The Norths Meet Murder Read online

  Weigand nodded and was consoling. No doubt it was of no importance. Still, Mr. Edwards might think it over and, if any details occurred to him, keep them in mind against the further question or two which might be necessary. “To complete the record,” Weigand assured Mr. Edwards, pleasantly. For now, he could think of nothing else; Mr. Edwards had been most helpful. Mr. Edwards expressed himself as pleased to have been helpful, and offered to be even more so. He would, for one thing, be glad to make the records of the Berex trust available to investigators, since the matter had come up, and if Weigand had, remaining, any doubts. Weigand deprecated the necessity, but said he would, to complete the record, send auditors around.

  Weigand leaned forward to rise from the chair and a nickeled watch popped, somehow, out of a vest pocket. It popped out and slithered across the carpet almost to Mr. Edwards’ feet. Mr. Edwards retrieved it, as one instinctively retrieves articles which roll to one’s feet, and handed it back to Weigand, who accepted it with apologies for his clumsiness and replaced it in his pocket, holding it lightly by the stem. He shook hands with Mr. Edwards, which was like shaking hands with a small, smooth cushion, and led Mullins out.

  It was, he thought, probably foolish to go to so much trouble to get Edwards’ fingerprints on the watch, carefully polished for the purpose, but so long as he had he might as well have them brought up. Mullins approved that, but was rather cross with the lieutenant for not pursuing the alibi further.

  “We oughta talked to that servant,” he said. “If there’s anything screwy going on there, they can cook something up together.”

  “Do you really think there is?” Weigand asked. Mullins started to answer, with some emphasis. “About the case, I mean,” Weigand added. Mullins, rather grudging about it, shook his head.

  “Not that guy,” he said. “Flowers! Cooking! Huh!”

  They walked back toward the subway and were, Weigand realized, hardly a block from the Buano house. While they were there, he thought, they might as well check up a point or two with the Norths. He looked at his watch—not at the nickeled watch, but at one on his wrist—and found, rather to his surprise, that it was after five. Presumably Mr. North, also, would be at home. He might as well, Weigand decided, find out where Mr. North was on Monday afternoon, for the sake of the thoroughness Inspector O’Malley so much prized.

  7

  WEDNESDAY

  5:15 P.M. TO 5:45 P.M.

  The Norths were home, and at cocktails, which they urged on Weigand and Mullins. Weigand said that, of course, they were on duty—Mullins looked very unhappy—and that they would be very glad of cocktails. Mullins beamed, and his beam grew when Mr. North, after a quick look, suggested he might prefer rye. Mullins did prefer rye.

  “I was telling him about the murderer’s leaving his name,” Mrs. North said. “Was he?”

  “What?” said Weigand. “This is where I came in,” he said to himself, bewildered.

  “Was he the murderer, of course,” Mrs. North said. “The man who left his name—Edwards. The laundryman.”

  Weigand said that he hadn’t, as yet, seen the laundryman, although no doubt it would be attended to. He had, he said, seen Clinton Edwards.

  “And is he?” Mrs. North said.

  “Listen—” said Mr. North. “You shouldn’t ask him things like that. Murders are confidential.”

  “Right,” said Weigand. “However, I don’t think he is, as a matter of fact.” He remembered something. “You had dinner at his house Monday evening? Right?”

  “Right,” said Mr. North.

  “Did you have lobster?” Weigand asked. Both the Norths looked at him in astonishment. He nodded, confirmingly.

  Mr. North said he had a vague idea they had lobster and Mrs. North said certainly, from her receipt. “Recipe,” she said. “Only I was brought up saying receipt.”

  Weigand explained about Edwards and the lobsters. He supposed, he said, that one could spend considerable time preparing lobsters? Both the men looked at Mrs. North, who said that one certainly could, particularly by her receipt.

  “Hours,” said Mrs. North. “Simply hours.”

  “Literally?” said Mr. North, interested.

  Mrs. North nodded, adding that, of course, it depended on how many and where you started. If you started with live lobsters, it was one thing, but she never did because of the claws and putting them in boiling water. She couldn’t, she said, bear to think of lobsters in boiling water, so she had it done at the market. But even with the lobsters boiled, there was the problem of taking them out of the shell, and then boiling the shells.

