Murder Is Suggested (14 page)

In the car, Mullins started the motor, but did not shift into gear. He looked at Weigand, who waited.

“He wasn't much hurt,” Mullins said. “Of course, most people can't hit anything with a revolver. But—And he couldn't have done it himself. But—And if the bullet matches, as it's gonna, Loot, he's sorta in the clear. And—the girl knew he'd be about there about then. And—that there was a cop pretty close and that cops are supposed to know something about first aid.”

“Right,” Bill said. “A little drastic but—could be.”

“There's other things a helluva lot more drastic,” Mullins said, and started the car rolling.

“On the other hand,” Bill said, at the next stop light, “it would be nice to know what Hunter almost remembered.”

“If anything,” Mullins said, and got “Right, sergeant,” and the light changed.

Mr. Arnold Ames had been rubbed to a high polish. He sat behind a desk which had been similarly treated. He was in his thirties—dark and handsome and, unless he had remarkably short legs, tall. He was a “realtor,” flocking with others of his kind in a building to themselves in the near-east Fifties, where even small buildings are costly things. He looked across his desk at Bill Weigand. He said that he had been shocked to read of the death of Professor Elwell. He said that it was difficult to imagine such things happening to persons one knew, even slightly.

“Although,” Ames said, “even that's an exaggeration. I met him once. Maybe twice.”

“Through Miss Oldham?”

“Yes. Did Faith suggest you interview me? I can't imagine why she would have thought of such—” He concluded that with a shrug. His jacket, Bill thought, fitted beautifully.

Bill offered the usual, not always entirely convincing, explanations. In such things as this, all avenues must be explored; the most trivial relationships clarified. Miss Oldham had been, it was evident, a close friend of the professor. Mr. Ames might, conceivably, know some tiny thing—It did not sound especially convincing to Bill himself. But Ames nodded his head, the gesture dignified beyond his years.

“She did talk a good deal about Professor Elwell,” he said. “Or Uncle Jamey, as she called him.”

The tense was interesting. “Did?”

“Does still, I suppose,” Ames said. “Or did until this happened. What I meant was, I haven't seen her for—oh, several weeks. So I can't understand why she—”

“Actually,” Bill Weigand said. “It was her mother mentioned you, Mr. Ames.”

Ames said, “Oh,” and put the tips of his fingers together and looked over the steeple at Bill Weigand, as if estimating his reliability as a tenant. He said, “Oh,” again. He said, “So she's been—being helpful.” Then he said that it wasn't really any business of the police. He said it was, in fact, a little embarrassing. However—

“I met Faith last spring,” he said. “Or late last winter. At some sort of party. She's an attractive girl, in an off-beat sort of way. Don't you think so?”

“Yes,” Bill said.

“For one thing,” Ames said, “she can make you feel like a protector. Not by anything she works at. Just by being the way she is. Actually, I doubt if she needs much protection. Don't you?”

“I've only met her,” Bill said. “Asked some questions when she was under stress. No doubt you're right.”

“And, it doesn't have anything to do with Professor Elwell's death.”

“Probably not. However—”

“We went around together for a few weeks. Cocktails, dinner, dancing a little. Not precisely a thing, you understand, but something that could have got to be a thing. Maybe.”

“And didn't because?”

“Mostly,” Ames said, “because a man named Hunter came along. He'd been around for some time, I gather, but all the same he—well, came along is good enough. Sort of thing they write songs about, I guess. Hasn't happened to me so far, but there you are.”

It was not, at a guess, the sort of thing too likely to happen to Arnold Ames. But that was only a guess; the most polished surface may, presumably, cover great surging.

“It doesn't,” Bill said, “seem to have upset you much.”

“Now I don't know I—” Ames began, with surface slightly riffled. But then he said, “O.K. No, it didn't. Nice little thing. But there are a good many nice little things about, aren't there? Without mothers who—”

He stopped abruptly. And Bill waited.

“All right,” Ames said. “Between us?”

“If it hasn't any bearing.”

Weigand could be sure it hadn't. Between them, then—

“I said it was a little embarrassing,” Ames said. “Well, Mrs. Oldham—Faith calls her Hope all the time—she—well, got notions. You know what I mean?”

