Curtain for a Jester Page 9

She went on, her account still fitting, not much amplifying, that of Pam and Jerry North. She told of the dummy’s “murder.”

  “It wasn’t as if Byron didn’t know what it would mean to Mr. Monteath,” she said. “To have it happen again.”

  She had said it before. It was time now to take it up. What had happened before of which the shooting of a red-wigged mannequin was a repetition?

  Mrs. Wilmot seemed surprised at the question. She said, “Why, the burglar, of course” and waited as if, with that, she had explained everything. But Bill Weigand only shook his head. “But the police knew all about it,” she said. “I thought of course—”

  “No,” Bill said. “You mean Mr. Monteath shot at a burglar once before? Under circumstances similar to this—this contrivance of Mr. Wilmot’s?”

  She did. She had assumed that the police, as represented by Captain Weigand, knew about that. It was, it had to be, a matter of record. Bill could only shake his head again. Perhaps some policemen knew; he did not. Where had it happened?

  “Oh,” she said. “Up in Maine. About—well, it was just before the war.”

  She was invited to go on. She went on.

  The Wilmots had been motoring in Maine in late July of, she thought, 1940 or 1941. They had come to a little village near the coast—she paused at that, and shook her head. “I’ve forgotten the name of the place,” she said. Byron Wilmot had remembered suddenly—told her he remembered suddenly—that the Monteaths had a cottage somewhere near, and had suggested they look the Monteaths up. “I remember I wasn’t very enthusiastic,” she said. “I didn’t know them well at all and we’d planned to spend the night somewhere quite a ways ahead and—Well, anyway, Byron insisted.”

  They found the Monteaths’ cottage after a little search, found it isolated, on a just passable road which ended with the cottage, and near the sea. They had found Monteath there alone.

  “Right away I knew we shouldn’t have come,” she said. “He was so obviously worried and he was packing up. You see, his wife had been taken ill suddenly and was in a hospital in Portland. He had taken her there, I think, and then come back to pack up because—well, she was very ill.”

  Mrs. Wilmot had felt they were in the way, even though Monteath politely urged them to stay, to have a drink. They had, but over her protests. They had left in the late afternoon and driven on. “I still remember how worried poor Arthur was about his wife,” she said. “How I felt we had intruded.” She paused. “It was that same night it happened,” she said. “We read about it in a newspaper the next day, or heard it on the car radio. I don’t remember. Somebody tried to break into the cottage and Mr. Monteath shot to frighten him off. But—well, he killed him. Just by accident, of course. Not meaning to at all. You can imagine how he must have felt—his wife dying and then—this awful—mistake. And for Byron to bring it all up again last night!” She shook her head; she made a small sound, deprecating without words.

  “Mrs. Monteath died?” Weigand asked.

  She nodded. Mrs. Monteath—her name had been Grace—had died a day or two later in the hospital.

  “Of course,” she said, “everybody knew it—the shooting, I mean—had been an accident and the police didn’t do anything to Arthur. Didn’t arrest him or anything. Of course, they wouldn’t. I don’t suppose he could ever forget, though. The two things coming at the same time, that way and—and everything.”

  “The man he shot,” Bill said. “Was he identified, do you know?”

  She didn’t.

  “Did your husband?”

  So far as she knew, Byron Wilmot had known no more than she.

  “It hasn’t anything to do with this, has it?” she asked. “I mean—I told you about it to show what—well, the kind of cruel things Byron would do. Do deliberately.”

  Bill Weigand understood that. There was no reason to think that this unfortunate accident of almost fifteen years ago had anything to do with Byron Wilmot’s death.

  “To get back to the party,” he said. “After the incident of the dummy, do you remember anything that might help us?”

  She told what else she remembered, which brought little new. Her story of the last few minutes of the party accorded with that of the Norths’, her account of her unsuccessful effort to get Clyde Parsons to go home with her agreed with his. She had taken a cab—she did not remember of what fleet, if any—from downtown New York to Forest Hills, getting home late. She had gone to bed. She waited, then. She was thanked. She went to the door with Bill Weigand and Mullins, stood on the porch watching them as they got into the car. Somewhere, in a shadowy marsh, peepers started their shrill salute to spring.

