The Dishonest Murderer Read online

  “Well,” Jerry said again. He took the ashtray from the arm of the chair in which he was sitting and carried it to the fireplace. He emptied it into the fireplace. He looked at Dorian’s ashtray, but it was already empty. He advanced toward the ashtray beside Pam.

  “Darling,” Pam said. “Don’t fidget.”

  He looked at her gloomily, felt the faintest stirrings of animosity. A fine way for Pam to act, he thought. You’d think she never got sleepy; that she wanted—

  “Make yourself a drink, Jerry,” Pam said. “Eeny, meeny, miney—”

  “Oh,” Jerry said, quickly, “guess I’ve had plenty too.”

  He remained standing. That never failed.

  “Moe,” Pam said. “Sit down, Jerry.”

  He looked at her quickly, shook his head quickly. He looked at Bill Weigand. Bill did not look up, but he spoke.

  “I know, Jerry,” Bill said. He sighed. “We all are,” he said.

  “Well,” Jerry said, continuing to stand.

  Bill looked up and grinned at him.

  “Sleepy,” he said. “Let’s go to bed, these people want to go home. I know. But they’ll be calling back.”

  “Oh,” Jerry said. “Well, how about a drink?”

  “I didn’t think it would be so long,” Bill said. “It oughtn’t to be much longer. Then we will go.”

  “I wasn’t—” Jerry began, and stopped.

  “Of course you were, darling,” Pam said. “Imagine you emptying ashtrays otherwise. Eeny, meeny, miney, moe.”

  “All right, Pam,” Jerry said, and suddenly smiled at her. “I thought you’d already counted out your murderer. Eeny?”

  “To be fair,” Pam said. “Impartial. Eeny, it had something to do with the attempt to bribe the senator, if there was any. I mean, whoever wrote the letter to the senator, whether it was Breese or someone else, had something. It was because of that something—because he was ready to sell out—that the senator was killed. By somebody who felt very strongly about the hydro-electric project, or the dignity of the Senate, or—or something. Or by Mr. Phipps, who thought the senator’s death was better than his dishonor or—well, that’s eeny. In brief.” She paused and looked around. Nobody said anything. “Meeny, it was the brother, who enticed the senator down there and killed him to get his money. Does he, by the way?”

  “No,” Bill said, “his daughter does. With a sizable annuity to Mrs. Burnley, in consideration of her long and devoted friendship. Nothing to the brother. Ten thousand to Phipps.”

  “Well,” Pam said, “the brother for some reason we don’t know. Or, Mrs. Burnley, to get her annuity.”

  Dorian opened her greenish eyes. She suggested that meeny was rather heavily loaded.

  “Well,” Pam said, “miney obviously is Breese. I’ve explained that. I still like it best.”

  “Moe?” Jerry said.

  “Moe is a spare,” Pam said. “For contingencies, like it having been a coincidence. Or for anything else we think of. Which, Bill?”

  Bill Weigand looked up at her. He smiled and shook his head.

  “Possibly,” he said, “a combination.”

  “Look,” Pam told him, “it’s already complicated enough. And—”

  The telephone rang. Weigand raised his eyebrows at Jerry North, got a nod in exchange, and lifted the receiver. He said, “Yes,” and then, “Go ahead, Sergeant.” Then he listened. He listened with a quickening interest. The others could hear the voice Bill was hearing, but not the words.

  “Right,” Bill said. “Right, Blake. You’re damned right it’s funny.” He listened again. “I would have too,” he said. “Don’t worry.” He listened again. “Well,” he said, “I’d rather you took over.” The other voice resumed briefly. “Right,” Bill said, and listened again. “No,” he said. “My hosts are sleepy. I’ll be at—” He paused, and looked at Dorian. “The office,” he said. “In about half an hour. If I’m not, Mullins will know.” He hung up, then. The others looked at him. Dorian seemed to have come, instantly, wide awake.

