Murder Has Its Points (11 page)

“Nobody's responsible for anybody,” Self said. “You see a kid fall into a sewer, you try to pull it out, if you happen to be on hand. Sure, I disapproved. I disapprove of all the bad things that happen to everybody. Take it that I'm against sin.”

Bill Weigand smiled faintly, and moved his head slowly from side to side.

“All right,” James Self said, “she's a lovely little thing. I'm sitting here in this cave, growling, and one day she walks in and says she's come from Chicago because life there is sterile—whatever the hell she meant by that—and can I give her a job? Because she wants to be some place that has something to do with books.” He shook his own head. “Good God,” he said.

Bill kept on waiting.

“So—” Self said. “She lighted up the cave. And I did need somebody to tell people please to feel free to browse. She tell you that?”

Bill nodded.

“Her father manufactures buttons,” Self said. “Gives you pause, doesn't it? Until you remember buttons have to come from somewhere. And that somebody must make—oh, rubber bands. Paper clips. Hairpins, for God's sake. Bit button man. And her mother—what the hell am I going into all this for?” He looked hard at Weigand. “You think I fell for her,” he said. “Was overcome by yen.”

“Well—”

“Not that,” Self said. “I don't say nothing like that. But not flatly that. She's—what the hell's the use? Keep it simple. That's what you want, isn't it? Payne grabs off my girl and I kill Payne. Only—she isn't my girl. And I didn't kill Payne.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Whatever you say.”

“Until you can prove different,” Self said.

“Unless I can.”

“How did you get onto this—angle? Or is that none of my business?”

“Payne brought Miss Rhodes into a restaurant,” Bill said. “You saw them. Seemed angry—upset.”

“Willings,” Self said, “is a blabbermouth. Has to put everything into words. Has to listen to his own words. Try them out. Regardless—” Self broke off and leaned back in his chair. “And God,” he said, “how the bastard can write!” He leaned forward again.

“And where was I at the time of the crime? And who was with me? And have I got a revolver—”

“Rifle,” Bill said. “Twenty-two target. Probably with a telescopic sight.”

“I said revolver just to throw you off,” Self said. “Sure I knew it was a rifle.”

Bill sighed, audibly.

“No,” Self said. “Revolver or rifle or popgun. No. I left this damn party—”

“By the way. How'd you happen to go to the party?”

“Got invited. Thought there might be a performance. Couldn't see Willings passing up a chance like that. Not after Payne's review.”

“You saw the performance?”

“Saw it. Thought it only fair. Contrived unhappy ending. Good guy felled by bad guy. You've considered Willings? Unexpectedly deflated. Made an ass out of, to put it simply. Which he wouldn't like at all.”

“Yes. You went alone to the party?”

“You mean, did I take Jo-Jo? No. After the show was over I came back here. Upstairs, that is. I've got an apartment upstairs. Which Miss Jo-An Rhodes does not share. That's for the record. I read a while and had a drink and about nine o'clock I got hungry and went out and got some food. That I could prove, I suppose. Not the rest of it. Well?”

That, Weigand told him, about did it. For the moment. Bill went, alone, through the small storeroom and into the shop. Jo-An Rhodes was sitting in one of the chairs, back to window, reading. She looked up as he came into the room; looked up quickly.

Since the light was behind her, Bill Weigand could not see her face clearly. There was no real explanation, therefore, for the sudden conviction in his mind that the girl—the very pretty girl—was frightened. She looked at him as he walked the length of the room, and did not speak. She did not turn her head after he had passed her, nor as he went out through the door, while a distant bell tinkled his departure. So he could not, still, see her face clearly enough to read anything in it. Nothing to go on, really. All the same, he thought her frightened.

In the area outside, he turned and looked back into the shop. Jo-An Rhodes was going toward the rear of the shop. She was going so quickly that she seemed almost to be running.

8

Mrs. Gladys Mason was, certainly, employed by the Hotel Dumont. She was one of six assistant housekeepers. She lived in the hotel—in Room 1701A. She would now—the assistant manager looked at his watch. Since it was after one o'clock, she would be on duty. Certainly he would be glad to arrange for Sergeant Mullins to talk to her. Couldn't imagine Mrs. Mason—seemed a good, reliable person—would know anything about “this tragic event.” (The assistant manager spoke of the tragedy of the event with deep sincerity. The Hotel Dumont didn't like any part of it—or not, at any rate, the last part of it. The scuffle—well, it showed that celebrities knew a good hotel to scuffle in.)

