The Dishonest Murderer (15 page)

“Two things,” he said. “Where's Freddie? What do I tell the police?”

“I don't know,” Jerry said. “As for the police, tell them everything.”

Admiral Satterbee shook his head doubtfully.

“Fact is,” he said. “Freddie misunderstood. That's why she went to you. Won't the police?”

“Not in the end,” Pam said. “But we can't advise unless we know what you're talking about.”

The admiral said, “Wumph.” He nodded.

“Got something there,” he said. “See that, North?”

Jerry nodded to indicate he saw it.

“But first,” he said, “what experience we've had has been because Lieutenant Weigand is a friend of ours. We don't keep anything from him.”

“Permanently,” Pam said. “Or except to keep him from making a mistake, of course.”

Admiral Satterbee looked first at Jerry North, then at Pam.

“We use our judgment,” Pam told him. “About when.”

Jerry looked at her and seemed about to speak, but the admiral spoke first. He said, “Fair enough.”

“It was this way,” he said. “The man who came here last night was a detective. Private investigator, whatever you call them. I'd hired him. His firm, that is. Made the arrangements with another man. Man named Briggs.” He paused. “Have to admit Briggs made a better impression. This was a man named Smiley. This friend of yours, Weigand, asked about him.”

“You denied knowing him?” Jerry said.

“Wanted to get a course first,” the admiral said. “But I may have been wrong.”

“You were.”

“Go on, Admiral,” Pam said. “Water under the dam.”

They both looked at her and she seemed to be, at the same time, looking at herself.

“It's something else,” she said. “Under the dam isn't right. Bridge?”

“Or over the dam,” Jerry said, And, to Admiral Satterbee, “She's right, of course. Go ahead.”

The admiral went ahead, using his short sentences, pausing now and then, leaving a good deal half said. It had started, he told them, with an anonymous letter. The letter was about Bruce Kirkhill.

The writer of the letter had said that he (or she) felt there was something about Bruce Kirkhill that the admiral, as his prospective father-in-law, ought to know, since it might affect his attitude toward the senator's marriage with Mrs. Haven. Kirkhill was not the upright man he appeared to be. “Used the word upright,” the admiral said. “Meant honest.” Kirkhill was preparing to sell out to the interests opposing the Valley Authority; to sell out, in the most literal fashion, for money. He had been in contact with the Utilities Institute, with its chairman, Grainger. He had accepted money and was to get more. In return, he would change sides. He was preparing a speech in which he would, carefully—arguing that conditions had changed, not his views; that the present was not the time for so great a public expenditure; saving himself as he chose—come out against the project he had so ardently sponsored.

“Not for that sort of thing myself, you understand,” the admiral interjected. “Damned socialism, as I see it. But—makes the man a cheat. An—an outsider. Nobody for Freddie to marry. See my point?”

They saw his point.

“But,” Jerry said, “was there anything to prove this? To make you believe it was true?”

There had, the admiral admitted, been nothing you could call proof. There had merely been accusation.

“Then?” Jerry said, making obvious what he meant by the inflection of his voice. The admiral seemed, for a moment, almost embarrassed.

“I didn't like the man,” he said. “May as well admit it. All right in his way. Not our way. Couldn't see what Winifred saw in him; thought she was making a mistake.” He paused, seemed to make an effort. “Didn't think she'd be happy with him,” he said, uneasily, as if he were speaking in an unfamiliar language. “Want her to be happy.”

“Of course,” Pam North said. “Still?”

“You think I'm an interfering old man,” the admiral said. “Got to old for my job; turned out to grass. Nothing to do but try to change my daughter's course.” There was bitterness in his voice, and challenge, and a desire to be contradicted. “Girl's got no mother,” he said.

“It's not that,” Pam North said. “It's—” She paused, uncertain. They waited a long moment, but she did not go on.

“Anyway,” the admiral said, “this letter. Suppose I grabbed at it. Thought it gave me something to work on. Admit that, if you like. Probably have thrown it away if I hadn't had this—doubt about Kirkhill. Should have done, naturally.” He paused momentarily. “Wish I had,” he admitted.

