Murder Out of Turn Page 10

  Mrs. North looked at Weigand slowly, and something like fear came into her eyes.

  “I wonder what he heard?” she said. “That we didn’t hear. Or didn’t understand.” She paused. “I wonder what he’ll do about it?” she said.

  11

  SUNDAY

  10:05 P.M. TO MONDAY, 1:15 A.M.

  There had been no answer to Mrs. North’s question fifteen minutes later, when Heimrich and Weigand finished checking off their possibles. The question still hung in the air; seeming to float under the roof of the cabin, where the stretchers, extending from eaves to eaves, threw heavy shadows; it waited outside the cabin, in the country darkness which hemmed in their little center of light and fire. Weigand had shaken his head over it, and let it go by default.

  They had checked and discarded. There were apparent outsiders, to be ignored for the time being—most of those from “drunkards’ row,” such apparently detached people as the Askews and Hanscomb. “The man nobody knows,” Mrs. North said of Hanscomb, and proved by being unable to amplify. There were a few to be marked free from suspicion for other reasons. Mrs. Wilson. “Dorian Hunt?” Weigand said. Heimrich said, “Why?” and Weigand, after thinking a moment, nodded, and did not divulge his own reason, which was simply that he couldn’t imagine her killing—and, he was surprised to discover, was definitely antagonized by the idea. The Norths.

  “I think,” Mr. North said, “that that’s mighty white of both of you. Mighty white.”

  Mrs. North told him not to be silly. She said she’d like to catch Bill suspecting them. “Again,” she added. Weigand looked at her and smiled, and denied he ever had, even a year before.

  But it left them plenty. “Blair,” Heimrich said. “Start with Blair.” Motive, opportunity, character—all fitted.

  Thelma Smith? There was no reason to leave her out. She had hated Jean Corbin, if Jean qualified as First Victim; she did not impress you as having compunctions which would stop her from killing the innocent in self-defense.

  James Harlan Abel? “He’d kill anybody in a minute if they got in his way,” Mrs. North assured them, “and anything which disturbed him would be getting in his way.” Perhaps Jean Corbin had been bothering him and he had brushed her aside. It seemed insufficient. “But not for him, maybe,” Mrs. North insisted.

  Mrs. Abel? Jealousy would cover her, if it were true that Jean had been trying to entice her husband. She was neurotic, they agreed.

  The Fullers? It was their sickle, but that was for them rather than against them. No motive was apparent. “Count them out?” Weigand inquired; and Heimrich, after a moment’s hesitation, nodded. “Of course!” said Mrs. North, with some indignation. “Just like us.” She did not amplify, and Heimrich looked faintly puzzled, but went on.

  Hardie Saunders? There was opportunity—there seemed to be opportunity for almost everyone, particularly with the time of one crime vague and the positions of no one at the time of the other assured, or assurable. His character was against murder, apparently. His motives, if they existed, were indecisive.

  Van Horst? Unless one believed old Marvin, there was no motive. And it was hard to believe old Marvin.

  “How about Marvin himself?” Heimrich said. “If we’re looking further than Blair, that is. I’ve always thought he was dangerous, and he’s crazy enough not to need a motive. Maybe he just doesn’t like women to wear pants.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. North, “he’d have to be crazy. He wears pants, doesn’t he?”

  “Barely,” Mr. North assured her.

  Heimrich smiled, but said he was serious—half-serious, anyway. They had to leave Marvin in as a possible. You could never tell what strange grudge he might hold against either girl.

  Arthur Kennedy? Why? “Well,” Weigand said, “there might be a connection. He’s in the street; Helen Wilson used to be in the street. And Dorian’s father—” He stopped, and looked worried.

  “I guess we can’t leave her out,” he admitted, and Mrs. North heard regret in his tone and looked at him speculatively, and then smiled a little to herself. “She may have blamed Helen for her father’s trouble. I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s a motive.”

  Heimrich nodded. He said he thought Weigand would have to come back to that. He added, however, that he still favored Blair.

