Payoff for the Banker (25 page)

It had taken seconds—seconds during which a scream hung in Pam North's throat, Jerry's hands gripped hard on her shoulders, Bill Weigand and Mullins ran as if they were running, at slow motion, through quicksand. But actually they were running rapidly, and they seemed to run off the edge of the pool into the water and then—half swimming, half walking with the pressure of the water against them, they went toward the deep end. In seconds more they were both swimming.

But they were still in the middle of the pool when one of the men—it was impossible to see which one, with only the back of a head, dark against the water, to go by—broke water. He looked around wildly; he threw up one hand in what might have been a beckoning gesture—a desperately beckoning gesture—and arched himself into another dive.

Then, out of the turbulence of churning water, he came up again and now he had the girl in his arms, and they could tell it was the girl by her slightness in his arms as he clutched for the pool rim and hooked a hand over it and began to lift her out. The Norths were running by then; they were almost at the pool when Mary Hunter was lifted clear and lay for a moment motionless beside the pool, wearing now only the white shorts of her bathing suit. Pam was already pulling off the light coat she was wearing as she ran toward the still figure, very fragile, helplessly at the mercy of anyone and anything.

Jerry ran with her, but did not try to pass her, and so she reached the pool first. Pam's coat was swinging free by then. She reached the girl just as the man who had thrust her up to the tiles beside the pool started to swing up beside her. Pam took one look at him, swung the coat as if it were a club and engulfed his head in it. Off balance, he made an odd sound and fell over backward into the water.

Pam was kneeling beside the girl and had spread the coat, no longer a weapon, over her when Jerry knelt beside them. But already Pam had the answer for them. Mary Hunter was alive—with a dark bruise on her forehead, with a good deal of water in her, but alive. Pam was about to give artificial respiration, as well as she remembered it, when Jerry stopped her.

“She'll be all right,” he said. “But why on earth—?”

He motioned toward the man who, in swimming trunks and with an expression of great anxiety on his face, was swinging up beside them out of the water. He reached toward Mary Hunter and Pam cried out, “Stop him, Jerry!”

But then she stopped, because Mary Hunter opened her eyes and looked up at them, but saw only one of them. She stretched slim bare arms toward him, and Pam, still not understanding what had happened, but conscious that there was a terrible mistake somewhere, and that it was evidently hers, simply knelt and looked at them.

“Josh,” the girl said, and although her voice was faint and choked a little, there was a note almost of exultation in it. “Josh—you
did
come back!”

Joshua Merle took the girl, and Pam's coat with her, into his arms and lifted her up against his chest and held her there, his face bent to hers. It seemed to Pam, who was for a moment very near them, that both of them were crying. But they were both so wet that it was, obviously, hard to tell.

Pam stood up then and looked at them, and then looked at Jerry and then spoke.

“Who,” Pam North said, “is trying to kill whom?”

She seemed entirely bewildered. Jerry put his arms around her to lessen her bewilderment and they stood watching Weigand and Mullins, who were apparently playing porpoise—diving under the surface, coming up, diving again. But it was on only his second dive that Weigand came up, a little slowly, with the limp body of a man whose thin white shirt was plastered to him.

And then Pam gasped and turned to Jerry, still in his arms, and said:

“Jerry! It was the
other
man who limped. It wasn't Josh at all.”

Jerry watched Bill Weigand and Mullins lift Weldon Jameson out of the pool, and noticed that Mullins kept his hands on him until Bill had swung out onto the tiles, and kneeling beside the very limp, but, it was now evident, very murderous young man. They were taking no chances, Jerry thought.

“Who limped?” he repeated, then. “Of course they limped—they both limped.”

“Behind me,” Pam said. “In the cottage—the one who killed Mr. Potts. That was what I remembered that I had forgotten. Before he hit me, I heard him walking behind me. Just a step or two, but there was something wrong with it. Something out of order. And when I heard Stanley Goode walking I knew what it was, because he didn't.”

“Didn't?” Jerry said.

Pam was watching Mullins swing up beside Weigand. They began to give Jameson artificial respiration, very expertly. It seemed, Pam thought, rather a cruel thing to do, under the circumstances, but she supposed they had to.

