Murder by the Book (20 page)

“You told her about Dr. Piersal,” Jefferson said.

“Yes. And we both decided that it would be better if she—well, if she went to Miami. I said I'd try to rent a car and that I'd let her know if I could, and when I'd pick her up. And then—”

Then, she said, she had walked back to the hotel and gone up and changed and—

“Mrs. Payne,” Jefferson said, “it didn't occur to you—not any time—to call the police? Tell them you had found a man stabbed to death? Particularly as you'd satisfied yourself your mother wasn't the one who had stabbed him?”

“When I got back,” she said, “there were men at the end of the pier. And police cars in front. So the police knew. There wasn't anything I could tell them.”

So she had arranged to rent the car, and telephoned her mother to be ready, and picked her up and—

“And the rest,” she said, “was just the way I said it was. She checked in at the Columbus and we had lunch and I drove around and then came back.”

She had, Pam realized, been speaking with growing confidence. It was as if she had been walking in fog, and come to a place where the fog was thinner, and walked more briskly, and came finally to a place where the air was clear.

Jefferson said he saw. He said, “Far's you know, your mother's at the Columbus now?”

“Why,” she said, “yes. Anyway, I suppose she is. Unless—sometimes she does things on impulse.”

Jefferson said, “Sure.” He said, “I'll just give them a ring and—” He stood up and looked down at the girl.

He turned, and started to walk away. And then Rebecca Payne said, “It's no good, is it? She won't be there. They'll tell you that. And—that she never registered there.”

Jefferson came back and sat down again.

“All right, Mrs. Payne,” Ronald Jefferson said. “Want to give it another try?”

“She didn't kill him,” Rebecca said. “I know she didn't. She—she said I was crazy to think she had. She said she often got up early and went for a swim. That was all it was. I know that was all it was.”

And she doesn't know, Pam North thought. She doesn't know at all.

15

Chief Deputy Sheriff Ronald Jefferson had left, abruptly, to find a telephone. He had said, “Wait here, will you?” to the Norths, to Rebecca Payne. They had waited there, in the shady corner of the wide, long porch. Rebecca had put her hands, again, over her eyes, her fingers pressed hard against her forehead.

Four stories now, Pam thought, and each admitting something explicitly, or by implication, denied in the one which had preceded it. A drive alone to Miami, for the ride only, for distraction and for “thinking things out”; the same drive, equally innocent, with her mother, at her mother's request; once more a drive across the bridges, over varicolored waters, but this time with knowledge, and almost certainly with fear, as companions in the car. And now, this last.

There was not much difference in the last—only the vital difference which changed understandable evasion into flight. It had not taken the dark girl many words to have her other “try at it.” She had spoken in a monotone, looking at nobody, looking toward the ocean.

It had been as she said until she reached the motel. Then—

“She wasn't there,” Rebecca said, in the dull voice, the voice without inflection. “I waited—oh, fifteen minutes. Perhaps longer. Then she came. She was wearing a bathing suit. It was wet. She said she had wakened early and gone for a dip, and then had breakfast. Only …”

She paused, then. After a moment, Jefferson said, “You didn't believe her, Mrs. Payne?”

“It …” the dark girl said, and paused again. “It wasn't like her. She almost never got up early. As for going for what she called a ‘dip.'” Again she stopped. This time she resumed without prompting. “She's been sick,” she said. “Her mind—it could have been more serious than they thought. If that was it—if she's really sick that way—they couldn't do anything to her, could they?”

There were things “they” could do, and would do if what Rebecca feared, was not quite saying, was true.

“It would be taken into account,” Jefferson said. “You—what did you say to her when she came in?”

Rebecca had told her mother that Dr. Piersal was dead, and how he had died. Her mother had seemed shocked.

“Then it—what I was afraid of—got through to her and she was—seemed—incredulous and—and very angry. She said I must be crazy to think a thing like that. That I, not she, should be—she said—‘locked up somewhere.'”

“And, specifically, denied she had killed the doctor?”

“Over and over. With—with a kind of violence. It—she got more and more violent.”

“You didn't believe her?”

