Murder in a Hurry (21 page)

Bill Weigand looked at her. He shook his head.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “We found him back here. We're—”

But nothing could be finished. The excited man came back, pulling at his necktie. He gestured behind him as he came, and his eyes were as wild as his hair.

“More!” he said, advancing to Bill Weigand, looking at him fiercely. “For God's
sake!
”

Then behind him, making their way back of the set as the others had done, Colonel and Mrs. Raymond Whiteside appeared, Mrs. Whiteside in advance and, evidently, in fury.

“Really!” she said, when she saw Weigand. “This man of yours—” Words failed her. “Really,” she said, a grande dame confronted by a public nuisance.

“Now Barbara,” Colonel Whiteside said. “Now Barbara.” He shook his head at Weigand.

“But really, Lieutenant, I must say,” he said to Bill Weigand. “To be—summoned, in this fashion.”

Bill said, “You were—”

“… Then perhaps you will be so good, sir, as to tell me why …” That was Inspector Brunk, mumbling from the stage; mumbling on a note of satisfaction, of incipient triumph.…

“Voices!” the excited man said. “Oh—please! Voices! They'll
hear
you.”

(And still she had not seen Brian; still she did not know; still over all that was important, that was vital, was this idiot babbling, this meaningless confusion. Oh Brian—where are you, Brian?)

“How much longer does that last?” Bill Weigand demanded of the excited man, and Weigand's voice was drawn thin with irritation. But before the man could answer, the ambulance surgeon came out of another shadow, followed by the two men with the stretcher. The stretcher was still empty.

“A bump on the head,” the ambulance surgeon said. “Might have got it walking into a door. Why it put him out I don't know.”

“Is he—” Weigand began, but then the mumble of the inspector rose; became the triumphant thunder of British justice. “Then, sir, I must warn you that—” the on-stage detective said and, as these words came through the canvas, the excited man stood up, seemed to be counting desperately although he made no sound, and raised his hands, fists clenched. A look of horror began to spread over his face and then there was the sharp, reverberating crack of a pistol fired close by. Everybody jumped; Stein whirled, reaching inside his coat.

“The wrong
beat!
” the excited man said, to no one. “Bring her
down
, for God's
sake!
”

And then, as the sound of the descending curtain momentarily dominated, the excited man straightened his necktie, smoothed his hair and, generally, beamed around at Weigand, at Mr. and Mrs. North and at Liza, at Sergeant Stein and Colonel and Mrs. Whiteside and the man who had come with them.

“And there we are,” he said, in quiet and cultivated tones. “Went off rather well, I thought? Considering?” His tone patently asked approbation.

“Wonderfully,” Pam North said, giving it. “Who got shot?”

“The physician, of course,” the no longer excited man told her, as if surprised. “You mean you haven't seen it? But my
dear
. It's running months.”

“I'm sorry,” Pam said. “I've really been meaning to.”

Then it was suddenly much lighter in the area backstage; then the vicar, the couple from London, the inspector and the pretty young woman, whose part in the whole proceedings remained mysterious, came offstage through the door into which, it seemed hours ago, Sherman Pine had incontinently pitched. The young man named Tom came after them, and everybody gathered around him and began shaking his hand. “Wonderful, my boy,” the no longer excited man told him. “I knew you could do it.”

“Now!” Bill Weigand said, and, although his voice was not greatly raised, it seemed that he shouted. “Now—all of you. I want …”

They were back at the Sutton Place house and Liza O'Brien was beside Brian Halder at last, looking up into his set, unresponsive face.

“Let's have it again, Mr. Halder,” Bill said. “Why did you try to kill Pine?”

But Pine was not dead. He was not even badly hurt. There was a white adhesive bandage on the back of his head; now and then he pressed the palm of one hand against his forehead, as if his head ached and he were trying to press the pain away.

“I didn't,” Brian said. “But what's the use of telling you?”

His voice was harsh, angry. He seemed unconscious of Liza's fingers, pressing his hand desperately, pressing until her slender fingers ached.
Not this way
, she tried to tell him with her fingers.
Oh, not this way
.