“Didn't what?” Jerry said, because he disliked things left unfinished rather than because he did not already know.

“What?” Pam said. “Oh—limp, of course. Mr. Goode doesn't limp. So naturally I remembered that the man who came up behind me, and hit me on the head,
did
limp. So I thought of course it was Josh Merle, because I never considered Jameson at all, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Jerry said. He held her closer. He told her, in her ear and only for her, that she was really a very special person. This did not seem to surprise Pam North in the least. But she pressed closer to Jerry and looked up at him, and her face still was puzzled.

“Why?” Pam said. “That's what I don't see—why?”

14

T
HURSDAY,
J
UNE
15, 12:40
A.M.
TO
1:50
A.M.

Laurel Burke was white and tired-looking when she came out of the study with Weigand and Mullins. She looked like a young woman who has been questioned for more than two hours by very expert questioners. Weigand looked tired also—almost as tired as she. Neither he nor the girl nor Mullins spoke as they came out into the living room where the others waited, the French doors to the terrace closed now. Bill crossed to the table of bottles and glasses, indoors now, and mixed two drinks. He gave one to Laurel Burke and drank rather deeply of the other. Mullins mixed rye with water and stood drinking it beside the chair Laurel Burke had chosen. He might have been guarding her.

There was a rather long pause, during which Bill Weigand took another drink from his glass and, after consultation with himself, a third. Then he spoke.

“Miss Burke has been telling us some things,” he said. “Haven't you, Miss Burke?”

Laurel Burke merely looked at him.

Bill Weigand did not act as if he had expected her to answer, although he seemed to pause for her answer. When he began again he seemed to begin all over again.

“There were two plots against Mr. Merle,” he said. “One was against his money. The other was against his life. Miss Burke was in only one of them. She didn't know about the other. Weldon Jameson knew about Miss Burke's little plan—Miss Burke's and Oscar Murdock's. He used what he knew when he decided to kill George Merle.”

Bill drank again. When he spoke next he spoke to Joshua Merle, sitting beside Mary Hunter on a sofa.

“Behind everything Jameson did,” Bill said, “was an emotion which is in itself very admirable. Behind all of it was loyalty. Not his to you, Mr. Merle—not his to anybody. Your loyalty to him. Your sense of indebtedness to him. You know why you felt it, to the extent you did—to the rather extreme extent you did. Why was it?”

“I've told you,” Josh Merle said. “I—.” He paused because Mary Hunter's hand had tightened on his. His tone changed. When he spoke again it was slowly, as if he were for the first time examining his attitude toward Jameson.

“It was my fault we cracked up,” he said. “Jamie hadn't had much—only his wanting to fly and the chance to fly. He planned to fly after the war—it was all he wanted to do. I banged him up so he'll never get a chance to fly.” He broke off. Weigand shook his head in answer to the unspoken thought.

“No,” Bill Weigand said, rather grimly. “He won't get a chance to fly. Not now, anyway.”

“It was my fault we cracked up,” Merle repeated. “I—got flustered or something. I did the wrong thing. There was no excuse for it. Jamie knew there was no excuse for it. We both knew I had to make it up to him.”

“Did he say so?” Bill wanted to know.

Merle shook his head.

“Not in words,” he said. “He didn't need to. I owed it to him. At least—I felt I did. I—I'm not sure, now, that it made much sense. I admit I took it pretty hard—at any rate I think now that I took it pretty hard. You see—Jamie wasn't the first person I'd—let down.”

He looked at Mary Hunter suddenly. She smiled at him.

“I was hipped on the subject,” Joshua Merle said, as if he had just realized it. “That was it—I was hipped on the subject of not letting anybody else down.”

“Right,” Bill Weigand said. “Now—two other things. Your father made you an allowance after you got out of the Navy. It wasn't large. Right?”

“Yes,” Merle said.

“The other thing,” Bill said. “How did your father feel about Jameson? Did he share your conviction that you would have to go on all your life paying a debt to him? To put it bluntly—taking care of him?”

