Bill merely shook his head. He continued to wait.
“O.K.,” Blake said, “I saw Wilming. I told him where to head in. He hadn’t fallen out any window when I left. He was just sitting there, looking at me. All he said was, ‘Get out of here.’”
“And you did?”
“And I did.”
“Spill it,” Bill told him.
If you believed Joe Blake, there was not much to tell, not much that helped. He had gone around to see Vilma St. John, planning to tell her that he had got a friend to run the shop over the weekend; that he could therefore ride up to the summer camp with her and stay over Saturday and Sunday. He had not told her, because when he walked in Paul Wilming was standing by Vilma’s desk and had one hand on the girl’s shoulder. It wasn’t a new thing; there had been other things like it which made Joe Blake sore. This made him sore—at the girl, at Wilming. To Wilming, now, he said something. “I told him to lay off. I told him I was getting fed up.” Wilming apparently had shown surprise; when Joe Blake continued to be hostile and vocal, he had suggested they go to his office if Blake felt he had to raise a rumpus. They had gone to Wilming’s office, and Blake had raised his rumpus—a purely vocal rumpus with one end. “I told him to lay off. I told him he’d better.” Wilming apparently had listened, saying little but at first trying to mollify the younger man, trying to make him believe he was imagining things. In the end, under the tirade, Wilming apparently had got annoyed. In the end he had told Blake to get out.
“I was done anyhow,” Blake said. “What the hell?”
“Did you have your hands on him?”
“On him? He’d’ve fallen apart.”
“You dropped the flower,” Bill said.
“I guess so,” Blake said. “I didn’t notice. I had my hands on his desk, sort of leaning forward, and it must have fallen out. I didn’t notice.”
“He was all right when you left?”
“He was all right.”
“And Vilma? Did you see her when you went out?”
Blake said he hadn’t. She was not at her desk, and anyway he was still sore. He had gone to lunch alone; then back to the shop.
“You didn’t see her again?”
“Um—no.”
The hesitation was obvious. Bill waited.
“I tried to,” Blake said. “Along in the afternoon I—well, I got to feeling different. So I went over to Grand Central and waited around by the gate. Where her train left from. I didn’t see her.”
“You were there early?”
“Early enough. She didn’t show up.”
“Did she plan to go from the office? Directly? Do you happen to know?”
“Sure. She lived over in Brooklyn.”
“So she might have been quite early? At the gate, I mean?”
“I guess so.”
“Earlier than you were?”
“I suppose she could’ve got there—” Blake said, and broke off. “You mean somebody met her earlier? The guy who killed her?”
“How do I know?” Bill asked him, reasonably. “Obviously it’s possible. If you didn’t meet her.”
“I told you,” Blake said.
“Right,” Bill said. “You told me.” Mullins answered a knock at the door. He talked for a moment with someone outside. Bill looked at Mullins and raised his eyebrows.
“The Norths are outside, Loot,” Mullins said. “Waiting to see you.”
Bill nodded. He turned back to Blake.
“As you say, you’ve told me,” Bill said. “We’ll check, of course.”
“You can check,” Blake said. “You can check and be damned.”
“On your way, tough guy,” Weigand said. “If we want you we’ll let you know.”
He watched Joe Blake leave the office. His eyes were no longer quite so hard. When Mullins, standing by the door, raised interrogative eyebrows after Blake had passed, Bill Weigand shook his head.
“Not now,” he said. “Later maybe.”
“His story’s O.K.?” Mullins wanted to know.
It could be, Bill told him. There was, at the moment, no way of telling.
“But you think it is?” Mullins asked.
Bill shrugged. His face gave Mullins the answer. The Loot thought they’d wasted time with Blake. It was tough if they had. They didn’t have time for too many false starts.
“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “You want I should bring in the Norths?”
Weigand was sitting at his desk, the fingers of his right hand tapping, when he nodded “yes” to Mullins. He was sitting so, looking at the wall in front of him, when the Norths came in. He shifted his gaze quickly and half smiled, but not before they had seen his face with the smile missing. What she saw made Pam North want to cry.
