The Judge Is Reversed (11 page)

He had, they told him. He had sent it to the
Times
. Which had printed it.

“Don't have time for the papers,” Gebhardt said. “Make this nut Ackerman sore as hell, I'd think. No telling what a crackpot—” He stopped, abruptly. He looked from Pam to Jerry and back to Pam again. He told them he'd be damned.

Sergeant Mullins did not precisely say he had told anybody so. For one thing, he admitted to himself that he had not. Which was not to say he had not had his thoughts. Red coat and green pants, and said he was a doctor.

“Helluva lot of money to leave to a cat doctor,” Mullins did say. “Must have been pretty fond of cats, this Blanchard.”

There was only one answer to be made to this, and Bill Weigand made it—“Right.” It was a hell of a lot of money to leave to anybody. Two hundred thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of money. “To my friend, Oscar Gebhardt, to be used at his discretion for purposes we have discussed, the sum of two hundred thousand dollars.”

“Build an old cats' home, you think?” Mullins suggested.

Bill smiled mildly, and said he didn't think anything one way or the other, having no material for thought. Except, again, that it was a lot of money to leave to anybody.

It was evident that John Blanchard had had a lot of money—or had thought he had. Or had had at the time, some eighteen months before, when he had made his last will and testament, of which the document they had found in the safe was a copy. (The will had been drawn up by Cameron, Notson and Fleigel, which, it was to be assumed, had retained the original. Cameron, Notson and Fleigel would be consulted.)

Substantial as it was, the bequest to Dr. Oscar Gebhardt was not the largest provided. The largest was to Hilda Latham, of Southampton, Long Island, and was in the amount of half a million dollars. “Phew!” Mullins said, hitting the nail on the head. “Why?”

Nothing in the will answered that question, and it puzzled Bill Weigand. The daughter of an old friend—yes. A young woman toward whom Blanchard—“Uncle John” of other days—might have felt as toward a favorite niece. But still—

He had gathered, although from no specific facts, that the Lathams were in no need of money. He checked his memory, seeking the grounds for this assumption. Except that Hilda, after saying that her father was Graham Latham, had hesitated momentarily, as if identification of the name was to be expected—as if the name were almost as likely to be identified as, say, Rockefeller. Graham Latham, Southampton, membership in the West Side Tennis Club—there were implications of the luxurious. Of course, even people with a great deal of money do not, presumably, mind being given more. And do, Bill thought, seem uncommonly likely to be given more. But still—

“You know,” Mullins said, “it's kind of a funny thing she'd come all the way up here to save a hotel bill. Ain't it? Won't need to now, will she?”

Bill looked at Mullins thoughtfully. He was not surprised; he does not underestimate Sergeant Mullins. He was, admittedly, a little chagrined at having missed a point. However—

Robert and Helen Sandys (or the survivor), if in Blanchard's employment at the time of his death, were to receive fifty thousand dollars and the apartment, which Blanchard owned, and there were no strings to this, either—no requirement that they provide for whatever cats were also surviving (and in Blanchard's employment) at the time of his death. From the little he had seen of the Sandyses, Bill supposed that no such stipulation was necessary, and that Blanchard had known it.

There was a clause directing the executors of the estate to set aside a sufficient sum from the residue to provide an annual scholarship of two thousand dollars to be given to “the boy, not over seventeen, who shall, in the opinion of the selection committee of the United States Lawn Tennis Association, be, in any year, the most promising junior player of United States citizenship, providing that he is financially unable to start, or to continue in, study at the college or university of his choice.”

The remainder of the estate—“Remainder?” Mullins said, in a tone of some incredulity—was to be divided evenly among the Greenwich Village Humane Society, the Authors' League Fund and the ASPCA.

They were sitting at a desk in Blanchard's office, Mullins at the end of the desk. A long-haired red cat leaped (and where had he been?) onto the other end of the desk, reached out a paw, and delicately patted the will of his late master.

