Murder within Murder Page 26
Bracelet on left arm had her name on it, like an identification bracelet. Driver’s license in her purse. Other things—letters, perhaps. They might give the address of her studio in the Carnegie Hall Building. She used that address for business. The bracelet was the best bet.
“But I don’t think it was an accident,” Bill said. “I’m afraid—have you heard anything about a guy named Wilming? Supposed to have jumped out a window about noon. Some place in the forties?”
“Wait a minute,” Cochrane said. He was gone a minute. “Chap named Paul Wilming,” he said. “Art editor—wait a minute, art editor. Dorian’s an—”
“Right,” Bill said. “What about him? Still suicide?”
“Yes,” Cochrane said. “Precinct job. Walt Flanagan handled it. Why, Bill?”
“Dorian was there,” Bill said. “Immediately afterward. Is Flanagan sure?”
Cochrane thought he was, supposed he was. His report did not raise any doubts.
“Of course,” Cochrane said, “it’s a hell of a thing to be sure about. You know that. He fell out of a window and he died of the fall. At least, the medical examiner doesn’t say different. Did he jump? Did he fall? Was he pushed? You know how it is, Bill.”
“Right,” Bill said. “But—Dorian was there. Now Dorian disappears. Do you like that, Ted?”
“It’s funny,” Ted Cochrane said. “I see what you mean. However, from this end—”
“Right,” Bill said. “Get on with it, won’t you, Ted?”
Ted Cochrane sure as hell would.
“And get me Mullins,” Bill Weigand said. “He ought to be around still.”
Sergeant Mullins was around. At the first sound of Bill Weigand’s voice he was almost as concisely crisp as Weigand himself. But for the most part he listened. He said, “Yeah, Loot,” and “O.K., Loot,” and made notations on a pad in front of him.
“Flanagan’s all right,” Mullins said once. “I don’t say he ain’t all right, Loot. He sees what’s in front of him.”
“Maybe this wasn’t in front of him,” Weigand said. “Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be.”
Mullins said “Yeah” to that. He listened only a moment more. He said, “O.K., Loot. I’ll pick you up.”
Bill Weigand put the telephone down. In spite of himself, in spite of his inner, bitter certainty that this was not to dissolve happily into harmless tardiness, he listened for footsteps before he again took up the telephone. Jerry North answered this time.
“Jerry,” Bill said, “I think something’s happened to Dor. I’ve started things moving.”
“I was afraid,” Jerry North said. “We both were—we’ve been talking. Pam thinks it hooks up with this business—”
Bill did not wait for him to finish.
“So do I, now,” he said. “I think she’s got something about the cigarette. Tell her that. And—do you know any of the people at Esprit? Is it your neck of the woods at all?”
“I didn’t know Wilming,” Jerry said. “I’ve had some dealings with Stanton. About some Esprit stuff we want to put out in an anthology. There’s a chap named Helms I think we met once. Pam thinks we did, anyway. She says sure I remember, because I spent half the evening staring at Mrs. Helms. But I don’t remember.”
“But not Wilming?”
“I don’t think so. Neither does Pam. As I said, we’ve been talking. By the way, Stanton’s a fairly tough guy, in some ways.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well—he’s tough on publishers, for one thing. He’s tough about Esprit stuff. He’s just—well, a tough guy. All I know about is business, of course. I don’t know how he is personally.”
“Is he tough with the staff?” Weigand said.
Jerry North paused a moment.
“Because he fired Wilming, you mean?” he said, then. “Well—I only know what I hear about him. Maybe he is. He thinks a lot of Esprit—maybe more than of anything else. Or anybody else. But that could be just gossip. Most of it is, probably.”
“Do me a favor,” Bill said. “You know people who’ll be talking about Wilming. People who knew him, probably. People with theories. Listen. Right?”
“Of course,” Jerry said. “You do think the two things hook up—Dorian and … this?”