“That there was more between you and Miss Oldham than there was?”

He could call it that. More than there was at the time, or was at all likely to be. “Although,” Ames said, “I don't argue it was as clear to me then as it got to be later. Faith's a damn nice little thing. The thing was, we hadn't—” He paused again. “Put it this way,” he said. “Mrs. Oldham jumped the gun by—by a hell of a long way. Probably there wouldn't ever have been a gun, even if Hunter hadn't showed up—across a crowded room, for all I know. And—well, that sort of thing makes a man shy off. Me, anyway. Especially when it's so damn clear—”

He looked at Bill with the expression of a man who has made it clear. Bill shook his head.

“All right,” Ames said. “I said it was embarrassing. My family's got a bit of money. I've—oh, never been in jail. Or in the tabloids or—been notoriously feebleminded or got myself into jams and that sort of thing. Gives mothers of pretty young daughters ideas, sometimes. Hell of a thing to have to explain, but there it is.”

Bill said he saw. He said that it was evident, then, that “you and Miss Oldham don't—contemplate marriage.”

“Never did,” Ames said. “Could be it—what there was of it—was cooling a bit even before Hunter showed. And, Mrs. Oldham got—possessive. And got pretty obvious. And—”

Bill waited.

“All right,” Ames said. “Took the edge off a bit. Also—how could I tell how much of—well, of Faith's seeming to take to me was Faith and how much mama? See what I mean?”

Bill saw. He said, “Mrs. Oldham has a good deal of influence over her daughter, you think?”

“A lot,” Ames said. “Anyway, I thought so until—well, until Hunter showed up. Faith must have made a break then because—well, from all I hear, Hunter hasn't got any money. And mama—” He shrugged again.

Again Bill said he saw. There was one other point: During the time he had known Faith Oldham had Mr. Ames felt that Professor Elwell also had a good deal of influence over her? That she relied on him?

Ames said, “Well—” on a note of consideration. Then he nodded his head.

“She seemed to admire him a lot,” he said. “Her own father had been dead since she was a child. And Elwell had, I gather, been kind and—well, I suppose he may have more or less taken her father's place. This is all guessing, you know. And it's not the sort of thing I know much about, or think much about. And I certainly can't see it has any bearing.”

“Probably not,” Bill said. “But—I'd better ask you this, Mr. Ames. Have you any reason to think that Professor Elwell may have influenced Miss Oldham in favor of Mr. Hunter? Hunter seems to be by way of having a protégé of Elwell's and—”

And Arnold Ames laughed across his polished desk. He laughed so heartily that two polished men at nearby polished desks looked at him in surprise, even, Bill Weigand thought, in reproof.

“Being a cop must be the damnedest thing,” Ames said, when he had finished laughing. “Have to think of the damnedest things. Did Elwell alienate Faith's affections from me, to Hunter? And did I, surging with unrequited passion—for God's sake, captain!”

“We have,” Bill said, “to look at all conceivable sides of a question, Mr. Ames.”

He certainly did, Ames said. He sure as hell did, apparently.

“At three o'clock yesterday afternoon, captain,” Ames said, “I was showing a charming couple through a charming apartment in the Sutton Place area—a very out of this world duplex, completely air-conditioned yet with wood-burning fireplaces and a view of the East River. From two-thirty until almost four. Charming couple will so depose and—” He shrugged under the perfectly fitting jacket.

“Good,” Bill Weigand said. “Did you rent the apartment, Mr. Ames?”

Ames began to laugh again, and Bill thanked him and left him laughing. It seemed altogether probable that what Arnold Ames was having was the last laugh.

Driving back to West Twentieth Street, Bill nevertheless felt that he had been touched by the feathery suggestion of something. Whatever it was had, however, fluttered away. It was to be hoped it would, in time, flutter back. He would merely have to wait.

Pamela North returned to her apartment at around three-thirty, and was somewhat heavily laden, having stopped en route at the offices of North Books, Inc. She brought with her a copy of
Hypnotism in the Modern World,
by Jameson Elwell, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Dyckman University, a new cookbook, two mysteries and a volume of modern poetry, if here a distinction may be made. She riffled through the cookbook to see what was new, read one of the modern poems three times and settled with
Hypnotism in the Modern World.
Martini sat on her lap and, as time passed, was now and then read to.

