Death of a Tall Man (7 page)

“Funny setup,” he said. “We may need a sketch of it, Barney. O.K.?”

“Sure, Loot,” Detective Barney Jones said.

“A rough, for now,” Weigand told him.

“O.K.,” Barney said.

The precinct lieutenant, two other detectives from the precinct squad and the two photographers went out, in a long file. Weigand waited until they had gone through the waiting room. Then he went to the door. He stood looking into the room, and the people in it looked back at him, worried again, waiting uneasily. He stood for a moment and was about to speak when the door at the end of the room, which had just closed on a police photographer, opened again. Bill Weigand looked down the room at Pam North.

“Is this—” she began, and then she saw Bill.

“This is the place,” Bill Weigand told her, his voice grave and businesslike. “We've been waiting for you, Mrs. North.”

Pam looked, momentarily, very much surprised. She looked hurriedly at Bill's face.

“I—” she began.

“Yes, Mrs. North,” Bill Weigand said, his voice very official. “You're late. However, now that you are here.” His official voice had resignation in it. “Now that you are here, we'll go ahead. In here, Mrs. North.”

Pam, still looking puzzled, came down the room. All the people in the room looked at her. Bill took her arm as she passed him, in a gesture which seemed one of direction.

“Ouch!” Pam said, in a low voice. “Bill!”

Bill herded Pam North in front of him into the private office of the late Dr. Gordon. He closed the door behind them.

“Now!” he said.

“Hello, Mr. Mullins,” Pam said. “Mr. Stein.” She looked at Barney Jones, who looked at her with round, appreciative eyes.

“Jones, miss,” Barney told her. He looked at Bill Weigand.

“The sketch, Barney,” Bill said. “The sketch.”

“Yeah,” Barney Jones said. He went to the door leading to the first examining room, opened it and went through.

“Now, Pam,” Bill said. “How did you do it this time?” His voice was no longer official. It was merely very interested.

Pam told him. She left out the part about the captured taxicab.

“And how did you get in?” Bill said.

“Well,” Pam said, “I'm afraid I used your name. And they seemed to think you'd sent for me, Bill—one of them seemed to think I was a relative or something—of the victim, I mean, not of you—and—”

“Right,” Bill said. “Jerry won't like it.”

“O'Malley won't like it,” Mullins said. He said it gloomily. He closed his eyes and opened them again. “At all,” Mullins said.

Pam had seen the body. Her face was grave, suddenly. She turned to Bill and her face was still grave.

“It was a—an impulse, Bill,” she said. “A sudden thing I do like—like the taxicab. I didn't tell you about that. But coming here was like that. I'm—I'm sorry.”

Bill smiled at her.

“Officially,” he said, “I regard your actions, my dear, with—” He decided not to keep it up. “Actually,” he said, “I'm glad to see you, Pam.”

Mullins shuddered; he made his shudder audible. Somehow he had got directly behind Pam, who jumped.

“Mr. Mullins!” she said. “Don't do that!”

Mullins was embarrassed.

“Look, Mrs. North,” he said, “it wasn't to make you jump. It was just—I was thinking of the inspector.” He paused, considering. “Maybe I shouldn't,” he said. “Only he's sort of a hard guy not to think of, Mrs. North. You know that.”

“She's here, Mullins,” Weigand told him. “I let them think out there that she was—official. A policewoman or something. So she's here. I'll think about the inspector.”

“You won't like it,” Mullins told him. “But it's O.K. with me, Loot.”

Pam looked at Bill and her eyes asked a question.

“They are uneasy,” Bill told her. “Off balance. At least, I hope they are. Because they're the people we have to work on to begin with. The police have taken over—something impersonal has taken over. Not me—not Mullins or Stein—the police. You, Pam—you, unexplained—might have broken it. So I let them think you were police, too.”

“Oh,” Pam said. “Then what do I do?”

“Sit tight,” Bill told her. “Try not to say anything and if you do—” He considered that, rejected it as hopeless. “Try not to say anything,” he repeated. “Listen. And—use that mind of yours all you want to, Pam.” He smiled at her, and this time it was Bill Weigand to Pam North. “Very nice little mind,” he assured her.