“You wanted to see Mr. Pine,” Bill Weigand said, and there was little to be told from his voice; it was a voice stating facts, not for the first time. “You made several efforts to see him, at first with Miss O'Brien. Then, after the curtain went up for the last act, you left your seat—perhaps you had never gone to it—went down the aisle, through the door to the stage area, around behind the set and came upon Mr. Pine just as he was about to make his entrance. You hit him, intending to kill him. Why?”

Brian Halder merely shook his head.

“Or,” Bill Weigand said, “didn't you try to kill him? Did you try merely to make it
seem
that you had tried to kill him?”

Again, Brian Halder did not reply; again he merely shook his head. Bill Weigand gave him a chance to amplify, but did not seem surprised, did not seem disturbed, when Halder continued not to speak. Weigand seemed about to continue, but when Lieutenant Colonel Whiteside spoke, turned to him politely, waited politely.

“Isn't it the law, Lieutenant, that a man is entitled to talk to his attorney before he answers questions?” Lieutenant Colonel Whiteside asked. He was as polite as Weigand.

“Right,” Bill Weigand told him. “But then, Mr. Halder isn't talking, is he?”

“It seems to me,” Whiteside said, “that you are attempting to get him to talk, Lieutenant.”

“Really, Raymond,” Mrs. Whiteside said. “Brian is a grown man. He can take care of himself.” Her voice sounded as if, contemptuously, she did not believe what she said. But her husband said, mildly, “Of course, my dear.”

But Brian wasn't taking care of himself, wasn't trying to take care of himself. That was why it was all so frightening. Since they had come to the house, Brian obviously in custody, the others with scarcely more choice, Brian had said almost nothing, had let his face show almost nothing. He had seemed to accept aloneness; it was as if, in some fashion, he had withdrawn himself from all of them, even from Liza. Momentarily, when Liza took his hand, his fingers had responded to the pressure of hers, but then that response ended and, although he did not try to free his hand, the contact remaining between them was meaningless.

“We just wanted to talk to Mr. Pine,” Liza heard herself say, and was shocked at her own voice, at the fear palpable in it, at the inadequacy of the words she used. Weigand turned away from the Whitesides and looked at her and waited. She looked up at Brian, trying with a look to arouse him and then Weigand, too, looked at Brian Halder.

“She had nothing to do with it,” Brian said.

“What did you want to talk to Mr. Pine about, Miss O'Brien?” Weigand asked, when the tall young man did not go on.

“About—” she began, and stopped. About shaking the truth out of him? About making him admit, or hearing him deny, that, because he was in love with Brian's mother, and with the Halder money, he had killed an aging man with strychnine and folded his slight body, grotesquely, in a pen meant for an animal?

“Go on,” Weigand said. “About J. K. Halder's murder, of course. At any rate, that's what he told you?” “He,” Weigand's head movement indicated, was Brian.

She looked up at Brian again, desperately, seeking to get some guidance from his fixed face, thinking that, by saying even so little as she had said, she had made matters worse for him. She saw him hesitate, felt his uncertainty.

“Not about the murder,” Brian said, and his voice was harsh. “And, I didn't have anything to do with Pine's getting hit.”

Bill Weigand did not seem surprised at this answer. He seemed, without comment, merely to hear it.

“Suppose, Mr. Halder,” Weigand said, “I give you the possibilities as they occur to me. We found you in Pine's dressing room, ostensibly waiting for him. You seemed to be surprised to hear he had been attacked. One possibility is that you were surprised, that you
were
merely waiting for him. But obviously, you weren't waiting merely to have a little chat about—oh, say, theories of acting?”

Brian Halder looked at Weigand for a moment and then away from him; looked at the others grouped at the end of the long living room, as if from one of them, not from him, the answer should come. He looked, Pam North thought, longest at his mother; at Pine, she thought, Brian Halder did not look at all.

