Payoff for the Banker (20 page)

Joshua Merle and Mary Hunter met in the living room, with no one else around except Pam North—which was the way Pam had hoped it would happen; to contrive which, Pam had suddenly been overcome with a desire to powder her nose when she saw Merle go in from the terrace and had insisted that Mary Hunter must also want to powder her nose. Jerry had smiled at her and shaken his head a little and then he had joined Mullins at the table which held the drinks.

Mary Hunter had started to turn back when she saw Joshua Merle, tall and angry-looking, but then had straightened and stopped and looked at him. It was a moment before either spoke, and Pam had time to fear that neither was going to speak. Then Joshua Merle said:

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Hunter,” as if from a great distance.

“Hello,” Mary Hunter said. “Mrs. North brought me here. I—”

“You don't have to tell me you didn't want to come,” Merle said. “You made that clear enough a long time ago.”

“Josh,” Mary Hunter said. “Oh Josh—why—”

That, Pam decided, was her cue. She took it Neither of them saw her go.

The terrace was deserted. Jerry and Sergeant Mullins were walking across the lawn toward the swimming pool and Laurel Burke was with them—walking between them, with the movements, Pam decided, of a dress model. Pam started to follow them, and resented the necessity of following them—of following anybody—and stopped and said, “Damn!”

“I might as well go home,” she thought. “Get Jerry away—get Jerry and go home. Because Mary and Josh have got to work it out themselves from now on. If there is, after all this time and Rick Hunter and everything, anything to work out.”

“Oh,” a gentle voice said, “I think there is, Mrs. North. I think you were very wise to bring Mrs. Hunter out.”

“I often talk out loud,” Pam said to Wickersham Potts. “Don't pay any attention to me. I've tried not to, but there it is. I suppose it wasn't any of my business, really.”

“No,” Mr. Potts said, “speaking strictly—I suppose not. But one's business is so limited if one sticks to it too religiously. Mine, for example, is playing an organ.” He paused to consider. “Which I play extremely well,” he added. “Probably as well as anyone in this country. You've heard me, perhaps?”

“Oh, yes,” Pam said. “It was very fine. Only I suppose I don't really appreciate the pipe organ, Mr. Potts. Not that it isn't—tremendous.”

“I also play the flute,” Mr. Potts said. “For my own amusement. A flute is much more amusing than an organ. But, of course, limited. But even an organ does not occupy a whole life. Not even mine.”

“No,” Pam said. “Do you think, too, that Mary and Josh ought to explain things? Quit misunderstanding each other? Just—just because it is so foolish to let an old lie—it was a lie, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Potts said. “Dear old George was a very intelligent liar, when he wanted to be. And he often wanted to be. You see, he hated Mary's father. So he—eliminated Mary. He often eliminated people. On the other hand, he contributed very handsomely to the church and so helped pay my salary.” He considered. “I don't know that that strikes a balance, entirely,” he said. “But there it is.”

“And he got himself murdered,” Pam said. “There that is, too.”

“Oh,” Mr. Potts said, “do you think there is a connection? I rather thought—but no doubt you are right.” He considered again. “At any rate,” he said, “in the sense that everything is connected with something else. In the end.”

Pam said that that was what she had meant. Then she spoke suddenly.

“Do you know who killed Mr. Merle, Mr. Potts?” she said.

Wickersham Potts looked at her, and she thought afterward that his eyes had narrowed slightly.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Of course. Don't you?”

“I'm not sure,” Pam said. “I think I do.”

“Of course,” Mr. Potts said, “we can both be wrong. There are so many side issues. And it is so difficult to tell which
is
a side issue. Miss Burke and her baby, if there is a baby. Mr. Murdock and his murder, if he was murdered.”

“Oh,” Pam said, “he was murdered.”

Mr. Potts nodded.

“Mary Hunter and Josh,” he said. “And, of course, the money—all the money. And the smallness of young Merle's allowance. And the accident which kept him out of the Navy. It is really very complex.”

They were still standing near the French doors. Potts looked around them.

“All this,” he said, “it's quite impressive, isn't it. Have you seen my little place? Really, it's the Merles' little place too, but they let me rent it. For years now.”

“No,” Pam said.

