Untidy Murder

by Frances Lockridge

  “Did you get Bill?” Jerry said, when they were seated and had ordered cocktails.

  Pam nodded. She had got Bill.

  “Jerry,” she said. “He sounds terrible. You know?”

  Jerry said he could guess. He looked at Pam.

  “Very easily, my dear,” he said.

  She reached along the seat and took his hand, and pressed it and let it go.

  “We’re not doing anything,” Pam said, and sat looking across the oblong room at nothing. “It was never so important, and we’re not doing anything.”

  Jerry said he took it that Bill was not enthusiastic about Wilming and Mrs. Helms, which meant, presumably, Wilming and Mr. Helms, in the last analysis. The last analysis being Mr. Wilming and the window.

  “He said, ‘Thanks, Pam,’ but not as if he were thinking about it,” Pam told Jerry. “He said they’d check. Then he said, ‘Look Pam, we’ve got several leads. We’re working on them,’ and then somebody spoke to him, Mullins I think, and Bill said he’d call us and goodbye. And, actually, I don’t think that I like it myself.”

  “Wilming and Mrs. Helms?” Jerry said. He considered. “I did, rather,” he said. “Maybe because it was mine. Why don’t you?”

  “Too simple,” Mrs. North said. “Too vague, too. Personally, I don’t believe men kill other men just for making passes.” She considered this. “At their wives, I mean.”

  Regardless of what she believed, Jerry told her, it had been known.

  “Did we ever?” Pam said and Jerry shook his head, asking clarification.

  “Know of any, of course,” Pam said. “I don’t just mean plain ordinary killing, like your finding a strange man with me and shooting him. I mean murder.” She turned and looked at Jerry. “Would you, if you did?” she asked him.

  “Instantly,” Jerry told her.

  “I doubt it,” Pam said. “I think you’d run your fingers through your hair and say, ‘Listen, Pam!’ I’ve often wondered.”

  Jerry looked at her and ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. He said, “Listen, Pam!”

  “Oh,” she said, “just in the abstract. What did you think I meant?”

  “I tried not to,” Jerry told her. “I just wondered why you’d often wondered. I mean—often? I mean, if you think of it often it must—”

  “I know what you mean,” Pam said. “Although really, Jerry, you’re sometimes pretty obscure, you know. Actually, you know there aren’t any strange men.”

  “Strange men I wouldn’t mind,” Jerry said. “Only if they weren’t.” Then he grinned at her. “Forget it,” he told her. “Where were you?”

  “That I don’t believe Mr. Helms pushed Mr. Wilming because of passes at Mrs. Helms,” Pam said. “Because that would be just killing and this is murder.” Jerry started to speak and she shook her head. “Don’t say you don’t know what I mean,” she said. “Somebody thought about this, so it’s murder. If it just happened it would just be killing, and Dorian wouldn’t have been kidnaped. Isn’t it logical? Oh—the curry soup and eggs benedict, please. And some of the popovers.”

  Jerry said it was very logical and that he would take the same.

  “So, as I said, we’re not doing anything,” Pam said. Her face, which changed so often, changed now. Some of the special kind of life it had went out of it. “Jerry—what do you think has happened to Dorian?”

  Jerry merely shook his head. Then, for rather a long time, neither of them said anything. The waiter brought the cold vichyssoise with curry in it and they both ate abstractedly.

  “I don’t know what Bill will do,” Pam said. “Jerry—what’ll Bill do?”

  “Find her, I—” Jerry said, and he seemed still to be thinking of something else. He interrupted himself to nod to someone across the room, smiling as he nodded. Pam looked at the two people who had just been seated, and at whom Jerry had nodded, and then she looked at him.

  “Jerry,” she said, “I thought you didn’t remember her!”

  “What?” Jerry said.

  “Mrs. Helms,” Pam told him. “You said you didn’t.”

  Jerry ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair. He said, “Listen, Pam—”

  “We’ve been through that,” he said. “I didn’t at first; then I did. But I wouldn’t know her now if she were—if she were sitting across the room.”

  “Jerry,” Pam said. “You just did!”

  “What?” Jerry said. He examined his wife. “Are you all right?” he asked her.