The members of the family, and Pine and Liza O'Brien with them, now joined with them, sat almost in a semi-circle, their backs to the windows which overlooked the East River. The semi-circle was irregular; J. K. Halder's oldest son, “Junior,” sat with his wife on the long sofa under the windows, and Barbara Whiteside, erect for all the softness of the sofa, her piled white hair undisturbed in regularity, sat next to her sister-in-law, but seemed detached from her; seemed, by intention, to leave a physical space between them which was meant to emphasize a separation of a different kind. In a chair at the end of the sofa, next to his wife, was Lieutenant Colonel Whiteside—a firm, heavy man with a strong face. Or was it, Pam North thought, that he has adopted an expression of strength; an expression put on a face not quite designed for it? Whiteside looked back at Brian Halder, at Weigand, without change of expression.

Almost, not quite, at right angles to them, opposite the spiral staircase, was another sofa, smaller than the one under the windows. There Pine sat, holding his head, looking up now as they waited for Brian, looking away again as Brian's eyes passed over him unseeingly. And next to Pine, one hand on his arm, sat Mary Halder.

She looked young, Pam North thought; young and fragile and, certainly, very pretty. She was in a black evening dress, her white shoulders bare—a pretty woman, younger than her years. If I were a man, Pam thought, I'd want to protect her. But—

Brian Halder stood across the room from his mother and Pine and Liza O'Brien sat in a chair beside him, her right hand in his left. But she's holding his hand, not the other way around, Pam thought; the poor kid, Pam thought. What's the matter with the man?

Jerry and Pam more or less faced the members of the family. As if we were a jury, Pam thought. And Bill Weigand, with Mullins a little behind him, stood where he could look at all of the Halders, at Pine and Liza, and he was looking at them now. He looked at them slowly, carefully, and then back at Brian Halder.

“Well?” Bill said.

“I had a fool idea,” Brian said. “Nothing came of it, so it doesn't make any difference. I didn't see him. I didn't see anyone, except somebody—some man—who told me where the dressing room was. Pine's dressing room. The next person I saw was one of your men.” He looked at Mullins, at Stein, at a precinct man, all standing a little in the background. “I don't see him here,” Brian said.

“And at that time you didn't know Mr. Pine had been attacked?”

“No.” Brian Halder looked at Weigand. His face was still set. “I told you that. You don't believe me. So what?”

Bill Weigand shrugged to that.

“Mr. Pine?” he said. “Did you see Mr. Halder backstage? Talk to him?”

Pine raised his head. He said, “Huh?” with unactorlike enunciation. Bill repeated it.

“I didn't see him,” Pine said. “I was waiting to go on. Somebody stepped up behind me and hit me.” For a moment he looked almost amused. “Must have made a hell of an entrance,” he said.

“You hadn't planned to see Mr. Halder?” Weigand asked the actor. “Didn't have anything in particular you wanted to talk to him about?”

Pine shook his head. Then he appeared to wish he hadn't and clutched it.

“Poor boy,” Mary Halder said.

She had not spoken before, or Pam could not remember she had spoken. She had been in the house, dressed as she was now, when Weigand brought the family home, brought the Norths with the family, and she had gasped when she saw the bandage on Pine's head, and had gone to him. They had spoken briefly, presumably he had told her what had happened. She had greeted the others; smiled at Liza O'Brien; greeted her own son with almost equal detachment. But whether that was of her choice, or because of something in his manner, it had been hard to determine. Pam had felt, obscurely, that in some manner Brian had warned her off. After that, she had merely sat quietly; one might almost have thought numbly.

But now she seemed to have come to a decision, and one which had nothing to do with her almost absently expressed sympathy for Pine. Because she did not look at him as she spoke, but looked instead at Brian and at Liza beside him. What she saw in her son's eyes, what she had put into her own, there was no way of knowing, but then she shook her head quickly, as if telling him he was wrong.

“Brian,” she said, and in the silence her voice was unexpectedly strong and clear. “Whatever it is, dear—everything's got to come out, now.”

She looked at him, must have met refusal in his eyes.

“It will be all right, Brinny,” she said. “Whatever it is.”

It was more the tone than the words which made so oddly touching what Mary Halder said to the tall young man who looked down at her, his face still set. Or perhaps, Pam thought, it was the tone and her use of the diminutive. She must have called him that when he was a baby, Pam thought. And now, all at once, he's—why, to her he's a baby again. That's what it is.