Voyage into Violence

by Frances

  The Norths had sat side by side on a sofa in the living room, and a uniformed man had stood in the hallway leading to the door of the suite and looked at them. His expression was dispassionate, not really inimical. Detectives passing in and out—there is much going in and out at such times, all of it ordered, not all of it self-explanatory—looked at the Norths in passing, with judgment reserved, and curiosity only professional. Looked at detachedly, Jerry North thought, we’re in something of a spot, with a good deal to explain and no explanations handy. But of course—As soon as Bill gets here, Pam thought, more immediately to the point. If it is murder, of course. She considered that. As I suppose it will be, because it always seems to be and—

  It was, they both thought, about time for Bill—for Captain William Weigand, Homicide, Manhattan West, who would know (whatever it looked like) that this was only one more of those things which happened to the Norths, lightning rods for homicide—to show up, to take over. They would sit then no more in Coventry, judgment would no longer be so obviously reserved.

  The uniformed man near the door heard something and turned to open the door. Three men came through it, and Sergeant Stein was the first. “Here they are now,” Pam said, softly, not without relief. Another man came through the door. He was not anybody the Norths knew. A third man came—a large man, red of face, a man choleric with authority.

  Jerry North could feel his eyes widening, looked at Pam, who looked quickly at him, and saw her eyes wide too. Then they both looked at Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, Commanding Detectives, Borough of Manhattan.

  And Inspector O’Malley looked at them—looked with rising color. Across the room, Inspector Artemus O’Malley bristled at Pam and Jerry North.

  It seemed, for a moment, as if Inspector O’Malley might explode. It was unfortunate that, just then, the cat Martini chose to come out from under the sofa, to see what there was for a cat to see.

  O’Malley made a great sound—a sound without words, which was rather like a roar. Martini crouched and hissed, turned, and was a café-au-lait streak to the safety of cave the sofa made. She growled a penetrating Siamese growl.

  O’Malley steadied himself, but his color did not lessen. It was clear he sought control.

  “My God!” O’Malley said, and his voice filled the room, made the big room shrink, made it shudder. “You two!” He paused to gain control. “And a cat!” Inspector O’Malley said. But now he screamed. And from beneath the sofa, Martini, who had had enough of all of it, screamed back.

  “She hates to be yelled at,” Pam North said, without emphasis, by way of explanation. “All loud noises.”

  O’Malley swelled further, which could hardly, Pam thought, be good for him.

  “Who’s a loud noise?” Inspector O’Malley shouted, and advanced a step, and Jerry North found himself rising carefully from the sofa. The suite had, until then, been filled with little noises—the sounds of people moving, of men talking quietly. Now, momentarily, there was no sound in the two rooms; it was as if Deputy Chief Inspector O’Malley’s roaring voice had blown all lesser sounds away. Everything listened.

  “It’s only,” Pam said, “that cats have very sensitive ears. Because they spread out so, inspector.” She looked up at him. “Like funnels,” she said. “On pivots, of course.”

  Inspector O’Malley drew in a massive breath. He exhaled it, seemingly molecule by molecule. His lips parted and were rejoined. And he turned, abruptly, on Detective Sergeant Stein, on the other detective who had entered with him.

  “Well,” O’Malley said, “waiting for a streetcar?”

  And he turned away and led, massively, toward the bedroom. The nameless detective followed at his heels. Stein, for an instant, hesitated. There was half a smile on his dark, sensitive face. His eyebrows went up slightly. “On another case,” he said. “Out of town.” And then, quickly, he went after Inspector O’Malley who, all too evidently, had taken matters into his own hard hands.

  It was clear enough—it was much too clear—what Stein had been talking about. He had been talking about Captain William Weigand, on another case and out of town on it. With Mullins, evidently, which didn’t help at all.

  “Even the inspector,” Pam said, her voice low, “can’t think we—I mean, merely because she came in here to—to die. Or—they must think to get killed. Because—”

  She stopped. Jerry was moving his head slowly from side to side.

  “Why not?” Jerry said.

  Pam blinked her eyes quickly.

