Murder Is Served

by Frances Lockridge

  Peggy Mott was standing in front of a chair which had been pushed sideways near the desk. She was standing, forced back a little, her face contorted and her lips half parted as if she were trying to scream.

  Pam could see only the girl’s back-tilted head, her contorted face, one side of her straining body. Between them, his back to the door—one of his hands reaching toward Peggy Mott’s throat—was André Maillaux. For an instant, even after the sound of the opening door reached him, he could not seem to stop lashing at the girl with words. And then he whirled. It was incredible that so round a little man could move so quickly, that so round a face could be so twisted. And then he jumped toward Pam.

  The instant seemed to freeze. Released, Peggy Mott was falling backward—was in an attitude of falling, but seemed not to move. For that frozen second, André Maillaux seemed caught, also, in suspension, as if the air had turned suddenly to an invisible jelly, holding him in the act of rushing toward Pam North, with a knife in his right hand.

  Pam drew air into her lungs to scream and thought she heard a scream. Then, while she had still not screamed, had not moved, Maillaux staggered grotesquely, and at the same time there was a great, sharp sound which filled the room. And, quite slowly, André Maillaux fell to the floor at Pam North’s feet.

  There was a door beyond the desk, opposite the one by which Pam had entered the room. Bill Weigand was standing in the door, with an automatic in his hand. His face was filled with anger.

  Then a good many things happened very rapidly, as if hurrying to catch up, to obliterate, that vacuum there had been in time when Peggy Mott was falling and did not fall, when Maillaux was rushing toward Pam North to kill her, and not moving. Mullins appeared at the door with Bill Weigand, and he had Leonard—tall, thin, with a look of utter astonishment on his face—by the arm. And then behind Pam there was movement and somebody—Jerry—had her by the shoulders and was pulling her back against him and Dorian was saying, anxiously, in a voice much higher than belonged to her, “Bill! Bill!”

  Maillaux was trying to get up, and Mullins was beside him. Maillaux still held the knife, and Mullins kicked at the hand which held it, and the knife slid, harmless, soundlessly, across the carpet. And then Pam North heard her own voice and was astonished, because she had not intended to speak.

  “Why?” Pam said. “I don’t see why.”

  Good heavens, Pam North thought, I’m talking aloud to myself again. I thought I’d got over that.

  13

  MONDAY, 12:20 A.M. TO 1:05 A.M.

  The small, white-and-yellow living-room was as full as it had been twelve hours before; it was fuller by one, John Leonard, whose now relaxed length seemed to take up a disproportionate amount of the little space. Jerry had pulled up a straight chair and sat straddling it, leaning on the back. Dorian was back in her chair by the fire and curled in it again; Pam and Peggy Mott and Weldon Carey sat in a row on the sofa. Carey had his elbows on his knees, his hands supporting his head and he seemed, even seated, to be thrusting forward, driving at something. Then, quite gently, Peggy touched the one of his hands which was nearer her and he turned, suddenly, and smiled and leaned back. They all looked at Bill Weigand, who looked at his drink.

  “No,” he said, “I wasn’t surprised. Not at the very end.”

  “Well,” Pam said, “I wasn’t either. But you have to expect something to be surprised when it isn’t. By that time I didn’t really expect anything.” She paused and looked at Leonard. “Except maybe you a little, Mr. Leonard,” she said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  Leonard waved it off, not speaking.

  “And I still don’t see—” Pam said, and left it hanging.

  “Mullins’s steak,” Bill said, and he seemed amused momentarily. “You missed Mullins’s steak.” He looked at Pam, who looked back as blankly as it was possible for Pam North to look. “Not the one he had,” Bill said. “The one he remembered.”

  Pam looked momentarily enlightened and said, “Oh, that!” But then her face clouded and she shook her head. “I’m still not sure—” she said.

  “Listen,” Jerry said. He said it with emphasis, and everyone looked at him. “Listen. Maillaux killed his partner, Mott. He attacked Leonard here. He killed the other girl—Pam’s mink, Elaine Britton. He tried, in the end, to make Peggy write a confession. From what Pam says, he was going to kill her after she signed it and—”

  “And I knew it,” Peggy said. “But—I almost did.” They looked at her, now. “It was very strange,” she said. “I almost did it just—just to gain minutes. The minutes it would take to write it. I could never see before why people—oh, let themselves be taken for rides, marched to gas chambers. It’s just for minutes.” She looked at Carey. “Wel,” she said, and her voice was strained and a little frightened. “Just for minutes. Minutes!”

