Murder Is Served (25 page)

“I can't,” Bill said. “Mullins can't. We—”

The telephone rang. Bill listened as before, said, “Right” as before, returned the instrument and resumed his drink.

“Grist,” Pam said. “Gritty grist.”

Everyone looked at her. She had the expression of one who is looking at himself.

“Maybe we had better get something to eat,” Pam said. “Do we all think Luchow's? Or do we think the Algonquin?”

“Either,” Dorian said, and seemed about to stand up. Her eyes were on Bill. “I want to feed him,” she said, nodding at Bill. “I—”

The telephone rang again. Bill Weigand said, “Damn” and picked it up. He listened and his eyes narrowed slightly. He did not listen long, and his “Right,” this time, had a new quality. He looked at the others, and his face had lost some of its weariness.

“The Mott girl and Carey have just gone to Maillaux's,” he said. “I think we join them.” He looked around at the others and nodded his head slowly. “I think we join them,” he repeated. He smiled at Mullins. “Maybe the steak—” he started, and then seemed to abandon it. He stood up. “Right?” he said.

You went into the foyer and left hats and coats at the check stand; to your right, beyond a wide arch, was the bar. From either foyer or bar, depending on the immediacy of your thirst, you could go down three steps to the level of the restaurant proper, encounter William or M. Maillaux himself, be greeted—with graduated enthusiasm—and turned over to Henri or Armand, the greater captains. You were passed on then, lingeringly if of sufficient importance. (Early diners from out of town were passed on politely, but rather as if they were hot.) You reached, in time, your own presiding captain, waiter, busboy, sommelier, hot bread purveyor and, on occasion, page boy. Maillaux's, empty of customers, was still comfortably filled.

The Norths and the Weigands, with Mullins behind them, amiably disapproving, went into the foyer, and the three men turned toward the check stand. The slight girl waiting there began her professionally welcoming smile, saw Weigand and Mullins and abandoned the smile. Then, almost quickly enough, she resumed it.

Cecily Breakwell was not, it occurred to Bill Weigand, glad to see them. He found this interesting, but not self-explanatory. It might well mean nothing; he doubted if anyone at Maillaux's, who recognized Mullins and himself, would be particularly glad to see them.

Cecily said, “Good evening, Lieutenant,” nodded to Mullins and said, “Thank you, sir,” to Jerry North. She removed coats from the counter of the stand, retired with them into the depths, returned with identifying checks. “I work here Sunday nights, too,” she said. “During the lunch period other days, but in the evenings on Sundays.” She seemed rather in a hurry to explain, Bill thought. But that might well be no more than nervousness. Bill said, “Right,” vaguely, and he and Jerry North and Mullins rejoined Pam and Dorian.

They had turned, as if by reflex, toward the bar, and then Pam, who was in the lead, checked herself and turned back toward the others, at the same time making a little motion of her head toward the bar. She said, “Look,” and they looked. John Leonard was there, by himself, long, a little hunched on a bar stool, ‘his back to them. Pam North formed words with her lips, almost soundlessly. “Did you know?” she asked with her lips.

Bill Weigand watched her, guessed. He shook his head. They went on to the bar, moved down it toward the end nearest the main room of the restaurant, and found places in a row. The restaurant did not seem to be crowded. They sat, and Leonard leaned forward and looked down the bar at them. He said, “Hi,” in an unprofessorial tone. It occurred to Pam that he had had even more drinks than they had had. She nudged Jerry and said, in an inclusive tone, “There's Mr. Leonard, Jerry.” She nodded at Leonard then, and so did Jerry. Leonard got up and walked down the bar toward them, moving with slightly too much care.

“Hunting?” he said, addressing them generally. He did not give them opportunity to answer. “I thought you didn't drink, Lieutenant. Now where did I get that idea?”

He stood above the five at the bar, leaning down a little, looking down the bar at them. He enunciated very clearly, in his speaker's voice. He did not wait for Bill to answer.

“Or just with me,” he said. “Is that the rule, Lieutenant? Stipulated by the Emily Post of the department?”

He seemed amused, but there was an edge under his amusement. This time he did wait for Bill Weigand to answer.

“I'm a sundowner,” Bill said. “Nothing to do with you, Mr. Leonard. I drink in the evenings.”

