The Norths Meet Murder Read online

  While this went on, and Mullins waited, Lieutenant Weigand went to see Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, in charge of the Homicide Squad, and of Lieutenant Weigand—in final charge, too, of the body which had turned up in the bathtub. Inspector O’Malley had once been rather like Mullins, only several times as bright. Like Mullins, he preferred blastings, and regarded amateur murder with distrust. Murders like the present, which were not only amateur but bizarre, irritated Inspector O’Malley. Thus, although not an unamiable man, as Deputy Chief Inspectors go, he growled at Weigand when the lieutenant entered, and wanted to know, profanely, where he had been. Weigand said he had stopped for a bite of dinner; he tried to make it sound as if he had scooped a sandwich off a counter and chewed as he ran after clues. The inspector looked at him coldly, and Weigand was gratified that he had avoided the fourth cocktail, but felt slightly uneasy about the third.

  “Well,” said Inspector O’Malley, “what’s going on there? It sounds screwy to me.”

  Weigand told him what he knew—about the Norths finding the body, about the battered skull and the nudity, about the Western Union boy who probably was not a Western Union boy, and about the cat. He told about the cat with misgivings, because, among other prejudices, Inspector O’Malley did not like cats. He did not even like to have cats mentioned. He frowned disgustedly.

  “A cat!” he said. “For God’s sake!”

  Lieutenant Weigand was sorry, and said so. Nevertheless, there it was. A cat had got into it and, when you looked at it carefully, to good purpose. It fixed the time, if you could believe it.

  “A cat!” said Inspector O’Malley, with distilled disgust.

  The inspector glared at Weigand, blaming him for the cat. Weigand waited suitably and went on.

  “Well,” said the inspector, when Weigand had told him all he could think of that was pertinent, and omitted only the conversational waywardness of Mrs. North, which he doubted the inspector would appreciate—“well, it’s your baby, Weigand. It’s certainly a screwy one.”

  Weigand nodded. There was no doubt of that.

  “Let’s have a report,” the inspector directed. “Let me know when you get an identification. Did you see the press?”

  O’Malley preferred the press to cats, but by a narrow margin, and his tone revealed it. Weigand had seen the press, as a matter of fact; for a moment amid other moments. He had told the press there was a body and murder, and described the man. He said that that was all he knew, thinking it was enough for the press to know—from him, at any rate. The press could go to O’Malley, for more. The press would, it assured him, and he warned the inspector. The inspector thanked him for nothing; the press was on the doorstep, howling. Weigand thought of something, and suggested it, as a lieutenant suggests things to an inspector. He thought it would be better if the exact time of the killing were kept from the press. The inspector agreed.

  “Even if we knew it,” he said. “A cat!”

  Weigand left it to the inspector to tell the reporters that he, Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, had the matter well in hand and expected an arrest soon. The inspector, Weigand knew, would “have the case in hand” and be “working on it unsparingly” until, in the end, he solved it. And if it were not solved, the inspector would take Weigand in hand. The lieutenant did not resent this; it was a course proper to inspectors.

  Weigand went back to his office and looked at the reports, which were coming in. Prints not in the files; the body not that of Mr. Irwin Bokandosky, missing since September 26 from his home in the Bronx; not that of Alexander K. Churchill, absent only since the tenth day of October from his home in Queens—and also from his cage in the City National Bank. This last did not surprise the Police Department in the least; it had ideas already about Mr. Churchill. Mullins reported that it was a damned screwy case, and was deepeningly pessimistic.

  Weigand studied the report sent along by the Assistant Medical Examiner, Dr. Sampson. It was technical, but clear enough, and Weigand translated it to himself. The man had been dead about twenty-four hours, but it might be as short a time as twenty or as long a time as twenty-eight. He had eaten several hours before he died. Death resulted from severe brain lacerations, and several blows had been struck. The blow which had partly disfigured the face, breaking the nose, had been delivered after the man was dead. Perhaps, Weigand thought, out of sheer rage. The weapon had had, apparently, a circular, flat face. (“Maybe a croquet-mallet,” Sampson had written along one edge of the report.) Weigand conveyed the gist of this to Mullins, who took it badly.

