The Dishonest Murderer Read online

  Then she was awake; quite wide awake. Celia Kirkhill was standing beside the chaise longue, looking down at her. Celia’s eyes seemed unnaturally wide open and the skin of her face looked drawn, flattened against the bones of the eye sockets. Celia was dressed in a wool frock; why, Freddie thought, she has changed since the others went.

  “I didn’t know you were asleep,” Celia said. She sat down on the edge of the chaise longue. “Curt told me he thought Breese was in love with Dad. Why did he say that?”

  It was oddly as if they were continuing a conversation already begun, as if they had previously been talking about this.

  “Something she said when he was taking her home,” Freddie said. “Something she did.” She reached out a hand, took the girl’s slender wrist. “It doesn’t matter now, Ce,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, dear.”

  “Dad didn’t feel anything about her,” Celia said. “Not anything. Not for a long time. She was pretending. If it was anybody—” She paused. Freddie waited. “If it was anybody, it was Howdie,” Celia said. “I—I saw them once.”

  It didn’t matter, Freddie told her. It didn’t matter any more.

  “It’s all mixed up,” Celia said. “Terribly mixed up.” She began to cry. She did not sob, but tears formed in her eyes and began to creep down her face. “Freddie,” she said. “It’s so awful. So awful.”

  “I know,” Freddie Haven said. She pressed the girl’s wrist. “I know, Ce.”

  “He sounded so—so happy,” Celia said. “When he called me in the morning. Just to talk to me. So happy to be coming up. He said, ‘Give my love to Freddie, baby.’ He said—”

  “Don’t, dear,” Freddie said. “I know.”

  Celia did not appear to hear her.

  “He was getting away earlier than he had expected,” Celia said. “He thought he might get here earlier. There was something they had to do and he didn’t know how long it would take. But he thought it might not take long and he would—”

  “I know, Ce,” Freddie said. It is so hard the first time, Freddie thought; so hard when things change, when you first find out that things change. “You just have to try to start over,” she said, but it was more to herself than to the girl beside her.

  “It was all planned,” Celia said. There was a kind of incredulity in her voice. It could not be the way it was, because it had been planned another way. “It was all planned, Freddie.” She paused a moment. “Freddie,” she said. “Dad loved you. He—he was so happy. Underneath this—he was worried a little about Uncle George, but underneath he was so—looking forward to things so.”

  “Uncle George?” Freddie said. “His brother?”

  “Dad worried about him,” Celia said. “Things weren’t ever right about him. Dad had to—”

  “Celia,” Freddie said. She was suddenly wide awake. “You said Bruce had something to do. In New York? Was it about your uncle? You said—” she tried to remember the words. “Didn’t you say they had something to do? That that was why he was coming earlier than he had planned? Was it about your uncle?”

  She was conscious of a new quickness in her own voice. She saw Celia become conscious of it.

  “Why,” she said, “I don’t know, Freddie. I—I think it was something he said made me think it might be about Uncle George. But I don’t think—”

  “Try to remember,” Freddie said. She sat up, manoeuvred to sit beside Celia, put an arm around the girl’s slim shoulders. “Try to remember, Celia. Bruce was coming up early for some special reason. Was it because of your uncle?”

  “I thought it was,” Celia said. “I can’t remember why. I don’t think Dad—Dad said that. Wait a minute. He said something about ‘the same old thing’ or ‘the same old trouble.’ He was always having to help Uncle George, get him out of some sort of trouble. That’s why I thought—”

  “He said ‘they’ had something to do,” Freddie said. “Who did he mean, Celia? What did he say?”

  Celia shook her head.

  “Just that there was something to do in New York,” she said. “I think he said ‘we,’ meaning himself and—well, and Howdie, wouldn’t it be? It was almost always Howdie in—in things like that.”

  “But Howard didn’t meet him,” Freddie said. “Howard was in the library, working on this speech.” She paused. “Could it have been Breese?” she said. “Or Mrs. Burnley?”

  “I don’t know,” Celia said. “I suppose—but I don’t think he had seen Breese for months. Really, Freddie.” She turned to look into Freddie’s eyes. “It was just you, Freddie,” Celia said.

  The poor baby, Freddie thought. She’s trying to—to comfort me. She came to do that. But now that is so far off; it matters, but not the way she thinks it matters. Freddie said, “I know, dear,” and tightened her arm about Celia’s shoulders. But she spoke abstractedly.

  It was a little as it had been in the dream, but now the pieces were stable; now they did not dissolve as she touched them, change shape and texture, alter from words written to words spoken. What Celia remembered was vague, inconclusive. But it was still tangible. Bruce had changed his plans. Either he had changed them at the last moment or he had, at the last moment, mentioned the change to his daughter. He had planned, with someone else, to do something in New York during the afternoon or early evening. It was at least possible that it was while doing that something, perhaps as a result of it, he had been killed. And, someone was associated with him. If it was one of them, one of “ourselves,” whoever it was had not admitted it, had concealed it. But that meant—

  Celia was wrong in thinking her father had meant Howard Phipps when he said “we.” Phipps had been at the library; he had, she gathered, been able to prove it. Then it was one of the others—Breese Burnley or her mother, Curtis or—not Father, she thought. Not Father! But possibly Celia’s Uncle George himself; perhaps that was all Bruce had meant.

