Murder Comes First

by Frances

  Murder Comes First

  A Mr. and Mrs. North Mystery

  Frances and Richard Lockridge

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  1

  Saturday, October 14, 9:15 A.M. to Sunday, 3:10 P.M.

  It was a very fine morning. Little of it, to be sure, could get into the apartment in lower Manhattan of Mr. and Mrs. Gerald North—a thin wedge of the day’s sunshine had forced a window and now lay on the floor, exhausted by its effort; through open windows there came a tentative freshness which was surely mid-October air, with the summer’s humidity wrung out of it. The air had been a little over-used, was hand-me-down air, but there it was, almost breathable. Gerald North lowered his newspaper onto the breakfast table, gave the news he had read the reproachful sigh which was no more than its due, and breathed some of the air. He said it looked like being a nice weekend.

  “Um,” said Pam North, reading the mail. “Oh.”

  “The weather,” Jerry said. “Nice out. I looked. Fair and continued warm through tomorrow.” He lighted a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Why don’t we get the car and drive up to camp? Maybe stay overnight? Look at leaves?”

  “Oh Jerry,” Pam said. “The aunts.”

  “No worse than usual, I shouldn’t think,” Jerry North said. “Anyway, I wasn’t suggesting a picnic.”

  Pam re-pronounced the word. She started to spell it.

  “Listen,” Jerry said, and ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. “Not Aunt Flora? The one with the wig?”

  “They’re in California,” Pam said. She paused, and said she meant Aunt Flora and her new husband. “But the wig too, I guess,” she added. “No, these are the Cleveland ones.” She regarded her husband, who did not look enlightened. “Father’s,” she said. “Aunt Flora is mother’s. These are quite different. Maiden.”

  There could hardly be, Jerry admitted, a greater difference between any maiden aunt and Pam’s Aunt Flora.

  “You mean,” he said, tempted irresistibly down a side path, “that Flora’s got another one? Her eighth?”

  “Sixth,” Pam said. “Of course, months ago. I told you then. This one’s quite old, apparently. Fifty, anyway.”

  Aunt Flora, Jerry pointed out, must be close to seventy.

  “Sixty-five,” Pam said. “But I think it’s encouraging she’s closing the gap. How do we happen to be talking about her?”

  “The other ones,” Jerry said. “The maidens.”

  Pamela North said, “Of course,” but for a moment still seemed puzzled. Then she said that, anyway, they were coming. “This afternoon,” she said. “They’ll expect me to meet them and have hotels and everything. Aunt Lucy forgot to mail it. She says, ‘Thelma wrote this Monday but I forgot. I hope it doesn’t matter. Don’t tell.’”

  Jerry enquired what Pam meant to say. Did she, for example, mean to say that she had, this Saturday morning, got a letter from three aunts who were arriving this Saturday afternoon and expected hotels? Pam did. Had Aunt Lucy ever heard of the telegraph? Or the telephone?

  “Well,” Pam said, “she’s the literary one, you know.”

  Jerry ran his fingers again through his hair and spoke feelingly of non sequiturs. Most of the literary ones he knew, as a publisher, were entirely familiar with the telegraph and the telephone. They commonly sent the one collect and reversed charges on the other. They usually wanted to talk about the advertising, if it could be called that.

  “Reading literary,” Pam said. “Not writing literary. Although I think she used to do little poems. She’s really sweet, Jerry. Thelma’s the horsy one. Shall I try the Welby?”

  Jerry nodded. She should, by all means, try the Welby. He could think, offhand, of no hotel more maidenly. “Particularly,” he said, “the cocktail lounge.” He remembered it and shuddered involuntarily. Then he snapped his fingers. He said he had them.

  “Lucinda and Thelma,” he said, “and—what’s the other one?”

  “Pennina,” Pam said. “Grandfather liked things to end in ‘a’. Because his own name was Aaron, I guess.”

  “Listen—” Jerry began, but then he said, “All right. Try the Welby.”

  Pam tried the Welby. She appeared to make progress.

  “The Misses Whitsett,” she said, and spelled it out. “Three of them. With baths and connecting if possible.” She waited. “Wonderful,” she said. “Thelma will like being across the hall.” She listened again. She gave her own name; she said she was sure they could make it before six. She hung up.

