Murder Is Served (11 page)

“Start over,” he said then. “Drink your drink.” He waited, making her conscious that he was waiting. She lifted the glass again, and this time she drank from it. She put it down and looked at him, and now she smiled.

“It's a mess, Weldon,” she said. “Maybe I'm a mess. Tony—and all.”

“Quit it,” he said. “That doesn't count.
We're
not a mess.”

“In a mess,” she said. “You could—” She saw his face darken.

“All right,” she said. “I won't say it again.”

“Don't,” he said. “Not any time.”

“The only thing is,” she said, “I love you. For what good it is.”

“You'd better,” he told her. “You'd damn well better.”

She looked at him, and again she smiled and now he smiled too. His smile was not grudging, it changed his face for an instant. Then his smile went, and he shook his head.

“This is a funny love scene,” she said. “It wouldn't play.”

He did not seem to hear her, or he took what she said as an exit line from a situation.

“The cops won't believe you,” he said, forcing them back. “It's an old line. Dead before you got there. And you didn't call them. They'll laugh at you.”

“You believe me,” she said. She waited an instant. “You do believe me?”

“I'm not a cop,” he said. “My believing doesn't count.” He smiled, very briefly. “Anyway,” he said, “I've got to believe you. Nobody else does, you know. Nobody in the world. And—nobody will.”

“Then?” she said.

“Two things,” he said. “Take all the time we can grab. Maybe there'll be a break. Don't volunteer. The old rule. We'll make them find us. That's the first thing. If they do—when they do—none of this. You understand? You weren't there. You don't know anything.” He looked at her, hard. “You'll do that?” he asked. “Dumb up? Most people talk themselves into holes. What you don't say won't hurt you.”

“Somebody will have seen me,” she said. “They'll prove I was there.”

“Do you know somebody saw you?”

“No.”

“Probably no one did. It would be straight bad luck if anyone did. Unless—” He stopped suddenly. She waited and then said, “Yes?”

“Unless somebody arranged the whole thing,” he said. “Unless somebody is framing you, using you.”

“No,” she said. “I don't believe that. It's just—bad luck. Just a mess.”

“We'll play it that way,” he said. His voice was not assured. “We'll bet it's that way. If we're wrong, we'll find out, soon enough.” He stopped and looked across the table at her, leaning forward, thrusting forward. “You'll play it this way?” he said.

“Yes.” She looked at him. She nodded.

“All right,” he said. “Finish your drink. Then we'll have another and eat.” He shook his head quickly. “Don't say it,” he warned. “You'll eat. And like it. See?” His inflection put the last word in quotation marks. He was obviously, heavily, the tough guy.

“Okay, boss,” she said. She lifted her drink again and he leaned forward, looking at her. For an instant they were fixed so, violent darkness against pale quiet. Then, deliberately he turned and raised two fingers to the bartender, pointed down with two fingers at their glasses.

It was then a few minutes after eight.

It was eight-fifteen by the clock over the door at Charles'. The Norths and Weigand sat around a corner of the bar, Pam in the middle, and Gus set a fresh glass, heaped with ice, in front of each of them. He retired a little way down the bar and poured gin and vermouth into a mixing glass. They watched with anticipation. Gus returned, emptied ice from the glasses and filled them with colorless martinis. He waited while they tasted, was satisfied with their expressions, and moved a little way down the bar.

“So,” Bill said, “they patched him up and you talked to him. Right?”

“Not much patching,” Jerry North said. “Not much of a wound.”

“Which is funny,” Pam said. “Isn't it? Do people faint when they see blood? I mean, if there's some reason not to faint. I should think he'd have chased first and then fainted.”

Bill Weigand shrugged at that one. Presumably people did faint at the sight of blood—some people.

“Usually their own blood, probably,” Pam said. “However, that's what he says. Alternatively—”

She stopped and took a sip from her glass.

“Alternatively?” Jerry said.

“He could have faked it,” Pam said. “As he could have faked the paper—”

Bill shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That's corroborated. By this girl in the class. Cecily Breakwell.”

