The Norths Meet Murder Read online

  “Yeh?” said Mullins.

  Weigand said, O.K., they could skip that, for the time being. There was a better motive—the hundred grand.

  “Like I said,” Mullins said. “They were in it together.”

  That, Weigand pointed out, was not necessarily true. They might have been. On the other hand, Berex might have been in it alone, figuring that if he killed Brent he would get Mrs. Brent and the hundred thousand along with her. Or, possibly, even without the hundred thousand—just eliminate the husband and marry the wife. Perhaps Mrs. Brent, for some reason, would not try to get a divorce, and Berex, with or without the hundred thousand in mind, in addition to his desire for the lady, might have decided on the shortcut.

  “That’s happened, all right,” Weigand said.

  Mullins agreed that that had happened, all right.

  “Listen, Loot,” he said, “I think it was the two of them together. That’s how I think it was.”

  “Then why,” Weigand said, “would Berex leave in the mailbox the slip of paper with Edwards’ name on it—and with his own fingerprints on it? And with enough of the letter X on it to lead us to him? Why did he do that, Mr. Bones-Mullins?”

  Mullins wrinkled his brows, sighed deeply, and then brightened.

  “To lay it on Edwards,” he said. “The piece of the letter he didn’t cut off was just an accident and he forgot about the fingerprints. He was trying to lay it on Edwards, because he had it in for Edwards.”

  “Did he?” Weigand said.

  Mullins said he didn’t know.

  “I dunno,” Mullins said. “He could of had. Or maybe he just had to use some name that Brent would know, and picked on Edwards’, not caring much either way what happened to Edwards.”

  “Then why didn’t he destroy it afterward?” Weigand said. They looked at each other, and Weigand looked almost as much pained as Mullins.

  “He must have wanted to pin it on Edwards,” Mullins said. “That’s the only way it makes sense.”

  Weigand nodded, and said it looked like it. But why the fingerprints? Mullins said that Berex probably just didn’t think of them.

  “Then why,” Weigand said, “were they upside-down?”

  Mullins said, “Jeez, Loot.”

  “Well,” Weigand said, “it might be this way. Berex might have got the prints on the paper at some other time, perhaps when he was pulling a sheet of paper from the pile. Perhaps sometime he pulled a sheet out, and decided not to use it for some reason, and shoved it back, leaving his prints. Then, by accident, he used that particular sheet when it came to cutting out the slip, but when he was actually cutting it he was very careful about prints, and when he slipped it into the slot at the Buano house, he was still careful and used tweezers or some such instrument, never dreaming his prints were already there.”

  “It could be,” Mullins said.

  Then, Weigand went on, say Berex decided on murder, either with or without Claire Brent, and prepared the slip of paper the day before, went to the country, telephoned Brent from there and made an appointment with Brent in the name of Edwards, met Brent at the scene of the appointment—the Buano house—and killed him, left the slip to lay a false trail to Edwards and then drove back to the country, completing his alibi. Mullins said it could be. Then Mullins thought of something else.

  “That slip,” he said. “Doesn’t it count Claire Brent out, figuring her as having done it by herself? Wouldn’t she have thought it would lead to Berex, who she’s sweet on?”

  Weigand pondered, and agreed that it was a point. But she might merely have clipped the piece from a letter Berex had written her, not noticed that she clipped a bit of the X onto the slip and never thought of his prints being on it.

  “She couldn’t see them, of course, until they were brought up,” Weigand added.

  “Yeh,” Mullins said. “I guess they did it, all right.”

  “Both of them?” Weigand said. “Or just Berex? Or just Mrs. Brent?”

  Mullins shook his head, and said Weigand had got him there, all right. Then he thought of something else.

  “How about the postman?” he said. “The guy Barnes, who was pushed. Did they push him, too?”

  Weigand figured, he said, that whoever killed Brent killed Barnes, and he also figured that they would never prove anything about Barnes until he proved everything about Brent. Certainly, Berex and Mrs. Brent were in the neighborhood at the time, and certainly both had told stories which put them somewhere else.