  VI

  Thursday, 3:55 P.M. to 5:15 P.M.

  Mrs. Gerald North had telephoned, requesting that she be called back. A patient, bar-to-bar check had placed Clyde Parsons until around a quarter of two that morning—at which time he had been too intoxicated to be served at a small place on Eighth Street. (Or so the night bartender, pursued to his home in the Bronx and awakened there, had virtuously insisted.) Bill started another check, which would require equal patience: Did some hack driver’s record show a trip, beginning at around one in the morning, from downtown New York to Forest Hills? Bill Weigand regarded Mullins. After consideration, he nodded. He gestured toward a telephone.

  “See what Maine can tell us, sergeant,” he said. Mullins groaned faintly, pointed out that Maine was large, the shooting of a stray burglar far in the past. But he got on with it.

  Bill asked for a familiar number, heard the sound symbolic of a telephone’s ringing, heard Pam North’s voice. He listened.

  “No,” he said, “we haven’t anybody following Baker.” He listened again. He said, “You’re sure?” He listened. He said, “All right, Pam, I know you do. You do look at things.” Once more he listened to a clear, quick voice. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “I’ll try to get one. You said the Waldorf?”

  That, Pam told him, was what Mr. Arthur Monteath had said to the cab driver, as he left to be followed by Mr. John Baker.

  “I—” Pam said. “Wait a minute. Somebody’s at the door. Shall I call you back?”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “No—wait a minute, Pam. I’ll call you. Right?”

  “Right,” Pam North said, and the receiver clicked to Bill Weigand’s ear. He looked toward Mullins, at another desk. Mullins was regarding a telephone with the expression of one who awaits a summons.

  “Pam says our friend Baker is following Monteath,” Bill said. “And that Monteath took the Norths to lunch to pump them. That Clyde Parsons wanted to get into the diplomatic service and didn’t. That Monteath would like us to ask him whatever questions we have so he can go to Washington. That she forgot to ask him whether he knew anybody with red hair.”

  “Jeeze,” Mullins said. His telephone rang. He said, “Mullins speaking.” He said, “O.K., keep trying.” He hung up.

  “Put Stein on that,” Bill told him. Mullins brightened. “Get up to the Waldorf. Find out if Monteath’s stopping there. Find out if he is there. If Baker’s there.”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. He was pleased; detectives should not be chained to telephones. He went in search of Stein. Bill sat for a moment, his fingers tapping his desk, his eyes narrowed. If Pam North was right—and Pam was very often right—people were up to things. That was, he hoped, a good sign. He nodded to Stein, who came to attend Mullins’s telephone, who would already be briefed. Bill Weigand got his car, drove to the Novelty Emporium. There he sought, and found, Mr. Dewsnap—Mr. Bertram Dewsnap.

  Mr. Dewsnap was a small, gray man, and there was no merriment in him—among false faces of most hilarious design, tricks designed to convulse the most dour, Mr. Dewsnap gave no indication that he was amused, or ever had been. He sighed deeply when Bill identified himself.

  “I can’t understand it,” he said, and tears trickled in his voice, although his sharp gray eyes remained entirely dry. “Mr. Wilmot was always so—so full of life.�
� He sighed again. “Why, only yesterday—” He paused, he shook his head, he sighed once more. Bill waited. “But there is no use remembering,” Mr. Dewsnap told him. “We must learn to face it.”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Dewlap.”

  “Snap,” Dewsnap said. “Dewsnap, captain.”

  Bill apologized; was told, in a tone of resignation, that it often happened. He was told, also, that there were already men going over the company’s books. “Men from the police,” Dewsnap said, and added a sound akin to “tut.” Bill knew that; that was routine. He sought more personal background—specifically, the background data which might be available on Martha Evitts and John Baker.

  Neither of whom was there, Dewsnap told him. He sighed again. He could not understand it. Baker had been there that morning; had gone to offer the police, in behalf of the staff, any assistance he could. (“I talked to him,” Bill said.) Baker had not returned. Miss Evitts had simply not appeared. They had tried to get in touch with her at her apartment. They had failed. (“Right,” Bill said. “So did we.”)

