Payoff for the Banker (19 page)

“She told me—she told some friends of mine—that your father intervened,” Weigand said.

Intervened, Merle said, was good. Intervened was very good. Weigand waited. Merle said he still didn't see what it had to do with anything, but what the hell?

“I was in love with her,” he said. “She acted as if she were in love with me. But Father laughed at that—and he was right that time. He said ‘like father, like daughter' and not to trust any Thorgson. You see, her father had tried to gyp the old man once. He didn't get away with it—it was the other way around—but the old boy hated him. Or had contempt for him. And he said Mary was the same breed. I—I suppose I yelled at him. And he just smiled, in a way he had—not a nice way.”

The way George Merle smiled meant that he would take care of things in his own fashion, whatever his son thought. He had, Joshua Merle said.

“One afternoon,” Merle told Weigand, “the old boy sent for her—I was off changing and she was right here, sitting on this terrace. She went in to see him and when I came out she had gone—with a nice check. It was as easy as that. The old boy said if she wanted money she could get it easier than by marrying me—probably told her some nonsense about cutting me off in his will and stopping my allowance meanwhile. What he called an allowance—enough to keep me in cigarettes and tied to the house. He said he would pay her then and there. And he did. I was worth ten thousand dollars to Mary—ten thousand lousy smackers.”

“Did she tell you this?” Weigand asked.

“I didn't see her again,” Joshua Merle said. “Not to talk to, anyway. The old boy told me. He was—he was smirking about it. I hated him.”

“Yes,” Weigand said. “Did you go on hating him, Mr. Merle?”

Merle looked at Bill Weigand and his eyes narrowed.

“I didn't like him much,” he said. “I never liked him much after that. But he was right and I suppose he did me a good turn. But I just didn't like him.” He paused and looked at Weigand hard. “Do you think I'd kill my father because I didn't like him, Weigand?” he wanted to know.

Weigand shook his head, but did not answer directly. Instead, he asked another question.

“Suppose,” he said, “your father lied to you about her. Suppose—I'm merely supposing—he told her some other story—that you had asked him to get rid of her for you. Something like that. And suppose that later, recently say, she found out the story he told you. What would you think of that, Merle?”

Merle thought it was a lot of nonsense. He didn't call it nonsense, but that was roughly what he meant. But after he had said that, he looked at Weigand with narrowed eyes. He wanted, after a moment, to know what Weigand meant by that.

“Your father was killed in Mrs. Hunter's apartment,” Weigand said. “Suppose—and this is merely supposition again—she really loved you and never got over it entirely. Suppose she suddenly came into her apartment and found your father there—suppose she arranged to get him there after she found out. Suppose she tried to get him to tell you the truth and he just laughed at her. And suppose all the hate she had been feeling since she found out floated up and—.”

Merle looked at Weigand as if he were seeing horrors. He passed his hand over his forehead. It was quite a while before he spoke.

“You're making it up,” he said, and swore at Weigand savagely.

Weigand sat quietly and looked at him.

“But I said I was making it up,” he agreed. “I said I was supposing. It is a hypothesis entirely, Mr. Merle. Only—it is a possible hypothesis. Assuming your father lied.”

“He didn't lie. Not that time,” Merle said. He said it with determination, and with anger.

“Oh, yes,” Weigand said. “He lied, I think, Mr. Merle. I really think he lied.”

He waited and Merle merely stared at the ground.

“You see, Merle,” Weigand said, “your father hated Mrs. Hunter's father. He had cheated Mr. Thorgson out of quite a sum of money, I suspect. And often we hate those we wrong—it is a form of self-justification. Your father wasn't going to let Thorgson have the satisfaction of seeing his daughter married to you.” Weigand paused. “Of course, to do your father credit,” he added, “he may not have thought the feeling between you and Mary was really serious.”

Merle did not look up. He spoke to the ground. He said:

“It was serious, all right.”

After a considerable time, Merle spoke again.

“Is that all you wanted?” he said.

Weigand agreed it was all he wanted. But when Merle stood up and had taken one limping step, Bill Weigand spoke as if he had just remembered something.

