A Pinch of Poison (6 page)

Mullins thought it over, and said he supposed not.

“But maybe somebody saw something?” he suggested.

Weigand said that if anybody had, the police probably would hear from them when the news came out. However—

“You might have some of the boys ask anybody who is still at a table near the McIntosh table,” he said. “There's no harm in it, except to the hotel's feelings, and you might turn up something.” He paused. “And,” he said, “you'll find Mr. and Mrs. North and Miss Hunt out there. You might ask Mrs. North to come in.”

Mullins' face brightened.

“Jeez,” he said. “Is Pam and Jerry here? And Miss Hunt?” He beamed. “We've had some times,” he said, hopefully. Then his face clouded. “Only they was always screwy ones,” he remembered. “The cases, I mean.”

Weigand agreed that they were.

“And this one,” he added, “doesn't seem to be any too clear.” He drummed on the table. “You might chase the boys out of the living-room—have them ask some questions of somebody, or go over the tablecloth or something. Is there anybody else left?”

“Only,” Mullins said, “this bus-boy guy. Just a kid, he is.”

Weigand said Mullins could send the kid in. The kid came in. He had red hair, clashing with the maroon of his uniform, and he looked at Weigand with round eyes.

“Say, mister,” he said, “are you a detective?”

Weigand admitted it.

“An officer?” Frank Kensitt insisted. “One of the mucky-mucks?”

“What?” said Weigand. “Oh. Yes, in a way. Why?”

Frank looked around anxiously, with wide blue eyes. The eyes fell on the body, and the boy said, “Jeez.” Then, unexpectedly, his eyes filled with tears. After a moment he spoke angrily through the tears.

“Listen, mister,” he said, “Miss Winston was a swell lady. Did somebody bump her?”

Weigand nodded.

“Did you know her, Frank?” he asked. Frank nodded. He sure had known her, he said.

“She got me this job,” he said. “And got me out of the farm school and everything. She was a swell lady.”

Weigand probed. Frank was, it developed, a ward of the “office.” Weigand puzzled it a moment. “The Placement Foundation?” he suggested. Frank nodded. He was too old for adoption when the “office” took him and, after several other places, he had gone to the farm. And Miss Winston had got him out and got him a job and if any guy thought—

“All right, kid,” Weigand said. He would, he supposed, have to follow this up, or have it followed up. But he had better get it from—who was that, now?—Mary Crane, at the Foundation. “Why did you clear the table so fast, kid?”

Frank looked around the room.

“Is there anybody else here?” he asked, tensely. Weigand shook his head.

“All right,” Frank said. “They're in my locker!”

“Who are in your locker?” Weigand inquired.

Frank looked annoyed, and his voice was impatient.

“The dishes,” he said. “The things Miss Winston ate and drank out of. What did you think?”

“You mean,” Weigand said, “that you cleared the table and put all the dishes in your locker? Why?”

Frank looked contemptuous.

“Fingerprints,” he said. “And things like that. I knew it wasn't no pass-out, not no ordinary pass-out. Not with Miss Winston. So I saved the things.”

“Well,” Weigand said, “I'll be damned.” He looked at Frank, who was regarding him intently. “Well, I'll be damned,” Weigand said. “You're quite a kid.”

“You want 'em, don't you?” Frank's voice was anxious. Weigand nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I'll send a man with you to get them.” Suddenly he grinned at the boy. “Only why fingerprints, son?” he said. “Why not some poison left in a glass or on a plate?”

Frank stared harder.

“Jeez,” he said. “Sure enough!”

5

T
UESDAY

10:50
P.M.
TO
11:25
P.M.

The body of Lois Winston went in a long basket, down a service elevator, to an ambulance marked “Department of Hospitals. Mortuary Division.” Nicholas arrived in time to stand aside for it, looking a little ill, as it was carried through the door of the suite. He looked after it and shook his head gravely, paying tribute to death.

“Yes?” Weigand said. He was sitting in a lounge chair in the living-room, and his nervous fingers tapped a cigarette against the side of an ash-tray.

“About Mr. McIntosh's reservation,” Nicholas said. “You asked me to check on it.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “And—?”