  “The shells?” said Weigand. Mr. North, at whom the detective was looking, nodded.

  “She boils them,” he said. “For the flavor. But I usually take them off. It takes time, all right.”

  It didn’t seem, to Weigand, that they were going much of any place.

  “Well,” he said, “anyway—”

  Mrs. North said she could get him the receipt, if he liked, but Weigand shook his head, just in time to save Mullins from choking on his drink. Recipes for lobster would, Mullins’ face reported, be entirely the last straw. “Screwy!” Mullins’ face said, with exclamation-points.

  “I could send it to you,” Mrs. North said, pursuing the subject. Weigand nodded, abstractedly. He said there were one or two other things.

  “The slip,” said Mrs. North. “What about the slip? Show it to him.”

  Weigand hesitated a moment.

  “After all,” Mrs. North said, “who found it?”

  Weigand shook the slip from the envelope to the coffee-table and they bent over it.

  “Handwriting?” Mr. North inquired.

  Weigand shook his head. Printed as it was, and so small a sample, it would be very nearly hopeless, he imagined. The experts could try, of course. They looked at the name, and it told them nothing new.

  “How about the other side?” Mr. North said. “Blank, I suppose?”

  Weigand realized that he hadn’t looked, because he supposed so, too. He flipped it over with the torn end of a paper match. It was, as everyone had expected, blank. They stared at it, and all three saw at the same time that it was not quite blank. At one end of the slip, on the edge, were two small marks. Mr. and Mrs. North pointed at it together, and said, “What’s that?”

  The marks were tiny and only a fraction of an inch apart; they slanted diagonally away from each other. The Norths leaned back and looked at one another, while the detective studied the marks. Mrs. North said she bet she knew what it was.

  “Part of a letter,” said Mrs. North. “Somebody cut a letter down the center.” She looked very pleased. “I think it’s a fine clue,” she said. Mr. North looked at the marks again.

  “What letter would be like that?” he said.

  Mrs. North’s lips moved faintly as she ran through the alphabet.

  “K,” she said, triumphantly. “If you cut a K just to the right of the fork and left it on, it would look like that.”

  Weigand and Mr. North looked at her; even Mullins allowed his attention to be distracted, momentarily, in the direction of the slip.

  “It could be,” Mr. North said. “It could be, at that, Weigand.”

  Weigand look at it again. It could, at that.

  “Or an X,” he said.

  The Norths looked at it again.

  “Any other letter?” Mr. North said. Separately, but more or less in unison, they ran over the alphabet. They all looked at one another, and shook their heads. It couldn’t, they decided.

  “It could be K going away or X going either way,” Mrs. North said. “But nothing else.”

  “That’s right, too,” Mr. North said. “Only, of course, it needn’t be a letter at all. It can be just a couple of marks, meaning something else.”

  Weigand agreed; Mrs. North didn’t.

  “It has to be a letter,” she said. “Part of a letter, anyway. It looks like it. We ought to look at it through a glass.”

  Weigand
nodded. It would, he agreed, be a good idea.

  “Got a glass?” said Weigand.

  “No,” said Mrs. North. That seemed to be that, for the moment. Using his match, Weigand wheedled the slip back into the envelope.

  “I’ll have it examined,” he said. “They may turn up something.” They sipped their drinks a moment, and Weigand said there were a couple of other points.

  “Do you people know the Fullers?” he said. “Benjamin Fuller and his wife.”

  “Jane,” said Mrs. North. “Ben and Jane.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Then you do. Do you know whether they knew Brent?”

  Mrs. North started to shake her head, but Mr. North said, “Yes.”

  “Oh, Jerry,” Mrs. North said. “Now you’ve brought them in!”

  Mr. North looked surprised and said, “But they did.

  “My God,” said Mr. North, “hundreds of people did, probably. But they didn’t all kill him. There’s no harm in that.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. North, “I still don’t think we ought to. I didn’t earlier, when he asked. Did I?”