  “Breese and Howdie,” Celia said. “The last few months it’s been Breese and Howdie. I don’t think it was important, but I used to see them together. Dad knew and—he didn’t care, Freddie. So you see—”

  Breese in Howard Phipps’s arms, leaving the memory of her perfume on his clothing. Breese and Howard; Breese and Bruce Kirkhill; Breese and—Breese and Curtis Grainger, in a taxicab after the news of Bruce’s death, and Breese sobbing because the man she loved was dead. Or was that true? Had Curtis invented it, used an invention for his own purposes? To—to lead away from the anonymous letter, and the things it had charged against Bruce and, at the same time, against Curtis’s father, or, perhaps, Curtis himself?

  “Have you told them about what your father said?” Freddie asked. “Told the police?”

  Celia shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s—it’s been hard to remember.” She had stopped crying, now she began again. Freddie Haven tightened her arm, held the girl, said, “I know, Ce. It’s awful, Ce.”

  “But you ought,” she began, and stopped. For what was there, really, to tell the police? That Bruce Kirkhill had planned to be in New York for most of the afternoon and early evening of the day he was killed; that he and someone had planned to do—something. What could the police make of that? It shrank almost to nothingness as she thought of it. It was not worth telling; it was nothing to tell. Then she realized, and was puzzled, realizing, that out of intangible substance of this repeated conversation, she had built something which had almost the solidity of a conviction.

  “It must have been Breese,” she said. “I think it must have been Breese he was going to see.” Celia started to speak, but Freddie shook her head. “Not because there was anything between them,” Freddie said. “I don’t mean that. But—perhaps there was something left over. Or, from what there had been, something new developed.”

  Celia shook her head. Her eyes were puzzled.

  “I know,” Freddie said, and smiled faintly. “It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Even with the background of my own thoughts, it doesn’t make much sense, Freddie th
ought. To Celia—her mind did not finish the thought. If I went to Breese, she thought, asked her whether she saw Bruce, whether he had come to New York to see her, perhaps I could—could help.

  “I don’t think it was Breese,” Celia said. “I’m sure it wasn’t.”

  But she was not sure. Her voice revealed that; the very shape of her words revealed it.

  They looked at each other.

  “We could ask her,” Celia said. “Why don’t we ask her?”

  “Not you,” Freddie said. “You—”

  But the girl began to shake her head. “I have to know too,” she said. “Don’t you see that, Freddie? Because it was about Dad, I have to know.”

  Pam North pointed out that she had never said it was the only logical solution. She said it was merely the one which, on what they knew, covered everything. They were back in the Norths’ apartment, after dinner at Charles. They had been talking and sipping drinks; they had had long pauses, in which the silence was companionable. Dorian, curled in a big chair, seemed only half awake.

  “But,” Pam said, “starting with the character, and with the dishonesty. What else covers both, and everything else? She’s calculating, as you said yourself, Bill.” Bill Weigand shook his head. “Oh,” Pam said, “in other words. I’ll give you other words. She was in love with the senator; according to Mr. Grainger, she was still in love with him. She didn’t want him to marry Mrs. Haven, so she wrote the admiral this letter. When that didn’t seem to be working, she killed him. ‘All men kill—’”

  “Pam,” Jerry said. “No!”

  Pam said she was willing to admit it was an exaggeration; she had merely been going to use it because it fitted.

  “How did she kill him?” Bill asked. “How did she go about it?”

  That, Pam said, she obviously didn’t know. She said she could suppose, if they wanted her to. Bill nodded.

  “Well,” Pam said, “which letter was first?”

  They all looked at her.

  “The letter the senator got from his brother? Or about his brother,” she said. “The letter the admiral got about the senator?”

  “According to Phipps,” Bill Weigand said, “the George letter was about a week ago. The other was a week before that, apparently. Roughly.”

  “All right,” Pam said. “She writes this letter to the admiral. Nothing happens. Or, she thinks nothing is happening. So she writes this letter about George. Maybe she pretends she is George. She says she—George, that is—has to see the senator about something important. Suppose she—that is, George—says she, I mean he, of course, is in a jam which will bring disgrace on the family name and, for his own protection—I mean the senator’s own protection—he—I mean George—has to have him—”

  “You mean the senator?” Jerry said.

  “All right,” Pam said. “I’m just talking the way I’m thinking. Yes, the senator, bail George out. All right so far?”

  “Well—” Jerry North said.

  “Good,” Pam said. “Now, still pretending to be George, she makes an appointment to meet the senator down on the Bowery, where George is living. I just say the Bowery, of course.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “Of course.”

  She looked at him. She pointed out that she had been invited to suppose.

  “She tells the senator to dress so he won’t be recognized, because if he’s recognized this gang—”

  Jerry North said, “Pam! Darling!” and ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. “What gang?”

  “The gang George is in a jam with,” Pam said. “Naturally. This gang will recognize him and that will spoil everything. Shall I suppose why?”

