Murder Is Served (18 page)

Peg Mott said something, but Carey hardly heard it. She didn't want to come, but he pulled at her, not gently, and said, “Come on!” and, because things were working that way, because it was absurdly easy, she came. He grabbed her around the waist first, then by the arm, and they ran down the street with the wind behind them. It was precisely that easy. He heard the taxi driver yelling and heard the motor start, and then they dodged into what appeared to be an alley. Still, Carey hadn't thought about it; he'd grabbed an opportunity (and his girl) and he had run for it. They were out of an alley, on another street, still running and with Peg gasping a little for breath, before he began really to think. Then he made them stop running.

Then Peg Mott spoke, in little breathless words, and said, “No—no, Wel—we've got—to go—go back. We can't—”

“It's too late for that,” he said. “Come on.”

She tried to stop. She said she was going back.

He let her stop.

“All right,” he said. “We'll both go back. Maybe you're right.”

But then she started on again, and he started with her.

“We can't now,” she said. “You know that. Unless you'll let me go alone. You hit the detective. You hurt him. They'd—”

She did not say what they would do, or anything more. But he could feel her trembling. At that, he thought, she was right enough. He'd stirred up a nest, all right. One that wouldn't quiet down in a hurry. They'd be pouring out of the nest, now; they'd be angry.

“Why did you?” she said. “What good can it do?”

There wasn't any answer to that, either; not any real answer. He hardly knew himself. There had been a picture of Peg locked up, in a cell, helpless. There had been a chance. That was all it came to. There wasn't any plan. But now, he thought, there had to be. And it had to be one based on going ahead. Maybe they'd had it, but they had to keep on, now, until that was proved. There was a subway station up the street, and they went toward it. That was the first part of the plan.

Peg Mott went along with the feeling that she was walking into darkness. She had run with Weldon Carey because, after what he had done to Stein, he had to run, and clearly would not run without her. And now there did not seem to be any way to turn back which would not involve him in more trouble, worse trouble, than anything which had come yet. She went along, walking into darkness, and at the same time glad, brought to life again, by the pressure of Weldon's hand on her arm, by his presence. Although she felt that this was wrong, that there should be some other way, she did not hold back as they went down the stairs of the subway station, into the West Side local. They did not try to talk against the roar of the train. At the Sheridan Square station they got out of the train, and went up the steps and then, because Carey had a plan now, away from the square on Fourth Street, toward the west. The wind was against them now, trying to drive them back. He seemed to be thrusting them into it.

The wind snatched at her breath and Peg did not try to say anything, even to ask where they were going. She merely went on, head down, with Carey beside her. She staggered once when a gust struck her, and then he put an arm around her waist, holding her close, so that they were a unit thrusting against the wind. It was better, after that.

She did not know the street, beyond Eighth Avenue, into which they turned, and when they went into the door of what appeared to be an aged business building, she was thankful only that, inside, the air was still. It was no warmer, but it was still. They went up a flight of wooden stairs hugging one wall, and then up another flight. Then Carey knocked on a door, opening off a long corridor. He knocked and kept on knocking, and finally there were sounds of movement behind the door, and a man's voice began to swear, sleepily. Then the door opened suddenly, and a slim man in his late twenties stood in it, hugging a blue robe around him.

“Who the hell—” the man began, with anger, and then stopped. “So it's you,” he said. “What the hell, Sergeant?”

“Hiya, Colonel,” Carey said. “Wake you up?”

“You know bloody, god—” the man at the door said and then, for the first time, seemed to see Peg Mott. “Well,” he said. “Well, well, Sergeant, What gives?”

“Look, Paul,” Weldon Carey said. “We need a hand. How about it?”

“Then why the hell don't you come in?” the slender man said. “What are you waiting for?”

They went in. It was warmer inside, but it was not warm. There was a single light in the middle of a room which seemed tremendous, which did, Peg began to realize, include the whole floor of the building. Toward the front there was only dimness, against which the light from the dangling bulb made no progress. The other way there were curtains stretching across, cutting off an end of the enormous room.

