Payoff for the Banker (15 page)

“I'm sure I wouldn't know,” the vice president said sternly. “I never supposed that Mr. Merle had—had need for a confidential man.”

The vice president regarded the suggestion with distaste. He pushed it away with his fingertips.

“Right,” Weigand said. “Now—we have reason to think that Mr. Merle drew a check for a considerable amount yesterday and that he gave it to someone. Or that someone took it. Would you have any way of telling us whether that is true?”

The vice president smiled and was patient. Mr. Merle's personal checkbook would, naturally, be the only source of such information. Weigand also was patient. He suggested that Mr. Merle might have several checkbooks for several purposes. He suggested that the bank records might show whether such a check had been cleared—whether any check drawn by Mr. Merle, for a probably considerable amount, had been cleared.

“Naturally,” the vice president said, “Mr. Merle's account was frozen as soon as we heard of his death. No checks would be cleared.”

Weigand agreed. That was the rule. It went into effect when the bank had definite notification of the death of a depositor.

“In fact, however,” he pointed out, “checks do frequently go through after a person's death—checks drawn before death and reaching the bank afterward. But before official notification. Isn't that correct?”

The vice president supposed it happened.

Then, Weigand suggested, there might be just a chance that a check drawn by Mr. Merle, dropped into the mails the night before for deposit, say—or brought in just as the bank opened in the morning—might conceivably have been cashed? By someone who went through accustomed motions without analysis; possibly by someone who had not even heard of Mr. Merle's death, or not taken in the fact of his death as having any application to routine business at hand?

The vice president thought it possible. He would check. He sent out orders. He and Weigand sat and looked at each other.

“What did you think of Murdock, personally?” Weigand asked suddenly. The other man looked at him and raised eyebrows. Weigand did not amplify.

“I had very little contact with Mr. Murdock,” the vice president said. “I knew very little of his relationship with Mr. Merle. I did not even know his exact duties.”

Bill Weigand waited. The vice president reached into his mind and chose words carefully.

“I should not,” he said, “I should not at all have taken him for a bank man. If I had met him elsewhere.”

Weigand smiled slightly. The vice president did not smile. His expression did not, on the other hand, reject Bill Weigand's smile. Weigand lighted a cigarette, and an elderly man came in carrying an eyeshade in one hand and some papers in the other.

“Mr. Merle's statement,” he said. “As of this morning. And Mr. Murdock's.” He looked at the vice president and sighed. “I'm afraid there was a check,” he said. He sighed again and went away. The vice president looked at the yellow records and at a check clipped to them. Without comment, he pushed the collection across the desk to Weigand.

The day before, George Merle had drawn a check for $10,000, made out to Oscar Murdock. The check, not endorsed, had come in, in the mail that morning. The bank had endorsed it by stamp and transferred the amount to Murdock's account, completing a transaction between dead men. Weigand raised eyebrows and looked at the vice president.

“Somebody slipped up,” the vice president said. “As you suggested, Lieutenant. The rest, of course, was routine.”

“Including the stamped endorsement,” Weigand said, not as a question.

“Routine,” the vice president agreed. “When we know both payee and payer. When it is entirely a deposit matter.”

Weigand studied the check and the records for a moment longer. He shoved them back.

“Is it your check?” the vice president wanted to know. “The one you were interested in?”

Weigand thought it was. He thought that, later, they might want it, in which case a proper order would be forthcoming. Meanwhile—

“Does it clear anything up?” the vice president asked.

“No,” Weigand said. “Not particularly.”

Weigand turned it over in his mind as Mullins angled the Buick across town to the East River Drive, uptown to the Tri-Borough and along parkways and into quieter roads on Long Island. It didn't clear things up, particularly. It was not even certain that it was the check they were after. For why would that check be made out to Murdock, when it was meant for “L”? And why, if Murdock had it, would he take the chance of mailing it to the bank, knowing that it would inevitably suggest that he had been in at Merle's death?

“Maybe,” Mullins said, “Merle was just paying off a bet. Maybe it hasn't anything to do with us, one way or the other.”