  “Of course,” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Jerry said, “what do you mean?” He recaptured the conversation. “I just did what?” he said. “Didn’t you say I just did something?”

  “Of course,” Pam said. “You just recognized Mrs. Helms. She is sitting across the room. Contrary to fact, but it isn’t.”

  “What?” Jerry said.

  “If—were,” Pam said. “Grammar. Contrary to fact supposition. But it isn’t. You just nodded to her.”

  Jerry looked back, with a somewhat startled expression, at the table toward which he had just nodded. Then he turned to Pam and spoke carefully.

  “I just nodded to Buford Stanton,” he said. “The editor of Esprit. The man with whom I’m negotiating for anthology rights. The man with the red hair.”

  “And,” Pam said, “the man with Mrs. Beatrice Helms. All very cozy. Nobody mourning poor Mr. Wilming. Just happily drinking manhattans. Jerry!”

  “Well?” Jerry said.

  “Mrs. Helms particularly,” Pam said. “He just worked for Mr. Stanton. But he made passes at Mrs. Helms. At least.”

  “Still,” Jerry said.

  “A woman’s always fond of a man who makes passes at her,” Pam said. “Even if she doesn’t particularly want them. You’d be sorry he died, even if you were in love actually with somebody else.” She paused for a moment, indicating the end of general statement. “Like Mr. Stanton,” she said.

  “What?” Jerry said.

  “Even if she’s really in love with Mr. Stanton,” Pam said, “she must be sorry about Mr. Wilming. It stands to reason.”

  “Listen, Pam,” Jerry said, and now he was earnest. “You’re jumping. Is there any reason Mrs. Helms shouldn’t just simply, like a lot of people, be in love with Mr. Helms?”

  “Are they?” Pam said. “Oh, I see what you mean. No reason. But she’s mixed up with Mr. Stanton.”

  “She’s having lunch with Mr. Stanton.”

  “Look at them,” Pam said. “I have been. They’re not just having lunch. It isn’t as if—oh, as if I had lunch with Bill Weigand. Look at them.”

  Jerry looked at them. It was vague and inconclusive. Probably it was merely something Pam had put into his head. But he saw what Pam meant. He turned back and Pam was leaning close to him, and she spoke now in a low voice.

  “Jerry,” she said, “suppose something. Suppose Mr. Stanton is in love with Mrs. Helms and Wilming—well, gets in the way. Mr. Stanton didn’t like him much anyway and was about to fire him and then he got to thinking about it and pushed him out of the window instead. Jealousy and—oh, whatever else there may have been. Perhaps Mr. Wilming was really a terrible art editor and had done something to hurt the magazine. You told Bill Mr. Stanton has—oh, a special feeling about the magazine. And then he finds out that Wilming is getting in his way with Mrs. Helms and—”

  “Listen,” Jerry said, “do you really want me to suppose that?”

  “Why not?” Pam said.

  Jerry made it slow, spoke it carefully.

  “We start out with Stanton and Mrs. Helms having lunch,” he said. “Having it very publicly, at the Algonquin. We decide that, because they’re having lunch, they’re having an affair. We decide that, because they’re having an affair, Stanton is jealous of Wilming. So we decide Stanton pushed Wilming out a window. Really, Pam.”

  “Well,” Pam said, “we have to start somewhere. That’s perfectly reasonable.”

  She looked again
at Stanton and Mrs. Helms, who now were eating soup.

  “Anybody can make anything sound ridiculous,” Pam said. “Which doesn’t prove it is.”

  “And,” Jerry said, “you can start any place. Even if Wilming got killed because of Mrs. Helms, you don’t have to start with Stanton.”

  “Start with Stanton,” Pam said. “It sounds like a slogan—as if Mr. Stanton were running for something. Go on.”

  “You can start with Helms himself,” Jerry said. “If it’s jealousy, who would be most apt to be jealous? Helms.”

  Pam shook her head.

  “Too many people,” she said. “If it was only Wilming or only Stanton, maybe. But its being both means Mr. Helms got used to it, and if he’s used to it, he doesn’t kill anybody. It would be more likely that Wilming would kill Stanton, or Stanton would kill Wilming. You could even figure it that one of them might kill Helms, particularly if he didn’t know about the other.”

