Untidy Murder Read online

  “A suicide,” Pam said. “A man she was going to see jumped out a window. But I don’t suppose there’s any connection, really.”

  “Connection?” Bill repeated. “Between Dorian’s wanting to see a man and his jumping out a window? I shouldn’t think so.” His voice was dry on the last words.

  “Bill!” Pam said. “You know what I meant. Between her being late, of course. Although she was all right at lunch.”

  It really wasn’t difficult. All the meanings were there. It was only that some of the words weren’t.

  “Probably,” Pam said, “it’s merely that somebody was late this morning and it threw them all off. At Bonwit’s. Probably the suicide doesn’t enter in.”

  “No,” Bill said, “I don’t see why it should. Who jumped?”

  “A Mr. Wilming,” Pam said. “Art editor at Esprit. Business anxieties, the radio said. Which means he was going to get fired.”

  “And Dorian was there?” Bill said.

  Dorian was there, Pam told him. She had gone to show Mr. Wilming a sketch. But he jumped before he looked at it.

  “She said a very nice detective asked her just a few questions and let her go,” Pam said. “A Mr. Flanagan. A very polite detective, she said.”

  “Flanagan?” Weigand repeated. “Oh yes. A precinct man. I know him. Very pleasant guy. He didn’t pass it along to us.”

  “He decided it was suicide, Dorian said,” Pam told him. “It seems poor Mr. Wilming was not only going to be fired, but had lost his mother recently. So apparently he just sat at his desk, smoking, and all at once went over to the window and jumped out. His cigarette was still burning when Dorian got there.” There was another momentary pause, but this one was somehow different from the one which had interrupted Pam North a moment before. Possibly it seemed different because of Pam’s quickened breath—the faint, soft sound he heard of her breath being drawn in.

  “Bill!” Pam said then, and her voice was quite different; it was excited. “I don’t believe it! Your Mr. Flanagan didn’t think!”

  “Don’t believe what?” Bill said. He listened to her with half his mind; the other half listened for footsteps in the outside hall.

  “That he would just leave his cigarette to burn out,” Pam said. “It—it isn’t right.”

  “No?” Bill said. “Not right?” He thought he heard footsteps; he decided he didn’t.

  “Bill!” Pam said. “Listen. He would put it out. Stub it out! Don’t you see? When he made up his mind. He wouldn’t just leave it there as if—as if he were coming back to it! Nobody would.”

  Bill heard—thought he heard—the door closing downstairs.

  “Look, Pam,” he said, “I think she’s coming now. If she is we’ll be along in half an hour or so. Right? And you can tell me about the cigarette.”

  “But—” Pam said.

  “Goodbye, Pam,” Bill said. “We’ll be along.”

  But after he had hung up, the person who had come in downstairs was not Dorian after all, and he sat down again in the chair he had left when he went to the telephone. He sat restlessly. He lighted another cigarette and, as he did so, remembered he had been smoking when he had gone to the telephone. He looked at the ash tray. A cigarette, hardly a quarter smoked, had been stubbed out in the tray. The end which had been lighted was black and splayed out. Weigand looked at the cigarette he had put out, with some violence apparently, before he went to the telephone. As he looked at it, a line formed slowly between his eyebrows.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Dorian repeated, and her voice was dulled now. “I tell you—”

  The man named Farno shook her again. He was not gentle now. And then he slapped her across the mouth. His hands did not let her fall back from the blow.

  But they had not really hurt her. Her hair which, only a little while before, Henri of Bonwit’s had so much admired, standing back in approval of his own handiwork, saying, “Voilà, madame!”—her hair had fallen out of its cunningly contrived perfection. Her mouth was swollen a little from slaps by the big soft hand. But she was not really hurt.

  “I didn’t see anything,” she said and tried to put a hand up to touch her mouth. The man named Farno forced the hand down.

  “She wants us to get tough, Farno,” Piper said. “I guess she wants us to get real tough.” He snickered.

  In some ways Piper was the worse of the two. He had not touched her. He had only enjoyed what Farno had done to her. Farno himself did not seem either to enjoy slapping her or to regret it. It seemed to be business with Farno. To Piper, and she shrank from the thought, it was a kind of game—a pleasant game.

  “Maybe we ought to get real tough, see?” Piper said, and again he gave the strange, unpleasant little laugh. “A cigarette, maybe?”

  Farno did not loose Dorian but he turned to Piper and seemed to examine him.

  “Some day they’re going to lock you up for keeps, Piper,” he said. “You know that? You get such a kick out of things.”

  “Now Farno,” Piper said. “Now you oughtn’t to say—”

  “You don’t think of things like they was jobs,” Farno said. “See? Like they was something we get paid for.” He half addressed Dorian, now. “He gets personal, lady,” Farno said. “See? Me, I don’t get personal.” He shook her, not hard. “It’s just we want to know something,” he said. “Something you know. I don’t get any fun out of it.”

