The Dishonest Murderer Read online

  Howard Phipps still leaned forward in his chair, his eyes still on Lieutenant Weigand, tenseness in his attitude.

  “I had no contact with the Grainger office,” he said, speaking carefully, making each word heavy. “Curt can tell you that.”

  “I c-can,” Curtis Grainger said. “This man was lying. Or—” He looked at Briggs.

  “That is what he told me,” Briggs said. “As I told the lieutenant, he did not amplify. But that is what he told me.”

  “You’ll be wasting time, Lieutenant,” Phipps said. “This won’t get you anywhere. Somebody strings the admiral along, makes it look good. Don’t you see that?”

  Of course it was that way, Freddie thought. Why can’t he see it? And then she thought, Oh Dad. Dad!

  “We have to go into everything,” Lieutenant Weigand said, and his voice was mild. “Even statements which may be baseless. It’s part of our job. We have to try to consider every possibility.”

  “T-try Breese Burnley,” Grainger said. “Leave us out of it. S-she was in love with him.”

  But that is wrong, Freddie thought. That may have been true, but it was long ago.

  “Yes?” Weigand said.

  “I t-took her home this morning,” Grainger said. “After we—after we heard. She broke down. She said things she didn’t mean to say. She was in love with Bruce. Still in love with him.” He turned to Freddie. “She hated you,” he said. “Did you know that?”

  Freddie shook her head. I didn’t know that, she thought; I don’t believe that. But at the same time she thought, I wouldn’t have known. She’s not like most people; she—she’s so smooth that things don’t show.

  “No,” she said. “It was a long time ago. Whatever it was.”

  “It was this morning,” Grainger said. “She was broken up.” He turned back to Lieutenant Weigand. “She would have tried to keep Bruce and Freddie from marrying,” he said. “She might have tried anything. This letter you talk about. Why couldn’t Breese have written it? Hoping the admiral would do something to—to stop the marriage?”

  He stopped speaking, but he did not seem to have finished. His eyes were narrowed, as if he were working something out.

  “Yes?” Weigand said.

  “You want a possibility,” Grainger said. “You want to consider everything. All right. Breese makes this thing up, writes this letter. How long ago did the letter come?” This last was to Admiral Satterbee. But Weigand answered. “Ten days,” he said. “Two weeks.”

  “She writes the letter,” Grainger said. “And, she waits. And, so far as she knows, nothing happens. The letter’s a dud. And so—” He spreads his hands, making the implication clear.

  “You make quite a jump,” Bill Weigand told him.

  “Think about it,” Grainger said, and Weigand nodded. He said, “Right.”

  “Meanwhile,” he said, “tell me where you were this afternoon between two and four, Mr. Grainger.”

  “The hell—” Curt Grainger began. Bill Weigand sighed. “Please, Mr. Grainger,” he said. His voice was weary.

  Grainger flushed again, momentarily. His stammer was somewhat more apparent when he spoke. But he managed to speak quietly; to say he had been in his apartment, to agree he had been alone. “Trying to work things out,” he added. When he finished, Bill Weigand merely nodded. He was standing by the admiral’s desk, the fingers of his right hand beat a tattoo on the desk. There was a considerable pause.

  “Right,” he said. “I think that’s all, for the time being. Unless someone else has remembered something?”

  He gave them time to answer. It appeared that no one had remembered anything. Weigand did not seem surprised.

  “It’s terribly mixed up,” Pam North said, and took, in a perplexed way, a sip from her cocktail glass. “Everything cancels everything.”

  They were at Charles bar, sitting around the corner. Jerry and Pam sat with their backs to the windows; Dorian Weigand and Bill were at right angles to them. There were not many people at the bar, and those who were looked rather tired, worn by the labor of dragging the New Year in.

  “How many do you make?” Pam said, putting her glass down, and addressing Bill Weigand. “I make five, not counting the admiral and Mrs. Haven. Mrs. Burnley and Breese—why Breese, do you suppose?—the brother, if there is any, Mr. Phipps and the Graingers.”

  Jerry had counted with his fingers. He said that it made six, not five.

  “Oh,” Pam said, “I count the Graingers as just one. Like father, like son. The sixth would be just a coincidence.”

  They all looked at her.

