Murder Is Served (13 page)

“So far as the police know, however, she will now inherit a major portion of Mott's very large estate. Regardless of any other disposition he may have made, her dower rights would net her many millions.

“According to friends of Mott, he opposed her stage career and it has been suggested that he used his considerable influence in theatrical circles to interrupt it. She had an important part in last season's ‘Come and Get It' and played last summer on the barn circuit. She has not been in any production this year.

“Mrs. Mott has not been at her East Forty-eighth Street apartment since the murder, according to Inspector O'Malley, and—”

She read on, read innocuous statement after innocuous statement; felt, rather than understood, the technic which made juxtaposition serve the purpose of allegation. She wondered who those “friends of Mott” might be—those eager, damning, almost accurate tellers of tales. (Tony would have told those “friends.” She could almost hear him. “Let her walk out. Let her try it on her own. I said to her—”) He had been an ordinary man; that had been the trouble. With all the money he had, with all that money gave him, with all his skill in money's use, he had still been an ordinary man, saying ordinary things, showing more than usual spite when he was annoyed. It was money made the spite effective, hurting, not any special quality in the man. He had not even been a first-rate heel, this Tony Mott of whom, now, everyone was making so much. He had had millions of dollars and used them irresponsibly. That was all you could say of him.

She sat remembering Tony, no longer reading. Three years ago, when she met him, she had not thought any of these things. She had not seen that he was ordinariness stuffed with money. It had taken a year of marriage—no, be honest, Peg. A year of marriage had produced distaste which had become a kind of creeping thing, and contempt, and anger. But it had not really produced knowledge. It had only been in the past few months when, to these things, she had added evaluation of Tony Mott. And that had been because of Weldon Carey; of his and her long conversations, of which Mott was only now and then the center. Weldon, without—at first—knowing Mott, knowing what Mott could do, had known the kind of man Mott was, and had helped her to know it. Weldon had been angry at Mott, as he was angry at so many things, but the anger had been—again at first—abstract. It was when they both found out what Mott was doing to them, how he had extended activities which at first included only her so that they affected Weldon, because of her, that Weldon Carey's anger became personal. And still it had been, at bottom, all so very ordinary.

You took a vain man, a man of small acid vanities, and interfered with him, “crossed him.” “Crossed in love,” except that, with Tony Mott, it was ridiculous to talk of love. She had been merely a pet who disobeyed him, and was to be taught that nobody disobeyed Tony Mott. She had not even been important to him in love-making, let alone love. (She doubted, now, whether any woman had been very important to Tony, even in that most primary capacity.) She had been merely a possession, turned wilful, challenging the Mott vanity, and hence to be disciplined. And Weldon, when Mott found out, had been merely an associate in disobedience. Perhaps he had hardly been that. Weldon, when Mott found out about them, had become, to Mott, not another person but a mere extension of her insubordination. Weldon had become, in a sense, an action of hers, something she wanted to do. And therefore he had become something to be eliminated.

She had brought Weldon trouble. She was bringing him more. She was bringing it to him as fast as turning subway wheels could take it, and her. And, thinking of Weldon, her mind outstripped the turning wheels. She thought what she would tell him. It was not important, any more, that she was sorry. It was not even true that she was sorry. It was not, except superficially, anything she had done. It was something which had happened; it was as much something which had happened to him as it was something which had happened to her. They were in it together. Up to our necks, she thought. It gives us a kind of—a kind of unity, a kind of inseparability. She was hurrying to the fire Weldon was, but she was part of the fire. Part of the fire was in her.

I never felt this way before, she thought. It was never this way before.

She kept her face bent toward the paper, but she did not read it. She merely waited reunion.

When she got out of the train, finally, and climbed up the stairs to the street, the wind caught her. But this time the wind was behind her as she went toward the house in which Weldon lived. The wind hurried her, so that she was almost running.

She was certain, now, that this was right. Weldon would be at the room, waiting for her. They could not have missed on this. He would have found her gone, he would have understood, known that she would, when she had time to think, want to be with him. So he would have gone uptown to his room and would be waiting for her there.

