Killing the Goose (14 page)

Two young women murdered; their names and stories in the morning newspapers. But grouped only by newspaper makeup, as representing similar tragedies, and not written together as facets of a single crime. And not played prominently, because of the war. And with the account of Frances McCalley's murder much shorter than the account of Ann Lawrence's, and run under it like an afterthought. For reasons which would surprise no newspaper reader and displease no amateur of murder. The newspapers did not, as yet, suspect any link but coincidence.

There were two possibilities, as to that. The newspapers might be right, in spite of the facts nobody had told them. The facts were insufficient proof of anything; two girls might know each other and be killed the same day and their deaths be unconnected. It was not, of necessity, an orderly world. That much Weigand was prepared to admit, as theory. But he was not prepared to act upon it, because he believed the newspapers were not right. He believed the two had died within a single pattern of crime.

“Sit down, Mullins,” he said. He pushed cigarettes toward the sergeant, who sat at the end of the desk. Mullins said, “O.K., Loot,” and took a cigarette. He took a lighter out of his pocket, opened it and twirled steel against flint. Fire appeared.

“Mrs. North,” Mullins said, taking a long drag.

“What?” Weigand said.

Mullins waved the lighter.

“Gave it to me,” he said. “This. For my birthday.”

Weigand said he didn't know Mullins had had a birthday.

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “I had a birthday. Mrs. North gave me this. I don't know where she got it, nowadays.”

“I do,” Weigand said. “Don't use it when Jerry's around, Sergeant. He gave it to her. She could never remember to fill it.”

“Oh,” Mullins said.

Conversation languished momentarily.

“Listen, Loot,” Mullins said after a time, “who—?”

“I don't know,” Bill Weigand said.

Mullins looked disappointed. He looked more disappointed when Weigand said that eight men and women who had dined at Ann Lawrence's and the four or five who had dropped in later would be assigned to the Mullins province. Mullins was delegated to think about them. Mullins said “O.K.” without enthusiasm.

“Routine,” Weigand said.

“Ain't it?” Mullins agreed.

So far, Weigand said, it all was. He talked for Mullins to listen and advise, getting facts straight in his own mind. He drew another sheet of paper to him and wrote names on it.

He wrote the name “Lawrence”—he printed it clearly as a headline. He wrote “1—3:30,” which indicated the time limits between which, on medical evidence obtained during the night, she had probably been killed. He wrote “skull,” to fill out the record.

That was what they knew. He wrote down “John Elliot.”

Elliot, he told Mullins, who nodded, was still the most likely, if for the moment you arbitrarily rubbed out his alibi. Mrs. Pennock would swear he had quarreled with the girl; she would swear there had been a scuffle. Elliot had come around the next day to keep an appointment with the dead girl, but that would be an obvious step for an intelligent man to take. Elliot had hit a policeman and escaped, which was the obvious thing for a guilty man to do. But it was not—and here was an evident flaw in logic—the obvious thing for an intelligent man to do.

“Hell,” Mullins said. “Sometimes guys is bright and the next minute they ain't. You know that, Loot.”

“Right,” Weigand said. As Mullins indicated, it was an abstract point which faded as you examined it. But the alibi did not fade. On evidence they couldn't, at the moment, go behind, Ann was alive after Elliot had left her. She died while Elliot was sitting in Dan Beck's comfortable apartment, talking comfortably with Dan Beck.

“Unless this Beck guy is lying,” Mullins pointed out.

“Why?” Weigand asked.

Mullins shook his head. Then he brightened.

“Why not?” he said.

Weigand shook his head this time. He didn't know; he didn't know either way. He tapped his desk softly.

“All right,” he said. “I'll take Beck off your list. That leaves only eleven or twelve. Take Beck off, unless something comes up. That leaves ten or eleven. I'm making things easy for you.”

“Yeah,” Mullins said, without conviction. “O.K., Loot.” He ruminated. “You know, Loot,” he said, “it ud better be Elliot. On account of if it isn't, who have we got?”

Weigand shrugged. Mullins had put a finger on it. Or call it a thumb. They suffered from a paucity of everything, except the obvious. And Dan Beck's alibi stood in the way of the obvious.

