The Norths Meet Murder Read online

  “And that,” he said to himself, “is that.”

  He sent Stein home with Mrs. Brent and Stein called a doctor and directed the frightened maid. Mrs. Brent was conscious again by that time and her eyes were open, looking at nothing. They still had a strangely shallow look, and it was impossible to believe that she was seeing anything through them; anything that was there and then.…

  Weigand went on to Headquarters, reported, set things rolling again. Two hours later the newspapers were excited with the news that Stanley Brent, Yale graduate and attorney, member of the firm of Strahan, Mahoney and Brent, was the man found murdered so curiously in a bathtub in the village; found “nude” the previous day, in case the readers had forgotten, by Gerald North, connected with the publishing firm of Kensington & Brown, and Mrs. North; husband of Claire Brent, before her marriage Claire Askew and well known a few years before as a tournament tennis player who once had reached the quarter-finals at Forest Hills before she was eliminated by Helen Jacobs; father of no children, member of several clubs. He was generally thought of, the papers said, as one of the more promising of the younger members of the city’s bar. He had had a short but brilliant career several years before as an Assistant District Attorney. A former State Supreme Court Justice spoke very highly indeed of Mr. Brent, as a prosecutor and as a man.

  Detectives settled down on the law offices of Strahan, Mahoney and Brent. They learned from Brent’s secretary, who fluttered with excitement and now and then wept, that Brent had left the office at lunch-time Monday, saying he would not be back and not saying where he was going. She had canceled several appointments for him, at his direction. She had wondered when he did not come to the office Tuesday and had told Mr. Mahoney. (Mr. Strahan had, it seemed, been dead for several years.) Mr. Mahoney had suggested that she telephone Mr. Brent’s home, which she had done, getting no answer. Mr. Mahoney had then said that, probably, Mr. Brent had gone to the country to help Mrs. Brent with the closing of the house, and been prevented from telephoning, or thought it unnecessary. She had telephoned the apartment again that morning, and still got no answer, and had been about to ask Mr. Mahoney for further instructions when Mrs. Brent telephoned and was told her husband had not been at the office since Monday.

  Detectives settled down in Brent’s office; experts with training as accountants began going through books. Mr. Mahoney spluttered and was calmed. Nothing confidential would trickle through the police hands and minds. But the police wanted to find out things—names of clients, details of appointments, names of correspondents who might, as correspondents sometimes did for one reason and another, write personal letters to a lawyer at his office. When they left they took a good many things with them—check-books, appointment blanks, not a few letters which were, clearly, extremely personal. Back at Headquarters they made out reports, attaching exhibits, and sent them along to Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, who looked at them with a detached air and sent them to Detective Lieutenant Weigand.

  Inspector O’Malley then saw the press and reported that he and the men working under him were, they felt, making rapid progress. Without saying so, he left the implication that an arrest was extremely imminent. This implication encountered the tough, experienced minds of reporters who knew Inspector O’Malley, and many other policemen. The implications bounced, at which nobody was surprised, not even Inspector O’Malley.

  Weigand was at his desk when the reports came in, and decided to defer them, for the moment. People first, Lieutenant Weigand believed. Then documents. Then, with both people and documents in mind, people again. He looked at his watch, confirming his suspicion that it was lunch-time. He lifted a telephone and instructed the police operator to get Detective Mullins on the wire. Detective Mullins came on the wire. He said:

  “Hey, listen, Loot, you said—”

  Weigand said he was sorry, but that things were happening. Mullins could eat breakfast while he ate lunch and meet him—well, meet him at 95 Greenwich Place. They would go on from there. Mullins groaned.

  “O.K., Loot,” he said, aggrievement in his voice.

  Weigand went on to lunch. After lunch he walked a dozen blocks, thinking. There was not, he found, much to think about, as yet. But, at any rate, he had the victim; had something to work on. He would talk to a few people now, before they thought too much, get what he could find from the desk Brent almost certainly had in his apartment. Then he could spend the evening putting things together, if they would go together. The trouble with this business was, he thought to himself, that you never got enough sleep. You never knew enough facts, either.

