Murder Comes First

by Frances

  But, since Mrs. Logan’s death, Hilda had been thinking and remembering, and that incident she remembered. After it, although letters continued to come from Sally Sandford, Mrs. Logan mentioned her more frequently, and seemed more worried about her. She had not, however, again mentioned the typewriter.

  Hilda had not spoken of this memory of hers to anyone else, even to Paul Logan. For the rest she could add nothing to what she had already told the police, which told them little, except that Mrs. Logan’s bathroom was much used by guests, was available to anyone in the house, so that almost anyone who got into the house could have substituted the concentrate of death for what Mrs. Logan had called “concentrated health.”

  It was almost eight o’clock when the Norths left the Logan house. Jerry, pointing out that they were drinks behind, suggested the Plaza, as no more than around the corner.

  “Gimo’s,” Pam said. “We’ve got to tell Bill.”

  Jerry was doubtful.

  “Don’t you see?” Pam said. “It was the wrong typewriter. Whatever the police thought.”

  “Listen, Pam,” Jerry said.

  “Whatever they thought,” Pam assured him, and told Jerry the address of Gimo’s, to relay to the taxi driver when they found him. They found him then. “The one Mrs. Sandford is writing on,” Pam explained, when they had started. “Mrs. Logan noticed it.”

  It was a very short distance to Gimo’s and when the cab stopped Jerry was still explaining that the police did not make mistakes about things like that, and Pam was unpersuaded, pointing out that anyone could make mistakes or take too much for granted.

  The maître d’ appeared to remember Pamela North, which was flattering. He offered an immediate table, but, told they wanted to look for somebody—“a Mr. Weigand,” Pam told him—helped them look. They found Bill and Dorian Weigand, sitting opposite one another in a booth upstairs, eating veal scaloppine, and joined them.

  “Bill,” Pam said, “it’s the wrong typewriter! Mrs. Logan found out and—and—” But there Pamela North stopped, and was puzzled. “Only,” she said, “what does it mean? What difference would it make?”

  When the Norths had been served drinks and had ordered dinner, when Pam North’s suspicions had been explained, that question still remained. What difference did it make? There remained also Bill’s complete assurance that the police had not been wrong. There was only one typewriter involved. All of the letters initialed by Sally Sandford and found in the Logan house had been written on that one typewriter. The defects were unmistakable, not to be overlooked.

  “They stick out a mile,” Bill told her. “The letter ‘r’ alone would be enough. Look, Pam, you could pretty near see it across the room.”

  “Tweezers!” Pam said. “That’s what it is!”

  The three of them looked at her. They looked at one another. They looked again at Pam North.

  “All right,” Jerry said, “I give up.”

  “It’s obvious,” Pam said. “It’s the woods and the trees again. Not seeing whichever it is for the other. The one that’s too obvious, of course.”

  They all waited.

  “Bill,” Pam said, “did real experts make the comparison? Of one of the typed letters with another? Or did somebody just notice the letter ‘r’ and the other thing—what was it? Oh, the letter ‘e’ out of alignment—and jump? Because either of those could have been done with tweezers and people see what they expect to. Or are expected to.”

  “Pam means—” Jerry began, but by then Bill and Dorian saw what she meant, and Bill nodded slowly. The imperfections which could be seen across the room, which were the obvious ones, could perhaps, be faked. If not with tweezers which, Bill had years before discovered, Pam considered the universal tool, the inventive apex of the machine age, then with almost anything else. Possibly, in point of fact, with the fingers only. Identity in typescript would so be achieved, to the casual glance. With no reason for suspicion, none might enter the mind. If, nevertheless, suspicion had entered Mrs. Logan’s mind—

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said. “I see what she means. As a matter of fact, I don’t know. I’ll find out.”

  He elected to find out then, although Dorian urged that he finish dinner. “He never finishes dinner,” Dorian told the Norths, after Bill had gone to find a telephone. “He’s supposed to be on his forty-eight. He—”

  He had, Dorian told them, been telling her all about it. It had not been a restful dinner. Dorian wished Pam’s aunts had stayed in Cleveland.

