Curtain for a Jester (18 page)

“I'm not sure,” Bill said. “Wait a minute.”

“Yes,” Stein said. “That's the one. The man who identified the man Monteath shot. Well, he was at the apartment recently, probably last night. Only—there's a catch in it.” Stein paused for a moment. “Seems Behren's dead,” Stein said.

“That,” Bill said, “is quite a catch. Go ahead, sergeant.”

Stein went ahead. The many prints set and photographed in the Wilmot penthouse were being processed. So far, only two prints of particular interest had shown up—the man who had left a print inside the safe had touched other objects in the apartment. For one thing he had been at the files. And, a second set of prints, coded to Washington in accordance with routine, proved to belong to one Alexander Behren. The army had turned the prints up. Behren had been drafted late in 1942, at the age of twenty-nine. He had been—“listen to this, captain”—five feet ten inches tall. He had weighed one hundred and thirty-eight pounds. He had had red hair. He had had, as a distinguishing mark, a scar through his left eyebrow. “Apparently,” Stein said, “he ran into something sharp a good while ago. Or somebody took a knife to him.”

Behren had gone through training. He had been sent to the Pacific. He had been in the New Guinea fighting. And there he had vanished. “Missing, believed dead.” He had remained missing, was still believed dead. His body had never been identified; a good many had never been. But, dead or alive, he had attended Mr. Wilmot's last party. “In a way,” Stein said, “it looks as if he attended it twice, doesn't it, captain?”

“Yes,” Bill said, “in a way it does. Anything else?”

There was nothing else. Martha Evitts was still missing. John Baker was still missing. Sylvester Frank was still—

“No,” Bill said. “Not Frank any more. You can call them off on Frank.” He explained, briefly. He replaced the receiver. He looked at Pam and Jerry North, who waited.

“A man named Behren,” Bill told them. “It seems he was at the party last night. It seems that he—”

“But the butler told us that,” Pam said. “He said Mr. Barron was there. The man with the scar.”

“No,” Bill said. “This man's name is Behren.” He spelled it. “Alexander—” He stopped. Albert Barron. Alexander Behren.

“Well,” Bill Weigand said, “I'll be damned if he didn't.”

“The red-haired man,” Pam said. “It has to be, Bill. Red hair turned to gray hair!” She turned to Jerry. “Red herring indeed,” Pam North said. “I told you—”

“Right,” Bill said. “You did. And—Mr. Behren, who's supposed to be dead, identified the man Monteath killed in Maine.” He continued to look at the Norths. He smiled faintly.

“Everything clear now?” he asked.

IX

Thursday, 7:20 P.M. to 9:35 P.M.

Martha Evitts raised her cup to her lips. But she put it down, the coffee untasted. She looked at John Baker, across from her at a small table in a small restaurant near Times Square.

“What it comes down to,” she said, “is that you're not what I thought you were. Are you?”

“Yes,” he said. “In what matters to us.”

She shook her head.

“Different,” she said. “Completely different.” She paused. “Older,” she said. “For one thing—older.”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “But that's all right, isn't it?”

“Oh,” she said. “That's all right. But it doesn't matter much, does it?”

“I'm the same man,” he said. “As far as we're concerned, exactly the same man. I wish you'd believe that.”

“Oh,” she said. “I try. I try to believe so many things. You—you don't help me much, John.”

“All I can,” he said. “All I can right now. I'm sorry it's that way, but it is.”

“You're mixed up in something.”

He said she could call it that. He drank coffee.

“Again,” he said. “I had nothing to do with killing Wilmot. I don't know who did. I was there—at the penthouse—about something else. I expected to find Wilmot alive. Leave him alive.”

“You followed this man—what's his name? Monteath. Mrs. North saw you. You didn't deny it.”

“No,” he said. “I didn't. I don't. And—I can't tell you any more about it.”

He was told he asked a lot.

“All right,” he said. “I ask a lot, Martha. But, I didn't kill Wilmot. I didn't want him dead.”

“You could,” she said, “tell me anything. I wouldn't be—upset. It'd be better than the way it is.”