  “Blake found Mrs. Haven,” he said. “And Miss Kirkhill. They, and Mrs. Burnley, were at Breese Burnley’s. Mrs. Haven is home, the girl’s at the Chatham with Mrs. Burnley but—Miss Burnley’s missing. And then a funny thing—”

  He broke off, because the telephone rang again. He did not signal Jerry this time. He picked the telephone up and said, “Yes? Weigand.” He listened. He said he’d be damned. He said, “Right, Mullins. No, I’ll go,” and replaced the telephone and, at once, stood up. His face was tense, interested.

  “The brother’s showed up,” he said. “Walked into the East Sixty-seventh Street station and said didn’t we want to see him? Just like that. Said, ‘Not that I know a damned thing.’”

  “But you think he does?” Pam asked, and Bill looked at her.

  “You know,” he said, “it would be just as interesting if he didn’t.” He nodded, in agreement with himself. “Even more,” he said. Then he looked at Dorian. “Can you get home by yourself?” he said. “Because—”

  “Of course,” Dorian said. But Bill looked at her doubtfully. “Of course,” she repeated. “Just because once I—”

  “I’ll take her, Bill,” Jerry said.

  “Of all the silly—” Dorian began, coming out of the chair, standing up, in one smooth, unbroken movement. “Just because I let a couple of—” She stopped. “For years before I met you, Lieutenant, I was perfectly capable of going home by myself. And—”

  She looked at Bill, looked then at Jerry North. She looked at Pam.

  “Males,” Dorian said. “Oh, all right. I’ll be protected.” She smiled at all of them, addressed herself to Bill. “Of course,” she said, “you’ve no idea when?”

  He shook his head. He said, as soon as he could.

  X

  Sunday, 1:25 A.M. to 3:05 A.M.

  Sergeant Blake had stood for a moment looking down at Freddie Haven. His sensitive face—it was rather a long face, she thought; he was not really a handsome man, as Jack, for example, had been handsome—was somewhat troubled. He looked at her speculatively, his faint smile serious. She waited, but when he did not speak, but merely continued to look at her, she put her key in the lock of her apartment door. Then he spoke.

  “Mrs. Haven,” he said. “I—” He paused. She looked up at him and waited. “If anything else comes up,” he said, “will you—will you not try to handle it alone? Will you call—” he hesitated momentarily—“us?” he finished. “Not try to handle things yourself?”

  She thought he was about to continue, as she thought he had been about to say “call me” and had changed it to “call us.” But he did not go on. He merely continued to look at her, his expression intent, as if he were trying to see into her mind.

  “We only wanted to see Breese,” she said, and he shook his head quickly and started to speak and did not. Then, after that instant, he merely said, “All right, Mrs. Haven,” and his expression changed slightly, became less personal. He didn’t mean about Breese, she thought. He meant—had he been thinking of the man Smiley she had found dead? But that was impossible; no one knew about that. No one could know.

  “Anyway,” he said, and now his tone was light, “stay put, Mrs. Haven. Leave it to us. Will you do that?”

  “Of course,” she said, and her tone was like his; her tone pretended that this was not of importance.

  She said, “Good night, Mr. Blake,” then, and went into the apartment. As she closed the door, Blake had turned to face the elevator gate. He has, she thought inconsequentially, surprisingly square shoulders.

  Watkins, looking very tired, met her in the foyer.

  “The admiral has retired, Mrs. Haven,” he told her.

  “Did he take something?” she asked, and Watkins nodded and said, “The usual, Mrs. Haven.” The usual meant one sleeping pill; the admiral believed, on what evidence Freddie had never been able to decide, that he suffered from insomnia. “Go to bed yourself, Watkins,” she said. “You must b
e tired.”

  He thanked her, admitted he was tired, looked at her with a question in his expression.

  “Have they—?” he said. “Do they know anything?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what they know, Watkins. It’s all—mixed up.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Haven,” Watkins said. “He’s worrying. Upset.”

  Freddie nodded. She said they all were. “We’ll just have to wait, I guess,” she said.

  “Yes, Mrs. Haven,” Watkins said. “He’s not used to this sort of thing.”

  “No,” Freddie said. “None of us is. Good night, Watkins.”

  She went up the stairs to her room. Its warmth, its soft lights, made a refuge. Marta was sitting in a chair, asleep. She woke as Freddie came in, and for a moment seemed dazed. Then she got up, and said she was sorry. Freddie shook her head.