“I …” She paused for a longer time, and looked at nobody. “I was afraid,” she said. “I didn't know what to believe. Can't you understand how I felt? How—how dreadful it was?”

“Yes,” Jefferson said. “You were the one who suggested she get away?”

Rebecca nodded her head, still not looking at him, not looking at the Norths.

“At first she said she wouldn't. That she had nothing to run away from, had not done anything. She said that—both things—several times. I tried to calm her down. Said I knew she hadn't. But that, anyway, it might be better. I said, ‘It'll just be a mess if you stay here. There'll be all sorts of bothering things.' I told her it would be upsetting and that there would be stories in the newspapers. Stories dragging up everything. I said there would be no use in going through all that. She calmed down finally and said that perhaps I was right.”

She had got the car; they had driven to Miami. They had even had lunch at the “Top of the Columbus.” But Mrs. Coleman had not checked in at the Columbus. By that time, Rebecca had persuaded her mother to go back to New York.

“I pretended I tried to get plane reservations,” Rebecca said. “Said I couldn't. I don't know whether I could have or not but—but on planes there's a passenger-list. People's names.”

She had, instead, tried both railroads, and found a bedroom available on the afternoon Seaboard train. There had been, then, a momentary hitch. “It sounds ridiculous,” Rebecca said. “She said she couldn't possibly ride in a bedroom. That I should know better than to expect her to. If I couldn't get a drawing room, well, she'd go in a compartment. But she wasn't going to be—‘cooped up,' she said—in a bedroom.” The girl paused. “It was a double bedroom,” she said. “Meant for two people.”

It had taken a good deal of persuasion, many repetitions of how much of a nuisance it would be to be involved in the investigation of Dr. Piersal's death. But finally Mrs. Coleman had consented to the cooping up. Rebecca had waited until the long silvery train pulled out of the station, on the chance her mother might at the last minute change her mind.

“Then I did the things I said I did,” Rebecca said. “Drove around, had my hair done in one of the Miami Beach hotels, came back here—”

It had been then that, abruptly, Jefferson had stood up and said, “Wait here, please,” and gone into the hotel. He was gone about ten minutes.

“Got that friend of yours,” he said, to the Norths. “Seemed the quickest way. There isn't much time to get organized. You want to say anything more, Mrs. Payne?”

“That's the way it was,” she said, without taking her hands down from her face.

“You got your hair done, I suppose, in the hope the beachboy wouldn't recognize you.”

“I suppose so,” she said. “Does it make any difference?”

“I guess not,” Jefferson said. “If you have any plans to leave town—”

“I haven't any plans for anything,” the girl said. “Have I told you enough, now?”

“For now,” Jefferson said, and the girl got up and walked down the long porch and into the hotel.

“They'll meet the train,” Jefferson said, and sat down and lighted a cigarette. “Pick Mrs. Coleman up for questioning. If she hasn't got off the train earlier. That train stops a lot of places. She could have got off damn near anywhere. You think she told the truth, finally?”

The Norths looked at each other. Jerry shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know,” Pam said. “So many … variations.”

“She could,” Jefferson said, “have seen her mother stab him. Or not actually seen that, but seen her mother near—maybe on the pier, running.”

“I suppose so,” Pam said. “What happened to Bradley? His alibi stand up?”

“No,” Jefferson said. “But it was for something else, apparently. A small-time con game. And, damn it to hell—I'm sorry ma'am—the con game gave him an alibi for the killing.”

“Inconvenient,” Jerry said.

“The double-crossing little so-and-so,” Jefferson said. “Come to that, she could have killed him herself. Mrs. Payne. And dragged her mother into it, not the other way round.”

“She's here,” Pam pointed out. “She didn't run.”

“Could be bluff. She did a lot of lying.”

There was no arguing that, and neither North tried to argue it.

“How,” Pam said, and now she was regarding the ocean, and might have been talking to herself, “did Mrs. Coleman know where to find him? Know he'd be at the end of the pier?”

“He'd be in plain sight,” Jefferson said. “While he was standing up, anyway.”

“To anyone here, staying at the hotel,” Pam said. “Who happened to be up and about. Or who was looking for him. But she didn't stay here, did she? Walk blocks at the crack of dawn in a bathing suit on the chance that he might be out at the end of the pier? Or anywhere but asleep in bed?”

