Death Takes a Bow (23 page)

“Well,” Weigand said, “I hear you threatened to kill Sproul.” Weigand's tone was conversational.

“No!” the girl said. “No, George. I didn't—you know I didn't!”

“It's all right, honey,” Schwartz said. “These cops! Smart boys, these cops. Aren't you, copper?”

“Enough,” Weigand said. He waited. “So Miss Shaw was lying?” he said. “Maybe she threatened him?”

Loretta Shaw looked at Weigand and hated him. Weigand was not, for the moment, particularly fond of himself. However—

“So I said I'd like to kill him,” Schwartz said. “So you arrest me and knock a confession out of me. It must be swell to be a cop. All right. I said I'd enjoy killing Sproul. I would have enjoyed killing Sproul. Intensely.”

“But of course you didn't,” Weigand said. His tone was intentionally weary.

“I didn't,” Schwartz said. “There's no of course about it. It just happened that I didn't. Maybe I would have, some day. If he got in my way again. I hated the bastard.” He said the last without emphasis, but in a way which made it sound as if he had hated Sproul a lot. It was rather startling, the way he must have hated Sproul.

“I'll work it out for you,” Schwartz said. His tone had contempt in it. “I was violently jealous of Sproul because he had taken my wife. I hated him and wouldn't have minded killing him. I found out that my wife—my former wife—was really going through with marrying him, although I felt that she still loved me. I—I threatened to kill Sproul if she didn't remarry me and to keep me from doing that she went so far as to get a license to marry me. But I got to thinking it over, and I thought I'd better kill Sproul anyway, to be on the safe side, and so I gave him a dose of morphine. Is that enough for a jury, copper?”

“Plenty,” Weigand assured him. “Do you want to say that was the way it was?”

“It wasn't that way!” the girl said. “You know it wasn't that way! Tell him it wasn't!” The last was to George Schwartz.

Schwartz looked down at her and smiled a little.

“What's the use?” he said. “That's the way the copper wants it to be. That's a nice, easy way for it to be. Isn't that right, copper?”

Weigand looked at him and felt tired. All melodrama and complexity, these people were. But easy to see through. Childishly easy. He was supposed to reject this theory because it came from Schwartz, who would not advance it if it were true; who advanced it as if it were an absurd theory, gauged to the immature mind of a policeman. Weigand was supposed to be stung by the reflection on his mind, and to reject the theory with annoyance. Whereas the theory might be true, and all this an intellectual's obvious game. Weigand's temper frayed at the edges; he knitted it up again before he spoke.

“I'd like an easy solution,” he said. “Obviously, Mr. Schwartz. Would you like me to accept yours?”

Weigand did not sound angry. He did sound a little as if he were speaking to a small boy. Schwartz did not seem to notice it, but the girl did and she looked at Weigand with eyes which held speculation.

Schwartz's mind had room only for its own emotional subtleties. He told Weigand what it was he didn't give what Weigand thought.

“You ought to,” Weigand advised him. “You really ought to, Mr. Schwartz. Do you want me to accept this as a confession that you killed Sproul?” He was patient, now. Schwartz was listening, now; he heard tired patience in Weigand's voice. He looked a little embarrassed, suddenly; Weigand suspected that he was looking at himself, and being a little surprised by what he saw.

“Am I to take it that you really want to find out?” Schwartz said. It was an effort to get his feet under him, and sounded like it. “Or are you just asking?”

Weigand said, “Oh, for God's sake.”

“All right,” Schwartz said. “Maybe I was wrong. No, I didn't kill Sproul, Lieutenant. And Retta didn't. But I worked out some very fancy ways to kill him, from time to time. In my mind. In day dreams.”

“George!” Loretta Shaw said. “You mustn't—”

“Very fancy plans,” Schwartz insisted, but his tone was light and amused. “Sealed rooms and everything. One of them was new.”

Weigand went along.

“I doubt it,” he said. “I doubt it, Mr. Schwartz.”

“So,” Schwartz said, “you read them too. Carter Dickson?”

“Sometimes,” Weigand said. “Only it's John Dickson Carr for sealed rooms.” Schwartz shook his head.