Before any of them said anything, Pam crossed the little office and put her left hand on Bill Weigand’s shoulder. She still did not say anything, nor did Bill, and then she went back to stand beside Jerry, nearer the door.
“We’re looking for a Pontiac coupe,” Bill said. “We’ve got that far.” It was as if he were answering a spoken question. “For two men named Farno and Piper. Farno used to be a private detective. We picked up his license before the war.”
Jerry North pulled chairs from against the wall. They sat and waited.
“Two lines,” Bill said. He looked at them and then looked at the wall, and it was as if he were talking to himself. “Two lines. A kidnaping and a murder. We don’t know that they cross.”
“They cross with—” Pam said. She tried again. “They cross with Dorian.” It was oddly difficult to speak Dorian’s name.
Bill Weigand shook his head at the wall.
“They may only seem to,” he said. “We may only hope they do because—because it gives us two lines. You both know that.”
“I’m sure,” Pam said. “I’m really sure. It’s the only way that makes sense.”
Bill Weigand looked at her then, and so did Jerry. Then for a second they looked at each other, and did not need to speak.
“I know,” Pam said. “Things don’t have to. In theory. All the same, they do.”
“Right,” Bill said. “We bank on it. We assume Wilming was pushed. We assume Dorian saw something—or that somebody thought she saw something.” He spoke Dorian’s name almost as if it did not mean Dorian. He looked at the wall. “We assume one thing led to another.”
There was a pause then. Bill broke it.
“The man who was here was a guy named Blake,” he said. “Joe Blake. He was going to marry the St. John girl. You saw about her?”
Jerry nodded for both of them. Bill Weigand told them about Blake. When he had finished, Pam North began to shake her head. He smiled at her faintly.
“A dead end?” he said. “It could be.”
“The Helmses,” Pam said. “Stanton. Those three and Wilming were—tied up, somehow. Because she’s beautiful. Isn’t she, Jerry?”
“Almost,” Jerry said. “Near enough.”
“Entirely,” Pam said. “She played with Wilming. With Stanton—with both. That’s what we came to tell you. That it was with both.”
Weigand waited.
Pam told him about Buford Stanton and Beatrice Helms.
“There was something,” she said. “It was more than just lunch. Wasn’t it, Jerry?”
“It could have been,” Jerry said. He couldn’t be sure.
“Last night, Pam,” Bill said, “you thought it was Wilming and Mrs. Helms.”
“I told you,” Pam said, “it was both.”
Bill shook his head. He told Pam she was jumping, and Jerry nodded. It had been Wilming and Mrs. Helms because they had been together at a party at a friend’s house. It was Stanton and Mrs. Helms because they had lunch together, almost as publicly as possible. It wasn’t good enough.
“Well,” Pam said, “is this man—this Blake—is he any better?”
She waited only for Bill to shake his head, and went on.
“Just because it doesn’t ha
ve to be doesn’t mean it isn’t,” Pam said, and now both of them looked at her. She nodded, confirming her own belief in a clarifying statement. “Because people don’t sneak around corners any more, we think there aren’t any corners,” she said. “Isn’t that right?”
The two men looked at each other and neither was enlightened.
“Once,” Pam said, “before we were born—or most of us, anyway—if a married woman and another man had lunch together, or went to a party together, tongues wiggled.”
“Wagged,” Jerry told her.
“It’s more of a wiggle, actually,” Pam assured him. “Try to talk by wagging and see where it gets you. But call it wagged. Tongues wagged. There were scandals. Isn’t that so?”
“For the sake of argument,” Jerry said.
“Now,” Pam said, “it’s always all right. It never means anything. Which is just as silly. Now we never suspect anything, and half the time—” She paused to consider this. “Well,” she said, “a third of the time, perhaps, it means just what people used to think it meant. I think it does this time.”
“In both cases?” Bill said. “Wilming? Stanton?”
“I think so,” Pam said.