“He appears to have telephoned himself,” Nicholas said. “At least my assistant who took the reservation says a man called. He specified a table near the floor, although usually he preferred one of the divans against the wall.”

“Right,” Weigand said. He stared through Nicholas for a moment. “Suppose,” he said, “you give me a list of all reservations made for this evening. You can do that?”

There was, Nicholas admitted, a list. But the manager would have to approve. If—

“All I want is the list,” Weigand said. His voice sounded tired, “I don't care who has to approve. The manager, Mr. Ritz or the whole waiters' union. Just get me the list.”

“Yes, sir,” Nicholas said. He moved to the door and opened it. He became, instantly, Nicholas of the Ritz-Plaza.

“But I am very sorry, ladies-sir,” he said. “This is a private apartment and I regret—”

“Nonsense,” Pam North said, briskly, appearing around Nicholas. “Tell him, Bill!”

Bill told him. Pam came in and Dorian behind her. Mr. North, looking rather worried, followed them.

“Well,” Weigand said. “A delegation. Sit, friends. Join me in a little murder.”

Pam looked doubtfully at the closed door to the bedroom.

“Is it?” she said, and nodded at the door.

Weigand told her it was.

“They just took it,” he said. “It was Lois Winston, of East Sixty-third Street and the Placement Foundation, daughter of the late Clarence Winston, who was an oil man, and the present Mrs. Kenneth Ashley who—” Then he stopped and looked annoyed. He looked around for Mullins and sighed. He emerged from the chair and sought Mullins at the door and returned with Mullins, who beamed at the Norths and Dorian.

“Hello, Mrs. North,” Mullins said, pleased. “And Mr. North. And Miss Hunt! Sorta like old times, ain't it?”

“Hello, Mr. Mullins,” Pam said. “It's nice—” She stopped and looked at him more intently. “By the way,” she said, “I've been meaning to ask. Have you got a first name? To call you by, I mean.”

Mullins suddenly looked sheepish and looked hurriedly at Lieutenant Weigand. Weigand nodded, remorselessly.

“Tell her, sergeant,” he ordered. Mullins swallowed.

“Aloysius,” he said, his voice suddenly booming. “Aloysius Clarence.”

He looked at the Norths and Dorian defiantly. Mrs. North looked rather blank.

“Oh!” she said. “Oh—all right, Mullins.” She looked at him gently. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“Thanks, Mrs. North,” Mullins said, warmly. “The times I—”

Weigand broke in, told him to save it.

“Get on the phone,” he instructed, “and find out if Kenneth Ashley—the father of the squirt who was just here—is alive. Or what.”

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. He looked around for a telephone book, mutely indicated its absence, and exited.

“Listen,” Pam said, “we've got something.” She turned to Mr. North. “Where is he?” she demanded. “I thought you were going to bring him.”

“Look, Pam,” Mr. North said, anxiously, “you're not going to get into this one, are you?” His voice was pleading, but not very hopeful. “He's outside. I left him with a detective. But I don't really think—”

“Who,” Weigand wanted to know, “is outside with a detective?” He looked at Pam, and his expression oddly mirrored that of Mr. North. “Please, Pam,” he urged. “After all, I'm working here.”

Pam looked a little indignant, and then softened. She said all she wanted was a chance. She said it was a waiter who had seen something.

“We got to talking while we waited,” Pam said, “and then we sort of talked to our waiter, because maybe he had seen things.” She looked at Mr. North, who was shaking his head. “Well,” she said, “anyway, I did. And Dorian did, too. And it turned out he had seen something at—at the murder table.”

“Listen, Pam,” Mr. North said, “have you got to be so tabloid?”

Nobody paid any attention to him. Weigand looked interested and went to the door. He returned with a waiter, who looked worried.

“The lady,” the waiter said, doubtfully. “She thought I ought—”

“Right,” Weigand said. “You saw something?”

The waiter, a No. 67 by the disk on his coat, had seen something. Nothing, he supposed, important. But he had been near the table at which McIntosh and Miss Winston were sitting and had been looking around idly, with nobody to serve at the moment and a waiter's glance for the tables. The man and the girl who, somebody said, was dead—well, they had got up to dance. And while they were dancing, a man had come to their table from another table some way off and bent over it.

