Death on the Aisle (19 page)

“She was alone,” the girl said. “I only stayed a minute or so. She said she was getting ready to take a bath. She was in a negligee, as a matter of fact, and the tub was running. I only stayed a minute.”

“Where?” Weigand said. “I mean, did you stay in the living room? Or go into the bedroom? Did she let you in herself?”

“I rang the bell,” the girl said. “She opened the door a little and saw who it was and said to come on in. She said: ‘You may as well come in, too. Everybody does.'”

“Did she seem angry, upset?”

“No.” The girl thought. “She seemed—oh, sort of resigned and—amused. As if there had been a string of little things. But not irritated.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “Then you went in?”

Ellen Grady had, the girl said, opened the door and then walked on through the living room to the bedroom. Alberta had closed the door behind her and followed. Ellen had sat down in the chair and offered her a cigarette and Alberta had sat on the bed and taken up the matter of the first-act dresses. Ellen had been pleasant about it, and agreed at once to Alberta's choice. Then Alberta, seeing that Ellen wanted to go on with her bath—“she kept sort of looking toward the bathroom,” Alberta explained—had crushed out her cigarette and—

“I said I hoped I hadn't bothered her, but that I'd wanted to get it settled,” Alberta said. “Miss Fowler wanted to know, and so did I. She said it was all right, and she was sorry to hurry me away, but that somebody was coming and she wanted to get her bath in first. So I just went.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “And she?”

As Alberta went on into the living room on her way to the door, she said, Ellen had already started to take off the negligee and was walking toward the bathroom.

“She waved at me,” Alberta said. “Sort of—oh, ‘good-bye-be-seeing-you' and—oh, I almost forgot.”

“Yes?” Weigand said.

“Just as I was going out she called after me,” Alberta told him. “She said to snap the door so it wouldn't lock. It usually locked when you closed it, I suppose.”

“And you did?”

She had. She had supposed, naturally, that the other person Ellen Grady was expecting had been told to come on in and that Ellen wanted the door left so that she could come on in.

“She?” Weigand repeated. “Did she say it was a woman?”

“She just said ‘somebody,'” Alberta told him. “But I naturally supposed it was a woman, since she was—well, she certainly didn't act as if she were expecting a man. Unless—” She stopped.

“Unless?” Weigand repeated. The girl looked at him, and half smiled.

“Do I have to fill it in, Lieutenant?” she said.

Weigand shook his head. What, he wanted to know, had Miss James done then.

Then, she said, she had gone on across town by taxi to the Algonquin, where she was meeting Mr. Kirk for dinner. She met Mr. Kirk, they had dinner, she came to the theatre. Weigand said he saw.

“Was Mr. Kirk there when you got there?” he asked, casually.

“No,” she said. “He was late as it hap—oh!”

“How late?” Weigand asked.

“Only a few minutes,” she said. “Hardly any time. I waited in the bar, where we were going to meet. Then, in just a minute or two, he came along.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “We can always check on just how long you waited, if it seems important. Now—how did it happen that Dr. Bolton had in his hand, when he died, a piece of material which belonged to you, Miss James? A piece of orange silk you were showing Miss Fowler, as a sample of what you wanted for the accents on your blue dress?”

There was no sound from the girl for a moment, but her eyes seemed to grow wider. Weigand watched her hands; saw them twisting together in her lap. Then she said: “Oh—I—” and stopped.

“Well, Miss James?” Weigand said.

She seemed to stiffen to meet the moment. She swallowed and when she first spoke her voice was uncertain. Then it, too, steadied.

“Humpty said you'd find out,” she said. “And that you'd suspect—all sorts of things. And not believe that I really lost it. It was—I was afraid to explain. But—”

“But?” Weigand repeated, when she did not go on.

“I simply don't know,” she said. “I must have lost it some place. And somebody must have picked it up. Perhaps Dr. Bolton himself. I don't know why it was in his hand when you found him—”

“Simply because, Miss James, it was in his hand when he was killed,” Weigand told her.

She nodded, and said she supposed so.

