A Pinch of Poison (23 page)

“Get Miss Crane,” she said, evidently talking to the operator. “Well, find her—it's vital. One of our children has been kidnaped.”

“Michael!” Mrs. North said. She said it on a rising note of excitement. “Not Michael?”

The secretary nodded, holding a hand over the transmitter.

“This morning,” she said. “Sometime in the last two hours. He was out playing and now—now he's nowhere!”

“Oh!” said Mrs. North. “Oh, no! Not Michael!”

She stood up and her red purse slipped from her hand and fell, spilling compact and lipstick and spraying oddments. Mrs. North stood for a moment with wide, frightened eyes.

“But he's just a little boy!” she said. “Nobody could!”

Possibly if Miss Crane had been there—if Pam could have had the feeling that something was being done, then, quickly—Pam might have remembered that she was to keep outside of things. She always insisted, afterward, to Jerry that it was because nobody seemed on hand to do anything that she had forgotten her promise. Jerry pointed out that the police could be notified at once; that, as a matter of fact, the police had been notified at once. But Mrs. North insisted that it wasn't, at that moment, enough to think of the police.

“I just thought of a little boy,” she said. “And dreadful things happening, and the way he played with my watch. You'd have done the same thing, Jerry!”

“No,” Jerry said. “Not I, Pam. But you—yes, that's different.”

It had been different. Mrs. North had not waited, even for Miss Crane; even to be sure that news went to Lieutenant Weigand. She could trust Miss Crane for that. She merely tore at the record, riffling its pages excitedly, until she found the name and address of Michael's present boarding mother—Mrs. Konover, who lived in Queens Village. Then Mrs. North moved.

Caution of a sort did reassert itself as she went down on the elevator. On the ground floor, she almost ran toward a telephone booth. Why she telephoned Dorian Hunt instead of someone else—instead of, for example, Jerry himself—was always obscure to him. It was never obscure to Mrs. North.

“It was a little boy,” she explained. “A child. So of course it had to be another woman! That's obvious!”

She telephoned Dorian Hunt and, luckily, got her at once. Her words tumbled as she told what had happened. “You've got to come with me, Dor,” she said. “We've got to do something! Now! We can't wait!”

“Well—” said Dorian.

“Now!” said Pam, urgently. “Before something dreadful happens.”

The police heard the news a few minutes after it came to Pam, but it was more than an hour before Weigand heard of it. For once he was out of reach, turning over odds and ends at the New York offices of Henri et Paulette. So, without his knowledge, the Missing Persons Bureau widened its net; the police at a Queens precinct went into action and O'Malley, fuming in his office, was snappish even with reporters and demanded that heaven and earth be moved to discover Lieutenant Weigand. Weigand, with Mullins beside him, turned over odds and ends patiently.

He talked, first, to Miss Hand—Miss Geraldine Hand, the secretary of John Graham. She had been at the roof, he told her, and they wanted to know everything that anyone at the roof that night could remember. Had she seen Lois Winston?

“Yes,” Miss Hand said. “Although I didn't know who she was at the time. But I recognized the man she was with—Mr. McIntosh—from seeing his picture in the papers and then I looked at her just—well, just to see what kind of girl a man with all that money went around with. And then next day, when I read the papers, I realized who she was.”

Weigand nodded. And, while she was watching them had she seen anything—well, anything suspicious? Anything which, looking back on the evening afterward, in the light of what had happened, seemed suspicious in retrospect?

She shook her head.

“By the way,” Weigand said. “How long were you there? Do you remember?”

Miss Hand shook her head again, and said she was sorry. It was, she remembered, rather late—they had started late, because Mr. Graham had been detained. Then they had wasted more time going from the restaurant in which she had waited, and which Mr. Graham had objected to when he arrived, to the roof. So it was—oh, well after nine o'clock—when they finished dinner, and went back to the office.

“Right,” Weigand said. “That's near enough. It's just routine, you understand.” He paused, and consulted a note. “Although,” he said, “I gathered from Mr. Graham that you had left rather earlier. However—people don't always agree about the time, do they?”