“Right,” Weigand said. He considered. “But I think it has,” he said. He had a sudden idea, which fitted nearly enough. “Suppose—” he began. Then he saw a small sign pointing up a graveled road. It said: S
TATE
P
OLICE
B
ARRACKS
.

“There,” he said, pointing. Mullins swung the car up the road and in the graveled circle before the barracks.

Weigand went in and came out with a tall, vigorous man in civilian clothes.

“Captain Sullivan,” he told Mullins. “Captain, Sergeant Mullins.”

With the man from the Criminal Identification Department of the State Police guiding them, they looped back to the road. The town of Elmcroft began around the next bend. It ended around the bend which followed. Two miles beyond it, they swung off on a private road between stone pillars. They left behind a band of evergreens screening the house from the road.

It was a large house, lying white under the June sun. It lay among lawns, and off to the left a man was riding a power-mower in narrowing circles, the lawn newly neat wherever he had been. When they stopped the car the smell of newly cut grass was fresh and Bill Weigand's mind was ruffled by memories which the fragrance evoked.

“It's odd,” he said, unexpectedly to himself, “how odors make you remember things. More than music. Or isn't that true of you, Captain?”

The captain said he had never thought of it particularly. Mullins said that with him it was tunes.

“And,” he said, “every so often when I'm shaving I think of collecting for magazine subscriptions when I was a kid. I think of a Hundredth Street and between Second and Third Avenues.”

“Why?” Weigand asked.

“Hell,” Mullins said, “how should I know, Loot?”

They got out and stood looking at the house.

“It's a fine place,” Captain Sullivan said. “One of the best around here. Over beyond the house they can go right down to the sound and a private beach. Pretty nice.”

If they didn't want to go to the private beach, there was always the private swimming pool. At the side of the house toward the east, where the sun would reach it in the morning and shade cover it in the afternoon, was a broad stretch of level lawn. Beyond it, perhaps two hundred feet from the house, was a pool, and to the north of the pool a low structure, clapboarded and white like the house, evidently contained dressing rooms. Between the bathhouse and the pool, and along the side of the pool nearest the house, were deck chairs and tables, some of them protected by colored umbrellas. And as they watched, a girl in a white bathing suit came out of the bathhouse, walked out on a diving board, bounced once and arched into the water.

“Miss Merle,” he said. “Miss Ann Merle. The daughter.” His tone sounded slightly disapproving. “You'd think she—” he started to amplify. “Only she wouldn't. Not Ann Merle.”

“What?” Weigand wanted to know. “Wear a black bathing suit?”

Captain Sullivan laughed briefly. He admitted that there was, after all, no reason why a daughter recently bereaved should, as a gesture of mourning, eschew a swim in a private swimming pool.

“Only,” he said, “it still don't look right.”

The girl swam the length of the pool, swam halfway back again and turned suddenly toward the side nearest them. She pulled herself up and looked at them. Then she came out, twisting herself expertly over the edge. She said, “Hi!”

“Hi, Ann,” Captain Sullivan called across the lawn. Weigand looked at him quickly. It was unexpected.

“'Lo, Teddy,” Ann Merle said and moved a little way toward them. They walked across the grass toward her and she stopped and stood waiting. She was a very pretty girl from a distance and she was an even prettier girl as they approached. As they came closer, she pulled off a white bathing cap and her hair was black and smooth. She had deep blue eyes in a tanned face and all that the bathing suit did not hide of her was smoothly tanned. She stood easily, waiting for them, her arms hanging naturally by her sides and her hands, a little cupped, easy in repose. She was clearly undisturbed at the approach of the law; at the approach of three men, she was superbly confident.

“What,” she said, when they were near enough so that she did not need to raise her voice, “brings you—oh, Father, of course.”

“Ann,” Captain Sullivan said, “these men are from New York. Homicide men. They're investigating the—your father's death.”

He introduced them, and the girl was quiet and serious.

“I supposed somebody would come,” she said. “To—to look us over. I hope you don't think all this”—she waved at the pool and included herself in the term—“means any of us is taking Father's death casually.”