It was several blocks from the subway to the house, and the wind blew her all the way. It blew her into the door of the old apartment building, which was almost a tenement, and up the stairs to the third floor. She had always hated the place, as Weldon hated it. Weldon's room, rented from a gray couple who had a flat too big for them, was featureless, and, through thin walls, you could hear the gray couple breathing heavily. But now she could not get up the stairs fast enough.

She rang the bell and, almost at once, the door opened. She was so sure it would be opened by Weldon that she almost spoke his name before she saw that the man was neither Weldon nor the gray landlord. It was a man of medium height, slender, dark, with a sensitive, expressive face. At the moment he looked a little regretful about something. She looked at him an instant and, because he was so little what she had expected, did not at first realize what had happened. Even his words came as a surprise, as something deeply inappropriate.

“Mrs. Mott,” Detective Sergeant Stein said, not as a question. “We've been waiting for you.” He looked beyond her. “Though we did think Mr. Carey would be with you,” he added. There was nothing in what he said, or in his attitude, to make her go so cold.

The summarized dossiers had gone through channels, and returned through channels. Inspector O'Malley had had them and had marked a cross in red pencil in the corner of one, representing the O'Malley choice. Looking at it, Bill Weigand nodded slowly to himself. He was afraid so. He was afraid he was going to have to agree with the inspector. It seemed a pity. Dorian would not like it; O'Malley represented all that Dorian, in long experience, had found unlikable about policemen. Having spent some years persuading Dorian, largely by example, that there were policemen and policemen, Bill was doubly reluctant to identify himself with O'Malley. Bill thought of Dorian, and wished he had more regular hours. Nine to five would be pleasant, he thought; or ten to four, if you came to that. She would be waiting for him now, at home, making idle sketches, reading in bed, perhaps fallen asleep over her book. It looked as if she would have a long wait. He hoped that she would not have fallen asleep with a cigarette lighted—and suddenly, hoping she would not, he became certain she had.

“Damn,” he said to himself, but there was nothing for it. He picked up the telephone, gave a number to the switchboard, waited while the instrument buzzed rhythmically in his ear. Then Dorian's voice sounded sleepy.

“Bill,” she said, “aren't you ever coming home?”

He told her that God knew. He asked her if she was all right. “Of course,” she said. “Why ever not, darling? Is it that Mott case?”

He said it was.

“I should think that would come under the heading good riddance,” Dorian said.

So, apparently, might too many people, he told her. There was a tiny pause.

“I just got to thinking about you,” he said.

Dorian said she knew. She said it in a soft voice.

“Actually, I got afraid you'd go to sleep with a lighted cigarette,” Bill said. “That's the fool thing I thought.”

“That's all right,” Dorian said. “It wasn't a fool thing. I won't.”

“I know,” Bill said. “It was a fool thing, all the same.”

“Come home when you can,” Dorian said, after another tiny pause. “I'll be careful about cigarettes.”

“Right.” Bill said. He said good night.

“Good night, Bill,” she said, and there was the little click of a replaced receiver. It was idiotic that Bill could feel invigorated, renewed, by such trivial words. Doting, Bill thought; all right, why not? He was pleased that he could think of no answer, and returned to the dossiers.

They were terse, boiled down. The one on top was typed, “CAREY, Weldon.” It continued: “Age 31; associate Peggy Mott, degree of intimacy not established; met her about a year ago at Dyckman University, where both taking courses; often together. Enlisted Marine Corps 1942; discharged master sergeant December 1945; served Pac. theater, including Okinawa; described as writer; now student under GI bill; born Louisville, Ky., son Weldon and Mary Carey. Had play accepted prod current season, but producer abandoned. Reason given, difficulty casting. Rumor expected backing not forthcoming. Peggy Simmons (Mott) announced in publicity for lead at one time. Carey's M.C. record good; no police record.”