“Then you think Helms?” Bill said. “Logically you would.”
“It doesn’t have to be that simple,” Pam told him, and Bill said, “Right.”
“If what’s happened to Dorian is part of it,” he went on, “it isn’t simple. Not in execution, anyway. Not a you-leave-my-wife-alone-or-I’ll-push-you-out-the-window affair. At least, I shouldn’t think so.”
Again he seemed to be talking to the wall, and his speech seemed more to run down, to be forgotten, than to be ended. Pam North ended the pause finally.
“What do you do, then?” she said.
“Wait,” Bill told her. “And start over.” His voice was heavy.
“Not see the Helmses?” Pam said. “Not see Stanton?”
“What?” Bill said.
“Not—” Pam began, and Bill interrupted to say he was sorry.
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll see them, of course.”
“They’re all out at Stanton’s,” Pam said. “Wherever that is.”
“In Jersey,” Bill told her. “Near Hopewell.” His voice was dull and again his mind seemed a long distance from the little office. The telephone rang and he picked it up, and his voice was still dull when he said, “Yes?” And then as he listened his face changed, came alive. He said, “When?” and his voice was quick again. He listened and said, “Right.” He listened again.
“Try to keep them from pawing it too much,” he said, and hung up. Now he looked at the Norths, for the first time as if he fully saw them.
“Wilming’s place burned down,” he said. “His weekend place—out by Stanton’s. And—there may have been somebody in it!”
Jerry had said, “Can we help?” and Bill, with no hesitation, had nodded. So the Norths went in the back seat of Weigand’s Buick, with Weigand and Mullins in the seat in front of them; with Bill Weigand at the wheel and the “PD” shield uncovered. Going through the Holland Tunnel, Bill switched on the red lights and they went through to a shrill chorus of police whistles, giving encouragement, letting them make risky crossings between the two westbound lanes. The sense of speed in the tunnel was incredible, frightening. Pam North, with an effort, thought of something else. But they came out of the tunnel in one piece, with the siren crying in its lonesome voice.
They kept on going fast, over the Skyway, out New Jersey 25, angling north after a time. But eventually, on lesser roads, they had to stop and ask their way, and as they went on they stopped more frequently. Finally it was a matter of asking—at filling stations, at roadside stands—where, thereabouts, a man named Wilming lived, a man named Stanton. The name “Stanton” got them further. It got them to a black-surfaced road and finally, through trees, along a drive, a glimpse of a big house. But that was not what they wanted. They went on along the black road for a quarter of a mile and found what they wanted. A mailbox on their left had the name “Wilming.” Opposite it, on their right, a drive ran straight back from the road, with trees arching over it. They went up the drive, and as they went the acrid smell of burned wood, wet burned wood, came down the drive to meet them.
There had been a house at the end of the drive, and now it was blackened wreckage. Part of a rear wall was standing; there was a doorstep leading to nothing. Firemen in a miscellany of uniforms were pouring water from a hose line that dipped a pond off to the right. They were desultory about it; they were ending off a job which they had never had a chance to do.
Three men stood a little to the side, out of the way, and watched them. One of the men was a State trooper. His uniform was very pretty, his face was not. A second man was smaller, less starched; he was middle-aged and looked at things with sharp eyes. The third man was Buford Stanton. All three looked at the Buick. When he saw the police department shield, the trooper walked over, saluted.
“Had a little fire here,” he said. Bill Weigand nodded and identified himself. Stanton’s eyebrows went up, but he made no comment.
“We had all the fire we could have,” Stanton said, from where he stood. “With what we had.”
The middle-aged man said nothing. He looked at Weigand and Mullins and the Norths, and did not seem curious. He looked back at the fire. Stanton saw the Norths when they got out and then he moved toward them. He said, “Hello,” with some surprise. He said, “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Neither did we,” Pam North said politely. “Lieutenant Weigand brought us.” She nodded toward Stanton for Bill’s benefit. “Mr. Stanton, Bill,” she said.
