Payoff for the Banker (23 page)

“Anyway,” Pam said, “that's what intuition is. Yours or anybody's. It's merely taking a short cut through the woods because you've already been around by the road and know the way. You knew it was Jameson that Burke was talking at because you've seen people talk at people and you know how it looks and sounds. So when you saw it again you took a short cut through the woods instead of going around the barn. Why Robin Hood's, incidentally?”

Jerry said he didn't know.

“Well, anyway,” said Pam, who was sitting up now and even leaning forward a little so she could look at Jerry. “That's how you knew it was Jameson. It's perfectly simple.”

Jerry said, “Oh.”

“Perfectly,” Pam said. “Only of course you were wrong. You got lost in the woods somewhere. If it was anybody, it was Josh Merle. Only I'm not sure it was anybody. I think she was just fishing.”

“Fishing?” Jerry said. “For what?”

That, Pam said, she did not know. Any more than she knew what it was she remembered, but had forgotten, about the person who struck her and killed Mr. Potts.

“It's very exasperating,” she said. “Here Bill knows and if I could remember we'd know too, or if we could work it out the way he did.”

“We could use intuition,” Jerry said.

Pam shook her head. She said that Bill hadn't used intuition, or at least she didn't think he had.

There were footsteps on the flagstones behind them and the footsteps ended and Stanley Goode came across the grass toward them, the sound of his steps lost in the grass. He stopped and he spoke lightly. He asked if they had happened to notice where Ann Merle had got to. And then he looked down at Pam and seemed surprised at the response to his question.

The response was unquestionably surprising. Pam North did not answer—she did not speak at all. But she looked at him with eyes which grew round and startled and it seemed to Jerry, watching her, that something had happened which to Pam was frightening. He started to speak, but then Pam spoke instead.

“Mr. Goode!” she said. “Did you walk across the terrace just now? The—the hard part? The flagstones?”

“Why,” Stanley Goode said, and his words came slowly and the note in his voice was odd. “Yes, I guess I did. I came from the living room, so I must have walked across the terrace. Why, Mrs. North?”

“Oh,” Pam said. “So that—” She broke off. “I'm afraid I don't know where Ann went, Mr. Goode,” she said. “I thought she was with you.”

Pam stood up as she spoke and Jerry, not knowing precisely why, stood with her. He was surprised, but pleased, when she put her hand in his.

“Perhaps she's down by the pool, Mr. Goode,” Pamela North said, very politely. “Perhaps you would find her if you looked down there.”

Mr. Goode looked no less puzzled, but he accepted the change in Pamela North with politeness. He said that that was a jolly good idea and that he would go down and have a look. He went off, not hurrying, and Pam waited a moment before her grip on Jerry's hand tightened and she was pulling him toward the terrace.

“Jerry,” she said. “Jerry! We've got to hurry!”

“Hurry?” Jerry said. “Hurry where, Pam?”

“Anywhere,” Pam said. “Where everybody is. We've got to find people, Jerry. Because if we don't it will be Mr. Murdock all over again.”

She started off. Jerry held her a moment. He told her, not quite as a question, that now she knew.

“Of course,” she said. “Of course.” She was impatient.

“But,” Jerry said, “apparently it was something Goode did that tipped you off. And Goode went down toward the pool.”

“Goode?” Pam repeated. “Oh—Goode! But Jerry, he's just—what's the thing that makes other things come together?”

“That makes—?” Jerry said. “Oh, a catalyst. A catalytic agent.”

“Of course,” Pam said. “
Now
will you hurry?”

13

W
EDNESDAY
, 9:05
P.M.
TO
10:15
P.M.

Mary Hunter wore a bathing suit which was shorts and a bra, which was white and which she had borrowed from Ann Merle. She had swum the length of the pool and back again just as the light faded and then she had stood irresolute a moment and pulled a light coat around her and had looked toward the house and apparently thought better of it. She sat in one of the canvas chairs which was still warm from the sun and seemed to look at the pool and looked at nothing. And after a few minutes, Joshua Merle came down from the house and stood looking down at her. He looked down at her and said, “Hello, Mary.”