“My God,” Sergeant Mullins said. “All over the place, ain't they, loot?” He looked at the red, who looked at him with considerable interest. “All kinds, too,” Mullins said. “You'd think—”

What you would think did not immediately become apparent. They were interrupted. A long thin man with a long sad face stood in the open doorway. “Dope from downtown,” he said, unhappily. He held papers out to Weigand. “Interesting, sort of,” he said. The fact seemed to depress him. “Gives an angle,” Nathan Shapiro said. “Only, pretty confusing. To me.” He went mournfully out. The cat went with him.

Bill looked. He said, “Well, well,” and handed the laboratory reports to Mullins. Mullins said he'd be damned. He did, Bill thought, seem a little disappointed.

On a corner of the base of one of the cat-scratching posts, the lab men had found two human hairs. They had also found hairs of several cats—a black cat, a brownish cat, a reddish cat. They had found several paw marks—hind paw marks—on the surface of the base. The red cat, from the length of the hair, apparently was a Persian.

The human hairs conformed to specimens provided by the mortuary, from the head of the late John Blanchard. There were no visible vestiges of blood on any corner of any of the three posts submitted. Chemical analysis had not been completed.

“Wouldn't have to be,” Mullins said. “Just caved in. Didn't bleed much.”

There were no fingerprints on any of the bases. The carpet covering of the posts would not, of course, take prints.

Two tennis rackets had been submitted, both in covers and presses. The wood of one of the presses was too rough to take prints; the wood of the other—this one rectangular; the other a truncated triangle—was smooth enough to take prints. The prints, all apparently made some time ago, were those of the deceased (these the most numerous) and of another man. The latter were fragmentary, inadequate for identification. “Probably Sandys's,” Bill said.

Both rackets had leather grips. On one of them were the prints, again not recent, of the deceased. On the other were also prints left by John Blanchard and, overlying them, much more recent prints which coincided with prints taken from a glass submitted at the direction of Captain William Weigand, but not identified by him. These prints were in such position on the racket handle as to indicate that the unknown person, almost certainly male, had held the racket, recently, as he might in play, employing the standard Eastern grip.

They looked at each other.

“For once,” Mullins said, “it ain't going to be screwy. Even if the Norths are in it.” But then a shadow passed over his ruddy face. “I hope,” Mullins said. “Only—you suppose it's
too
easy, loot? Because, after all, they are.”

That was at a little after nine in the evening. Doug Mears did not show up at the Forest Hills Inn, where he was staying, until a little after eleven thirty. He was awaited; he was taken to Manhattan, to the offices of the Homicide Squad in West Twentieth Street.

9

It was Pam who made up their minds for them. She said it was simple, really. She said, “Listen, dear,” and Jerry listened.

“If it was just boy meets girl over spaghetti,” she said, “then there's no reason why we shouldn't, because what difference would it make? They've a perfect right, so far as we know. Not as if either of them was married to somebody else. Unless, of course, one of them is. Anyway—if it's only that, there's no harm in our telling Bill. But if it isn't only that, and has something to do with this, there'd be harm in our not telling, or might be, and anyway Bill ought to decide and how can he if we don't?”

She paused; looked at Jerry expectantly.

“It was a little simpler before you explained it,” Jerry said. “But—I suppose you're right. Makes me feel a little like a divorce snooper.”

Pam said she didn't see why he complicated things by bringing divorce into it. She said nobody had said anything about a divorce. She pointed out that people have to be married before they can be divorced, and that if he was going to be sensitive about it she'd just as soon call. After all, she was the one who had seen them first, so the responsibility was hers.

It was eleven forty-five then, and Pam telephoned first to Bill's office, with a call to his apartment in reserve. The second call proved unnecessary.

Bill said, “Weigand,” and Pam said, “Pam,” which made a nice start. She told him then, and now was succinct as she can be when the mood is on her, about the presence together at Mario's of Doug Mears and Hilda Latham and of the outer semblances—the hand held, the intentness in the man's face—of some tie between the two which they had not revealed earlier when they met at the Norths' apartment.