“Listen to this, Teeney,” Pam said. “‘The technics used in inducing hypnotism can, with practice, be learned by almost anyone. Neither a dominating personality nor a glittering eye is in any way essential.' Think of that, Teeney.”

“Mrrr-ow-
oo!
”

“You may well say that,” Pam said, and scratched Martini under the chin, at which Martini swished her tail.

Pam read further, only now and then sharing her discoveries with her cat. It was, she thought, odd that, while almost anybody—if Professor Elwell was right—could learn to hypnotize, only a rather small minority could learn to be hypnotized.

“Think of that,” she said to Martini at one point, “a good operator can condition a good subject so that, after he has hypnotized him enough times, and reinforced a posthypnotic suggestion, all he has to do to put him back in hypnosis is to snap his fingers.”

“Um-ow?” Martini said.

“The operator's fingers,” Pam said. “You sound like Jerry.”

She learned that—always assuming Jamey had known what he was talking about, which she was entirely ready to assume—a hypnotic subject may indeed be purged of all memory of any trance and may, further, be convinced that he is impervious to hypnotism. She read also that a good operator can make even the best subject insusceptible to being hypnotized by anyone else. She read a good deal, in small takes, using the thick volume as if it were Little Jack Horner's Christmas pie.

But what she sought, and what she did not find, was a flat statement that a person hypnotized could be directed to commit a major crime. She found “perhaps”; there was no dearth of “it-may-bes.”

“The trouble with professors,” Pam told Martini, “is that they qualify. If only they would come right out and say so. Or, of course, not so.”

Martini did not reply, having fallen asleep. Conceivably, it occurred to Pam, into a hypnotic trance. There is not much she puts beyond Martini.

“You are falling sound asleep,” Pam told Martini. “Relax. You are falling sound asleep. Deeper and deeper asleep. Listen to me. You are falling sound asleep. Asleep, asleep—fast, fast asleep. Listen to me—”

“Mrrow-
ow
-oo,” Martini said and got down and sat on the floor and looked at Pam. “Owr,” Martini said, shortly. “Owr. Owr. OO-
row
.”

It appeared not to work with cats. At any rate, not at what a cat regarded as dinner time. Martini went toward the kitchen. “Tell Martha,” Pam said and Martini went on, telling Martha—and anybody else listening—with each step.

Pam returned to Elwell. Jerry had said he might be late; that he was sitting up with a sick manuscript. He was; it was almost six-thirty when he let himself in, and he said, “Wow!”—sounding rather like Martini. He said also that he was pooped and sat deeply in a chair and said, “Where is it?”

It was coming right up. It came up.

“Although of course,” Pam said, sipping her own, “it isn't as good as when you make it.”

“It's fine,” Jerry said. “You can do them always.”

“You do a kind deed,” Pam said, “and it bounces back on you. You look tired.”

“I am,” Jerry said. “Parsons has only a smattering of English.”

“But you say yourself he sells well.”

“The connection,” Jerry said, dreamily, “escapes me entirely.” He then held out an empty glass. He was told he shouldn't gulp. He waggled the glass and Pam took it, and retired toward the bar. Jerry leaned his head back; closed his eyes.

“You are falling sound asleep,” Pam said, tenderly, from across the room. “Sound, sound asleep. Deeper and deeper asleep. You must relax completely. You are falling sound, sound asleep.”

She paused. Had he not, visibly, relaxed? The chair, perhaps. Or, conceivably, the rapidly consumed martini. Surely not—

“Sound asleep,” Pam said, more or less on momentum. “You are falling—”

She stopped herself, poured water out of the martini pitcher, put ice in, added other ingredients, stirred. There was the engaging rattle of ice within glass. She looked at Jerry. He certainly did look asleep. Which was, of course, nonsense.

She poured his drink into a freshly chilled glass. She twisted lemon rind, as she had been taught. She carried the glass across the room. And Jerry slept. She put it down on the table beside his chair, and put it down with a click louder than was called for. Jerry slept.