  He seemed, she thought, oddly—under the circumstance almost horribly—anxious for her to believe him. If they had to get tough, if it came to cigarettes, Farno would not get any fun out of it. He would just be doing a job. And now she did not know which, really, was the worse of the two, and she felt the blood draining down from her brain, felt blackness coming in, circling in, from the sides.

  “You and your cigarettes!” She heard—distantly heard—the bigger of the two saying to the smaller. “Now she’s fainting!”

  She was lying on the floor and the blackness went away, at first in waves, then fading to gray, to light. And she heard a snicker.

  “That’s right, miss,” Piper said. “That’s right. Snap out of it.” He was sitting on a chair, bending over her. His eyes were black and seemed to have got larger. She looked around, raising herself a little from the floor.

  “Mr. Farno had to step out, miss,” the little man said. He snickered again. “He’ll be back, miss. He hadda make a phone call, see? To find out if we’re supposed to get tough.” He nodded to her and smiled. “Real tough,” he said. “Like cigarettes, see?”

  Dorian lay back again and looked at the ceiling. There had been a leak once in something above and the ceiling had an irregularly shaped stain. I’m really in something this time, Dorian thought. I’m really in something. Oh Bill—Bill! Oh, my dear—what a fool you’ve got! If I’d screamed and kept on screaming and—

  The door opened and she looked up at Farno. His expression was angry and puzzled and—was that possible?—frightened, all at the same time.

  “O.K., Mrs. Weigand,” Farno said. “You can get up now.” He did not offer to touch her; he merely glared down at her. “You—”

  There was anger in the epithet he used. Somehow, she realized, it had become personal to Mr. Farno.

  “Get up,” he said.

  She got up, slowly.

  “Piper,” Farno said, “let me introduce you to the lady. This is Mrs. Weigand, see? Mrs. William Weigand. Her husband is Lieutenant Weigand—Homicide Weigand. See?”

  “Jeez!” Piper said.

  “So now we’ve snatched the wife of a cop,” Farno said. “You fixed things up just swell, didn’t you, with your story about her just going to tell Weigand something. You see how you fixed things up, don’t you, Piper?”

  “Listen,” Piper said, “you snatched her. Suppose I made a mistake. Did you do any better, Farno?”

  For a moment Dorian thought Farno was going to hit the smaller man. But he did not. Instead he turned to her.

  “Why the alias?” he said. “Not that
it makes any difference, but what the hell’s the idea?”

  He seemed only puzzled and curious.

  “It isn’t an alias,” she said. “It was my name before I was married. It’s a professional name.”

  She paused, wondering if it would be clear to this big, dangerous, stupid man. He frowned, then his face cleared.

  “Like you was a fighter,” he said. He turned to Piper. “Get it?” he said. “Like she was a fighter named Kusioskow or something. Get it?” He looked at Piper without friendliness. “Get it, stupid?” he said.

  “O.K.,” Piper said. “So it’s my fault. Whata we did now?”

  “Tell me,” Farno said. “You tell me, smart guy.”

  Piper shook his head.

  “O.K.,” Farno said. “So I’ll tell you. We’re supposed to let her go, see? Just say, ‘Sorry, miss, seems it was all a mistake and don’t be mad about it,’ and turn her loose. That’s what the orders are.” He put an odd emphasis on the word “orders.”

  Piper looked at him and she could see a question between them.

  “Yeah,” Farno said, “and she goes home to hubby, see? And hubby’s a cop. And she says, ‘One of the guys who snatched me was a fella named Farno, sort of a big guy, sort of fat. And the other was a little dark guy named Piper.’ And he says, ‘Let’s go look at some pictures, dear,’ and sure enough there’s a picture of this guy Farno and another of this guy Piper. Seems this guy Farno used to be a licensed private—” He stopped suddenly.

  “Make it easy for her,” Piper said, and he was for the moment on top again. “Make it easy, why don’t you?”

  “What the hell?” Farno said. “It’s easy enough. So they pick up these two guys, see, and the lady here says, ‘Sure, the big one pushed me around and the little one wanted to use cigarettes on me.’ She says, ‘Yes, dear, these are those two guys, and they weren’t at all nice to me, darling.’ And this cop says, ‘It sure was too bad, sugar, and just wait until we get through with ’em, baby, because we don’t like guys who push cops’ wives around.’”

  He paused dramatically.

  “Jeez!” Piper said. He looked at Dorian. “Maybe you wouldn’t say anything, lady?” he said. He seemed wistful.

  Piper laughed. The laugh covered his answer.

  “Jeez!” Piper said again.

  “After which,” Farno went on, “they locks us up somewhere, supposin’ we’re still alive, and throws the key away, see? And they tell these guys where they lock us up, ‘These two birds pushed a cop’s wife around, so nobody’s gonna cry if their health don’t stay so good.’ See?”

  “Look, Farno,” Piper said, “there’s always the concrete treatment, ain’t there? Then she wouldn’t talk?”

  Farno laughed again. He stopped laughing and looked at Dorian and then he shook his head. But he did not shake his head decisively.

