Murder Comes First (8 page)

“We certainly seem to have lots of cats,” Pam said, absently, and the hacker said, “Huh, lady? Whatcha say?”

“Nothing,” Pam said, and gave him the address.

“I said,” Pam said, feeling she had been rude, “that we have lots of cats.”

“Yeah?” the hacker said. “Well, s'long as you like 'em.” It appeared he did not.

“Probably,” Pam said, “you like dogs.”

“Nope,” the hacker said. “Can't stand dogs.” He said nothing further until they had stopped at the restaurant in the East Fifties and Pam had paid and tipped him. “Don't like horses, either,” he said then, and turned contentedly out in front of a truck, which swore at him. He swore back.

Barton Sandford was standing just inside the door, by the hat-checking counter on the left. He was even taller than Pam expected; he was hatless and in tweeds. It was not easy to think of him bent, in a laboratory, over—whatever was bent over in a laboratory. Pam was told that this
was
good of her, and said “Not at all.” She was asked if she would like a drink, and said “By all means” in a tone unintentionally surprised.

“A martini, please,” Pam North said. “Very dry, if they can, and with lemon peel. But just squeezed, not in.”

There was a miniature cocktail lounge, a dining room beyond it and, from the dining room, stairs leading upward to a second floor. A maître d', who seemed to know Sandford, pulled chairs for them at a corner table in the cocktail lounge, delivered their drinks there. The drinks were not too dry and the lemon peel was in them. Pam was resigned and thirsty, thought that one can only dream of perfection, and drank. Sandford drank. He repeated that this was damn good of her. Pam repeated that she was afraid she could be of no help.

“Just a man,” she said. “A—oh, a kind of medium man, very quick. On the other side of the street, where you wouldn't have noticed him, probably. I wouldn't have, except that when you went into the house, he first stopped and then—well, disappeared. Into an areaway, apparently.”

Barton Sandford listened very carefully, as if he were hearing this for the first time; as if, from these bare details, he could make a picture, and an explanation. He nodded, as Pam finished, and said it was the damnedest thing. His pleasant face was troubled.

He shook his head, his eyes earnestly meeting Pam North's. He said that was the hell of it.

“I'm trying to find some sort of explanation,” he said. “Any sort. Grasping at—anything. Bothering people. You, for example.”

Pam avoided saying “Not at all.”

“You see,” he said, “after I left last night, I remembered about you and Mr. North. You—work with the police sometimes? I've read in the papers—”

Pam had given up trying to explain their status, which seemed to her at all times anomalous. “Working with the police” sounded as if they were informers of some sort. Yet, they did work—at least, they did much associate—with a policeman. It was—

“I suppose we do,” Pam said. “In a way.”

They sipped, while Sandford apparently considered.

“You see,” he said then, “things like this don't surprise you, don't seem—well, so damned impossible. You probably have gotten so you expect strange things to happen.”

“Got not gotten” Pam automatically corrected in her mind, and then said that she supposed in a way they had. For some years, anyway, things had happened.

That, Sandford told her, was precisely it. To him, nothing had, so that now it was all unreal.

“You jog along for years,” he said, “and nothing happens. Nobody pays any attention to you; you do an ordinary sort of job. Any day might be any day. You see what I mean?”

Pam nodded, raised her glass, found it empty, put it down again. Sandford, without looking at him, motioned to the maître d' and then to the empty glasses.

“I work in this laboratory,” Sandford said. “Nothing important. Research, but not important. Not big stuff. I go home at night and Sally's there. Maybe we go to a movie, maybe we go to the theater. We've got a little more money than most. That is, Sally has. But it's all—ordinary. You never stop to think about it much. You see?”

Pam nodded that she saw.

“Then it goes smash,” he said. “Sally goes away somewhere and I'm damned if I know why. To ‘think things out.' What the hell do you suppose she meant?”

He seemed to expect an answer. Pam could say only that women got that way, sometimes.

“Sally?” he said, as if Pam knew her and could tell. But now he did not wait for an answer. “Then Grace gets killed,” he said. “Then you say somebody is following me.
Me
, for God's sake?”

The drinks came. Sandford drank most of his, seeming not to know what he did.

“It drives you nuts,” he said. “I've got to find out what's going on.”