“Who only read snatches,” Pam pointed out. “So he—the professor—could really put in almost anything he wanted to. And then, of course, he would have to have it stolen, because he couldn't really produce it.”

They both looked at her.

“Why?” they said, almost at once.

“He's attracted to her,” Pam said.

“So he frames her,” Jerry pointed out. “Really, Pam!”

“I know,” Pam said. “I haven't got it all worked out. There's a man named Carey in it somewhere and—wait a minute. You know he said she went around with him, Jerry?”

Jerry North said, “What?”

“Leonard said Peggy Mott went around with this man Carey,” Pam said. “It was perfectly clear before. Now suppose Leonard's in love with Mrs. Mott. All right?”

“All right,” Jerry said, “All right with you, Bill?”

“Professor Leonard is in love with Mrs. Mott,” Bill said, gravely. Pam said both of them made her tired. She suggested that Bill do his own supposing, if he didn't like hers. Bill merely smiled.

“All right,” Pam said. “Leonard's in love with Mrs. Mott. So, to make her—well, available—he kills Mr. Mott. But
then
he finds out that she's really in love with this Carey and that makes him mad—makes Leonard mad, Jerry—and so he decides to frame her with the murder. So he makes up part of this paper she wrote and then pretends the paper is stolen and then pretends he was attacked and—”

“Why?” Jerry said.

Pam finished her drink quickly and looked very alert.

“In the first place,” she said, “the person with an obvious motive for stealing the paper is Mrs. Mott. Right?”

“Right,” Bill said.

“So that's settled,” Pam North said. “Now, just stealing the paper wouldn't be enough, because Leonard had read it and could tell you, Bill, what was in it, so the logical thing to do is to kill Leonard. Put yourself in her place. Wouldn't you—”

“Wait a minute,” Jerry said. “No, in the first place. And, in the second place, whose side are you on? You started out with Leonard and now you're putting yourself in the girl's place and what do you come up with? Attempted murder.”

“That's what we're supposed to think,” Pam said. “That's what Leonard wants us to think. I thought that was clear all along.”

But now, suddenly, she looked doubtful, and now she looked at Bill Weigand. The gravity with which he nodded was, this time, not assumed.

“Right, Pam,” he said. “You've come up on the wrong side.”

Pam looked at Jerry and he, in turn, nodded. He said he was afraid so.

“And remember,” he said. “Leonard sticks to it that the paper didn't mention Mott, directly or indirectly. If he'd made it up—or made part of it up—he'd made it as incriminating as he could.”

Pam North said, “hmmmm.” She finished her drink.

“Of course,” she said, “there is that.” She did not sound happy about it. She turned to Bill. “You think it was the girl?”

“Everything fits, that way,” he said. “No twisting. No forcing. She was married to Mott and separated from him; if he dies she comes into a lot of money. She hated him, by her own admission. She was there by this other girl's story. Elaine Britton's.”

“The mink's,” Pam said. “But the mink also said that Peggy Mott loved Mott and was trying to get him back. Didn't you say she said that?”

“Right,” Bill said. “Listen, Pam. I'll grant Mrs. Britton has a knife out for Mrs. Mott. I'll grant that, in wanting to give us a motive and not knowing the situation—not knowing there was reason to think Mrs. Mott hated her husband—the Britton girl went off at a tangent. But the significant part of her story probably is true. I think she did see Mrs. Mott go into the building. Don't you?”

Pam thought; she was reluctant.

“I'd rather not,” she said. “I'd hate to believe the mink. Still—”

“Still, you do,” Jerry told her.

“I guess so,” Pam said. “Still—that doesn't mean—”

“Pam,” Bill said. “Come off it. Whose side are you on?”

“It's just that there's too much against her,” Pam said. “It's too—neat. It's too convincing.”

Jerry North ran a hand through his hair.

“Look, Pam,” he said, “it's convincing that two and two make four. It's neat—simple. Also, they do.”

