The Norths Meet Murder (10 page)

“Yes?” said Weigand.

Edwards hesitated and looked rather unhappy.

“Lately,” he said, “there has been, or perhaps I may now say was, a misunderstanding on Berex's part. He felt that I—this is rather difficult, as you will understand, because I wish to be fair—that I had not been managing the trust as efficiently, shall I say, as it might be managed.” Edwards paused, and smiled, forgivingly. “It is difficult for practical men like you and me to appreciate how utterly without experience such men as Louis Berex may be in practical matters,” he said. “Securities, changes of value, rearrangement of investments—all things of that sort—are completely a closed book to Berex. He thinks, I believe, that securities somehow lay money, like hens.” He smiled, understandingly. “He felt that his securities were not laying well, as indeed, during the past year or so, they were not. He wanted an immediate explanation, but he could not understand the explanation when I gave it. Then he hired Brent.”

Weigand nodded.

“It was, I suppose, quite a natural thing for him to do,” Edwards said. “I was, perhaps, a little hurt, but I could understand. But I felt, at the same time, that a man of Brent's experience was—but one should not speak ill of the dead.”

“You felt that Brent was stringing him along, for the fee?” Weigand inquired, bluntly. Edwards thought it over, and in the end, nodded reluctantly.

“Something like that,” he said. “I felt—ethics—” He looked at Weigand hopefully, and Weigand nodded.

“Right,” Weigand said, and made mental notes. It was another matter to be looked into: He might, Weigand explained to Edwards, as well see Berex too, since, for the moment, one could not tell what might be learned from anyone who had known Brent. He got Berex's address, and saw that Mullins noted it. He turned to another point, assuring Edwards that it was purely routine, and for the record. Would Mr. Edwards outline his activities on Monday?

Mr. Edwards looked, momentarily, pained, then nodded. If, of course, he could remember—but yes, he could remember, as it happened. He had been out of town Sunday and part of Monday morning, reaching home a little before noon. He had changed and gone to his office, but only for a short time. Then he had returned to the apartment. That evening he was having a small buffet supper for some friends; some twenty friends. There was much to be done in preparation, particularly since he had been away the day before and could attend to nothing, and there was little exigent to do at the office. “My hours are always rather short at the office, I am afraid,” he said, with the smile of an apologetically indolent man. “Here, for example, I am at home at what is, for so many business men, the middle of the afternoon.” He had spent Monday afternoon making some preparations himself, and directing Kumi in others. “Kumi is my servant,” he explained. “My only servant. I live alone and very simply—but very simply.” He smiled, deprecatingly.

“I even tried my hand at cooking,” he said. “As, indeed, I often do. You may perhaps regard that as, how shall I say—an odd activity for a man? And flower arranging, too, no doubt? I always arrange the flowers myself.”

“No,” said Weigand, “I wouldn't think anything about that, particularly.” Edwards beamed on him.

“And you were alone all afternoon, or only with Kumi?” Weigand asked. “Kumi was here when you came, of course?”

Edwards nodded to the first question, and nodded again to the second.

“Not much of an alibi, I am afraid,” he said. “But it could hardly have taken all afternoon—I mean, isn't from twelve to, say six rather a long span of time? For an hour or so, perhaps, I might be more precise. If you could—?”

Weigand thought it over and decided he might, within limits, be more specific. He said they could, roughly, call it between three and four-thirty. Did that help?

Edwards shook his head, with a disarming expression, and said he was afraid it didn't.

“It is quite ridiculous,” he said. “About then I must have been preparing the lobster and Kumi was probably cleaning upstairs. I started him on that, I remember, not long after I returned from the office. That was about the time the lobsters came, and I was, I am afraid, rather annoyed.”

Mr. Edwards was annoyed, it turned out, because the lobsters should have been delivered during the morning, when Kumi could have shelled them while he was putting things to rights on the lower floor. As it was, Mr. Edwards, feeling that time was growing short and that there was much to do, had been forced to shell the lobsters himself, a process at which he was, he admitted, by no means expert. It was, he had found, very hard on the hands to shell lobsters. Perhaps he was shelling lobsters at the very time that—He paused, delicately.

