Murder within Murder (28 page)

She looked across the roofs and they were, as she had known they would be, unlike any she had seen before. Every window in New York—almost every window—had its own roof, with unexpected things on it. There was a roof near the Battery which had real grass growing on it; grass which had, at intervals, to be cut by a man with a lawn mower. There was no grass on any of the roofs in sight from the office window of Mr. Paul Wilming, art editor of
Esprit,
but down and to the east there was an awning with a table and summer chairs under it, and as she watched a man and a woman came out, the man carrying what was presumably a cocktail shaker.

The street sounds came up faintly and she was at first hardly conscious of them. Then, mingled with them, there was the sharp, cutting sound of a police whistle. The sound touched only the outskirts of her consciousness; but then it was repeated, and the repetition was in a series of staccato shrills which sliced clearly through the heavy rumble which always, even when the city seems to be asleep, rises over New York. Then, because the whistle commanded, she looked down—the long way down. She could see at first only the fringe of the crowd which had overflowed into the street. She had to lean perilously out, with nothing to hold to, before she could see, directly below her, a crowd gathering in a circle around something on the sidewalk. There were several policemen there already, summoned by that demanding whistle. And while she looked she heard the first, not very distant, sound of a siren.

“I don't understand,” a soft voice said behind her. “I was sure he'd gone into Mr. Helms's office but Mr. Helms hasn't seen him. The only other way he could have gone would be along the hall and we'd have—”

The girl stopped, because for the moment Dorian Hunt seemed not to be listening. And then, when Dorian did turn to her, the girl did not go on because of something in Dorian's face.

“No,” Dorian said, and she spoke slowly, and there was the beginning of horror in her widely opened greenish eyes. “I'm afraid not the only way.”

A siren, very close now, screamed up at them, and the girl beside Dorian Hunt gasped; said, “Oh, oh,
oh!
” on a rising note and then put her hand up to her mouth. Dorian saw the girl's eyes grow large and then saw a kind of blankness start in them, so she was able to catch the girl as she slumped toward the floor. And then the door which was behind her, the door through which they had come, opened violently and Buford Stanton came through it. He did not seem to see the two girls, but avoided them and went to the window, put his hands on the sill and leaned out so he could look down. He looked down only for a moment and then he stood up and turned toward the door. A uniformed patrolman stood in the door and looked at Stanton.

“I'm afraid so,” Stanton said. “The poor bastard!”

The patrolman went over and put his hands on the sill as Stanton had and looked down. He, like Stanton, looked down only for a moment. He stood up and took his cap off and ran his hand over his forehead and then put his cap back on again.

“It's a hell of a drop,” he said. “It's sure a hell of a drop.” He looked at Dorian and the girl. “What are you two doing here?” he said. “Who are you, anyway?”

“My name's Hunt,” Dorian said. “Dorian Hunt. I came to show Mr. Wilming some drawings. Some drawings he'd ordered. This is—I don't know her name. The receptionist. She came in with me.”

“St. John,” Stanton said. “Something St. John. What's the matter with her?”

“Can't you see she's fainted?” Dorian said, and was surprised that her voice rose. “I'd think you could see!”

“What good will that do?” Stanton said. He spoke again as if he merely sought information; as if there might be an answer.

“What was she?” the policeman said. “His girl friend?”

“How would I know?” Stanton said. “Maybe yes. Maybe no.”

They stood looking down at the girl, Stanton and the policeman, and at Dorian, who was now on her knees beside the girl. Dorian was suddenly angry, hotly angry.

“You could do something,” she said. “Why don't you do something?”

“She'll come out of it,” the policeman said. “Give her time, lady. If she was his girl friend, what's the hurry? He'll still be dead.”

The girl's eyes opened and she began to speak. Her words were hurried, mumbled. It was hard to make sense of them. She seemed, to Dorian, to be going on, as if there had been nothing intervening, with what she had been saying just before the siren in the street below told her its story. “I thought he was in Mr. Helms's room,” she said, “just gone … Helms's … I thought … but then Mr. Helms …” It was not articulate and it was not to the point.