“Somehow,” Mullins went on, pressing his point, “this guy Elliot got around Beck. Maybe it was a phonograph.”

Weigand looked at Mullins, as sometimes he looked at Mrs. North.

“Maybe what was a phonograph, for God's sake?” he said.

“The voice,” Mullins said. “That Beck heard on the telephone. Maybe it was a transcription, sort of. Of the Lawrence girl's voice.”

It was, Weigand pointed out, quite a transcription. It had carried on a conversation with Beck. It was not a transcription; it was a mechanical miracle.

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “You got something there, Loot.” He paused for a word. “A flaw,” he said, finding it. “But maybe he did it some other way. Maybe—maybe he fooled with a clock somehow.”

Weigand looked at Mullins with growing suspicion. He accused Mullins of having been reading books. Mullins, indignant, shook his head. He said, “What I read is newspapers, Loot. And reports on guys who had dinner with the Lawrence girl before she was cooled.”

“Right,” Weigand said, dismissing it. “Sorry, Sergeant. So we have Elliot, if we can break his alibi. Opportunity; motive. We have Mrs. Pennock. Opportunity. No motive we know of. We have Franklin Martinelli. Motive, possibly. Opportunity—possibly. And there's this to be said for Martinelli—he's violent. If he killed it would be—convulsively.”

Mullins considered the word and nodded.

“Now,” Weigand went on, after a moment, “for the other murder. We have Martinelli to begin with. Motive—yes, if he is lying about a reconciliation between him and the girl, and if he killed her he would be. Opportunity—not if his alibi is good. And his alibi is pretty good and it doesn't depend on somebody's telling the truth, unless—” He broke off, contemplating.

“Unless, of course,” he said, “the Harper girl is lying. Come to think of it, his alibi does depend on the truth of what somebody says. It's good—if he
was
coming out of the restaurant when the Harper girl went in. But—”

Mullins was looking negative. He shook his head heavily.

“She wants him to fry,” he said. “She wouldn't help him out of anything. If she saw him frying she'd think it was funny as hell.”

“Or,” Weigand pointed out, “she wants you to believe that. But suppose she's just acting you a little play, with Martinelli helping her. Suppose they worked it out between them, he to kill Frances and she to give him an alibi. Not an obvious alibi—one that would look accidental and unwilling. What do you think of that, Mullins?”

“Lousy,” Mullins said, with emphasis. “Why?”

“Because they both wanted to get rid of Frances,” Weigand said. “Because they wanted to get together and she was in their way. Maybe she was going to have a baby. Maybe she and Martinelli were really married.”

“Hell,” Mullins said. “It's you who's been reading books, Loot.”

Weigand paid no attention to him, but tapped on the desk.

“Or,” he said, “she might have killed Frances herself and alibied the boy without knowing it. Because Frances was leaving her for the boy, before you come in with your ‘why?' How do you like that one, Mullins?”

Mullins was not so quick, this time. Finally he nodded slowly and said he liked it better.

“But still not very good,” he said. “Who else?”

Weigand lifted his shoulders and let them fall again. Almost anybody in New York, he admitted. He pushed the papers back on his desk and looked at them. He crumpled the one on which he had started to write and dropped the ball he made into the wastebasket.

“The fact is,” he said, “we haven't begun. And we'd better.”

“Yeah,” Mullins agreed. He stood up. “Maybe,” he said suddenly, “Elliot killed both of them. Maybe they had something on him we don't know about so he killed them both. Because, Loot, when you come to think about it—
he was the only one we've come across who knew them both.
Martinelli just knew
about
the Lawrence girl, the way I see it.” He stopped and stared down at the lieutenant. “What was the matter with the McCalley girl when she was sick that time?” he demanded. “Did you think about that, Loot?”

Weigand looked at Sergeant Mullins for a moment without answering. His eyes closed a little, reflectively. He was frank, and said he hadn't.

“But,” he said, “I think we'd better find out, Sergeant. I think it might be interesting to know.”

The telephone rang, and Weigand scooped it up.

