Murder Is Served (21 page)

That far they had got within the first twenty minutes. Now, after another hour and more, it did not seem that they had got much further. This might be, Jerry North thought, biting a lead pencil absently, because they had been forced back to logic. They had got their premise, so far as he could remember, by magic. But it was more difficult from there on.

Peggy Mott had not killed her husband. Ergo, she had not attacked Leonard, because she would have had no reason. She had not killed Elaine Britton. Ergo, someone else had done these things, since they had been done. And this, at first, seemed to open it to its widest.

“Anybody,” Pam said. “The people we can think of, the people who seem to be concerned. But then—anybody. People we've never heard of.”

Unexpectedly, it was Paula Foster who helped them there; helped them after she had, for some time, seemed to be only a spectator. But she had been thinking, apparently, and now she said, “No.” Everyone looked at the small, red-haired girl, who seemed surprised that she had spoken.

“The real murderer,” she said, “has arranged to make Peggy appear guilty. Now, he couldn't have made her write that silly paper. We'll have to count that out, as merely a lucky break he had. So the first thing he had to do was to get her to the office, to Mott's office, at the right time. Now, you went there, Peggy, because somebody—you thought it was your husband—telephoned you and asked you to come.”

Peggy said, “Yes.”

“But you're not sure it was your husband? The man who called?”

“Not now,” Peggy said. “But only because now it doesn't seem to fit. I thought it was, then.”

“That's it,” the red-haired girl said. “Apparently it couldn't have been. That's what the police think, isn't it?” This last was to Jerry North, who shrugged. Then he nodded.

“Not ‘couldn't have been,' exactly,” he said. “Probably wasn't. He didn't call out through the switchboard after he got there around ten-thirty. He could have gone out, of course—but he would have had to go out of the restaurant, because all calls made in it clear through the switchboard. And the operator is sure he didn't call from anywhere. Well—the police can't see any reason why, if he wanted to call his wife, he should have gone out into the street on a cold day and found a telephone booth. Neither can I.”

“Then,” Paula Foster said, “somebody else called, pretending to be Mott, to get Peggy there. The murderer.”

“Oh,” Pam North said, “of course! How—how
stupid
we were!”

They looked at her, but she nodded toward Paula Foster.

“This person—this murderer—had to know one thing to make it work. He had to know that Mott was there. And he knew it because he was there himself. So we start with—who was there?”

But now Jerry North was shaking his head.

“No,” he said. “It's not that easy. Two telephone calls came in for Mott. Both of the people who called knew he was there, because they talked to him. One of them was Elaine Britton, if she told the truth. The other could be anybody.”

“But,” Foster said, “the telephone operator. Didn't she ask who called?”

“Bill says not,” Jerry said. “She was busy taking reservations, and just plugged through. She says Mott answered. She thinks one caller was a man and the other a woman, for what it's worth. If she's right, the man's unaccounted for.”

Jerry paused, reflected, and continued.

“So,” he said, feeling his way, “we have the people at the restaurant—and there may have been fifty. I don't know. A hundred, counting waiters and busboys and everything. And a man who may have been anybody. We don't seem to have got much of anywhere. Except that the person who called you, Mrs. Mott, was a man.”

The girl looked at him blankly for a moment. Then she said, “Oh, of course.”

But there was hesitancy in her voice, and they all looked at her and waited.

“Only,” she said, “Cecily Breakwell is such a good mimic and the conversation was so short and all, that—oh, I'm sure it wasn't Cecily.”

But they would not let her be sure of anything, and Cecily Breakwell's name went on the list, which was not as long as they would have liked. André Maillaux, himself. William. (Peggy could supply the last name—Snodgrass.) William Snodgrass. Cecily. And fifty (or a hundred?) people who worked in the restaurant, from waiter captains to dishwashers. And a man, entirely unknown, “anybody,” who had telephoned Mott during the morning, knew he was there, and might have come into his office from the street, unseen, as easily as Peggy Mott had. (“Only you didn't, as it turned out,” Pam said.) The trouble with opportunity was that everybody had it, and that physical facts pointed nowhere in particular.