“Come along back,” the man said. “Wait a minute.” He stopped. “Get some clothes on, Paula,” he shouted. “Got visitors.”

The voice which came back was clear, high. There seemed to be laughter in it. But the words were merely, “Come along.”

Carey seemed to hesitate a moment.

“Told you I was getting married, didn't I?” the slim man said. “Well, I got married. Come along.”

They went back, the man Carey had called “colonel” holding the curtains apart for them. Warmth met them, faintly tinged with odors—the pungency of burning kerosene, of tobacco, of perfume. But most of all there was warmth.

There was warmth and rather remarkable space. The room the curtains cut off was still a big room, high-ceilinged, with a row of tall, narrow windows at the far end. There were curtains over the windows; there was a screen cutting off one corner, near the windows; there were several deep sofas and a number of chairs; scattered through the room there was enough furniture, and rather good furniture, for a largish apartment.

Peg Mott examined the room, unconsciously, because it was so surprising. She found that the “colonel” was looking at her, with faint amusement. But then he looked away and around the room and said, “Hey, Paula!”

A small girl, very slender, with deep red hair, came out from behind the screen. She was holding a blue robe around her with one hand and carrying a tray in the other. There were cups on the tray, a silver coffee pot, and a tall bottle. She put the tray down on a low table and came toward them and said, as if she had known them a long time, “Hello.”

“This is Paula, Sergeant,” the “colonel” said. “This is Weldon Carey, the guy I told you about. I don't know who this is.” He motioned toward Peggy, and his whole face smiled.

“All right, Paul,” Weldon Carey said. “This is Peggy Mott. Mrs. Tony Mott.”

“Oh,” the red-haired girl said, involuntarily.

“Yes, Mrs. Foster,” Carey said. The challenge came back into his voice. “Mrs. Tony Mott.”

“Why not,” Paul Foster said. “Very handsome, too, Sergeant.”

He crossed to Peggy Mott and held out his hand. His smile was warming; the room was warming. And then Paula Foster came across the distance between them, with both hands out.

“Paul. Paula,” Weldon Carey said. “What gives?”

Paul Foster turned, still smiling.

“Why we got married,” he said. “Seemed too good to miss. Of course, she had all this fine furniture, too. That entered in.”

“Only no place to put it,” Paula Foster said, “so we got this.”

“Very fine, too,” Paul Foster said. “Homey. But plenty of room for expansion.”

They were talking for time, Peggy thought; to give her time, themselves time. They kept at it. Obliquely, things were explained. Paul Foster had been a colonel—a lieutenant-colonel, at any rate—as surely as Weldon Carey had been a sergeant. “Air Force, naturally,” Weldon pointed out, and looked at the other man with affection. “Dropped down on us one day.” Foster had, literally, dropped down, bailing out of a fighter plane, coming to earth, hurt, near a group of Marines under Carey's orders. Carey had crawled out and brought him in, Foster said; the Marines had taken care of him and finally got him back. “Heroes,” Foster said. “Particularly the sergeant here. And I was Army, remember. Must have been a temptation just to leave me there, you know.”

The smile went all over his face again.

There was warmth in the room; they were trying to make it her warmth. It wasn't, couldn't be, Peggy Mott thought. Tell them, Carey; they won't want us after you tell them.

Carey told them.

“Hell of a note,” Paul Foster said. “The cops must be crazy. Now what do we do?”

It was as easy as that; it was almost her warmth then, almost something she could share.

“First,” Paula Foster said, “these kids get some coffee and cognac. Then they get some sleep.” She looked at her husband, looking a good ways up. “Otherwise they'll catch cold,” she pointed out. “And anything's better without a cold. No matter what it is.”

They had coffee, with considerable cognac. Warmth came then, creeping—bodily warmth, a kind of drowsy acceptance. She was only half aware as the Fosters improvised, working together. She hardly realized, until morning, that she had slept beside the red-haired girl in a sofa turned into a bed, and that the two men—after long conversation which came to her dimly—had slept, less comfortably, on other sofas which did not turn into beds.