“I don't see that it makes any difference,” Loretta Shaw said. “I really don't.”

Atmospheres changed rapidly with these people, Weigand thought. Now they were both very amiable. Which proved nothing; murderers could be amiable when not a-murdering. None of this proved anything, one way or the other. But while the atmosphere lasted it was worth utilizing. Weigand relaxed and lighted a cigarette and gave the impression of a man who had concluded his business and was about to go, but was in no hurry to go.

“Right,” he said, and then after a pause, during which Schwartz and the girl looked at him with mild interest, he went on.

“Frankly,” he said, “and without prejudice—you people puzzle me a little. All of you—you two, Sproul as was, Mr. White and the Akrons. Particularly Mr. White.”

“Do we?” Loretta said. “Why? And why Mr. White particularly?” She paused, smiled and said: “Not that I can't see how he might.”

The three of them shared appreciation of Mr. White, needing no words.

“Right,” Weigand said, after a moment. “That's precisely it. Here is Mr. White and he is—well, what he is. Apparently he strikes the two of you much as he strikes me. One of you didn't like Sproul, the other was going to marry him. There was tension between the two of you about him. Akron doesn't seem to like anybody—except his sister. Little Mr. Jung—” He broke off and started over. “What I'm trying to say,” he said, “is that you formed a group which wasn't—well, well assorted. And yet you formed a group. You all, even you, Schwartz, went to a dinner celebrating Sproul's lecture tour. And all the time I've felt that you were—well, sticking together. However you felt about one another. It makes a kind of disunited united front.”

Weigand invited confidence; I am, he thought, being very lulling. Without prejudice.

“Not Jung,” Schwartz said. “Definitely not Jung. As for the rest—well, I know what you mean. I'd never thought about it, particularly, but I know what you mean. It's a hangover from Paris, I suppose.”

“Yes?” Bill Weigand said, and waited.

“It's merely,” Loretta Shaw said, “that we were a little group of roughly one kind of people in a much larger group of another kind of people. Isn't that it, George? We went around in little circles.”

“Concentric,” Schwartz said. “Yes, Retta, I suppose so. And when we came back we—well, brought our difference with us. Along with our differences. Our difference from other people, I mean. Although it was imaginary here. I suppose that it is merely that we had shared certain experiences and felt that we knew one another better than we knew other people.” He paused and looked abstractedly past Weigand. “Sometimes it seemed as if only that was real,” he said. “As if afterward we had been only playing out the string. Or it felt that way at first. Now it's wearing off; we haven't been as united lately as we used to be. After this I suppose we won't be united at all. But I can imagine how we would seem to an outsider.” He smiled, and looked at Weigand. “My use of that word explains the whole business,” he said. “Doesn't it? It even includes Mr. White, who's certainly a funny guy if there ever was one.”

“Very funny,” Weigand agreed. “Do you suppose he would steal somebody else's work and pass it off as his own?”

There was a pause. You can hear the brick drop, Weigand thought. Schwartz and Loretta Shaw looked at each other and then at Weigand. She left it to Schwartz, who said he wouldn't know.

“But there was a story to that effect?” Weigand said. It was not really a question.

“There were a lot of stories,” Schwartz said. “About everybody. Our friend Mr. Sproul was a great spreader of stories. I may have heard one about White. I wouldn't know whether it was true. He may have heard stories about me. He wouldn't know whether they were true, or what the truth about them was.”

He stared at Weigand. The atmosphere was changing again. But the interlude had been useful; maybe it had been useful. Weigand twisted out his cigarette.

“I got the story from Sproul's notes,” Weigand told them. “I got several stories.” He let it lie, for what they wanted to make of it. He took up another tack.

“How long were you planning to marry Sproul, Miss Shaw?” he wanted to know. “How long were you engaged to him?”

The girl thought a moment and said about a year, more or less. Weigand registered surprise.

“Wasn't that a good while?” he asked. “I mean—I should have expected you to marry as soon as you thought it would be a good idea. Being sensible people.”

And, he did not add, informal people. He thought of Mullins' description of the group and did not let his face show what he had thought.