  “Because—” she said, and then stopped. Jerry waited. After a time, a little heavily, he said, “Precisely.” The uniformed man had moved out of the hall and closer to them. He listened.

  “It’s chilly in here, isn’t it?” Pam North said. Jerry took her nearest hand. And they waited. Sounds came from the bedroom, with O’Malley’s rumbling voice as an obbligato. After a time, men began to come from the bedroom—the photographers came, the medical examiner came, some of the precinct men came. But nobody said anything to Pam and Jerry North, although all looked at them. After what seemed a very long time, two men came in with a rolled stretcher and, after a short time, went out with it, no longer rolled, no longer empty. And then, finally, O’Malley came out, with Stein and the other homicide man following him. O’Malley stopped in front of the Norths.

  He was no longer especially choleric; his gray eyes, however, did nothing to raise the temperature.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s have your story.” He pulled a straight-backed chair forward and sat in it—a massive man, filled with massive disbelief. “Take it down, Williams,” he said, without looking at Williams, and the man who had come in with the inspector and Stein found chair and table, and stenographer’s notebook.

  “Well,” Pam said, “it’s only that Mr. Prentori was coming to paint and paint makes Jerry sick and everything tastes of it. So we—”

  “All right, Pam,” Jerry said, quickly, because it appeared to him that O’Malley had begun to swell.

  “But,” Pam said, “Bill likes to have everything because who knows what may turn out to be—you’re hurting my hand, Jerry.”

  “Sorry,” Jerry said, and lessened his grip. “Listen, Inspector O’Malley—we came here to spend a couple of nights because our apartment’s being painted. We checked in and—”

  “One thing at a time,” O’Malley said. “You looked in the bedroom? I suppose you say she wasn’t there?”

  “Nobody was there,” Jerry said.

  “The boy turned on all the lights,” Pam said. “We couldn’t have missed—”

  “All right,” O’Malley said. “All right. You knew her, though. Told the people downstairs it was Miss Towne. You want to say you didn’t know her?”

  “On TV was all,” Pam said. “Actually, I don’t think I ever saw her until this afternoon. I couldn’t start anything because Mr. Prentori was coming so soon and so I just—it was about the Grandmother of the Year. You can ask anybody.”

  “The Grandmother—” O’Malley began and caught himself, with obvious effort. “You,” he said, and pointed at Jerry North, “suppose you just tell what you say happened. You checked in—”

  “Changed,” Jerry said. “I’d just come from the office.”

  “Yeah,” O’Malley said. “You publish books.” He said it darkly; obscurely, it became an accusation. “So then what?”

  They had gone out. Jerry thought a little after seven. They had had dinner.

  “Here?”

  It had not been there. It had been—

  “Left your key at the desk, I suppose,” O’Malley said, in the tone of one who supposes nothing of the kind.

  “No,” Jerry said. “Who does?”

  “Don’t waste so damn much time,” O’Malley said. “I’m not Weigand. Just tell me what happened. What you say happened. You went out and had dinner. Where?”

  “Well,” Pam said, “we started for the Algonquin, of course. But we saw this movie—I mean I remember
ed about the movie—anyway—we decided to have a quick dinner, because at the Algonquin it always takes us a long time, what with one thing and another and it’s such a pleasant place to talk, you know and—you’re hurting my hand again, Jerry.”

  It was, Jerry thought, better her hand than her neck which, from O’Malley’s expression, seemed to be in some peril. But, again, he relaxed pressure.

  “The Brass Rail,” he said. “We both had roast beef and—”

  “For God’s sake,” O’Malley said. “What’s roast beef got to do with it? Just don’t clutter it up so damn much.”

  They knew of Inspector O’Malley’s idiosyncrasies more from Bill Weigand, who worked under him, as did all Manhattan’s detectives, than from previous direct association. Cases in which the Norths were involved were, in O’Malley’s mind, cases to be avoided—they were, as Mullins also put it, “screwy” cases. (“The inspector likes things simple,” Bill had told them. “Not that he isn’t a damn good cop. It’s just that—” Bill had paused, seeking a word. “He doesn’t like things cluttered up,” Bill had said, and grinned at them, and said that they couldn’t deny they tended to clutter things up. “Not when they aren’t cluttered already,” Pam had said, with some indignation.)