  “They’re due at three five,” Pam said,” and we can bring them down here for tea and then take them over to the Welby.” She looked at her husband’s face. “By then,” she said, “they’ll probably want naps or something.” She looked at Jerry’s face again. “Really, dear,” she said. “And they’re going on to Florida Monday.”

  “In October?” Jerry said.

  “Aunt Thelma likes to be forehanded,” Pam said. “Probably it’s something about a horse, really. Will you, Jerry?”

  There was, Jerry started to say firmly, a manuscript he ought to go over. It was, he said less firmly, at the office. Until that moment, he said with even less confidence, he had forgotten it.

  “All right,” Gerald North said.

  “We’ll have a long lunch at the Algonquin first,” Pam said. “You’re a dear, you know. Some husbands would pretend they had the most unlikely things to—”

  “All right, Pam,” Jerry said, and smiled as he looked at her. Pam got up to get more coffee. As she moved, she intercepted the weary shaft of sunlight and was silhouetted briefly. Jerry’s smile was enhanced. After all, he thought to himself, aunts or no aunts.…

  Jerry North had prepared himself at lunch. Standing now with Pam behind a guard rope in Grand Central, waiting for a train from Cleveland, it occurred to him he might a little have over-prepared himself. It was a very warm afternoon for October and the three—well, call it three; ignore his half of Pam’s third—the three cocktails for lunch encouraged drowsiness. He shifted his weight to the other foot, swaying slightly from sleepiness. (Of course it was from sleepiness, Jerry told himself. What else?) A man in uniform opened doors in front of the guard rope and Pam and Jerry, along with fifty or sixty other people, could look down a long ramp into semi-darkness. At the bottom of the ramp, people began to appear. A tall man, carrying a briefcase, began to run up the ramp, ahead of all the others.

  “Always one of them,” Jerry said.

  He didn’t know, Pam told him. Perhaps he was making a connection.

  “For Washington,” Pam said. “A courier. Vital documents in the briefcase. Top secret.”

  The tall man reached the guard rope, reached across it, seemed to engulf a small young woman. Pam North said, “Oh.” She said, “Isn’t it nice, Jerry? So much better than documents. There they are.”

  Jerry looked down the ramp. He looked down at Pamela.

  “At the bottom with the red-cap,” Pam said. “The tall one’s Aunt Thelma, of course. Your tie’s crooked, dear.”

  Jerry straightened his tie. He looked down the ramp. It swarmed with people; the aunts were submerged. They waited. People reached the top of the ramp, looking quickly at the faces of those behind the guard rope, fanned out to either side of it.

  “Even when you know there isn’t anybody, you always look, don’t you?” Pam said. “Just on the chance. Even if you’ve only been to White Plains.” She looked up at Jerry, as if to make sure he was there. He indicated that he was.

  The people who were arriving came up the ramp solidly, filling it from rail to rail. Some of them waved to people waiting at the guard rope, gestured toward an end of it; knots of arrivers and receivers tied themselves in the passagew
ays and were bumped by suitcases. Those who were not met swirled around them, became anonymous in the station.

  “There they come,” Pam said. She waved.

  The aunts came up the ramp, the tall one who was Thelma in a tweed suit, leading on. The second one was in a print dress, largely figured, and a small blue hat. “Aunt Pennina,” Pam said, and waved again. Aunt Pennina waved back. A little behind her, and of about the same height but not by many pounds the same plumpness, was the third aunt. She wore a black silk dress and a pink hat. At least, Jerry thought, it must be a hat. “Aunt Lucinda,” Pam said. “Where did she ever!” She waved again. It was impossible, Jerry thought—it was absurd—that he could ever, even momentarily, have forgotten the aunts from Cleveland. Particularly, he thought, Aunt Thelma, whose felt hat was uncompromising; Aunt Thelma who led on to the guard rope.

  “Around the end,” Pam said, when they were close enough. She gestured.

  “Nonsense,” Aunt Thelma said. She advanced directly to Pam and Jerry. She lifted the rope and ducked under it. She held it for Aunts Pennina and Lucinda, who ducked obediently. She looked commandingly at the red-cap, who said, “No’m,” and went around.

  “My dears,” Pam said. “So nice!”

  “I suppose,” Aunt Thelma said, “you got the letter only this morning, Pamela? Since Lucinda forgot to mail it?” She turned to look at Aunt Lucinda, who smiled hopefully and seemed somewhat to flutter, who said, “Oh-Pam-dear-I’m-so-sorry” in one breath. Then she came quickly to Pamela and kissed her; then she looked up at Jerry and reached out and patted his arm and said, “Dear Gerald.”