  Perhaps Helms didn’t know about either, Jerry pointed out. Or perhaps he knew about one and not the other. And perhaps—at least perhaps—they were making the whole thing up. Then he picked up part of his change from the tray and left part, and said to Pam, “All right?”

  The waiter pulled the table back and Pam slid out. Jerry slid out behind her and started toward the door before he realized that Pam was moving toward the table across the room. It occurred to Jerry, frighteningly, that she was about to ask Buford Stanton and Mrs. Donald Helms about the present state of their affair.

  But Pam was smiling at Mrs. Helms and, when she got close enough, saying how pleasant it was to see her again. “At the Rogers’s, you know,” Pam said, and Mrs. Helms said, “Of course. Mrs. North.” Then Mrs. Helms smiled at Jerry and said, “And Mr. North.” Stanton tried to stand behind the table and they told him not to bother, and he said, “Hello, North.” Jerry said, “Buford Stanton, Pam. The editor of Esprit, you know,” and that was that.

  “Esprit,” Pam repeated. “Didn’t I read—oh, I’m sorry.”

  “About Wilming, she means,” Jerry said. “Nasty business.”

  “Very,” Stanton agreed.

  “Terrible,” Pam said. “Even people you’ve never met—a dreadful thing to think of.”

  “Actually, you did meet him, Mrs. North,” Mrs. Helms said. “He was with me that evening at the Rogers’s. Don’t you remember? It was while Don was away in the Navy.” She said this last partly to Stanton, evidently in explanation.

  Pam North looked puzzled.

  “A tall man?” she said. “Rather good-looking. Like an actor, somehow? Only older?”

  Mrs. Helms nodded.

  “And that was Mr. Wilming!” Pam said. “You remember him, Jerry?”

  “Yes,” Jerry said. “Seemed a very nice sort of chap.”

  “Oh, he was,” Beatrice Helms said. “So nice. Such a dear friend of Donald’s—my husband’s, you know. Don’s terribly upset.”

  “Of course,” Pam said. “A dreadful thing. He just—fell out?”

  Beatrice Helms shook her head. She said she was afraid not.

  “Actually,” Stanton said, “the police think he jumped. I don’t know why.”

  Pam North said again that it was terrible, and Jerry nodded gravely.

  “How could anyone?” Pam said. “What could there be so—so insurmountable—as to make anyone do that?”

  Stanton shook his head, with its bristling red hair. Beatrice Helms shook hers, with its smooth dark waves. She was almost a really beautiful woman, Jerry thought; so near it made no difference.

  “Even Don can’t guess,” Mrs. Helms said. “And he knew him better than anybody.”

  There was a little uncertain pause then and, after letting it run a few moments, Buford Stanton ended it. He ended it by looking at his watch.

  “Bee,” he said, “if we’re going to pick Don up and get out there before traffic gets any worse, we’ll have to be moving.” He looked at Jerry. “We’ll get together next week, some time?” he said. Jerry agreed they would.

  “Wilming’s death leaves loose ends, of course,” Stanton said. “We’re taking the weekend—Helms and I—to straighten them out. Out at my place. It’s a couple of hours’ drive, you know.”

  Jerry didn’t know. He made sounds.

  “Why we have to run,” Stanton said, and pushed at the table. Everybody was glad to have seen everybody else; the Norths went out.

  “Well,” Jerry said, as they waited in Forty-fourth Street, hopefully, for a taxicab. “Satisfied? Everything matter of fact, open, aboveboard.”

  “I never saw anything so aboveboard in my life,” Pam said. “I never saw so many things put there so carefully. Let’s go see Bill.”

  “Whatever for?” Jerry said, as a cab stopped and Pam began to disappear inside it. He repeated the question several times on the way to Bill Weigand’s office, and never felt altogether satisfied with the answers.

  7

  SATURDAY

  1 P.M. TO 5:45 P.M.

  Joe Blake was not frightened, which was disappointing. He did not look like a man who would easily be frightened. He was not tall; he was very square and solid, with a square, solid face. The jaw muscles were tight now, which made the face squarer. His blue eyes met Weigand’s unswervingly, angrily. His answers were curt to questions Weigand asked him. If he felt emotion, and Bill Weigand thought he did, the emotion broke, defeated, against a dam he had set up in his mind.

