Death of a Tall Man (11 page)

Mrs. Gordon had finished lunch, she thought, at about a quarter of two. She had gone to a little shop down Madison to do the shopping which had brought her to town. She had got some play dresses for Eileen.

“Eileen being?” Bill said.

“My little girl,” Mrs. Gordon said. “She's six.” The shaped lips smiled a little. “Going on seven,” she said.

The dresses were what had brought her to New York. But because Dr. Gordon had not joined her, she had eaten more quickly than she expected, and so had had more time. It was about two fifteen when she finished buying the dresses. She went to another shop and looked at hats.

It should be easy to follow her, if they decided to follow her, Bill thought. As, naturally, they would. Longchamps, a shop, another shop. Somebody would remember.

She had found a hat. She had worn it and had the hat she had been wearing mailed to North Salem. This—her slim fingers went up to her head. Then for a moment she looked puzzled.

“Where is it?” she said. “I wore it here. I—” She remembered, then. “I fainted, didn't I?” she said. “Somebody must have—” She looked around the room. “There,” she said, and pointed. There was a hat on one of the chairs. It was impertinent and bright, even when abandoned on the chair. Pam North, distracted, walked to the chair and picked up the hat. She held it up and looked at it; she turned it upside down and looked into it. She nodded at it and then, as an afterthought, at Mrs. Gordon. She took the hat to Mrs. Gordon, who put it on the desk and looked at it again. Then she looked at Bill Weigand.

“And?” Weigand said.

“I came here,” she said. “To—to show Andy my new hat. And then—” Her voice broke for the first time. She waited a moment, and swallowed. “To show my husband my new hat,” she said, clearly. “Then they told me. Grace told me.” Her voice was steady, now.

That, for the moment, was all of it. Weigand expressed sympathy. He told her she could go.

“Home?” she said. “Back to the country?”

“Yes,” Bill told her.

“And the—” she said, and balked at the word.

They would be in touch with her, Bill said. In a day or two. “There are certain tests,” he said, phrasing it gently. She grew a little white at that, but she nodded. She picked up the hat and went to a mirror over the false mantel to put it on. When she was satisfied, she looked at Bill again as if to say something, and then said only, “I'll go then, Lieutenant.” She went down the room to the door. She moved well. Dr. Gordon must have been proud of her.

“And now?” Pam said, as the door closed. Before Bill could answer she spoke again. Her voice sounded worried. “Where's Jerry, do you suppose?” she said. She was trying to keep worry out of her voice. Bill smiled at her, and said Jerry would be all right. He'd be along.

“Now,” he said, “a hundred things, more or less. Background on everybody. But they're already on that. A checkup on everybody's movements. By the way, did the hat come from the shop she said?”

“That's what the label says,” Pam told him. “Naturally.”

Bill agreed with that.

“Of course,” Pam said, “labels can go in and out. On fur coats and things. But I don't think this one did, do you? Because the hat is new, certainly.”

Bill shook his head. He said he didn't think this one did. He thought it belonged in the hat, and that the hat was new that day.

“We'll check, of course,” he said. “Detectives must be suspicious, like it says in the book. Suspicious of shopping trips, suspicious of afternoons spent at desks, suspicious of young men on the loose in building lobbies at appropriate times—young men who run away.”

“And of girls of twenty, in love with—flighty men?” Pam said.

By all means of girls of twenty, Bill told her. Particularly when in love.

“And,” he said, “of six compensation patients. Of a nurse with opportunity—and in love with her doctor. At the moment—of anyone who could have met Dr. Gordon after he left here, persuaded him to return on some pretext, killed him while the nurse was out at lunch and the other girl was sitting at her desk answering the telephone, and gone away again through the back door.”

“Where's Jerry?” Pam said. “I thought he was coming for me.”

“I don't—” Bill began, and was interrupted. A patrolman—a very weathered patrolman—opened the reception-room door and looked in. He came part way in, looked behind him, and remained where he could look in both directions.

“Lieutenant,” he said, “there's a guy here. Been here about ten minutes, this guy has. Says you know him.”

