The Norths Meet Murder (2 page)

To the right of the mailboxes were four bells, each similarly identified with the name of one of the tenants. The Norths' identification card was cut from a calling card; the Nelsons' was typed; Mrs. Buano's was hand-printed in ink and the bell connecting with the fourth floor was, generally, unidentified. If you were calling, you pressed the suitable button and a bell rang angrily in the apartment of your host, usually making him jump convulsively. Then, in theory, he went to a wall telephone in his apartment and asked who you were, his voice emerging from a grating in the vestibule. You yelled back into the grating and told him. But these amenities were commonly dispensed with, because the system was usually obscurely broken down. Newcomers to the house yelled valiantly into their telephones for a couple of months, and their guests yelled valiantly back, but communication was seldom effectively established. Experienced tenants, like the Norths, who had been there six years, merely pressed a little button set into their wall telephone.

Pressure on this little button actuated a mechanism in the lock of the downstairs door, and set up a furious clicking there. Inexperienced callers stared at the inner vestibule doors doubtfully when this clicking began and then, catching on, threw their weight against them. If everything had gone properly, one of the doors then opened, letting them into the inner hall, with heavily carpeted stairs leading up. The hall, in spite of a skylight at the top of the house, was usually dark; now and then, when a bulb burned out, it was almost entirely dark. Like everything else in the Buano house, it was also very clean; in the winter it was usually too warm, but in the summer—because of the thick walls of the house and old-fashioned ideas of spaciousness—it was surprisingly cool. To reach the Norths, you went up one flight.

The Norths lived on the second floor—once the parlor floor—in two big rooms and two little rooms. The big rooms, one facing the street and the other the rear garden, had fireplaces and high ceilings and deeply recessed windows and were, respectively, bedroom and living-room. There was a hall and bath between them. Mr. North's study was hall-bedroom size, and at the front; and in the rear was its twin, the kitchen. Martha, the maid, almost filled the kitchen, but did not seem discomfited, nor, the Norths noted thankfully, handicapped.

The floor above the Norths was similarly laid out, although with lower ceilings, and was almost always rented. The plans for the top floor, however, had eliminated the study, and the living-room stretched the width of the house in front, with a sweep of windows admitting north light riotously. That was why Mrs. Buano called it the studio, and there had been painters in it. Recently, however, it had proved that everyone who wanted a studio wanted it for a piano and pupils, and on that Mrs. Buano, who had firm ideas, set a firm foot. Better, she said, vacancy than pianos, and pupils always on the stairs.

“Tracking,” Mrs. Buano said.

Thus it was vacant, as per announcement on a swinging board on the front of the house, and available for the party.

“And,” said Mrs. North, finishing her second Tom Collins, “I've got it all worked out. Come on.”

“Come on?” said Mr. North. “Where?”

“We'll go look at it,” Mrs. North said. “I know where we want the radio and you tell me what you think about yellow paper.”

“Listen,” said Mr. North, “why yellow paper, for heaven's sake?”

“Hallowe'en,” said Mrs. North, “or, anyway, thereabouts. For decoration. Come on.”

Mr. North sighed, but the Tom Collinses had mellowed him and he went on. They went up the two flights and came to the door of the top-floor apartment, which was closed.

“All locked up,” said Mr. North, quickly. “We can look tomorrow.” He turned, ready to start down again, but Mrs. North said, a little impatiently, that it wasn't locked, and proved her point by pushing it open. “I was up yesterday and it wasn't locked,” she said. “Mrs. Buano leaves it unlocked so people can look at it without her going upstairs. Come on.”

Mr. North, who wanted to go and mix another Collins, sighed and followed her in. It was, he saw at once, dusty and forsaken-looking. And, although a faint breeze came through a partly opened window at the rear, it was extremely hot. Mr. North looked around quickly and said all right.

“All right for the party,” he said. “Fine for the party. Let's go.”

Mrs. North put a restraining hand on his arm, and Mr. North stopped.

“Here,” she said, looking around the smaller rear room, “we'll have the bar.”

“Bar?” said Mr. North.