IX.
Wednesday, 9:40 A.M. to 10:55 A.M.

Roughy put her forepaws on the edge of the bathtub and stared in at Pamela North with round, interested and unblinking eyes. Roughy spoke at length. Pamela North, comfortably stretched at full length under steamy water, regarded Roughy.

“Why?” Pam said. “Why, Roughy?”

Roughy always answered when spoken to. She answered now and Pam North listened with every evidence of close attention.

“You had breakfast,” Pam told Roughy. “Hours ago. Don't you remember?”

Roughy spoke at greater length. Her voice, which was attractive without being melodious—peculiarly without being melodious—was beyond question the voice of a Siamese cat. But Roughy was as unquestionably a small gray and white cat with nothing in appearance to suggest that she was a product of miscegenation. Roughy talked at length and, it seemed to Pam, with growing alarm.

“It's all right, Roughy,” Pam assured her. “I won't drown. I can get out at any time. See?”

To prove it, Pam lifted one leg out of water and waved it slightly. Roughy followed the movement of the leg with her round eyes. Pam let it subside into the water. Roughy watched it disappear, looked into Pam's face, and wept.

“Of course,” Pam admitted, “I have been in here a long time. But I really can get out, Roughy.”

Roughy seemed to doubt it. The whole business puzzled Roughy. She looked with what Pam thought must be anxiety at the water. Then she reached down and touched the water gently with a white paw. She made a surprised and incredulous sound, withdrew the paw, looked at it, shook it and began to lick it hurriedly.

“I'm thinking, Roughy,” Pam told her. “That's why I stay so long. Really.” The last was said with rather forced conviction. “I'm trying to think who killed the girls. Who do you think, Roughy?”

Roughy looked at her mistress and made a small, purely formal sound of acknowledgment. She lifted her paws from the edge of the tub and lowered them to the floor. She looked around the bathroom as if she had never seen it before, turned slightly and floated to the top of the clothes hamper.

“You're the best jumper we've ever had,” Pam told her. “By far.”

Roughy looked down at Pam from this new vantage point with fixed interest. It was so fixed as to be slightly discomforting. Pam looked away and tried to forget the small, disapproving cat. It was, Pam thought, really time she got out of the tub. It had been an hour, anyway, since Jerry had gone, and she had really done nothing in all that hour but take a bath. Probably, she thought, it constituted a record. Probably if she stayed under much longer she would dissolve. On the other hand—

Pam could, she found, reach the hot water faucet with the toes of her right foot and, with a little effort, turn it. She turned it, letting more hot water flow into the tub. The new hot water lapped her toes and advanced. By the time the line of demarcation reached her ankles, her toes were too hot. She turned the hot water off with the toes of her left foot, relaxed a moment and suddenly sat up. She hesitated a moment indecisively, decided that the time had really come and got out of the tub. She flicked water from her wet fingers at Roughy, who made a small, startled sound, bounced from the clothes hamper and made a soft thud on the tiles. Pam opened the door and Roughy rubbed against it purring, looking up at her mistress with deep emotion. She rubbed against the edge of the door and did not go out but only curved indecisively. Pam pushed her with the toes of one foot and Roughy collapsed suddenly, lying luxuriously on her back. Pam rubbed her abstractedly with a foot and Roughy expressed ecstasy. Pam stopped, and Roughy protested at length. The foot did not return and, after a moment, Roughy rolled effortlessly onto her feet, listened with apparently shocked intensity to some inaudible sound and dashed headlong out of the bathroom. Pam closed the door behind her and toweled herself, wondering about cats. Anybody who could fully understand cats, Pam thought, ought to have no trouble at all with murders, which were, after all, customarily done by humans. And no human, certainly, was half so intricate as a cat.

The trouble was, of course, that nobody understood cats, probably including other cats. So it got you nowhere.

She turned her mind with resolution to the problem of murder. It worried her to discover that she had no theories, except theories about people who had not killed Ann Lawrence and Frances McCalley. She did not think that Franklin Martinelli had killed them, or that John Elliot had—not really, although there was something funny there—or that Mrs. Florence Pennock, the housekeeper, had. (Although there was something funny there, too.) She thought that there was also something funny about Cleo Harper, but she did not really think that Cleo had murdered the two girls. It was all very negative.