His smile went away. He opened the door of the private office, went to the doorway of the waiting room and looked at the men and women in it. The blonde who was, apparently, Mrs. Gordon was sitting up. There was a dazed look on her face. Weigand's eyes went over her. They stopped on Grace Spencer. He made a motion with his head when he saw she was looking at him.

“Will you come this way, please?” he said.

He watched her as she crossed the room toward him. She was tall for a woman and thin, but it was an attractive, straight thinness. She moved well on long, slim legs; her shoulders were broad and square and they were held well back. Her face was faintly brown, as if tan from an earlier, hotter sun still lingered on it. When she reached him, he stood aside to let her pass. In the inner office, she did not look at the body, still sprawled across the desk. She looked beyond the body, out of the window behind the desk. But it was not as if she saw anything through the window.

It was shock, Bill Weigand thought. Rather severe shock. Natural enough, but after all she was a nurse. He looked quickly at Pam. Her eyes were thoughtful as she looked at Grace Spencer.

“I'm sorry about—” Bill said, and his head barely indicated the body. “It sometimes takes a little time for the ambulance—”

Grace Spencer spoke then. Her voice was light, clear, and without expression.

“I understand,” she said. “I quite understand.”

Then, when Bill Weigand indicated a chair, she moved toward it, still moving well but moving with a kind of abstraction. It was almost as if she did not realize she was moving. She sat in the chair with her body straight and her knees together and her hands in her lap. Bill's eyes, not seeming to, watched her hands. Sometimes it is hard to keep hands from moving. Her hands were not moving. But you could guess that only determination kept them quiet. She did not look at Mullins or at Stein; she did not look at Pamela North. She looked at Weigand, and waited. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, without emphasis.

“I'm told you found Dr. Gordon,” he said.

“His body,” she said. “Yes. I found it.”

He waited.

“It was about three o'clock,” she said. “A few minutes before three. The patients had begun to arrive. I—”

She told him of finding the body, of dismissing the patients, of summoning the police. Then she paused and looked at the man from Headquarters and waited. There was an expectant stillness about her. But her concentration had faltered a little as she talked. Her hands were twisting together.

“You acted very properly,” Bill told her. “Now we want to find out everything we can about what happened here today. You understand that, Miss Spencer? You realize why?”

“Dr. Gordon was murdered,” she said. “I do understand.” She let her voice hang an instant at the end of the sentence. Bill Weigand interrupted.

“I'm Lieutenant Weigand,” he said. “From Headquarters. These other men are Detective Sergeant Mullins and Detective Sergeant Stein. This is Mrs. North. She works with us.” He paused. His voice did not alter; it was detached, official. “Frequently,” he said. Pam looked at him and looked away again.

“Thank you,” Grace Spencer said. “You have my name. I am—I was—Dr. Gordon's nurse. I have been with him for three years. I am thirty-two years old and unmarried. I live—” She gave him an address in the Murray Hill district.

Weigand nodded at Mullins, but Mullins had his notebook out. He nodded back.

Grace Spencer began to tell what she knew of the events of Dr. Gordon's day. But almost as soon as she began, they were interrupted. Two men in white came to the door of the office, looked in and then waited. Weigand said, “Just a moment, Miss Spencer,” and conferred with them. He turned back, hesitating a moment. Then he turned to Grace Spencer.

“They're going to remove the body,” he said. “It—it wouldn't be pleasant to watch. I think we might move somewhere else, Miss Spencer. Would you suggest—?”

She suggested one of the examining rooms, but Bill shook his head. They were very small rooms. The waiting room would be better, except for the others there. He preferred—Then he thought of the solution, and smiled faintly. It would be appropriate. He spoke to Sergeant Stein and Stein went into the waiting room. There was the sound of movement there, and in the examining-room corridor. Stein came back, and nodded. The others were now in the examining rooms.

“The younger man and the girl wanted to be together,” he said. “I let them. All right?”