The patrolman's voice scorned this ridiculous claim. Weigand raised eyebrows.

“Want I should send him over to the station?” the patrolman said. “Or you want to see him? Been here about ten minutes, but you was busy.”

A voice came around the patrolman from the hall. It was indignant.

“Shut up, you!” the patrolman said, facing toward the hall.

“—your staff of half-wits,” the voice said. “Tell this damned cop—”

“Jerry!” Pam said, and started toward the door. “Darling! Where have you been?”

The patrolman dissolved at Bill Weigand's gesture. Jerry North took his place. Jerry was running a hand through his hair.

“Listen, Pam,” Jerry said. “For half an hour—”

“You're late,” Pam told him. “We were worried about you.”

“This cop—” Jerry began. Pam smiled at him and said, “Darling!” in a tone of sympathy. Then she considered and looked at him again.

“Of course,” she said, “he didn't stop
me,
come to think of it.”

There was no triumph in her tone. Or, at most, very little. Jerry grinned at her and came down the room and she went to him and told him that his hair was mussed. Jerry merely smiled at her. She took both his hands, then, and looked at him more carefully, as if to see that he was really, all of him, in front of her.

“Look,” she said. “If we had a date for lunch you'd call me up if you couldn't, wouldn't you? Whatever I'd said?”

“What?” Jerry said. Then he looked at her eyes. “Of course, Pam,” he told her. “Always.”

“Because the other's so sensible,” Pam said, with conviction.

Bill was on the telephone. He was telling people to do things, now. He hung up and looked at them.

“You,” Pam said, “call Dorian and tell her there's a murder. Or—why don't we have dinner together? The four of us.” Mullins came back through the door from the examining area. “And Sergeant Mullins, of course,” Pam said.

“Hullo, Mr. North,” Mullins said. He seemed to consider a moment. “Well,” he said, “here we are again.”

They sat at the bar in Longchamps at Fifty-ninth and Madison.

“Before anything else,” Pam said to Jerry, who was next to her, “did you feed Martini?”

Jerry nodded, and sipped a martini.

“How was she?” Pam said. “I hated to leave her but—”

“You had to attend a murder,” Jerry said. “I know. She was all right. She climbed up on my back and tore some more threads out of my coat.”

“Good,” Pam said. “Lively, then.”

Jerry agreed she was lively. He drank again. He turned to Pam.

“Look,” he said, “I suppose she's all right? Mentally?”

Pam was indignant. Of course she was all right mentally.

“Well,” Jerry said, “she behaves very oddly about her tail. She doesn't know it
is
her tail. She doesn't have any control over it, as far as I can see. Or even recognize it. The tip thrashes around and she looks at it and moves her head when it moves, as if she were watching a tennis game. Do you think that's bright?”

Pam wanted to know why not. Jerry raised his shoulders and dropped them. He said he didn't know. He said it didn't seem very bright, somehow. After all, it was her own tail. She washed it, when she thought of washing.

“So why,” he asked, “does she always look so surprised when she sees it?”

“Because she has blue eyes,” Pam told him.

“What?” Jerry said.

“Cats with blue eyes look surprised,” Pam explained. “It's because you're surprised that they have blue eyes, I expect.”

Jerry shook his head slightly to clear it. He looked at his cocktail glass. He emptied it.

“Listen, Pam,” he said. “That's your surprise. I mean the cat's surprise.”

Pam looked at him, puzzled. Then her face cleared.

“Oh,” she said, “well, we attribute to animals what we feel ourselves. So it's really our surprise.” She paused. “Of course,” she said, “Martini does seem to think her tail is just something that follows her around. But she's not very old yet. She's very bright, for her age. Do you know any other cat who retrieves alternately for two people, no matter who throws?”

“No,” Jerry said. “All right, she's bright. She—”

The waiter captain came and told them he had a table for five. They went to the table. Now they could talk about the murder. Pam and Bill Weigand, but mostly Bill, told, in summary, what they knew to date. Jerry drank and listened. Dorian Weigand, her greenish eyes fixed on her husband, her cocktail glass turning round and round in her pointed fingers, listened almost without other movement. Now and then, looking at her, Bill forgot precisely what it was he was talking about. When he did, Dorian smiled faintly.