  “Men with no clothes, croquet-mallets, cats and screwy people,” he said, indignantly. “And the guy ain’t even got a record,” he added, piling on what was evidently the last straw. Weigand agreed this made things difficult, as did the battering of the face. The last was, intentionally or not, a shrewd move on the part of the murderer, since it made it highly improbable that the newspapers would publish photographs taken of the corpse, and thus blocked one quick channel of identification. Weigand sighed and reached for his hat.

  “Let’s go look at it,” he said. “Maybe we’ll see something.”

  Mullins heaved himself up, sadly, and Weigand led the way to their car. Mullins switched on the red lights, which made him more cheerful, and almost smiled as the siren cried their coming. A morgue attendant got the body out of its refrigerated drawer, where Dr. Sampson had left it. Weigand examined the hands, and pointed out the deep cigarette stains on the right hand.

  “You get that from holding on when you drag,” Mullins assured him. “If you let go, you don’t get them, see?”

  Weigand said he saw, saying it abstractly as he examined the face. The wound told him nothing, but he looked thoughtfully at the bristle on the undamaged cheeks. The beard had grown since death, but it seemed to have grown irregularly—here and there the detective saw hairs much longer than those around them. And the short sideburns, instead of ending sharply, were irregular. The man had shaved hurriedly and badly when he shaved the last time and—then Weigand realized why, and rubbed his own cheek reflectively. He, too, had recently bought an electric shaver, and was having trouble learning to use it. Unaccountably, it missed hairs now and then, and it was hard to get a clean line at the sides. It left stray beard hairs standing belligerently among their clipped neighbors.

  It might, Weigand realized, put them on to something. With his own razor there had come a guarantee blank, valid only when it had been filled in with the name and address of the purchaser and sent to the district office of the manufacturer. If, now, this man filled out such a blank and mailed it, his name and address would be on file with the company—along with, he added sadly to himself, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others. If he had bought the same kind of razor Weigand had bought himself; if he had sent in the guarantee blank as, thinking of it, Weigand remembered he himself had not. “Do it tomorrow,” he thought, and pulled himself back to the matter at hand. Was it, he wondered, worth the trouble? He decided it was, and looked sympathetically at Mullins. Mullins caught the look, which he knew of old, and an expression of foreboding overspread his face.

  “Now, Loot,” he began, “listen—”

  Weigand told him, crisply, what he had to do—he and Perkins and Washburn. Mullins’ expression lightened a little at the news he was not to be the only victim. They would get hold of the manager of the Clipper Shave Company and he—with Perkins and Washburn—would go over the records of guarantee slips returned. They would copy out all showing identified purchases within two weeks—“better make it three,” Weigand corrected himself—and tomorrow they would get enough men on it to make the rounds.

  “Tonight?” said Mullins, drearily. “I gotta work all night?”

  Weigand’s sympathy was mild and his instructions unaltered. “Tomorrow you can get some sleep,” he promised. Mullins went unhappily to the telephone to break the news to Perkins and Washburn, and to try to persuade one of them to uncover an officer of the company. Mullins s
aid “Yeah” and “That’s what I told him” into the telephone, glanced around to see if Weigand had relented, learned he had not, and, eventually, went about his chore. And now, Weigand realized, he would do it diligently and exactly, missing nothing. Weigand looked at the body and had another idea, but decided it could go until morning. He could, he decided, do with some sleep himself, and went home to get it.

  4

  WEDNESDAY

  8 A.M. TO NOON

  He went to sleep in his small apartment uptown thinking that it might be rather fun to be married to somebody like—well, like Mrs. North. He awoke in the morning and groaned to find it day again, and constabulary duty to be done. He made himself coffee and toast and decided the world was screwy; he smoked his first cigarette and was mildly dizzy for a moment; he answered the telephone. Mullins, sleepily, reported a list of four hundred and thirty-two names, all over town, and said he was turning it in and going to get some sleep. Weigand called Headquarters, reported, and found that the squad could allow him three men to check the four hundred and thirty-two names, and felt that preliminary work, at least, could be done by telephone.