  “Or,” she said, “that Inspector O’Malley would go there and take the district attorney with him, and leave Bill alone to do his job. Or that he had a different kind of job.”

  “You’ve always wished that,” Pam told her. “Only, not really.”

  “I—” Dorian began, and then stopped, her almost green eyes shadowed for a moment. Then she smiled and nodded and said Pam was right.

  “You have to take them as they come,” she told Pam, and the two women smiled together about the way they came.

  “If you two would be happier alone,” Gerald North said, formally.

  “The way they come,” Pam repeated, and both she and Dorian seemed momentarily amused. But then Bill Weigand came back from the telephone. There was an odd expression on his face and for a moment he said nothing. They waited. Bill did not at first seem to notice this; he seemed to have forgotten the errand on which he had gone.

  “The typewriter?” Dorian Weigand said and seemed to be examining her husband’s face.

  “Oh,” Bill said. “That.” He seemed to shake himself out of abstraction. “I’m sorry, Pam. The idea’s no good. They didn’t stop with the obvious similarities. As a matter of routine, they made a thorough comparison. Everything they found at the Logan house from Mrs. Sandford was written on the same typewriter.” He smiled faintly. “Nobody used tweezers,” he said. “I don’t know what bothered Mrs. Logan, but there was only one typewriter.”

  Pam North said, “Oh.”

  “What else, Bill?” Dorian said, still with her eyes on her husband’s face.

  “Else?” Bill repeated. “There isn’t anything—” He looked at Dorian.

  “Oh,” he said. “I saw a man I know slightly. Didn’t expect to see him here, is all.”

  But his tone was not convincing, and now all of them looked at him and waited.

  “There’s more—” Pam began, and Bill shook his head. Nevertheless, they continued to wait.

  “All right,” Bill said. “This much—and I don’t know any more myself, and won’t unless I’m told, and won’t be told. The man I saw works for the government. He made a point of not seeing me, so he’s probably working now. There’s no reason to think it has anything to do with—with anything we’re interested in. And—we make a point of keeping hands off, unless we’re asked. They want it that way.”

  There was another pause.

  “This is where Sandford brought Pam for lunch,” Jerry said, his voice casual.

  “Right,” Bill said. “I gathered that. The martinis are only fair, so I imagined—” He broke off. He started again. “By the way,” he said, “did you gather that Sandford came here often, Pam?”

  Pamela North nodded, her face thoughtful. Then an idea crossed her mind and crossed, at the same instant, her expressive face.

  “No,” Bill Weigand said, “he’s not here now.” Pam’s expression faded. “You can’t have everything,” Bill told her.

  It looked, Pam North said, as if this evening she couldn’t have anything. But then the waiter served her scaloppine.

  6

  Tuesday, 1:05 A.M. to 10:20 A.M.

  Gerald North realized precisely what it was he wanted to suggest to the author of Old Folks at Home—in addition, of course, to the invention of a new title. The thing that had all along bothered him, Gerald North realized, was that, near the beginning of the ninth chapter, the time transitions, previously handled with so much dexterity, began to lose definition so that—so that—It was ent
irely clear in my mind when I started, Gerald North told himself. The time transitions from the ninth chapter on but Pam sees the woods even when most of us can’t see the—no—no! The book I’m thinking about is Aunt Lucinda’s Gribland’s something or other and—he had it! The old folks aren’t at home, Gerald North thought and realized that if he could only remember the phrase tomorrow the whole uneasy secret of the trouble with the tenth chapter would be—

  “Jerry!” Pam North said, from the next bed. “Are you awake?”

  “Of course,” Jerry said. “I was just lying here—” He paused. “I am now,” he told her.

  Pam turned on her light.

  “He’s FBI,” Pam said.

  Jerry scrambled through his mind. What was it he had just hit on? He clutched at the fabric of a retreating dream, and came back with meaningless words. “The old folks aren’t at home,” he said, half aloud, more than half doubtfully. What was that supposed to mean?

  “Of course,” Pam said, “if you’d rather talk in your sleep.”

  “I’m awake now,” Jerry told her. “Who’s FBI?” He remembered. “Oh,” he said. “The man Bill saw at the restaurant. Of course, dear.”