  “Stray Bowery bum,” she said. “An accident. A coincidence.” She took another sip. “Although really,” she said, “it’s all so confused that there’s nothing for it to be coincidental with.” She considered. “Coincidental to,” she said.

  Bill Weigand and Jerry North, simultaneously, raised their glasses and drank. They put them down and regarded Pam North, who looked thoughtful.

  “Why,” Dorian said, “don’t you count this admiral and Mrs. Haven? From what Bill says—” She stopped and looked at her husband.

  “Well,” Pam said, “for one thing, it makes too many. It would be simply ridiculous. You might as well count Mr. Briggs. Or the senator’s daughter. By the way, Bill, is there really a brother?”

  Bill Weigand appeared tired; there were lines in his face. He nodded; he said there was a brother; he corrected himself. He said there had, at any rate, been a brother. He had been, apparently, much as Phipps described him. They had been able to find no one who knew him.

  “From the outside,” Dorian said, “where I seem to be, I’d vote for the brother. He sounds like a man who might be on the Bowery. Probably he inherits something, perhaps a lot.” She paused. “You’ll all have to admit it’s neat,” she said. “Tidy.”

  Bill Weigand looked at his empty cocktail glass. His regard was reproachful. Gus moved near and paused, briefly, politely, in front of the four empty glasses. “Please,” Pam said. Gus made more martinis. “Bill,” Pam said, “where are you getting?”

  “We haven’t found anyone downtown who remembers seeing the senator last night,” he said. “Phipps checked in at the Waldorf early Friday morning, as he said he did. Smiley was shot with a thirty-eight at three o’clock Saturday, give or take fifteen minutes either way. Breese Burnley was still seeing a good deal of the senator as recently as six months ago. Nobody we’ve been able to get in touch with at the Grainger office remembers seeing Phipps there, or will admit it if he did. Breese saw something of Grainger—the father, not the son—from a little after Thanksgiving until he went back west about a week ago. Mrs. Haven left the apartment this afternoon at eighteen minutes of three. The admiral left three or four minutes before she did. She was perfectly calm when she called and asked for her father a little after three, according to Watkins, who would stand on his head twenty-four hours for either the admiral or his daughter, and may very well be lying. Phipps was in the public library as he says he was most of Friday, consulting reference books on hydro-electric projects—and irrigation projects since Babylon. That is—he was if we believe the times on the withdrawal slips, if we forget he could have been in and out a dozen times without being noticed. Senator Kirkhill telephoned his daughter a little before nine yesterday morning and said he was taking the next train from Washington. He took the nine o’clock, which put him into Penn Station at one in the afternoon. Most of what we’re getting from most of these people is only half the truth, if that.”

  “Goodness,” Pam North said. “How thorough!”

  Bill Weigand grinned at her. Even his grin was tired. He told her to think nothing of it; he said he had merely scratched the surface.

  “That’s true enough,” Pam said. “But I meant Mr. Phipps, not the police. Why Babylon?”

  Bill Weigand shrugged.

  “The touch of erudition which adds the je ne sais quoi,” Jerry North said. “Pass the peanuts, will you, Bill?”

  “
You’d think,” Pam said, “that he’d have Babylon at his fingertips by now. Because Senator Kirkhill had been talking about dams for years. Did Phipps write the speeches, do you suppose?”

  Bill Weigand said that Phipps talked about rough drafts. Dorian said, abstractedly, that she would bet. Pam said it certainly was mixed up. Jerry North ate peanuts with a crunching sound.

  “What I don’t see,” Pam said, “is how nobody knew the senator had a weak heart. Take Jerry, now.” She paused. Jerry stopped crunching.

  “There’s nothing the matter with my heart,” Jerry said. He sounded aggrieved. “Barring that touch of neuritis in—”

  “That’s what I mean,” Pam North said. “It isn’t human not to talk about ailments. Particularly if it’s a man. Jerry’s got this touch of neuritis and everybody knows about it. Once I was waiting in his office late and the cleaning woman came around and asked about it. The cleaning woman for the whole floor. And the senator was a man, of course.”

  “I don’t,” Jerry said, “see what being a man’s got to do with it.” He took a drink. “But she has something,” he said.

  Bill Weigand nodded.