“And I fear the lobsters cannot substantiate my alibi,” he said. “They were, shall I say, unresponsive at the time and now, I fear, are long since digested entirely.” He looked thoughtful. “I hope,” he added. “And Kumi, while certainly in the apartment, was upstairs during most of the period you fix, so I fear—”

Weigand nodded and was consoling. No doubt it was of no importance. Still, Mr. Edwards might think it over and, if any details occurred to him, keep them in mind against the further question or two which might be necessary. “To complete the record,” Weigand assured Mr. Edwards, pleasantly. For now, he could think of nothing else; Mr. Edwards had been most helpful. Mr. Edwards expressed himself as pleased to have been helpful, and offered to be even more so. He would, for one thing, be glad to make the records of the Berex trust available to investigators, since the matter had come up, and if Weigand had, remaining, any doubts. Weigand deprecated the necessity, but said he would, to complete the record, send auditors around.

Weigand leaned forward to rise from the chair and a nickeled watch popped, somehow, out of a vest pocket. It popped out and slithered across the carpet almost to Mr. Edwards' feet. Mr. Edwards retrieved it, as one instinctively retrieves articles which roll to one's feet, and handed it back to Weigand, who accepted it with apologies for his clumsiness and replaced it in his pocket, holding it lightly by the stem. He shook hands with Mr. Edwards, which was like shaking hands with a small, smooth cushion, and led Mullins out.

It was, he thought, probably foolish to go to so much trouble to get Edwards' fingerprints on the watch, carefully polished for the purpose, but so long as he had he might as well have them brought up. Mullins approved that, but was rather cross with the lieutenant for not pursuing the alibi further.

“We oughta talked to that servant,” he said. “If there's anything screwy going on there, they can cook something up together.”

“Do you really think there is?” Weigand asked. Mullins started to answer, with some emphasis. “About the case, I mean,” Weigand added. Mullins, rather grudging about it, shook his head.

“Not that guy,” he said. “Flowers! Cooking! Huh!”

They walked back toward the subway and were, Weigand realized, hardly a block from the Buano house. While they were there, he thought, they might as well check up a point or two with the Norths. He looked at his watch—not at the nickeled watch, but at one on his wrist—and found, rather to his surprise, that it was after five. Presumably Mr. North, also, would be at home. He might as well, Weigand decided, find out where Mr. North was on Monday afternoon, for the sake of the thoroughness Inspector O'Malley so much prized.

7

W
EDNESDAY

5:15
P.M.
TO
5:45
P.M.

The Norths were home, and at cocktails, which they urged on Weigand and Mullins. Weigand said that, of course, they were on duty—Mullins looked very unhappy—and that they would be very glad of cocktails. Mullins beamed, and his beam grew when Mr. North, after a quick look, suggested he might prefer rye. Mullins did prefer rye.

“I was telling him about the murderer's leaving his name,” Mrs. North said. “Was he?”

“What?” said Weigand. “This is where I came in,” he said to himself, bewildered.

“Was he the murderer, of course,” Mrs. North said. “The man who left his name—Edwards. The laundryman.”

Weigand said that he hadn't, as yet, seen the laundryman, although no doubt it would be attended to. He had, he said, seen Clinton Edwards.

“And is he?” Mrs. North said.

“Listen—” said Mr. North. “You shouldn't ask him things like that. Murders are confidential.”

“Right,” said Weigand. “However, I don't think he is, as a matter of fact.” He remembered something. “You had dinner at his house Monday evening? Right?”

“Right,” said Mr. North.

“Did you have lobster?” Weigand asked. Both the Norths looked at him in astonishment. He nodded, confirmingly.

Mr. North said he had a vague idea they had lobster and Mrs. North said certainly, from her receipt. “Recipe,” she said. “Only I was brought up saying receipt.”

Weigand explained about Edwards and the lobsters. He supposed, he said, that one could spend considerable time preparing lobsters? Both the men looked at Mrs. North, who said that one certainly could, particularly by her receipt.