“She really knew better,” Schwartz said. “When it looked like coming to the point, she had more sense.”

His tone was resolute; more resolute than convincing. Loretta Shaw shook her head slowly.

“No,” she said. “Not honestly. In the last few months, yes. But there was a while before that when I would have married him any time. Only he wasn't in any hurry.” She looked at Schwartz. “That's how it was, George,” she said. “I'm glad now, but that's how it was. He kept putting it off. I didn't.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “I have to be personal, you know. I may as well go on. Did Jean Akron have anything to do with it? His hesitancy, I mean?”

The girl flushed. But she looked at Weigand, and her voice was calm.

“Perhaps,” she said. “I think so now, anyway. I didn't then. I thought—oh, that there were some arrangements he had to make first. But perhaps it was Jean.”

Weigand nodded. He said Jean's brother seemed to think so. He added that they were devoted, for brother and sister.

“He is,” Schwartz said. “I don't know about Jean. Lately. I think she's—well, been noticing Y. Charley a good deal.”

“This devotion—?” Weigand said.

Schwartz shook his head.

“She keeps house for him,” he said. “She's useful to Herbert Akron, and Herbert Akron is very devoted to people who make him comfortable. He doesn't want things upset. He can be pretty violent about it, because he's a pretty violent guy, apparently. We never knew him very well; he dropped in and out, seeing his sister, coming on business mostly. He wasn't one of the group. Neither was Y. Charley, for that matter. But a lot of people you haven't heard of were.”

Loretta Shaw picked it up. She said there was no reason why it should be somebody from the group, or that part of the group Weigand knew.

“A lot of other people didn't like Lee,” she said. “A lot of them may be in New York.”

Weigand nodded and said, “Right.” He added that they would broaden it out later, if they had to; that it was early days yet.

“We merely take people up as they come along,” he said. “Without prejudice.”

He stood up.

“We're still suspects, I suppose?” Loretta Shaw said, her voice carefully light.

“Oh, yes,” Weigand said. “Maybe one of you did it. Maybe you, so you wouldn't have to marry Sproul. Or for some other reason. Maybe you, Schwartz. So she couldn't marry him. Or for some other reason.”

“Naturally,” Schwartz said, and his tone matched Weigand's. “Naturally we deny it.”

“Naturally,” Weigand said. “Why not?”

He started toward the door and the telephone bell rang. He hesitated and Loretta Shaw answered it. She said, “Why, yes, he is,” and turned to Weigand. “It's for you,” she said. Weigand took the telephone and listened and said, “Right.” He looked at the two a moment, speculatively.

“I'll probably be back,” he said, in a different voice. He went out and down the stairs and into the Buick. He went downtown fast.

Weigand read the letter again. It was written on the stationery of a Pittsburgh hotel, in long hand, and the signature was legible enough. It was addressed to “Officer in Charge, Homicide Bureau, Police Headquarters, New York City.” It read:

Dear Sir:

I believe I have information which may help you solve the murder of Mr. Victor Leeds Sproul. Since before giving you that information, I must conduct certain investigations of my own, I am leaving for New York tonight on the 11:15 train. I will come to your office some time during the morning and I would appreciate an interview with the officer in charge of the Sproul investigation.”

The writer was “sincerely yours.” He was Robert J. Demming. And he was dead, per the report of Detective Lieutenant Fahey. Weigand looked at the envelope, clipped to the letter. He was dead because it had rained heavily the day before; so heavily that airplanes between Pittsburgh and New York were grounded; so heavily that a letter marked for air-mail had come through by train. And as a result neither air-mail postage nor special delivery stamp had got the letter to men who would have known what to do about it until Mr. Demming was dead.

If the letter had come by air-mail it would have reached him the evening before, Weigand thought. And if it had reached him the evening before, Mr. Demming would not have been left to his own resources. They might have thought that Mr. Demming was probably a crank; they would have thought that Mr. Demming was probably a crank. But a crank who brings his crankiness personally from Pittsburgh to New York is not a crank to be ignored by policemen very anxious for information. As God knows we are, Weigand thought, with annoyance. So Mr. Demming would have been met and safeguarded.