The Dishonest Murderer Read online

  “What were they doing?” Jerry asked. “How were they going about it?”

  The admiral shook his head. That had never emerged, apparently. “Don’t know how they do these things,” he said. “Follow people around, eh? Put in these microphones? Listen in on telephone conversations? I don’t know.”

  Jerry North shrugged, letting it go.

  About ten days ago, the admiral said, Briggs had said they seemed to be getting on to something. He had still not been specific. He had merely said they were making progress, that he thought they were getting somewhere.

  But at about the same time, the admiral indicated, he had begun to have doubts about what he was doing. “Began to seem like an underhanded thing,” he said. “Realized I ought to go to Kirkhill himself, put it up to him, if I was going to do anything. Nasty, snoopy business, this way.”

  He looked at Pam North, then at Jerry.

  “Realized I’d made a mistake,” he said. “Not fair to Kirkhill. Not the sort of thing I wanted Winifred mixed up in.” He shook his head. “Didn’t see it clearly before,” he admitted. “Too concerned about the girl. See what I mean?”

  “Of course,” Pam North said. “We all do things and wish we hadn’t.”

  The admiral had debated the matter, become increasingly dissatisfied with what he was doing. Apparently what had decided him to terminate the investigation was a conversation he had had with his daughter the evening before.

  “Asked her if she was sure she was right,” he said. “Said she was. Something about her, way she looked, made me feel I was a meddling old fool. So I called these people and ordered them to send me a bill and call it off. Talked to this man Briggs. He wanted to argue, kept saying they were really getting places. Didn’t want to argue, so I just told him circumstances had changed. No use telling him I’d changed my mind, you see. Gave him the idea something new had turned up.”

  “And this,” Jerry North said, “was just before—just about the time, really—that Kirkhill was killed?”

  “That’s it,” the admiral said. “That’s it, North.”

  “But really,” Pam said, “nothing had turned up. It was just something you said?”

  “Yes,” Admiral Satterbee said. “But—”

  They waited and, now obviously concerned, unhappy, he went on. He had thought it ended there. It had not. “This man Smiley,” he said. “Came around, you know. It was Smiley Winifred told you about. Worried her.”

  “It did,” Jerry agreed. “Go ahead, Admiral.”

  It had been entirely unexpected; it had been alarming. Smiley had come, and had come confidently, with a kind of gloating assurance. When he saw Smiley, the admiral had realized—apparently for the first time—that his position would be unsatisfactory, even uncomfortable, if the whole matter came out. “Might be misunderstood,” he said. “By Winifred. Even by the police.” He had realized that, little as he wanted to, he would have to talk to Smiley. He had taken him into the library.

  Smiley had done most of the talking, the admiral said. There had been a kind of obscurity, a kind of indirection, about what Smiley had said. Smiley had made a good deal of his duty to work with the police; had talked about his license as a private operative, which the police might suspend or cancel if he did not cooperate. But his first duty, he said, was always to his client. He would have to tell the police that he had been investigating Senator Kirkhill. They might think that, in view of Kirkhill’s death, the investigation was important.

  “But,” Smiley had said, “we always try to protect clients. Briggs and I want to get your point of view on this affair.”

  “I told him to tell the police everything,” the admiral said. “None of it had anything to do with Kirkhill’s death; that he knew that. He said he understood that; that I understood that. But he wondered if the police would. He said we had to look at all the angles. Said I didn’t realize how the police worked. Said, ‘You want to think it over, Admiral. Maybe the police’d think it looked funny. Here you’ve been trying to get something on this guy. This senator. Hiring us to smell around. Then you say, “Forget it, boys. Something new’s come up.” Like you said to Harry. “Circumstances have changed.” Then it turns out somebody’s rubbed this guy out. See what I mean?’”

  The admiral had not, he said, been ready for this—for the words, for the tone in which they were spoken. The tone, he gave the Norths to understand, had been more important. “He’s an oily sort of man,” the admiral said. “Not trustworthy. The kind you get rid of if he turns up in a ship. As a reserve, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” Jerry agreed, without inflection.

