Murder Is Served (28 page)

Mullins had been watching, now he nodded.

“Now it ought to be all set,” Bill said. “Unless Pam—” He did not finish immediately, and Mullins, after a moment, said, “Yeah?”

“Oh,” Bill said. “Pam North. She's—on to it, Mullins. She knows something's up.”

“That Mrs. North,” Mullins said, and Bill, smiling a little—and looking a little worried—said, “Right.”

“You know, Loot,” Mullins said, and pushed the outer door open, “Mrs. North, she goes off on tangents. Did you ever notice?”

Bill Weigand joined Mullins on the sidewalk and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It looks like it, sometimes. I used to think that. But what she really does, Mullins, is to cut across tangents. Often without even appearing to notice them. It's equally confusing, sometimes, but it's different. See what I mean?”

Mullins shook his head.

“Nope,” he said. “To me, she's sorta screwy. Nice, you understand, but sorta screwy. I always feel she's leaving things out.”

Bill agreed with that. They declined the offer of the doorman to get them a cab, and turned right and started up the street.

“And,” Mullins said, “she never looks where she's going, Loot.” Bill nodded to that.

“Because she sees it so clearly, probably,” he said.

“It's a good way to get hurt,” Mullins said. “You know that, Loot?”

Bill had known it for years, and had felt he should do something, and had never quite succeeded. But this time, he thought, Pam's safe out of it—she and Dorian. This time neither of them gets in a jam. This time I'll tell them about it when it's all over.

Mullins and Weigand walked on up the street.

The sense of sitting still, untouched, in the center of tension remained with Pam North. The brandy did not help, she hardly knew that she was drinking it. But when she put it down, she touched the base of the glass against her coffee cup, and the sharp, small sound was almost shattering. She jumped, felt herself jumping. Dorian was looking at her, now. Dorian said Pam was jumpy.

“No,” Pam said, “I don't think so. Oh, perhaps, a little. Why did Bill go, do you think?”

“To call the office,” Dorian said. She made it sound simple.

“I think—” Pam said. “Never mind.”

“Relax,” Jerry said. “Take a deep breath, Pam.” He was smiling at her. He shook his head, slightly, when he had her attention. “Take a deep breath and forget it for an hour,” he said. “For five minutes.”

“All right,” Pam said. She took a deep breath and tried to relax. She looked around the restaurant and thought, nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. I'm just sitting here jittering about nothing. Jerry's right; it isn't ours anymore. We've passed it on. We're just onlookers. And anyway—

She saw M. Maillaux across the room. As she watched, he stopped again at the table where Peggy Mott sat with Weldon Carey. He leaned toward them and seemed to say something, and Pam saw Peggy smile and shake her head. Maillaux was there only a moment; then he went on toward the front of the restaurant, his head moving, his eyes, she thought, seeing everything.

Peggy and Weldon had finished eating, now. They had coffee cups in front of them, and cigarettes in their hands, and they seemed contented and at ease. Pam picked up her own small, silver coffee pot and shook it, and when it sloshed promisingly, poured coffee into her cup. Jerry nodded at her and smiled approval, and she smiled back. But she watched the door, still, for Mullins and Bill, who ought to be coming back soon.

She had not, at first, wanted to go to the Restaurant Maillaux, but Weldon had insisted. She had wanted to go to some small place, some hidden place and it had been that desire of hers—that desire to make herself small, to draw shelter around her—which had, apparently, been what had made Weldon so insistent. He had been abrupt, he had said, “The hell we will!” It was then he had, evidently thinking of the action most unlike that she desired to take, said, “Hell, we'll go to Maillaux's.” He had not said, “We'll show them,” but that had been in his voice. He was wearing his chip again, and there was no arguing with him. And she had not, in any case, felt up to arguing.