  “You asked where,” Jerry said. “The Brass Rail. Nobody knows us there so—”

  “And,” O’Malley said, “you didn’t leave your key at the desk, like you’re supposed to. Anybody see you go out? Out of here?”

  “Dozens, probably,” Jerry said.

  “Anybody you know. Anybody can say, ‘Sure, I saw Mr. and Mrs. North go out of the Breckenridge at twelve minutes after seven, on the nose, and get a cab and—’”

  “No,” Jerry said. “And we didn’t get a cab. We walked.”

  It could not be said that O’Malley snorted. It could not, on the other hand, be said with confidence that he did not snort.

  “All right,” O’Malley said, “what you say is you left here a little after seven, and went to dinner at the Brass Rail, although this hotel is full of restaurants—pretty good restaurants from what I hear—and didn’t take a cab, so nobody can check that out, and—who’d you see knows you at the Brass Rail?”

  “Nobody,” Jerry said. “Listen, inspector, people do things all the time they can’t prove—”

  “Skip it,” O’Malley said. “You ate this roast beef. So—”

  They had gone to a movie. In spite of the earlier dinner, the rather less leisurely atmosphere, they had been late for the movie—gone in, found seats, when the film was, at a guess, about a third run. They named the movie.

  “Kept your seat stubs, probably?” O’Malley said.

  They had not. Who did?

  “H-mmm,” O’Malley said, with meaning. “You got in late, you say. What time did you get back here?”

  “About a quarter of eleven.”

  “Get a cab back?”

  They had not.

  “H-mmm,” O’Malley said. “Stayed over to see the first part of this movie, probably?”

  They had not.

  “Because,” Pam said, “that spoils them sometimes, don’t you think? I mean, if you go in in the middle, they seem—I mean most movies seem—so much better than they are. More—subtle? But if you stay through—and there are almost always cartoons, anyway, and usually the ones where they do dreadful things to a cat—the—where was I?”

  “God knows,” O’Malley said. “If you’ll—”

  “Oh yes,” Pam said, “if you stay through, it all makes just ordinary sense and you haven’t anything to ponder about. Like in this one—if she felt that way about him, why did she marry him in the first place? They put the explanations first, usually.”

  “Look,” O’Malley said, “how can they put the explanation in before there’s anything to—” He stopped abruptly. “That’s enough of that,” he said, with an almost violent firmness—a firmness, Jerry suspected, directed inward, toward the inner O’Malley. “You came in here,” he said, “and found Miss Towne, a woman you’d never met before, on your bed.” He said this to Mr. North, a little carefully, even a little anxiously, he did not look at Pam.

  “Jerry’s or mine,” Pam said. “We hadn’t decided yet. Does it matter a great deal, inspector?”

  “It—” O’Malley said, loudly, and caught himself. “On one of the beds,” he said.

  Jerry nodded.

  “Perfectly strange woman,” O’Malley said, “comes into your hotel room while you’re out going to a movie and gets herself killed. Why? How’d she get in? I suppose you’re going to say the door was open?”

  “No,” Jerry said, “the door was locked. She must have had a key. Somebody must have had a key.”

  “Two duplicates,” O’Malley said. “Both in the mailbox where they belong. You had a key.”

  “Yes.”

  “She was killed, then?” Pam said.

  “I’ll ask the questions,” O’Malley said. “Just let me ask the questions, huh? Sure she was killed. That is—sure she was.” He looked at them closely. “Given poison,” he said.

  They were supposed, Pam thought, to react to that; to say, or do, something which would reveal. There was open expectancy on O’Malley’s florid face. They were supposed to look—relieved? surprised? Then it wasn’t really—

  “Look like you don’t buy that, North,” O’Malley said, and spoke quickly, spoke hard. Pam looked at her husband and thought, The poor dear. And thought, What an unconcealing face he has, really, because Jerry did not look at all as if he were buying that.

  Jerry shrugged. He said he wasn’t a doctor; he said if the medical examiner—

  “You thought it was something else,” O’Malley told him. “What?”

