The Judge Is Reversed

by Frances Lockridge

  “Which last,” Jerry said, “was in the papers. Except, not the affair in the garden bar.”

  “This Mears,” Bill said. “He was really sore? All-out sore? About calls in a tennis match?”

  Mullins emphasized scepticism by shaking his head slowly.

  Apparently there was an angle, Jerry said—an angle which included money. As Al Laney had implied—a question of an offer for a professional tour. Whether Doug Mears needed money—Jerry shrugged. He said that a good many of them did; that amateur tennis, although it would be absurd to contend that it did not pay—to a degree by subterfuge—had in recent years become an apprenticeship to a profession. About Mears—He shrugged again.

  “Also,” Pam said, “the girl’s in it somehow. A pretty girl with red hair. Not dyed, I don’t think. At the table with Mr. Blanchard and Mr. Mears—looked at her.”

  This was amplified. Bill Weigand said, “Ummm.”

  “We haven’t got too much on Blanchard yet,” he said. “He was fifty-seven, according to Who’s Who. A widower. Childless, apparently. An attorney by profession, but not in active practice for a long time. If any time. Didn’t need to be, I gather, having enough of what it takes.”

  Blanchard had been a widower for some fifteen years, living alone, with two servants, in the old-fashioned apartment which had been his parents’. It had been a “good” address those many years ago; it no longer was; it was evident that Blanchard had not minded.

  “Perhaps,” Pam said, “he felt that his living there made it a good address.” They regarded her. “He looked like that,” Pam said.

  Admittedly, this was possible. It did not, at the moment, seem to have much importance. Except that it might, if Pam was right, give them some measure of the dead man. It is always desirable to measure the violently dead; it is seldom easy. Measurement of the late John Blanchard was proceeding slowly. Partly, this was due to the fact that the day was Sunday, when it is difficult to find out anything about anything. People who might have answers to questions which might be asked are, generally, inaccessible. Offices are closed; bank vaults, including those which shelter safe-deposit boxes, are sealed inexorably by time as well as by heavy locks.

  The apartment had, so far, yielded only bits and pieces.

  When Dr. Oscar Gebhardt had found Blanchard, the attorney—and judge of cats and the fall of white balls on the worn grass of tennis courts—had been dying alone in his apartment. If one did not count three cats. He might have been struck down minutes before Gebhardt found him or, conceivably, two hours before. He had been struck in the back of the head with a heavy object, a blunt object; an object with a dull point.

  “They say,” Bill told the Norths, “that the wound was the sort that might have been made if he’d been knocked backward against the corner of a desk. Or of a desk drawer. Only—he would have had to hit it very violently. Been thrown against it. And there are no other marks of violence on the body. Gebhardt was right, incidentally, in thinking there was nothing anybody could have done by the time he got there. Whole back of the skull bashed in. Brain laceration.”

  Blanchard had been dressed in slacks and jacket and rubber-soled suède shoes. He had made himself coffee that morning; a little coffee remained in a Chemex and it was still faintly warm when the police arrived. Tasted, it had seemed reasonably fresh. He had fed the cats, who, apparently, ate from a single dish. He had fed them chopped beef, jarred for small children; a little remained and had not dried out. Precisely when he had done these things there was no way of determining.

  The two servants Gebhardt had mentioned were a man and wife; two of the rooms of the apartment had been their bedroom and sitting room; one of the baths their bath. The man was quite tall and thin; the woman short and decidedly plump. The clothes in their closet revealed this. There was nothing to indicate where they had gone. They were Mr. and Mrs. Robert Sandys, or had received mail so addressed, and dropped envelopes into a wastepaper basket. There was nothing in their rooms to indicate that they did not intend to return.

  Blanchard had owned two cars—a 1957 Buick sedan; a later model Cadillac. The Cadillac was in a garage three blocks away; the Buick was not. Sandys had picked it up Saturday morning and it had not been returned.

  The most likely thing was that Blanchard had given the Sandyses the weekend off, and the use of the Buick to enjoy it in. They might be anywhere.

  “Looking at leaves,” Pam said. “Only it will be early unless they go way up.”