  It was the dark man, his face no longer angry, who this time put a hand over one of the girl’s.

  “Take it easy, Peg,” he said.

  “Maybe we’d better leave all this for now,” Pam said. “Just forget it, for now. After all, it’s all right. Maillaux gave himself away. And—he talked?” This was to Bill, who nodded.

  “Somehow,” Bill said, in a voice carefully without inflection, “M. Maillaux got the idea he was worse hurt than he was and thought he might as well tell the whole business.”

  “You wouldn’t know how he got that idea, would you?” Carey said. He seemed mildly angry again. Bill looked at him, kept his face expressionless, and shook his head.

  “No,” Peggy Mott said, “I want to find out about it.”

  “Then,” Jerry said. “Two things. We know what he did. I don’t know how you tumbled to it, Bill. And I don’t know why he did any of it. Or, anyway, I don’t know what started him. And this business about Mullins’s steak. What was that?”

  “The steak he didn’t like,” Bill said, “was the tip-off.”

  Nobody saw it, they looked at him puzzled.

  “At first,” Bill said, “we had a perfect case against Mrs. Mott. We all saw that, including Mrs. Mott. Pam said it was too perfect but that was a—an esoteric objection.”

  “Nevertheless—” Pam said.

  “Nevertheless, I considered it,” Bill admitted. “I never denied that. I considered the possibility that someone was handing it to us on a platter and that, because it seemed so easy, it was possible we hadn’t gone deeply enough. Then I talked to Mr. Leonard and—”

  Leonard, who had been looking at the carpet, sighed audibly.

  “All right,” Bill said, and smiled slightly. “I’ll leave out the detail, Mr. Leonard. However—I had two cases, then. One interfering with the other. And so, because I wasn’t sure enough, I held up on Mrs. Mott. And, I began to wonder whether there might be another case—or half a dozen more cases.” He paused. “It was—disquieting,” he said, mildly. “I went back over everybody. Went back over all we knew about them, looking for something we’d missed. I didn’t find it, at first. I just lost certainty.”

  “Plowed the ground,” Pam said.

  They all looked at her.

  “Loosened it,” she, amplified. “Then Mullins sowed seed on it. Right?”

  “Mullins sowed seed,” Bill agreed. “I saw why somebody else might have wanted to kill Mott. It was just a glimmer. Then, you two”—he nodded at Peggy Mott and Carey—“decided to go to the restaurant. And, I saw the pay-off coming up. For obvious reasons.”

  “Obvious?” Jerry said. It was part question, part cue. Dorian turned a little in her chair. “He likes this, you know,” she said, conversationally. “Don’t you, Bill?”

  Bill grinned at her, not answering.

  “Obvious?” Carey said. “How obvious?”

  “If somebody other than Mrs. Mott had killed Mott, and the girl, he had certainly gone out of his way to arrange things so Mrs. Mott would appear guilty,” Bill pointed out. “Arranged a frame for her. Now, this somebody finds that it hasn’t worked. That, so far as he knows, Mrs. Mott�
��s cleared or, at least, that we’re not satisfied. So what will he do, in view of what he’s done before? Obviously, he’ll provide something new—something that will satisfy us. So it seemed like an idea to go along and see what this person would do.” He paused and his face hardened momentarily. “See he didn’t do too much,” he said.

  “You thought it was Maillaux by that time?” The question was Pam’s.

  Bill nodded, then hesitated.

  “I thought so,” he said. “I still only—well, thought so. It still might have been Leonard. And I still might be doing it all the hard way, refusing to accept the obvious. Mrs. Mott. But there wasn’t any harm in finding out. In giving everybody enough rope. I pushed it along a little, too—hinted that we still thought it was Mrs. Mott, hoping that the right person would figure one more little thing planted against her would finish things off.”

  “Me,” Leonard said. “You hinted that to me.” He was morose.

  “You,” Bill said. He was cheerful. “You were still in it, Mr. Leonard. I gave Maillaux the same hint. I’ll admit when you stumbled over Mullins in the corridor, while we were listening to Maillaux and Mrs. Mott, I was a little confused.”

  “My own interests,” Leonard said. “I wanted to keep track of things. Also, I had had a couple of drinks.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “But, anyway, it was clear by then. Clear what Maillaux was trying to do, hence what he had done. It wasn’t necessary to know then, and I didn’t know, that he’d got her to go to the office by sending her a note supposed to be from me. And I thought he’d killed Elaine—Pam’s poor little mink—merely because the person with an obvious motive to kill her was Mrs. Mott.”

