Murder within Murder (22 page)

He paused a moment and looked at Spencer. Spencer was looking out of the window. But it was evident that he was listening.

“Only,” Weigand said, “she didn't have any future. Around the middle of December—December 11th, it was—somebody killed her. Somebody came up behind her on a street that wasn't very light and stuck a knife in her back. So in the end it didn't matter a damn whether she was beautiful or not.” He waited a moment. “Remember a girl like that, Mr. Spencer?”

Spencer turned from the window and looked at Bill Weigand.

“There were a lot of girls at Ward,” he said. “Some of them were thin and had red hair.”

“Her name was Joyce Wentworth,” Weigand said. “Remember her now?”

“I might,” Spencer said. “I might if there were any reason to.”

“Isn't there?” Weigand asked him.

“No,” he said.

“Suppose,” Weigand said, “there was a man like yourself, Mr. Spencer—a man who had got kicked out of a job because some girl told stories about him—stories that weren't true; weren't essentially true. Suppose that, as a result of losing this job—this man was in his forties, and trained for only one thing—the man was hard up. Suppose—”

“All right,” Spencer said. “Suppose my wife died because I couldn't get her the kind of treatment she needed. Or suppose I keep feeling that that may have been the reason. Suppose she died in November 1942, and that I took it hard. Very hard. Suppose—what with my grief, my sense of inadequacy, a kind of hopelessness that may have set in—I became somewhat unbalanced. Suppose I got to brooding about this girl—this feather-minded little fool—who had knocked hell out of my life because she was vain and silly—emotionally unstable. Or just—what word would you like, Lieutenant?—avid. Suppose the girl was a thin, red-headed girl named Joyce Wentworth and I found out she was in New York and went after her. Because I was unbalanced at the time, you remember. Suppose I followed her home and stuck a knife in her. And suppose, reading about the case, Amelia Gipson remembered that Joyce Wentworth was the girl at Ward—she'd know, of course—and found out that I'd been here in New York at the time, drinking a lot and in a kind of daze, and put two and two together. Suppose she found me and told me she was going to the police. Is that the rest of your story, Lieutenant?”

It could be, Weigand told him. With a postscript.

“Suppose you killed Miss Gipson to keep her from going to the police,” he said.

That was obvious, Spencer said. Too obvious to need mentioning.

“Well?” Bill said, and waited.

“No,” Spencer said. “As a matter of fact—no. It was another girl; actually, I don't remember the Wentworth girl at all. There was a name in the class records—I remember that. I suppose, if I tried, I could vaguely connect it with a red-haired girl, since you suggest it. I don't remember any red-haired girl who was particularly striking.”

“Were you in New York in December 1942?” Weigand wanted to know.

Spencer shook his head.

“I was in Indianapolis,” he said. He looked around the room. “In a room rather like this one. I was drunk most of the time. I wasn't dangerous to anybody. I was just—drunk.”

“Can you prove it?” Weigand asked him.

“That I had a room in Indianapolis that month?” Spencer said. “I suppose so. That I didn't leave it for several days at a time—that I wasn't in New York on the eleventh—no, I don't suppose I can.”

“Can you prove that the girl who accused you wasn't Joyce Wentworth?” Bill wanted to know.

Spencer hesitated a moment and then shook his head. So far as he knew, Amelia Gipson had presented the story to the head of the college in very circumspect terms. It would have been, he supposed, a Miss A who had complained. That was the method. The college president preferred not to know too much; possibly Amelia preferred not to tell too much. “For reasons of her own,” he said. Except for the girl herself, he supposed there was nobody who knew the story.

“And,” he said, “the girl was killed in a motor accident about a year later. One of those late-at-night, everybody-half-drunk affairs.”

That, Bill told him, was inconvenient. It was very inconvenient.

“Isn't it?” Spencer said. “So I have no chance of proving my story—and the name of the girl wouldn't help, would it? Because I could just say it was any girl who got killed in that kind of an accident at about that time. I suppose there were plenty.”

“Right,” Bill said, “there were plenty. There are always plenty.”

“But on the other hand,” Spencer said, “can
you
prove anything, Lieutenant? Can you prove I was in New York? That I did kill this—this Joyce Wentworth? That I also killed Amelia Gipson?”