But he had not thrown the letter away, forgotten it. He had hired detectives in an effort to find out whether there was any truth in the letter's accusations.

“You what?” Jerry North said.

“Hired these men,” the admiral said. He spoke defensively.

“How did you pick them?” Jerry asked. “Somebody recommend them?”

The admiral looked more than ever embarrassed.

“Advertisement,” he said. “Public notice thing, in the
Times.
Investigations. Confidential.”

“Good God!” Jerry North said. “You mean you just picked these people at random? Showed them the letter? Asked them to find you proof?”

“About that,” the admiral said. “Not the way you'd have gone about it, North?”

“Good—” Jerry began and abandoned it. “No,” he said, carefully without emphasis. “But go on, Admiral.”

The admiral went on. He explained as he went, defensively. He had seen the man named Briggs, and had been favorably impressed. Briggs had seemed to accept the proffered employment as a matter of course, as something they did all the time, and this had encouraged Admiral Satterbee, had made the whole matter seem one of business routine. Briggs, it appeared, had, by his appearance and manner, overcome the admiral's hesitancy, and the doubts which the “hole-in-a-corner” office had aroused.

Smiley had not been present during the interview, but Briggs had called him in to meet their new client just as the admiral was about to leave. “Didn't pay much attention to him,” the admiral told the Norths. “Figured he was just a man working for this Briggs. See what I mean?”

They saw. He continued. This had happened a couple of weeks earlier. The letter had arrived; the admiral had thought it over for a day or so, then gone to Briggs and Smiley. For these two weeks, or a little less, he had been receiving reports. They were at first vague and inconclusive, seeming to get nowhere.

“What were they doing?” Jerry asked. “How were they going about it?”

The admiral shook his head. That had never emerged, apparently. “Don't know how they do these things,” he said. “Follow people around, eh? Put in these microphones? Listen in on telephone conversations? I don't know.”

Jerry North shrugged, letting it go.

About ten days ago, the admiral said, Briggs had said they seemed to be getting on to something. He had still not been specific. He had merely said they were making progress, that he thought they were getting somewhere.

But at about the same time, the admiral indicated, he had begun to have doubts about what he was doing. “Began to seem like an underhanded thing,” he said. “Realized I ought to go to Kirkhill himself, put it up to him, if I was going to do anything. Nasty, snoopy business, this way.”

He looked at Pam North, then at Jerry.

“Realized I'd made a mistake,” he said. “Not fair to Kirkhill. Not the sort of thing I wanted Winifred mixed up in.” He shook his head. “Didn't see it clearly before,” he admitted. “Too concerned about the girl. See what I mean?”

“Of course,” Pam North said. “We all do things and wish we hadn't.”

The admiral had debated the matter, become increasingly dissatisfied with what he was doing. Apparently what had decided him to terminate the investigation was a conversation he had had with his daughter the evening before.

“Asked her if she was sure she was right,” he said. “Said she was. Something about her, way she looked, made me feel I was a meddling old fool. So I called these people and ordered them to send me a bill and call it off. Talked to this man Briggs. He wanted to argue, kept saying they were really getting places. Didn't want to argue, so I just told him circumstances had changed. No use telling him I'd changed my mind, you see. Gave him the idea something new had turned up.”

“And this,” Jerry North said, “was just before—just about the time, really—that Kirkhill was killed?”

“That's it,” the admiral said. “That's it, North.”

“But really,” Pam said, “nothing had turned up. It was just something you said?”

“Yes,” Admiral Satterbee said. “But—”

They waited and, now obviously concerned, unhappy, he went on. He had thought it ended there. It had not. “This man Smiley,” he said. “Came around, you know. It was Smiley Winifred told you about. Worried her.”

“It did,” Jerry agreed. “Go ahead, Admiral.”