  “No,” Bill said. “Just go ahead.”

  “Is there anything the matter with it?” Pam asked.

  “No,” Bill Weigand said. “I don’t say there’s anything the matter with it.”

  “All right,” Pam said. “She meets him. In disguise?” Pam hesitated. “No,” she said, “I don’t think that, really. She has some explanation of being there. Wait a minute—this gang has found out about her and the senator, through George, and George has got in touch with her, too, and—”

  “All right,” Jerry said. He looked at Bill. “You know,” he said. “There isn’t anything wrong with this. At bottom. Prune it a bit and—”

  “Right,” Bill said.

  Pamela thanked them both.

  “So while they’re waiting,” she said, “they have a drink. He is full of knockout drops and they—well, they knock him out. Or partly, because he has to go from wherever they were to this doorway. Then he—then he dies. She’s planned it this way, of course—this oblique way—so his death won’t be connected with anyone in his circle. So the police will think it was a thug. That’s what’s so dishonest.”

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said. “Go ahead, Pam. Smiley?”

  That was easy to suppose, Pam said. Suppose Smiley was following the senator, saw him meet Breese Burnley, guessed what had happened, tried to blackmail Breese, got killed for it. “Anybody could suppose that.”

  “And then called us up to report his death?” Bill said.

  “Why not?”

  “Why?”

  Pam said she was willing to suppose. To fix the time, for some reason. Presumably, because it was a time for which Breese had established a fictitious alibi. But Bill Weigand shook his head at that. The trouble was, she did not have an alibi. Mullins had checked. She had been in her apartment, alone, taking a nap.

  “And,” he went on, “this afternoon you thought that Mrs. Haven had found Smiley’s body. And, presumably, notified us.”

  “Bill,” Pam said. “You don’t think—”

  “Oh yes,” Bill Weigand said. “I do. So do you. All that nonsense about third or fourth hand.”

  Pam North said, “Bill,” in an aggrieved tone, but he only smiled at her and nodded.

  “You’re guessing,” she said. “Intuition.” She paused. “Anyway,” she said, “she’s just worried about her father, which is ridiculous. Or—” She looked at Bill Weigand.

  “Why?” he said. “Why is it ridiculous, Pam?”

  The telephone rang, then. Jerry jumped, slightly, as if he had been a considerable distance off. Dorian, curled in a big chair, opened her greenish eyes. Jerry said, “Yes?”, said “Yes,” again without interrogation, and shook the telephone at Bill. Bill took the telephone and said, “Weigand,” and, after a second, “All right, Smitty, go ahead.” Then he listened.

  His eyes narrowed as he listened. He said, “Try to get Mullins. And Blake.” He listened again. He said, “Right,” and replaced the telephone and for a moment looked at it.

  “Mrs. Haven has just left the apartment building,” he said. “She’s got Miss Kirkhill with her. I wonder if—”

  He did not finish.

  IX

  Saturday, 11:30 P.M. to Sunday, 1:10 A.M.

  There had been an increasing tenseness, a feeling of urgency, of something about to happen, on the way from the apartment building in Park Avenue to this smaller building in a side street west of Central Park. Out of the intangible, something tangible seemed on the instant of being born. The weariness, the sense of plodding vainly, had left Freddie Haven; she had willed the taxicab to go faster, risk the slippery pavement of the street which ran in a gorge through the park. Hurry, hurry, she had thought; if we can only hurry, we will know.

  But now all this ended, was snuffed out, in a small vestibule. Freddie Haven again pressed the button above the name of Breese Burnley—pressed it long and hard, and waited. Surely, now, there would be a responsive clicking sound in the lock of the door in front of them. But again, nothing happened.

  “It’s no use,” Celia said. Her young voice was weary; in the dim light of the vestibule, her face was indescribably weary. I shouldn’t have let her come, Freddie thought, and said, “I guess there isn’t, Ce.” Her own voice sounded deadened, muted by disappointment. She had built so much on this and only now realiz
ed how much she had built, and on how little. The unresponsiveness of this small inanimate thing, this little push button, mocked her. There’s nothing here, it said; there was never anything here.

  “She just isn’t at home,” Celia said. “We should have telephoned.”

  For an instant, Freddie Haven was almost angry. Didn’t Celia realize? You couldn’t telephone. You had to go, to see a face, hear a voice, know from the expression in eyes, from the movement in hands, what words did not tell you.

  “Yes,” Freddie said, “I suppose we should have. She isn’t home. We—we may as well go back.”

  She pushed at the door leading into the building, pushed at it knowing it would be locked. It was locked.

  “All right,” she said, and turned away from the door toward the other door leading to the street. “Come on, Ce. We’ll—”

  She stopped. The door was opening. It will be Breese, Freddie thought, and at almost the same moment saw it was not Breese. Fay Burnley, huddled in her fur coat, came into the vestibule.

  “Ouh—h,” she said. “It’s so cold.” Then she looked at Celia and Freddie Haven and said, “What’s happened? Something dreadful’s happened.” Her voice was excited, and frightened.