  Jerry North said, “Hello, Aunt Lucinda. Didn’t matter at all.”

  “Of course not,” Pam said.

  “Anyway,” Aunt Pennina said comfortably, “we’re here. That’s the main thing, isn’t it?” She kissed Pamela. “So pretty, dear,” she said. “And your nice husband, too.” She smiled at him.

  “Hello, Aunt Pennina,” Jerry said.

  “Good afternoon, Gerald,” Aunt Thelma said, firmly, evidently feeling this had gone far enough. “Where’s that man got to?”

  “That man” had circled the guard rope and come up to them, wheeling luggage on a hand-truck. He looked at Aunt Thelma and then, rather quickly, at Jerry North.

  “You want a taxi?” he said.

  “I presume—” Aunt Thelma began.

  “Yes, please,” Jerry said.

  “—my nephew has brought his car,” Aunt Thelma continued.

  “No,” Jerry said. He felt he should explain. “Too hard to park, Aunt Thelma,” he explained. He hoped that what he detected in his own voice was not a note of apology. “Taxi, please,” he said to the red-cap, more decisively than he intended.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” the red-cap said, with dignity, with forbearance.

  The red-cap trundled off.

  “Come Lucinda,” Aunt Thelma said. “Pennina.” She led them after the red-cap. Pennina came second, Lucinda turned and smiled, flutteringly, at Pam and Jerry. Then she followed too. Pam and Jerry North walked after them, side by side. Aunt Thelma, when a cab was found, luggage loaded beside the driver, gave the red-cap thirty cents and led the way into the cab. The red-cap looked at her and seemed about to speak. Jerry gave him a dollar. “Thank you, sir,” the red-cap said. Jerry found himself hoping that Aunt Thelma had not heard him. Jerry was conscious of an odd uneasiness, almost of guilt. He straightened his tie and got into the cab, sitting beside Pam on a jump seat.

  “Thirty cents was quite enough,” Aunt Thelma said firmly from behind him. “There is no reason to spoil people.”

  “I—” Jerry began.

  “Tell us about Cleveland,” Pam North said quickly.

  “What?” Aunt Thelma said.…

  Three cats greeted them just inside the door of the Norths’ apartment. They sat in a semi-circle, the two flankers sitting taller than Martini in the middle. Martini looked up at humans from round blue eyes. Her daughters, Gin and Sherry, looked up from crossed blue eyes. Sherry, who was a soft blue-gray on face and legs and tail, where the others were a rich brown, tilted her head to one side. She appeared to be, with some apprehension, regarding Aunt Lucinda’s hat.

  “Oh,” Aunt Pennina said, “the beautiful kitties. The sweets!”

  “Cats,” Aunt Thelma said. “Hmm.”

  “I always think of T. S. Eliot,” said Aunt Lucinda. “‘Growltiger’s Last Stand’ you know. As the Siamese something or other something or other. Such a wonderful poet.”

  “Yah,” said Gin, the junior seal point, drawing it out. “Yah-ow.” Then, resonantly, she began to purr.

  “I suppose,” Aunt Thelma said, “you haven’t any kind of a dog?”

  Martini turned deliberately and walked away. The other two looked at her in surprise and then, obediently, followed her.

  “It’s one of the words she knows,” Pam said.

  “Nonsense,” said Aunt Thelma. “Cats! Where’s the bathroom, Pamela?”

  In order, the aunts “freshened up.” In order they returned to the living room, to iced-tea and cookies. The aunts removed their hats; Aunt Thelma removed the jacket of her tweed suit. They talked to Pam about relatives, to whom, so far as Jerry—relaxed in a deep chair, not with iced-tea—could determine, nothing of great moment had happened. He considered the aunts and discovered that, now that they were, in a sense, landed, he rather enjoyed them.

  They were, he thought, all in their sixties, and perhaps Aunt Thelma was the eldest, although perhaps she was merely aged by authority. Otherwise, they could not easily have differed more.

