Murder Out of Turn Read online

  “What did you come here for, Miss Hunt?” he said. “What are you looking for?”

  He saw her breast rise as she drew in a steadying breath. He waited; saw her catch control. She was acting well, he thought, when the anger faded out of her face.

  “You startled me,” she said. “I’m sorry I seemed—excited, I felt—I felt as if you had trapped me.”

  She was disarming, now, but Weigand stared at her and his expression did not change.

  “Well,” he said, “haven’t I? Aren’t you trapped, as you put it?”

  She laughed. It almost sounded like laughter.

  “But it’s ridiculous,” she said. “I came here because Mrs. Wilson asked me to, and you make me feel—you make me feel as if I had been caught in something criminal. Or you did.”

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “You might feel that way. Why did Mrs. Wilson ask you to come here?”

  He saw the story growing behind her eyes; felt that she knew he saw it growing. There was hesitation too brief to be perceived, but not too brief to feel, in her answer.

  “She wanted me to pick up something for her,” Dorian Hunt said. “She said that, if I got down this way, it would be kind if I would pick up Helen’s checkbook—hers and Helen’s, rather—and bring it out with me. I said I would be glad to if I got downtown and—”

  “And you got downtown,” Weigand said. “I see. And then you decided to leave without taking the checkbook.”

  “But of course,” she said. “Anybody would. I saw that somebody had been going through the desk and I thought I heard breathing and I—well, I was terrified. Why shouldn’t I be? How was I to know that it was—that it was the beneficent, guarding police?”

  There was irony which tried to be light irony in the last phrase. Weigand let it slide past him. She waited, and saw that it slid past him.

  “Well,” she said, “are you going to believe me? Or is that too simple for the police mind?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That is too simple for the police mind. Or too complicated. No, I don’t think I’m going to believe you, Miss Hunt. Because, you see, I think I know what you came after. I think you came after a picture—a picture of your father, inscribed to Helen Wilson. I think you didn’t want anybody to know you had come, and came up the stairs very quietly. I think you—where did you get the key, Miss Hunt?”

  He snapped the question at her.

  “Mrs. Wilson gave it to me, of course,” she said. “As I told you. And I don’t know what you mean about the picture.”

  He listened to her voice. He thought she did know about the picture.

  “What do you think the picture means, Miss Hunt?” he asked. “I was wondering when I heard you outside. I was wondering if it meant anything. What do you think, Miss Hunt?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t mean—”

  She broke off. He was smiling a little, not happily.

  “All right!” she said. “All right! So I did come after the picture—to keep it away from snoopers. From snooping policemen—from people who would give it to the newspapers, and make it seem like something it wasn’t; would drag it all out again … and again … and again! To keep it out of the garbage-can of minds like yours, if you want to know. So what are you going to do about it, Lieutenant? Wouldn’t you like to lock me up because I came to get a picture my father gave to a girl who thought he was a fine man? Wouldn’t you—”

  There were tears in her voice now. But they were angry tears.

  “He was a fine man!” she said. “You wouldn’t know about men like that—you want to hound them, and twist what they do, and send them to prison.” She flared at him. “Send me to prison, why don’t you?” she said, and her voice was shaking. “Why don’t you? You’ve caught me, haven’t you? You can charge me with something, can’t you? You’re stronger than I am—why don’t you take me away and lock me up? Isn’t that what policemen are for, Lieutenant Weigand? To lock people up?”

  Weigand felt tired, suddenly. There was tiredness in his voice.

  “I don’t want you for anything, Miss Hunt,” he said. “I don’t want the picture for anything. If you’re lying about it, I’ll find out. You can go any time, Miss Hunt.” He watched her a moment. When he spoke again there was something bitter in the weariness of his voice.

  “And take your damned picture with you,” he said. His voice was level, tired and bitter. He left the door, suddenly, and moved across to the desk. He picked up the picture, slowly, unemotionally, and held it out to her.

  “Take your picture,” he said.