“Hello,” she said.

“It's a funny party,” he said. “Do you want a drink? Or anything?”

She said, “No,” still looking at nothing across the pool.

He sat down on the grass beside her. He said, “I'm sorry as hell, Mary. About everything.”

“So am I,” Mary said. “About Rick. About your father. About everything. About little Mr. Potts.”

“Yes,” Josh Merle said. “But mostly I'm sorry about us. About me.”

“I suppose,” Mary Hunter said, “that it sounded reasonable enough. He was your father. You hadn't been around much.”

“I'd been to Princeton,” Josh said.

“Oh, Josh!” the girl said. “Oh, for God's sake.”

He laughed a little, without amusement. He said he appreciated her defense. He said there was nothing in it.

“I'm not defending you,” the girl said. “Why should I defend you? You're somebody I used to know.”

“All right,” he said. “I can still be sorry about it. I can still be—oh, what the hell.” His voice was suddenly tired.

The girl told him he would get over it. She said he would obviously have to get over it.

“All right,” he said. “I let you down. Then I let Jameson down.” He laughed shortly. “Let him down hard,” he added.

She did not say anything. She looked at nothing across the pool.

“My father,” he said after a pause, and now his tone was carefully conversational, “had a lot to answer for.”

“Well,” she said. “He answered for it. The hard way.”

Josh said he didn't know. He said there were harder ways. A good many harder ways.

“All right, Josh,” she said. “All right.”

“He kicked us around,” Josh said. “Probably he enjoyed it. What do you think?”

She said she didn't know.

“I think he had it coming,” Josh Merle said. “Looking at it abstractly, as if he weren't my father.”

“Josh,” she said. “You talk like—” She broke off. She came up in her chair and balanced in it, leaning forward, elbows on knees. She looked at the ground and after a moment she said, “Listen, Josh.”

“Listen,” she said, “There's something the matter with you. I don't know what—maybe it's conscience. You brood over things—over us, over your father, even over Jamie. Over being—hurt.”

“Crippled,” Josh said, as if he were supplying quite casually, a missing word. “Lame. Limpy.”

“Over being lame,” she said. “Call it anything you want to. It's an incident. I'm an incident. Even your father is an incident. Heaven knows, Jamie is an incident.”

“Murder is a pretty big incident,” Josh Merle said. “Crippling your best friend and changing his whole life is a pretty big incident. You—you were a very big incident. I think incident is a hell of a funny word.”

“Look,” she said. “You can turn a page—read another chapter. Put on another reel of film. You can do that.”

“Can you?” he said.

She twisted her body to look at him. Her bra and shorts were white against her skin. In the dusk, they seemed to have a glow of their own, and her eyes seemed to have a different glow.

“Why not?” she said. “I did.”

“Without any trouble?”

“Well,” she said, “I did it. Everything's some trouble.”

He looked at her and said that some things wouldn't be. She looked back at him and did not pretend not to understand, and shook her head.

“No,” she said, “this is a new reel. This is another page.”

“Is it?” he said. “What makes you so sure?”

He did not move toward her. But it was as if he had moved.

She leaned back suddenly in the chair. It was as if there had been the strand of a spider's silk between them, and her movement had broken it. Words were inessential, but there were words.

“Because that was yesterday,” she said. “That was a long time ago. That was when you didn't come and get me, Josh. That was when you believed—when you were a good boy and believed what papa told you. Don't you remember?”

He did not answer for a moment, and then he stood up before he answered. He stood over her and looked down at her and the tension between them was of a new and different kind. Looking up at him, the girl's eyes widened slowly and she started up.

“No,” he said. “If I were you, my dear—”

Then he broke off suddenly and turned toward a figure which came toward them.

“Oh, hello,” he said. “Hello, Stan. Looking for Ann?”

“I,” Goode said, “am almost always looking for Ann, aren't I? Is she down here? Mrs. North thought she was.”

“No,” Josh Merle said. There was no tension now. He spoke easily, carelessly. “Anyway, I haven't seen her. Have you, Mary?”

“No,” the girl said. “Why don't you sit down somewhere, Mr. Goode? Maybe she's around somewhere.”