  “I’m tempted to pick him up,” he said, thoughtfully. “Maybe we could persuade him to talk. Only—”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “‘Only.’ I think I wouldn’t yet anyway. You’ve no evidence for the D.A. It—”

  Since they had returned to the cabin after Weigand’s abortive pursuit of the eavesdropper, the New York detective had been sitting where he could look out the door that gave onto the porch. Now, staring abstractedly across the lake, he broke off and got up and went to the door. He beckoned with a flip of his hand and the others joined him, Mrs. North on tiptoe to see over Weigand’s shoulder.

  “What?” she said. “I don’t see anything.”

  Her voice was low, almost a whisper. Weigand pointed.

  “Over there,” he said. “It looked like a flashlight. There!”

  They all saw it—a sudden point of light. It went out as they watched.

  “Where would that be?” Weigand demanded, hurriedly.

  “The dam camp,” Mr. North told him. “It’s empty, but somebody’s fooling around.”

  “Right!” said Weigand. “Somebody’s fooling around.” He turned to Heimrich. “I’m tired of people fooling around,” he said. “We’ll fool around a bit ourselves.”

  Heimrich nodded.

  “Car,” he said. “Does the road run that far?”

  Mr. North nodded. You could get within a hundred yards of the camp by the back road which, winding halfway around the lake, went on beyond it and later joined the main road from Route 22 to Patterson.

  “Come on!” Weigand said. “We’ll take my car.”

  The two detectives crossed the living-room, moving fast. Mr. North started to follow them, but when he reached the door he stopped. He turned back, and hesitated. He looked at Mrs. North.

  “Boat,” he said. “Whoever it is could cross back by boat while they were going around. I ought to have told them.”

  Mrs. North nodded.

  “So,” said Mr. North, “I’ve got to cut across by boat myself, to cover that. You stay here.” He started for the door, but Mrs. North caught his arm. She said he wasn’t going to do anything of the kind.

  “Listen,” Mrs. North said. “You don’t understand! He’s a murderer. He kills people. If you think I’m going to let you—”

  “I’ll be all right, Pam,” Mr. North told her, breaking in. “I’ll be careful.”

  “—go alone,” Mrs. North finished, “you’re crazy, Jerry. If anybody’s going to kill you, I’m going to be there.”

  She stopped and listened to herself. She said that that sounded funny. “Anomalous,” she said. “I mean they’ll have to kill me, too. Come on.”

  Mr. North wanted to argue further, but it is hard to argue with a wife who is running down a dark path, with only a little moonlight to guide her, toward a boat landing. Mr. North caught up a flashlight and ran after her, and remembered not to yell. He caught her at the landing and started to argue, but she climbed into the boat and untied the painter, and seemed about to go on without him. He made the stern seat, crept past her cautiously, and took the oars. He started to say something, but Mrs. North said, “Right oar, hard,” and by the time he had obeyed they were, somehow, irretrievably on their way over dark water from which mist was rising. Mr. North had, he realized, forgotten about the mist. But he went on, and Mrs. North guided him. They were less than halfway across when they saw the lights of a car on the far shore, swinging in toward the dam camp. The lights stopped and the smaller light of a flash moved dimly, through the gathering mist, toward the cabin.

  “Bill and Lieutenant Heimrich,” Mrs. North said. “Listen!” They listened, and heard nothing. “I thought maybe yells,” Mrs
. North said. “Or shooting. Maybe he’s got away.”

  “And maybe,” Mr. North pointed out, “he’s coming our way. Keep your voice down.”

  “I think we should have thought,” Mrs. North said. “Why wouldn’t he just run down the other side? Why use a boat?”

  There was, Mr. North realized, no reason at all why whoever it was, assuming it was somebody with guilty intentions, should not retreat along the shore opposite the Norths’ cabin. That gave him another idea.

  “We’ll cut straight across,” he said. “Head him off!”

  He veered the boat away from the dam end of the lake, and leaned on the oars for the opposite side. The lake was narrow; even with Mr. North’s rowing it took only a little time to cross. The boat went aground in mud, however, while a couple of feet still separated it from the far bank. Mrs. North started to move, but Mr. North caught her arm and pulled her back.