  She hesitated a moment, and there was an odd change in her face. Then, without saying anything, she reached out and took the picture. She looked at it a moment and then her fingers loosened and she let it drop between them. She looked at him a moment longer and then turned. And then she was gone and the door was closed behind her and he heard her steps going down the stairs, not trying to be silent. He stood and looked at the picture and after a while he said he would be damned. He said it reflectingly, as if he were puzzled. Then, without touching the picture, he went to the door and out of the apartment and found the janitor and gave him the key. He had nothing to say to the janitor, who had conversation left. He wanted to look up the street to see if Dorian Hunt was still in it, but instead he looked ahead of him as he climbed into his car. He drove without thinking through the maze of streets, came out on Sixth Avenue and stopped in front of Charles’.

  There was a seat at the bar and the bartender smiled and nodded toward it. Then, looking at Weigand’s face, he said nothing, but poured a jigger of gin in a mixing-glass and added vermouth. Weigand groped for the martini without looking at it, and drank it, staring into the mirror in the center of the oval bar.

  15

  MONDAY

  4:45 P.M. TO 7:10 P.M.

  The bartender had a benign pink face and knew everybody. He was merely present if Weigand wanted to say anything until Weigand finished his drink, and edged the glass back across the bar. The bartender picked it up and twirled it between his fingers.

  “I tell you, Lieutenant,” he said, “you never tasted my sherry martini, did you?”

  “What?” said Weigand. “No. Sherry martini?”

  The bartender smiled, approvingly. He said that was right. Sherry martini.

  “You ought to try it sometime, Lieutenant,” he said. He hesitated, as if making a decision; acting a little for Weigand’s distraction. “I tell you,” he said. “Suppose I mix you one now? I’d just like to have you try it.”

  “Why, yes,” Weigand said. “Sure, I’d like to try it.”

  The bartender went to the other side of the bar and came back with a bottle. He showed the label to Weigand.

  “This is about the only kind you ought to use,” he explained. He was serious and friendly about it. “It has to be as dry as you can get it—almost white, see? It’s too expensive to serve regularly, of course, but I think you’d like to try it.”

  “Yes,” Weigand said. Now his eyes were focused again, and the bartender nodded hardly perceptible approval to himself. “You use it instead of vermouth?”

  The bartender beamed, and said that Weigand had it.

  “Same proportions,” he said. “Same everything.” His hand swooped out of sight and came back with a mixing-glass again. The glass burrowed into ice, and came up almost full. “You’ve got to measure it,” the bartender said, earnestly. “Trouble with most people’s drinks, they think they don’t have to measure them.” A look of pain crossed the friendly, pink features. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “there are some men behind bars right here in New York—!” He left the conclusion hanging, unable to encompass the enormity in words. “Twenty-five years I’ve been mixing drinks,” he said. His eyes saddened. “With an interval, of course,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t try to mix anything without measuring. Not anything.” He cast around in his mind. “Not an old-fashioned,” he assured Weigand. “No, sir. Not even an old-fashioned.”

 
He mixed as he talked. Gin poured into the hourglass jigger and fell on ice in the shaker. The jigger reversed itself. Sherry filled it until surface tension strained to hold it in the measure. It joined the gin. A spoon whirled, spinning in trained fingers. It was soothing, diverting to watch the spoon, Weigand found. A clean glass; a big olive. The martini shook in through a strainer. It slid across to Weigand, who had to lift it slowly to maintain the tension, which was now transferred to the glass. It was a game. He sipped, and the bartender watched, pink face expectant, consoling.

  Weigand’s eyebrows went up and his head moved, appreciatively nodding. As if it, too, had been held by surface tension, the bartender’s face broke out of expectancy. A smile appeared. The dignified head with its pink crown nodded, too.

  “I tell you,” the bartender said, “there’s nothing like it. Not in a martini.”