Mrs. North led him through the hallway to the big studio room.

“And dancing here,” she said, “with the radio over there.” She pointed. “And you'll have to get the electricity turned on, and see Mrs. Buano about the water.”

“Water?” said Mr. North.

“It's turned off, too,” Mrs. North said. “Everything's turned off, and we'll have to get somebody to clean, unless—”

“No,” Mr. North said, “I certainly won't. We'll get somebody to clean.”

There would, Mrs. North pointed out, be a lot of cleaning to do in the studio room, and in the rear room. The kitchen, since they could cook anything they wanted cooked in their own apartment, didn't matter so much. And there was, of course, the bathroom. That would have to be cleaned, of course, because people—

“Yes,” said Mr. North, quickly, “I see that.”

Mrs. North's heels clicked on the bare floor as she went to examine the bathroom. The bathroom door was closed, and she opened it quickly. The bathroom, without a window, was black vacancy, with only faint light filtering in from the hall.

“A match,” Mrs. North said; “we'll just look.”

Mr. North, behind her, flicked on his lighter and held its wavering flame above her shoulder. Both peered into the bathroom. And then Mrs. North's breath came in, with a kind of shudder, and Mr. North shook out the light and, seizing her shoulders, drew her back against him, holding her firmly.

“All right,” said Mr. North, quickly, and keeping the shake out of his own voice. “All right, Pamela.” The voice came through to Mrs. North, and she managed not to scream, and in a moment he had pulled her back from the door, and was saying, over and over: “All right, kid. All right.”

She was quiet after a moment, and nodded, although she still did not dare to try to speak. Mr. North held his hands for a moment firmly on her shoulders, and then flicked on his lighter again and went back, because he had to, to look at what they had seen. It was not a pleasant thing to look at.

Whoever had hit the man who was lying in the tub had hit him much harder than was necessary, even admitting a murderer's necessities. The head lay against the sloping end of the tub with a peculiar, horrible flatness, and that, quite clearly, was because blows had crushed in the back of the head. The face, too, was battered and discolored, but there did not seem to be any other mark on the body. Mr. North could see that, because the body was entirely naked—naked and white in the uncertain light of the little flame. After Mr. North had looked at it a moment it seemed to him to begin to float, and then Mr. North turned and went out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Mrs. North was standing where he had left her and she looked at him once. Then she was clinging to him, shaking, and saying something he could not understand about the party. He thought she did not understand what she was saying, either, because she seemed to feel that there was something horrible in their having planned to give a party.

2

T
UESDAY

5:15
P.M.
TO
7
P.M.

Mrs. North was still trembling a little when they reached their own apartment, but she was sure that she was perfectly all right. “Only it was awful,” she said, “just when we were talking about a party.” She had, she said, always wondered how people felt when they discovered a murder, and then she looked a little puzzled, and said that even now she didn't know, really.

“Things happen too quickly to have feelings about them, don't they?” she said. “I mean, by that time things are over, and you begin to have feelings about the kind of feelings you had. And it isn't as if we knew him, of course.”

She was, Mr. North saw, coming out of it quickly—much more quickly, as a matter of fact, than he was, and he thought that it must have something to do with speed of perception. He, for example, was only now really shaky and glad to sit down. He sat down and reached for the telephone. “Police?” Mrs. North said, and Mr. North nodded.

“You know,” he said, “I never called the police. I never really thought I would.” Mrs. North nodded.

But, an indefatigable reader of directions, Mr. North remembered how to call the police, and dialed the operator. She was cool and impersonal and a long way off, where nothing had happened.

“I want the police,” Mr. North said. Then he remembered the phrase. “I want a policeman,” he said.

“What?” said the operator, as if it had come to her very suddenly. Perhaps, Mr. North thought, she has never called the police, either. Mr. North told her again and gave his name and address. “It seems to be murder,” he added, because he wanted to tell somebody about so strange and awful a thing.

“Thank you,” said the operator, and cut off, leaving Mr. North with a sense of incompletion. He was still glad to be sitting down, but he was feeling better. Mrs. North seemed virtually all right again, excited instead of shocked.

