Murder Has Its Points (20 page)

“Remember? I knew there was—that Tony married someone after Faith, before me. Is that what you mean? Did we meet sometime? I'm terribly sorry. I don't remember. I'm so dreadfully bad at—”

Gladys Mason shook her head.

“I don't mean that,” she said. “Last night. After—after Tony was shot. After Mrs. North told you and—”

“I remember Mrs. North—coming,” Lauren said. Then she said, “
Wait!
Of course I remember you. It's—it's all been so—so like a dream. I keep forgetting things. You came and sat with me after the doctor gave me something to make me sleep. Somebody said, ‘This is Mrs. Mason. She'll stay with you for a little.'” She shook her head slowly. “It was dreadful of me to forget,” she said. “I've been—nothing has seemed quite real. I'm—it was good of you to sit with me.”

She looked suddenly at Mrs. North and then, her eyes a little widened, again at Gladys Mason. Whatever she had forgotten, Pam thought, she remembered clearly enough now.

“But,” Lauren said, her deep voice very low indeed, “after you came I must have passed out. Passed out like a light, as they say. I remember your coming in and now somebody saying your name and I said, ‘a nurse?' Didn't I? And somebody said, ‘the housekeeper.' Wasn't that it?”

“Not all of—” Gladys said, and Lauren leaned forward in her chair and, again, said, “Wait. Please—did I say something to you? Something about your boy? But—how could I? I—I'm sorry, Mrs. Mason. I don't know anything about your boy. Not even that you and Anthony had a son. Not his name. Not anything.” She looked very intently at Mrs. Mason. “You say ‘what I meant.' Do you mean I did say something?” Then she looked quickly at Pam North.

“No,” Pam said. “Not to me. I told you that. But, to her—”

“You said,” Gladys Mason told the woman with coppery hair, who sat beside the fire, light from above touching her hair, “that he was not supposed to be over there. Your voice wasn't clear, but you said that. It was as if you were talking in your sleep.”

“I don't remember. I don't know what I meant. Certainly nothing about your—”

“I asked you what you meant by ‘over there' and you said, ‘The King Arthur, of course.' That's the hotel across the street. You said ‘he' didn't belong over there. ‘What's he doing over there?'”

Lauren shook her head again.

“Maybe I did,” she said. “I don't remember. If I did, I don't know what I meant. Not belonging at the King Arthur? But—it's just a hotel. Anybody can ‘belong' at a hotel.”

“Not,” Gladys said, “a busboy who works at a hotel across the street. Oh—I don't say it's clear. But—did you see him? Or—was it somebody else? Going into the other hotel. Your husband could have been shot from there.”

“See somebody?” She shook her head again. “I don't understand—” She looked toward Pam, then toward Faith Constable. “Can't one of you,” she said, “tell me what this is all about? Why you've come here to—to ask these questions?”

“At the Dumont,” Pam said, “your windows faced the street. You could look across at the King Arthur. Mrs. Mason thinks you did, and saw her son going in. You see, she's afraid. The boy hated his father because—oh, for lots of reasons. He may have had a rifle.”

“But—” Lauren said.

“You said,” Gladys told her, “that there was something the matter with his leg. The man, whoever it was, you saw. And—Bobby limps. Not all the time. When he's tired and—”

“Listen,” Lauren said. “Will you—will all of you—listen to me a minute? I didn't see anybody. I don't really know what you're talking about. I suppose—all right. I'm not questioning what you say, Mrs. Mason. I said some things when I was—well, when I was drugged. I don't remember. What you say I said doesn't make any sense to me now. But whatever it was, it couldn't have had anything to do with what happened to Tony. Because—”

She paused and partly closed her eyes. She was, Pam thought, arranging what she wanted to say, getting it clear in her own mind.

“I suppose,” she said, and spoke slowly, as if she thought of each word, was still working it out as she spoke. “I suppose if I had seen anybody, it would have been a little while before Tony was killed. While the party was going on; after I left it and went up to the room because I had a headache. Is that what you mean, Mrs. Mason?”

“I don't know when,” Gladys said. “But—yes, I suppose it would have been then.”

