The Norths Meet Murder (24 page)

Weigand let a cigarette burn into the edge of his desk, and thought about Kumi. He sighed and picked the cigarette up and inhaled varnish. He ground it out, angrily, and started another.

He also started the Fullers, and things brightened. There was no need to ask whether Benjamin Fuller was up to the task; that, from one glance at him, was clear. He also had, Weigand suspected, the glowing, angry temper which would make the thing psychologically possible. A quick uppercut to the chin would be more likely, perhaps. He was not a man to lay long plans. But “long” was a relative word; all preparations for, and the accomplishment of, Brent's death might have come within one not too long period of anger. And Fuller had cause enough for anger; cause enough to hate Brent, who was making him appear, among other things, a complaisant fool; who was making life difficult for the slim, alive young woman to whom Fuller had so evidently given his smoldering devotion.

The weapon, again, was nothing. The time? Weigand picked Fuller's statement out of the pile and checked it over. There was an alibi of sorts. Clipped to the statement was a report from Chicago. Crowley, Fuller's temporary companion on Monday afternoon, had remembered and confirmed. He thought, however, that he and Fuller had separated nearer three o'clock than any other time. Weigand pulled his chin and nodded. That made a vague alibi vaguer. He wrote Fuller's name on his sheet of paper and drew a line under it. Then he drew another line. Mullins came back, with coffee, and they had coffee. Weigand tried to fit Mrs. Fuller into the picture. He conjured up, with amazingly little trouble, a picture of Jane Fuller herself—a vivid picture of a girl in rust-colored slacks, with a heart-shaped face.

It was a very agreeable picture, and Weigand caught himself regarding it with agreeable sensations. He reminded himself, hurriedly, that he was a cop, looking for somebody to send to the electric chair. But, in a moment, he decided that Mrs. Fuller would hardly fit the role. She, among all the possibles, seemed unlikely to have the necessary physical strength. Possibly she had a motive—sheer annoyance at Brent's peculiar pursuit, and indignation at the false position in which Brent had put her—but it was not too strong. She didn't, to be sure, have an alibi, or anything approaching one. From the point of opportunity, she was more likely than anybody except, possibly, Mrs. North. But there must have been, in the city, several millions with opportunity, and without alibis. Weigand drank coffee, wearily, and hoped his murderer was not, unsuspected, among those millions.

He thought of the Norths, and felt obscure guilt. Tacitly, he had promised that he would, not think of the Norths as murderers. Had he made a mistake in that promise? He thought them over, recalled Mr. North's motive and grinned over it; his lack of alibi, and grinned again. He finished his coffee and stared at Mullins, who was nodding over his empty cup. Weigand shook his head, sadly, and set his own cup down hard on the desk. Mullins jumped and looked indignant.

“Listen, Loot,” he said. Weigand grinned at him and held out his cup for more coffee. Mullins poured from the cardboard container.

Weigand drew a fresh sheet of paper toward him, and made himself a little list. He paused over it, now and then; interrupted himself for more coffee; now and then scratched out one word and wrote another. When he finished he had this:

He looked it over, and felt rather sad about it. It seemed to rule out almost nobody. It left Mrs. Brent and Berex, together or singly; Benjamin Fuller and Kumi well up; Edwards and Mrs. Fuller and the Norths, lower down and in about that order. Weigand drew a line through it; then crumpled the sheet and threw it on the floor. He took another sheet and wrote at the top: “Funny questions?” He filled it in, with the aid of more cigarettes and many fits of staring at the ceiling. When he finished, it read:

1) Why leave a slip of paper with Edwards' name and Berex's fingerprints on it? Why was Edwards' name used?

2) Why did Mrs. Brent lie about the Danbury Fair?

3) Where were Berex and Mrs. Brent going when Jane Fuller saw them?

4) What did the postman know? Could he identify the murderer?

5) Why pick the empty apartment at the Buano house?

6) Why was the window of the apartment left open, so that the cat got in? Air to dissipate odor of decomposition?

7) What is the racket the District Attorney's office is investigating?

8) What was the purpose of Brent's proposed visit to the D.A.'s office? Why didn't one of them up there ask him?

9) Were Brent and Jane Fuller really lovers, whatever Fuller thought? And, on that point, was Fuller really saying what he thought?

10) Is Berex really an inventor, and has he ever invented anything of importance? And how badly does he need money?

11) Since Brent knew where Edwards lived, why was he not suspicious when invited, as he apparently had been, to meet Edwards in an apartment he appeared to occupy in the Buano house?

12) Is my man really on this list, and if he is, how am I ever going to hang it on him?

Weigand looked at his list and shuddered slightly. A few of the questions were probably extraneous, including, he gloomily decided all to which he could guess the answers.

Number 11, for example, was easy. Brent had not been at Edwards' apartment for several months. Whoever invited him to the Buano house had merely to tell him Edwards had recently moved. None of the answers he could guess seemed to get him much nearer an answer to the final question, or, at any rate, to the latter half of the final question. Hunch told him the answer to the first half, but not very firmly. The man or woman was, hunch told him, on his list. He picked up the crumpled paper from the floor and looked at the list again. No name glowed red. Suddenly Weigand thought of a fine thing to do.

“Well,” he said. “I'm going home. I'm going home and sleep on it. What do you think of that, Mullins?”

But Mullins was already asleep, and his answer was an annoyed murmur.