  “I’ll jump,” he said. “You wait in the boat—sit as far back as you can, to lift the front end. Then I can pull it up.” He spoke in a whisper, and Mrs. North nodded. Mr. North inched his way to the prow, and leaped across to a sodden shore. He found firmer ground, grabbed the painter and began to pull. Then a noise made him whirl, dropping the line.

  There was a disturbance in the brush off to his right, and Mr. North ran toward it. It was a floundering noise as of some heavy, squirming thing, and as Mr. North rushed toward it it stopped. Only then did he remember the flashlight he had thrust into his pocket. He dragged it out and aimed its beam ahead. There was nothing to be seen in the dim radiance it painted on the mist. He went on, making better time, although there was no path. He heard Mrs. North call after him, softly: “Jerry! Jerry!”

  “Yes,” he called, since there was no point in trying to hide his presence. “Yes. In a minute! There’s—”

  Then his voice was cut off and he was staring at the ground. There was a figure lying doubled up at his feet, and Mr. North dropped to his knees beside it.

  “It’s a man, this time,” Mr. North was thinking, with horror in his thoughts, even as he turned the face upward and identified the man. It was John Blair. And then there was movement behind Mr. North and, by instinct, he flung up an arm. There was sharp pain in the arm, and it dropped. Then a sudden flash spread through Mr. North’s world, and blackness blotted it, and Mr. North had time for only one more thought before the blackness swept over him.

  “Well,” Mr. North thought, absurdly, but with a kind of triumph at his perspicacity. “So he hadn’t gone away, after all!”

  It was Mr. North’s belief, when he learned later what had happened, that Pam had saved his life, and this conviction he did not afterward abandon. Pam North, after it was all over, said that she, at any rate, agreed with him and added that it was a comfort, finally, to find him appreciating her. But Weigand was never much convinced by their theory. Mr. North’s assailant, Weigand thought, had merely hit Mr. North and run at once and would not in any circumstances have waited to strike again.

  “He wasn’t trying to kill you,” Weigand pointed out to Mr. North that same night, as Mr. North reclined uncomfortably on the couch in the cabin, his head securely bound up and his right arm in a sling. “You didn’t know anything.”

  Mr. North felt that this was a too sweeping way to phrase it and said so, but Bill Weigand brushed his protest aside, having more serious things to think of.

  “You were in the way,” Weigand reasoned. “You might chase and identify. So it was handiest to knock you out. It didn’t matter much to him, of course, whether you came out of it or not, so long as you didn’t come out of it too quick. Even if Pam hadn’t gone charging in, you’d be just about where you are now.”

  Mr. North’s head ached and he didn’t argue, but he still thought Pam had saved his life. He shivered a little to think of it, because there was, after all, no assurance that the assailant had gone. He had heard Mrs. North call; he might very well have been waiting for her to come.

  She had, it became clear afterward, gone fast. When Mr. North stopped speaking in mid-sentence she had tensed, and waited a minute, and while she was waiting she had heard sounds of movement from the brush near where she guessed he had been. Then she moved. She stumbled and fell getting out of the boat, and hardly knew it; she pulled herself out of the mud and ran, calling, “Jerry! Jerry!” It was only a moment before she found him, and found that he was breathing. She saw that there was someone else lying near him, but the other person was nobody of hers, and she was holding Jerry’s head in her lap and calling as loudly as she could call for help when he opened his eyes. He opened his eyes and blinked and said, “Hello, kid.” But he remembered nothing of that afterward.

  Weigand and Heimrich were leaving the vacant cabin and about to reenter their car when they heard Mrs. North’s cries, and it took them a little time to reach her. They might have gone on foot down the path on that side of the lake, but it was strange territory to both, and they wasted time by driving back to the Norths’ cabin in the car. They wasted as little time as they could and stay anywhere near the rough road, but they wasted some. And they wasted more rowing across the lake after they found a second boat. So it was between ten and fifteen minutes before they reached the Norths, and then Mr. North was fully conscious, although not up to much. He was sitting rather dizzily, with his back against a little tree and his right arm dangling uselessly, and insisting that Mrs. North see whether there was anything to do for Blair. Because Blair, too, was still alive. He was breathing heavily and when Weigand found the pulse it was weak and reedy, but Blair was alive.