  Lieutenant Weigand went down into a subway entrance, hung to a porcelain strap and stared for a few minutes at a map of the Independent Subway System, and emerged at West Fourth Street. From there it was only a few blocks to the Buano house. When he got there, Mullins was standing in front of it, leaning on the railing and looking suspiciously at a negro houseboy who had come out of a house across the street to polish the doorknob and look suspiciously at Mullins.

  Weigand gathered Mullins up and together they summoned Mrs. Buano. She had never heard of Stanley Brent. He had certainly not occupied the house while she owned it. She had been consulted by Mrs. North on Monday about a party in the vacant apartment—“studio”—on the top floor, had seen nothing odd in the request and had readily agreed. Yes, Mrs. North had said she was going up to look at the apartment, Mrs. Buano had told her that the door was unlocked; it had not been locked since the previous tenant moved out. Why, when you came to that, should it be locked? There were the four walls, nothing else and, in any case, the front door of the house was always locked. Nobody could get in.

  “Well,” Weigand said, “somebody did. Right?”

  Mrs. Buano, a middle-aged, incisive woman, with coiffed gray hair, agreed that somebody had, more the pity was. It didn’t, she pointed out, help the house—thank heaven the Norths weren’t apt to be frightened away, however. She did not, it became clear, blame them for finding the body. It was, as a matter of fact, just as well they had, since it had to be found sometime.

  “That might have been a long time, as a matter of fact,” Weigand pointed out. “With the bathroom door closed, and the apartment door closed—heavy doors, heavy walls, top of the house. And the bathroom has a ventilator, of course? Right?”

  Mrs. Buano agreed. Ventilators were required by the building code. Weigand nodded.

  “And with a window open, too,” he said. “The murderer may have counted on its being a good while before anybody noticed. You wouldn’t have gone up in the normal course of things, would you?”

  Mrs. Buano agreed that she wouldn’t. Not with the October renting season past, although one could never tell. But it might, certainly, have been several weeks, in the ordinary course of things; even a month or two. With the ventilator and everything, and the doors closed.

  “He may have counted on that,” Weigand said. “He may have thought, if it was long enough, we couldn’t identify. Right? We would have, though.”

  Turning from that, he confirmed that Mrs. Buano had admitted no one to the apartment Monday afternoon; as a matter of fact, she was away for a couple of hours in the middle of it. She had heard nothing of the Western Union boy, but that, she added, meant nothing. She might have been away; she might have been in the rear of her own ground floor, where she would have heard nothing in the hall in front. There were, she was certain, no keys to the front door loose in the world. She had a set, and her maid; each tenant had two each. She had the two keys which would have been issued to tenants of the top floor. The Nelsons, on the third floor, might, to be sure, have given their keys to somebody, but she thought it unlikely. They were very particular people. Either of the Norths, and particularly Mrs. North, might easily lose a key, but if either did he would report the loss and she would change the lock. Only a few months before, indeed, Mrs. North had lost a key, and Mrs. Buano had had the lock changed. But since then no keys had been missing; the key lost by
Mrs. North the spring before would be useless in the lock now on the door.

  That seemed, Weigand agreed, to be that. He thanked Mrs. Buano, hoping he would not have to bother her soon again. She bowed; Weigand bowed. On the sidewalk again, Mullins said that, to him, it was still screwy. He was morose about it.

  Weigand thought that, while they were there, they might as well talk to the Norths—to Mrs. North, anyway, assuming Mr. North would be at his office.

  Mrs. North was home, and clicked them in. She leaned over the banister and beckoned eagerly. She was excited.

  “I was just trying to get you,” she said. “I know who did it!”

  “What?” said Weigand.

  “The murder,” Mrs. North said. “I know who did it! He left his name!”