“Hours,” said Mrs. North. “Simply hours.”

“Literally?” said Mr. North, interested.

Mrs. North nodded, adding that, of course, it depended on how many and where you started. If you started with live lobsters, it was one thing, but she never did because of the claws and putting them in boiling water. She couldn't, she said, bear to think of lobsters in boiling water, so she had it done at the market. But even with the lobsters boiled, there was the problem of taking them out of the shell, and then boiling the shells.

“The shells?” said Weigand. Mr. North, at whom the detective was looking, nodded.

“She boils them,” he said. “For the flavor. But I usually take them off. It takes time, all right.”

It didn't seem, to Weigand, that they were going much of any place.

“Well,” he said, “anyway—”

Mrs. North said she could get him the receipt, if he liked, but Weigand shook his head, just in time to save Mullins from choking on his drink. Recipes for lobster would, Mullins' face reported, be entirely the last straw. “Screwy!” Mullins' face said, with exclamation-points.

“I could send it to you,” Mrs. North said, pursuing the subject. Weigand nodded, abstractedly. He said there were one or two other things.

“The slip,” said Mrs. North. “What about the slip? Show it to him.”

Weigand hesitated a moment.

“After all,” Mrs. North said, “who found it?”

Weigand shook the slip from the envelope to the coffee-table and they bent over it.

“Handwriting?” Mr. North inquired.

Weigand shook his head. Printed as it was, and so small a sample, it would be very nearly hopeless, he imagined. The experts could try, of course. They looked at the name, and it told them nothing new.

“How about the other side?” Mr. North said. “Blank, I suppose?”

Weigand realized that he hadn't looked, because he supposed so, too. He flipped it over with the torn end of a paper match. It was, as everyone had expected, blank. They stared at it, and all three saw at the same time that it was not quite blank. At one end of the slip, on the edge, were two small marks. Mr. and Mrs. North pointed at it together, and said, “What's that?”

The marks were tiny and only a fraction of an inch apart; they slanted diagonally away from each other. The Norths leaned back and looked at one another, while the detective studied the marks. Mrs. North said she bet she knew what it was.

“Part of a letter,” said Mrs. North. “Somebody cut a letter down the center.” She looked very pleased. “I think it's a fine clue,” she said. Mr. North looked at the marks again.

“What letter would be like that?” he said.

Mrs. North's lips moved faintly as she ran through the alphabet.

“K,” she said, triumphantly. “If you cut a K just to the right of the fork and left it on, it would look like that.”

Weigand and Mr. North looked at her; even Mullins allowed his attention to be distracted, momentarily, in the direction of the slip.

“It could be,” Mr. North said. “It could be, at that, Weigand.”

Weigand look at it again. It could, at that.

“Or an X,” he said.

The Norths looked at it again.

“Any other letter?” Mr. North said. Separately, but more or less in unison, they ran over the alphabet. They all looked at one another, and shook their heads. It couldn't, they decided.

“It could be K going away or X going either way,” Mrs. North said. “But nothing else.”

“That's right, too,” Mr. North said. “Only, of course, it needn't be a letter at all. It can be just a couple of marks, meaning something else.”

Weigand agreed; Mrs. North didn't.

“It has to be a letter,” she said. “Part of a letter, anyway. It looks like it. We ought to look at it through a glass.”

Weigand nodded. It would, he agreed, be a good idea.

“Got a glass?” said Weigand.

“No,” said Mrs. North. That seemed to be that, for the moment. Using his match, Weigand wheedled the slip back into the envelope.

“I'll have it examined,” he said. “They may turn up something.” They sipped their drinks a moment, and Weigand said there were a couple of other points.

“Do you people know the Fullers?” he said. “Benjamin Fuller and his wife.”

“Jane,” said Mrs. North. “Ben and Jane.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “Then you do. Do you know whether they knew Brent?”

Mrs. North started to shake her head, but Mr. North said, “Yes.”

“Oh, Jerry,” Mrs. North said. “Now you've brought them in!”

Mr. North looked surprised and said, “But they did.