It did not, Pam pointed out, have to mean anything. They had merely thought he ought to know, since the decision as to what things meant was his.

“Right,” Bill said. He hesitated, feeling that the presence of Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley hovered over him. (A very red-faced presence; Inspector O'Malley has strong feeling about the Norths; it amounts to Northophobia.) “As a matter of fact,” Bill said, “Mears has just been brought in to—explain a thing or two.”

“Bill!”

“Not now,” Bill said. “In time, Pamela. As always. Good night, Pamela.”

Bill Weigand, having hung up, considered the telephone. It fitted in—was a piece in a picture which was forming. A young man and a young woman with more to talk about than they had seemed to have; a bequest which was certainly what people called “substantial”; fingerprints where no fingerprints should—

“All right,” Bill said, to Mullins. “Have him brought in. And a stenographer.”

“Formal like?”

“Right,” Bill said. “I think so, sergeant.”

They brought Doug Mears in. He moved, for all his length, in spite of what was almost angularity in his long body, with lithe grace. His face was set, angry. He said, “Now what?” in a hard voice and stood in front of Bill Weigand's desk.

“Sit down, Mr. Mears,” Bill said, and Mears didn't, and Bill seemed not to notice this. “There are a few more questions we'd like to ask you. In connection with Mr. Blanchard's death.”

“I don't,” Mears said, “know a damn thing more than I've told you.”

“Then,” Bill said, “we'll just go over that again. It may take some little time. You may as well sit down.”

This time Mears sat down. He leaned forward. There was truculence in the shape of his body.

“Am I charged with anything?” he said. “Let's get that straight.”

“No. You're not charged with anything. At the moment.”

“Suppose I don't want to answer questions? You try to beat answers out of me?”

Bill sighed. He made the sigh audible.

“No,” he said. “We don't beat anything out of you. You don't have to say anything, answer anything. We can charge you—say as a material witness. That's a very handy charge. You can get a lawyer to represent you when you're arraigned tomorrow before a magistrate. Then you'll find out why you were asked to come here.”

“Asked,”
Mears said, with bitterness.

“Very well,” Bill said. “Why you were brought here. You're wasting everybody's time, Mr. Mears.” Mears glared at him. “Right,” Bill said. “Sergeant, take Mr. Mears down to the desk. Book him as a material witness in the homicidal death of John Blanchard. Let him make the telephone call he's entitled to make. Then—”

“O.K.,” Mears said. “I've got nothing to tell you. But, O.K. Shoot.”

“Mr. Mears,” Bill said, “you say that when you went to Mr. Blanchard's apartment this afternoon—went to get a drink he'd offered you—that that was the first time you'd been there today?”

“You're damned right I do.”

“When you went there you found the police in charge,” Bill said. “You were asked to go downtown to the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. North. You—”

“Asked hell,” Mears said.

Bill sighed again; again made the patient sigh audible.

“You weren't in the Blanchard apartment alone, were you?” Bill said. “Let wander around it alone?”

“I didn't get beyond the foyer. You ought to know that.”

“Oh,” Bill said. “I do, Mr. Mears. You had no chance, then, to go to a hall closet off the foyer and get anything out of it. Touch anything. Right?”

Mears didn't bother to answer, which was enough answer.

“Then,” Bill said, “suppose you tell me how your fingerprints got on the handle grip of a tennis racket Mr. Blanchard kept in the hall closet? Got there very recently. Almost certainly in the last twenty-four hours.”

“What the—”

“Wait. A racket in a press. Which may have been used as the weapon by whoever killed Mr. Blanchard.”

“You're trying to pull something. Running a bluff.”

The words were firm enough. They had come after a considerable pause. They had come after a change in the expression on Mears's young face. You can't take a change of expression into court. However—

“No,” Bill said. “They were there, Mears. Right where they would be if you had held the racket to—hit a tennis ball. Or—to hit something else. Well?”

Mears said nothing. He continued to lean forward. But the truculence had gone.

“When did they get there? When you used the racket as a club? To kill Blanchard?”