  “Arty doesn’t think so much of the idea, anyhow,” the office lieutenant informed him.

  Weigand hadn’t thought Arty would. Nor did he suppose Arty would think so much of the other idea, which was for a canvass of cigar-stores with pictures. The canvass might, Weigand thought, begin in the neighborhood of the murder, although there was no particular reason to think the murdered man lived there. Afterward it might broaden out. The Bureau decided, reluctantly, it could give five men to that and Weigand realized the murder was making a stir. He got his newspapers from in front of the apartment door, when he had finished with the telephone. The murder was making a stir, all right; it had, Weigand gathered, everything. There were pictures of the house, and of the bathroom—without body—and of the Norths. Mrs. North looked surprised and interested, Weigand noticed. There were no pictures of the body, except a few shots in one of the tabloids, taken at some distance and after the body had been covered. Nobody, the newspapers reported, knew the identity of the victim, nor the time of the murder. The Norths, he was pleased to notice, had evidently been cautious about what they said to the press.

  Weigand went downtown to Headquarters and waited for reports. It was dull business, and he took a hand in telephoning to the purchasers of electric razors. Most of them were alive and well, or had been when they left home that morning. Two wives who answered gave small shrieks, and, apparently, fainted. About every fourth call gave no response and had to be put aside for further investigation, along with a smaller pile of reports which left matters in the air. It was slow work and probably, Weigand thought, futile. He was explaining to an alarmed Italian woman that her husband was, so far as he knew, in perfectly good health and importing the olive oil he had gone forth that morning to import, when a call came. He hung up on expostulations, and said “Yes?” into the other telephone.

  “Detective Stein, Lieutenant,” the voice said. “Got him, I think.”

  Weigand was flooded with pleased astonishment, and demanded particulars. Stein was, he said, in a United Cigar Store on Sixth Avenue, about three blocks from Greenwich Place. It was only the third store he had tried, and the clerk was pretty sure.

  “Fellow named Brent, he thinks it is,” Stein said. “A lawyer.”

  Weigand told him to stick around; that he would be up. A squad car took him up. The clerk was certain, by now, and pleased with himself.

  “He’s been coming for three years, Mr. Brent has,” he said. “That’s him, all right.” He pointed at a photograph, retouched to lessen the facial injuries as much as possible, taken in profile to hide them still more.

  “That’s the angle he always stood at,” the clerk said. “Put one elbow on the counter and talked a minute, he did. Came in almost every day and just stood there while I got the cigarettes; always the same brand, always two packs. He didn’t ever have to order when I was on.”

  His name was Brent, which was as far as the clerk could go. He could go so far because Brent had come in once or twice with friends who had called him by name. Once one of them had said, to Brent, something about “you lawyers” and after that, when they were talking, the clerk had asked Brent if he were a lawyer and Brent had said he was.

  “I like to find out about customers,” the clerk explained. “Makes the job more interesting, somehow.”

  Weigand agreed that it would do that, and started things rolling by telephone. It was easy to find the Brents who were lawyers. There were only three of them. It was easy to discover, by telephone, that two of the legal Brents were in their offices, deep, it proved, in conference, and that the third had not yet come in. It was not, indeed, difficult to detect an undercurrent of uneasiness and uncertainty in the voice of the secretary whose employer had not arrived—the secretary of Mr. Stanley Brent, of 34 Fifth Avenue, with offices in East Forty-second Street, who lived within such comfortable walking distance of the United Cigar Store on Sixth Avenue near Tenth.

  Weigand came out of the booth, thought a moment and went back in, calling Headquarters and the squad room where the check of electric shaver purchases wearily continued. He told the detective who answered that they could lay off a while, and to find out if the name of Stanley Brent, 34 Fifth Avenue, was on the list. It was, and Weigand was pleased with himself. It was on the list of those whose telephones had not answered, but that had been almost two hours earlier. Weigand went around, with Stein.

  5

  WEDNESDAY

  NOON TO 2 P.M.