“By the way,” he said. “That man who called you at Charles and told you your father had been killed—would you know his voice if you heard it again? Had you ever heard it before?”

“I don't know,” Merle said. “I don't remember that I'd ever heard it before. It was muffled, sort of. I didn't think about that—just about what the man said. I just heard what he said and started off without waiting for Jamie.”

“Right,” Weigand said.

Merle went off. For a man with a limp, he walked fast.

Bill Weigand rather unexpectedly found himself alone. He was alone when Pam and Jerry North arrived, bringing Mary Hunter with them. Then it was a little after four o'clock.

11

W
EDNESDAY
, 4:10
P.M.
TO
6:15
P.M.

“Bill,” Pam North said, “We found the gun, so we came right out. Because it proves it isn't the gun.”

“Oh,” Bill Weigand said, “hello, Pam. Jerry. Mrs. Hunter.”

“Mrs. Hunter's gun,” Jerry North amplified. “It was in the bottom of a trunk in the storage warehouse. She remembered this morning where it ought to be. It never was in the apartment. Pam thought it was important.”

Bill said it could be. He held out his hand. Mary Hunter took a .38 revolver out of her handbag and gave it to him. He turned it over and looked at it. It was a nice little gun. There were no cartridges in the cylinder. There was nothing to indicate that it had been used recently; nothing to prove it had not.

“In a trunk in the warehouse,” Bill Weigand repeated.

“Yes,” Mary Hunter said. “I remembered which trunk I had put it in after Rick went away. Mrs. North thought we ought to get it and bring it to you. We all three went and they watched me take it out of the trunk. Mrs. North thought they'd better, so they could—tell you what they saw.”

Bill said that had been the way to do it. He said he would have the gun tested, as a matter of routine.

“You don't seem much interested, Bill,” Pam said.

Bill looked at her and smiled. He wanted to know if she had really expected he would be much interested. He said he had no doubt that this gun had been at the bottom of a trunk in a warehouse when George Merle was shot. And that, with the gun found by Murdock's body, they had enough guns. He wondered, but he did not say he wondered, why the Norths had brought Mary Hunter to Elmcroft. Because it was clear they had brought her.

Pam North looked around and said: “Where is everybody?” and Bill Weigand said they were around. Somewhere around. Then he asked a question, suddenly.

“Mrs. Hunter,” he said, “did you ever, under any circumstances, for any purpose, accept a check from George Merle? For any purpose—to take to your father, for example; to repay you for an expenditure you had made—for any purpose at all?”

Mary Hunter looked at him and seemed puzzled.

“Why no,” she said. “Of course not.”

“Right,” Bill Weigand said.

“Lieutenant,” Mary Hunter said. “Josh didn't hate his father. He hadn't any reason to.”

Bill looked sharply at Pam North, who smiled back, quite blandly.

“The only reason Josh could have had for hating his father was because of me,” Mary Hunter said. “And Josh didn't—it wasn't serious. Not that serious.”

“All right,” Bill said. “If you say so.”

Mary Hunter said she did say so.

“Mrs. North seemed to think,” she said. “Seemed to think you—.”

“I merely said it was possible,” Pam North said. “I thought if you explained there wouldn't be any confusion. Or if you and Joshua Merle both explained.”

“Did you?” Bill Weigand said. “And did you, Jerry?”

“I,” Jerry North said, “came along for the ride. At a ruinous expenditure of A coupons, not being a policeman with unlimited rations.”

“Well, well,” Bill Weigand said. “We'll have to find Mr. Merle presently.”

Mullins came from around the house and Mr. Potts was with him. They were talking and seemed to be on very happy terms. Mullins stopped for a moment when he saw the Norths and then, apparently in spite of his wiser instincts, beamed at them. He and Mr. Potts came over and Mr. Potts said “Hello, Mary,” before he was introduced to the Norths.

“Why don't you have your friends help themselves to a drink, Lieutenant,” Mr. Potts said. He looked informingly at the bar table.

“But—” Pam North said. Jerry took her by the arm and said “Come on, Pam.” Mary Hunter hesitated. Then she followed the others. From the living room, Ann Merle came out and joined them. She looked across at Wickersham Potts, who smiled and nodded vigorously.

