Murder within Murder (23 page)

“Hello, Pam,” Jerry said. “What's the matter?”

“Are you all right, Jerry?” Pam said. “Jerry—are you all
right?
”

“Of course I'm all right,” Jerry said. “Why wouldn't I be?”

“You're not run over?” Pam said. “You're not in a hospital?”

“What on earth, Pam?” Jerry said.

“You're
really
all right?” Pam said. “I mean … you're not hurt at all? It was you all the time?”

“What was me all the time?” Jerry said.

“The telephone?” Pam said. “It was ringing.”

“Listen,” Jerry said. His voice was calm, but it had a kind of desperation in it. “Of course it was ringing. You answered it. That's … that's how we happen to be talking on the telephone. I called you up and you heard the telephone bell ring and you answered the telephone. And it was me. See?”

“Oh,” Pam said. “I know
that
. I thought it was the hospital. You see. I wasn't here.”

“You … what?” Jerry said.

“I wasn't here,” Pam said. “I mean, I'd just come back. And you'll have to say something to the management about that lock, because the key stuck and so of course I thought it was the hospital. Because the telephone was ringing.”

“Oh,” Jerry said. “I … of course. And you're all right?”

“Of course
I'm
all right,” Pam said. “It was you, not me. I was all right all the time.”

“Of course,” Jerry said. His voice had lost its note of anxiety. “Well … I've recovered, darling. I called up about the funeral.” He paused a moment and then spoke hurriedly. “Not mine, Pam,” he said. “Amelia Gipson's. I think I ought to go … just as a … just since she.…”

“Obviously,” Pam said. “I meant to mention it this morning. Of course we have to go. Noblesse oblige.”

“Well,” Jerry said, “perhaps not quite that. But it seems like a reasonably … thoughtful thing to do. Don't you think?”

“Of course,” Pam said. “I'll go, too.”

“Well,” Jerry said.

“Of course,” Pam said. “We'll both be thoughtful. Only have we time for lunch first?”

The funeral, Jerry told her, was set for three o'clock. At a funeral parlor on Madison Avenue. They would have time for lunch. He suggested the Little Bar at the Ritz.

“Only of course we can't drink,” Pam pointed out, agreeing to the Little Bar at the Ritz. “On account of going to a funeral.” She paused, reflecting. “Maybe one each,” she said. “To quiet our nerves.”

Jerry said that his nerves were completely quiet.

“Well,” Pam said, “they didn't sound like it. A minute ago. You sounded very puzzled and … perturbed, sort of.” She paused a moment. “Jerry,” she said. “I wish you'd take better care of yourself. You … you really ought to.”

“I know,” Jerry said. He was very grave. “Just out of the hospital, as I am.”

Pam sat a moment, catching her breath, after Jerry had hung up. Then she decided she ought to tell Bill that she had not seen Mrs. Burt. She dialed; she got Bill Weigand. He was sorry she had not seen Mrs. Burt.

“I talked to Mr. Burt,” she said. “I had to, because I'd pretended it was about a lost compact. That I was there, I mean. And he didn't react to the Merton case. I thought he might if he knew his wife was really Mrs. Merton.”

Bill Weigand said he should have thought Burt might.

“Do you know yet, Bill?” she said, then.

“No, Pam,” Bill told her. “All I've got is another possibility.”

Was it, Pam wanted to know, a good one?

“About as good as the others,” Bill said. Pam said, “Oh.”

“As good as mine?” she said.

Better, Bill told her. Particularly if Burt really hadn't shown interest in the Merton case.

“No more than in the others,” she said. “The Joyce Wentworth case. The Purdy case. Are you going to the funeral? Because Jerry and I are, and we're having lunch at the Ritz first, and why don't you join us?”

Bill Weigand hesitated a moment. Then he agreed.

Pam sat then, duty done, and thought of things absently. She thought she must change and do her face if she was having lunch with Jerry. She jumped then, because Martini had come out from under the sofa and jumped on her. She petted the little cat abstractedly.

One thought had led to another, and the last puzzled.

