Death of a Tall Man (17 page)

Presumably these men varied—they were tall and short, they had beliefs which were all the more intense for being muddled, they had at some time loved, or hated, according to their capacities; some of them might be alive thirty years from now and some of them might die within a week. In their past lives, or in those they might live, there were, it was conceivable, the seeds of other murders. The police might meet them again, and would not entirely have forgotten them. Their names would be in files, somewhere, and might turn up. They might get themselves run over. Or they might drive through traffic lights. Then it might appear that, once, murder had brushed them.

But, so far as the reports Bill Weigand tossed into the file basket showed, it had this time only brushed them.

That, for now, was the size of it. Bill thought of Dorian. She would be asleep, now, relaxed and quiet. But there would be a dim light in the bedroom, because she always kept a dim light on when he was not at home. If he could go home she would awaken, without surprise—merely opening her greenish eyes slowly—and look at him and then, after a moment of gravity, she would smile and say something to him, using a language which was nobody's business but their own.

“Damn!” Bill Weigand said. He went out of his office, down a corridor and into a small room which could have stood another window. Mullins was asleep on one of the two cots; he was not as ornamental asleep—or in any other condition, come to think of it—as Dorian. Bill undressed, sufficiently, and lay down on the other cot.

Now what the hell did Grace Spencer know? Bill wondered. What had she seen when she returned from lunch and made her check on the empty examining rooms and waited to call the doctor to meet his patients at three? Had she seen something and decided not to tell it, and then, perhaps, changed her mind, too late? Or had the significance of something she had seen impressed itself on her, again, too late? There was the crux of it—there was the crux of both cases.

Sergeant Mullins snored once, resonantly. Bill Weigand said “Damn!” again and turned his back to Mullins and after a little while he went to sleep.

7

T
UESDAY
, 8:30
A.M. TO
12:07
P.M.

The story was prominent in the newspapers. It was prominent in the
Herald-Tribune,
which Mrs. North read. It was prominent in the
Times,
around which Mr. North reached groping for his cup of coffee. Martini tossed a wadded cigarette package into the air, jumped straight up after it and came down twisted, with her tail and back bristling. She made a lunge for it, paused suddenly to scratch her right ear, and then batted it to Pam North's feet. Martini sat and looked at Pam expectantly. Ignored, Martini spoke. She put out a paw and touched Pam's nearest leg.

“Last pair of stockings, Teeney,” Pam said, in a reasonable tone. “Don't.”

“What?” Jerry North said. “Say something?”

“Stockings,” Pam said. “Last pair. The
Herald-Tribune
didn't get North Salem in.”

“No?” Jerry said, pleased. “The
Times
did. New lead.” He read it to her. “Police of Westchester County and New York today were investigating the apparently linked murders of Dr. Andrew Gordon, widely known oculist, slain yesterday in his office in the Medical Chambers, and of Grace Spencer, his nurse, beaten to death hours later at the Gordon home near North Salem, in Westchester County,” Jerry read. He paused. “A mouthful,” he added. “Ouch!”

“What?” Pam said.

“Teeney,” Jerry said. “The
Herald-Trib
hasn't got the nurse?”

“It's an earlier edition,” Pam said, defensively. “We usually get an earlier edition of it. Don't!”

Martini, deciding that Pam's leg offered the greater responsiveness, had returned to it. Martini made comment, deep in her throat, comprehensible only to herself.

“And don't talk Siamese,” Pam said. “Talk cat.”

“Yah,” Martini said, drawing it out.

Nobody answered her. She kicked the wadded cigarette package aside, ran after it, jumped on it, smelled it, and wandered back, talking low in her throat. Still nobody paid attention. Seemingly without effort, almost absent-mindedly, she floated to the top of the breakfast table.

“No!” Pam North said. “No, Martini!”

Martini could ignore with anybody. She moved, delicately, to the cream pitcher, looked quickly at Pam, and hurriedly put her face in it.

“No!” said Pam, explosively.