The Sunday newspapers had cats in them. Jerry North moved, suddenly, halfway across the room and removed Gin from the book section of the
Times
. He returned, clutching the book section of the
Times
, and Sherry leaped from the couch, landed, somehow, under the amusement section of the
Herald Tribune
. The amusement section of the
Herald Tribune
began to travel, erratically, across the room. Jerry rescued that.

Martini, who had been watching her offspring with pleased approval, took a dim view of their dispossession. She looked up at Jerry, lashed her tail, and said, “Yah!” The younger cats stopped and stared at her. Gin leaped, landing on her back, rolled her over. The two cats, locked, apparently, in a death struggle, rolled into the
Times'
Review of the Week.

“The long, lazy Sunday mornings before the fire,” Jerry said, to nobody. “The rest, the relaxation. No, Sherry!”

Pam North appeared at the door of the kitchen and said that breakfast was almost ready. “I decided to make biscuits,” she said. “I thought biscuits would be nice for a change. And, anyway, Martha doesn't seem to have got any bread. Are biscuits all right?”

Jerry said that biscuits were fine.

“Drop biscuits,” Pam said. “I think they're better, don't you?”

“Fine,” Jerry said.

Pam withdrew from the kitchen door, but she continued to talk.

“I don't know,” she said. “More mellow, somehow. Drop biscuits, that is. And not so formal, of course.”

“What?” Jerry said.

Pam came back to the kitchen door.

“Drop biscuits,” she said. “What did you think?”

“Fine,” Jerry said.

“Better texture,” Pam said. “And, I'll have to admit, easier. I don't deny that.”

“No,” Jerry said.

There was a little pause then, and Jerry was conscious that he was being looked at, waited for. He looked up.

“To be perfectly honest, I put too much milk in,” Pam said, when he was looking at her. “And they have to be drop biscuits, or reconstituted. And then I'd probably have to measure. All right?”

“Fine,” Jerry said. He grinned at her, suddenly.

“Damn,” Pam North said. “You knew all the time I'd put too much milk in. Didn't you?”

Jerry nodded, still grinning.

“I never get away with anything,” Pam said. “Boiled eggs? There's the telephone.”

The last was a formality. The telephone was ringing almost in Jerry North's lap.

“Who'd be calling at this hour Sunday morning?” Pam said, with interest. Jerry said, “Hello? Yes?”

“Before breakfast,” Pam said, and Jerry, distracted by two points of view, compromised and said, “What?”

“Never mind,” Pam said, and the man at the other end of a telephone wire said, “Paul Foster. You don't know me, Mr. North.”

Jerry said, “Ummm?”

“About the Mott case,” Paul Foster said. He had a light, oddly gay, voice.

Jerry said, “Ummm?”

“Who is it?” Pam said. “I just put the biscuits in. But they're almost done.”

Jerry shook his head at her. He jerked it toward the front of the apartment, indicating the extension telephone in the study.

“All right,” Pam said, “but remember there isn't any bread.”

“I'm sorry,” Jerry said into the telephone. “Something was going on. Will you say that again?”

“We want to engage you,” Paul Foster said. “Retain you. Whatever the word is.”

“Retain me?” Jerry said.

“You and Mrs. North,” Foster said. “To find out what's at the bottom of it. Because Peggy didn't do it, you know.”

“What on earth?” Jerry said. And then a new voice came in, strong in Jerry's ear. It was Pam's voice and it said, “He means he wants to hire us, Jerry. Don't you, Mr.—ah—?”

“Foster,” the man said. “Mrs. North. Good. Hire you is better. To find out who killed Mott.”

“Look,” Jerry said, brushing off a cat which was resenting his withdrawal from the world of cats. “Look, we're not detectives. Where did you ever get that idea?”

“Officially,” Pam said. “Which means for money,” she explained. “Although sometimes I wonder—” The last seemed to be to herself.

Paul Foster said, “Oh.” He seemed surprised and a little confused.

“Anyway,” Pam said, “how do you know she didn't?”

“I've talked to her,” Paul Foster said. “She says she didn't.”

“For God's sake!” Jerry said. “Why wouldn't she?”