“I thought he seemed to be sticking something, perhaps a note, under the lady's plate,” the waiter explained.

“And would you know the man?” Weigand asked. His tone was quick with interest.

“Yes, sir,” the waiter said. “I—but perhaps I should speak to the manager, sir.” He looked for advice.

“Just speak to me,” Weigand directed. “You knew him, I gather?”

No. 67 looked rather unhappy, and nodded. He was the young man who had been summoned, a little later, to the living-room by a detective. After the girl had collapsed and been carried there. He was a dark, rather good-looking young man, rather slight.

Weigand nodded.

“And that was all you saw?” he asked. No. 67 shook his head. There was, he said, something else.

“After the young lady was—was carried in here,” he said, “the young man went back to the table. He—well, I assumed he picked up the note.”

“Why do you assume that?” Weigand asked. No. 67 looked a little confused.

“I suppose you looked, and there wasn't any note?” Weigand said. The waiter nodded. “Touch anything?” Weigand wanted to know. The waiter shook his head.

“Right,” Weigand said. “I'll see that the manager doesn't mind. And thanks.”

The waiter went away, still looking worried.

“Is it something?” Mrs. North said eagerly. “Is it a clue, or something?”

Weigand nodded slowly.

“Anyway,” he said, “it was Mr. Randall Ashley doing something at his sister's table.” He thought it over. “I'm afraid,” he said, “that I'm going to have to break in on Mr. Ashley's sleep.”

He looked at his watch. It was a little after eleven. There was a knock at the door and a detective handed in a long sheet with names typed on it. Whoever needed to had approved the surrender to the police of a copy of the reservation list of the Club Plaza, on the roof of the Ritz-Plaza Hotel, for the evening of Tuesday, July 28.

Weigand looked at the Norths and Dorian without seeing them. Then he saw Dorian and smiled. It was warming to see a smile answer him.

“Bill,” Dorian said, suddenly, “I hope you catch him.”

It was surprising from Dorian, who so hated all pursuit, all “hunting,” and who had such excellent reason for hating it. Weigand was conscious of delighted astonishment and for a moment was puzzled by it. Then he realized that, for the first time, Dorian had abandoned the separation she had always maintained between Weigand as Weigand, and Weigand as police lieutenant. She had, and quite consciously, come over to his side and he felt very contented about it. He looked at Dorian appreciatively, and it occurred to him that he was beaming at her even before Pam North spoke.

“Lieutenant Weigand,” Pam said. “Remember there are Norths present.” She paused until he looked at her. “And murderers to catch,” she added.

Weigand looked back at Dorian and they shared contented laughter with a glance. Then Weigand sighed and returned to duty. He went to the door and called Mullins and Mullins came.

The boys, Mullins reported, were asking questions around, without getting much of anywhere that he could see. Mullins was pessimistic. The dishes from Lois Winston's place had been salvaged from Frank Kensitt's locker. Half an inch of liquid in the bottom of a glass which apparently had contained a Cuba Libre had been bottled and labeled, as had what remained in a water glass. The glass from which, according to McIntosh's account, she had drunk iced coffee apparently had been returned to the kitchen when the drinks were served, as had the plates on the table. The bottles had been dispatched to the city toxicologist at Bellevue for analysis. Weigand nodded, checking off.

“I think we're finished here,” he said then. “For now, anyway. We'll leave the boys to go on with their questioning for a while. Tell them to report at the division later. You and I'll be moving, Mullins.”

“What,” Mrs. North wanted to know, “about us? Do you just throw us back?”

“Well,” Mr. North said, “we could always go home and—play three-handed bridge.”

Mrs. North looked at him coldly and said, “Bridge!

“Bridge after murder!” she said. “You do think of the dullest things sometimes, Jerry.”

She looked hopefully at Weigand, who shook his head.

“No, Pam,” he said. “I'm not taking the three of you. Or even one of you. You're big boys and girls; you'll just have to think of something.”

“Well,” Pam said, “I think we'll go out and have another drink. I want a Cuba—” She broke off. “Or,” she said, “perhaps a very weak brandy and soda. Come on.”