  Weigand tried to remember; did remember that she had assured him she had never heard of Brent; put two and two together and came out with, he supposed, about three and a half. The lacking half represented a faint probability that Mrs. North might have had some other reason. He said, in answer to Mrs. North’s question, that she hadn’t.

  “But you had heard of Brent?” he said.

  Mrs. North said, all right, they had because of knowing the Fullers.

  “We’ve known the Fullers for two or three years,” she said, “and seen a good deal of them. But it was before that that they knew the Brents. I think they knew them rather well at one time.”

  “How well?” Weigand wanted to know. Mrs. North hesitated and said she thought “quite well.” Weigand nodded.

  “Did you ever hear that Brent and Mrs. Fuller were—well, playing around? I mean, you probably know people who knew them then, and things get around. Right?”

  The Norths looked at each other; Mr. North nodded agreement to Mrs. North’s glance, and Mrs. North said that, as a matter of fact, they had heard something of the kind. Gossip, it was.

  “But of course, it could have been true, for all that,” Weigand said. “A good many people thought it was true, didn’t they? Edwards did, for one—does, as a matter of fact.”

  “It’s just their minds,” Mrs. North said. “They want to think that, because they like to think things are happening. I know it wasn’t true, ever, and isn’t now.”

  “Know?” Weigand said, doubtfully.

  Mrs. North nodded in a decided way.

  “You always know,” she said. “It’s always perfectly clear, and Jane Fuller wasn’t playing. I know Jane, so I know she wasn’t.”

  It wasn’t, Weigand thought, as easy as that, but there was no point in an argument. It would, he thought, be pleasant if it were as easy as that; detecting would be much simpler, for one thing.

  “But they didn’t see each other just before Brent was killed?” he said.

  Mrs. North shook her head vigorously, but Mr. North nodded his, reluctantly.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said. “I think they did—I heard they did, until quite recently. I heard somebody talking about it, somewhere.” Mrs. North said, “Oh, Jerry!” Mr. North said that, of course, that might merely be more gossip.

  “Look,” he said, “why don’t you ask the Fullers? I mean—all we know is gossip, and I don’t like to be passing it on. And, anyway, we get all this second or third hand. There were rumors, and they lasted until quite recently—that’s all we know, really. And the Fullers are friends of ours. Right?”

  “Right,” Weigand said.

  “But there wasn’t any truth in anything about Jane Fuller and Brent,” Mrs. North said. “That’s perfectly clear.”

  “Right,” said Weigand. “What kind of people are the Fullers, aside from the fact that she wouldn’t play around.”

  The Norths had trouble getting together on that. They agreed that Fuller was tall. Mr. North stopped there in describing him, and Mrs. North said he was homely in an attractive sort of way. “The red-haired sort of way,” she added, in explanation. “He’s very full of energy,” she said, further. Mrs. Fuller, they both agreed, was much smaller, and dark. “Very attractive,” Mr. North said. Mrs. North looked a little doubtful at that, and shook her head hesitantly. “I wouldn’t say she’s good-looking, exactly,” she said. “She’s got lovely hair and eyes, though. I think she’s a very sweet person, really.”

  “I always felt, somehow, that he would have a nasty temper, under the proper circumstances,” Mr. North said. “He looks it, somehow.”

  “Why, Jerry!” Mrs. North said.

  Weigand said, “Um.” Mullins produced a curiously artificial cough and looked at Weigand knowingly when Weigand looked at him.

  “Bad temper, eh?” said Mullins, significantly, and retired into his drink.

  “But listen,” Mrs. North said. “He isn’t—”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “I’ll see him, anyway. Make up my own mind. Right?”

  Mrs. North seemed a little mollified, but not entirely satisfied. “Prejudice,” she said, to nobody in particular. “Prejudicing detectives.”

  Mr. North poured more cocktails and gestured Mullins toward the rye tantalus. Mullins said he didn’t mind if he did, and proved it. Weigand said there was, while they were on it, one other point.

  “I gather neither of you knew Brent, personally?” he said. “I asked Mrs. North and she didn’t. How about you, North? Did you Know Brent?”

  Mr. North, rather to everybody’s surprise, nodded. Mrs. North said, in a shocked tone, “Why, Jerry!”