“I'd like you to,” Mr. Potts said. “Would you care to?”

“Why yes,” Pam said. “Very much, Mr. Potts.”

And that was not really accurate. But she did want, quite a good deal, to know why Mr. Potts wanted her to see his little place.

Mr. Potts directed her down the terraced path toward the beach, and up the other path from the beach to the cottage. He pushed open the door and she went in ahead of him. The living room was large for a place which seemed, from outside, so tiny—it was large and underfurnished with chairs and tables which seemed light and clean. It was a room beautifully, miraculously, free of clutter.

“Mr. Potts,” she began, when she heard footsteps behind her, “it's—”

And then, blindingly, without warning, her head pained with incredible, flaring violence and blackness came in from the sides as she felt herself falling. She spent the remaining moment of consciousness thinking that this was very odd of Mr. Potts, and very unlike him.

Her head ached as she had never known it to ache, in great swirls of pain. She tried to raise herself from the polished floor against which her cheek was pressed and the pain hurled her down. She lay for a moment and the pain was less intense and she pushed herself up to sit on the floor, holding herself up with her hands thrust out in front of her. She shook her head, and the pain came back, but she could remember more clearly.

Mr. Potts had asked her to come to see his cottage, and she had thought he wanted to tell her something. And he had let her precede him into the cottage and there had been footsteps behind her as she was admiring the room and—

She was looking at blood. A little rivulet of blood, like spilled water but less fluid, was creeping across the polished boards in front of her. As she looked it stopped creeping; it was a red finger of blood, motionless on the floor.

Pam North made herself turn. Wickersham Potts lay a few feet away from her. He lay on his face. The blood was coming up around a knife in his back.

Pam fought back the blackness which came up around her. She pushed at it desperately with her will, but her will was not strong enough. Darkness engulfed her again and she pitched forward onto the floor. One of her hands, as she lay huddled on the floor, was an inch or two from the finger of blood which pointed away from Wickersham Potts, late organist of St. Andrew's, amateur in human behavior; Mr. Potts, who in the end had encountered a professional.

Jerry North and Bill Weigand found Pam and she was still unconscious. She regained consciousness in Jerry's arms and looked up at him and said, “Hello, darling. What happened?” before she remembered what had happened. Then she turned her face and pressed it against Jerry's arm and he held it there. Without moving, her words muffled, she said: “Mr. Potts, Jerry. He's dead, isn't he?”

“Yes,” Jerry said.

Pam lifted her head, but she did not look at the body.

“He was such a nice little man, Jerry,” she said. “At first I thought he hit me. I couldn't see why.”

Bill Weigand stood up beside Potts's body. He said that, if she felt up to it, it would help for her to tell what happened. Jerry said, “For God's sake, Bill!” But Pam sat up, still in the circle of Jerry's arm, and said she was all right. She still did not look at the body.

She told them of coming to the cottage with Mr. Potts, of hearing footsteps behind her and of being struck. As she remembered, she put her hand up and touched the back of her head gently.

“It's all right, Pam,” Jerry said. “Just a bump. A pretty big bump. He didn't try to kill you. You were just—in the way.”

Pam smiled at Jerry to reassure him. Her smile quivered a little.

“I thought Mr. Potts hit me,” she said. “But then I knew he didn't.”

“When you came to,” Bill said. “And then fainted again. I gather you must have, because you knew he was dead.”

“I think I did,” Pam said. “It's blurred. But before that, I knew it wasn't Mr. Potts.”

“How, Pam?” Jerry said. “Did you see him?”

But Pam shook her head, slowly, bewildered.

“I don't think so,” she said. “That's all blurred too. I don't think I saw anybody—except Mr. Potts, of course. But I just remember thinking ‘why, it isn't Mr. Potts at all' while I was falling. The first time, that must have been. Because the second time it was Mr. Potts, of course. Only it's all mixed up.”

“Never mind,” Jerry said. “It will come straight.”

“If it does,” Pam said, “I'll know who it was—I mean, who it was all the time. Mr. Merle and Mr. Murdock and now Mr. Potts—I'll know the whole thing.”

And as she said that an odd feeling came over her. It was a cold, unhappy feeling; it was like the feeling of a great disappointment.