  “You shouldn’t have waited,” she said. “Go to bed, Marta.” Then she shook her head again. “There isn’t anything new,” she said. “Nothing different.”

  “It’s a shame,” Marta said. “That’s what it is, Miss Freddie. Their making out it has something to do with—with us.”

  It has, Freddie thought. Oh, it has! But she merely nodded, agreeing. She let Marta help her, declined a “nice hot bath,” undressed and got into bed. Marta looked down at her, and Freddie smiled up. “Go to bed yourself,” Freddie said. “Everything’s all right, Marta.”

  Marta did not look as if she believed this; she hesitated, as if there were something she should do, as if she did not know what the something was. She looked around the room for it and, not finding it, sighed. “It’s a shame,” she told Freddie again, and went.

  It is a shame, Freddie thought, lying on her back, looking up at the ceiling. It is mixed up—oh God, she thought, what’s happening to us? What’s happening to Breese? What—

  But her mind was too tired. She wanted to look at things calmly, with detachment; she wanted to try, again, to put it all together, to add it all up; to work out something, some frame, which would include all of it—include her father and the grinning dead Smiley, the scent on Howard Phipps’s neat blue suit, the letter someone had written her father, the brother named George. But her mind was too tired, her eyes were too tired to see the smudged outlines of these things. She felt herself drifting, felt herself asleep.…

  And then again it was the telephone, ringing loudly, clamoring at her. But she was not surprised; it was as if she had known that this would happen. She reached for the telephone by her bed.

  “Yes?” she said and, almost breaking in on the single word, Howard Phipps said, “Thank heaven, Freddie! I was afraid you’d—” He did not finish that. He began again.

  “Breese telephoned me again,” he said. “Just now. I just hung up. She’s back at her apartment. And—there’s something terribly wrong. With her, I mean. Can you—can you go there with me?”

  “What is it?” Freddie said. “What do you mean? What did she say?”

  “She—she was mumbling. Her voice was all fuzzy. I think she’s—taken something.”

  “No!” Freddie said. “Oh no!”

  “She said ‘I’ve got to tell it’—something like that,” Howard Phipps said. His voice was tense, excited. “‘Tell someone before—’ and then something I couldn’t make out. I kept saying ‘Breese! Breese!’ and then it seemed to get through to her. She said, ‘The letter didn’t—’ and then something else I couldn’t make out. Then she said ‘Bring Freddie.’ She stopped then and I kept talking to her, but it sounded as if she—she’d just dropped the telephone. Not hung up. Just—just put it down somewhere. Dropped it.”

  “Did you—” Freddie began, but again he cut in.

  “I called you first,” he said. “Not—not the police. Because—well, because of what she said about the letter. I thought we’d—you and I—if we could see her, hear whatever it is she wants to say. If she can still—”

  It swirled in Freddie’s mind. It brought fear swirling into her mind. The letter—the letter someone had written her father. That was what Breese had meant; it must be what she had meant. Howard knew it was what she had meant. But then—then—

  “I’ll come,” Freddie said. “I’ll—I’ll hurry. You’ll be there?”

  “As soon as I can,” Phipps said. “I’m—I’m afraid she wants to—to confess something. To us—you. About—about all of it.”

  “I’ll come,” Freddie said again. “I’ll come. Don’t—”

  “No,” he said. “Not until we’ve seen her. But hurry.”

  “Yes,” she said, and heard the click as he hung up. She was out of bed, moving swiftly, fear swirling in her mind. The letter—her father—the letter—

  She dressed and started for the door. And then, almost as she was opening it, she stopped. She knew then another fear. And quickly then she went back to the telephone on the desk. She looked at a number she had written on the memo pad beside the telephone. She began to dial.

  “Then why did you think we’d want to talk to you?” Bill Weigand said. He looked at the man sitting across the desk from him. The unshaded lights of the precinct squad room were harsh on the man’s face. He looked like his brother, except that he was a little older than Bruce Kirkhill had been when he died, except that the muscles of his face were softer, sagged a little. He was a big man, too.

  “I read the papers,” George Kirkhill said.

  There was, Bill Weigand pointed out, nothing in the papers about him, about George Kirkhill.