“Why not?” Stanley Goode said. He sat down on the grass by Mary's chair. He looked up at Josh. “Unless, of course,” he said, “this is a private fight.”

Josh laughed. He said it wasn't a fight. He said he was going to change and have a swim. He walked toward the bathhouse along the concrete edging of the pool. His footsteps were irregular as he walked, and in the gathering darkness his movements were faintly irregular as he limped.

The change in Pamela North was amazing. Hurrying along behind her, Jerry thought that never—not even in her—had he seen so remarkable a change so quickly made. A few minutes ago she had been deep in a lassitude which could hardly—if, Jerry thought, at all—be distinguished from sleep. Now she was—well, now she was very difficult to keep up with, particularly as it was now quite quickly growing dark. Jerry hurried across the lawn and across the flagged terrace and they burst, it seemed to him, into the living room.

Laurel Burke was deep in a chair; enfolded in a chair. She held a cigarette as if holding a cigarette were an effort; looking at them, she lifted a glass and drank and put it down with a gesture which seemed to assure them that there was a duty, discharged against obstacles. Pam North stopped and it seemed to Jerry that she almost skidded. She looked at Laurel Burke and then she looked around the room. She came back to Laurel Burke.

“Where,” Pam said, and her voice was hurried, “where is everybody?”

Laurel Burke was languid.

“Well,” she said, “I'm here.”

Pam's tone dismissed that.

“Everybody else,” she said. “Bill Weigand? Sergeant Mullins? That State policeman—what's his name?”

“Sullivan,” Laurel told her. “He's good-looking. They all went.”

Pam looked at her and shook her head.

“They couldn't have gone,” she said. “They couldn't!”

“I don't know why not,” Laurel said. “Anyway, they did. They told the old girl—Mrs. Burnside or whatever it is—that there was nothing more they could do here tonight and that they were going. And they went.”

“No,” Pam said. “I don't believe they went.”

It was, Laurel Burke assured her, all the same to Laurel Burke. Maybe they hadn't gone; maybe Mrs. Burnside—

“Burnwood,” Jerry said. “Burnwood.”

Maybe the old girl made it up; she didn't know the old girl; maybe the old girl did make things up. Maybe Jamie made it up.

“Jameson told you?” Jerry said. It was queer; he agreed with Pam that it was queer.

“Jamie,” Laurel said. “Good old Jamie. He told me.”

Laurel Burke had, Jerry decided, had a good deal to drink. The fact that she had had a good deal to drink grew on you. Apparently it grew on Pam, because now she turned and walked away. As Jerry watched her she made a quick circuit of the living room. She found it empty, save for Miss Burke. She started out a door and changed her mind.

“Outside somewhere,” she said. “Jerry! Come on. We've got to find Bill!”

The Norths went out the way they had come and Laurel's voice, deep as cotton velvet, followed them. “—back to New York,” she said. “And I've got to stay here.”

In spite of himself, Jerry paused; in spite of himself he turned a little and said, “Why?”

“I,” Laurel said, with dignity, “have got to mind the baby.”

Jerry was sure afterward that he wasted only a moment considering this, but when he followed Pam onto the terrace it was no longer clear that he was following Pam. At any rate, Pam had disappeared. He started to call her and then decided not to call her. There was something breathless in this sudden darkness; something secret. Pam's urgency communicated itself to Jerry. The thing to do was to find Bill Weigand, or at any rate Sergeant Mullins. Because surely the Burke girl had misunderstood; surely they were still somewhere at Elmcroft.

Around the corner of the house, where Pam thought she had detected movement—toward which, sure that Jerry was behind her, she had gone at a run—Pam found nobody. But surely there had been somebody there; somebody heading toward—toward the path leading down to the beach and the beach cottage. Pam started toward the path, still almost running. She ran headlong into a very thick and prickly bush. The bush swayed slightly and Pam North bounced.

That wouldn't do. She would have to have a light. She would have to get a light from the house and go down—she started back around the corner of the house, still moving rapidly. She collided with something, but this was not a bush. This gave and made a surprised sound.