“Except at me,” Peggy said. She looked around at them. “Maybe it's no good,” she said. “No good at all. I hadn't realized—” Weldon Carey broke in. He told her to shut up. He was very angry, and held her closer. Pam North pointed out, rather gently, that her innocence was what they started with. She said that if there was too much opportunity to go around, they would have to begin somewhere else. Everybody seemed to understand her perfectly.

“Of course,” Jerry said, “the knife narrows it.” He considered. “Not much,” he added. “It suggests that it was someone connected with the restaurant—somebody who knew Mott had a knife on his desk—but it doesn't prove anything.”

But this suggestion did encourage them to start with those who “belonged” in the restaurant; this, and the lack of anywhere else to start. (“Because otherwise, we'll have to take in everyone who has a telephone,” Pam North said. “And even then, there'd be booths.” Jerry said, “Pam!”)

They started with Maillaux himself, and with the question, “Why?”

“You knew them best,” Paula Foster told Peggy. “I suppose you did, anyway. Can you think of any reason? Did Maillaux have it in for Mott? Had Mott injured him? Or did Mott threaten him in any way?”

Peggy thought and shook her head. On the contrary, Mott, and Mott's money, were things Maillaux wanted to preserve. Mott's money had rescued the restaurant from, perhaps, bankruptcy; Mott himself had brought in patrons. Maillaux had every cause to be grateful, to value Mott.

“Unless,” Pam said, “all the golden eggs had been laid, of course.”

Peggy shook her head at that, and the soft, pale hair swayed around it. She didn't think they had. “But I don't know,” she said. “I don't really know.”

Foster said he shouldn't suppose so.

“They've spent a lot of money, certainly,” he said. “It's beginning to come back. But probably there's still more going into the business than coming out; after all, they've only been reopened a few months. Mott's checkbook would still be a handy thing to have around.”

“Mott himself apparently was a handy thing to have around, if you come to that,” Jerry said. “There wasn't any personal quarrel? About women, for example?”

Peggy shook her head again. She knew of none. She said it didn't sound like Maillaux.

There was a short, rather discouraged, pause. Then Jerry said, “Well. Snodgrass? William?”

They looked at Peggy again, and again she had to shake her head. Then she paused.

“Tony did tell me once that William had saved some money and wanted to buy into the restaurant,” she said. “I suppose he might have been resentful when Maillaux took Tony's money instead. But it doesn't seem very strong.”

They agreed it didn't. They went to Cecily Breakwell. It seemed to Pam North, remembering the small frivolity that was Cecily, an incongruous place to go. Unless she was in love with Tony Mott, had been given encouragement, had been thrown over. There was always that. “I simply don't know.” Peggy said. “I thought it was all—all poor Elaine, now. But I don't know.”

It was speculation, insubstantial. The fact that Cecily was a mimic, wanted to give impersonations and was working toward that as a goal was hardly more substantial.

“Look,” Carey said, suddenly. “I know the Breakwell kid. She couldn't plan that far ahead. We're wasting time. We want somebody who had a real grudge against Mott—who hated him.” He paused and looked around. “As a matter of fact,” he said, and his voice was unexpectedly quiet, “I hated him as much as anyone. I hated him down to the ground.” He paused. “Under it,” he added.

They all looked at him; Peggy looked up at him.

“No,” he said. “But I could have. I'd have enjoyed it. The cops will turn that up. Because of Peggy and—well, he kept my play off Broadway.” He nodded. “Maybe it doesn't sound like much,” he said. “But—it's where I live. Where I lived, anyway. He knew it, all right. The—” he broke off, smiled faintly. “Anyway,” he said, “he's particularly the kind of louse I don't like. Or was.”

“Corollary premise,” Pam said, “you didn't do it. Or why are we wasting all this time?”

There was no answer to that, or to the implication they were wasting time.

“Maybe he criticized a chef,” Jerry North said. “Maybe he slapped a busboy. Maybe—quite possibly, as a matter of fact—he did some other girl dirt. We just don't know enough.” He looked at Peggy Mott and his expression was not happy. “And the police know too much,” he said.