“I suppose all the time I've been thinking it had to be a woman,” she said, and since the little cat was in her lap now she spoke aloud. “I suppose that's it, Martini. Because of the perfume. But it could have been a man with it on for the purpose.” She contemplated this and shook her head. “Or,” she told Martini, “a man with an atomizer. Just to fool us.”

She stroked the little cat.

“Only,” she said, “it didn't stop Bill from thinking about men too. It was subconscious with me, Martini—that's mostly why I gave up Mr. Hill, probably. But I wonder why it didn't block Bill?”

It was almost the first thing she asked him when they were having their one drink around at the Ritz. He smiled at her. He said because it was only one of the little touches. He said you found them in most cases. He said they would throw you off, if you let them.

“You can be too subtle,” he said. “You can be taken in by subtle things. There are half a dozen ways of explaining the perfume in Miss Gipson's room—ways that have nothing to do with Miss Gipson's killing. There are one or two ways—you've hit on one with your theory of a man with an atomizer—that might be connected with the case. Or it might actually be a woman. But the point is—it isn't important enough to stop over. Because perhaps we were supposed to stop over it. Perhaps we were supposed to think it was the significant clue. And we can't risk doing what we're supposed to do.”

“But,” Jerry said, “it might be important. It might really be significant.”

Bill nodded. He said it might very well be.

“In which case,” he said, “it will fit in as we go along—when we get on the right road. But we'll get on the right road because we find out the big things, not the little things. Because we find out who wanted to, who could have. In this case, there seem to be several people who had reason and opportunity.”

“And—?” Pam said.

“And,” Bill said, “we wait for a break. We do what cops always do—we put on the pressure, we wait for a break. And we keep our eyes open, so we'll see the break when it comes. Of course—the break may in itself be one of the little things. Somebody talking out of turn; somebody telling a foolish lie. Somebody having made a silly mistake. But the main thing is the pressure. The main thing is to keep the pressure on. To keep somebody feeling we're crowding him.”

They finished their drinks.

“What's the new possibility?” Pam asked.

Bill told them. He said it was only a possibility. Pam said it certainly was.

“Anyway,” she said, “you seem to have come around to thinking Miss Gipson was killed because of something she found out when she was reading about the old cases. As I always said.”

Bill Weigand shook his head. He said he hadn't come around to thinking anything. He said he was still exploring.

“The trouble is,” Pam said, “there are too many possibilities. And nothing to make any of them more than a possibility. You tell yourself a story about Mr. Spencer; I tell myself a story about Mrs. Burt. What do you tell yourselves stories about, Jerry? Sergeant Mullins?”

Jerry was very grave.

“I think Backley, the lawyer, is really Purdy, the wife killer,” he said. “I think he wasn't killed in the plane crash at all and that Miss Gipson found it out and threatened to expose him, making it necessary for him to kill her.”

“Really, Jerry!” Pam said. “Really.”

Jerry said it seemed as good to him as any of the others. But one eyelid drooped momentarily for Bill Weigand's benefit.

“Sergeant?” Pam said.

“The kids,” Sergeant Mullins said. “The nephew and the niece, one or the other. To get the money.” He contemplated. “I guess the nephew,” he said. He looked at Mrs. North. “Look, Mrs. North,” he said, “they can't
all
be screwy.” He said it as if he were arguing with himself.

13

T
HURSDAY
, 2
P
.
M
.
TO
4:35
P
.
M
.

The afternoon newspapers, keeping the story alive against increasing odds and bringing it up to date with the quiet desperation known only to afternoon rewrite men, had used the time and place of Amelia Gipson's funeral as a lead. The results were middling; a steam shovel would have done better, but for a funeral this did well enough. As their cab drew up in front of the Stuart Funeral Home, Pam looked at the people on the sidewalk and said it looked like an opening night.

“On the contrary,” Jerry told her, and paid the taxi driver. The crowd pressed up and looked at them.

“That's the niece,” a thin woman with startling black eyes said shrilly. “That's the Frost girl.”

“Naw,” the man with her said. “Come on, Stella. It ain't nobody.”

“Well!” Pam said, in a soft voice to Jerry. “Well! I hate to be such a disappointment.”