“No,” Lauren said. “I mean, it wasn't. I had this headache—the noise, the—the strain. Everything. I went up to the room, yes. I took aspirin and lay down. Then, after about half an hour, I took a Nembutal and I was—I was asleep when you came to tell me, wasn't I, Mrs. North?”

“Half asleep,” Pam said.

“I remember everything I did at first,” Lauren said. “Afterward—afterward it was hazy. I said that, when—when I came to ask you what I'd said, Mrs. North. But not at first. I took aspirin and lay down and then the Nembutal, when the aspirin didn't seem to help. My nerves were jumping. And then I got that—that soft feeling. You know what I mean? Anyway, that's what I call it. The ‘soft' feeling. And then somebody knocked at the door and you came in and—”

She stopped.

“I'm making this long,” she said. “I know that. But, I'm remembering it step by step. That's why. And—I never once looked out the window. Came up, took my dress off and my shoes. Went to the bathroom and took the aspirin, and got a Nembutal capsule and a glass of water and put them by the bed and—and got on the bed and propped my head up and—and waited. I didn't look out the window. Why should I? There—there's nothing to see from the window. Oh, lots of things. But not really anything. So—I didn't see anybody I knew—knew shouldn't be there, was out of place—going into the King Arthur.” She looked from one to the other. “Don't you see?” she said, and looked at Gladys Mason. “I was only dreaming. I was—I must have been reciting a dream I was having. I don't remember the dream at all, but that has to be it.”

She still spoke slowly. There was weight on each word.

“Don't you understand?” Lauren said. “I'm sorry if I worried you, Mrs. Mason. About—what did you say his name was? Oh yes, Robert. Terribly sorry. I didn't see him. I didn't see anybody.”

Gladys Mason looked at Pam, and her eyes waited. There was, Pam thought, uncertainty in Gladys's eyes.

“Of course, dear,” Faith Constable said. “Dreams are such jumbles.”

Which, Pam thought, was entirely true. Dreams are made of shadows and of words; dreams start from something and go anywhere and nowhere. One sees the name of a hotel on a sign and, somewhere, perhaps at some other time, a man limping, and the dreaming mind makes a fantastic story embodying both. The dreams are sometimes pictures; sometimes words. (Jerry has told her that his are always in words, and that what wears him out is editing sentence structures.) It might well be such a dream which had brought them hurrying northeast through darkness to this bright house. No—not quite that. What had brought them still was real enough.

“Mrs. Payne,” Pam said, “he hasn't been here? Robert Mason, I mean?”

“Why,” Lauren said, “no. Not while I've been here. But that's only about an hour. You see—”

She had taken an early afternoon train to New Canaan, which is the nearest railway station to Ridgefield—the nearest, at any rate, with anything approaching adequate service. When she and Payne had gone into New York several days earlier, they had left their car in a New Canaan parking lot. When she had tried to start the car this afternoon it had refused to start. She thought that was about three o'clock. She had had to walk to a garage, wait for somebody to be free; afterward to wait, reading (for want of anything more fascinating) catalogues of new cars, while a mechanic found what had blocked the fuel line.

It had been after six when, finally, she got home. She had fixed herself a drink, a sandwich. Which reminded her. She really must get them—

“No,” Pam said. She had a second thought. “Not yet, anyway,” she said. “And nobody has come? Not the boy? Not anybody?”

“No. Why should anybody? Why should—” Again she hesitated over the name. “Robert? I don't—” She stopped abruptly. She had been facing Pam; she turned quickly to Gladys Mason.

“You told him,”
she said.
“This—this thing you made out of what I said.”
She breathed deeply, and spoke more slowly, but it seemed to Pam with an effort. “So now,” she said, “he thinks I will tell somebody I saw him. Going into the other hotel. Carrying a rifle? That's what—that's why you came. You thought he might come here to—to make sure I didn't talk. That's it, isn't it?”

Mrs. Mason said, “Well—”

“Yes,” Pam said. “That's it, of course.”

“You've rather put me on the spot, haven't you?” Lauren said to Gladys Mason. “On quite a spot. And, you must be quite sure he did kill Tony, mustn't you? That if I
had
been looking out the window I could have seen him, because he was there. I didn't, but I could have. Because otherwise, what I might say wouldn't matter, would it?”