Weigand nodded. After all, if they wanted to plan their evidence, they had already had opportunity. And it was sometimes helpful if witnesses tried to plan their evidence. It so often involved them in contradictions. The human mind was seldom as logical as it tried to make itself.

The questioning of Grace Spencer moved to the waiting room. She sat at Deborah Brooks's desk and Pam sat on one of the sofas near by. Mullins put his notebook on a corner of the desk. Grace Spencer went on with her story. She told of checking on the compensation cases, of relieving Miss Brooks—Deborah Brooks, the receptionist—while the doctor proceeded with his examinations.

“There was nothing unusual about the doctor when he returned from the hospital?” Weigand asked her. “He was much as always when you told him the patients were ready?”

“Yes,” she said.

He told her to go on. She told of Deborah Brooks's return, of her own resumption of her desk in the corridor.

“I sat at my desk so that I would be available if the doctor needed me,” she said, and Mullins took it down.

3

M
ONDAY
, 4:55
P.M. TO
6:05
P.M.

They gave Grace Spencer time, not hurrying her, not speaking. It would be better for her now that the tension had broken into tears. And it might be better for them. Waiting, Bill Weigand looked across at Pam North, and she tried to tell him something with her eyes, with her lips soundlessly forming the words. He could only guess at what she was trying to tell him, but he took a chance on the guess. He nodded. Then he looked back at the slender nurse and watched her shoulders shake under the white uniform. Then, suddenly, she lifted her head and looked at him. Her eyes were wet and her face contorted. He could see the effort which drew her face back into its accustomed lines.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “This is always difficult. I realize that.”

She tried to smile. She made a bad job of it.

“Have you any ideas about it, Miss Spencer?” he said. “About who might have wanted the doctor dead?”

She shook her head. He watched her. He did not think she hesitated before she shook her head, but it was a possibility.

“The back door,” he said. “What you call the ‘back door.' Is it locked?”

She nodded. Then she spoke, trying to keep her voice steady.

“It has—whatever you call them,” she said. “A snap lock. It is locked from outside after you close it. Unless you set it before you go out.”

Weigand nodded.

“And so far as you know,” he said next, “no one had tripped the lock—set the catch so the door could be opened from outside without a key—at any time today?”

She shook her head. Then she looked doubtful.

“Anyone could have,” she said. “The doctor when he went out to lunch. Anyone. There's no way of telling unless you look. The key works just the same.”

“Yes,” Weigand said. “I realize that, Miss Spencer.” He paused a moment. “Do you know of anything around the office that is like a knob—a smooth knob? Or a small, heavy ball? Of metal, perhaps?”

She looked puzzled. Then, as she understood, she said, “oh,” in a voice which was only a breath. He watched her eyes. He thought they reflected a thought; rejected it—or kept it hidden.

“No,” she said, “I don't know of anything like that. Unless—no, I don't know of anything.”

“Unless what?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. “How large would it be?”

Bill Weigand told her it would fit in a hand. Comfortably. So that the fingers could curl most of the way around it. That, he said, was what he thought.

“No,” she said. “I don't know anything like that.”

He thanked her again and asked her to stay. In one of the examining rooms, he suggested.

“Will the lab be all right?” she said. “There—there are some things to do. I may as well do them.”

The lab would be all right, he told her. In an hour or so, he hoped, she could go home.

They watched her cross the reception room and go through the door at its end. Then Pam looked at Bill and waited, and after a moment—during which he looked at the closed door—he looked at her. He asked her what it was.

“She was in love with him,” Pam said. “With the doctor. Wasn't she?”

Bill Weigand nodded slowly. He said he thought she was.

“And now,” he said, “do we quote Oscar Wilde, in unison?”

“About each man, only it would be a woman, and the thing he loves?” Pam said. “And all that? I wouldn't, even if I thought so. Because I don't think it's particularly true. I think it's just something somebody says in a poem. Don't you?”

As a general rule, Bill said, he thought it was something somebody said in a poem. In this instance—