  Looking at, or for, leaves was a possibility. There were dozens of other possibilities. If the Sandyses did not return within reasonable time—that evening would seem a reasonable time—they would be looked for. They would be able to help the police in the measuring of a man killed.

  In the apartment in the old building, John Blanchard had been, in a way, more isolated than if he had lived in a big country house, miles from anywhere, deep in many acres. Such houses are approached by car; cars are seen, perhaps speculated about.

  At any time, but particularly on a Sunday morning, anyone might turn off the sidewalk into the apartment house Blanchard had lived in and been unnoticed, unremarked. After noon on weekdays, but only after three in the afternoon on Sundays, the small elevators which served the two wings of the building were attended; at other hours they were passenger-operated.

  Anyone could walk across an empty lobby, as Gebhardt said he had walked, and gone into an elevator and pressed a proper button and been seen by nobody. From the small lobby on the sixth floor, two doors opened—one to Blanchard’s apartment and the other to a presumably similar apartment occupied by people named Butler. The Butlers had left the previous Friday on a cruise.

  Whoever had killed Blanchard had been let in by Blanchard. Or had had a key of his own. Or her own.

  Pam North raised eyebrows at the last qualification.

  “Right,” Bill said. “Depending on what was used, of course. And on the strength of the lady. But at the spot hit the skull isn’t very—resistant. Blanchard’s wasn’t, anyway.”

  They hadn’t, Jerry gathered, found what had been used. He assumed the theory wasn’t that Blanchard had been hit in the back of the head with a desk? With the corner of a desk?

  “Jerry!” Pam said. “Nobody could hit anybody with a desk. A table, perhaps, but—” She stopped, abruptly. “Bill!” she said. “Scratching post?”

  Bill Weigand blinked for a moment. But then he stopped blinking and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He said, “Hmmmm.”

  “You may well,” Pam said. “Wait.”

  She went out of the living room and shortly, from some distance, there was a sound of banging. “We put it out of sight,” Jerry said. “Because—well, just because.”

  “I know,” Bill said. “Because she—”

  “Both of us,” Jerry said.

  Pam came back, with her hands full. “I wish,” she said, “you’d find someplace else to put our rackets. Both of them fell off and one came down on my toe and—” She stopped. “Anyway,” she said, and waved what her hands were full of—waved it a little truculently, but obviously in demonstration.

  It was a square post, about three feet long, set into a broad square base of polished wood. The post was covered with a carpet-like material, in this instance somewhat tattered. It was most tattered at the height a medium-sized cat might reach when the feline urge to scratch came upon him.

  Pam raised the post above her head and held it so that, if brought down violently—on, for example, another head—the corner of the squared base would strike first. She held it so for some seconds. She said, “Well? He had one?”

  Bill Weigand nodded his head. He said, “Right, Pam.”

  Sergeant Mullins got up and took the cat-scratching post from Pam and hefted it and examined the joint between post and base. He put it down and said, “Might break off, maybe. But, on the other hand, maybe not. He had three of urn. One for each cat, I guess.” He looked at Weigand. “Maybe?” he said.

  “Right,
” Bill said. “By all means, Mullins.”

  Mullins went to the telephone in the living room. He dialed and waited.

  He said, “Nate?” and then, “Know what a scratching post looks like?” He waited again, momentarily. “That’s it,” he said. “For cats. There’s three of them up there and it looks like it could be—”

  Briefly, he told Nate what it looked like it could be. “So maybe—” he said, and stopped.

  He said, “Oh,” in a slightly diminished tone. He said, “O.K., Nate.” He put his hand over the receiver and turned to Bill Weigand. “Nate Shapiro,” he said. “Thought of it. Sent them along to the lab. Anything else—yeah, Nate?”

  Again he listened. He said, “Maybe you’d better talk to the loot, Nate. I mean the captain.”