  “But we’ll never prove anything about Barnes,” Weigand said. “We’ll stick to Brent. Only if we get the right person for the Brent killing, he has to have been able to kill Barnes, too.”

  “Listen, Loot, you’re making this sort of hard, ain’t you?” Mullins said. “It’s screwy, anyway.”

  Weigand agreed, but not that he was making it hard. Somebody else had made it hard. He was just trying to soften it up. So—

  “D’y want to go on to the others, Loot?” Mullins asked. “It looks to me like we got ’em already.”

  Weigand said he thought they had better look at the others, too.

  18

  FRIDAY

  MIDNIGHT TO 2 A.M.

  They looked at Edwards. He was a big man, and if he was also a soft man it would take no great hardness of body to hit an unsuspecting man over the head and not too much more to drag him from one room to another and hit him again. Say, Weigand and Mullins agreed, he could do it. He could have secured a weapon with no difficulty. But—

  “Why?” Weigand asked Mullins, who said, “Yeh, why?”

  Weigand turned up a copy of the report of the auditors who had, at Edwards’ so generous invitation, been looking over the records of the Berex trust fund; the fund which had, to start with, been a frail enough thread to tie the expansive party giver to the murder of a man who was, inconveniently, not Berex at all. The report left the thread more frayed than ever. The accountants had not, to be sure, entirely finished, but so far as they had gone, could find nothing in the accounts which gave any ground for suspicion. Edwards had, apparently, managed well, and paid over income regularly. Nothing which resembled a motive for murder of Brent by Edwards had turned up.

  And could he have been at the place of murder at the time fixed? Apparently not; Edwards was, by all accounts, and by all evidence, wrist-deep in lobsters at the moment. There was also the slip of paper with Edwards’ name on it, obviously left so that it would be found.

  It had seemed to point to Edwards, but, looked at more closely, as they now looked at it, it pointed away from him. It had brought him at once into an investigation from which he might, otherwise, have been omitted altogether, or reached only casually. Weigand remembered Mrs. North’s happy assumption that the murderer had left his name, and grinned over it. Murderers didn’t, in his experience, leave their names. Certainly not intentionally; certainly not if they were men as astute as he suspected Edwards to be.

  “We can wash him out,” Weigand said. “Right?”

  Mullins nodded sagely, if a little sleepily, and said, “Yeh.” Then he brightened a little.

  “There’s that guy Kumi,” Mullins said. “He’s something to think about.” Mullins’ tone turned that duty over to his superior. Weigand looked at him, blinked and suggested that he send somebody for some coffee. Mullins looked relieved and went to find somebody, while Weigand thought of Kumi. Perhaps he could have done it; he was a solid, vigorous little man, who might, in spite of his denials, know jiu-jitsu. He could have got a mallet.

  “Hell,” Weigand said to himself, “who couldn’t?”

  Could he have been on hand? Weigand thought it over, and nodded. Perhaps he could have been, at that. With Edwards husking his lobsters, enthralled by cookery, Kumi might very easily have left the apartment, done his spot of murdering, and returned without Edwards’ being the wiser. Motive? He picked out Kumi’s statement from a pile of papers and skimmed through it. He nodded to himself. Taking into account everything—racial pride, Ku
mi’s alien psychology, perhaps other things which had not yet come to the surface—and you could give him a motive.

  Weigand let a cigarette burn into the edge of his desk, and thought about Kumi. He sighed and picked the cigarette up and inhaled varnish. He ground it out, angrily, and started another.

  He also started the Fullers, and things brightened. There was no need to ask whether Benjamin Fuller was up to the task; that, from one glance at him, was clear. He also had, Weigand suspected, the glowing, angry temper which would make the thing psychologically possible. A quick uppercut to the chin would be more likely, perhaps. He was not a man to lay long plans. But “long” was a relative word; all preparations for, and the accomplishment of, Brent’s death might have come within one not too long period of anger. And Fuller had cause enough for anger; cause enough to hate Brent, who was making him appear, among other things, a complaisant fool; who was making life difficult for the slim, alive young woman to whom Fuller had so evidently given his smoldering devotion.