“People aren't like arithmetic,” Pam said. She looked at Jerry. “You can't add up people. There wouldn't be any—well, any
fun
left. Sometimes, Jerry, you talk just like a man.”

“I—” Jerry said. He finished his drink and looked anxiously at Gus, who responded by advancing. Gus raised his eyebrows.

“Not for me,” Pam said. “Two plus two indeed!”

They compromised by going to a table first and having drinks brought to them there. Pam was quiet for a time and then she looked at Jerry and smiled.

“I suppose you're right,” she said. She looked at Bill Weigand. “Both of you,” she said.

Bill nodded, apparently at his soup. He said he was afraid they were. He said that, if it was any consolation to Pam, he doubted whether they would make first degree stick, as against Peggy Mott.

“Unless she makes it hard for herself,” he said. “We bring her in. She says she wasn't there. We prove she was there. Then she says Mott was dead when she got there.”

“And you prove he wasn't?” Pam said. “How?”

“We raise the probability,” Bill said. “If we have to. But about then, if she's wise, she gives it up—says she was there, saw a knife, that everything went black, that he had been brutal to her—as probably, in his way, he had been—that she doesn't remember what happened next. She's probably good looking, maybe beautiful. She is sad and sweet on the witness stand, she has a good lawyer. The jury breaks into tears. It gives her—”

“All right,” Pam said. “I get the idea. Then all you have to do is to get her?”

“I think so,” Bill said.

“Inspector O'Malley will be happy,” Pam said, innocently. “It's all so—obvious.”

Bill Weigand looked momentarily unhappy.

“Even so,” he said.

“Except getting her,” Pam pointed out.

Bill smiled this time. He got up, still smiling, and said he had to telephone. He returned very quickly, still smiling. He sat down again and said he was glad Pam had reminded him. She looked at him with suspicion.

“To pass along the word she's probably with this Carey,” Bill said, contentedly. “This Carey you told me about, Pam.”

6

S
ATURDAY
,
9:15
P.M. TO
10:50
P.M.

She had eaten nothing, or almost nothing. He had watched her not eating, watched her pushing food around her plate, sometimes trying to eat. Her mouth would be dry inside; she would be chewing food and it would be turning to dry flavorlessness, to something you would choke on if you swallowed. It could be that way when you were afraid, and there was nothing much you could do about it. There was always some time when you were afraid, and this was her time. You couldn't swallow the first time, if that was the way it hit you.

She could drink her coffee, black, acrid from long roasting, tasting as if it had been burned. She drank slowly, but she drank, looking over her cup at nothing. He wished he knew what she was thinking, planning. Conversation had drifted away from them after they finished their second drink; he had eaten and she had played at eating almost silently. He could not think of the words to get conversation started again, and at the same time felt anxiety that the silence would let her start thinking and making plans without him. He thought now that it had. He pushed his cup away and, responsive to the movement, she put her own cup down and looked at him and waited.

“We can't stay here, Peg,” he said. “We've got to get moving.”

“That's it,” she said. “That's just it. You can't stay anywhere. I found that out. After a while you have to go some place else, but you can't stay there, either.” She shook her head. “There's no use running, Weldon,” she said.

It made him angry again; he leaned forward again.

“You don't know what you're talking about,” he said, and his voice was harsh. “They're tough, Peg. Good God, you don't know about tough guys—about being locked up, not able to go where you want to, being pressed down and closed in on. You can't take it, I tell you.”

“Sooner or later,” she said. “You know that, Weldon.”

He said that was just it. That was just what they didn't know. Perhaps they would find somebody else, maybe even the right one. Then she would never have to go through it.

“You don't understand,” he said, and tried to force her to understand with the intentness of his gaze, the demand of his voice. “They'll hammer at you, over and over. They'll—put you in a hole you can't get out of. They'll beat your head down. Listen, Peg—you don't get over it. Not all over it. Not ever.” He paused. “Damn it,” he said, “you think I don't know what I'm talking about. I've told you. About the Jap camp. About what it did to guys. I've told you a little.”