  “I can’t understand it,” Dewsnap said. “It’s all quite—quite beyond me, captain.”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “It’s very difficult. Do you have personnel files, Mr. Dewsnap? I suppose you have?”

  Mr. Dewsnap, without happiness, agreed that they had. He left the little office, which was on a mezzanine, with its only window overlooking a sales floor filled with the preposterous. He returned, after a few moments, with two folders. He proffered them to Weigand, suggested that his desk be used, left again. He reappeared on the floor below, moving among counters, among costume racks, his head turning from side to side as he walked.

  Evitts—Martha Jean. Age 29. Employed at the Emporium for the past three years. An uptown address. Two former employers, with one of which she had remained three years, with the other two and a half. Letters of recommendation from both. High school graduate, two years’ college, business school course completed. Parents—William and Martha Evitts—both deceased. Religion, protestant. Social security number—Bill made a note of it. Salary—the Emporium paid rather well. Next of kin—a cousin, one Mrs. Ralph Simpson, living in California. Bill made a note of her address.

  He put the folder aside. It did not appear to have told him anything of importance. He took the other.

  Baker—John. Age, 25. Address, a midtown hotel. Employed since the previous August. Salary—$50 weekly.

  And—that was all. The folder held only a single file card, only so much information as might, without crowding, go on three lines of the card. Well, Bill Weigand thought. Well. Well. He went to the window which looked down on the sales floor. Mr. Dewsnap was looking up at it, which was convenient, if perhaps a little odd. Bill beckoned. Dewsnap came upstairs to the mezzanine, into his office. Bill abandoned the desk to its owner. He said, “Oughtn’t there to be more than this about Mr. Baker?”

  He showed Dewsnap the card. Dewsnap looked at it.

  “Of course,” he said. “Much more. I—” he paused. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “I don’t understand it at all, captain. Unless—I’ll look.”

  He went. He returned.

  “I thought the rest might have slipped out,” he said. “I can’t find anything more. It’s very—irregular.”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “By the way—is that his present salary?”

  Dewsnap looked at the card again. He said he would suppose so. He said that Mr. Wilmot had fixed salaries.

  “It isn’t much,” Bill said.

  Dewsnap looked at it again.

  “No,” he said. “It isn’t very much, is it? He must have to live very carefully.”

  Bill Weigand nodded. He considered. Were the personnel records kept in a locked file? They were not. Then anybody—any employee, certainly—could examine them? If he wished, add to them, subtract from them?

  “Why?” Mr. Dewsnap asked. “I suppose so. But I don’t understand, captain.”

  The area of Mr. Dewsnap’s non-understanding seemed large. Did he really, Bill wondered, fail to understand what was surely obvious—that Baker, if he chose, could have taken from his record such information as he preferred the police, under these circumstances, not to come upon? Bill looked at Dewsnap with some care.

  “You mean Mr. Baker might have taken out part of his records?” Mr. Dewsnap asked.

  “Right,” Bill said. “Mr. Baker. Or—someone else.”

  Mr. Dewsnap shook his head. He shook it worriedly, to all appearances a man out of his depth. “Why would anybody do that?” he asked.

  Bill abandoned it. He said there was another thing.

  “We found carbons of correspondence in Mr. Wilmot’s apartment,” he said. “Several in German, apparently arranging for the manufacture, in Germany, of certain devices. Do you know about that?”

  Mr. Dewsnap’s face cleared. That he did know about. A number of what the captain called “devices”—and the word was well chosen, certainly—were manufactured in Germany on designs developed by Mr. Wilmot or other inventors. Devices in which precision was of great importance, for the most part. Bill raised his eyebrows. Didn’t the import duties—

  “Mr. Wilmot apparently thought not,” Mr. Dewsnap said. “He is—was—a very astute businessman, captain.”

  “He would send the designs to Germany?” Bill said. “Those were the blueprints, I suppose?”