  “I’m not a fool,” Kirkhill said. “There will be. Anybody could guess that. Bruce was found downtown. I used to live down there.” He paused a moment. “Also,” he said, “I was fond of Bruce. He was my brother, after all.”

  “Still?” Bill Weigand said.

  “I used to live down—down that way,” George Kirkhill said. “In a flop house. When I was drinking. Somebody was going to add things up.”

  “And you say they don’t really add?” Bill asked him.

  “To nothing,” George Kirkhill said. “It’s been two years since—two years ago Bruce made me a loan. I wasn’t in contact with him again.”

  “Yes?” Bill said.

  “I was drinking too much,” George Kirkhill said. He smiled suddenly, not happily. “Hell,” he said, “you’ve heard. I was a drunk. A Bowery bum. Well, I quit.”

  “After this last money from your brother?”

  The big man nodded.

  “Just like that,” George Kirkhill said. “Just like that. I—well, I got bored with the other. That’s it—just bored with it. No reform. No—moral compunctions. Just bored as hell. I got a place uptown, dried out, looked around for a job. Two years ago. And—I left Bruce alone. Figured he had it coming.”

  “And since you’ve been living at this place uptown, working at this cigar store?” Bill said.

  The man nodded.

  “You didn’t write your brother a letter a couple of weeks ago? Or any time within a year?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you were working Friday night? New Year’s Eve? From six until two?”

  “That’s right,” George Kirkhill said. “Selling cigarettes to people. Cigars. Most of the people were drunk. A little drunk anyway.”

  “You realize we can check this?” Bill asked. “About where you were, I mean? Where you’ve been for the past two years?”

  “Sure,” George Kirkhill said. “Want you to.”

  “Actually,” Bill said, “that’s why you came here, to the station house, isn’t it?”

  “Sure,” Kirkhill said. “Doesn’t it make sense?”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “It makes sense. And that’s all you know?”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Right,” Bill said. He hesitated. “You knew your brother, of course. Used to, anyway.”

  “Sure.”

  Bill Weigand hesitated, but only momentarily.

  “There’s been a suggestion,” he said. “A charge. That your
brother was getting ready to sell out to the people who don’t want this hydro-electric development he was interested in. What would you think of that? Between us?”

  “I’d think it was a damned lie,” George Kirkhill said. “Bruce wouldn’t sell out. Anyway—why should he? He’s—he was filthy with it.”

  Bill Weigand nodded.

  “He’ll leave you some of it,” he suggested.

  Kirkhill shrugged. He said he could use it.

  “But I doubt it,” he said. “Anyway—I don’t give much of a damn now.” He looked at Weigand. “You know,” he said, “it’s funny, but I don’t. Can you believe that?”

  Bill nodded. He said he could believe a lot of things. Even that. He stood up.

  “Thanks for coming in,” he said. He read from his notes the address George Kirkhill had given, verified it, watched Kirkhill go. A detective at the door looked at him enquiringly, and Bill shook his head. George Kirkhill could go, without an appendage. George Kirkhill went. After a little, Bill Weigand went out into the cold night, got into his car—which was also cold—and drove downtown to the Homicide Squad office. He hoped things were going to work out from here on in. They’d better, he told himself. Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley would be very annoyed if they didn’t. Bill thought of O’Malley, who was undoubtedly comfortably asleep, and thought it would be fine to go home and turn in. He thought of Dorian, waiting in their apartment. He sighed deeply, and drove on, in the wrong direction. He stopped in front of the building in West Twentieth street and climbed the stairs to his small office.

  Sergeant Mullins was sitting at Weigand’s desk. He got up and sat on it; Bill sat in the chair. Mullins looked interested.

  “About what I thought,” Bill said. “Otherwise, why would he show up so conveniently? Why not make us find him?”

  “That’s right,” Mullins said. “The boys are checking up?”

  “Right,” Bill said. “We’ve got to keep everybody honest. Even if they are.”

  “You know what, Loot,” Mullins said, “sometimes you talk like Mrs. North. You know that?”

  Mullins was advised not to let it get him down.

  “Speaking of the Norths,” Mullins said, “where are they?”