The Norths Meet Murder Page 11

  “Get under a good overhead smash some time,” Weigand said. “Even with a racquet, and not anything heavy—like a mallet. You’d see things. Or maybe you wouldn’t see anything.”

  Mullins didn’t think much of the idea, it was clear; he thought tennis was something you played in white pants. But he let it go, in favor of something else.

  “Parkes called up,” he said. “Remember Parkes—Sergeant Parkes, assigned to the D.A.’s office?”

  Weigand nodded.

  “He said he thought we ought to know,” Mullins said. “He thought we ought to know Brent had an appointment with one of the assistants for Tuesday. With an assistant named Cummings. They don’t know what about and they sort of wondered why he didn’t show up. Then one of them sort of thought to look in the paper and there, sure enough, it was. Even those boys could dope out why he didn’t show up after they saw the papers.”

  Weigand was interested; very much interested.

  “They didn’t know what he wanted?” he said.

  Mullins said that was it. He called up and said he wanted to give some information and they put him onto Cummings. He said he wanted to come around and see Cummings personally and made an appointment for Tuesday—the next day.

  “It was Monday when he called, then?” Weigand said. “What time Monday?”

  “Monday afternoon about one o’clock,” Mullins said. “They made a note of it. Bright guys up there. About an hour ago they got to thinking we might be interested.”

  The District Attorney’s office, it developed, was leaving the matter entirely to the Department, although in promising cases it often assigned detectives from the staff detailed to aid its investigations. Just now, however, its staff was busy on rackets.

  “Parkes says they’ve got some hot stuff,” Mullins reported, interestedly. “He says they’re going to blow things open.”

  “Well,” Weigand said. “That will be swell. What things?”

  Parkes hadn’t said. Just things.

  “What about the other end?” Weigand said. “Brent’s office? Did the boys turn up anything?”

  Mullins hadn’t heard and Weigand sent him to find out if Sergeant Auerbach, in charge of investigations at the law offices, had reported in. Auerbach had, and came along. He had been, he said, writing up his report to send along to the Inspector, but he could give Weigand the gist of it. They had interviewed everybody at the office and nobody knew any thing of importance. “You’ll get it all,” Auerbach said. “But I don’t think there’s anything in it.” They had checked Brent’s bank account and income. His balance was not large, but large enough and his income was substantial and steady, running, apparently, around fifteen or twenty thousand a year. There was nothing irregular about it; no large unexplained deposits, no unaccountable withdrawals.

  “They spent about all he made,” Auerbach said. “But there was always more coming along.”

  The Brents had had a joint account, and Brent had had another in his own name. The bills from various charge accounts went to his office and were paid from there, apparently after reasonable lapses of time. At the time of his death he owed rather over a thousand, which was, Auerbach said, probably about average for his income.

  “It doesn’t show us anything that I can see,” Auerbach said. “The details are all in the reports.”

  They had got a list of the firm’s clients, on pledge that the information would go no further, and the cases especially assigned to Brent were checked.

  The law firm had, Weigand discovered, a good many imposing clients, many of them corporations. Consolidated Foods was on the list, and the Framingham Steel Corporation and something called, rather oddly, Recording Industries, Inc., along with many others. These apparently were permanent clients, and a few of them were checked. There were also a number of individual clients assigned to Brent, and Weigand ran through them without finding any familiar names until he came to “Berex, Louis.” He pointed to the name.

  “Any correspondence from this man?” he wanted to know.

  Auerbach thought there was; he went back to his desk to look and returned with two letters, which he tossed to Weigand. Both bore Berex’s name printed at the top. One merely confirmed an appointment at Brent’s office for a Friday in late September. The other, written a fortnight earlier, asked for information.

  “Will you let me know,” Berex had written, “what progress you are making in the Edwards matter? And what attitude he and his lawyers are showing? I appreciate that these things cannot be made to move rapidly, and that you are doing all that can be done. But you will appreciate, also, my anxiety to get the matter settled.”

  Clipped on was a carbon of Brent’s answer, which said, in effect, that he hoped to have progress to report within a week or two, and that he did appreciate Berex’s desire for a favorable conclusion of the matter. Both letters were direct and formal; neither showed that the relation between the two men was more than that of client and counsel. Weigand read them quickly and continued to stare at them. After a while he said, “Um,” thoughtfully.

  “Anything else?” he wanted to know.

  “There were several notes from dames,” Auerbach said. “Nice, friendly notes. I’ve got the boys checking them. Brent seems to have gotten around quite a bit.”

  “Anything from a Mrs. Fuller?” Weigand asked. “A Jane Fuller?”