“No,” Bill Weigand said. “I was just telling the captain here—.” He broke off. Ann Merle smiled at Captain Sullivan.

“Teddy doesn't approve?” she said. “No, I suppose he doesn't. Teddy has trouble with us, don't you, Teddy.”

Captain Sullivan smiled, with no great enjoyment.

“She and her brother drive like hell, Lieutenant,” he said. “The boys are all the time picking them up for it. That's what she means.” He spoke to the girl. “You'll do what seems all right to you, Ann,” he said. “It's not my business.”

“Anyway,” Ann said, “it isn't what the lieutenant wants to know about. Unless he thinks I'm—callous. And hence a suspicious character. And I don't think he does.”

She looked at Bill Weigand.

“I'm not callous, Lieutenant,” she said. “I'm not forgetting about Father.”

Her voice was sober.

“I want to help,” she said. “We all do.”

Bill Weigand was sure she did. He agreed when she said that they would want to go up to the house. He agreed further when she said that she would get her brother to talk to him. He assured her that the whole matter was routine; that he would like permission to go over her father's desk; that, as a matter still of routine, he wanted to meet the family. Herself, her brother—. He paused.

“Aunt Mae,” she filled in. “That's all the family there is, really. Jamie's around, of course, but he's—he's just a—a guest. And then there's Arnold Wickersham Potts, of course. Wicky.”

“Is there?” Weigand said. “Does Mr. Potts live here?”

“Oh, no,” Ann Merle said. “Not here. Not at the house. He rents the guest house. Down by the beach. But of course you've heard of Mr. Potts. A. Wickersham Potts? He doesn't use the Arnold much.”

“No,” Weigand said. “I never heard of Mr. Potts.”

“No?” the girl said. “The organist? He's really celebrated, you know. Among organists. He plays at St. Andrew's on Park. Where we go—where we've always gone in winters. When we're in town.”

“Does he?” Bill Weigand said. “I don't know many organists.”

He did not suppose that he would intimately know Mr. Potts—a tall, dark man, he supposed, with rather lank hair and a long, sharp, delicate face. His tone dismissed Mr. Potts. He ran over in his mind the things that might matter—the things and people. Ann Merle and her brother Joshua, Jameson possibly, the aunt possibly, George Merle's checkbook, details of the will from the lawyer in Elmcroft, possibly a servant or two to corroborate details of George Merle's movements the day before. And then? Then back to town, probably, with background in his mind—with Merle fitted into a habitat so that he could be seen against it, with whatever oblique light on Merle's character, the place he lived, the books on his library shelves, the pictures on the walls, might shed. And then, in town, back to slow digging—digging into Murdock's past and Laurel Burke's, digging into the real character and the unadvertised activities of the respected gentleman who had come to so awkward an end in the little Madison Avenue flat. It was going to take long digging, Weigand decided; longer than the inspector would approve. Unless unexpected things happened—things of which there was now no sign.

An hour and a half later his views as to the probable future of the case were unchanged. He sat at Mr. Merle's desk and reviewed from his notes.

The checkbook had given him something. It was not certain what that something meant—what a check, made out not the day before but the day before that, for $10,000 and entered on the stub, not to Murdock but to cash, had to do with three bullets in Mr. Merle's chest. You could suppose it was the same check, entered as cash in the checkbook and made out on its face to Murdock. That was an interesting supposition, because it meant that Merle had not wanted the record of the payment to show to anyone who might be tempted to look at the checkbook entries. A housemaid dusting the room in his absence, perhaps? An inquisitive member of the family? Because the book was in an unlocked drawer of the desk.

He had found that the servants, and particularly the chauffeur who had driven George Merle to the train, agreed with Joshua Merle as to the time of the elder Merle's departure for the city the day before. They also agreed with Joshua Merle's account of his own movements. Merle himself was calmer than the night before and easier. And he had nothing to add. He had spent the day idly in town; he had dropped in at Charles for dinner and there someone, ostensibly a policeman, had telephoned him of his father's death. He had met Jameson outside, told Jameson the news and asked Jameson to go around to the precinct house with him.