And then, once at the restaurant, she had, unexpectedly, almost enjoyed herself. She had not seen Weigand at first, and she had never known that the man a few tables away, by himself, was there because she and Weldon were there. (Carey had suspected it; he had not been surprised. He had looked at the man challengingly and got a blank gaze back and had then, uncharacteristically, shrugged it off.) She had seen the Fosters come in, and been glad, although she could not think why, that the Fosters had not joined them. The two of them were enough; somehow, although they were in no small, hidden place, she felt the reassurance, the protection, she had hoped to find in such a place. She and Weldon could make a little corner for themselves, even here. Why, she thought, we can do it anywhere! It must be right, then. It did not even matter that Carey was so often angry.

And, in the restaurant, he had not been. He had seemed to feel the same relaxation she felt; their moods joined. It became, without either of them having planned it so, worked to make it so, an interlude utterly carefree. Weldon had talked, for the most part, and she had listened. He had talked about things which were not of their immediate concern, except as they were things which concerned everyone. And, although many of the things he said were essentially somber, even frightening—so much one could talk about was both, that winter—he spoke with a kind of gaiety. It was as if, in their small, momentarily safe, corner they had for a little time escaped to a place where even members of the human race could breathe freely, without foreboding. It was as if they cut this small interlude out of time itself.

That had lasted through dinner, which was delicious; the two visits, one early, one when they were finishing their coffee, M. Maillaux made to their table had not broken the spell. The first time he was merely the attentive host, impersonal. The second time, and this seemed to have been an afterthought, he had come to suggest that, after “this is all over” but as soon as was convenient, she and he confer about the restaurant. “I have a proposal, you perceive,” he said, and beamed down at her. It was almost the first time she had realized that now, with Tony dead, she was Maillaux's partner in the ownership of this large, quietly glittering, place. But even that did not, for the time, break in upon them in their miraculous, protected corner.

And then, when it had begun to seem that the interlude would continue, unbroken, to a natural ending which would be part of it, the page boy had come. She had been looking out over the restaurant, hardly seeing it, listening to Weldon, and she had seen the boy coming in their direction. She had watched him, idly, as one watches something moving when the mind is somewhere else, and had not realized until he was actually there that their table was his goal. Then she had taken the folded slip of paper, still almost automatically, and had opened it without fear. Weldon stopped talking, and it was as much that as anything which shook her out of peace.

Then she read what was written on the unfolded paper and it all came back—the fear came back, the sense of struggle. She sat, for a second, rereading the brief message; then, for another second, she stared at the paper without seeing it.

“Peg!” Weldon Carey said. “What is it?”

I can't let him know, she thought, and her thoughts raced. (As the rat had raced, seeking an unstopped hole.) I can't let him be caught again; I can't have him hurt by it.

She turned so that she half-faced him, and she smiled. The smile said it was nothing before her words said it was nothing. She had never tried to act for Weldon before, but she tried now.

“Nothing,” she repeated, and made the smile hold, made the word come easily, unstrained, out of a throat suddenly constricted, dried out. “M. Maillaux wants me to give him a moment.” She managed to make the word “give” sound as if she were quoting it from the letter. “In his office.” She smiled. “After all,” she pointed out, “I'm a kind of partner now. Or will be, I suppose.”

“For God's sake!” Weldon said. “Why now, Peg?”

But he seemed to accept what she said, without question. It did not seem absurd to him, made up. It was merely, he seemed to feel, badly timed.

It was easier to smile now; to act. It was going over. She could raise her shoulders just a little, let them fall; repeat the gesture in the expression of her face. She didn't know. But it was not important.

“Only a minute,” she said. “I'd better see him, don't you think? You don't mind, Wel?”

“I guess not,” Weldon said. His voice minded, but not too angrily. “You won't be long?”

“Oh no,” she said. “Oh no, Wel.”

He got up, pulled the table out for her, and she slid around it. Not long, her mind repeated, not long—not long, now. But she managed to keep the smile on her lips for Weldon Carey.

Knowing that he was watching her, wanting desperately to look back at him—to run back to him—she walked with her shoulders back, her body erect, as she had been taught to walk, toward the door ahead of her. She knew where the door was; Tony had showed it to her once when, in spite of what was between them, he had insisted that she praise the changes he had made. It was inconspicuous, leading from the restaurant into the office suite; it was convenient. It was convenient now—terribly convenient. Its nearness robbed her of time.