They started out, Pam a little shaky even with Jerry's supporting arm about her. When they were at the door, Bill Weigand turned back suddenly and went to the body. Gently he turned it so he could see the face. There was no doubt about it. Mr. Potts looked, in death, very surprised indeed.

Most of them were back on the terrace when Bill Weigand and the Norths reached the top of the terraced path and came around the house. Weigand counted them up as they walked toward them—Joshua Merle and Mary, sitting side by side; Weldon Jameson and Stanley Goode sitting in a little group of which Ann Merle was the third; Laurel Burke with Mullins close to her, as he was supposed to be; Captain Theodore Sullivan of the State Police, by himself. Meggs at the table mixing drinks. Mrs. Burnwood—no Mrs. Burnwood.

Weldon Jameson started up as he saw them coming. He said, “Mrs. North! You're hurt!” and started toward them.

“She's all right, Mr. Jameson,” Bill Weigand said. “She—bumped her head.”

“How—?” Ann Merle began, but Bill stopped her.

“I'm going to tell you,” he said, and his voice was distant and level. “All of you. Meggs!”

Meggs came across the terrace.

“Ask Mrs. Burnwood to come out,” Weigand told him. Meggs said, “Yes, sir,” and went into the living room. They waited. After a few minutes Mrs. Burnwood came out and looked at Weigand without cordiality.

“You sent for me?” she inquired, as if she were expressing an impossibility. “You
sent
for me?”

“Yes,” Bill told her. “Please sit down, Mrs. Burnwood.”

She looked very surprised. She sat down.

“Now,” Bill Weigand said, still standing. “One of you stabbed Mr. Potts in the back within the last half hour. You were very successful. You killed him. Before that, the same person slugged Mrs. North and knocked her out. I don't know why whoever it was didn't kill her, too, but apparently that wasn't the intention.”

“Wicky?” Ann said. “Not Wicky?”

“No, no,” Mrs. Burnwood said. Nobody else said anything for a moment and Captain Sullivan stood up. Bill Weigand nodded.

“Yes, Captain,” he said. “Your bailiwick, definitely. In the cottage down by the beach.”

Sullivan went among the chairs, striding, and around the corner of the house.

“The poor little guy,” Laurel Burke said. Then she stood up suddenly. “Listen,” she said, and her voice was no longer artfully deep. “I'm getting out of here. The hell out of here.”

“No,” Bill told her. “Nobody's getting out of here. Not now.”

“But,” she said.

“Nobody,” Weigand repeated. “Captain Sullivan will want you all here. Until he takes over, I want you all here.”

“Really, Lieutenant,” Mrs. Burnwood said. “Really. You speak as if—” then she stopped and her eyes were surprised.

“Right,” Bill Weigand said. “That's just the way I speak. One of you—one of you here—killed Mr. Potts. Also Mr. Merle and Murdock. Mr. Potts, because he knew which one of you killed Merle. Is that clear enough?”

“Too damned clear,” Jameson said. “And Potts did know. He told me he knew.”

Weigand had a hunch and played it.

“I think,” he said, “that he told each person here that he knew the identity of the murderer. He was—playing a little game.”

“It was a damned dangerous game,” Joshua Merle said.

Weigand nodded.

“Yes, Mr. Merle,” he said. “It was a very dangerous game. Because, you see, he did know. And the murderer knew he knew. To one of you he said something more than he did to the others—too much more.”

“But,” Ann said, and her voice was doubtful, “how could he know? He was here all day yesterday. I'm sure of that.”

Weigand nodded.

“Right,” he said. “As far as evidence went, I don't think Mr. Potts could prove anything. But I think he knew, just the same—for a very simple reason. He knew all of you very well—he was very interested in people. He knew things—little things and big things—which it would take an outsider years to learn. Among the big things he knew was the identity of the person who killed Mr. Merle.”

12

W
EDNESDAY
, 7:15
P.M.
TO
9:05
P.M.

Lieutenant Weigand made a little dot with his pencil after each of the names on the sheet of paper before him. He looked at the names and the little dots and then he looked across the desk which had been George Merle's and shook his head at Captain Theodore Sullivan of the Criminal Identification Division of the State Police.