  “Right,” he said. “You’d expect most of them to know—his daughter, his fiancée, his secretary, his housekeeper. And Miss Burnley, if he—if they saw as much of each other as they seem to have.”

  “How much,” Pam said. “For innocent ears?”

  “Plenty, apparently,” Bill said.

  “What’s she like?” Pam said. “Otherwise, I mean.”

  “Otherwise?” Bill repeated, and then said, “Oh.” “Very polished young woman,” he said. “Covered with the best grade enamel.”

  “But seething underneath?” Pam said. “A hidden volcano?”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Jerry said.

  Bill Weigand said he hadn’t been underneath. For all he knew—

  “She sounds dreadful,” Pam said. “So—so dishonest.”

  They all looked at her. Jerry North ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. He said, “Listen, Pam.”

  “Calculating,” Pam said. “Banking her fires.” She looked puzzled. “Just what is a banked fire?” she asked, of the others in general. But when Jerry, in a bemused tone, actually started to tell her, she said, “Rhetorical, Jerry. Some other time.” She turned to Bill.

  “Would Dorian like her?” she asked. “Would I like her?”

  Bill Weigand shook his head.

  “Would Jerry?”

  “Er,” Bill said. “She’s a very attractive wench.”

  “Listen,” Jerry said, but Pam shook her head at him.

  “Otherwise?” she asked Bill.

  Again Bill shook his head.

  “Calculating,” Pam said. “Conniving. Not letting her face show what her right hand’s doing.” She stopped and seemed to regard this remark. “Anyway,” she said, “not honest. Not—candid. Is she?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Bill said. “But listen—”

  “But supposed to have been in love with the senator,” Pam said, not listening. “Really volcanic underneath when he decided to marry Mrs. Haven instead. And then—what are you waiting for?”

  “Pamela,” Bill Weigand said. “I admit she isn’t a person either you or Dorian would particularly like. Now, if I follow you, you decide she killed Kirkhill.” He looked at her. “Really,” he said.

  “Not because of that,” Pam North said. “Because she’s dishonest. Who else is? Not Mrs. Haven. Not the admiral. Imagine a dishonest admiral!” She paused to give them the opportunity. “Not Mr. Grainger, because people who stammer never are.”

  “What?” Jerry said.

  “Dishonest,” Pam said. “It would be much too difficult. Not the secretary, I shouldn’t think, although it is funny about Babylon. And, of course, we’re looking for someone dishonest. A dishonest murderer.” She looked around at the others. “You all see that,” she said. Jerry and Bill Weigand looked at each other, but Dorian looked at Pam North and nodded slowly.

  “The old clothes,” she said. “The part of town. The whole bizarre setup.”

  “Of course,” Pam said. “To mislead. Dust in our eyes. In other words, a kind of sleight of hand. So that we’d look in the wrong place. Fundamentally dishonest. And what did you say once, Bill? ‘Make the character fit the crime’?”

  “Not I,” Bill said. “That is, I quoted. It was Heimrich. But really, Pam! Are you arguing that it’s that easy?”

  Pamela North looked, for a moment, a little hurt. Then she said she didn’t see what was so easy about it. When you looked at it, she said, it was perfectly logical. “Step by step,” she assured them.

  There seemed nothing to add to this. They welcomed Hugo, coming to proffer a table in the café.

  He seemed so certain, Freddie Haven thought, thinking of Lieutenant William Weigand. It was as if, in what was to her only the confusion of an eddying fog, he was moving along clear paths, toward a destination already apparent. There would be no way of stopping him, no way of changing his course. There was not even any way of telling how much he already knew, because he did not seem surprised at anything which was said. It was as if he expected certain things to be said, planned to have them said. She felt that it was hopeless to try concealment; that any move toward concealment she, or any of them, might make would be counted on in advance, planned against, even used.

  Freddie, lying on the chaise longue in her room, the lights low, tried to fight against this conviction. This man with a thin face, with a level voice, was not, could not be, what she was thinking him. He had certain methods; by doing certain things, asking certain questions, he achieved calculated results. He was trained for that, professional in that. But under this there was merely another human mind, sometimes baffled—as hers was now; sometimes, from incomplete observations, reaching conclusions which were incomplete, or even inaccurate. He was like anyone else—like William Blake. She thought of Blake with no surprise, as an example which came naturally to her mind. Blake, too, was intelligent, was trained. But things which were not really essential would distract him—the expression in eyes, the shapes of faces, his own sympathy, his own emotions. She had hardly talked with Blake, but she accepted these things about him as obviously true. She did not try to understand why this was so.