“Loot,” Mullins said, “I don't know if it means anything. But young Merle has been trying to get his sister to marry the Jameson guy. Mr. Potts says so, anyway. He thought you'd want to know.”

Potts smiled. He said that the sergeant put it a little more strongly than he would put it. He merely assumed that Lieutenant Weigand would want to know all there was to know about—“about the people in the case.”

“Did you?” Weigand said, without committing himself. “Well,” Mr. Potts said reasonably, “in your position I would. I would collect all the pieces.”

“You have, apparently,” Bill Weigand told him.

Potts smiled at Weigand.

“I told you I was interested in people,” he said. “I know all these people quite well. I've known them for a number of years, of course.”

“Right,” Bill said. “And Merle wants his sister to marry Weldon Jameson. I gather she doesn't want to.”

“Because of young Goode,” Potts added for him. “Of course. No, she doesn't want to. But her brother is insistent—almost insistent.”

“And Jameson?” Bill Weigand said.

“Oh,” Potts said, “Jameson wouldn't mind. I don't think he'd mind at all.” He paused and looked past Weigand into the distance. “A sense of obligation can be a very strange and compelling thing,” he said, with a great air of making an abstract remark. “But I mustn't harp on it.”

It might, Weigand told Mr. Potts, be helpful if Mr. Potts would say straight out what it was he wanted to say; what he knew or thought he knew. Mr. Potts told him that that was, of course, a very reasonable idea.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “I know no facts which would help you.” He stopped smiling. “If I did,” he said, “I wouldn't beat about the bush. I assure you of that, Lieutenant. I merely have opinions—and guesses. As you must have yourself.”

“Why should Merle have a particular sense of obligation to Jameson?” Weigand said. “Because of the plane accident?”

“Oh,” Potts said, “Josh won't accept it as an accident. He calls it criminal negligence. His. He thinks he has ruined Jameson's future. Because, you see, Jameson was very intent on flying. He always had been, apparently, since he was a boy. And now he can't. And he hadn't, apparently, made plans for any other kind of life.”

The shadow of the house had crept across the flagged terrace and was edging onto the grass beyond. It had grown hot and still on the terrace. Meggs came out again with fresh supplies for the bar table and Bill Weigand, crossing that way with Mullins, decided that it was not formally time for cocktails. Weldon Jameson came out from the living room and poured himself a scotch and his face and eyes showed he had had several before it, although his movements were precise and certain. Meggs mixed Mullins an old-fashioned and Weigand changed to a Tom Collins.

“This is a pretty wet case, ain't it, Loot?” Mullins said.

Jameson limped away toward the swimming pool. Stanley Goode was sitting in the sun by the pool watching Ann Merle, who was back in her white swimming suit and, as Weigand and Mullins watched, dived from the pool's rim.

It was cooler in the living room than on the terrace. Bill Weigand started in and hesitated just outside one of the French doors. Mrs. Burnwood was standing in front of a chair which had its back to Weigand and in which its occupant was hidden.

“—have it,” Mrs. Burnwood said rather loudly, and in an angry voice. “You're making him think he owns the place.”

She saw Weigand at the door and stopped and looked at him with hostility. She turned and went across the room and out of Weigand's sight. Joshua Merle got up out of the deep chair and came across to the French door. His face was dark and worried. He did not seem to see Weigand until he was almost on him and then he did not pause.

“Still here, Lieutenant?” he said.

There was nothing to say, and Bill Weigand said nothing. Merle turned left on the terrace and went around the house toward, Weigand assumed, the path which led down to the private beach and Potts's cottage. After a few moments, Weigand went after him and had a look. There was no sign of Merle. A graveled path descended in terraces. Weigand went down it and, after a little, came out on a small, immaculate beach. A little way off from the beach was the cottage which was presumably Mr. Potts's. There was no sign of life around, and Bill Weigand went back up the path.

The reaction to his announcement that Murdock had been a victim, not a murderer, was slow in coming. Possibly he had been wrong in thinking it would come. And he needed it—he needed a blowoff. Because it was not enough to know in your own mind; to be pretty sure you knew. Bill went down toward the pool.