Leonard bowed, not quite burlesquing it. He said he stood rebuked. “Join us?” Jerry North said, and Leonard shook his head. “Waiting,” he told them. “A friend. Good hunting.” He bowed again, went back up the bar to his stool, sat hunched over a drink and appeared to forget them. Pam North looked at Bill, her eyes challenging him.

“You're not, particularly,” she said. “At least, I've known—”

Bill Weigand looked at her without any particular expression. Then he raised his eyebrows.

“It is Emily Post,” Pam said, with an air of discovery. “Then—you do.”

“Are you two talking about something?” Jerry North said. “And if you are, what? Four martinis, one old-fashioned. One of us ought to see about a table.”

“No rules,” Bill said, to Pam. He stood up and told Jerry he would see about a table. He hesitated a moment. “Don't make too much of it, Pam,” he advised, and went to the turn of the bar and down the three steps to William Snodgrass, resplendent, correct, beside a restraining velvet rope. From the bar they could see William bow.

From where they sat, they could look out over the main room of the restaurant—a room which was commodious without appearing large, which had banquettes around the walls, which was lighted artfully. It did not seem crowded, and there was no one, so far as they could see, waiting admission at the ropes. There was an atmosphere which Pam could not at once identify. Then she decided it was an atmosphere of leisure. This surprised her a little.

“You know,” she said to Jerry, “I thought it would be different. More—I don't know—keyed up. You know?”

“Sunday night,” Jerry said, lifting his glass.

“Well—” Pam said, and lifted hers.

Bill came back to them, nodded and sat in front of his drink. Whenever they were ready, he said, William was ready.

“Was he glad to see you?” Dorian asked, and Bill shook his head and said, “Not particularly, I imagine. Rather surprised.” He sipped his drink. “Which is natural,” he said. “They'd all like to forget the whole thing. I—remind them.”

There was movement up the bar, beyond a young couple who leaned their heads close together over their drinks, making a circle against the world. John Leonard rose to his considerable height, looked down at them and bowed, and went out into the foyer.

“Tired of waiting?” Pam said. “Going home?”

“Or going to telephone,” Jerry said. “Or—”

Pam looked at Bill, her gaze urging response. Bill merely smiled and shook his head, and went back to his drink. He could be irritating, Pam thought. She looked at the back of his head, as he turned toward Dorian, who sat between him and Mullins. It occurred to Pam, suddenly, that Bill might be up to something. It was odd that he had not had a drink with Leonard that afternoon. And it was, to a degree, true that Bill Weigand did not like to drink with people he might subsequently have to arrest. She thought it was a preference, rather than a rule, and hence nothing to build too high upon. But it was interesting.

It was interesting that they had come there, on Bill's suggestion—almost, it seemed, on Bill's orders—after he had heard that Peggy Mott and Weldon Carey were there. It was interesting, also, that they did not seem to be there. At least, they were not immediately in sight. They were not at the bar, unless—She checked the bar. No, they had not come in; they were not at the bar itself, or at any of the little tables she could see from where she sat. And it was interesting that Bill, who had seemed so tired when he first came that evening, so much at a loss, no longer seemed particularly tired. Of course, Pam thought, the drinks helped, and seeing Dorian helped. But there must have been something more. She tried to think what it had been.

There might, obviously, have been something in the “grist” which had come in over the telephone. That was the most likely. It might have been something that, with or without the grist, had happened in Bill's mind: some new light that logic had shed, suddenly, on facts already known. It might have been something which had happened at their apartment. Thinking this, she tried to remember what had happened. Bill had come in, they had debated where to eat—with Bill taking little part—they had had drinks. The telephone had rung and been answered by Bill, and he had listened to reports about which he had told them nothing. (If it was something in one of those, I didn't miss anything, Pam thought; I can't be blamed.) Bill had heard, presumably from a detective who was trailing Peggy and Weldon Carey, that the two had gone to the Restaurant Maillaux. Was that it? Did that fact, merely as a fact, have significance? Pam worried the idea, finishing her drink. If it had, it escaped her.

Then, here at the restaurant, there had been the presence of Cecily Breakwell at the check stand and the presence of John Leonard at the bar. The first did not seem either remarkable, or important; the second, while unexpected, seemed without any particular significance. Those things were all she could think of. And yet, somewhere, at some time, since he had come into their apartment, Bill Weigand's attitude had changed.