“Personally,” Pam North said, when the returns were in, “I vote for Mr. Smith. He's the one I want it to be.”

“Why?” Jerry said.

“Because I like the others better, of course,” Pam said. “I vote against the son—Dan.”

“Because the girl's in love with him,” Jerry told her.

“Well,” Dorian said, “she sounds like a nice girl.”

Mullins looked at his old-fashioned, shook it, and tilted it for a drop he thought he saw. He looked a little disappointed. Then he looked over the glass at Weigand, who was shaking his head.

It didn't work that way, Weigand told them. It was too bad, but it didn't. Nice girls had, before now, fallen in love with murderers. And would again.

“And he ran,” Weigand pointed out. “It isn't conclusive. But it needs explanation. Why did he run?”

Pam shook her head at that. She wished he hadn't.

“As for your favorite,” Weigand said, “I'm afraid not, this time, Pam. If his secretary confirms his story.” He paused. “As she will,” he said. “Smith doesn't seem to be a fool. If she got back not later than one fifteen, if he was there until three, he's out. Obviously.”

The others nodded. Pam said, “Yes,” with a little sigh.

“It's disappointing,” she said. “You could work it out so—so neatly. He's lost Dan's money, not the doctor. The doctor had found out and was going to—oh, do something. So Nickerson Smith killed him. It's—convenient.”

It would be convenient, Bill Weigand agreed. The chances were ten to one against. The—

The waiter captain came and got Weigand, who was wanted on the telephone. Weigand was gone only a few minutes. He came back, sat down, finished his drink.

“The chances are now a thousand to one against,” he said. “Unless a Miss Conover, of Brooklyn, is lying. The boys dropped around. She came back at one thirteen—she noticed the time because she was due back at one and was late, and wondered how late. She checked herself by a wall clock in the office, which is electrically controlled. And Smith was there. He was at his desk. As soon as he heard her come in, he buzzed for her and began dictating. He was there until he was telephoned for by the nurse. A couple of men, whose names she has, came in to see him. One of them at about one thirty, and stayed perhaps fifteen minutes. One of them a little after two, and stayed almost half an hour.”

“You'll ask them?” Pam said, not hopefully.

They would ask them, Weigand agreed. “We ask everybody,” he told her. “Everything. As you know.” But they would tell the same story.

“And the girl is telling the truth?” Dorian said.

The boys thought she was, Bill told her. The boys were good judges. So many people tried to lie to policemen.

“So,” Bill said, “you'd better pick somebody else, Pam.”

Pam North agreed. She brightened.

“Why not one of the patients?” she said. “One of the men he examined. Suppose—” She stopped, figuring. Bill waited, half smiling.

“Suppose one of them didn't really go out,” she said. “The nurse didn't see four of them go. She just saw the rooms empty and decided they had gone. But suppose one of them—say the man in the first room, because that would be easiest—really went into the doctor's private office and—and waited. And when the doctor came back, killed him. And then—sneaked out somehow?”

“How?” Bill said. “The nurse was in the corridor. If we believe her.”

Pam wanted to know if they had to. Bill shrugged. He said they didn't have to believe anybody. Also, he said, all they had to go on was what people told them, so in the end they had to act as if they believed somebody. He granted that Nurse Spencer's testimony was uncorroborated. Actually, her story of the doctor's leaving might have been pure invention. But in that case, it was also desirable to assume that she had killed him herself or, less probably, was shielding somebody who had.

“Which,” he said, “is something to bear in mind. Not necessarily something to accept. Personally, I think she was telling the truth, as she saw the truth. I think she has a good mind and is probably, therefore, a good reporter. I can be wrong. But—we have to start with the belief that at least part of what we are told is true—that the innocent people concerned are coming as near the truth as they can. Otherwise—well, otherwise we can't start.”

“Actually,” Pam said, “I think Miss Spencer was telling the truth. But couldn't the man—this patient who's hiding in the doctor's office, and has just killed the doctor—couldn't he get out without her seeing him?”