“I don’t know,” Bill said. “I think it’s funny. Screwy.” He paused. “As Pam does,” he said. “As you do. Listen, tell Pam to guess for me, Jerry. I can use her guesses on this one. Tell her to guess like hell.”
“Anything—” Jerry said, and let it hang.
“I know,” Bill said. “I’ll take you up.”
He put the receiver back in its cradle. Then, simultaneously, the buzzer of the front door sounded and the telephone rang. He took the receiver up, listened, said, “Hold it a minute.” He went over and pushed the wall button which released the downstairs door. He heard that door open, left the apartment door open and went back to the telephone.
“O.K., Ted,” he said.
“Nothing from the hospitals,” Cochrane said. “Nobody unidentified in accidents. We’re working on the hacks.”
“Right,” Bill said. He was about to hang up when Cochrane spoke again.
“Hold it,” Cochrane said. “We were in luck in the hacks. It looks like she took a Parmalee right in front of Bonwit’s. Driven by a—” He broke off. Bill heard him call to somebody in the office. “Is this a gag?” he called. Bill could not hear the answer. Cochrane came back on. “All right,” he said, “they say it isn’t a gag. Driven by a hackie named Thomas Jefferson. He remembers her pretty well. And—well, Bill, he says he took her to your place. He says she got out of the cab and went up the steps. He watched her because—well, Bill, he says ‘because of them legs.’”
Mullins came in. He stood by the door and waited.
“You’re sure she’s not—well, around somewhere?” Ted Cochrane said. You could tell he hated to say it.
It was half an hour before Bill Weigand and Mullins, working fast, working expertly, were absolutely sure. The apartment itself took only a few minutes. Already, Bill, thinking himself a frightened fool, doing it anyway, had looked in the likely places. Now they looked in the others. Then they went through the four-story building, starting in the basement, where an Italian janitor spluttered indignantly; continuing to the top where the janitor’s pass key let them into a studio apartment with a spreading sky-light. Then they were sure that if Dorian had come to the house in Thirty-seventh Street, she had gone away again.
They were back in the living room and Mullins looked an enquiry at Bill Weigand. Bill’s face was set in hard lines; he looked older than Mullins had ever seen him. Bill Weigand’s shoulders rose and fell in the tired parody of a shrug. And Mullins spoke slowly.
“You know what it looks like, Loot,” he said. “It looks like she’s been snatched. You figure it’s that way, Loot?”
“It could be,” Bill said. His voice was suddenly tired.
“On account of she knows something about this Wilming case,” Mullins said. “Or—or on account of somebody’s got it in for you, Loot. Somebody you pinned something on. A hood, like—well, like Scratchy Lavery, Loot. Some of Lavery’s boys were pretty sore. You know that.”
Bill knew it. If some of Lavery’s boys had Dorian.… Bill picked up the telephone, got his own office, got Detective Sergeant Stein in the office. Again he talked fast. Stein said, “I’m sorry as hell, lieutenant,” and then for several minutes he merely listened. When Weigand finished, Stein said, “Right, we’ll round them up and shake it out of them, lieutenant. If they’ve got Mrs. Weigand—” Stein did not finish the sentence. The tone in which he spoke made explicitness unnecessary.
Weigand and Mullins started, then. But when Mullins was in the outer hall, Bill turned back and took a sheet of paper from the desk and wrote on it, writing large, “Darling—I’ve gone to look for you.” It made no sense to write that; it anticipated a miracle.
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About the Authors
Frances and Richard Lockridge were some of the most popular names in mystery during the forties and fifties. Having written numerous novels and stories, the husband-and-wife team was most famous for their Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries. What started in 1936 as a series of stories written for the New Yorker turned into twenty-six novels, including adaptions for Broadway, film, television, and radio. The Lockridges continued writing together until Frances’s death in 1963, after which Richard discontinued the Mr. and Mrs. North series and wrote other works until his own death in 1982.
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ISBN: 978-1-5040-3121-9
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