  “You know how they feel about cop killers,” he said. “I guess they’d feel the same way about a coupla guys killed a cop’s wife.” He considered this. “I guess they’d feel about the same way,” he said. He looked very unhappy. “More, if anything,” he said.

  “You know what?” Piper said. “We’re in a jam, Farno.”

  And then they both looked at Dorian Weigand.

  “What the hell are we going to do with you, lady?” Farno said, after rather a long time. He spoke as if he really expected guidance.

  The ash tray was piled with cigarettes by seven o’clock. Few of them had been smoked far down, most of them had been stubbed out, most of them had been bent and broken by the force of the stubbing. Bill Weigand lighted another cigarette; he paced to the window, looked out of it, paced back again. There could be a hundred reasons why Dorian was now more than an hour and a half later than she should have been. Some of the reasons he could think of did not make him cold inside.

  He thought of what, as a policeman, he would tell a husband who called, frightened, because his wife was an hour and a half later than she should have been. Long ago he had served a trick in the Missing Persons Bureau; it had been his first job out of uniform. He could remember how many anxious calls they got; how absurd, sitting at a desk, with no wife to worry about or a wife safe at home, or a wife whose comings and goings had ceased much to matter, it had seemed to the men at the MPB. They had been, the best of them, patient; they had, again the best of them, gone through the accustomed routine of probable explanations. She had met a friend and had forgotten to call, she had lost track of time, she had told him she would be late and he had forgotten. She would turn up safe and sound. If she didn’t—oh, say, in four or five hours—call back and things would be started moving. It had been simple then, and they were amused sometimes by the more frantic young husbands, and told one another about this new guy whose wife was fifteen minutes late and who was having fits. And usually they were right; not always, only usually. If he were not Lieutenant William Weigand of Homicide they would be tolerant of him if he called now, but they would not take him very seriously.

  And the answer to that was that they did not know Dorian. (“You don’t know Mary—or Agnes, or Rebecca—If you knew you would understand. You’d know why I’m worried. It isn’t like—I tell you, it isn’t like—”) Dorian knew he would, barring emergency, be home between five and six, she knew they were meeting the Norths for cocktails and going on to dinner. If she could not have made it, she would have called. If she could not have made it.… (“But I tell you, Mary would have telephoned me!” Or Agnes. Or Rebecca.)

  Three plus two made five. Five plus a quarter of an hour, five plus half an hour if she walked, five plus an hour if she met someone and stopped for a drink and knew that she would still be home almost on time—you couldn’t make it add to fifteen minutes after seven. Three plus an hour of waiting to be taken at the hairdresser’s, plus the two hours, plus the time to get home by cab—you could cut out the walking, in that case, and the drink with a friend—and you came up with six-thirty as the latest. Bill Weigand stubbed out a cigarette and, almost at once, lighted another. He looked at the cigarette he had stubbed out. When you were excited, for any reason—when you felt, because you were excited, that each gesture had in it something of finality—you did not lay a cigarette on the edge of an ash tray and let it burn itself to ash. You crushed it out, you ground the coal to blackness, you bent the fragile white tube and, a certain percentage of the times, the tube broke under the weight of your fingers. Anybody ought to know that. Police Detective Flanagan ought to know that. If you made up your mind to jump out of a window, if you got up from your desk to walk to the window, you were excited. Anybody ought to know that.

  And if two strange things happened in a day, it was not coincidence. Anybody ought to know that, too. If a girl with wide, observant eyes was in the office of a man who had apparently just killed himself, if there was doubt he had just killed himself, if the girl was unaccountably lost a few hours later, it wasn’t coincidence. You couldn’t play it as coincidence. Anybody ought to know that. Anybody ought to have known it an hour ago.

  Bill Weigand was at the telephone by then. His voice was quick, imperative, when he said, “This is Lieutenant Weigand. Let me talk to Cochrane.” He drummed on the telephone table with the fingers of his right hand, waiting. He said, “Lieutenant Cochrane? … Ted, Bill Weigand. Listen.…”

  He talked rapidly, concisely. Five feet seven, one twenty-five. (Dorian after a bath, perched tiptoe on the bathroom scales.) Eyes gray-green—gray blue-green. (Darling, what is the color of those eyes?) Brown hair. (But there are so many browns!) Probably wearing a gray print dress with small green figures printed on it—little green dogs. (Such a cool dress, Dorian, flowing against your body!) Short gray coat. No hat. A little brown left on the face from Bermuda in March; silver bracelets on her arms, gray shoes, stockings such as most women were wearing, a certain way of walking.…

  “I’ve met her, Bill,” Lieutenant Ted Cochrane of the Missing Persons Bureau said. “Remember? I know how she moves.”

  �
��She was at Bonwit Teller’s this afternoon,” Bill said. “She probably left about five—not much before, probably not much later. She may have walked. Probably she took a cab.”

  “Yes,” Cochrane said. “Look, Bill, you know I’ve got to ask this. Did she have any identification? Something which would tell somebody who she was if she … couldn’t?”

  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.