  Smiley had spoken this piece of his, and then had sat smiling at the admiral. “Lot of teeth,” the admiral said. “Showed them all.” He had apparently been waiting for the admiral to say something; had spoken as if there were an answer to this. The admiral had not at once got the point. Smiley had waited, had shaken his head at the admiral’s slowness and then had said, promptingly, that he and Briggs would hate to have to tell the police “about all this.” He had said that they hated to get a client in a bad spot. But there, he had said, it was.

  “Still didn’t get what he was after,” the admiral said. “Not used to men like Smiley. He sounded as if he were thinking of my interests, but I could tell he wasn’t. Sounded like a man after something.”

  “Yes,” Jerry North said. The admiral’s daughter had said her father was inexperienced. “Innocent,” she had said. Could he really be as “innocent” as he now indicated?

  “Then,” the admiral went on, “he began to talk about his license again. Said that his livelihood depended on it. Said he’d be on a spot if he didn’t go to the police with what he knew. Said he’d be taking a big chance. That—”

  “In the end,” Pam North said, “how much did he want? Not to go to the police?”

  The admiral looked at Pam.

  “Get it, do you?” he said. “Obvious all along, I suppose.” He shook his head. “I got it, finally,” he said.

  Smiley had not, the admiral told them, said how much he wanted. He had said that he would have to think the matter over; he had made a point that he had not asked for anything. He had even pretended to be surprised at the admiral’s interpretation. He had said he would have to talk it over with his partner. He had, in short, avoided putting in words anything which, repeated, would convict him. But the admiral, by then, had had no doubt what Smiley meant. And he had agreed that he would see Smiley again, after Smiley had talked to his partner.

  “Going to call me up,” the admiral said. “Arrange a place to meet. ‘Talk the whole matter over,’ he said.” He paused. “Well?” he said.

  “Go to the police,” Jerry told him, at once. “Tell them the whole story. If—they’ll understand.”

  “‘If it’s true,’ you were going to say,” the admiral told Jerry North. “There it is, North. Who’s going to believe it? Do you?”

  “Yes,” Pam said. “Anyway, weren’t you here, in the apartment, when Senator Kirkhill was—when somebody poisoned him?”

  The admiral shook his head. He was unhappy about it. But he had not been in the apartment. He had gone out to dinner, alone. “There was this party coming up,” he said. “Lot to do in the galley. Went out to my club and had dinner. Already told the police that.”

  “If you can prove it, you’re all right,” Jerry pointed out.

  “North,” Admiral Satterbee said, and his tone was suddenly peremptory. “I didn’t kill Kirkhill.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” Jerry said. “I’m talking about—if this man, this Smiley, goes to the police, can he make you any trouble? Any real trouble? Beyond embarrassment? Can you prove where you were from—say about six o’clock last evening until the party started? The police will want to know, after they hear this story. As a matter of routine.”

  They already wanted to know, the admiral told the Norths. He had already told them that he had had dinner at the club. That, presumably, he could pr
ove. But—he had gone out early, walked—it had not begun to snow, then—found he was not yet hungry, stopped in a newsreel theater, stayed perhaps half an hour, then walked on. He had dined quickly, alone. Probably the waiter would remember that. But then he had gone into the club’s library and read the afternoon newspapers for, possibly, an hour. The library had been almost empty; he was not sure he had been seen. He had picked up a taxicab in front of the club at a few minutes before nine o’clock, and got home at five after. He had noted the last time; he was vague about the others.

  “Not satisfactory,” he said. “I see that. You still say go to the police? Tell them the whole thing?”

  “Yes,” Jerry North said. “If it comes down to that, it will be your word against Smiley’s, assuming he tries to go beyond the—what you tell us. Your word ought to be good.”

  The admiral said he supposed so. He did not appear confident.

  “As to where your daughter is,” Pam said, “didn’t she tell anybody?”

  Admiral Satterbee looked at her a moment, apparently arranging ideas. Then he shook his head.

  “Watkins says she telephoned me earlier this afternoon,” he said. “Says she sounded—excited. I was out. Try to get a walk in when I can. Like to keep in shape.”