  “From the color of her face,” Jerry said, “I thought she might have died of asphyxiation. Perhaps—”

  He paused.

  “Well?” O’Malley said. “What?”

  “—been smothered,” Jerry said. “With a pillow, perhaps. There’s a bluish lividity, usually, if it’s asphyxiation and there weren’t any marks to show—”

  He stopped, having finally got it—got it from the look of contentment on O’Malley’s florid face; a look almost of a cat who has found cream. (The poor dear, Pam thought of Jerry. Not that most of them really like cream, she thought, for no reason in particular.)

  “Very interesting,” O’Malley said. “I’ll have to tell the M.E. that. Took his man a long time just to guess and here you come up with it. You must be a doctor, North. On the side.”

  North Books, Inc., had recently published an abridged toxicology. Jerry had skimmed through it, since Pam and he seemed, nowadays, so often to be in situations where some smattering of toxicology and medical jurisprudence might prove helpful. He had read about the bluish lividity. He had—

  He stopped the explanation—stopped because O’Malley listened with interest so acted out, nodded so often to show he followed, looked so very much like a cat with cream.

  “Sure,” O’Malley said. “That explains that. Funny thing you and this Miss Towne hadn’t run into each other. Before now.”

  They looked at him.

  “Books,” O’Malley said. “TV. Advertising. All that sort of thing. Same breed of—cats.” He said “cats” with a certain emphasis; an emphasis, Pam thought, of loathing. (“In addition,” Bill had said, when explaining O’Malley’s antipathy to Norths in cases, “he’s heard you have cats. He hates cats.”)

  It was unfortunate that Martini, hearing her race mentioned, responded, from underneath the sofa, with a Siamese remark. It was only an answer, really, on hearing cats referred to. But the Siamese voice is seldom dulcet. O’Malley glared at the sofa, with loathing.

  “One thing we forgot,” Pam said, thus reminded. “When we went out we left the bathroom door open, so Martini could—that is, go to it. We put her pan in there, you know. The pan with paper in it? And—”

  “For God’s sake,” O’Malley said. “So what in God’s name?”


  “Only when we came back it was closed,” Pam said. “We thought the maid—wait a minute. The maid was in here. Closed the door and turned down the beds and—”

  She was told to wait a minute.

  “Well,” O’Malley said, and said it to Sergeant Stein, “where is she? This maid?”

  It would, Pam thought, have been unfortunate for Sergeant Stein if he could not, immediately, have pulled a maid out of a hat. As it happened, he could. He did. O’Malley paid this foresight the tribute of a brief nod.

  The maid was Rose Pinkney. She was thirty-seven years old and lived in Brooklyn, and was a widow, and none of these things mattered, except to her. She worked the evening shift at the Hotel Breckenridge; worked from six until midnight. She turned down beds. (That she and others should be employed to go in the evenings from room to room, knocking on doors of rooms listed as occupied, waiting, saying, “Sorry, the maid,” if they were answered, going in if they were not and taking spreads from beds and folding them neatly, turning down covers and upper sheet at a certain angle, prescribed—that this went on nightly in the Hotel Breckenridge always slightly puzzled Rose Pinkney. Guests could, she supposed, learn to turn down their own beds or, more simply, merely get into them. If she were running a hotel—But she was not, of course, and the work was light and the hours no worse than most hours. Better than cleaning offices in the middle of the night.)

  That the routine had come to this puzzled Rose Pinkney even more. News of what it had come to, spread through the housekeeper’s department rapidly, and in many forms. A man had been murdered on the seventh floor, and there was blood all over everything. No, a couple on their honeymoon had shot one another. No—no—on the other hand—

  And now she was in the middle of it, which was exciting, but made her ill at ease. She tugged at the skirt of her uniform, which needed no tugging at. The big, red-faced man said, “Miss Pinkney,” and she said, “No, Missis Pinkney, please.” He said, “All right,” impatiently and she flushed slightly. But, firmly, she said, “Missis Pinkney it is, on account of—”

  “All right,” Inspector O’Malley said, rather more firmly. “You worked this floor tonight?”