Payoff for the Banker (26 page)

Merle thought and then shook his head. Then he thought of something and spoke.

“But,” he said, “it wasn't Jamie who called me up.” He spoke with confidence, but then he looked puzzled. “I don't think it was,” he said.

Bill smiled faintly. He said that this was a difficulty. He had thought it would be. He said the defense was going to make a lot of that.

“I'm convinced that it was,” he said. “It had to be—and Jameson lied about it. That was the discrepancy. That was what really convinced me that he was the man we wanted. Because, you see, he made it clear that he had just happened to be walking toward Charles when he ran into you. But you, Mr. Merle, said that you had decided not to wait for Jamie after you got the telephone call and had run into him outside as he was coming in. Remember?”

“Well,” Josh Merle said, “that was the way it was. But how—?”

“From the drug store on the corner,” Bill told him. “It's only a few feet down the street. I think he called you from there, came out quickly and walked toward the restaurant, being pretty certain he would pick you up. As he did. We're trying to find somebody in the drug store who can identify him; we have been all evening. If we can, we've got him. Because—” he broke off and smiled slightly—“Because, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
that call was made to Mr. Merle by somebody who knew his father had been killed. And at that time, nobody knew it but the police, Mrs. Hunter and Mr. and Mrs. North
. The police didn't call; the Norths and Mrs. Hunter didn't call. The murderer called. Jameson called. He disguised his voice. I think you'll decide, Mr. Merle, that you can't swear it
wasn't
Jameson. That you can't swear either way.”

“But why?” Mrs. North said. “Why did he call at all?”

Because, Bill Weigand told her, he wanted to be in on the investigation. He wanted to be where he could watch it—where he could do whatever the turn of the investigation indicated. And the only way he had to do that was to go along with Joshua Merle, who would naturally be questioned. He wanted to be in from the start; he therefore arranged that Merle should be in from the start.

Pam said, “Oh.” She said, “Did he—” and stopped, her eyes wide.

“Precisely,” Bill said. “He found that we suspected Murdock. For good reason. So he gave us Murdock—on a marble slab. Murdock, confessing by suicide that he had killed Mr. Merle. Ending the case by his suicide—except that he had a broken wrist which was improperly set. And that you noticed it, Pam.”

“You mean—he killed Murdock just for that?” Jerry North asked.

“Right,” Weigand said. He seemed surprised at the doubt in Jerry's tone. “What better motive? He didn't care who he killed—you'd have to talk to him to realize how little he cared. And, if it worked, killing Murdock so as to suggest suicide would bring the whole case to an end—with Mr. Jameson comfortably in the clear. It was a very reasonable murder, Murdock's was. As a matter of fact, Jameson is a very reasonable murderer. He is quite unhampered by emotions. He killed only when it could reasonably be expected to do him some good.”

“But,” Pam said, “Mr. Potts?”

Bill shrugged. That, precisely, they would never know, he said. If it came into the trial they would merely have to suggest that Mr. Potts had discovered something—something tangible—that pointed to Jameson as the murderer and that Jameson had discovered that Mr. Potts knew something.

“But,” he said, “I don't think that Mr. Potts had discovered anything tangible. Probably Jameson thought he had. Or perhaps Jameson thought he would find something—or put us in the way of finding something. I think that Potts was killed purely and simply because he was too observant—because he, of all those who knew Jameson, really knew him—really knew that if murder was being done and Jameson were around, Jameson was the man to watch. Because of the kind of man he was. I don't think Mr. Potts knew any more than that.”

He paused.

“Nothing tangible,” he said. “Only observation and reason—only the faculties of the human mind, developed beyond the average. Mr. Potts was a very intelligent man. I think that that cost him his life. We'll never know, but that is what I think. Mr. Potts went beyond facts to the truth once too often.”

He finished his drink and poured another. The rest waited. Bill Weigand sat down with this drink and still they waited.

“Now,” he said finally, “we come to the beginning. Which is where Miss Burke and Murdock came in.” He looked at Miss Burke. “Miss Burke has decided not to press her point about the child,” he said, dryly. “Haven't you, Laurel?”

Laurel Burke looked at him with quiet hate. He waited.

“To hell with you,” she said. “All right.”

“Because,” he said, “if Miss Burke doesn't bother you, and if she testifies as we expect her to, we won't bother Miss Burke. About the plan she and Mr. Murdock had to collect from Mr. Merle.”

He hesitated. He said that part of this was rather embarrassing, because it did not throw an entirely pleasant light on George Merle.

“All right,” Mrs. Burnwood said, unexpectedly and brusquely. “All right. We all know George wasn't a saint.”

He hadn't been, Weigand agreed. He told the story without emotion, explaining that he was summarizing what Laurel Burke had told him.

They must understand, to begin with, that Oscar Murdock had done a good many odd chores for George Merle. Some had to do with business; some had not. Among the latter was—Weigand paused for an inoffensive word—making preliminary arrangements with attractive young women from time to time. They need not go into that, except that Laurel Burke was one of the young women—the last of the young women. Mr. Murdock had made preliminary arrangements after Mr. Merle, who had heard her singing in a small night club, had expressed interest. The preliminary arrangements completed satisfactorily, Murdock had made further arrangements, because Mr. Merle had found in Miss Burke something he had been looking for, for some time.

“Mr. Merle was a careful man,” Weigand pointed out. “He was anxious not to jeopardize his position. Murdock had no position. So ostensibly, Murdock and Laurel set up housekeeping on Madison Avenue. Mr. Merle planned to use it as a cover; for a while he did.”

But Mr. Merle had placed more trust in Murdock than Murdock deserved. Murdock saw a chance to improve on the situation and Miss Burke agreed to the improvements.