“There's nothing I can tell you,” he said. “Not now.”

“Nor,” she said, “tell the police?”

“Nothing that would help,” he said. “Probably nothing they don't suspect, anyway. Or will get on to before long. You'll just have to believe that—well, that things will be all right.”

“I'm trying,” the girl said. “I'm trying very hard, John.”

“Then,” he said, “drink your coffee.” He looked at his watch. “I've got to make a telephone call,” he said. “Wait for me. Then I'll take you home. Sit here and drink your coffee and—quit worrying.”

“That's fine,” Martha said. “That's wonderful.”

“You'll wait?”

“Yes, I'll wait. I'll drink my coffee.”

He looked across the table at her. He smiled suddenly, and his face changed. He's the other John, now, she thought. She said, “I'll wait.”

He still hesitated, but only for a moment. He went between tables to a telephone booth near the restaurant entrance. He dialed a number. When he was answered he said, “This is Baker.” Then he listened.

“Yes,” he said, “I'd think so. He went there.”

He listened again.

“How important is it?” he asked, and again listened. He said, “I suppose he could” and listened again.

“It forces our hand,” he said. “But, if it's forced, it's forced. When?”

As he listened, he whistled. He said it didn't give much time. He said, “O.K., I see what you mean.” He hung up the receiver and went back to the table. He looked at Martha Evitts's cup. He said, “You didn't drink it all.”

“Almost,” she said.

“Martha,” he said. “I can't take you home after all. There's something I've got to do. Will you go home?”

“Yes,” she said. “I may as well.”

“And stay there?”

“Yes.”

“The police may show up,” he said. “Tell them what you know, if you need to. They'll know it by now from these Norths of yours, anyway, Tell them you don't know where I am.” He smiled faintly. “By then you won't,” he said. “All right?”

“I guess so. I guess it has to be.”

“For a while,” he said. “You ready now?”

She was. They walked together to the Times Square station of the IRT. She went toward the uptown express platform.

“I go the other way,” he told her. “Stay at home?” She nodded. “Don't worry,” he said. She smiled. It was not a particularly good smile.

John Baker went to the other express platform. He took a downtown train. He was still on it when it tilted down into the tunnel beneath the East River.

Acting Captain William Weigand sat at his desk. He ate a hamburger on a roll and drank coffee. The coffee tasted of cardboard container; the hamburger tasted of nothing in particular. Weigand used the telephone. His voice traveled some hundreds of miles and was heard by a uniformed state police officer in a barracks in Maine.

“I appreciate it was a long time ago,” Bill said. “I realize you've looked it up once for Sergeant Stein. It looks like meaning more now.” He listened. “Right,” he said. “I'll wait.”

He held the telephone in one hand and the hamburger in the other, eating because, with no time for a proper dinner, one has to eat. He felt the beginning of that sense of urgency which so often came when, finally, a case began to take shape. But logic lagged behind; what he had hold of remained, to the mind, amorphous. More accurately, Bill thought, he seemed to have a case in either hand, as in one hand he held a telephone receiver and in the other a hamburger on a bun. He waited for a man in Maine to consult records of years ago.

“All right,” the man in Maine said, “I've got what there is. It isn't much. This man Monteath, summer resident, killed a man he says tried to break in. The man was identified as Joseph Parks by a man who said he was a friend of his. Fingerprints checked. Small-time crook from your town.”

“No charges against Monteath?”

“Nope.”

“No suspicion there was any funny business?”

“Not on the record,” a twanging voice from Maine said. “I wasn't on the case. The man who was on it got himself shot five-six years ago. If he had any suspicions they don't show on what we've got.”

“Right,” Bill said. “I'm interested in this man who identified Parks. Alexander Behren, we have it.”

“That's the name we've got here,” Maine said.

“How did Behren happen to show up?” Bill asked. “Read about an unidentified man being shot? I suppose he was unidentified until Behren showed up? No papers on him.”

“Seems not,” Maine said. “Hold it.”

Bill held it, this time briefly.