  The weapon, again, was nothing. The time? Weigand picked Fuller’s statement out of the pile and checked it over. There was an alibi of sorts. Clipped to the statement was a report from Chicago. Crowley, Fuller’s temporary companion on Monday afternoon, had remembered and confirmed. He thought, however, that he and Fuller had separated nearer three o’clock than any other time. Weigand pulled his chin and nodded. That made a vague alibi vaguer. He wrote Fuller’s name on his sheet of paper and drew a line under it. Then he drew another line. Mullins came back, with coffee, and they had coffee. Weigand tried to fit Mrs. Fuller into the picture. He conjured up, with amazingly little trouble, a picture of Jane Fuller herself—a vivid picture of a girl in rust-colored slacks, with a heart-shaped face.

  It was a very agreeable picture, and Weigand caught himself regarding it with agreeable sensations. He reminded himself, hurriedly, that he was a cop, looking for somebody to send to the electric chair. But, in a moment, he decided that Mrs. Fuller would hardly fit the role. She, among all the possibles, seemed unlikely to have the necessary physical strength. Possibly she had a motive—sheer annoyance at Brent’s peculiar pursuit, and indignation at the false position in which Brent had put her—but it was not too strong. She didn’t, to be sure, have an alibi, or anything approaching one. From the point of opportunity, she was more likely than anybody except, possibly, Mrs. North. But there must have been, in the city, several millions with opportunity, and without alibis. Weigand drank coffee, wearily, and hoped his murderer was not, unsuspected, among those millions.

  He thought of the Norths, and felt obscure guilt. Tacitly, he had promised that he would, not think of the Norths as murderers. Had he made a mistake in that promise? He thought them over, recalled Mr. North’s motive and grinned over it; his lack of alibi, and grinned again. He finished his coffee and stared at Mullins, who was nodding over his empty cup. Weigand shook his head, sadly, and set his own cup down hard on the desk. Mullins jumped and looked indignant.

  “Listen, Loot,” he said. Weigand grinned at him and held out his cup for more coffee. Mullins poured from the cardboard container.

  Weigand drew a fresh sheet of paper toward him, and made himself a little list. He paused over it, now and then; interrupted himself for more coffee; now and then scratched out one word and wrote another. When he finished he had this:

  Suspects Motive? Physical ability? Alibi? Opportunity to kill Barnes?

  Mrs. Brent

  jealousy—greed

  yes

  weak

  apparently

  Berex

  love—greed

  yes

  weak

  apparently

  Mrs. Brent and Berex

  combination of above

  yes

  none

  yes

  Fuller

  jealousy and anger

  yes

  fair

  probably

  Mrs. Fuller

  weak

  improbable

  none

  probably

  Kumi

  revenge(?)

  probably

  none—really

  probably

  Edwards

  none known

  yes

  fair

  probably

  Mr. North

  faint

  yes

  none

  probably

  Mrs. North

  none known

  no

  none

  probably

  He looked it over, and felt rather sad about it. It seemed to rule out almost nobody. It left Mrs. Brent and Berex, together or singly; Benjamin Fuller and Kumi well up; Edwards and Mrs. Fuller and the Norths, lower down and in about that order. Weigand drew a line through it; then crumpled the sheet and threw it on the floor. He took another sheet and wrote at the top: “Funny questions?” He filled it in, with the aid of more cigarettes and many fits of staring at the ceiling. When he finished, it read:

  1) Why leave a slip of paper with Edwards’ name and Berex’s fingerprints on it? Why was Edwards’ name used?

  2) Why did Mrs. Brent lie about the Danbury Fair?

  3) Where were Berex and Mrs. Brent going when Jane Fuller saw them?

  4) What did the postman know? Could he identify the murderer?

  5) Why pick the empty apartment at the Buano house?

  6) Why was the window of the apartment left open, so that the cat got in? Air to dissipate odor of decomposition?

  7) What is the racket the District Attorney’s office is investigating?