“One of which,” Weigand said, “was that Laurel and Murdock made their ostensible relationship their real relationship.”

Weigand paused and thought that over. He apparently concluded that there was no more delicate way of saying it.

They also decided that the surest hold a young woman on the make could have on a rich man who was paying her rent was to have a child by him.

“But she didn't,” Weigand said. “She decided she wasn't going to. So Murdock—coöperated.”

Laurel Burke swore at him suddenly and uglily.

“Miss Burke,” Bill said, undisturbed, “prefers the theory that she and Murdock fell in love. In either event, the results were—as planned. Miss Burke is really going to have a baby. Presumably Murdock's in fact; certainly Mr. Merle's according to the story she and Murdock told Mr. Merle.”

Murdock pretended, of course, that he was still a faithful employee of Merle. He remained, in Merle's eyes, merely an arranger. When Laurel began to demand money in view of her condition—and to talk of a large lump sum settlement—Murdock pretended that he was only the messenger who carried her demands, although in fact he was the one who, with his knowledge of how far Merle could be driven, fixed the amount of the demands. Everything went according to their plan. As part of the plan, Laurel left the apartment on Madison Avenue and went into “hiding”—partly merely to worry Merle; chiefly, Weigand thought, to keep Merle from going directly to Laurel.

“Murdock thought he had better keep it all in his own hands,” Weigand explained. “Probably because he didn't fully trust Miss Burke.”

He looked at Laurel Burke. She had closed her eyes and said nothing.

“Incidentally,” Weigand said, “Murdock decided to sublet the apartment, not being a man to waste if waste could be avoided. It was chance—but not a long chance, since he knew her—that led him to rent it to Mrs. Hunter. He told nobody—not Laurel nor Jameson.”

“Jameson?” Josh Merle repeated. “Did he know about it?”

Weigand nodded. After a certain stage he had.

They could assume that for some time Jameson had realized that George Merle was an obstacle to his plan of living on Joshua Merle for the rest of his life. They could assume that he had already been an obstacle; that Jameson's presence was one of the reasons George Merle kept his son's allowance low. Jameson had looked around for something to do about it, no doubt at first something short of murder. Luck played into his hands when he happened to see George Merle and Laurel together at the Zero Club which, because it was out of the way in a good many respects, Merle considered safe.

Jameson thought he might make something out of that and investigated. He suspected Murdock was in it, knowing that Murdock was usually in things, and—half by persuasion and half by veiled threats—got Murdock to introduce him to Laurel Burke.

Out of Laurel he got the whole story because—

“He guessed part of it,” Laurel Burke interrupted, her voice tired and no longer carefully husky. “He was a smart one—he figured part of it out. Somehow he guessed that Ozzie and I were—were keeping house. He made me think he would go to old man Merle unless we came through with the story. But he didn't want to be cut in and—hell, he was on the make too. He was just one of the crowd. So, one time and another, I told him most of it.”

She stopped and lay back in the chair, her eyes closed. She had, apparently, made her contribution.

“Jameson didn't want to be cut in because he got another idea,” Weigand said. “He decided to use Laurel and Murdock as a cover. If Merle died suddenly, particularly in the Madison Avenue apartment, the Laurel-Murdock angle would come out. And they would be mixed up in it—if it was murder. Particularly if he planted a few clues for the police that mixed them up in it. Once the police found out what Murdock and Laurel were up to, they wouldn't—Jameson figured—bother to look any further.”

It had seemed like a good opportunity, with suspects ready-made. So Jameson, finding out the stage of the negotiations for collecting from Merle, wrote a letter inviting Merle to come to the Madison Avenue apartment to pay off. He set the amount of the payoff low as an inducement and Merle, having no reason to suspect anything but the shakedown he was expecting, went with a check in his pocket. Jameson presumably had suggested a check because a demand for cash might make Merle cautious—might even lead him to bring a bodyguard along. Probably Jameson rather hoped that the check would be made out to cash, in which case he could regard it as a bonus.

He got into the apartment ahead of Merle—they would have to find out how, but presumably by walking up from the ground floor and using a skeleton key in the old lock. They were working on that. When Merle came, Jameson let him in and shot him. He took the check, found it was made out to Murdock—Murdock had arranged that method of payment, persuading Merle that it would leave less open trace than a check made out to cash—and sent it by mail to the bank for deposit to Murdock's account. He hoped this would lead the police to believe that Murdock had been there and got the check himself. He left the letter he had written Merle and signed with Murdock's initials—and had written, it appeared, with gloves on, so that only Merle's fingerprints would show. He left the apartment, walking down the stairs and avoiding the elevator man, and took a cab at Sixth Avenue and made his call to Joshua Merle.

“After that,” Weigand said, “he just did what was necessary as it came up. A lot came up.”

Weigand finished his drink and stood up.

“Which,” he said, “is that—is all of it. He'll be tried in the city for Merle's murder; he'll be indicted for the other murders and, if it seems advisable, for the attack on Mrs. Hunter. And Mullins and I will be getting along back.”

Jerry North stood up and looked at Pamela, and she stood up too.

“Of course,” she said. “It's awfully late.” She turned to Mrs. Burnwood. “Thank you for having us,” she said, and her voice sounded sleepy. “It's been very—” She seemed suddenly to realize what she was saying. “Oh!” Pam North said.

Then she looked at Mary Hunter inquiringly, because Mary had come out with them. Joshua Merle's arm lay along the back of the sofa and Mary Hunter's head was resting on it. Mary's eyes were closed and it did not look as if she had any intention of riding back to New York with the Norths.

“Or,” Pam said to herself, “with anybody.”

So Pam gave Jerry a little push toward the door and they went out after Bill and Sergeant Mullins.

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