  Weigand stayed with the Norths, and propped Blair’s head on a coat while Heimrich rowed back across the lake, churning wildly in the dark water and almost losing his way in the still thickening mist, and started things going. Then, for the third time in less than twenty-four hours, an ambulance hurried to Lone Lake, its siren commanding right of way, and an interne from the Brewster Hospital examined both victims. Mr. North’s head was only bumped, but his arm was broken. But the interne shook his head over Blair, talked of fracture and concussion, and looked worried. There was room in the ambulance for Blair and North and, because she insisted so anxiously, Mrs. North too. Weigand went behind in his car to bring them back.

  The Norths and Weigand came back in a reasonably short time. Mr. North’s arm was set and if his face was, for a while, almost as white as the bandages, there was nothing to worry about.

  “A nice, clean break,” the house surgeon told him, approvingly, and Mr. North felt as if he should be proud. The bump on the head—partly, no doubt, because of the protecting arm—was nothing more than a bump, hardly worth binding up. But the scalp was nicked and the surgeon conscientious, so that Mr. North looked—and pretty much felt—a dire casualty.

  There was nothing “nice,” even to the surgeon, in Blair’s injuries. He had been hit hard, and with intent, and his skull was fractured. Prognosis was difficult; an X-ray would tell them more. Meanwhile he was unconscious and apt to remain so for many hours, even if he did, eventually, regain consciousness. That was by no means certain.

  “I’ll tell you what is true,” Weigand said, when they were back at the cabin and were discussing Mrs. North’s intervention. “Whatever saved your life, you saved his, Jerry. If he lives. Because the attack on Blair is pretty clearly unfinished business.”

  “But why?” Mrs. North said. “I thought you thought it was Blair. I mean, that he was the man. So why would the murderer upset that by hitting him? Why wouldn’t the murderer think it was just dandy for you to suspect Blair, and wait and see what you did about it?”

  Weigand shook his head, and said they didn’t know enough to answer that. There were too many chances; too much uncertainty. How, for example, could the real murderer know that they suspected Blair? Wasn’t it, even, mere speculation to assume that Blair had been hit by the murderer?

  They raised their eyebrows at that. Weigand nodded. It was improbable, on the face of it, but Blair might still be
their man. And his assailant? Well, what would they think of the theory that the person who hit Blair had been, not the murderer, but someone out to get the murderer, and get him without waiting for the law?

  They looked as if they would not think much of it.

  “Right,” said Weigand. “Neither do I, as a matter of fact. But it’s possible. Suppose somebody like, say Thelma Smith—all tangled up emotionally; hating Jean Corbin and loving her at the same time—discovered that Blair had really killed Jean. What would she do? I don’t know. Do you?”

  The Norths thought a moment, and then Mr. North shook his head, immediately wishing he hadn’t. It hurt. But it was true that he didn’t know what Thelma would do. Neither, it appeared, did Mrs. North. “Only not hit people,” she thought, and Weigand nodded agreement to that. “Unless she went sort of crazy, as she might,” Mrs. North added. Weigand nodded agreement to that, too.

  And if Blair were not the murderer, there were several possibilities. For one thing, somebody had been eavesdropping through much of the questioning, and something that Blair said might have frightened the eavesdropper, who was probably the murderer. Somehow, say, Blair revealed that he knew something dangerous, and so had to be got out of the way.

  “What?” said Mrs. North. “What did Blair say, if what he said gave something away? Did you hear it?”

  Weigand had already been thinking of that, and had to shake his head.

  “No,” he said. “If it was that way, we’ve missed something. I don’t know what. And if the murderer did hear anything of what Blair said, he probably heard enough to realize that Blair was building up a case against Blair, not against anybody else.”

  He looked at them and they looked at him. He smiled a little, not happily.

  “Confusing, isn’t it?” he said. “A policeman’s life.”

  “What we need,” Mrs. North said, “is coffee. I’ll make it, only talk loud so I can hear.”

  “Well,” said Weigand, pitching his voice so that Mrs. North could hear him in the kitchen, “here’s another possibility. Blair had some reason to suspect the murderer, and knew it himself—I mean, it wasn’t just a fact of which he didn’t realize the significance; it was something he understood, and which pointed clearly at the murderer. So—”