  8) What was the purpose of Brent’s proposed visit to the D.A.’s office? Why didn’t one of them up there ask him?

  9) Were Brent and Jane Fuller really lovers, whatever Fuller thought? And, on that point, was Fuller really saying what he thought?

  10) Is Berex really an inventor, and has he ever invented anything of importance? And how badly does he need money?

  11) Since Brent knew where Edwards lived, why was he not suspicious when invited, as he apparently had been, to meet Edwards in an apartment he appeared to occupy in the Buano house?

  12) Is my man really on this list, and if he is, how am I ever going to hang it on him?

  Weigand looked at his list and shuddered slightly. A few of the questions were probably extraneous, including, he gloomily decided all to which he could guess the answers.

  Number 11, for example, was easy. Brent had not been at Edwards’ apartment for several months. Whoever invited him to the Buano house had merely to tell him Edwards had recently moved. None of the answers he could guess seemed to get him much nearer an answer to the final question, or, at any rate, to the latter half of the final question. Hunch told him the answer to the first half, but not very firmly. The man or woman was, hunch told him, on his list. He picked up the crumpled paper from the floor and looked at the list again. No name glowed red. Suddenly Weigand thought of a fine thing to do.

  “Well,” he said. “I’m going home. I’m going home and sleep on it. What do you think of that, Mullins?”

  But Mullins was already asleep, and his answer was an annoyed murmur.

  19

  FRIDAY

  8 A.M. TO 1:30 P.M.

  Weigand slept and, when his mind returned to him Friday morning, scanned it eagerly for signs of new perception. It disappointed him; things looked much as they had the night before. He went back to Headquarters and brooded over his tabulation of suspects, and sighed. No hunch pointed. He looked at his questions and closed his eyes. Perhaps he was asking the wrong questions; perhaps he had, even, the wrong suspects. His telephone rang and he went in and explained matters to Inspector O’Malley, who was grumpy about them and wanted to know what he was to tell the reporters.

  “Listen,” he said, “it’s going to be off the front page in another day if we don’t liven it up.” O’Malley slapped his desk. “Break it!” he commanded. “Break it!”

  Weigand went sadly bac
k to his office and looked at the list again, although he had it by heart. He called Mullins in and was severe with him, and Mullins angrily ordered the latest reports from a uniformed clerk, who had nobody to be cross with. The reports came, and showed nothing much. Investigations were still in progress into Brent’s professional and extraprofessional life. The State police were cooperating in an effort to find somebody who might have noticed Berex and Mrs. Brent in their wanderings in Putnam County, assuming they had really wandered in Putnam County. A New York Central conductor had, from a picture, identified Berex as a man who might have been on the 11:05 train out of Grand Central for Chatham, and might have alighted at Brewster.

  The precinct reported that it was continuing its efforts to find a witness to Barnes’ death who could remember, and be sure about, what he had witnessed, and thought perhaps it had a lead. It would amplify its report later. The tailor who made Brent’s clothes had identified them as the clothes he made for Brent. Everything that did not particularly matter clicked comfortably into place. Uptown, a detective had, by chance and knowledge of a good many people, found one of the girls who had written affectionately to Brent, and had got out of her a sufficiently vivid account of a trip to Atlantic City two years before. It had rained heavily in Atlantic City that week-end. And. Brent had been a fine boyfriend, for the duration.

  Weigand shook his head over these reports, and others as illuminating. He left Mullins to keep in touch and went uptown to visit Berex.

  Berex was at his office, and at the drawing-board. He swung around lithely when Weigand entered and ran pencil-darkened hands through his sandy hair. He said he had been expecting Lieutenant Weigand to call, and grinned slantingly.

  “We sort of made a mistake about the fair,” he said, before Weigand asked him. And, before Weigand asked him, he told a story identical with that of Mrs. Brent. He told it cockily, with assurance, and his eyebrows challenged the detective to make more of it than he was told of it. Berex denied that he and Mrs. Brent had been apart at any time during the afternoon; he denied any implications as to their relationship.