“Housekeeper, please,” the assistant manager said into the telephone on his desk. After a moment, he said, “This is Mr. Purdy, Mrs. MacReady. Will you have Mrs. Mason come down to my office, please. There's a man from the—”

He stopped with that, and listened. After a time he said, “Oh, hm-mm,” and listened again. He said, “Yes, that was the right thing to do,” and once more listened and then said, “No. I'll check on that.” Then he replaced the receiver.

“This is most unfortunate,” Mr. Purdy said. “It seems that Mrs. Mason didn't sign in at the proper time. And—I really can't understand this, Sergeant. But—”

The facts were not, however, difficult to understand. Sergeant Mullins understood them perfectly. Mrs. Mason had not reported for her tour of duty. A maid sent to her room found her not in it. She also found her possessions not in it. In simpler words, which Sergeant Mullins's mind readily supplied, Mrs. Gladys Mason had scrammed the hell out of there.

“Pine Room, please,” the assistant manager said into his telephone. After a moment he said, “This is Mr. Purdy. Let me talk to Karl, will you?” While he waited he cupped a hand over the transmitter. “There's a son of hers,” he said. “Working as a bus. Find out what he—Oh, Karl. You've got a bus named Mason. Son of one of the housekeepers. Wonder if you'd—” He stopped. He said, “Oh, hm-mm.” He listened again. “All the same like mama, apparently,” he said, and hung up and told Mullins what Mullins by then expected to hear.

Robert Mason had been due to report in the Pine Room at ten-thirty that morning to get to work, with other busboys, on setups for lunch. He had not.

“He live here too?” Mullins asked and Purdy looked surprised; said, “Certainly not, Sergeant. Probably has a furnished room somewhere. We can check his registered address.” He was urged to do that, and did it by telephone. It took a little time. Robert Mason's listed address was in the West Forties—very much in the west of the Forties. Furnished rooms would come cheap there.

Purdy had been cooperative, unquestioning. He questioned now. “What's it all about, Sergeant?”

“Routine,” Mullins told him. “Who'd know this Mrs. Mason best, would you say?”

Purdy shrugged at that, dissociating himself. He then considered. “I guess Ma MacReady,” he said. “That's—Martha MacReady. We call her ‘Ma.' She's the housekeeper. But I don't know how well—”

“Tell you what,” Mullins said. “Suppose I talk to this Martha MacReady. Miss or missis?”

It was the latter. Her small office was down a long corridor and progress to it was impeded by hand trucks of laundry, ranged along one side of the corridor. Mrs. MacReady was pink and broad and comfortable behind a battered desk. She was using the telephone. She said, “Here's your check-out list. Got your pencil, dearie?” It appeared that dearie had her pencil. Mrs. MacReady gave a list of room numbers. Finished, she listened briefly. “Know it's long,” she said. “Gladys has taken the day off, seems like. You just get the girls at it, dearie.”

She hung up. She looked at Mullins. She said, “Well, you look like it.” Mullins knew he looked like it. Sometimes it was a handicap, sometimes it wasn't. “My late was one of you,” Mrs. MacReady said. “Patrolman. Happen you'd know him? Michael MacReady. Coney Island Precinct last few years.”

“Well, ma'am,” Mullins said, “not offhand. Don't get out to Coney Island much.”

“Before your time, anyway,” Mrs. MacReady said, and since she appeared to be around sixty Mullins thought it likely. “What's Gladys Mason done?”

“Nothing we know of,” Mullins said. “Just wanted a word with her. Looks like we're not going to get it right away, don't it? So, next best thing, what can you tell us about her? Except that she's not around?”

“She's a good sort,” Mrs. MacReady said. “Whatever you say.”

“Now ma'am,” Mullins said, “I don't say she wasn't. How old would you say? How long's she worked here. Things like that.”

The records in the employment office would show her age. “What she said it was, anyway.” Mrs. Mac-Ready herself would guess the middle forties. As for the length of time at the Dumont, a little over five years. “And,” Mrs. MacReady said, “the best one I've got. Did have, I guess you'd say.”