“All right, dear,” Dorian said. “All right. You'll be all right.”

The girl sat up very suddenly and looked at them.

“Something happened,” she said. “Something—oh!” She looked at them and now her eyes focused. “Mr. Wilming!” she said. “He—”

“I'm afraid so, sister,” the patrolman said. “I'm afraid he did.” He looked at the window and the others looked where he looked. He shook his head.

“I don't figure he just fell,” the patrolman said. “The sill isn't as high as it could be, but it isn't so low. Is it? Not to stumble over.” He looked at Stanton. “It looks like he jumped, mister,” he said. “You the boss here?”

“Yes,” Stanton said. He ran his hand through his thick red hair. He needed a haircut.

“Know any reason he'd jump?” the policeman said. “Going to lose his job, or something?”

“Yes,” Stanton said. “He was going to lose his job.”

The patrolman nodded.

“There you are,” he said. He shook his head. He looked again at the window, and again he shook his head. “Must have been a damned good job,” he said. “Was it, mister—?” This time he left it open, waiting for a name. Stanton gave him the name. The patrolman took out a notebook and wrote the name down. He looked at Dorian and said, “Hunt, wasn't it?” and her nod gave him another name to write down. Then he looked at the girl. She got up from the floor as he looked at her and faced him. There was an odd kind of formality in the movement, and in her speech.

“Vilma St. John,” she said. “I'm the receptionist.”

“Thanks, sister,” he said. “You were fond of—him?”

This time he nodded toward the empty desk. They all looked at it. In the ash tray a single cigarette was burning, had burned almost to the end. It must, Dorian realized, have been burning when they entered; it must have been longer then. It must have burned slowly, sheltered behind the cabinet of an inter-communicating system, if—She tried to remember, although it did not matter. Smouldering cigarettes have a harsh pungency of their own; if it had been burning when they came in she must have smelled it, and not been conscious that she smelled it. She tried to remember, and a memory came slowly back. The cigarette had been smouldering, she thought, when they had first entered the room. She was conscious then that the patrolman was watching her.

“It's funny, lady,” he said. “It's funny how they'll do it. Almost every time—light a cigarette, take a drag or two and then do it whatever way they're going to. It's sure funny.”

Stanton crossed to the desk and, without touching it, looked at the cigarette. A cylinder of gray ash lay broken in the tray; the tip of the cigarette, just aglow, had fallen into the tray and rested against the side. Stanton pointed.

“Wilming's, all right,” he said. “He always smoked them. Nobody else around here did.”

Stanton could, Dorian realized, see the name of the cigarette, printed close to the end. The policeman went over and looked at it.

“Fatima,” he said. He seemed surprised. “Used to smoke them when I was a kid,” he said. “Funny thing.”

The door to the hall opened and the policeman straightened himself and said, “This seems to be it, sergeant,” to the middle-aged, uniformed man who stood in the doorway. “Looks to me like he jumped. Seems he was going to lose his job.”

“Save it, Robby,” the sergeant said. “Tell it to the boys from the precinct.” He looked at the window, seemed to measure the sill. “However,” he said, “you could be right, Robby. I'll say that.”

The “boy from the precinct”—there was only one—to whom Patrolman Robby told it a few minutes later, was a middle-aged and comfortable detective sergeant. Wilming's body had struck the pavement, horribly, at about 12:25; it had narrowly missed several people; Robby had whistled for reinforcement to handle the crowd and had reported in. Bloodstained cards in a wallet had provided tentative identification, linking Wilming with
Esprit.
The sergeant, riding a radio patrol car, had sent Robby up to check. Robby had found—he waved at the window, identified those in the room. The detective sergeant listened and nodded, and wrote down names.

“It looks like suicide,” he said. He turned to Buford Stanton. “To you?” he said.

Stanton hesitated. Then he nodded slowly.

“He never complained of dizzy spells?” the detective asked, and his tone made it a question of routine, for a routine record. “Heart attacks? You know what I mean?”

“Not to me,” Stanton said. “I don't think so.”