  “That wasn’t it?” Pam said. She paused. “I ought to have had a glimmer myself,” she said. “She was so anxious to see Maillaux when she went to the restaurant to say she had seen Peggy go in. In the foyer, when Jerry and I were waiting for a cab.”

  “Anxious?” Jerry said. “I didn’t get that.”

  “Anyway,” Pam said, “she asked for him, first off. Why, Bill?”

  “Because she was in a position to give us the motive,” Bill said. “Because she thought he might make it worth her while not to give us the motive. She—well, she tried again. Unfortunately for her.”

  “Bill,” Dorian said. “Get back to the steak. Please, Bill. Tell us about the glimmer.”

  Bill looked at Dorian and smiled. He said, “Right.”

  “Maillaux comes from a family of restaurant owners,” he said. “And—not just people who happen to own restaurants. People to whom running restaurants—great restaurants—is the most important thing in life, or just about. You have to get that picture—blow it up to size. The importance of running a restaurant which is really great. A restaurant epicures think of first when you mention eating, mention a city. Or, think of among the two or three you think of first. The great places, the grande cuisine. Cordon bleu. Do you see that—see that coming down through several generations of the Maillaux family? See the pride building up?”

  He paused and looked at them.

  “Try to,” he advised. “Because that was what did it. Incredible pride. In a way, incredible honesty, too. For Maillaux, it wasn’t the point, merely, that he operate a famous restaurant—one everybody knew about. It had to be more than famous; it had to be great in the eyes of the few people all over the world who know about food. Not just the food people all over the world are dying for lack of. Food in the epicure’s sense.”

  “Anachronistic,” Carey said. “Good God!”

  “Right,” Bill agreed. “But it still goes on. And that was Maillaux’s league. And, until a year or so ago, he seemed to be getting to the top of it. Maillaux’s was one of the great restaurants of New York, and that meant of the world. Then—I don’t know precisely why, perhaps to keep up the standard, Maillaux’s prices had to get too high for too many people—he got into financial difficulties. And—Tony Mott bought in. He did the place over and aimed at a new clientele. The crowd which cares more about glitter, and service, and going to the right place, than about food. People who—well, I’ll tell you what Maillaux said. ‘Pigs,’ Maillaux said. ‘They smoke through dinner. You perceive? The palate—bah!’”

  “But,” Pam said. “Even so. I mean, he made money?”

  Bill nodded. He said she didn’t see what Maillaux was really like. Money he had to have, obviously. But—

  “Mott knew the kind of crowd he wanted,” Bill said. “He knew they ‘smoked through dinner.’ He didn’t care, and it gave him a chance to improve the profits. He liked profits, didn’t he, Mrs. Mott?”

  “Very much,” Peggy said. “Oh, very much.”

  “So, what was put into service-chi-chi—could come out of the kitchen,” Bill said. “That was obvious, and nobody would know the difference. But—you have to see how this hit Maillaux. It was like—well, like making a Supreme Court justice into an ambulance chaser, a shyster. And, don’t think that Maillaux would think the parallel extreme. He’d probably say, ‘A Supreme Court justice, phooey!’”

  “With a French accent,” Pam said. “No—wait a minute. There in the office he didn’t have one. Until he said ‘revolving’ when he meant ‘revolution.’”

  “He turned it on and off,” Bill said. “He’d been here a long time. He had a good ear. But he spoke to customers as he realized they preferred. However—”

  “Go ahead,” Jerry said.

  “Mott had control,” Bill said. “He could call the turn. He did. Probably, although Maillaux doesn’t admit this, the way the money came in kept Maillaux quiet for a time. Perhaps Maillaux thought he could get his own way back in the end. But apparently things got worse and—well, they fought about it. That’s what Elaine had to tell us, incidentally. Mott had told her that Maillaux was acting up, and had laughed about it. She knew Maillaux. Maybe she guessed that, on such a point, he had a monomania. Maybe Mott did, but figured he could handle Maillaux. Well—he couldn’t. Maillaux decided that—that he would be better off if he had Mott’s money without Mott. Of course somebody would have inherited Mott’s share—you, Mrs. Mott, if you didn’t kill him—but Maillaux figured he could handle any ordinary person. And no ordinary person would have the ability Mott had to get the kind of patronage Mott wanted. Anyway, Maillaux took a chance.”

  “With a knife,” Pam said.

  Bill nodded.