  “But she didn’t say where she was calling from?” Pam asked.

  Admiral Satterbee shook his head.

  “The anonymous letter,” Jerry said. “Have you got it?”

  Again the admiral shook his head.

  “Tore it up last night,” he said. “After I decided not—not to meddle. Burned it in the fireplace.” He indicated the library fireplace with a movement of his head. “Anyway,” he said, “it was typed. You couldn’t tell anything from it.”

  There was no use going into that, Jerry North thought. Nor did there seem to be anywhere else to go. Admiral Satterbee continued to look at the Norths, first at one and then at the other, as if there were more to be said, or more to be done. But it was not clear to Jerry what the admiral wanted them to say or do.

  “Tell the police,” Jerry said. “Tell them the whole story. Before this man Smiley does, if you can. As for your daughter—”

  But the door of the library opened and Watkins stood in it. He seemed perturbed. He begged pardon.

  “Lieutenant Weigand wants to see you, sir,” he said. “He insists it’s important.”

  The admiral half rose; he looked at the Norths, and there was, it seemed to Jerry, suspicion in his face. But before he could speak, Bill Weigand had replaced the butler at the door.

  Bill looked at the three, and did not seem surprised that two of them were the Norths. His face was grave; he nodded briefly to Pam, to Jerry, and turned to the admiral.

  “This man Smiley,” Bill Weigand said. “The man you say you didn’t see, Admiral Satterbee. He’s been shot. Killed.” He paused a moment, his eyes on the admiral. “Or did you know?” he said. His voice was level and very quiet.

  Admiral Satterbee, standing tall behind his desk, standing straight, merely looked at Weigand. His eyes seemed to go blank.

  “About three o’clock,” Bill Weigand said, in the same tone. “A little before, a little after. In his office. While he was trying to get at his gun. Or did you know, Admiral?”

  He waited, this time.

  “No,” Admiral Satterbee said. “I didn’t know. I—”

  “But Smiley was here last night?”

  Admiral Satterbee looked at the Norths. Momentarily, he hesitated. Pam North nodded her head.

  “Yes,” Admiral Satterbee said. “He was here last night. I had—”

  “Employed him,” Bill Weigand said. He turned, spoke into the living room. “All right, Sergeant,” he said. “Bring him in.” Weigand moved into the room, leaving the doorway free.

  A square man in his middle forties came into the doorway. Sergeant Mullins was behind him. The man, who looked like any business man, looked clean, well dressed, confident, nodded to the admiral.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” he said.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Briggs,” Admiral Satterbee said.

  VII

  Saturday, 3:40 P.M. to 6:15 P.M.

  After she had got into the taxicab a few blocks down Broadway from the building in which she had left a man who grinned at death, Freddie Haven merely sat for a moment. The taxicab, warm, redolent of cigar smoke, was for that moment less a vehicle than a refuge. But then the driver had turned and looked at her and had said, “Where to, lady?” and she had had to find an answer.

  Apparently the police had already been told that the man Smiley had been murdered. Presumably, arriving so soon, they could tell within half an hour or so when he had been shot. Therefore, her reasons for avoiding the police became less exigent. But they did not cease to exist. She did not know how precisely a physician could set the time of death; she assumed that final precision remained contingent on circumstances, even if the body was quickly found. A physician might be able to say, for example, that Smiley had died between two and three o’clock. Then if her father had been in the apartment until two-thirty—

  “Lady,” the driver said, his voice intentionally patient. “You want to go some place, lady?”

  “The Waldorf, please,” she said.

  She did not know why she had, so suddenly, thought of Howard Phipps. She did not really know him well, although she had seen a great deal of him. It was only that now, as in the early hours of morning when she had made that ill-advised visit to the Gerald Norths, she felt an almost desperate need to share with someone, someone responsible and skilled, the anxieties which obsessed her. It must be, she thought as the taxicab started up, because I suddenly feel lonely. It is as if Dad weren’t around any more.