“And Florence Adams,” Weigand said. “Because if you killed one, I'd suppose you killed the others. I don't know, Mr. Spencer. I really don't know.” He spoke easily, almost casually. “But if I decide you did, I can have a damn good try at it,” he said, and his voice was less casual. He stood looking down at Philip Spencer, and Mullins, standing a little behind him, put away his notebook. “A damn good try,” he said.

Spencer looked up at him, and now he was smiling. It was difficult to interpret the smile.

“Well, Lieutenant,” he said, “have you decided?”

Weigand merely shook his head, and he, too, smiled.

“I'll let you know,” he promised. “I'll be sure to let you know, Mr. Spencer.”

It seemed to Detective Sergeant Angelo Farrichi that Lieutenant Weigand was doing it the hard way. More precisely, he was having Detective Sergeant Angelo Farrichi do it the hard way. It was a warm day, for one thing. It had been getting warmer all morning. On warm days, Sergeant Farrichi preferred a more desultory life. He also preferred not to feel silly, and snapping pictures of people walking on Park Avenue, few of whom were photographically suitable for any purpose Farrichi could think of, was unquestionably silly. Particularly when you were photographing them all on one film surface. Pushing little cards, which bore the name of a quite fictitious studio, at people who did not want them was also silly.

If you wanted pictures of people, Farrichi thought—snapping a picture of a stout woman being led down Park Avenue by a stout dog—you went and took them. If you were the police, you either went where the people were and took their pictures, or you had them brought down to the photographer's lab, where conditions were better. Usually, you photographed them behind a board with numbers on it, so that later there would be no doubt who they were. You did not pretend to be a sidewalk photographer and lie in wait.

But you did if you were a sergeant and a lieutenant told you to. Farrichi sighed and threw away a numbered card which the stout woman had seemingly not seen as he held it toward her. You did many things if you were a sergeant and a lieutenant requested it; that was the purpose of sergeants. And if you were a good detective as well as a good photographer, you did it as well as Detective Sergeant Farrichi was doing as he lay in wait for Mrs. Willard Burt.

Farrichi was the sidewalk photographer to the life. He beamed at his subjects as he maneuvered into position in front of them; he beamed as he held out the cards which were to be sent, with fifty cents, to the address given in exchange for one print of a fine action photograph. When they rejected the cards, he stopped beaming as if a switch had been thrown, threw the card away, and waited for a likely subject. Only if you had watched closely would you have noticed that the subjects Sergeant Farrichi picked were not really the most likely. Another sidewalk photographer would have noticed this and thought Farrichi very new at the game. He passed up returned soldiers walking with their girls; he ignored people obviously from out of town, pleased with themselves against the background of Park Avenue; he voided new parents with new children. You would have thought that he was concentrating on those least likely to send in their little cards, and you would have been entirely right. There was no point in making work for everybody—the work of returning money with a polite note regretting that the Eagle Photographic Studio had, overnight, gone out of business. By selecting people who would hardly care to look at themselves more frequently than was essential, Farrichi abetted the paper-saving campaign.

There was no other sidewalk photographer around to notice this, or to speculate why Farrichi chose Park Avenue in the Sixties instead of Fifth in the Forties, the traditional hunting ground. There had not been a sidewalk photographer around for several years, because of one thing and another—including a shortage both of print paper and photographers. Farrichi had wondered if this would not make people suspicious, but evidently it did not. There seemed to be a normal inclination merely to look through him.

He kept an eye on the door of the apartment house in which the Burts lived; he was never far from it. He kept in his mind Weigand's careful description of Mrs. Burt—a description so exact that it had printed a picture of her on Farrichi's sensitive, photographer's brain. He waited for her to come out, or, if she was already out, to go in. His feet hurt and his collar wilted, but his smile kept on flashing as he picked with care the most unlikely subjects for his art.

People went in and out, but none of them was Mrs. Burt. At a few minutes before eleven a very attractive young woman he had seen somewhere before came out and got into a taxicab, which started, slowed suddenly and started again.

The face puzzled Farrichi for a moment and then he placed it. She was that Mrs. North who was a friend of the lieutenant. It would be interesting to know what she was up to. A few minutes later a man came out and spoke to the doorman in a measured voice and went off in the taxicab the doorman whistled for. Farrichi had never seen him before.