  “Now you see where the steak came in,” he said. “Mullins knows a good steak when he gets one. And—any good restaurant can give you a good steak. It isn’t esoteric. It’s something a place like Maillaux’s would do perfectly, without thinking about it one way or another. If it gave Mullins an indifferent steak—well, the kitchen was falling apart. And, if Maillaux didn’t like that, and considering his history, his family’s history—well, I got a glimmer. And played it that way.”

  There was a considerable pause. Jerry refilled glasses.

  “Maillaux didn’t move without planning,” Bill said. “He wanted it to be perfect. Mrs. Mott was obviously the one to pin it on; her motive was ready-made. So he called her up, pretending to be Mott, and arranged for her to be on hand. Then, just before she was due, he went into Mott’s office, picked up the steak knife, and stabbed Mott from behind. That was all he had to do except, a little later, go around and discover the body. If Mrs. Britton hadn’t seen Mrs. Mott there, if nobody had seen her, Maillaux could have come to us himself and said he had seen her. That would start things going the way he wanted them to go. After that, he improvised. He was around when Miss Breakwell told about that paper you wrote, Mrs. Mott. He was there when you two”—Bill indicated the Norths—“came to tell me the paper had been stolen. That was a nice break for him. He made it better by his attack on Leonard, which wasn’t, incidentally, intended to be more serious than it was. Maillaux himself wouldn’t have missed; Mrs. Mott might have. And, although he decided he had to kill Mrs. Britton for his own protection, that was useful too, because Mrs. Mott had an obvious motive. Ev
erything was perfect.”

  “Too perfect,” Pam said. “Too good to be true.”

  There was another pause. Pam ended it.

  “Look,” she said, “you say he heard about the paper’s being stolen. You mean, he didn’t steal it?”

  Bill smiled slowly. He nodded. He said, “Right.”

  “Did he, Mr. Carey?” Bill asked. “That’s just something you did for him. Wasn’t it?”

  Carey leaned forward again, as if he were about to leap.

  “Damn it all,” he said. “What else would I—?”

  His voice was angry.

  “Suppose I did?” he said. “Are you going to make—”

  Then, quite unexpectedly, he stopped. He stopped because the slim blond girl sitting beside him reached out and took his face in both her hands and turned the face toward her own.

  “Shut up, Wel,” she said. “Shut up, dear.”

  And then, apparently to see that he did, and still holding his face in both her hands, she leaned forward a little and kissed him on the lips. She did it quite simply, as if there were no one else in the room.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries

  1

  MONDAY, APRIL 16, 8:58 A.M. TO 3:03 P.M.

  Deborah Brooks watched her step getting out, in accordance with instructions, and the elevator door banged heavily behind her. She turned right, walked half a dozen steps and let herself into the office through what all of them called the “back door.” This door closed behind her soundlessly and she flicked up a tumbler switch without looking. Her fingers slipped off it; then her mind overtook her reflexes and she noticed that the lights in the corridor were already on. She looked at her watch and it said eight fifty-eight. Grace was early then, which was unlike Grace who came as exactly on the hour as if she wound herself each morning. It was more probable, Deborah thought, that her watch was slow. Machinery was fallible.

  Deborah went down the short corridor and past the first closet. She opened the second and took off her light coat—and noticed that Grace’s coat was not, after all, neatly on its customary hanger. Deborah noticed this with a fraction of her mind. She peered into the mirror on the inside of the closet door. She closed the door, pulling it toward her, and then went the rest of the way down the short corridor and opened the door which led from it into the bathroom. The light was not on there and she flicked it on. She looked at herself carefully in the mirror over the washbasin. She looked a moment and then stuck out a pink tongue, suddenly, and looked at it with care. That was something she had done since she was a little girl; there was something magical and reassuring about it. Even now, when she knew that the magic and the reassurance came, somehow, from a past which she could never regain—and knew that the gesture was meaningless—she still stuck out her tongue at herself when she faced a mirror. Sometimes she did not even look at her tongue after she had stuck it out. But when she stuck it out, even when she did not look at it, she was a child again and her father was saying, “Stick out your tongue, Debbie,” and he was looking at it and nodding gravely in approval. That meant she was well; that she was not confronted by those strange discomforts which meant that she could not play and go to parties. Her father could tell when those discomforts were coming, merely by looking at her tongue. That had been the magic, when she was very little. Even when she understood that her father was a doctor, and so could tell things by looking at you that others could not tell, the magic still, in some not very clear fashion, remained. If you stuck out your tongue and looked at it, you warded off evil.