  It was not so much—surely, she told herself, it is not so much—that she was by nature dependent. It was rather that, since she had been grown, she had always had someone with whom to share things: share happiness and sorrow, and the little fears of life, and the perplexities. There had been her father, after her mother died. Then there had been Jack, for so desperately short a time; then her father again. Now, for the moment, with her father thus involved, and thus surrounded and cut off from her, there was no one. So she had thought of the Norths, so now she thought of Howard Phipps.

  Bruce had trusted Phipps, and relied on him. Bruce would not so have trusted anyone who was not competent, able to meet situations, what her father would call “savvy.” And, except for Celia, except for herself, Phipps had been closer to Bruce than anyone, would thus be more involved in these circumstances which, vaguely and inconclusively, appertained to Bruce’s death.

  The cab went up Seventh Avenue and past the narrow building, hemmed between big neighbors. There were three small police cars in front of it, now, and a large sedan which, presumably, had brought other men from the police. The taxi driver slowed and looked at the cars.

  “Something’s going on there,” he told her. “That’s a squad car.” His head indicated the big sedan.

  She said, “Yes,” in a voice which carefully revealed no interest. The driver, she felt, was disappointed; he speeded up, she thought, reluctantly. But he did drive on, drive past the building, and at the next east-bound street he turned to the right. He peered down the avenue as he turned, clearly hating to leave the scene of excitement.

  It was about four o’clock when she reached the hotel and paid off the cab. She walked down the long lobby, strangely feeling herself conspicuous, feeling that people were looking at her. This is the way a fugitive must feel, she thought; a person who is running away must feel this exposure, this uneasiness.

  She found a house telephone and asked to be connected with Phipps’s room. There was a wait, and the sound of the telephone ringing. Then Howard Phipps came on. His clipped tones, his controlled voice, were immediately recognizable.

  “Howard,” she said. “This is Freddie Haven. I’m downstairs. I—can I see you?”

  There was the briefest hesitation. Then Howard Phipps
said, “Of course, Freddie.”

  “Shall I come up?” she said.

  She had hardly finished the question when he said “no.” He would come down, he said; he would meet her by the house telephones; he would buy her a drink. “Wait there,” he said. “Won’t be a minute.”

  He was more than a minute, but he was quick. She stood near the telephones, waiting as he had asked. In three or four minutes he came toward her. He moved with familiar quick confidence; he smiled when he saw her, but the smile gave way quickly to an expression of gravity. He held out both his hands in greeting and she, responsive to cordiality, to sympathy, took them both. And then, surprisingly, she thought, why, he smells of perfume! The scent of perfume was, momentarily, very sharp. Then she could not detect it any longer; then she thought, it was one of those odd tricks of the senses. Some woman is near us, wearing a good deal of scent; there was some movement of the air, some eddy of the air.

  “You need a drink,” Howard Phipps told her. “We both do.”

  He took her to one of the cocktail lounges, ordered for both of them, did not let her speak of anything, stopped her by a shake of the head, until the drinks were in front of them.

  “You need this,” he told her, again. “You look done in, poor kid.” It was strange to be called a “kid”; curiously it was consoling. “A dreadful thing,” he said then, his voice low. “An awful thing. I haven’t had a chance—” He broke off. He smiled with a kind of hopelessness. “There isn’t anything to say, is there?” he said.

  “Nothing,” she said. “About Bruce—nothing. Howard, I want you—”

  And then, again, the fragrance came, as Howard Phipps bent toward her. It was a low-pitched scent, faintly musky; so feminine that, emanating from a man’s clothing, it was improper, unnatural. And now there was no woman near them.

  Emotionally she recoiled, even before her mind straightened out this oddity. Then her mind found a solution, made, at the same time, two discoveries. Within a few minutes, Howard Phipps had been holding some woman in his arms; holding her close, so that scent from her clothing had clung to his. That was the first thing; the second was that, without conscious thought, the name of the woman came into her mind. Within a few minutes of the time she telephoned Howard Phipps, he had had his arms around Breese Burnley. He had been holding her close to him. The low-pitched scent, the musky scent, was hers.