  She felt, lying there, her eyes closed, very tired and, now, dispirited, rather than frightened. Her thoughts no longer ran, around and around, in the squirrel cage of her mind. All fleetness seemed to have left her mind; it seemed difficult to understand even simple things. She felt that each thought came with a slow effort; it was as if she were moving, heavily, draggingly, through deep sand, each step to be made only by a conscious, wearying attempt.

  She had begun to feel this way after Weigand and the Norths had gone. Briggs had gone at once, after them. Howard Phipps had stayed a few minutes, saying little; seeming let down, puzzled. Then he had said, in a tired voice, that he would have to get back to it; had said, vaguely, that it was all a mess, and had gone, she supposed, back to the Waldorf and whatever he was doing there to knot up the straying ends of a public career hacked through. Celia had come down, hearing Curtis Grainger’s voice; had smiled with effort, the smile strange on her drained face, and Grainger had gone to her quickly, taken her to a corner of the big living room. They had sat there talking, his arm around her. Was that before Phipps had left, or after? It was an effort to remember.

  Her father had walked out of the library with the others, but then had stopped just beyond the door and shaken his head with an effort at a smile, and had gone back into the smaller room, closing the door behind him. It was then that Freddie had gone up to her room. Marta had followed her, tried to persuade her to eat something and, failing in this, had gone away with shaking head.

  It was hardly thought, this plodding effort which had ensued in Freddie Haven’s mind. She had tried, for a while, to determine where Weigand’s search was taking him; tried to follow, through this mud, in this fog,
the path on which he seemed, to her, to be moving with such assurance. She tried to put together what she now knew, what she had heard. But she could not concentrate. She could only hear voices—the voices of her father, of Phipps, of the man named Briggs. (When she thought of Briggs, she thought inescapably of the man who was dead, and who still grinned at her across his desk. She tried to close her mind to the thought, force the image away.) She heard Pamela North’s light, quick voice, intervening when, with the picture of Smiley too vivid in her mind, Freddie had almost given herself away. But most of all she heard the voice, level, unsurprised, of Lieutenant Weigand.

  The heavy, plodding wakefulness merged, after a time, imperceptibly, with heavy, plodding sleep. But her mind did not sleep. It toiled on in dreams. She was in a room and, all around her, were voices, sometimes recognizable but without source. The voices were making her play a kind of arduous, exhausting game. She had, within a certain time—the time vague, undefined, yet limited—to put together into a coherent whole what these voices were saying. The words she heard were part of a story, and to win the game, the losing of which would bring some dreaded, but also undefined, catastrophe, she had to put what the voices said together in a certain order. “Circumstances have changed,” a voice said, and it was her father’s voice. “I just changed Bruce into a man with grinning teeth and you must not call the police.” The last started in her father’s voice, but then the voice changed into one she could not identify, and another voice broke in saying, “But darling I hate you, darling” and then there was a voice which smelled of scent (and this was entirely reasonable and to be expected), saying, “You killed him in the public library, because it was on page three o’clock and where were you, Admiral, because there was so much snow?”

  These words, meaningless, full of meaning, became pieces of paper, and she had to pick up the pieces of paper from the floor of the room and put them together, matching the torn edges, but as soon as she found pieces which matched the pieces changed shape in her hands. You have to hurry, hurry, hurry something said, and she hurried so that she could hardly breathe. But then she was in a small room and a hand reached into the room holding a glass and a voice said, “You have to drink this, you know, and you have to hurry if you want to help your father,” and she reached out toward the glass but the glass fell between her hand the other hand, and papers spilled out of it. There were words on the papers and they were at first in a language she could not understand, and then they seemed to be written backward and then, as she looked at them, the words were the names of people. One of the names was Aunt Flo, and another Fay Burnley’s, and the third was that of William Blake. There were many other names, some of which she did not recognize, and now she knew that she had to pick the right name—that there was one name which was right, and all the others were wrong, and that if she made a mistake, or even if she waited too long, the walls of the room would close in and—