There seemed to Pam North to be a kind of desperate anxiety in his voice; she felt he was trying to drag something out of her. But she felt there was nothing further in her to be dragged out.

“Apparently,” she said, “this man waited in the areaway for—oh, ten minutes. Fifteen. Smoked a couple of cigarettes. Then went. Anyway, that's what Mullins thought.”

He said it didn't make any sense.

“It wasn't the police,” Pam said. “I'm sure of that. Actually, Mr. Sandford—” She paused and after a moment he said, “Yes?”

“I suppose the most likely thing,” Pam said, and spoke slowly, “is that your wife actually wants a divorce and has somebody following you to—well, to try to get evidence.”

Sandford finished his drink. Then he spoke decisively.

“I don't believe that,” he said. “She couldn't do a thing like that. Anyway, she—” he paused. “She knows better,” he finished.

He had, Pam thought, at least convinced himself, probably because he wanted it that way. She finished her drink, thinking that all the same, the man probably had been hired by Mrs. Barton Sandford. She declined another drink, and they went up the stairs to the second floor dining room. She felt that Sandford continued to expect something more from her, some assuagement of his uneasiness, some explanation of what had happened. She hadn't any.

“The FBI isn't after you?” she said, after they had ordered.

He laughed at that, said, “Not me” and then sobered quickly, urged another drink. Pam resisted temptation by a narrow margin.

They talked, then, inevitably, about the murder of Grace Logan. Sandford wanted to know if Pam's aunts were really worried, or had cause to worry.

“I was around to see Paul this morning,” he said. “Rallying round. The kid's broken up, of course. The cook, Hilda, told both of us about the Misses Whitsett at breakfast. The cops must be nuts.”

Pam didn't think the aunts were worried, or had cause to be, and Sandford reinforced this, heartily, with a “Hell no!” All the same, the cops were not necessarily nuts, Pam told him. The aunts had been there. Aunt Thelma could have put the poison in the capsule bottle. There was even a motive of sorts. Pam found herself sketching it. Sandford told her it was the silliest damn thing he'd ever heard, as the waiter brought vichyssoise. Pam agreed to this.

“What do the police think?” Sandford asked her, and Pam briefly raised her shoulders.

“Probably nothing yet,” she said. “I'd think Mrs. Hickey might interest them. She won't tell what she and your aunt—aunt-in-law?—quarreled about.”

“Oh,” Sandford said. “That. Probably about Paul and Lynn Hickey. They want to get married. Lynn's mother was on their side. Lynn wants to make a man of Paul, probably. He could stand having it done, don't you think?”

“Heavens!” Pam said. “I only met him for a minute. Isn't he made?”

“What?” Sandford said. “Oh—not entirely. Grace coddled him. And, I guess, wanted to keep on doing it. She thought Lynn was ‘hard,' and wouldn't be good for Paul. So—she thought, or pretended to think, Lynn wanted to marry Paul because he'll inherit what Grace had. She probably got around to telling Rose Hickey that and—well, there'd be your quarrel.”

“Is Lynn?” Pam asked.

Sandford looked puzzled for a moment. “Hard?” he said, then. “No, I shouldn't think so. She can take care of herself.”

“And Paul Logan too?”

“Probably,” Sandford said. “But I can't see either Lynn or her mother doing—well, what was done. I told the lieutenant that, incidentally. But of course, I don't know. Maybe I don't know much about people.”

They were at coffee, by then. He wanted to know what the police would do next.

“Ask questions, probably,” Pam told him. “Try to trace the poison. Dig into things.”

He nodded, abstractedly. He paid the check. He said it was good of her to have come.

“I'm sorry I couldn't help,” Pam North told him. “But I told you I couldn't.”

He said he knew. He said he had hoped there might be something, anything; that he had hoped she would remember.

“You see,” he said, “I keep wondering if the two things aren't hooked up, somehow—Grace's murder and this man's trailing me, I mean. Because I'm certain Sally has nothing to do with it.” He paused. “With any of it,” he said, his eyes insistent on Pam's. Pam could not answer that, not being sure of anything about it. She thought she ought to call the aunts.