  Weigand put down an empty glass, after glancing at it briefly. He crossed the room and took the telephone from Mullins and said, “Yes, Shapiro?” He listened. He said, “Ummm.” He said, “Right.” He said, “Did she? That’s interesting.” He said, “Right. We’ll come back—” and stopped and turned and looked, briefly, at the Norths. He said, into the telephone, “Tell you what, Nate. Have one of the boys bring her down here. Right? All informal like. And only if she doesn’t mind coming. You know the pitch.” He listened again. “By all means in her own car, if she’d rather. Somebody along to help her park, don’t you think?” He listened again, briefly, said “Right,” once more and put the telephone back in its cradle.

  “A young woman walked into the apartment,” Bill told them. “Started to, anyway. Had a key to it. Said Mr. Blanchard had invited her to drop by for a drink. Very much upset to find out that he’d had his last.”

  “So,” Jerry said, “she’s being brought here. To the North station house.” He went to make drinks.

  “Well,” Bill said, and sat down and waited. “There’s one other point. Seems she’s got red hair. Very pretty red hair, Nate Shapiro says. In that mournful way of his.”

  Jerry distributed drinks. When he put Pam’s down by her chair he said, “Sorry about the foot,” and was looked at, momentarily, without apparent comprehension. Then Pam said, “Oh, that. I’d forgotten.” She lifted one foot and looked at it. “Seems all right,” she said. “It was just at the moment it—” She stopped, since she was clearly not being listened to.

  Gerald North said that he’d be damned and went off down the hall toward the closet from which Pam had brought the scratching post—the, sadly, no longer used scratching post. There was, again, some rattling from the closet. Then Jerry came back. Just inside the living room he paused and then held, above his head, a sheathed tennis racket. He held it as if he were about to make an overhead smash.

  The racket was in a cover. It was also in a wooden press—an oblong arrangement of wood, with turnbolts at each corner, clamping the racket.

  When he had full attention, Jerry brought the racket sweeping down, hard—and so that one of the wooden corners of the press, rather than the face of the racket, would strike anything that intervened.

  “Pretty much like the corner of a desk, isn’t it?” Jerry said, and patted the corner of the racket press with what appeared to be affection. “A good deal easier to handle than a desk, too. Good and heavy in the head a racket is, when there’s a press on it.”

  Bill Weigand put his drink down and held his hand out. Jerry put the racket in it, and Bill swung it slowly back and forth.

  “Quite heavy,” he said, and handed it to Mullins, who stood up and swung it as if it were a club. “What d’yuh know?” Mullins asked himself.

  “Blanchard used to be quite a tennis player,” Jerry said. “Probably had a few rackets still around in the apartment. Nobody throws rackets away. Always figures that sometime he’ll get back to it. Never quite gives up.” He looked at the racket Mullins held as one might look at a stranger. “Probably warped by now,” he said. “Strings gone, probably.” He went back to his drink.

  Weigand nodded to Mullins, who went again to the telephone, and dialed again, and again said, “Nate?” He listened briefly. He said, “O.K. I’ll tell the loot-I-mean-captain. But there’s another thing, Nate. See if Blanchard had any tennis rackets lying around, huh? In—” He turned and looked toward the others for enlightenment. “Presses,” Jerry said.

  “Presses,” Sergeant Mullins said, to Detective Nathan Shapiro, supervising further investigations in the outsize apartment on Riverside Drive. “Wood gadgets that clamp—oh.” He listened. He said, “Yeah, Nate. That was the idea. Be seeing.” He hung up.

  “Two rackets,” he said. “Both in presses.” Weigand raised eyebrows. “Yeah,” Mullins said. “Nate’s sent them along to the lab. Also, the girl’s on her way down.”

  They sipped, seated again, the racket on the floor by Sergeant Mullins’s chair.

  “Only,” Pam North said, after some minutes, “it’s a little hard to picture. Somebody walks in and says, ‘By the way, Mr. Blanchard, have you got a tennis racket handy? Like to brain you with it if you have.’ And Blanchard says—”

  She did not finish her sentence. She finished her drink, instead.

  “It seems stronger than usual,” she said. “Did you put in extra vermouth, Jerry?”

  6

  Hilda Latham was slender, even in a green woolen suit. Her eyes were greenish-blue, and she was very pretty. And she had dark red hair. When the precinct man who had come down with her said, at the doorway, “This is Miss Latham, captain,” and, without being told, went out again and closed the door behind him, Bill Weigand looked quickly at Pam North. Quickly, just perceptibly, Pam nodded.