“I can't do any more than say it again,” Peggy said, and did not look at any of them. “I can keep on saying it again. I didn't kill Tony. I didn't—”

“Stop it, Peg,” Weldon Carey said. “We all know that.” He looked around at them, and the truculence was back, the challenge. “Anybody who doesn't know that?”

There seemed to be no answer to that, no answer which would meet the demand in the voice of the black-haired man. Nobody made an answer. And for a time, nobody said anything at all, and then it was Pam who spoke.

“You know,” she said, “I keep thinking about Mr. Leonard, somehow. Because, after all, he started the whole thing, didn't he? But there doesn't seem to be any reason.”

John Leonard's apartment, which was not far from the university, was larger than one would have expected. If Leonard lived in it alone, Bill Weigand thought as Leonard let him in, he must rattle. Leonard looked at Weigand, looking down a little, and raised his eyebrows. Weigand named himself, described himself, and Leonard said, “Oh, that paper the girl wrote, I suppose?” he said, and welcomed Weigand in. “I told the Norths what I remembered. Didn't they tell you?”

“Oh yes,” Bill said. He looked at the sling which supported Leonard's arm. “How're you feeling?” he said.

“Fair,” Leonard said. He regarded Weigand. “If it's about that,” he said, “I still don't know a thing. Somebody waited for me. In ambush. And stabbed me, very slightly. As I told your friends, the other detectives, I fainted when I tried to chase whoever it was. I'm afraid I'm not helpful.”

It would be hard to be, under the circumstances, Weigand assured him. He said they were working on it. “Of course,” he said, “you see the obvious answer, Mr. Leonard?”

Leonard said he was afraid he did. There was a pause, and Leonard said, “Well,” without any particular inflection. Then he asked if he could get Weigand a drink. Bill Weigand shook his head and said no.

“Mr. Leonard,” Bill said, “a point has come up, about which I'm bound to ask you a few questions. A new point—new to me, anyway.”

“Yes?”

“Do you know, did you know, a girl named Anita? She called herself Anita Farnsworth. That wasn't her real name.”

Bill Weigand stopped and waited, watching the man sitting across from him, the man who looked, Bill thought, so exactly as a professor ought to look. And he saw that Leonard hesitated, closed his eyes for an instant. Leonard opened his eyes and looked at Weigand and smiled, very gingerly.

“So,” he said, “it came out. Yes, I knew Anita. My sister, Lieutenant. The girl Mott—hurt.”

“Hurt badly,” Weigand said. “Inexcusably. I realize that, Mr. Leonard. But—”

He let Leonard finish the sentence in his own mind. Leonard shrugged his rather bony shoulders.

“Oh, I'm not surprised,” he said. “I expected it, in a way. I was fond of Anita, Mott hurt her, cruelly and, as you say, inexcusably. As a result, you presume, I hated Mott and might have killed him.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Which means, I suppose, that you are not satisfied that Peggy—Mrs. Mott—was the one? Otherwise—”

Bill Weigand said that they were bound to consider everything, whenever it came up, however it came up. He was mild. He pointed out that all he had indicated was that the incident of Leonard's sister required amplification.

“I'm glad, anyway, that you haven't settled on Peggy,” Leonard said. “I'd hate to see anyone like that—spoiled. Destroyed.”

“Right,” Bill said. “So would anybody. To get back to your sister. Where is she now?”

“In a sanitarium.”

“And?”

Leonard shrugged. He said nobody knew; that nobody could know.

“She may recover,” he said. “She may not. You gathered that nervous breakdown—they called it that—was a euphemism?” Bill nodded. “Now,” Leonard went on, “she's usually in a depression. Now and then she comes out of it and is, rather mildly, excited. She came up against what we call a block and—couldn't surmount it. Couldn't find a way out, poor kid.”

“Mott was the block,” Weigand said.

“Her love for Mott. His rejection of her love. Yes. Call it Mott if you like.”

“And, naturally, loving your sister, you hated Mott for what he had done?”

Leonard looked at Weigand, his eyes narrowed again, but his expression was almost amused. It was as if he were going to upset something and was enjoying, in advance, the small, flickering triumph.

“One would think that, naturally,” he said. “And, certainly, I disapproved of him. I disapprove of all people like Mott. But hate him? No. In a way, I was almost sorry for him. You see why?”