“Behren showed up the next morning,” Maine said. “Guess he didn't read about it, because how could he? Wasn't printed yet. Seems he reported a friend of his had been going to meet him somewhere and hadn't. Described the friend, and it fitted. Looked at Parks, and sure enough.”

“Right,” Bill said. “He could have known when he showed up what he would find?”

“Well,” Maine said, in the accents of Maine, “he could have. Said he didn't, apparently.”

“Do you know whether he had any contact with Monteath? Behren, I mean. After he turned up?”

“Nothing to show. Wait a minute. Probably didn't. Monteath's wife was in a hospital down in Portland. Pretty sick, seems like. Monteath wanted to get there, and apparently the boys let him. Pretty early in the morning he left.”

“You've got the name of the hospital?”

The state police office had. He gave it to Weigand.

“One more thing,” Bill said. “I don't suppose your record gives a description of Behren?”

There was a brief pause.

“Nope,” Maine said. “No reason it should, is there?”

“None,” Bill said. He thanked Maine. He depressed the buttons on the telephone set, released them. He wanted somebody in authority—a resident would do, a telephone operator would not—at a hospital in Portland. He replaced the receiver and spent some minutes in thought, which produced little save more questions. Had there, for example, really been blood on Clyde Parsons's topcoat? Had the coat really been in the penthouse at all? Sylvester Frank was a liar. But, how much had he lied? The telephone rang.

“Got a doctor up there,” the police operator said. “He do?”

“Put him on,” Bill said. “We'll have to find out.” He waited. A distant voice said, “Hello? Dr. Farley speaking.”

Weigand identified himself. He said he was interested in finding out what he could about a Mrs. Arthur Monteath, who had died in the hospital late in July of 1940. Could Dr. Farley help him? Or put him on to someone who could?

“I doubt it,” Farley said. “I can't, anyway. Not here then. I can try records, but there may not be anybody there. It's late here.”

“I know,” Bill said. “It's late here too, doctor. See if you can get me switched, will you?”

It took time. A faint sound indicated that a bell might be ringing somewhere in a distant hospital. Then the ringing stopped. Then Weigand was asked what number he was calling. But then a voice said, faintly, “Records.” “I'm ringing your party,” another operator said, and Bill Weigand said, “Please. This is police business. Stay out, will you?”

“You rang,” Records said, distantly. “I'm sor-
ree
,” an operator said, elaborately. “Excuse it please.”

“Is this the records room?” Bill said, raising his voice above confusion. “There's no need to shout,” Records said.

Bill was sorry, or sor-ree. He explained.

“Really!” Records said. Records was young, female. “All those years ago?” The years might have constituted a lifetime; Bill supposed, from the voice, that in this case they constituted the major part of one.

“It's important,” Bill said. “Police business. I'm calling from New York.”

“Well,” Records said. “I'll look.” A distant madman was to be humored. “What was the name again?”

Bill gave it and waited. He did not wait long. Mrs. Arthur Monteath had been admitted to the hospital on July 27, 1940. Myocardial infarction. She had died on July 29, after a second heart attack. Body had been claimed by her husband.

It was what Bill had expected. It was all there was to it—a young woman, recently married, on vacation with her husband in a little cottage near the sea, where the beat of water against rocks was never silent, had had a heart attack and two days later had died of it, or of another. There was no point in carrying it further.

“Can you give me the name of the doctor?” he asked. “Of the nurse? Is either of them there now?”

Records could. The doctor had, she thought, left Portland. The nurse—“Oh,” Records said. “That's Aunty.” Records gasped slightly. “I'm sorry,” she said. “The night superintendent of nurses, now. Yes—I suppose she's here. But I'm afraid she'll be too busy to—”

“Try,” Bill told her. “Give me her name and try.”

Ten minutes later, Bill Weigand put the telephone receiver in its cradle and sat looking at it. The warm friendliness of a middle-aged voice was still in his ears. If he were in a hospital, he would like to have Alice Blanchard as his nurse. “The poor, poor thing,” she had said, of Grace Monteath. “She was so young, really. It was so sad her—her not wanting to live. I've thought of her so often, wondered so often.”