  It had an aromatic, elusive taste. Weigand, fully engrossed, tried another sip. It was hard to define the difference, but it was a fine difference. It was a clearer taste, at once more gentle and more decisive. If a thing could be more gentle and at the same time more decisive.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “It’s something, all right.” He tasted again. “It’s certainly something,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” the bartender said. “It makes a mighty fine martini.” He let his assurance sink in. “But you’ve got to be careful,” he said. His voice was warning. “Not just any sherry. It’s got to be dry. I mean dry.” He looked horrified at a thought which silently crossed his mind. “Not domestic!” he warned. “Don’t think you can do it with domestic!” His voice was urgent, and he looked at Weigand anxiously, for reassurance.

  “Right,” Weigand said. It seemed pretty important to him, too. “I won’t use domestic.” He found that he was uttering “domestic” with a kind of alarm, almost of loathing. The bartender nodded before him and then his gaze shifted to the next stool. It lost a little of its avuncular warmth.

  “Hiya, Loot,” Detective Mullins said, from the next stool. “Hiya, pal.” This was to the bartender, who looked faintly abashed. “Old-fashioned, I guess.” The bartender winced, but was too much a gentleman to show it. Weigand was amused, he discovered. Two martinis elevated amusement from a sub-cellar of consciousness.

  “Well,” he said: “Mr. Mullins. In person. Have a drink, Mr. Mullins.”

  He shifted to observe Mr. Mullins, who observed him.

  “Sure,” Mullins said. “Why not? An old-fashioned, I guess.”

  “This,” said Weigand, “is where you came in. Did you get the dope?”

  “Yeh,” Mullins said. “I got the dope. And of all the—”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Did you find the people—Helen Wilson, John Blair?”

  Mullins had. It had been a hard job. He had had to go through—

  “Right,” Weigand said. “And how about it?”

  Mullins started to haul out what was evidently an encyclopedia of notes. Weigand stopped him.

  “Hold onto all that,” he said. “In case. But just tell me.”

  Well, Mullins said, it was like the Loot thought, or he guessed it was. Like in the newspapers, anyway. Helen Wilson had been in line to inherit plenty from the Brownley estate.

  “Plenty?” Weigand repeated. “Such as what?”

  That Mullins couldn’t answer. The estate had not yet been appraised; there was evidence of a good many bad investments. All anybody could be sure of was that there would be plenty. “What I’d call plenty, anyway,” Mullins amplified.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “We’ll call it plenty, for the moment, anyway.”

  Helen inherited through her father and absolutely. Dying before final adjudication, her share went to the next of kin. If she had lived to receive the money, it would have gone to her heirs—or to anyone to whom she had willed it. But now—

  “Yes,” Weigand prompted. “Now?”

  Now it went to three people. John Blair—Weigand nodded over that confirmation—a chap named Archibald Blair who was—“Right,” Weigand said. “We can go into that later, if we need to.” And a man named William Simpson, who also was—

  “Right,” Weigand said. “It checks, as you said.”

  He stared at his empty glass, but shook his head as the bartender also regarded it, questioningly. Mullins finished his own drink and thrust it forward hurriedly. The bartender, a little gloomily, mixed another old-fashioned. Weigand stared at his glass, but now there was a different sort of abstraction in his stare.

  “Only,” Weigand said, at length, “it was Blair who got slugged. I’m afraid that’s a catch.” He looked at Mullins’ glass. “Drink it up,” he said. “We’re moving along.”

  Mullins drank it up, looking disappointed, as might a man with more old-fashioneds in his mind. Weigand pushed bills across the bar and reapproved the sherry martini. He would watch out about domestic, he promised. The bartender nodded and smiled and was clearly pleased with Weigand’s progress. The bartender was a physician, surveying convalescence. Weigand checked his watch with the clock over the door, and they agreed, substantially, that it was five thirty-five.

  An hour and a half to Lone Lake, if they drove fast; an hour and three-quarters if traffic was bad. Suddenly, unexpectedly, either time seemed too long. Weigand was, to his own surprise, conscious of an unaccountable feeling of urgency. He shook his head, but the feeling persisted—a feeling that he had already been too long away from the lake, and the people there; that it was necessary that he be there, quickly.