She walked, unhurriedly, and the words of the note, which had not been signed by M. Maillaux, went over and over in her mind.

“Mrs. Mott,” the note had read. “Come at once to Maillaux's office.” It had been signed with one word, “Weigand.” The brevity of the note, the curtness of the signature, told their own story. Weigand did not need to temporize further, to be polite any longer. He had the right to order her, and he wrote out an order. Well—it was better than if he had sent one of his men for her. He had been thinking, probably, of the restaurant, of avoiding a disturbance, rather than of her. Still, it was better this way. She could at least walk to it, with her head up.

She opened the door and went through it and, by an effort of will, closed it quietly behind her. She came into the office reception-room, near the corner of the room. Farther along, in the same wall, was the door which opened into the coatroom; ahead of her was a corridor which led between the office, on her right, which had been Tony's, and the smaller office, on her left, which was Maillaux's. This corridor joined, at the end farthest from her, a hall which ran the length of the building, at one end to a door onto the street, and at the other a door to the kitchens. It was through that hall she had come the previous day, keeping her appointment with Tony.

She went across the empty reception-room to Maillaux's office and knocked on the closed door. There was no answer, and she realized that she—or Weigand himself—had made a mistake about the offices. She went back across the reception-room and knocked at the door of the office which had been Tony's. She heard, almost at once, “Come in, Mrs. Mott,” and was opening the door before her mind formulated the thought that the voice was not the one she had expected to hear. She still kept on moving into the room and heard her own voice say, “Why—?” She heard fear in her voice.

Bill and Sergeant Mullins had not come back. But a page boy had come across the room from the restaurant foyer—a boy wearing a tightly fitting jacket, a tilted pill-box hat, a boy who almost, in the perfection of his costume, burlesqued a page—and headed with confidence for their table. Pam looked at him, and, seeing her intentness, Jerry turned his head, and Dorian twisted in her chair. The page boy stopped and, with an air of accomplishment, produced a folded note. He said, “Mrs. Weigand, please?” and Dorian held out her hand. Jerry tipped the expectant boy, who wheeled, military in his exactitude, and went off. Dorian read the note and held it out to Pam.

It was brief. It read: “Have to go to office after all and may be an hour or so. Get P & J to take you home with them and I'll collect you there.” It was signed “Bill.” Pam read the note and handed it to Jerry, who read it and at once beckoned to the waiter.

“He sort of wishes me on you,” Dorian noted. “I hope—?”

“Nonsense,” Jerry said. He looked at the check, remained nonchalant—with some effort—and put bills on top of it.

“My,” Pam said. “My!”

Jerry grinned at her and said, “All right now? You see, there wasn't anything to jitter about.”

“Well—” Pam said.

But apparently Jerry was right. Apparently she had been imagining things—imagining a tension, a trap set. Apparently Bill was not, after all, ready yet. It was even, since she had been mistaken about that, possible that she had been mistaken, also, in her unhappy certainty that Bill had made up his mind, closing it, finally, against Peggy Mott's innocence.

Jerry North got back change on a tray, left most of it on the tray, smiled at them and said, “Well?”

“Let's,” Pam said, and pushed back her chair. The three of them stood up, dropping napkins on the table, accepting bows from their retinue. They started to make their way toward the front of the restaurant, and Pam took one last look—for reassurance—at Peggy Mott and Weldon Carey. And then, as quickly as it had left, her sense of tension returned.

Weldon was just sitting down again at the table. But he was alone. And Peggy Mott, with a kind of stiffness in her movements, looking straight ahead, with her face set, was walking in front of the banquettes along the far wall. Pam stopped, involuntarily, and then, feeling Jerry's nearness behind her, went on. But she saw Peggy Mott go on, in front of the banquettes, until she came almost to the corner of the room. Then she turned to her right and opened a door and, without looking around—without looking back at Weldon Carey, who was watching her—went through the door and closed it behind her.