19

F
RIDAY

8
A.M.
TO
1:30
P.M.

Weigand slept and, when his mind returned to him Friday morning, scanned it eagerly for signs of new perception. It disappointed him; things looked much as they had the night before. He went back to Headquarters and brooded over his tabulation of suspects, and sighed. No hunch pointed. He looked at his questions and closed his eyes. Perhaps he was asking the wrong questions; perhaps he had, even, the wrong suspects. His telephone rang and he went in and explained matters to Inspector O'Malley, who was grumpy about them and wanted to know what he was to tell the reporters.

“Listen,” he said, “it's going to be off the front page in another day if we don't liven it up.” O'Malley slapped his desk. “Break it!” he commanded. “Break it!”

Weigand went sadly back to his office and looked at the list again, although he had it by heart. He called Mullins in and was severe with him, and Mullins angrily ordered the latest reports from a uniformed clerk, who had nobody to be cross with. The reports came, and showed nothing much. Investigations were still in progress into Brent's professional and extraprofessional life. The State police were cooperating in an effort to find somebody who might have noticed Berex and Mrs. Brent in their wanderings in Putnam County, assuming they had really wandered in Putnam County. A New York Central conductor had, from a picture, identified Berex as a man who might have been on the 11:05 train out of Grand Central for Chatham, and might have alighted at Brewster.

The precinct reported that it was continuing its efforts to find a witness to Barnes' death who could remember, and be sure about, what he had witnessed, and thought perhaps it had a lead. It would amplify its report later. The tailor who made Brent's clothes had identified them as the clothes he made for Brent. Everything that did not particularly matter clicked comfortably into place. Uptown, a detective had, by chance and knowledge of a good many people, found one of the girls who had written affectionately to Brent, and had got out of her a sufficiently vivid account of a trip to Atlantic City two years before. It had rained heavily in Atlantic City that week-end. And. Brent had been a fine boyfriend, for the duration.

Weigand shook his head over these reports, and others as illuminating. He left Mullins to keep in touch and went uptown to visit Berex.

Berex was at his office, and at the drawing-board. He swung around lithely when Weigand entered and ran pencil-darkened hands through his sandy hair. He said he had been expecting Lieutenant Weigand to call, and grinned slantingly.

“We sort of made a mistake about the fair,” he said, before Weigand asked him. And, before Weigand asked him, he told a story identical with that of Mrs. Brent. He told it cockily, with assurance, and his eyebrows challenged the detective to make more of it than he was told of it. Berex denied that he and Mrs. Brent had been apart at any time during the afternoon; he denied any implications as to their relationship.

“And if you don't believe me, prove different,” he suggested. “Meanwhile, I've got work to do.”

Weigand said, as darkly as he could manage, that maybe he would, but he did not convince himself and he was not sure he convinced Berex. At any rate, Berex's rather impudent smile did not falter, and he nodded satirical encouragement.

“Luck to you,” he said, brightly, and Weigand was aware that he glowered. Berex seemed to be gaining, rather than losing, confidence as time went on, which was not a thing Weigand liked to see in suspects.

Weigand looked as forbiddingly as he could manage at Berex, nodded with what he hoped might, if Berex were guilty of anything, be taken as emanating from a fund of inner knowledge, and went along. What he needed to do, he decided, was to go some place and think. He looked at his watch and was astonished to discover that it was almost lunch-time. He toyed with the thought of a drink or two, to lubricate thought, tried to convince himself that it was time to be sternly about a policeman's duties, and walked downtown. A little walk would help, he thought. It had not helped, noticeably, when he discovered that he was in front of Charles Restaurant. His feet turned with comforting independence and carried him in. He sat at the bar and ordered a martini.

Weigand had found his stool automatically, with most of his mind buried, and he was astonished when a familiar voice spoke from the next one.

“Personally,” the voice said, “I don't think people ought to drink this early, do you? Except if it's special, of course.”

He pivoted and observed Mrs. North fishing for the olive in the bottom of her glass.

“I,” she said, “just come for the olives. Don't they give you fine, big olives, here?”

“Well,” said Weigand, and looked to see. “Yes,” he said. He seemed to amuse Mrs. North, who showed it.

“Detective,” she said, and nodded to herself. “Even has to verify olives. Who did it?”

“What?” said Weigand.

“Mr. Brent,” Mrs. North said. “Who did him? Or don't you know yet?”

The last was in a disappointed and slightly chiding tone.

“Oh,” said Weigand. “Well, the fact is, we expect—” He looked at Mrs. North. “No,” he said. “I don't know who did for Mr. Brent. Do you, by any chance?”

Mrs. North looked surprised, and said of course she did.

“He left his name,” she said. “Didn't you know?” Weigand smiled and shook his head. He said he had told her it wasn't that easy. She sobered and nodded and said all right.

“I know,” she said. “No, I don't know who did it. Sometimes I suspect somebody and then I suspect somebody else, but I thought detectives didn't do it that way.”

Weigand sighed and said he wished they didn't, but that sometimes they did. He asked Mrs. North if she had had lunch, having an uneasy feeling that a cocktail wouldn't prove anything about that, either way. She would say, likely as not, that she always had an olive for dessert. But she had not had lunch, and would be delighted to eat it with him, although Mr. North might be along and join them.

“But he won't mind,” she said, leaving Weigand to wonder what Mr. North wouldn't mind.

They were led to a table by a captain who beamed on Mrs. North, and assured her that another place could easily be set for Mr. North. Mrs. North had waffles and sausage and Weigand wondered about her digestion. He had broiled sea bass, and wondered a little about his. After a few minutes Mr. North did come, groaned openly over the choices of the other two, and ordered a green salad. Mr. North had passed wondering about his digestion; he knew.