“You know,” she said, “they'll think we did it. They always do.”

It seemed, momentarily, odd to Mr. North that things, including his wife, were going on as usual; that they were talking as usual, and no more clearly or dramatically than usual. Then he decided it was not odd at all.

“People who find bodies,” he said. “Yes, they do usually.” He paused, thinking it over. “And, as a matter of fact, they're usually right,” he added. Something was bothering him.

“You didn't see it—him, I mean—when you were up there yesterday?” he said. “I mean, of course you didn't, but—”

Mrs. North looked at him, and a slight, affectionate quirk appeared at one corner of her mouth. Her voice was very serious, however.

“No,” she said. “I'd have mentioned it.” She waited until Mr. North looked up.

Mr. North had a moment to feel that things were all right again. “I—” Mrs. North began.

But then there was a wailing in the street, and an angry screech of brakes, and the sound of feet hurrying grittily oil the steps outside. A moment later the Norths' bell rang, in the way only a policeman, or perhaps a boy with a telegram, rings bells.

“Cops,” said Mr. North, and clicked them in. There were only two of them, at first, and they were in uniform.

“North?” the one who was ahead said, as if he suspected Mr. North of being hard of hearing. “Gerald North, 95 Greenwich Place? What's going on here?”

“We—” Mr. North began. But a great hungry wailing of sirens in the street outside poured in through the open windows of the apartment and drowned his voice. More brakes wailed, and in the background of the sound there was the distant rise and fall of other sirens.

“My,” said Mrs. North, who was at the front windows. “My—cops! Come and look.”

“I've got cops,” Mr. North shouted back, before he thought. The leading cop said: “Hey, you!” But by that time there were two more cops coming up the stairs.

“Six cars, every which way,” Mrs. North called, excitedly. “They don't pay any attention to one-way streets. Seven cars, and there's going to be a crowd. Oh—!”

Mr. North faced four policemen, and more were coming. It was all rather absurd—absurd and disproportionate, and for a moment Mr. North thought of the awful quiet upstairs in the bathroom and the faint light on the white body, and how it had begun to float. And now everything was so overwhelmingly alive, and full of sound.

“Upstairs,” Mr. North said. “Top floor, in the bathroom. We found him.”

The first two cops pounded on up the stairs. The next two went after them, but two more stayed with Mr. North.

“Well, buddy,” one of them said, “what's going on, here?”

Mr. North looked at him, and said: “Oh, for God's sake.”

“Listen, buddy—” the cop said.

“Where do you think you're going? To a fire?” Mr. North said, loudly. He was angry, all at once.

“There's another one, now,” Mrs. North called, in what was clearly a pleased tone. “A big one, just like anybody's. And another little one.”

“I guess it's the squad car, Buck,” Mr. North's adversary said to the other policeman. “Get on inside, buddy.” He said this last to Mr. North, in a tone of dislike, and Mr. North backed farther into the apartment. The two policemen came in with him, and stood looking at him. Then a much quieter voice spoke from the doorway, and the two policemen turned to face another man.

“What's going on here?” the new man said, but in a different tone. He said it as if he really wanted to know what was going on there. The policemen saluted.

“We just got here ourselves, Lieutenant,” the spokesman said. “Some of the boys have gone on up.”

“Some of them?” the lieutenant inquired. “Well, go up and bring some of them down. Before they take it apart.” He spoke quietly, and did not seem excited or angry. “And you are the man who telephoned?” he said, to Mr. North. “Mr. Gerald North?” Mr. North nodded. “And you found a body, right?” Mr. North nodded again. There seemed, now, to be more connection between the white body upstairs and all this confusion—a connection, as yet remote, but which might grow tangible.

The new policeman looked at Mr. North as if he saw him, and spoke as if he were speaking to another man. It also helped that he was in ordinary clothing—an ordinary blue suit, with a white handkerchief in the breast pocket, and a soft gray hat, worn tilted forward on his head. He did not seem angry about anything at all, but only interested, and he was, Mr. North guessed, in his late thirties. There was nothing special about him, except an air of interest.