The Norths Meet Murder (15 page)

Then the report from Brooklyn arrived, in an official Department envelope, and Weigand ripped it open. Mullins rallied around.

The Research Bureau had discovered several things. The slip was, to be exact, one and seven-eighths inches by five-eighths; it had been snipped from a good grade of bond paper with, the bureau believed, curved manicure scissors. The paper was of a type widely used and it was, the Research Bureau assured the Homicide Bureau, highly improbable that it could be traced, although the manufacturer's name could, no doubt, be established. From other indications, the slip apparently had been cut from a printed letterhead.

The marks on the narrow edge of the back of the slip led, the Bureau reported, to this conclusion. In cutting the slip, the person who had prepared it had cut into what probably was the name printed on the letterhead, leaving on the slip a part of one of the letters. The letter was, the Bureau had satisfied itself by examination under magnification, an X or, if a K, the only other alternative, a K from a specially cast type font. The angle of the marks, together with the lengths of the serifs on the two marks, made it almost certain, however, that X was the letter cut. It might be either the first or the last letter of the name—the Bureau suggested, for what it was worth, that the letterhead might have been printed for a man whose first name was Xavier, that being the name which first came to the mind of Detective Sergeant Kelly, who had dictated the report. It might, in time, be possible to trace the identity of the owner of the letterhead by canvassing print shops. The printing was by a special method which gave a raised surface to the printed words, simulating engraving. The name had not, however, been engraved.

There were two fingerprints on the slip, one on each of the opposing surfaces. The prints had been developed, photographed, enlarged and compared with the records. They were not the prints of anyone on record in the New York Police Department and had been, duly, dispatched to Washington for comparison there. Since the prints had been removed, indexed and filed, the Research Bureau had applied a fixative to the originals on the slip so that detectives working on the case might study the positions. The Bureau also supplied technical details as to the weight of the paper stock, the grade and probably manufacturer of the ink and added that slight traces of ink of a different grade, presumably from a typewriter ribbon, were present in the thumb print—see exhibit—which indicated that the owner of the thumb was also owner of a typewriter.

Weigand, whose digestion was quieting somewhat, saw exhibit, with a good deal of interest. The two prints stood out, now, clearly. The face and the reverse of the slip now had this appearance:

Weigand had picked up the fingerprints of both the Norths after Mrs. North had found the slip, and a glance was enough to show him that the prints on the slip were not theirs. Prints of Edwards had been developed overnight from the detective's watch—which was now scrupulously polished again and back in his pocket—and at first Weigand thought he saw a resemblance. Then he looked again and doubted it. Mullins was directed to have the prints from the slip and those of Edwards compared and get the answer. Mullins wrestled with the telephone a moment, and then announced he'd better go and see about it himself.

“Get them compared with Brent's, too,” Weigand directed, “or do I have to tell you everything? And with anybody else's we've got on this.” Mullins went to see about it.

Weigand stared at the slip and thought about Berex. The coincidence was, obviously, too great to be merely a coincidence; it was safe betting that the men whose names ended or began in X were few enough so that the chance of there being two in any one case was faint. Then he remembered something, and telephoned Detective Auerbach, who brought in one of the letters Berex had written Brent. The letterhead bore only the name of Louis Berex, and one glance at it pretty well clinched matters. He laid a piece of paper over Berex's letterhead so that the edge bisected the final letter. There was no doubt at all. He was less than ever surprised, therefore, when Mullins returned from the Identification Bureau to report that nobody so far printed in the case, beginning with the victim himself, had prints matching those on the slip.

It left the next step clear enough, and Weigand rose to take it. Then the telephone on his desk rang. He reached for it.

“And new binding on both edges,” the voice said. “And see if you can't find the belt to—”

“Hello,” said Weigand.

“—my brown dress,” said the voice. “I want Lieutenant Weigand, please.”

Weigand placed the voice.

“If,” he said, “you expect us to start looking for the belt to your brown dress, Mrs. North, I'm afraid—”

Mrs. North's laugh came through the receiver and then was cut off suddenly. Apparently she had remembered something.

“It's terrible, isn't it?” she said. “Did you read about it?”

“Listen,” said Weigand. “I don't get this. What's so terrible about a belt? Why should I read about it?”

Mrs. North said, “Oh, that,” and that he should forget it.

“That was the boy from the cleaner's,” she said. “They lost it, only really they just forgot to send it back. No, I mean it's terrible about poor old Timothy, who was sweet.”

“Timothy?” Weigand said. It was, as far as he could remember, a new one on him.

“Barnes,” Mrs. North said. “Timothy Barnes. The postman; the man who delivers the mail.”

Weigand remembered something about a man named Barnes who delivered mail—oh, yes, who had helped Mrs. North extract the slip from the mailbox.

He said he remembered. What about Mr. Barnes?

“He's dead!” Mrs. North said. “Murdered. It's in the papers on the front page, only it doesn't say he was. But he was, of course.”

Weigand jumped, sat down on the end of the desk and said, with something like excitement in his voice:

“What!” Then he said: “Listen, what paper?”

Mrs. North told him.

“It says an accident or suicide,” Mrs. North said. “But it wasn't, of course. It was because he found the slip. The murderer got him.”

Excitement ran through the real regret in Mrs. North's voice. Weigand thought quickly, and decided that it was odd, all right. Coincidence, maybe—but still.

“Are you sure it's the same man?” he asked. Mrs. North was; it was the same name. And the man was a mail-carrier, too; it was even in the neighborhood.