“Just what you call a ‘medium man,'” Sandford said. “Following me, waiting for me to come out, going away before I did. It doesn't make sense.”

Abstractedly, she said again she was sorry she couldn't be more help. It had been just a medium man. She thanked Sandford for the lunch, wondering a little why he had asked her and why she had accepted. On the sidewalk she declined to be dropped anywhere, saying she was walking down to Saks to shop. She walked with Sandford west to Madison, where he was catching an uptown bus; she walked down Madison, looking in windows casually. She stopped at one to look at sports clothes, and was conscious that someone had stopped beside her. She walked on, found a store which promised telephones, and called the Welby from a booth. The aunts were still engulfed.

She left the booth and was vaguely conscious of a youngish man, well-dressed enough, looking at magazines in a rack by the door. Momentarily, she was puzzled that she had noticed him at all and, if at all, why with a faint consciousness of familiarity.

She walked on to Fiftieth and turned west in it to Saks and there walked through broad aisles to the stocking counter. She bought stockings and walked back across the store to men's handkerchiefs. She bought Jerry a dozen without monograms, was unable to find her charge-a-plate, although she was certain it was in her purse, and noticed a youngish man, well-dressed enough, looking at colored handkerchiefs at the other end of the counter.

“Well,” Pamela North said to herself. “Of all things! Now it's
me!
”

It was unexpectedly unnerving. It was also somehow infuriating. Why, Pam North thought, the nerve of them—the very
nerve
of them! Then, impulsively, she started toward the front entrance of Saks, moving at a brisk canter. She'd show them, Pam decided, and emerged into Fifth Avenue, bumped into two people, said “Sorry!” and waved at a taxicab. Miraculously, it swerved in.

As easy as that, Pam thought, and gave the address of her apartment. There's—

The cab stopped at a light. Another cab drew alongside it. In the other cab a youngish man, well-dressed enough, was sitting comfortably, smoking a cigarette. He did not look in her direction. As a matter of fact, he looked away, so that she could not see his face.

“That man,” Pam said, to her own driver. “That man's following me.”

“Yeah?” the driver said, without turning. Then, dramatizing it, he did an over-elaborate double-take. He turned around. He looked at Pam North.

“Well,” he said, after his examination. “Could be. I'll give him that, lady.”

Unexpectedly, Pam North blushed.

“I don't mean that kind of following,” she said. “I mean
following
.”

The driver said, “Oh!”

“In the other cab,” Pam said, gesturing toward it. But at that moment the lights changed and Pam's cab started forward with a lurch, so that the other cab was for the moment left behind.

“What I want to know,” Pam's driver said, turning half around, apparently finding his way by supersensory perception, “is he going to shoot, lady? That's what I want to know. On account of, shooting I don't like.”

“Of course not,” Pam said, and then realized that she had no real ground for this optimism. For all she knew, shotting was precisely what the medium young man in the other cab—probably behind them now—had in mind. “Why should he?”

“Now lady,” the hacker said, in a tone of weary reason, “you ought to know that. I'm just telling you, I don't like it. You got to figure he might miss. You give a guy a revolver, or maybe an automatic, and nine times out of ten he hits the wrong guy.” He paused, went deftly around a bus, grazing it only slightly. “Like me, for instance,” he said. “Especially if it's a big gun,” he said. “A forty-five, maybe.”

Pam was not frightened by this; she shivered, but she was not really frightened. Only, maybe a cab was a bad idea; maybe she should have—

“Of course,” Pam said. “Take me back.”

“Back, lady?” the driver said.

“Where you got me,” Pam told him. “Saks.”

The driver said, “O.K.” and turned emphatically right in Fifty-fourth Street. He turned in front of a bus which was just starting up, and abruptly decided not to. The bus driver leaned out of his window and made remarks. He was still making them when another cab turned in front of him.

(It was the last of many straws for Timothy O'Mahoney, who had driven Fifth Avenue buses for years and never liked any part of it. “All right,” Timothy said, “that does it.” He opened the doors of his bus, picked up his change holder, and stepped out. Then he leaned back in. “We're not going no further,” he told a busload. “You can sit or walk.” As for Timothy himself, he walked. Timothy subsequently became something of a hero to the newspapers, if not to the Fifth Avenue Coach Company.)