“No,” Merle said. “Dad didn't feel about it the way I did.”

Bill Weigand smiled slightly at the understatement; Merle's tone, not by Merle's intention, betrayed how much of an understatement it was.

“You inherit what your father left, Mr. Merle?”

Weigand's words had the form of a statement; they had the inflection of a question.

“Ann and I,” he said. “There's enough for both, I guess.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “So we have a motive.”

Pam North, sitting beside Jerry, said, “Oh.” Then she said, “Of course!”

“Mr. Jameson killed Mr. Merle so Joshua would have more money,” Pam said, explaining aloud to herself. “And then he would get it from Josh.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “He killed for money, precisely as if he had been going to inherit himself. Because, as long as Joshua Merle kept on feeling the way he did,
wasn't influenced to feel differently
, Jameson was fixed. He hoped he would be fixed for life. And that, Mrs. Hunter, is the reason he tried to kill you. He did try to kill you?”

“He pulled me up and hit me with his fist,” Mary said. “The next thing I knew we were both in the water and he was trying to bang my head against the side of the pool.”

“The idea being,” Bill Weigand said, “that you had slipped and fallen in and that he was trying to save you. But he failed to save you—probably because you had a fractured skull. It would have been hard to prove it was murder, because it was all going to happen in the dark. And even as it was, there wasn't much margin. Mullins and I might have been a little late. Our timing wasn't as good as Mr. Merle's, I'm afraid. To be perfectly honest, it hadn't occurred to me he would turn on you.”

“Why did he?” Josh Merle asked. His voice was puzzled.

“Because,” Bill said, “he thought that there was a good chance that you and Mrs. Hunter might get married, and that she would convince you that your debt to Jameson was—well, was merely something in your mind. Because—”

“All right,” Merle said. He flushed slightly.

“Jamie was perfectly right,” Mary Hunter said, not flushing at all. “I thought Josh was all muddled about it. And Jamie did try to find out if Josh and I were—are—” This time she did flush.

“Right,” Bill said. “Mr. Jameson saw things going on around him. Not as clearly as Mr. Potts, perhaps—but clearly enough. You threatened the future he had murdered to arrange, Mrs. Hunter. So he decided he might as well kill you, too.”

“But—” Pam said. “Like that? Just—casually. He's horrible. Even as murderers go.”

Bill Weigand nodded.

“He is,” he said. “He is, in an unobtrusive way, as vicious a young man as I ever met. He sent you a message, by the way, Mrs. Hunter. He said he was damned sorry it didn't come off. He seemed to feel he should have planned it better. He said: “The trouble is, Lieutenant, that I got hurried toward the end.' He said it precisely as if he were explaining why—oh, why he missed a putt.”

“Is he talking?” Jerry North asked.

Bill Weigand shook his head. Jameson wasn't talking—for the record. He had sent his message when he and Weigand were alone, before he was locked up. He had also said he would deny ever having sent it; he had said that he would, of course, deny everything, from the murder of George Merle on.

“Then,” Pam said, “will you be able to prove it, Bill?”

Bill smiled at her. The smile was tired. He said they could make a case. He said it would be a true case. He said that a jury would have to decide what they had proved. He was non-committal. But when Pam looked at him with special intensity, he nodded just perceptibly. Pam decided he was pretty sure what the jury would decide.

“So—” Weigand said. “I am using you all as a jury, in a way. As jury and witnesses both. We have a motive for the murder of your father, Mr. Merle—and for the attack on Mrs. Hunter. By the way, Mrs. Hunter, did he say anything to you—ask anything—about your—your attitude toward Mr. Merle?”

The girl did not reply. She looked at Josh Merle for a moment and half smiled. She looked at Bill Weigand. Then she nodded.

She would probably have to testify to that, Bill Weigand told her. If they could get it in. It would be pretty far afield, but maybe they could get it in.

“Now, Mr. Merle,” Bill said. “You had an appointment to meet Mr. Jameson at Charles yesterday evening?” He looked at his watch and saw it was after midnight. “Tuesday evening,” he said.

Merle nodded.

“Did you, as far as you remember, tell anyone else about it?” Bill asked.