Martini did everything at once. Her head came out of the pitcher, her fur bristled and she got under way. It was all one movement. It took the cream pitcher with it for an instant, and left the pitcher on its side, cream spreading. Martini landed in the cream she had spilled. Infuriated, she went up and over Jerry North, sailed to the windowsill and bounced to a chest. She stopped there, shook her feet one after another, looked at the Norths with an expression of hurt astonishment, said “Yah!” with anger and began to lick her feet. As she licked them, she began again to make the low, throaty noise.

“I do wish,” Pam said, mopping up the cream, “that you wouldn't let her on the table.”

“
I
wouldn't!” Jerry said, mopping cream tracks off his shoulder with a napkin. “
I
—” He ended, baffled. He tried again. “Listen,” he said, “it was your leg she was at. Not mine.”

“No discipline,” Pam said. “That's the real trouble. No discipline at all. Poor Teeney.”

She went over to Teeney, who stopped licking her left hind foot, but remained in position. “Poor Teeney,” Pam said. “Nobody tells her anything.”

She stroked Martini's head. Martini purred briefly and called attention to the fact that she still had a foot to lick. There would be time later, Martini indicated, for head rubbing.

“Which reminds me,” Pam said, coming back and sitting down at the table again. “What was Grace Spencer going to tell?”

Jerry put his
Times
down, looked at the empty toast plate, said, “oh” mildly, and pointed out that they did not know that Grace Spencer had been going to tell anybody anything.

“As good as,” Pam said. “Otherwise why?”

“Why go there?” Jerry said. “Or why killed?”

“They're both the same thing,” Pam told him. “Part of the same thing. She remembered something and was going to tell Bill—no, she didn't know Bill was there, did she?”

“I shouldn't think so,” Jerry said.

“Then Dan Gordon,” Pam said. “Or the wife. So that they could take it up with the police. What?”

“She saw young Gordon come back with his father between two and three,” Jerry said, promptly. “She saw Mrs. Gordon having lunch with a gangster and paying him money. She saw somebody—Smith—say, carrying the doctor out of the last examining room, and began to think, later, that there was something a little strange about it. She saw Debbie having lunch with Westcott and urging him to do something to—I can't finish that one.”

“To kill Dr. Gordon, who was keeping her under hypnosis for his own evil ends,” Pam said. “Anybody can finish any of them if you want to make it easy. What did she really have to tell?”

Jerry discovered cream that he had missed, and rubbed at it, dampening his napkin in his glass of water. He shook his head.

“Two times,” Pam said. “When he was going out, before lunch. After she came back from lunch and before she found the body. One or the other.”

Jerry shook his head again.

“Any time between the doctor's return from the hospital and the time she found the body,” he corrected. “Something she saw or heard, either one. You can't shut out the time she was at lunch. It's quite possible she ran across something then.”

Pam considered; she nodded. He was making it harder, she said. But you couldn't get away from it.

“Actually,” she said, “you know what I think?”

“Good God, no,” Jerry said.

Pam ignored this.

“I still think it was something she saw when he was leaving,” she said.

“I know,” Jerry told her. “Because people who are about to be murdered look different from people who aren't. It—shows in their faces.”

“Well,” Pam said, “I should think they'd be worried.” She looked at Jerry and smiled quickly and shook her head before he could speak. “No,” she said. “Really. Because murders are the end of something else, almost always. They don't just—just come out of a clear sky. They come out of circumstances—worrying circumstances. And the victim is worried too, just as much as the murderer.” She paused. “Oh,” she said, “differently, I suppose. But you don't just get up all bright and cheery in the morning, all's right with the world, and get murdered at eight
A.M.
with the orange juice.”

Jerry said he saw what she meant, although he thought her example badly chosen.

“Everybody's worried in the morning,” he said. “It's the natural state of man. Particularly at what would be about seven thirty. Unless he didn't take his shower.”

“What?” Pam said. “Oh. That's frivolous.”

All their guessing was frivolous, Jerry told her. Any guessing when you had nothing to go on was frivolous.

“And,” he said, “I've got to see an author about a contract. You know what they want now? Control of reprints.” He stood up and sighed. “Authors used to be milder in the old days.”