“And I still don't know,” she said. “I had it this morning and showed it to Aun—to Miss Fowler. Then this afternoon it was gone when I wanted to try it with the blue and—” She was hurrying, now—hurrying away from a slip of the tongue. But Weigand stopped her.

“To Aun—” he repeated, echoing her syllable. “Your aunt, you were about to say, weren't you, Miss James. And then you said, ‘Miss Fowler' instead. And—
is Miss Fowler your aunt, Miss James
?”

Slowly, unwillingly, she nodded.

“Everybody knows that,” she said. “It isn't any secret except—”

“Except,” Weigand said, “from the police. Why from the police, Miss James?”

He was surprised, a little, when the girl smiled, and seemed to relax.

“You know,” she said, “I haven't the least idea. She wanted it that way—said we'd better not mention it, because it would merely be another confusion that had nothing to do with the murder. As of course it didn't. But she seemed to feel—oh, the more complicated the relationships of all of us, the more you would have to spend going down blind alleys. Like her and Mr. Tilford—everybody knows that, too.”

“Except,” Weigand told her, without inflection, “the police. What about your aunt, Miss Fowler, and Mr. Tilford?”

“Only,” the girl said, “that they used to be married—oh, years ago.”

“Well,” Mullins said, “I'll be damned.”

Weigand looked at him and Mullins said, “Sorry, Loot, but jeez!”

“What other ‘relationships' are you people keeping from the police?” Weigand wanted to know. “Keeping from us just to make it simple for us?”

The girl shook her head, the long reddish brown hair swaying. Nothing, she told him. Nothing that mattered. “Except,” Weigand said, “your ‘relationship'—whatever it was—with Bolton.”

It was a stab. Watching her closely, he could not tell whether it had reached a mark. Perhaps her eyes widened a little again; perhaps her newly won relaxation faltered a little. But it was hard to tell.

“Relationship?” she repeated. “There wasn't any—”

And then, with no warning, the door opened violently and Humphrey Kirk stood violently in the doorway. He spoke, loudly:

“You can't—” Humphrey Kirk said, and stopped. Weigand stared at him, and was suddenly rather amused. Because it was almost ludicrously evident that the scene which confronted Mr. Humphrey Kirk was by no means the scene he had expected. The hero had leaped furiously from his horse and found the maiden having tea with the dragon. The hero was left at a disadvantage.

“Well, Mr. Kirk,” Weigand said, in a voice which was incongruously low and quiet. “What can't I, Mr. Kirk? If you mean I can't ask Miss James questions, you're quite wrong. And if you mean I can't have you thrown out of this office, or if necessary out of this theatre, you're wrong again.”

He stared at Kirk, who stared back. Kirk looked, Weigand decided, slightly embarrassed.

“What did you think we were doing with her, Mr. Kirk?” Weigand asked, his tone very dry. “Shining a light in her eyes? Or beating her up?”

“Well—” Kirk said.

“You read too much, Mr. Kirk,” Weigand told him. “Such men get foolish ideas. Sergeant Mullins and I are merely asking Miss James some questions. She understands that she doesn't have to answer. So far she has preferred to answer. Isn't that right, Miss James?”

Alberta James spoke to Humphrey Kirk.

“It's all right, Humpty,” she told him. “They're not
doing
anything. But—”

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Kirk,” Weigand cut in, still in a patient, quiet voice, “you may stay if you like. Now you're here.”

“Well—” said Kirk.

“Sit down,” Weigand said. “There may be some questions for you, too. For example—what made you late in meeting Miss James for dinner this evening?”

“Oh, that,” Kirk said. “I got tied up—with Smith. I lost track of time. I wasn't more than a quarter of an hour late, anyway.”

Weigand looked at the girl, who looked down and reddened slightly.

“Well,” she said. “Perhaps it was a quarter of an hour. There wasn't any clock.”

Weigand said he saw.

“Did you use that fifteen minutes to kill Miss Grady, Mr. Kirk?” he asked. His tone was entirely conversational.

“What the—” said Kirk. “
No!
Why should I?”

“We assume,” Weigand said, “that whoever killed her did it because she knew something about the Bolton killing. Did you kill Dr. Bolton, Mr. Kirk?”

“Listen,” Kirk said. “What the hell goes on?”