  “I haven’t seen the ones you’re talking about,” Dewsnap said. “But—yes, that was the way it was done. The designs, and specifications. Chiefly for magic devices.” He paused. “To western Germany, of course,” he added.

  Bill said, without emphasis, that he had supposed so. He went to talk briefly to the men who were going through files. One of them shrugged. “Did a good business,” he said. “What are we looking for?” Bill could not tell them that, beyond what they knew of that. “Anything that doesn’t fit,” he said. “Incidentally—if you come across personnel records of a man named John Baker, I’d like to see them. Some stuff seems to be missing.” He got an, “O.K., captain.”

  From the floor below, on his way elsewhere, he looked up at the window of the office on the mezzanine. Mr. Dewsnap was looking down intently. Bill raised a hand, but Dewsnap did not appear to notice it. He was looking, Bill realized, not at a departing detective but at a man who had just come through the door from the street. Bill looked at the man.

  The man was of medium height, medium build. There did not seem to be anything in his appearance to occasion the intent scrutiny Dewsnap was giving him. Nevertheless, on the chance, Bill himself committed a face to memory—a long face, thinnish, an almost imperceptible scar-tracing running diagonally through the left eyebrow, irregular teeth. Hair, gray. Bill had passed the newcomer by then, but the picture remained with him. Hair, not altogether gray. Probably had been red.

  For an instant, Bill checked his stride. Then he resumed it. It was true that, some years before, the man he had just passed probably had had red hair. So, however, had a very considerable minority of the population, even if red-haired mannequins were not included. Still—

  He crossed the street to a drugstore, made a telephone call. He sat at a soda counter, drank coffee, watching the entrance to the Novelty Emporium. After about ten minutes, a man came in and bought cigarettes. He lighted one. He became interested in a display of pocket-size reprints. He was a man with time on his hands—time to waste. Well, Bill thought, he was almost certainly wasting it. Bill smiled to himself. Pam North would be pleased, when he told her. She had thought red hair so important.

  Bill retrieved his car and drove across town to a residential hotel in the Chelsea area. Mr. John Baker was not in. Several people had been trying to get in touch with him.

  The hotel was small; it was well kept. Bill indicated that he might be looking for a place to stay, perhaps for several weeks. A room with bath, by the week or, possibly, by the month? A very pleasant room, in the rear, where it was quiet, wou
ld cost a hundred and twenty-five a month. A room similar to Mr. Baker’s? Quite similar. Mr. Baker did, of course, have a corner room. Such a room, if one were available—none was, at the moment—would naturally cost a little more.

  Bill would let him know. He would get in touch with Mr. Baker at his office.

  It appeared that Mr. Baker had a private income or a very small appetite. He was spending considerably more than half his salary for lodging. It also appeared, at the moment, that Mr. Baker had no past. It was possible, of course, that he was carrying his past in his pocket.

  Bill went back to his office. Sergeant Stein had been efficient, and lucky. The Maine state police had been efficient, and cooperative. Stein stopped typing his report and gave Weigand an oral summary.

  At about one in the morning of July 28, 1940, Arthur Monteath had been alone in his cottage, near the sea, near Pemaquid. He had been awakened by the sound of someone trying to force the door—someone who, apparently, had thought the cottage empty. Confronted, the man had turned threatening. Monteath had fired one shot from a .32 automatic, intending to miss, to frighten. But, half asleep, nervously upset because of his wife’s sudden illness—for whatever reason—Monteath had not missed. He had shot the intruder through the forehead. Discovering what he had done, he had at once telephoned the police, told them the story, produced a permit for the pistol.

  There had been nothing, no uncertainty in the story, no physical evidence, to lead to doubt. There is no law which says a man may not defend his home, himself. All that Monteath said, all he showed in manner, convinced the police that only a warning shot had been intended. Monteath had not been arrested, there had been no court action.

  The dead man had been identified as Joseph Parks, twenty-four years old. He had lived in New York. He had a police record—juvenile delinquency, 1932; a charge of grand larceny, 1936, acquitted; extortion, 1938, sentenced to three years, on parole at time of death. There was nothing to make it improbable that he had taken to burglarizing summer cottages. He had never been a particularly successful outlaw.