“Wilming’s little place,” Stanton said, and waved at it. “Where he got away from it all.”
They looked at it.
“By the way,” Bill said, “you actually owned it, Mr. Stanton? Rented it to Wilming?”
Stanton nodded. He looked morosely at the remains of the little house. It seemed to sadden him.
“All right, boys,” the middle-aged man said, suddenly. “We don’t want a lake.”
The men holding the hose line turned it to one side. The sound of a chugging motor ended suddenly and the stream from the hose dropped, was deflated to drops, stopped altogether.
“Fire Investigation Bureau,” the trooper said, and nodded toward the middle-aged man, who now was walking toward the wreckage. The man walked up on the doorstep, precisely as if he were about to knock on the door, stepped forward and down and was up to his knees in wet ashes and charred wood.
“No basement,” Stanton said. He looked at the fire investigation man. “Just as well for him,” he added. “What’s he expect to find?”
“Whatever there is,” Bill said. He looked at the trooper. “The man who lived here was killed yesterday,” he said. “We’re looking into it.”
“I heard,” the trooper said. “Guy named Wilming?”
Weigand nodded and waited.
“It started burning a little before noon, as far as I get it,” the trooper said. “A man lives down the road a ways saw it first, and then they saw it at Mr. Stanton’s house. The gardener, wasn’t it, Mr. Stanton?”
“What?” Stanton said. “Oh—yes, that’s what they say.”
Stanton seemed to have lost interest. He was still watching the man who was wading in the ashes, who now had been joined by several of the firemen. What he saw seemed to bore him. He seemed suddenly to make up his mind to something, and that something apparently required him to go elsewhere. He started off, beginning a circle around the ruin. Then he paused, turned back and included Weigand and the Norths in an invitation. “Come up to the house when you get through here,” he said. “Give you a drink.”
He waited long enough to hear Weigand say, “Right,” in a tone without inflection. Buford Stanton, his red hair bristling, went around the place where the house had been and then along a path beyond it. They watched him go.
“Yes?” Weigand said to the troop
er.
“Some time before noon,” the trooper repeated. “This man down the road smelled smoke first—the wind was blowing it his way. He looked and saw the smoke and figured where it was. He turned in an alarm. About five minutes later this gardener at Stanton’s turned in an alarm.” He looked at the ruins. “It took the boys a while to get here,” he said, mildly. He looked back at Weigand.
“This man—this man down the road—thinks somebody was there last night,” he said. “Seems he saw a light. He was outside or something and saw a light over here. Through the trees.”
“He could have?” Weigand said.
“Yeah,” the trooper said. “I sort of looked. He could have.”
“And?” Weigand said.
The trooper shook his head.
“That’s about all there is,” he said. “The place burned down. You figure there was something else?”
Bill Weigand didn’t know. He said he didn’t know.
“But,” he said, “the guy who lived there got himself killed yesterday. And now his house burns down. I think it’s sort of funny. If I worked here I’d think it was pretty damn funny.”
The trooper waved without comment at the middle-aged man and the firemen.
“We got a gang coming,” he said. “What did you suppose? After Smith looks at it, we’ll take it apart.” A gesture identified Smith.
The Norths stayed by the car, out of the way, and they too watched Smith and his helpers. There were three of them altogether, and their efforts seemed to have little organization. They would wade through ashes, kicking burned pieces of wood aside; they would tug at and move larger timbers and look where the timbers had been and leave them. Smith did little of the tugging. Now and then he would point to something and the other two would move it. They worked in from the place the door had been and then Smith moved off to the left.
He found something there to interest him, and his movements—his whole body—so clearly expressed the interest that Bill Weigand and the State trooper moved toward him. They had gone a few steps only when Smith, who had been bending over something, stood up and turned, looking toward them. He began to nod his head in a pleased way, and then he beckoned. The Norths went after the two policemen. They walked around to the left side of the wreckage and stood just outside it, and Smith smiled and nodded at them.
Untidy Murder Page 13