A police investigation, Weigand told him. The asking of questions to get answers. Had he, to repeat, killed Dr. Bolton? Kirk said, “
Hell, no!
”, violently.

“Right,” Weigand said. “And don't ask me why you should. Because I could make a guess about that. It would concern Bolton and Miss James here.”

Weigand's voice was still low, but much harder. Kirk pushed the dangling lock of hair violently from his forehead and stood up.

“Sit down,” Weigand said. Kirk hesitated. Mullins half rose from his chair, but Weigand's fingers flickered at him. “Sit down, Kirk,” Weigand said. “You won't get anywhere jumping up and shouting. I'm telling you why you might have killed Ellen Grady. She might have known you killed Bolton. You might have killed Bolton because you were jealous of him. You might have been jealous of him because he was—how do you say it nicely on the stage?—taking her away from you.”

“I didn't have anything to do with Bolton,” the girl said quickly, her voice low but with a vibrating quality in it. “Humpty knows that.”

“Of course I know that,” Kirk said, almost too quickly. He glared at Weigand.

“Can't a girl go to her doctor?” he demanded.

Weigand smiled at him. He transferred the smile, which was not a warming smile, to Alberta James.

“The relationship of patient and doctor
is
a relationship, Miss James,” he said. “Or had you just forgotten it?”

The girl looked up at him, her hair swinging back from her face. Her expression was one of innocence—“young girl misunderstood,” Weigand said to himself. “These actors!”

“But Lieutenant,” the girl said, “I thought of course you meant something different. Of course he was my doctor. I have—almost everybody has, you know—a little sinus trouble. But it's important for an actress, and Dr. Bolton was very good. And I knew people he'd treated. So naturally I went to him. But do you call that a ‘relationship'?”

You could, Weigand told her. And why had she thought he meant anything more?

“You said,” he reminded her, “that—read it back to her, Sergeant.”

Mullins back-paged in his notebook.

“‘Relationship?'” he read, his voice a remarkable parody of the girl's. “‘There wasn't any—' Then this guy busted in.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “What
did
you think I meant, Miss James?”

He waited, and Kirk waited. But Miss James, looking down at her twisting finger, said nothing.

“Listen,” Kirk said. “You know what she thought you meant. We all know Bolton was a chaser.” He spoke contemptuously.

“Right,” Weigand said. “Was that it, Miss James?”

The girl nodded.

“And why,” Weigand said, abruptly, “did you jump at the conclusion I meant that, Miss James? Because other people had suggested it? And sit down, Kirk!”

Still the girl didn't speak.

“For God's sake,” Kirk said. “You can hear
anything
. If a girl spoke to Bolton, Winchell heard about it.”

“All right,” Weigand said. “That answers it. And you still insist you weren't jealous, Kirk?” Kirk spluttered. “All right,” Weigand said. “We'll make a note of it. Now—how serious was this sinus condition of yours, Miss James?”

Both Kirk and the girl looked surprised, and then relieved. The girl said that Dr. Bolton seemed to feel it was rather serious. At any rate, he had talked about the possibility of a minor operation and, recently rather urged her to have one.

Weigand said he saw.

“And were you going to?” he asked, in a tone of slight interest.

“I hadn't decided,” the girl said. “But probably it will have to be done, some time. I'd have gone right ahead before now, only Aunty—Miss Fowler, you know—didn't want me to. She said that I should never ‘let any doctor poke around in my sinuses.' She said it was dangerous. But of course that's all nonsense.”

“Well,” Weigand said, “that's out of my sphere, obviously. But I like to get a full picture. Now, Miss James—did you ever work in a department store? Or in a clothes shop, or some place like that?”

Both Kirk and the girl looked completely surprised and puzzled, Weigand decided. And she answered without hesitancy.

“Why,” she said, “yes, I did. Last year, and a while the year before. I modeled the first time and then I sold for several months. When I was ‘resting.'” Her voice put quotation marks around the actor's euphemism. Weigand said “Right.”

“I suppose,” he said, “that both of you know how to get to the basement, or whatever you call that area under the orchestra? Know you can get to it from both the lounge and the stage-door passage?”