“And, to be honest, broker,” Pam said. “Did you ever hear of a publisher dying in a garret?”

“Thousands,” Jerry assured her. Pam looked doubtful.

“Anyway,” she said, “I think that Dr. Gordon probably looked worried, because he was going to be murdered. Or was in a hurry, as if he had an appointment. Or said something that didn't mean anything at the time, but did afterward.”

“Like ‘we who are about to die'—?” Jerry said.

Pam stood up, too.

“Go see about the contract,” she said.

Jerry came around the table and kissed her. He said she tasted of jam. “Very nice,” he said, consideringly. “Strawberry.”

“Black raspberry,” Pam told him. “Lunch?”

Jerry said he would call her up.

“You'll be here?” he said, getting his hat off the sofa.

Pam North looked vague, suddenly.

“Look,” she said, “suppose I call you? About noon? And then we can go to Charles early, because otherwise they're full up and it's so embarrassing for Hugo. And we have to have two drinks while we're waiting and sometimes I wonder whether they're good for us.”

Jerry looked at her, not without suspicion.

“Look,” he said, “you're not going to be here. Right?”

Pam told him he sounded like Bill.

“Listen, Pam,” Jerry said, “wouldn't it be fun just to let Bill do it? For—for a change? Instead of leading with that agreeable chin?”

“Jerry,” Pam said. “You
can
say nice things.”

She kissed him, and this time he did not think of jam. He was still not thinking of jam when he remembered, as he got out of the elevator, that Pam had not, even remotely, agreed not to lead with her chin.

It had been hardly any trouble at all to get the names and addresses she wanted from Sergeant Mullins, although he talked at some length, and anxiously, about the inspector. Pam had had a twinge of conscience at circumventing Bill Weigand, but she paid no attention to it and obediently went away. She had more trouble circumventing Martini, who, chagrined that Jerry had escaped while she was giving a final polish to the right rear leg, was determined to block the escape of the one who smelled different, but did supply food when sharply spoken to. Pam backed out again—and almost bumped into a very surprised young man she had never seen before—but she caught Martini in the air as the little cat sprang, put her back and closed the door firmly after pushing out of it one hopeful, enquiring paw. This time, however, there was no taxicab. She waited ten minutes on the curb of Sixth Avenue, under a sign which called it “Avenue of the Americas,” and then was forced to take a bus.

Four of the addresses she had were in Manhattan, one was in Harlem and the sixth was—distantly, she feared—in Brooklyn. She would take the Manhattan ones first and then Harlem and then, if her strength and time lasted, the distant Brooklynite. The first, she decided, was the one in West Fiftieth, beyond Ninth Avenue.

It was a tenement and the one she wanted was on the fifth floor. It was a long way up; above the third floor the narrow wooden stairway sagged away from the wall, so that walking up it one instinctively hugged the wall and fought against a tendency to slip outward. “Some day,” Pam thought, “fire will go up these stairs and—and spread out at the top.” She shivered. The fifth floor was the top; that would be where the fire would mushroom. The air was staler there than it had been below where a sometimes-opened door let dead air out. But there was a glimmer from a dirty skylight above the stairwell—a skylight ideally situated, Pam thought, to provide a draft for the fire. She picked out one of the doors and knocked, and the door opened almost immediately. At first there seemed no reason for this response, and then Pam looked down.

“Hello, dear,” she said, looking into round brown eyes, “is your father Mr. Dunnigan?”

“I'm Mabel,” the little girl said, each word formed carefully on small lips. “Mabel Dunnigan. Who are you?”

“I'm Pamela North,” Mrs. North said.

“That's a funny name,” Mabel told her. “Goodbye.”

She started to shut the door.

“You mean ‘hello,' dear,” Mrs. North said. “Hello, Mabel.”

“I mean goodbye,” Mabel said. “They're different woids. Goodbye.”

“Words,” Pam said. “But I want to see your father, Mabel. I—”

A woman came out of a door into the inner corridor of the flat. She picked Mabel up and held her under an arm. The woman was taller than Pam by a good deal, and heavier by more. She looked down.