“She could have told him,” Jefferson said. “Maybe they met at the dog races and he—oh, told her about these pelicans. I don't know. Anyway, it looks like she did know.” He paused. “Somehow,” he said.

Pam nodded her head, but continued to look at the ocean. Jerry looked at his wife. Whatever was on the tip of her mind was troubling it again, he decided.

“Hippocratic,” Pam said absently and apparently to the Atlantic Ocean.

Jefferson looked at Jerry North quickly, obviously seeking translation. Jerry looked at his wife, and she looked at the Atlantic. They had, momentarily, achieved stalemate. Jerry ran fingers through his hair, without profit. He said, “Yes, Pam?”

“Oh,” she said, “nothing. It kept coming out ‘hypocritical' but I knew that wasn't right, of course.”

Jerry searched his mind quickly. He said, “Something in a crossword?”

Pam turned and looked at him, in evident surprise. She said, “Of course not, Jerry,” and watched him raise baffled shoulders. “It's nothing,” Pam said. “Just something I couldn't quite remember, and almost could. It gets to be a kind of itching.”

Jerry knew the feeling. He said, “Oh,” and then, “Was that what was on the tip of your mind?”

Pam looked toward, rather than at, him. It was clear she was re-examining her mind.

“I think so,” she said, after some seconds of examination. “But only part of it. It feels like …” She paused. “Like a symbol of it,” she said. “The oath that doctors take, you know.”

Jerry said “Yes,” and Jefferson, while still looking puzzled, looked relieved.

“Probably it will come to me,” Pam said, reassuring everybody.

They waited briefly as was no more than polite.

“Eventually,” Pam said.

Ronald Jefferson said, “Well.” He said that he'd better go back to the office and stand by in case the New York police picked up Mrs. Coleman and—And then he stopped abruptly, and now it was he who looked abstractedly at the Atlantic. Then he sat down again. He said, “I've just had the craziest damfool idea. Suppose they did it together. And that Mrs. Coleman was never here at all.”

He looked at them. They looked at each other. It was Jerry who said, “But—at the motel they—”

“Look,” Jefferson said. “I said it's crazy. But, mothers and daughters look alike, sometimes. According to this description your friend wired, Mrs. Coleman is slim and has black hair. And so's her daughter. O.K.?”

“Well—” Pam said.

“All right,” Jefferson said, “like I said before, it's crazy. But—suppose they decide, together, to knock off the doctor. Mrs. Coleman gets out of this booby—this sanitarium—and goes to her apartment. But she leaves it. A week ago. You can go a hell of a long ways in a week, if you want to hide out. Mrs. Payne comes down here. She checked in Wednesday. Spotted Dr. Piersal. They'd already known he'd be here. So, Friday she puts on suitable clothes—the kind a woman would wear to fly down in—maybe something of her mother's she's brought along for the purpose—and drives to the airport and waits until the morning plane comes in and parks her car and gets a cab and goes to The Bougainvillia and checks in as her mother. Wouldn't be any great trick after that to be her mother there and herself here, because nobody pays any attention to where hotel guests are. I mean, the management doesn't.”

He paused, and looked expectant.

It was Jerry's turn to say, “Well.” He added, “I suppose it could be done, but—”

“Kills Dr. Piersal,” Jefferson said. “Gets the car. Checks out of the motel as Mrs. Coleman. Drives—”

“The bellboy—” Pam said.

“It would be easy enough to fix the bellboy,” Jefferson said. “Be in the bathroom, say, when he comes for the bags. Tell him to take them down and put them in the car. Go down through the motel—you can do that, too, there—and come through and get in the car—Oh, it could be worked. Drive up to Miami and just kill enough time and come back and—well, and let us drag this rigmarole out of her, Making it hard but not too hard. So now—now we're chasing mama all over the place, but mama's already holed up, with a nice new name. If we do catch up with mama—well, she's not mentally responsible. As Mrs. Payne went to the trouble to mention. If we don't—well, when she figures it's safe, Mrs. Payne joins her and—”