“And listen,” she said. “Jerry and I were talking it over, and he was going
down
town. And he lived
up
town. And we thought he was going to Headquarters to tell you something and the murderer knew it and pushed him off.”

It was muddled, Weigand decided. And then, with a rather chilly feeling, he realized there was something in it. It was too much of a coincidence; too hard to take unless there was something in it. Then he thought of something else. If the murderer was that kind of a murderer—the kind out to clean up loose ends, ruthlessly—there were others who weren't in too healthy a position.

Mrs. North said, “Hello? Are you still there?”

Weigand said he was, and then talked crisply. The Norths, he thought, had better stay in and be careful whom they let in and he would send Mullins up to stick around.

“If he's after people,” he explained, “you and Mr. North are in line, perhaps. We don't know, but we'll play it safe.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. North, in the tone of a person who hadn't thought of that before. “You think—?”

If you put it that way, Weigand said, no, he didn't. But there was a chance, particularly if the slip was at the bottom of it. He'd come up later and they'd talk it over; meanwhile Mullins would be around and stick close.

“And not too much rye for him,” he added, for the benefit also of Mullins, who was listening. Mullins said, indignantly, “Now, listen here, Loot!” and Weigand waved him to silence. Mrs. North promised they would wait in for Mullins.

“The slip must be important, then,” she said. “If it is the slip.”

Weigand said that it began to look as if it might be, and that now he had things to do. “I'll be around,” he said. “Sit tight.”

Mullins already had his hat on when Weigand cradled the telephone. He said, “Listen, Loot,” and Weigand waved him on. “Only if I find you boiled—” he warned. Mullins looked grieved, and went on. Weigand got hold of a paper. On the front page, Mrs. North had said. It took him a minute to find the story. It wasn't a long story. It read:

SUBWAY DEATH HALTS TRAFFIC

Elderly Mail-Carrier Ends Life in the City Subway
.

Timothy Barnes, 87 years old, a mail-carrier, fell or jumped from the downtown platform of the Independent Subway at the Fourth Street station late yesterday, dying under the wheels of a Brooklyn-bound express train. Traffic on the express track was tied up for more than an hour and it was necessary to route express trains on the local track below Fourteenth Street until the body was removed.

Police recorded the case as probably suicide, although Barnes' wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Barnes, who lived with her husband at 643 East 172nd Street, the Bronx, said she knew of no reason why he should take his life. He was, according to Mrs. Barnes, in apparent good spirits when he left home yesterday morning. His health had been good and he was looking forward to his imminent retirement. He bad been a Post Office carrier for twenty-four years, and would have been eligible for a pension in August, next year.

Weigand called Charles Street Station, and got the lieutenant in charge of the Sixth Precinct detectives on the wire. Rapidly he sketched the situation and Lieutenant Sullivan at the other end figuratively threw up his hands.

“Could he have been pushed?” Sullivan repeated. “Sure he could have been pushed. He could have got dizzy and fallen; he could have jumped; he could have slipped on a banana peel. We'll never know.”

The platform was, Sullivan explained, moderately crowded, and there were half a dozen people, perhaps more, within arm's length of Barnes before he fell. Some of them were still there when the police arrived; some of them weren't. There was no way of telling. Nobody saw Barnes pushed, if that helped—yes, they had asked, as a matter of routine. Nobody saw that he wasn't pushed. A man nearby had reached out in, apparently, an effort to grab Barnes, and had missed him. A woman on the other side had, according to one witness, actually clutched at Barnes' coatsleeve, and it had been torn from her fingers. Neither the man nor the woman was among the witnesses the police had found to question, which proved nothing.

“People go sort of crazy when something like that happens,” Sullivan said. “Some crowd around; others run off. Some faint, and some just gloat. If somebody pushed him, we'll never know it—we'll never know either way.”

“He was going downtown?” Weigand said. “Right?”

He was, Sullivan said. Yes, they had noticed that he lived in the Bronx and that, normally, it was an hour when he would have been going home. All right, Sullivan said, mark it “suspicious” and there you were. It was going to stay suspicious, he thought. But he would send Weigand copies of all the reports, for what they were worth.

11

T
HURSDAY

10:45
A.M.
TO
N
OON

Weigand tucked the slip of paper which had invited Stanley Brent to his death into a fresh envelope, holding both slip and envelope carefully by the edges, and dropped the envelope into a pocket. He started out, thought better of it and went to the door of the squad room. He beckoned Detective Stein, a tall, dark young man, to come along. Stein came along, pleased, but a little curious. Weigand answered the inquiry in his face by saying that Mullins was on another job, and that they were going uptown to talk to a man, not about a dog. Stein said, “Right,” and Weigand grinned at him.

The appointment was at Berex's office, in a tall, rather old office building on Broadway, near Madison Square. It was, Weigand saw, a building of no special character—the directory listed men and firms in a variety of businesses. The white letters opposite Room 714 spelled out the name of Louis Berex and stopped, noncommittal as to the nature of Mr. Berex's activities. The detectives rode up to the seventh floor in an elevator which was in no hurry, and found Room 714 in the rear. Only one door gave entrance into it and black lettering on the door merely repeated Berex's name. Furthermore, the door was locked.

“What the hell?” Weigand said. He looked at his watch and discovered that they were a few minutes early. Then they heard the elevator stop again at the floor and a thin, wiry, sandy man came along the corridor. He stopped when he came up to them.

“Looking for me?” he said.

“Are you Berex?” Weigand said. The wiry man nodded and said he was sorry if he was late. It dawned on Weigand that Berex had come to the office solely to meet detectives.