Mrs. Mason was a widow. “Most of them are, like me.” Presumably, she had been a widow for some years. Before she came to the Dumont, she had worked, as a housekeeper, in other hotels. It was Mrs. MacReady's guess that she had started as a maid somewhere, and “been too good for it.”

“She must have been pretty a while back,” Mrs. MacReady said. “And, sort of high class, if you know what I mean. Come down in the world, like they say. Me, I was never up in it, you know. But sure you know.”

“Sure,” Mullins said. “This son of hers.”

He was told he meant Bobby. He agreed he meant Bobby.

“Busboy, the poor kid,” Mrs. MacReady said. “Wants to be a college graduate, but it looks as if that's out. Because here it is November and he's still working for Karl. And, let's face it, Karl's a holy terror if there ever was one.”

“The headwaiter?”

Mullins had better not call Karl that to his face. Karl was maître d'.

“He sees a busboy, he steps on it,” Mrs. MacReady said, unexpectedly.

She knew something of Robert Mason. At the request of his mother, she had helped him get his job at the Hotel Dumont, lowly as the job was. That had been the previous spring, when school closed. One of those colleges; she didn't know which one. Wouldn't mean anything to her, anyway. He was working his way through. “With what Gladys, the poor thing, could do to help.” The job had, presumably, been only for the summer, for the school vacation. But here it was November. “And he's still lugging trays.”

“Not now he isn't,” Mullins said. “Anyway, today he isn't. Look. You think maybe Mrs. Mason got another job somewhere? And just lit out? With the kid? Look—maybe there's a hotel in the town the boy's school is in, and she got a job there. Could be?”

“For one thing,” Mrs. MacReady said, “she's got money coming. For another thing, why'd she light out without telling anybody? This ain't a jail, Sergeant. I don't say it doesn't feel like it sometimes, but it ain't a jail. She wants to leave, she just says she wants to leave.”

“What's the boy like?”

The boy was a good-looking kid, if you didn't mind them thin as rails. He was, at a guess, a little over twenty. “Only thing I noticed particularly,” she said, “is that he sort of seemed to have his back up. Know what I mean? Sort of sore at everything. But a lot of kids are like that, nowadays.”

“And don't we know it,” Mullins said. “Bad-tempered, you'd call him?”

He could call it that. “More like surly,” she said. “You know what I mean?”

Then she said, “What's it all about, Sergeant?”

“Routine,” Mullins said, and was told to come off it. It was about this man Payne's getting killed, wasn't it? And what did that have to do with Gladys Mason.

“Well,” Mullins said, “seems she might have heard something. That's all I know about it. They say, ‘Go ask Mrs. Mason if she heard something.' You know how it is, your husband being on the cops. You suppose I could see her room?”

Mrs. MacReady didn't see why not, or what good it would do him. Mrs. Mason had taken everything when she went. But if he wanted …

The room on the seventeenth floor was very small—large enough for a cot-like bed, a chair, a small chest of drawers. Nothing in the drawers. A shallow closet off the room. Nothing in the closet. The bed unmade. No bath. The bath was down the hall. Not, clearly, a room for guests. A dormitory room, for help of the lower-middle echelon. On the street side.

Mullins leaned out of the single window. The room was at the side of the hotel and the entrance marquee was narrow. Looking down and to the side, Mullins could—just could—look under the marquee. He stood as far to one side as possible, and could see farther under the marquee. About, he judged, to the point at which Payne had been standing when he was shot. An uninterrupted line of vision equals, of course, an uninterrupted line of fire.

It is one thing to look around a room and find nothing useful in it. It is another thing to go over a room as experts go over a room. Mullins went back to Mrs. MacReady's office, and she said, “You again,” which was what he had expected. She said, “Didn't find anything, did you?” and he admitted he hadn't.

“However,” he said, “we'll want the technical-lab boys to go over it, and nobody to mess around in it first. O.K. And, how's to give me a description of Mrs. Mason? The boy, too, as well as you can.”

“So,” she said, “it's like that, is it. Well—”

Mrs. Mason, medium height. (If he knew what she meant. He did not, but nodded his head.) Weighed maybe a hundred and fifty. Light “complected.” Yellowish sort of hair, but graying. Blue eyes. Sort of a round face, if he knew what she meant. “Didn't look very happy, most of the time.” Pretty good figure, although she'd probably put on a few pounds. Dress her up, and give her something to smile about, and she'd be a good-looker still.