Miss Hand agreed that they didn't. She might, she said quickly, very easily be wrong. Weigand nodded and studied her. He wondered, interestedly, what she would be like outside the office; what she had been like, for example, with John Graham at the roof.

“By the way,” he said, “do you know Mrs. Graham? She's missing, you know.”

He studied her. Her face assumed an expression of concern.

“Yes,” she said. “Isn't it—dreadful? She always seemed such a—well, calm and even-tempered woman. Although, of course, I only met her a few times—she dropped in here now and then. Not often.”

“It's very upsetting for Mr. Graham, certainly,” Weigand said. “I suppose you didn't—but I can't ask you to betray any confidences.” He paused, and she looked at once interested and appropriately noncommittal. “I suppose,” he said, “that Mr. and Mrs. Graham got along all right? You know what I mean?”

Miss Hand's expression registered the question as indiscreet.

“Really, Lieutenant,” she said, “if there were anything you wouldn't expect me—but, fortunately, there wasn't. So far as I know, at any rate. He never—well, said anything, or expressed anything, which would make me think different.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “I suppose he called her up when he was going to be late getting home—that sort of thing. He was considerate, I mean. When he was going to be delayed—as the other night—he would telephone and all that?”

Miss Hand nodded, and said, “Of course.

“As it happened,” she said, “Mrs. Graham telephoned him Tuesday, and he told her then. But he was just going to call her—he'd told me to remind him.”

“Right,” Weigand said. His tone expressed conventional approval of marital consideration. Miss Hand, he could see, was thinking him rather stodgy—the substantial, middle-class policeman.

“By the way,” he said. “Just what is Mr. Graham's position here. Office manager—something like that?”

Miss Hand nodded.

“And other things,” she said. “He runs this end; our factory's in Long Island City, you know. He has something to say about everything except the actual manufacturing—sales, purchases, new lines—almost everything. Of course, the main office is at the factory, really, but a great deal clears through us.”

“Quite an important position,” Weigand said. His voice betrayed admiration of Mr. Graham's importance and, he trusted, a proper note of envy. “He must make a—well, a pretty good thing out of it.”

Not, Miss Hand assured him, loyally, as much as he deserved to make.

“He has a great deal of ability,” she said. “I sometimes feel that they don't appreciate him properly at the factory. He ought, really, to be a member of the firm, instead of just a salaried executive. But I suppose that needs capital, doesn't it?”

Weigand, with the air of a man out of his depth in commercial matters, but trying not to show it, agreed that it probably did. He thanked Miss Hand and collected Mullins. Outside, Mullins looked at him darkly.

“That was an act, Loot,” he said. “Just an act.”

“Was it, Mullins?” Weigand said. “Think of that!”

He shepherded Mullins to the Buick and drove downtown. He arrived between harried appearances of messengers in search of him, and had time for a telephone call before the storm broke. He made the telephone call to Danbury, and asked them to trace records. It was, he said, a routine item for the files—an item concerning a George Benoit, who had got a ticket there sometime Tuesday. The Danbury police checked while he held the line. The Danbury police reported.

“Yes,” Weigand said. “… Yes … About what time?… How long did you hold him?… Um-m-m.… Did he have any explanation?… He did, eh?… What?… Yeh, that was a hot one, wasn't it?… And was he?” There was a longer pause. “Sure enough!” Weigand said.… “Yes … Yes, it must make it difficult.… Well, thanks, sergeant. Do as much for you some time.”

He hung up and sat staring at Mullins.

“Well,” he said, “that's that. The little pinch of corroboration, sergeant, that savors the best of hunches.”

“What?” Mullins said. “I don't get it.”

“Don't you, Mullins?” Weigand said, gently. “You should, you know. It's all been spread out for you. What you didn't see, I've told you.”

Mullins stared at him.

“Listen, Loot—” he began.

Then the telephone on Weigand's desk rang harshly.

Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley was beside himself. He had taken his feet off his desk when Lieutenant Weigand, summoned peremptorily, hurried to him. He pounded on the desk with his fist, which was a large fist. Small objects on the desk jumped affrighted. Inspector O'Malley wanted to know what was going on. He summed it up for Weigand.