It was 12:30 when another taxicab stopped in front of the apartment house. Farrichi moved up to where he could catch a glimpse of the occupant. There were two occupants, and one of them was a woman of about the right age. Farrichi moved closer and made, unconsciously, a little sound of relief. It was Mrs. Burt, all right—Mrs. Burt with a man. Oh yes, the man who had come out of the apartment house a few minutes after Mrs. North. Mr. Burt, for a guess.

Farrichi moved up and waited while Mr. Burt—assuming it was Mr. Burt—paid the driver. He waited while Mr. Burt got out and extended a hand to Mrs. Burt. Farrichi's quick fingers played with adjustments on his camera, which was a much better camera than you would have expected of a sidewalk photographer. Mrs. Burt and the man were abreast when a beaming Farrichi moved in front of them. They had slightly surprised expressions when he pressed the shutter release.

“Picture of yourselves in New York,” he said, brightly, wheedlingly. “Natural pose photograph?” He beamed and held out his little card. The man with Mrs. Burt started to shake his head, and then, to Farrichi's surprise, accepted the little card. Mrs. Burt looked, Farrichi thought, slightly pained—possibly even annoyed.

“No sir,” Farrichi said, heartily meaningless. “You won't make any mistake. No sir!”

Mrs. Burt and the man with her said nothing. Farrichi, beaming still, stepped aside. The two went into the apartment house. Farrichi did not look after them. He went on about his business. Between the apartment house and the nearest corner, he snapped several photographs of improbable people, one of whom abashed him by accepting the card. But at the next corner he looked at his watch, looked up at the sun, evidently decided to call it a day. He closed his camera and put it into the container swinging from his shoulder. He walked off toward the subway.

But his watch told him it was lunchtime. His stomach told him he might as well have lunch before he went in. He thought of the Villa Penza on Grand Street and of veal parmigiana and he smiled. He took the East Side subway to Grand Street and walked to the Villa Penza. The veal parmigiana was all he had expected, and the service was prompt. But Farrichi was unhurried as he ate. The lieutenant had not indicated there was any need to hurry.

Pamela North heard the telephone ringing as she fitted her key into the lock, so the key stuck. You had to push it clear in and then pull it out a little—about a sixty-fourth of an inch, Jerry had estimated—and then turn, and when you were in a hurry this was impossible. Pam pushed it in and pulled it out, but this was apparently too far. The telephone rang demandingly. Pam said, “Oh!” and pushed the key in and pulled it out. She was very careful this time, and so she did not pull it out far enough.

The telephone rang.

“It'll die,” Pam said. “I know it'll die. And it's probably terribly important.” She wrenched at the key. The telephone rang again. It sounded to Pam as if it were getting tired.

“Wait a minute,” Pam said. “Please wait a minute!” The telephone was silent. Then it rang again. Sometimes if you turned the key the wrong way and then very hard the right way it worked. “You just back up and get a running start,” Pam had explained to Jerry, who had pointed out that you didn't need to if you were careful how far you pulled. Pam turned the key the wrong way and then very hard the right way and it stuck.

It's terribly important, Pam thought. It's about something happening to Jerry. He's been run over. And the hospital is trying to get me and there's only a little time.…

She took a deep breath to make her fingers stop trembling. She pushed the key all the way in. She counted to steady herself. “One,” she said. “Two—” The telephone rang. It sounded impatient. It was giving her a last chance. “Three,” Pam said to herself, and pulled the key out a sixty-fourth of an inch. She turned it. It turned. She rushed into the apartment and dived for the telephone. It rang again as she dived. She clutched it and spoke into it. Her voice was almost a scream.

“Hello!” she screamed. “Oh, hello!”

There was no answer. They had gone away. Jerry had been run over and was dying in a hospital and she didn't know what hospital because she had gone to look at Mrs. Burt, after Jerry had almost told her not to, and Jerry was—She held the receiver off and looked at it. Then she turned it around and put the receiving end, into which she had been shouting, to her ear. She said, “Hello,” again, but her voice was hopeless. Then she said: “
Jerry! Darling!
”