It had been entirely unexpected; it had been alarming. Smiley had come, and had come confidently, with a kind of gloating assurance. When he saw Smiley, the admiral had realized—apparently for the first time—that his position would be unsatisfactory, even uncomfortable, if the whole matter came out. “Might be misunderstood,” he said. “By Winifred. Even by the police.” He had realized that, little as he wanted to, he would have to talk to Smiley. He had taken him into the library.

Smiley had done most of the talking, the admiral said. There had been a kind of obscurity, a kind of indirection, about what Smiley had said. Smiley had made a good deal of his duty to work with the police; had talked about his license as a private operative, which the police might suspend or cancel if he did not cooperate. But his first duty, he said, was always to his client. He would have to tell the police that he had been investigating Senator Kirkhill. They might think that, in view of Kirkhill's death, the investigation was important.

“But,” Smiley had said, “we always try to protect clients. Briggs and I want to get your point of view on this affair.”

“I told him to tell the police everything,” the admiral said. “None of it had anything to do with Kirkhill's death; that he knew that. He said he understood that; that I understood that. But he wondered if the police would. He said we had to look at all the angles. Said I didn't realize how the police worked. Said, ‘You want to think it over, Admiral. Maybe the police'd think it looked funny. Here you've been trying to get something on this guy. This senator. Hiring us to smell around. Then you say, “Forget it, boys. Something new's come up.” Like you said to Harry. “Circumstances have changed.” Then it turns out somebody's rubbed this guy out. See what I mean?'”

The admiral had not, he said, been ready for this—for the words, for the tone in which they were spoken. The tone, he gave the Norths to understand, had been more important. “He's an oily sort of man,” the admiral said. “Not trustworthy. The kind you get rid of if he turns up in a ship. As a reserve, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Jerry agreed, without inflection.

Smiley had spoken this piece of his, and then had sat smiling at the admiral. “Lot of teeth,” the admiral said. “Showed them all.” He had apparently been waiting for the admiral to say something; had spoken as if there were an answer to this. The admiral had not at once got the point. Smiley had waited, had shaken his head at the admiral's slowness and then had said, promptingly, that he and Briggs would hate to have to tell the police “about all this.” He had said that they hated to get a client in a bad spot. But there, he had said, it was.

“Still didn't get what he was after,” the admiral said. “Not used to men like Smiley. He sounded as if he were thinking of my interests, but I could tell he wasn't. Sounded like a man after something.”

“Yes,” Jerry North said. The admiral's daughter had said her father was inexperienced. “Innocent,” she had said. Could he really be as “innocent” as he now indicated?

“Then,” the admiral went on, “he began to talk about his license again. Said that his livelihood depended on it. Said he'd be on a spot if he didn't go to the police with what he knew. Said he'd be taking a big chance. That—”

“In the end,” Pam North said, “how much did he want? Not to go to the police?”

The admiral looked at Pam.

“Get it, do you?” he said. “Obvious all along, I suppose.” He shook his head. “I got it, finally,” he said.

Smiley had not, the admiral told them, said how much he wanted. He had said that he would have to think the matter over; he had made a point that he had not asked for anything. He had even pretended to be surprised at the admiral's interpretation. He had said he would have to talk it over with his partner. He had, in short, avoided putting in words anything which, repeated, would convict him. But the admiral, by then, had had no doubt what Smiley meant. And he had agreed that he would see Smiley again, after Smiley had talked to his partner.

“Going to call me up,” the admiral said. “Arrange a place to meet. ‘Talk the whole matter over,' he said.” He paused. “Well?” he said.

“Go to the police,” Jerry told him, at once. “Tell them the whole story. If—they'll understand.”

“‘If it's true,' you were going to say,” the admiral told Jerry North. “There it is, North. Who's going to believe it? Do you?”

“Yes,” Pam said. “Anyway, weren't you here, in the apartment, when Senator Kirkhill was—when somebody poisoned him?”

The admiral shook his head. He was unhappy about it. But he had not been in the apartment. He had gone out to dinner, alone. “There was this party coming up,” he said. “Lot to do in the galley. Went out to my club and had dinner. Already told the police that.”