  “I only thought of it a moment ago,” Mr. North said. “There was something about the name ever since I saw it in the paper. I knew him slightly, as a matter of fact. He was, counsel for the plaintiff in a suit against us.”

  “Suit?” said Weigand. “Against you?”

  It was, Mr. North said, against the publishing company—plagiarism suit.

  “We brought out a book, and some woman argued it was stolen from something she had written,” Mr. North explained. “She’d sent us the manuscript earlier, as it turned out, and we’d sent it back. They tried to argue that we had given the idea to Peterson, our author. Nonsense, of course, and it was thrown out of court. And—”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. North. “Was that the time you got so mad—” She stopped, as if she had stepped on something, and flushed. Mr. North grinned at her.

  “All right, kid,” he said. “I was coming to that—no brick dropped.

  “I was on the stand,” he explained to Weigand, “and Brent cross-examined me. He tried to make it appear I had passed the idea on to Peterson, because I had completed arrangements with him. All nonsense, of course, but rather annoying. As Pam says, I was annoyed. But it was nothing, really.”

  “Look, Jerry,” Mrs. North said. “I’m sorry. I talk too much.”

  She was, it occurred to Weigand, talking too much now, but that was all right with him—or ought to be all right with him. It was all right with him as long as he remembered he was a policeman.

  “It was nothing,” said Mr. North. He seemed flurried and upset, and he was conscious that he must appear so, which annoyed him still more. “Molehills,” Mr. North said, rather explosively. “For God’s sake—”

  “Right,” said Weigand. “Obviously. All very silly.” He realized, however, that his next question was going to come in rather embarrassing juxtaposition.

  “This is purely routine,” he said. “But the inspector will want me to have asked. Where were you Monday afternoon, Mr. North? At your office, I suppose.”

  “Why, yes—” Mr. North said, and then he stopped, while a tiny tingle of alarm went through him. He hadn’t been, now he came to think of it. He had been—

  “Damn it all,” Mr. North said, exasperated. “As a matter of fact, I
was at a reception for one of our authors. At the Ritz. There was a mob of people from about five o’clock on.”

  “Well,” said Weigand, “if you left your office a little before five—”

  That, Mr. North said, was the whole trouble. He had been reading a badly typed manuscript most of the morning and missed lunch and then, in the middle of the afternoon, turned up with a headache. So he had left the office about three.

  “And?” said Weigand.

  “Took a walk,” said Mr. North, rather desperately. “Just took a walk, in Central Park. But, for God’s sake, I didn’t even remember I knew the fellow then! If you’d said ‘Brent’ to me it wouldn’t have meant a thing. Not a thing.” He looked at Weigand anxiously, but Weigand was finishing his cocktail. He looked at Mrs. North, who looked back at him, Mr. North disturbedly realized, bravely. She looked at him as if she believed in his innocence.

  “Listen!” said Mr. North. “Listen.”

  “There,” said Mrs. North, “I’m sure he believes you. It’s just a coincidence, really. You’re going to be perfectly all right.”

  “Damn it all,” said Mr. North. “Of course I’m going to be all right. It isn’t even a coincidence—it isn’t anything at all. Of all the—”

  Then he saw Mrs. North’s face again and suddenly grinned at her.

  “O.K., kid,” he said. “Have your games.”

  But the point was, he thought, whether. Weigand was playing the same game. He couldn’t tell from Weigand’s face. “But Weigand drank my cocktails,” Mr. North told himself. “Only,” he told himself, “that was before he knew I knew Brent.” He tried to remember whether Weigand had kept on drinking after he had known, and couldn’t be certain. The detective had, to be sure, had his glass up to his lips, but perhaps it was already empty. Mr. North felt, on the whole, pretty worried. “If I only knew,” he thought, “whether there was anything in the glass—that would tell me.” Then he thought of offering Weigand another cocktail, but Weigand was beginning to stand up.

  Mullins took a final gulp and stood up too.

  “Well,” said Weigand, “thanks. We’ll have to be getting along.” He paused. “You’ve both been helpful,” he said. Mrs. North smiled at that and Mr. North started to. Then he realized that Weigand might mean several things by that.