Pam North looked at the back of Bill Weigand's head as if she expected to see through it. It was annoying, it was—She regarded her glass, making her mind work.

“Pam,” Jerry said. “Hey—Pam. Come back. We're going to eat.”

She looked up. The others had slid from their stools, were grouped to advance on the restaurant. Jerry put a hand on her shoulder. “Wake up, lady,” he said. “Wake up.”

Everybody's so cheerful, Pam thought. It's as if they
all
knew something. She got up and went into the group, and they moved on William, who bowed and smiled, took down the restraining rope, and passed them on to Henri. As they walked through the restaurant, seeming to pick up attendants as they went, like a convoy acquiring protective craft, Pam looked around, seeking Peggy Mott and Peggy's angry companion. She did not see them.

They sat and were hovered over; menus, enormous and in French, seemed to descend from all directions into their hands. Henri remained, supervising; a secondary captain brooded close, a busboy darted in and out, a waiter stood expectant. The Norths and the Weigands worked through the menu, translating anxiously in their minds. Mullins put his menu down, and the lesser captain moved in, while Henri, without moving, seemed somehow also to advance.

“Can I just get a steak?” Mullins said. “Just a steak, rare?”

“But of course,” the lesser captain said. “But certainly, m'sieu.”

The lesser captain repeated, “Steak, rare,” and wrote it down on a tablet. Henri nodded approvingly; the waiter beamed and nodded too.

“And,” the lesser captain continued, his attention still raptly on Mullins, “to begin, m'sieu? The oysters? The potage?”

“Steak,” Mullins said. “O.K.”

“The potatoes?” the lesser captain said, beaming at Mullins, obviously charmed by Mullins' decision. “The green vegetable?”

“O.K.,” Mullins said. “French fries. All right. Some peas, I guess.”

“M'sieu,” the waiter said, with acceptance, admiration, and finality all in the word. He saw that Dorian had laid her menu down. The spotlight shifted, focussed on Dorian.

“Madame?” the lesser captain said. He was breathless. Dorian ordered, Pam ordered (what she believed to be breast of squab turkey under glass), and, sharing the spotlight, Jerry and Bill told the high priests of
la grande cuisine
what royalty would deign to eat. The emergency passed, things quieted. The sommelier offered, and was declined; the hot bread passer passed and was welcomed.

“They're not here,” Pam said to Bill, sitting next her on her right. “You said they'd come here.” She was somehow accusing; she felt somehow accusing.

Bill smiled and explained. They had only started, when he heard. They had parted after they left the office of the Homicide Squad, met again—each with his assigned detective in attendance—and had a cocktail uptown. Then they had gone out of the bar, their detectives converging, inconspicuously merging. Carey had flagged down a cab, and Peggy Mott's detective was near enough to hear him say, “Maillaux's restaurant.” Thinking this might be of special interest, Peggy's detective had remained to telephone Weigand. Carey's adherent had followed in another taxicab. “Just to keep them honest,” Bill said. “They ought to be here pretty soon.”

Pam North realized then that Bill had arranged the seating so that he could watch the entrance. He was watching it.

“Pretty soon,” he said. “Now, in fact. There they come.”

There they came, and Bill's eyes were not the only ones on the rather tall, slender girl who stood so easily and so confidently, with the dark man on her left and a little behind her. Peggy Mott knew that people looked at her, Pam thought. She had learned to know it, and not show she knew it.

“No wonder you let her go,” Dorian said, from beyond her husband. Bill took an instant to smile at her, and continued to watch the girl. His eyes seemed to have narrowed, Pam thought. Oh, dear, Pam thought, is it going to be her after all? Is he sure about her again?

M. Maillaux himself had replaced William at the rope. It was he who advanced upon the two who were waiting. From this distance, from Maillaux's back, and from his movements, his gestures, he seemed all the welcoming host. It was clear that he said something, that Peggy Mott smiled, that Carey answered him. Then M. Maillaux himself led them off, toward the left, toward a banquette. He walked plumply ahead of them, and his hands summoned, out of the air, a captain and a captain's aides. And M. Maillaux himself hovered, evidently still talking, until Peggy Mott and Weldon Carey picked up menus and disappeared behind them. Only then did M. Maillaux turn away, and now that he was facing them, an expression of rather special affability was on his features.