  “Nice of you to come down, Miss Latham,” Bill said, and Pam said, for herself and Jerry, that they were the Norths and could they get Miss Latham something to drink? The girl shook her head. There was a tightness about her curving lips; there was, Pam thought, a wariness in her greenish eyes. But it’s quite likely, Pam told herself, that I’m seeing what I look for.

  “I want to do anything,” Hilda Latham said. Her voice was soft, yet very clear. “Anything I can. Only I don’t—” She did sit down, then. “It’s so hard to believe,” she said, and this time the soft clear voice trembled a little. “When the men told me—” She did not continue. She looked from one to the other.

  They appreciated her coming down, Bill told her again. He didn’t know, either, what she could tell them. Except that it might help them to talk to anyone who had known John Blanchard well, as he assumed—

  “All my life, nearly,” Hilda Latham said, and her soft voice was steady again. “Since I was a little girl, anyway. He and father had been friends for years. And for a couple of years—no, three years—he and Aunt Susan—” She paused. She smiled faintly. The smile was without meaning. “I’m not keeping things very straight, am I?” she said. “Aunt Susan was Mrs. Blanchard. She died years ago. Not my aunt, really. Just—just a word a child uses. You know?”

  “Of course he does,” Pam said. “Won’t you change your mind about a drink, Miss Latham? Probably you could do with one.”

  “Well—” the red-haired girl said, and again arranged a smile on curved lips—a smile for convention’s sake. “Anything.”

  A martini would be all right; a martini would be fine.

  There was nothing, there had been nothing, to indicate that Hilda Latham remembered the Norths as among those who had watched the short, bitter scene in the garden bar at Forest Hills. There was no reason she should remember. She, not they, had been at the center, been the watched.

  “Thank you,” she said, to Jerry, for the drink. “You’ll wonder how I happened to have a key to John’s apartment.”

  “Aunt” Susan, but not “Uncle” John. But those appellations would have died with childhood. The girl was—what? In her quite early twenties, probably.

  “Anything you can tell us,” Bill Weigand said. “About the key, then?”

  Since her father—“Graham Latham?” She looked from one to the other, apparently for some sign that the name was recog
nized. She got none. Anyway—

  When her father had retired, about five years before, they had given up the apartment they had in Manhattan, and now lived all year around in the Southampton house. She had started to say, now did say, that there, in Southampton, before Mrs. Blanchard died, the Blanchards had had a house “next door.” Anyway—

  Her father and mother came into New York infrequently. Now and then, for a week or two in the winter, they came in and stayed at a hotel and went to the theater. But she came in much more frequently and when she did usually stayed in John Blanchard’s apartment. The key was so that she could come and go when she wished, whether he was there or not.

  “There’s room there for half a dozen,” Hilda said. “I could just pop in, and not even bother him. Just tell Mrs. Sandys—” She broke off. “They weren’t there today?” she said. “The Sandyses?”

  “No,” Bill told her. “Apparently they had the weekend off.”

  “Because of the tournament,” Hilda said, and nodded her head so that the deep red hair swirled around her face. “He’d be there—” Again she broke off. “Would have expected to be there,” she said, “most of the weekend. Umpiring—filling in on the lines. It’s hard to find linesmen sometimes and—”

  She shrugged slim shoulders, suggesting that she had wandered far from anything which would be found interesting, which would help. “Anyway,” she said, “that’s why he let Mr. and Mrs. Sandys off, I expect. If they’d been there—was it somebody who broke in? A burglar?”

  “Conceivably,” Bill said. “Only—the door wasn’t forced. And, nothing was disturbed. There’s nothing to indicate that Mr. Blanchard surprised somebody ransacking the apartment. You just happened to be in town today, Miss Latham? Or were you in last night? Stay at the apartment?”

  She hesitated for a moment. Then she shook her head, and again the red hair swirled.

  “No,” she said. “I came to see if John was—all right. I was home last night. Most of this morning.”