“Suicide,” the detective sergeant repeated, and nodded. “Of course, I'll have to get certain things for my report. The story of these ladies. Find out if anybody who saw him today thought he was particularly depressed. That sort of thing.” He smiled faintly, politely. “Forms, you know,” he said. “Paper work.”

“Helms is your man,” Stanton told him. Stanton waved at the door to Helms's office. “His assistant, Helms is—was. They were in and out of one another's offices most of the day. They were pretty well acquainted outside the office, too. If Wilming said anything, it might be to Helms.”

Stanton stopped and looked at the door to the other office.

“Anybody tell him?” Stanton said, and nodded toward the door. Nobody answered. Stanton looked at Vilma St. John. He shook his head. “Known each other for years,” Stanton said. “It'll upset him. Make him no good for days, probably, and just when we're going in.” He seemed aggrieved, suddenly. “The damnedest things happen to me,” he said, conversationally. “The damnedest things.”

He looked at the detective sergeant and seemed, Dorian thought, to be blaming him. The detective sergeant looked puzzled.

“I wonder if you want me?” Dorian said. She said it to the detective sergeant, who turned to her and seemed to find her easier to understand. “I only came to show Mr. Wilming some drawings. I'd only met him once before. I don't work here.” The detective sergeant nodded at each of her points. “And I have an engagement,” she said.

“You're Miss Hunt,” the detective sergeant said, and looked at his notebook. “Miss Dorian Hunt. Is that right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I'll want a statement,” he said. “Just a few words. I'll take it first if you like, and your address in case anything further comes up. All right, Miss Hunt?”

She nodded. She waited while, politely, the detective sergeant walked to the door with Stanton, ushering him out. Patrolman Robby and the uniformed sergeant went with the two; they formed for a moment a little group by the door. Watching them, as one watches movement, Dorian almost missed another movement; glimpsed it only, inadequately. She could hardly have sworn, she realized, that in the instant of the little grouping at the door Vilma St. John had bent swiftly and picked up something from the floor. It was only an impression that the thing she had picked up was small, and blue. It might have been, Dorian thought, the torn corner of a piece of blue carbon paper.

The receptionist was standing, certainly, with a hand on the desk—a hand holding nothing, with fingers spread—when the detective sergeant turned back. He smiled at the girl and asked her how she was feeling, and suggested there should be somewhere she could go and lie down for a bit.

“I'm all right,” the girl said. But she appeared for a moment reluctant to abandon the support of the desk. When she did abandon it, after that slight hesitation, she seemed to be all right. At the door she paused and looked back. “I'll be at my desk,” she said. “I don't need to lie down.” The comfortable detective sergeant merely nodded and smiled at that. After the girl had gone he turned to Dorian and said, “It was
Dorian
Hunt, wasn't it?”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm—”

“I know,” he said. “Met you once, but you wouldn't remember it. A shindig.”

She smiled, engagingly at a loss.

“So many of you,” she said. “You know?”

“And a good deal alike, really,” he said. “Same—what would you say—type?” He looked at her and smiled again. “You're not, you know, Miss Hunt.” He nodded his head, approving his distinction. “So you're an artist,” he said. “I didn't know that.”

“Of sorts,” she said. “Fashion drawings mostly. But some other things.”

“For this magazine,
Esprit?
” he said.

“I hope so,” she told him. “I don't know if Mr. Wilming's death ruins it.”

He smiled suddenly, with amusement.

“The damnedest things happen to you, too?” he said. “Like Mr. Stanton? He's a character, that one.”

An answer from her was not, she thought, indicated. Apparently she was right, because the detective sergeant seemed at that moment to turn over a new leaf.

“By the way,” he said, “my name's Flanagan. Detective Sergeant, Eighteenth Precinct. You didn't know Mr. Wilming, you say?”

She had met him only once, Dorian explained. He had telephoned her a week before and asked her to come in. He had said he liked some things of hers he had seen; he had wondered if she wanted to try something for
Esprit.
He'd bought an idea, he said, that he thought fitted her style.