  “Mr. Sandford too,” Pam said. “Don’t you see? It makes everything hang together. The man at the restaurant and Mr. Sandford are working on something.” She paused. “Atom spies, I suppose,” she said. “Even if they are dull. Anyway, that’s why the other man was with him last night—no, it’s Tuesday now, isn’t it?—Sunday night. Not following him, but both working on the same thing. Mr. Sandford was going to join him, but they don’t want the police in so he waited across the street, and then in the end had to go on about whatever it was they were doing. Mr. Sandford wasn’t being followed. The reverse, if anything.”

  “Well—” Jerry said. “He seemed surprised. Sandford, I mean. At the suggestion somebody was following him.”

  “Of course,” Pam said. “He would seem that, naturally. What do they call it? Cover. He wouldn’t simply come out and admit it. But afterward he began to wonder whether I had recognized the man, or could describe him so that somebody else would—Bill say—which would have interfered with whatever they were doing. So he asked me to lunch to find out and—”

  “Listen,” Jerry said. He sat up in bed and turned on his own light. He looked across at Pam, a pleasant amount of whom was visible.

  “Jerry,” Pam said. “This is the important thing.” She hesitated. “Right now, anyway,” she said. “Keep your mind on it. Listen what?”

  “Why would your being able to recognize Sandford’s sidekick interfere with what he and Sandford are doing?” Jerry asked her, carefully. “After all, they’re not after us.”

  “Nobody could know that without knowing what they are doing,” Pam explained, making it easy. “I could think of a hundred reasons.”

  Probably, Jerry thought, she could at that. And—quite possibly one of them would be the right reason.

  “All right,” he said. “You can do that tomorrow. Why were you followed?”

  “For the same reason,” Pam said. “Just to make sure I wasn’t on to anything—didn’t go and tell somebody something. Like Bill, say, what Sandford really is, instead of a biochemist. When I tried to throw him off he wondered, of course, but I suppose when I just went to Saks he decided I was all right—” She paused.

  “So you didn’t really need the new disguises?” Jerry said.

  “Well,” Pam said, “I couldn’t know I didn’t. And tonight, this man Bill knows—probably the same one who followed me; the medium man—was waiting to report to Mr. Sandford. And—” But then Pamela North stopped suddenly.

  “Jerry!” she said. “Suppose the man who followed me was on the other side? One of the atomic ones. He saw I was with Mr. Sandford, and wondered if I was an FBI woman and followed me to find out.” She leaned toward Jerry. “Jerry!” she said. “Have I really got into something again?”

  Jerry was now very much awake. But he did not know the answer to that question, except the prayerful answer that he hoped not.

  “I’ve been lying here thinking,” Pam told him. “Worrying. And you were sleeping so soundly, as if there weren’t an atom in the world. Also, if we’re going to be awake, oughtn’t we to close the windows?”

  Gerald North got up and closed the windows. He got back into bed shivering. Somehow, he thought, things are always a lot worse when you are shivering. You feel defenseless.

  “If it was the other ones,” Pam said, “we don’t know what to expect, do we? Anything—they might come here. They might—OH!”

  There had been a fairly large noise from the living room. Mr. North tried to pretend there hadn’t, but there had.

  “Just something settling,” he told Pam. “Things settle at night.”

  “Things?” Pam said.

  “Buildings,” Jerry told her. “Contraction and expansion or something.”

  “People break in at night,” Pam said. “They—”

  “All right,” Jerry said, and got out of bed. It was still cold. Perhaps there was something to wearing pajamas after all, even if they bunched. Or leaving a dressing gown—

  “Jerry,” Pam said. “You’re not going out there?!”

  “Just something settling,” Jerry said. “Sure. B-r-r!”

  “Then I’ll go too,” Pam said. “Because if anything happened to you—”

  “Stay right there,” Jerry told her. “It’s cold.” But Pam was out of bed. In spite of himself, Jerry discovered there was consolation in this support. He told Pam to stay behind him, and opened the door of the bedroom. He opened it craftily. Three cats spoke as one—as one cat whose voice was changing.