It boiled down a life, certainly. It boiled down an investigation and a good many hours of diligence; a good many questions asked, a good many telegrams sent and answered (and answered promptly, for a wonder), a good many cards turned over in a good many indices. It was not apparent precisely where any of it fitted in. Weigand looked at the card without seeing it; the fingers of his right hand tapped in rhythm, softly, on his desk. It was interesting. It had no red cross in the corner. Bill Weigand turned it over and looked at the next.

“MAILLAUX, André: 56; born Paris, son Pierre and Hortense M, worked waiter, busboy, captain in restaurant owned by father and uncle. (Maillaux family in restaurant business several generations, branch family same business Switzerland; Restaurant Maillaux Paris of high rank); André to U.S. 1926, nat. cit.; founded present restaurant 1928, family investing; apparently very successful and place well-known but spring this year took in Mott who—” Bill Weigand skimmed. He knew about that. “—does not inherit Mott's interest; no insurance favor corp. on Mott; found body and made report; Maillaux unmarried, recently no record women; lives over restaurant; reported strict employer but generally fair; no police record. (Note: Some indication Maillaux married in France before here; check under way.)”

O'Malley had made no notations on Maillaux's card. Bill Weigand made none. He went on: “LEONARD, John: 47; PhD, Col; associate prof. psychology, Dyck.; born Albany; major AUS, assigned Washington; inactivated (at request Dyck.) Jan. 1945; unmarried; author several books related psychology; well regarded Dyck; said to have large acquaintance non-academic circles, particularly theater, writing; understood to have considerable private income; former habitué Maillaux's restaurant; no evidence whether acquainted Mott, but sometimes moved similar circs.; report seen several times with Mrs. Mott away from univ. (checking further); (Note to WW: most recent book published by North Books, G. North president); one charge reckless driving (1940) sus. sen.; no other police record.”

That really boiled it down, Bill Weigand suspected. The sybaritic professor, responsive—as professors are supposed not to be—to pretty girls in classes. Hence Peggy Mott? The point deserved to be checked further. But things happened to lives when criminal investigations opened them unexpectedly. Little things, trivial things, forgotten things, were broken from context, given misleading importance. “Reckless driving,” for example; reckless driving was what a traffic patrolman wanted to call it, possible passing a red light. “Habitué Maillaux's restaurant” was interesting, under the circumstances. But hundreds might have been called that, and it would have meant nothing. You had to watch things like that, Bill Weigand said, and sighed, and thought there were a good many things a policeman had to watch. There was no notation from O'Malley here, either. But Weigand looked at the card rather longer than he had at the others, and drummed a little more sharply on the desk. Then he put the card aside and examined that of Elaine Britton—“BRITTON, Elaine”.

Britton, Elaine, was an “actress,” the word in quotation marks on the card. Bill smiled faintly. She was “about 27” and born South Bend, Ind. He continued: “One engagement, chorus line, 1940, no record other theatrical engagement; photographer's model, 1941–1942; married Percy Britton, retired coal dealer, 1943; divorced 1943, with alimony; has since lived at apparent rate not justified by amt. alimony; associated Tony Mott for about a year, described herself as his ‘fiancée' although he married P. S. Mott; early career in NY being checked; report once associate Morton Shepp, conv. 1938, op. gamb. res.; then thought used name Nell Schmidt; known professional Elaine Oliver prior marriage Britton; statement as to birthplace made by her application model agency, not verified; if Nell Schmidt (as above) questioned after arrest Shepp, not printed, no charge. No other police record.”

So that was Pam North's “mink.” She sounded it. Bill Weigand picked up the telephone and asked for Mullins. He had Mullins in the office within minutes. He tossed the card to Mullins, who read it and looked at the lieutenant and said, “Yeah. I thought so.”

“What else?” Bill said.

“She lives on Central Park West,” Mullins said. “Swank. In a way. You know what I mean.”

“Right,” Bill said. “And—?”

“She left there about eleven-thirty this morning,” Mullins said. “What she did before that I wouldn't know. She—”

“Friday night?” Bill said.

“Went to a show,” Mullins told him. “Went to Leon and Eddie's with a crowd. Mott was in the crowd. Mott took her home.”