  They hadn’t, Auerbach said, found anything. There was a note from Myrtle—“My God,” Weigand said—and one signed “Honey” and another signed merely “Love, K.” But the most recent of these, it developed, had been written almost three years earlier.

  “What,” Weigand said, “do you suppose they keep them for?”

  Auerbach hadn’t, he said, any idea. Mullins said that maybe they just liked to remember.

  “Well,” Weigand said, “they’ll be fun for the boys to check. Let me know what they find, will you?”

  “Sure,” Auerbach promised. “It will be about Christmas, but I’ll let you know. If you still want to know.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. Then he said, “Thanks,” and Auerbach went back to his report. Now, Weigand wondered, where were they? He looked at his watch and discovered, rather to his surprise, that it was almost eleven. He was tired and his head ached and Inspector O’Malley had gone home a long’ time before. Weigand checked, mentally. Brent’s clothes were being looked for, diligently but without much hope. The Salvation Army had been checked, but had no record of receiving a man’s complete outfit. The Post Office Department had been notified of the chance that the clothes worn by Brent might be jogging somewhere in the mails, bound for heaven knew what imaginary addressee.

  A couple of men were checking the parcel rooms at the Pennsylvania and Grand Central Stations, and the railroad ferries. As fast as unredeemed bundles were removed from the lock boxes on the subway stations, from which they are taken after a stipulated twenty-four hours has elapsed, they were checked. But the clothes might just as well never turn up. If anybody wanted to go to the trouble, and sacrifice, say, a flatiron, there were always convenient rivers.

  The slip Mrs. North found in the fourth-floor mailbox was being examined by modern science in Brooklyn. An eye was being kept on possible suspects. Weigand couldn’t see O’Malley until tomorrow, unless something broke. Berex was the next man to see, but that could wait until tomorrow; would have to wait until tomorrow, when the mailbox slip had been fingerprinted and otherwise examined. Hmmm—

  Weigand decided that there was nothing which prevented him from going home and sleeping a while. It was an agreeable thought. Mullins could drive him up in a Department car. He told Mullins as much, and Mullins said, “O.K., Loot.”

  It was turning cooler out, Weigand noticed, as they drove uptown. Weigand was stern about the red lights and the siren, this time; there was nothing to identify the car as belonging to the police except, of course, Mullins behind the wheel. Weigand was half asleep when they reached his apartment house in the West Fifties, three-quarters whe
n he fell into bed.

  10

  THURSDAY

  8 A.M. TO 10:45 A.M.

  Weigand had gone to bed Wednesday evening with a feeling of tired satisfaction; he awoke Thursday in a mood of angry impatience which nature abetted by providing him with a mild hangover. He got up filled with smoldering indignation, directed chiefly against himself and for slightly intangible reasons; he bathed and shaved irritably, and the whirring of the razor tightened his nerves. He was at Headquarters a little after eight, and angrily in quest of Mullins. Before nine he was smouldering on the telephone to Brooklyn, inquiring bitterly for a report on the slip of paper he had sent over the evening before. Mullins, when he came, was snapped into motion, telephoning Louis Berex to make an appointment for eleven; checking on the progress of the search for Brent’s clothing; arranging another interview to follow immediately with Edwards; finding out from the watchers’ reports what Mrs. Brent, Fuller and the Norths had been doing the evening and night before.

  None of them had, it developed, been doing anything out of the way. The Norths and their guests had gone to a motion picture theater around the corner and seen a mystery film, which Detective Cohen, rousted from his comfort at the bar across the street, had also seen and enjoyed. He was willing to tell Mullins the plot, but Mullins, feeling hostile eyes on the back of his head, demurred. Edwards had gone to a formal dinner in one of the East Seventies and his accompanying detective had had a dull time on the sidewalk.

  Fuller had stayed at home with, it was presumed, Mrs. Fuller, who had arrived shortly after Weigand left. A man identified as Berex by the doorman of the apartment house near the East River, where Berex lived, had come home about ten and, apparently, stayed home, although, since there were several possible exits to the house, nobody could be quite sure, and if Headquarters really wanted him watched, two men would be necessary, at least. Mullins relayed this information to Weigand, who was frosty. This morning, Mullins decided, the Loot suspected everybody.

  There was, Mullins knew by experience, a time in every case when the Loot began to suspect everybody. It came when things got too screwy even for the Loot, who could take things a lot screwier than Mullins could. Mullins suffered through this period, but he understood it. In his idle moments—never as numerous as Mullins would have liked—he experimented with crossword puzzles, and they were always too much for him at a certain point. Then, he had long since decided, the way he felt must be about the way the Loot felt now. He looked at Weigand warily, but with understanding.

  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—?”