  “Sh-h-h!” Pam said. “Be—”

  All three cats came happily into the bedroom.

  “Oww-AH!” Gin said, exultantly.

  “Who’s there?” Jerry commanded the darkness beyond to inform him. The darkness was silent. Jerry touched a switch and the hall’s darkness vanished; at the same time he stepped back inside the bedroom door, through which he had intrepidly ventured. He repeated his demand for identification, and got the same answer. Damn it, he thought, I wish I was wearing something. He advanced along the corridor, and at its end reached cautiously into the living room and flicked another switch tumbler. Nothing happened; whoever had left the living room last had turned off lamps at lamps, not, as was stipulated, at wall switch. Jerry advanced into dimness with what he hoped was confidence. He kicked a coffee table sharply, said “Ow!” indignantly, and found light.

  The room was empty. There was nothing to explain the sound. “Set—” Jerry began, and then saw the martini mixer on the floor by the chest on which it should have stood. He pointed it out to Pam, who said, “Cats.”

  “Something settling indeed,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t that, anyway. I could tell it was something alive.”

  They returned to the bedroom, putting out lights behind them. When they entered, the cats went under beds. Gin and Sherry went under Jerry’s bed; Martini went, aloof, under Pam’s.

  “Here Gin, here Sherry, here Teeney,” Pam said. “Nice babies. Here Teeney.”

  Martini made a low, interested sound; it was rather as if she were laughing softly.

  “Oh dear,” Pam said. “Now she’s going to play.”

  Jerry got down on the floor and crawled part way under his bed. He got Sherry by one foot and pulled and Sherry yelled. Gin watched with pleased interest and then went under the other bed to join Martini. By way of extenuating intrusion, Gin began to wash her mother’s face.

  Jerry put Sherry into the corridor, and closed the door on her, whereupon she howled. He went under Pam’s bed and Pam, shivering, went into it. Pam said, “B-r-r, the sheets got cold do you want me to help you?”

  Jerry reached in and both cats moved out of reach. He crawled further, and bumped bare shoulders on springs. He spoke soothingly to cats, who considered him with pleased expressions. He said, “Damn you both,” and they appeared
to smile. He said, “Nice Gin, nice Ginny, nice Ginger-cat,” and Gin began to purr loudly.

  “You look very funny sticking out that way,” Pam told him. “You’ll have—”

  But then Gin, who could never resist blandishment for long, approached Jerry’s wriggling fingers and—and he had her! He backed out, and deposited her in the corridor. He returned and crawled back under Pam’s bed. Martini let him touch her smooth coat with the tips of his fingers. He inched toward her and she departed beyond reach, crouched, swished her tail. Her round eyes were large and, evidently, amused.

  “Of course,” Pam told Jerry from above, “she’s just waiting for you to come around to that side, you know.”

  “So she can go out this one,” Jerry said. “I know.” He considered. “Lean out on that side and pounce,” he said. “I’ll block.”

  Pam leaned perilously out on the far side of the bed and pounced.

  “Missed her,” Jerry said. “More to your right.”

  Pam pounced again. Her fingers grazed Martini, who retreated from them delicately. Pam emerged further from her bed, hanging over it. She hung over so far that she could look under it and see Jerry. She greeted him cordially, and grabbed at Martini. She missed. But Martini retreated nearer Jerry. Pam grabbed again, momentarily lost her balance, and appeared to be about to stand on her head. She caught herself.

  Martini moved. She moved toward Jerry, evaded his clutch, and went under the other bed.

  “Of all the—” Jerry said, and came out himself. He started under his own bed, and Martini went out on the other side. She went to the door and sat down. She spoke sharply about people who kept cats, against their will, penned in bedrooms when all they wanted was to join other cats in living rooms. Jerry backed out, went around, and opened the door for her. She spoke briefly, rather impatient at the delay, and went out. Jerry closed the door.

  “She has such fun with us,” Pam said. “Where were we?”

  “Somebody had just dropped an atom in the living room,” Jerry told her. He shivered. He was told he would catch cold, and agreed. Getting back between the cold sheets of a bed long open would, he told Pam, be a grave risk.