  “Well,” said Weigand, and then, because no word he could think of seemed adequate, “well …” Then there seemed to be only one next remark.

  “Who was it?” Weigand said. “That is, I mean—who was it?”

  Mrs. North said that, if he would come in, she would tell him all about it. He went in. Mullins went in behind him.

  “Screwy,” Mullins murmured, darkly, just loudly enough for Weigand to hear. “I told you it was screwy.”

  “Well,” said Weigand, when they were sitting in the living-room. “You’ll tell me about it, right? Who left his name? Where?”

  Mrs. North said she wanted to begin at the beginning. The beginning, she said, was the Mortons, who were coming to dinner that evening. “And flowers,” Mrs. North said. “There’s a man over in the doorway who sells them for almost nothing. And—”

  “Listen,” said Weigand. “He left his name? Right?”

  Mrs. North said she was coming to that.

  “It’s a big clue,” she said, “but it goes in order or it doesn’t mean anything. It was when I was going out to buy the flowers because the Mortons are coming to dinner tonight. Right?”

  “Right,” said Weigand.

  Mrs. North had gone downstairs, on her way to get flowers, she said. It was about—“What time is it now?” Mrs. North said. It was a quarter of two, near enough. Then it would have been about an hour ago. Between 12:30 and 1. She looked in the mailbox to see if there was any mail for them, and there wasn’t. “But there was a letter in the wrong box,” she said.

  “The wrong box?” Weigand asked.

  “The fourth-floor box,” Mrs. North said, “and I thought I’d wait and see if it was for us.” So she had waited, knowing the postman was due about 1:30. “Timothy,” she said. “That’s the postman’s name. Timothy Barnes.” He was the regular carrier and the Norths both knew him. “Because he brings so many books,” Mrs. North explained, “and they won’t go in, so he has to ring.”

  Weigand felt that he was galloping, but he was getting used to it. Once you got the hang, you could keep up quite easily, playing leapfrog with words. He nodded.

  “So Mr. Barnes said he would look to see if it was for us,” Mrs. North explained. “He thought it might have been the substitute carrier on the 11 o’clock delivery.” She was being very clear and careful, now, Weigand could see. Mullins made an occasional low, bewildered sound, and tried to take notes. Every now and then he would look at his notes and make a discouraged sound.

  Mrs. North said the carrier had looked at it and it was, so he let her take it out.

  “And was that the clue?” Weigand said. Mrs. North looked at him, as if he should have known better. She said certainly not, it was an announcement from Saks of a private sale. The clue was under it.

  “Under it?” Weigand said.

  “In the bottom of the box,” Mrs. North said. “After I got the letter out of the wrong box there was still something in the bottom.”

  “Of the fourth-floor box?” Weigand said. “Where the murder was?”

  Mullins made an even lower and more discouraged sound; now, the sound said, the Loot was getting that way. Weigand himself felt oddly elated and triumphant.

  It was the fourth-floor box, Mrs. North agreed. And after she had taken the letter out there was still a little slip. She had known at once it was a clue. She had persuaded Mr. Barnes to leave the box open while she went up and got a pair of manicure tweezers and she had fished it out with them.

  “Not touching it,” Mrs. North said. “Fingerprints, you know.”

  Weigand said he knew.

  “And it had his name on it,” Mrs. North said.

  “Whose?” said Weigand. “I mean—can I see it?”

  That, of course, was what she was explaining for, Mrs. North said. It was a clue, so naturally it was for him. Nobody had touched it except with the tweezers. “Right?”

  “Exactly right,” Weigand agreed. Mrs. North said she would go and get it, and she went and got it, bringing it out in the tweezers. They laid it down on the coffee-table and looked at it. It was a slip of rather stiff paper, an inch and a half long, and about half an inch wide. There was a name lettered in ink on one side of it. The name was: “Edwards.” The size and shape suggested something to Weigand and he almost had it before Mrs. North spoke.