“I suppose—” Gladys began, and her voice was even duller than before, even more distant.

“No,” Pam said. “Anyway, it's not as certain as you say. He might have come to tell you you were wrong. Or, to say, ‘Look at me. I'm not the one you saw, am I?' It might be that.”

“Fortunately,” Faith Constable said, “it isn't either, is it, darlings? Because as far as we know, he hasn't come. Or, if he came before you got here, Lauren dear, he—he just found you weren't home and went away again.”

“To return,” Lauren said, with some bitterness. “A fine spot, a lovely spot.” She shrugged delicate shoulders under the black dress. She turned to Pam. “You said ‘anybody,'” she pointed out. “Is there somebody else who might come gunning for me?”

“We stopped at a drugstore in the village,” Pam said. “To ask how to get here. The man at the counter said—just happened to say—that somebody had already asked. That two men had, actually. One early in the afternoon. A tall, young man. Who might have come up by bus. The other, just before we did—before I did. Another tall man. He had a car. Anyway, the soda clerk thought he had a car. He gave them both directions.”

“Nobody,” Lauren said. “Nobody's come.”

“You're not expecting anybody?”

Pam thought Lauren hesitated a moment, looked involuntarily at the wide window which faced toward the drive. But when she answered, Lauren Payne said, “Why no. Nobody,” and there was a note of surprise in her low voice. Then she said, “The man with a car. If he was ahead of you, he should be here by now, shouldn't he? Whoever he was? Of course, he could have got lost. Or changed his mind. Or stopped somewhere, perhaps for—” She smiled, her smile impartial for all. “You really must let me get you something,” she said. “A drink, at least. You've come all the way up here like—like the cavalry to the rescue. And I—”

“Somebody,” Faith Constable said, “is coming now.”

They looked toward the window. Down the slope, beyond the hedge walls, the lights of a car were turning into the drive. The lights began to move up the drive. The lights seemed muted. Fog had formed while they talked.

14

Outwardly, there is little to distinguish Bill Weigand's Buick from any other Buick of its age and weight. There are, however, certain modifications, a longer radio antenna being the most obvious. There is also a switch which one may touch when it is desirable to have red headlights supplement white lights. If a certain button is touched, the Buick howls mournfully. And as the car went, far more rapidly than allowed, up the Saw Mill River Parkway a radio, set to police frequency, muttered to itself.

Sitting beside Bill, Jerry North leaned forward in his seat, as if he sought somehow to outspeed the car. Without words, he said, “Faster! Faster!”

“Will you for God's sake relax?” Bill said, when they were above Hawthorne Circle, and going seventy in a forty zone. “She'll be all right.”

“Oh,” Jerry said, “she'll be wonderful. If she's all right I'll wring her neck.”

In spite of everything—of his own feeling of urgency, of his own worry—Bill Weigand laughed briefly at the idea of Jerry's laying harsh hands on any part of Pam's anatomy.

“It's all very fun—” Jerry began, and a siren behind drowned out his voice.

Bill slowed the Buick and let the parkway patrol come alongside. Then he touched his own siren and slowed further, letting the cruiser pull ahead. Then he turned on the red headlights. The cruiser tooted recognition. Bill went back to seventy.

“What it is,” Jerry said, “she's gone to help somebody. That's what it always is, damn it.”

Which was true enough.

“Well?” Jerry said.

It was anybody's guess. Probably to help Lauren Payne, whom Pam thought to be in danger. In danger, presumably, because she knew too much. Therefore, because she had heard too much or seen too much. A murderer with something the matter with his legs. But still they were guessing.

“There's a State Police barracks in Ridgefield,” Bill said, and spoke patiently, since he had been saying much the same thing at quite frequent intervals since he had picked Jerry up at Jerry's office, and started to cover some sixty miles in as few minutes as possible. “They're keeping an eye on things.”

He did not qualify this in words. His mind qualified. The State Police would have no reason to feel urgency. They would have other things to do. Cops can never be everywhere at once.

“Damn it all,” Jerry said. “Why did she have to be so damned—cryptic? She doesn't have to be, you know. When she wants, she can be as—”