  Yes, Vilma St. John had been a friend of his; yes, if Weigand wanted it that way, Vilma had been his girl. He had planned to marry her. “You know it all,” he told Weigand, with something like a sneer. “All that doesn’t matter.”

  “You saw her yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  He shrugged. A little before noon. At her office.

  “And—?”

  That was all. He saw her. She was all right. She would be all right now if the cops knew their business.

  Weigand told him to skip it. He spoke reasonably.

  “You’re worked up,” he said. “Naturally.”

  “Why not?” Blake wanted to know. “Wouldn’t you be?”

  That was a good one, under the circumstances, Bill thought. That was a beautiful one. Dorian! Where are you, Dorian?

  “We do what we can,” Bill told him. “We’re trying now. If you know anything, you can help us—if you want to.”

  “About what?” Blake said. “I saw her at the office. She was all right.”

  “Why did you see her?” Bill asked him. “Was there a special reason?”

  “Why should there be?”

  Bill shook his head. He said this got them nowhere.

  “You can do two things, Blake,” he said. “You can tell us anything you know. Unless you have some reason not to. You’d know about that. I’d think it would have to be a damned good reason, if she’d been my girl.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as you killed her,” Bill said.

  “You—” Blake said and stopped.

  “Such as you killed Mr. Wilming,” Bill said. “And Vilma knew it and you killed her.”

  “You’re funny,” Blake said. “God, but you’re funny!”

  “Wilming was making passes at her,” Bill told him. “You knew that. You had an argument with him—maybe a fight. You knocked him out the window. Maybe you didn’t mean to. You were jealous as hell, Blake.”

  “Funnier and funnier,” Blake said. “You ought to be in the movies.”

  “You went around yesterday to see Vilma,” Bill said. “You found—well, say you found Wilming making passes at her. You got sore. Maybe you didn’t mean to knock him out the window. Maybe it was just a tough break.”

  “That old grandpa!” Blake said, with the contempt of twenty-five for the latter forties. “He couldn’t make the grade. The kid just laughed at him.”

  “Possibly,” Bill Weigand said. “Did you?”

  “Hell,” Blake told him. “It would’ve been too muc
h trouble.”

  For the first time Weigand was sure the younger man was defensive. He was a little surprised.

  “Look at this, Blake,” he said, suddenly. He waited an instant until Blake was looking and showed him the little blue flower. Weigand watched the square face. The jaw muscles moved a little, tightened a little more. “Mean something to you?” Bill asked.

  “Centaurea cyanus,” Blake said. “Annual cornflower. So what?”

  “So you’re wearing one like it,” Bill told him without emphasis.

  Blake’s fingers went to his lapel, touched the little blue flower there.

  “Forgotten it?” Bill said.

  “I’m in the flower business,” Blake said. “So I wear a flower. What the hell? It’s a habit.”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “I thought it might be. Were you wearing one yesterday when you went to see Vilma?”

  “I could have been,” Blake said.

  “And you lost it somewhere,” Bill said. Blake merely looked at him. It was a careful look. “You lost it in Wilming’s office,” Bill said. “We found it. This is it. The girl tried to hide it, but we found it.”

  “That’ll be something to prove,” Blake said.

  Bill Weigand did not say anything for almost a minute. He leaned back in his chair behind his desk, looked at Blake with very cold eyes. When he spoke his voice was cold and harsh.

  “Blake,” he said, “we’ll play this the way you want it. You can think you’re a tough guy. You can play it like a damn fool. We’ll play just as rough as you want to play. Maybe you’ve got to play it that way. If you killed Wilming and the girl, maybe you haven’t any other way to play it. I’m beginning to get sold on that idea.” He paused again and continued to look at Blake. “You want to say anything?” Weigand said, finally.

  “You’ll stick me with it anyhow,” Blake said, after a little pause.

  “If you did it,” Bill said, “we’ll sure as hell stick you with it. Whatever you say. Or don’t say.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” Blake said. “My God, Vilma and I—” He stopped. “Sob stuff,” he said. His eyes met Bill Weigand’s. “What’s the use of sob stuff? You want I should sing it?”