There were a couple of reporters in the cleared center of the crowd, and they looked at the Norths and looked away again. Then the taxicab drew away and the police car came up to the curb. The reporters moved toward it and Bill Weigand shook his head at them.

“Nothing yet,” he said. “Sorry, boys.”

“There's a rumor—” one of the boys, a tired-looking man in his fifties, began, and Bill shook his head a second time.

“No rumors,” he said. “Talk to the inspector, Harry.”

“Why?” said Harry, with simplicity.

“All right, Harry,” Mullins said. “Break it up.”

There was a man looking out the door of the Stuart Funeral Home. The door had discreet curtains not quite covering it and the man drew one of them aside. He looked worried and unhappy, and neither worry nor unhappiness sat comfortably on his face. He was not cadaverous or solemn; he was rotund and ruddy and when he opened the door he had the dignified cordiality of an automobile salesman. He raised his eyebrows at the Norths, with expectant politeness.

“North,” Jerry said. “Miss Gipson's employer … her late employer.”

“The late Miss Gipson's former employer,” Mrs. North said.

The rotund man looked at her and achieved a kind of enforced gravity.

“Very sad,” he said, “Very sad indeed. Chapel A, if you please.”

He looked past the Norths at Weigand and for a moment he was doubtful. He saw Mullins, and doubt vanished.

“Is it necessary?” he said, in a hurt voice. “Is it really necessary, Inspector?”

“What?” Weigand said.

“This crowd,” the man said, waving at it. “This—notoriety. The police.” He sighed. “Everything,” he said.

“I'm afraid so,” Weigand told him. “It won't last, you know.”

“Sad,” the man said. “Very sad. Chapel A.”

The reception-room was very restrained and somewhat dark. There was a dignified hush about it and a faint smell of flowers. There was organ music faintly in the air, as if an organ were being played in the next block. The chairs in the room were austere, as if they meant to discourage relaxation and provide comfort grudgingly, but they were upholstered in heavy, dark brocades. The Stuart Funeral Home did not discourage thought of the dead by pampering the living. But it did not forget that the living paid the bills, and wanted something for their money.

There were three doors leading from the reception-room and there were dimly illuminated signs over them. Like exit signs in theaters, only a sort of purple, Mrs. North thought. One sign said “Chapel A” and another “Chapel B.” The third said “Office.” Pam North looked through the door marked “Office”—the other two doors were closed by hangings—and saw a corridor leading away from the street. Off one side of the corner there was a wide arch, leading to another room. She could not see what was in the other room. The Norths, with Weigand and Mullins following them, went to the door marked “Chapel A.” Jerry reached around Pam and drew back the curtain for her.

The room was much dimmer than the reception-room, and was constructed like a small church. There were pews, facing a wall heavily draped with velvet. The velvet seemed to glow dimly with purple light. The sound of the organ music was more perceptible; the organ might now be as close as the next building. There was nobody in the room but, as they entered, the organ music increased perceptibly in volume.

It was a room to whisper in, and Pam whispered.

“Somebody looks through the curtains,” she said. As she spoke the room slowly became lighter, although there was no obvious identification of the source of light. It was still a kind of purplish light; a light which was a more revealing kind of darkness. The increased light seemed to focus, in a mood of almost overpowering reverence, on a coffin placed on a draped pedestal in front of the curtains at the end of the chapel. There were flowers around it, and over it.

“The poor thing,” Pam said. “Would she have liked this, Jerry?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I shouldn't think so. But I suppose it's inevitable.”

“We're early,” Pam said. She still whispered. “What time is it, Jerry?”

“Ten of three,” he told her.

“I wish it weren't so dark,” Pam said. She thought a moment. “I wish it weren't so—real,” she said. “And—so unreal, at the same time.”

Jerry said he knew. He touched her arm and they went to the rear pew on the right. Weigand and Mullins, who seemed to have been delayed in the reception-room, came in and Bill sat down on the opposite side of the aisle. Mullins stood against the rear wall, and the wall seemed to swallow him. The organ music swelled a little and Mr. and Mrs. Burt came in. Mrs. Burt was crying a little and Mr. Burt's hand was protectingly on her arm. When she saw the casket, Mrs. Burt made a sound like a tiny sob.