  There was nothing homely and nothing old about the apartment house at 34 Fifth Avenue; it belonged to a different era than the comfortable, spacious one which had given rise to the Buano house and its multiple replicas. The apartment house at No. 34 rose sharply in dispassionate façade and kept on rising for a long way. It was sleek and indifferent—the very model of what lower Fifth Avenue had become. A doorman gave the door a starting push for Weigand and Stein, making the action a haughty ritual. A uniformed attendant permitted them to ask that he announce them to Mrs. Brent, but his dignity slipped a little when Weigand gave his name and rank—Detective Lieutenant Weigand, from Headquarters. Curiosity and surmise passed hurriedly across the attendant’s features and left troubled ripples behind them.

  Mrs. Brent would see them; Mrs. Brent, after a slim, dark maid in a pale green uniform had momentarily intervened, saw them. Mrs. Brent was tall for a woman. Summer tan was still on her face and arms; smooth tan, well acquired. She moved with compact grace as, greeting them at the door of a long living-room, she led them a little way in and then turned, her eyebrows lifting politely. She said:

  “Lieutenant Weigand? Yes?”

  She said it, Weigand was gratified and a little surprised to observe, to him. Stein’s recognition was condensed to an inclination of the head. Her eyes, Weigand noticed, were gray and steady and seemed to be ready for something. Weigand thought how to begin; began by suggesting that she sit down. It told her something, apparently.

  “Stan?” she said. “Mr. Brent—?”

  “It may be,” Weigand said. “We’re not certain, yet. But a man who may be Mr. Brent has—has had an accident.”

  She moved a foot or two and sat down.

  “Dead?” she said. The voice had lost resonance. It was as if it were going on by itself. “He’s dead?”

  “It may not be Mr. Brent,” Weigand said. “We don’t know—there were circumstances. Was he home—” Weigand hesitated. “Was he home last night, say? Or yesterday?”

  Mrs. Brent shook her head, and said she didn’t know.

  “I just got back,” she said. “I was in the country. I’ve been in the country since Saturday, until just now—closing the house. But I thought Stan would be here this morning, and his office—”

  Her voice still seemed to be going on of itself.

  “I was going to call you,” she said. “Somebody, I mean—the police. He ha
sn’t been at his office since Monday morning.” Her hands clenched and unclenched on the arm of the chair. “Tell me—” she said.

  Weigand told her part of it. But it might not be her husband. It was merely a possibility. Her husband was about forty? His hair and eyes were brown? He—? Mrs. Brent nodded with each question, and her eyes grew wider and seemed to grow shallow. It was horrible to tell people things like this, Weigand thought, and now she knew; there was no doubt, really. Her voice was still deadened when she spoke—deadened and certain.

  “The man—” she said. “The man who was killed? In the papers?”

  “We don’t know,” Weigand said. “That’s it—we don’t know. You’ll have to tell us. I’m sorry, Mrs. Brent, I’m—” But there was no word to fit. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to come with us,” he said. He was formal, as a policeman. He would, at the moment, have liked to be something else; he would have liked to sell cigarettes to cheerful, chatting men who leaned elbows on showcases. These were the worst moments in a murder case. You grew used to the ones who were killed, used to bodies and coldness and horrible things. But you never got used to the ones who were still living; never learned what to say to them.

  Mrs. Brent stood up. Weigand nodded imperceptibly to Stein, and the other detective moved so he could reach a hand to Mrs. Brent’s shoulder, if it were needed. But it was not needed. Claire Brent walked quite evenly to the hall and adjusted the hat the maid handed her, slipped into the coat. Her voice was quite level when she spoke to the maid, saying she would be gone for an hour or two. All the way downtown in the taxicab the doorman got for them, with the dignified cordiality reserved for tenants and now extended to the companions of tenants, Claire Brent sat quietly, with her hands still in her lap. At the morgue she waited with unswerving quiet while the refrigerating drawer was opened and the body moved to a marble-topped table under a light. Even when the face was uncovered, she only nodded, slowly and with a horrible stiffness. Then her two hands on the sides of the table tightened for an instant and relaxed and Weigand caught her before her loosened body reached the floor.