  “You see what it is, don’t you?” she said. “It came out of the little slot by the bell.”

  That was it, Weigand realized. Each bell in the vestibule downstairs had a slot by it, into which a slip bearing the name of the tenant could be inserted. This slip would fit the slot; it had been cut for the slot. It had, he realized, almost certainly been in the slot. But it might—

  “Did anybody named Edwards ever live here?” he asked.

  That, Mrs. North told him, was the point. Nobody had; not, at any rate, since they had been there, and that was a long time. It couldn’t have been there all that time.

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “It’s the murderer’s name! He put it there so the other man could ring.”

  It could, Weigand realized, be that way. He checked it over, aloud, while Mrs. North nodded.

  “The murderer,” Weigand said, “came about—what did we say?—3:20 or 3:25. He had this slip ready, and put it opposite the bell of the fourth-floor apartment. Right?” Mrs. North nodded. “Then he rang your bell and pretended to be Western Union when you let him in. So—Then he went upstairs and into the apartment. Right?” Mrs. North nodded again.

  “Then,” said Weigand, “he must have already made an appointment with the man he was going to kill; made it for, say 3:30 or a little later, and given the man this address and false name.” Mrs. North looked dubious. Why, she said, false? And if false, why did the other man come? Weigand thought false, because nobody would use his own name. It didn’t stand to reason.

  “He, the murderer, talked to his man by telephone, probably,” Weigand explained. “Perhaps around noon Monday. He said he was Edwards, which means that the victim knew somebody named Edwards who might call him up and arrange an appointment. Right, so far?”

  Mrs. North still was a little dubious, but she nodded, and Weigand went on.

  “The murderer—” he began.

  “Call him X,” Mrs. North said. “People always do.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Call the murderer X. So X telephoned the victim, Brent.”

  “Brent?” said Mrs. North.

  Weigand said he had assumed she had seen the papers, but she shook her head. “Only the mornings,” she said; “he was still just nobody in the mornings.”

  He was, Weigand explained, Brent in the afternoons and told her, in a few words, something about Brent. But they would let that rest for the moment, and where were they? They were, Mrs. North said, with the murderer being called X, and X calling up the victim, Brent. Weigand said, “Right.

  “X called Brent,” he said, “and described himself as Edwards. Brent knew somebody named Edwards, and had some reason for wanting to see him but he didn’t know where Edwards lived—” Weigand studied a moment over that. “Or,” he said, “X, posing as Edwards, said he had moved and gave this address. It’s close enough to October 1 to make that’ plausible—you expe
ct everyone to move then. X told Brent to come around at 3:30 and Brent did. Sure enough, when Brent got in the vestibule, there was Edwards’ name by a bell, and he rang the bell and X let him in. And X killed him.”

  “But would it ring?” Mrs. North said. “The fourth floor bell, I mean, with the electricity off up there?”

  The bells, Weigand told her, would be on the general house circuit, unconnected with the apartment circuits.

  Mrs. North nodded, still a little hesitatingly.

  “Why couldn’t it really have been Edwards?” she said. “Somebody really named Edwards?”

  That, Weigand pointed out, was perfectly clear. If the murderer were really named Edwards, he’d take mighty good care not to leave his name around. Edwards, he said, was one name they could rule out—it might be Smith or Jones or Finklestein, but it wouldn’t be Edwards. Mrs. North said she saw what he meant.

  “But why leave any name?” she said. “Why leave anything, any slip? Why put the slip in the mailbox, as the murderer must have done, instead of just throwing it away?”

  It was Weigahd’s turn to nod, puzzled. He had, he agreed, got that to worry about. At the moment he couldn’t think of the reason. He picked up the slip and looked at it, still using the tweezers, and shook his head over it. Then he slipped it into an envelope.

  “It’s a clue, all right. It was quick of you to notice it, Mrs. North. It may tell us things. Now, a couple of other points. Did you know a man named Stanley Brent?”