“First the Winston girl,” he said. “All right. What the hell could we do about that?” Weigand knew the question was rhetorical. “Right,” O'Malley said. “That happened to us. And it stares us in the face—we've got everything—a guy nobody likes, to make it easy for the D.A.; motive, opportunity and, on top of that, he did it! That's what gripes me—a perfect setup, and
he did it!
”

O'Malley stared at Weigand, celebrating a perfect coincidence, rare in police annals. Not only could they pin it on a guy; it was the right guy.

“A natural!” O'Malley went on. “So what do you do? You get somebody else murdered—a Mrs.—what the hell's her name?”

“Halstead,” Weigand said.

“I know it!” O'Malley said. “I know it. You don't have to tell me things, Lieutenant. I was on the force when you were wearing didies. Mrs. Halstead. So you get Mrs. Halstead murdered, because you won't see what's as plain as the nose on your face.” Inspector O'Malley stared around his own nose at Weigand.

“I suppose you think that makes us look good?” O'Malley said.

Weigand shook his head.

“No, Inspector,” he said. “Not so good.”

“Look at the papers if you think it makes us look good!” O'Malley challenged. “And who gets it in the neck—
me!
”

Weigand doubted that, or doubted that it would be true for long. But he merely looked attentive.

“I get it in the neck,” O'Malley said. “I tell 'em we'll crack it in twenty-four hours and what happens? Somebody else gets killed. And then somebody disappears. This Mrs.—Mrs.—”

“Graham,” Weigand helped out. “Mrs. Graham disappears.”

“Yeah!” O'Malley said. “So Mrs. Graham disappears. The first thing we know about her, she disappears. Is that a note?”

Weigand nodded. O'Malley glared at him.

“And now what happens?” he demanded. “Now we lose the kid! A kid that's tangled up in it somewhere. Now, along with everything else, we got a kidnaping. Don't you know what the papers do to a kidnaping? Don't you ever
read
the newspapers, Weigand?” O'Malley's anger seemed to be softening into grief. “Headlines,” he said, gloomily, staring at the lieutenant. “Right across the page. ‘Child in Winston Case Kidnaped.' How do you think that makes us look?”

“It's tough, Inspector,” Weigand agreed. “Very tough.”

“Tough!” O'Malley repeated. He addressed the universe. “He says it's tough!” O'Malley told the universe, hopelessly.

He turned back and glared at Weigand.

“Did you ever hear of Staten Island?” he said. “Did you ever hear of the Bronx, up around the Boston Post Road? Did you ever hear of Jamaica—way out on the edges? Did you ever hear of wise cops who went back in uniforms and sat at desks and nobody ever talked to them or heard about them?”

“Right,” Weigand said. “Do you want me to say something, Inspector, or don't you?”

“You'd better say something!” O'Malley told him. “You'd sure better!”

“Right,” Weigand said. “We're going to break it. You can tell the boys that. Say we'll break it in—well, say in twelve hours. Say that the police have a theory which explains everything that's happened; that the police are confident of finding both Mrs. Graham and Michael Osborne. If you feel like it, tell them the disclosures will be sensational.”

“Yeah,” O'Malley said. “And suppose we don't?”

Weigand looked at him, and half smiled.

“Well,” he said, “you can always pin it on me, Inspector. And there's always Staten Island.” He stared back at the Inspector. “What the hell?” he said. “You think I
like
Staten Island?”

“Twelve hours?” O'Malley repeated, after a moment's thought.

Weigand nodded. “Or less,” he said. He said it confidently; he hoped he was right.

“Well,” O'Malley said. “Get on with it, Weigand. You won't do it sitting here.”

Weigand left like a man going somewhere, but he sat at his own desk and drummed his fingers on it. He telephoned Missing Persons and got Paul Durkin. He asked crisp questions.

“I think we've got a line,” Durkin told him. “We rounded up a taxi-driver who picked Mrs. Graham up near her home last night—a guy named Fineberg—Max Fineberg. Funny thing, he drove Lois Winston downtown from there Tuesday afternoon. What do you think of that?”

“Well,” Weigand said, “it's a fine time for him to be remembering it.” He thought. “Although,” he added, “I can't see it makes much difference. Where did he take Mrs. Graham?”