  Weigand slid behind the wheel and started with a jerk which surprised Mullins, beside him. They swung quickly west, through traffic. “If Mullins weren’t along, I’d be using the siren,” he thought, obscurely, and was mildly astonished at the thought. But Mullins could not be encouraged in a vice. They climbed the ramp to the express highway and paid little attention to the signs which said “35 M.P.H.” They even wove in and out, now and then, circling slow cars, taking all advantages. Weigand said little until, beyond the highway and the Henry Hudson Parkway, past the bridge over the Harlem, they settled down to an unvarying fifty on the Saw Mill River Parkway. It was merely a question, now, of letting the road roll back.

  “Well, Loot,” Mullins said, conscious of a relaxation of tensity, “how do you figure it? Is it a screwy one?”

  It was a familiar opening move between them. It invited Weigand to analyze; to rub his thoughts against the substantial common sense of Detective Mullins. It was time for that, Weigand thought, if it was ever going to be. He slid lower in the seat; the speedometer needle climbed to fifty-five. The sun slanted from the left and from behind and traffic thinned on the road. A motorcycle policeman, coming toward them, turned in his seat to watch the car, tried to intercept the driver’s eyes in warning, abandoned the project. Weigand swerved in to pass a plodding, ancient Pierce-Arrow; swerved back to the outside lane.

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s screwy—screwy with an extra turn. It’s twin-screwy.”

  “Jeez!” said Mullins, appreciatively.

  Weigand waited a moment to give Mullins time to complete his appreciation of the grimness of circumstances. He held the inside lane, going fast, at the Cross-county Parkway intersection, and gained speed as they passed on the eminence above Yonkers. They went downhill and into a broad curve at a speed which made Mullins look inquiringly at his lieutenant. Weigand was staring ahead, and his eyes did not shift as he began to talk.

  The problem, he told Mullins, was, at the start, a problem of two simultaneous murders—simultaneous, that was, to appearance. But the probability that they were distinct murders, having no causal relation to each other, was, Weigand thought, faint. Coincidence seldom went that far.

  “Yeh,” Mullins said, “they’re hooked up, I guess.”

  Then, if you assumed they were hooked up, you could assume that one had been committed to cover up the other. Thus you could call one the essential murder and the other the superficial murder.

  “Huh?” said Mu
llins, toiling.

  Weigand slowed impatiently for a red light; was moving again before it quite changed.

  One murder, if Mullins liked that better, was a primary murder, which would have occurred regardless of the other. But the second murder could not occur until there had been a first.

  “Yeh,” said Mullins. “Only which is first? I don’t get it.”

  That, Weigand said, was the rub, and it rubbed harder because there seemed to be motives for both murders. And rubbed harder still because, although the body of Helen Wilson had been the first found, there was no evidence to show whether she had been killed before or after the trap was laid for Jean Corbin, who might merely have died later but, so far as they were concerned, have been murdered first.

  Mullins looked hopelessly at Weigand, and shook his head.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “I know how you feel. So do I—or so did I.”

  So, he went on, as the speedometer needle climbed to sixty and stayed there, you had to make at least two distinct assumptions to begin. First, you could assume that Helen Wilson’s murder was the essential murder, starting there because hers was the first body found. Then you could find suspects. You did find suspects.

  “Yeh,” said Mullins. “This Blair guy.”

  Obviously, Weigand agreed, first of all this Blair guy. He had the best of motives—money. He had opportunity, as, apparently, did everybody else. And he was fine, until he got slugged. That tore it, or seemed to. There was a chance, of course, that he was still the murderer. He repeated to Mullins his speculations on that point, first formulated with the Norths as audience. Mullins thought it over, and shook his head.

  “Fancy,” he said. “You could argue that way, but it’s pretty fancy.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “I agree, I think.”

  Then, assuming that there was not something they had missed—“and I think we’ve got everything of importance,” Weigand interjected—there was only one remaining suspect for the Wilson murder as the essential murder. That was Dorian Hunt. Weigand’s tone remained emotionless. But the car’s pace suddenly increased.