  Aunt Thelma was not actually tall, except by comparison and, perhaps, by carriage. She was wiry under the tweed suit, her face had been left out in the weather and her hands were brown and vigorous. Her gray hair, worn short, was vigorous too; she regarded the world, commandingly, through light blue eyes. It occurred to Jerry that she probably wore tweeds, in part at least, because a rough gray tweed, while it collects dog hairs, does not show them. Gin came into the room, walked directly to Aunt Thelma, and began to smell her shoes. Gin’s nostrils vibrated slightly and she laid her ears back. She looked up at Aunt Thelma, perhaps to see if she were what she smelled like, and said “Yow-ah!” in a rather puzzled tone. Dogs beyond a doubt, Jerry realized. Dogs and horses. It takes all kinds, he thought drowsily.

  “All right,” Aunt Thelma said to Gin, firmly but without unkindness. “That’s enough of that.” Gin sat down and began to look at her.

  “—as for Flora,” Aunt Thelma said, continuing.

  It was the little thin one who was the literary one, Jerry remembered—Aunt Lucy. She had been pretty, in a way still was pretty. Her small face was bright with interest in things; she looked quickly from one to another of the people and the cats, as if she did not want to miss anything and, somehow, as if she were hurrying to catch up, and as if to hurry so was somehow bewildering. She saw Jerry when he looked at her, and a smile ran to her lips, as if late for an appointment.

  “Old maids’ gossip,” she said. “What you must think!” She stopped, still smiling. “The world of books,” she said, happily.

  “Oh yes,” Jerry said. “Yes.” Then he felt as if too quickly he had accepted the triviality of gossip. “Not at all,” he said, wondering what he meant.

  She weighed about a hundred, Jerry thought of Aunt Lucinda; she had given thought to the black dress and something, probably from the subconscious, to the pink hat. (She had taken it off, now, but Jerry still could see it on her curled, gray-blond hair. He thought, drowsy again in the warmth of the living room, that he would always see it.)

  Aunt Lucy nodded, her bright eyes, her eager face, waiting—waiting, Jerry thought, for talk of books. He could not think of anything to say about books, except that they weren’t, currently, selling as well as one might wish. He doubted if that would serve, so he merely smiled. Aunt Lucy smiled back and nodded, as if he had in fact said something, and then, quickly, began to listen to Pam, who
was talking about someone named Felix, of whom Jerry had never heard, but of whom Pam spoke with evident interest and apparent familiarity.

  Martini returned to the room, looked around it with the air of a cat who finds a room infested with people, and jumped on Jerry’s lap, making a sharp comment which Jerry hoped he misinterpreted. She put claws, but only the tips of claws, into his knee for traction, and gave everyone slow, complete scrutiny through unwinking blue eyes. Jerry put a hand on her back and she swished her tail.

  Aunt Pennina was about as tall as Aunt Lucy and must weigh fifty, perhaps sixty, pounds more. She had round pink cheeks; the skin of her face was like very soft tissue paper, very gently crumpled. Her small, plump hands, were prettily white; her hair was white and soft around her face. That she was not a grandmother was almost inconceivable. She should be pampering grandchildren and dispensing from a cookie jar. And she looked as if she had been in the Norths’ living room for weeks, almost as if she had been there always. She ate another cookie, and this interested Sherry, whose interest in food was unfailing. Sherry walked over, loose-jointed, at the downhill slant of a long-legged Siamese.

  “Nice kitty,” Aunt Pennina said comfortably. “Want a cookie?”

  Sherry, thus addressed, said, at rather too great length, that she would try, once, anything she could chew. Aunt Pennina held down part of a cookie and Sherry smelled it carefully. She smelled Aunt Pennina’s hand carefully. She licked the cookie. Then, briefly, as if for politeness’ sake, she nibbled at it.

  “Pennina!” Aunt Thelma said. “What are you doing?”

  “Feeding the kitty,” Aunt Pennina said. “Such a sweet kitty.” She was entirely unperturbed; she was unsurprised that Aunt Thelma should have asked to have described an action so obvious.

  “Crumbs,” Aunt Thelma said. “On Pamela’s rug.”

  Pam said it didn’t matter. She said you had to expect things with cats.

  “Pete used to tear them up in handfuls,” Pam added. “Rugs, that is. Is there any talk of their getting divorced?”

  There was, it appeared. Jerry half listened, half dozed. Sherry left the cookie, went to lick Martini. Martini, abstractedly, licked her in return. Then Martini jumped down, turned over on her back and pawed at Sherry. Sherry leaped over her and went off down a corridor, her hind legs appearing to run faster than her fore. Martini took after her blond daughter. Gin turned and, for no reason apparent to humans, began furiously to wash her tail.