Murder Is Served (8 page)

Bill was patient. He shook his head, and smiled.

“We expect to talk to her,” he said. “Obviously. We're not worried about finding her.”

“No?” the
Journal-American
said. “No?”

Bill Weigand let it go.

“That's all we've got at the moment,” he said. “All clear?”

“All you've got for us,” the
Herald Tribune
said, without animosity.

Bill smiled again and said, “Right, if you prefer.” He smiled a little more widely. “Of course,” he said, “if you aren't satisfied, you can always talk to Inspector O'Malley. He's in charge, you know.”

The
Times
said, “Ha.” Nobody else said anything. The
Times
, as became his confidence—and the fact that he could pick up anything he needed from the afternoons anyway—said, “Be seeing you,” generally, and left. The
News, Mirror
and
Herald Tribune
left after him. The afternoons eyed one another with some suspicion and went in a body. They would hang around, after telephoning; the services would hang around. The mornings would return. It was, Bill realized, going to be a major circus.

Bill sat alone in the office, drumming gently on the desk top with the fingers of his right hand. He wished they would pick up Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Peggy Simmons Mott. He wished it very much. She was not at her apartment, which was a long way, in blocks and other things which counted more, from Mott's apartment. She was not, so far as they could determine, at Dyckman University. There was nothing to indicate that either fact had significance; there was nothing to indicate that she was in flight. It was also technically true that there was no pick-up order out for her. But she would find it difficult to get out of the city by train or plane or bus—difficult but not impossible. Bill Weigand had no illusions about that.

He reached for the telephone and stopped with his hand on it when Mullins came to the door.

“This Meiau wants to see you,” he said.

Bill blinked a moment and then said, “Oh.”

“All right,” Bill said. “Let him in. And—Mullins.”

Mullins waited.

“Maybe it will be simpler if you just stick to Male Ox,” Bill said. “At least I'll know.”

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “I'll bring in Male Ox.”

M. Maillaux was round and clean; he had a round, clean face and small, plump hands, with tapering fingers. He walked lightly on small feet, although he was not a light man. His clothes did not look quite like ordinary clothes. M. Maillaux walked to the wrong side of his own desk, looked down at Lieutenant Weigand and said he had been thinking.

“Sit down, Maillaux,” Bill said. “Yes?”

Maillaux sat down.

“You suspect me, yes?” he said. “That is what I have been thinking. It is inevitable, you perceive.”

“What makes you think so?” Bill asked him.

Maillaux shrugged. He was very French. It was in his expression, his movements and his accent, as it was in the dark gray suit he wore. But it was nowhere emphasized.

“I am an associate,” he said. “You perceive? I have found his body. I could have gone to his office from here, from the kitchen. To me the knife is available. It is inevitable that I should be the suspect.”

Bill Weigand nodded. He agreed there was something in what M. Maillaux said.

“The circumstances,” Maillaux said. “You perceive?”

“I perceive,” Bill Weigand said, to his own surprise. “Why do you insist on this, M. Maillaux? Do you want to convince me?”

Maillaux regarded his pointed fingers and shook his head.

“We are intelligent men,” he said. “Of experience, no? It is merely that I wish you should perceive my understanding of the circumstances. You perceive?”

“I per—right,” Bill said, catching himself. “But I presume these circumstances are misleading? You did not kill your—is ‘partner' the word?”

M. Maillaux looked at Bill Weigand intently. He looked almost as if he were about to cry.

“More,” he said. “But much more. My friend, my good friend. My rescuer. You perceive?” Maillaux suddenly put his fingers against his forehead, shielding his face. He as suddenly removed them. “It is a catastrophe,” he said. “But a catastrophe. Maillaux has been destroyed.”

“Why?” Bill said. “You did well enough before. I've heard of Maillaux for a good many years.”

“But obviously,” Maillaux said. “Who has not? Of the old Maillaux, the
grande cuisine
, who had not heard? But who came? You perceive?”

Bill Weigand said he had always gathered that a good many people came. Maillaux spread his hands.

“But yes,” he said. “Of a type, certainly. I do not deny. The quiet ones, the elders. For the food, yes, for the wine, certainly. Those were great, you perceive. But not the famous people—the Winchell, the Lyons, what you call the café society. For Tony, they came. They were the friends of Tony. For lunch they came, for the dinner, afterward for the drinks. You perceive?”

“And the money rolled in?” Bill said.

Maillaux put together the thumb and second finger of each hand. He snapped them in the air, almost soundlessly.

“And how!” he said, unexpectedly. He looked surprised at himself. “Of a certainty,” he said. He shrugged. He looked at Weigand and raised his eyebrows. “I am a businessman, you perceive,” he said. “That I do not deny, Lieutenant. For me the good Tony was a very important friend. You perceive?”

“I agree you seem to lose by his death,” Bill Weigand admitted.

Maillaux's round face became as tragic as its contours allowed.

“But everything!” he said. “But all! It is a catastrophe!”

“And you had no—well, personal animosity against Mr. Mott?” Bill said. “No dislike? No rivalry, say?”

Maillaux looked astonished. He shook his head with energy.

“But we were friends,” he said. “We were associates. Would I permit myself—?”

“Perhaps not,” Bill said.

“In addition, there was no cause,” Maillaux said. “For the girls I do not compete, you perceive? It is not that I—however—I am of an age, no?”

Bill Weigand was not entirely convinced, but he did not argue. He did not think that M. Maillaux had quarreled with Tony Mott over a girl.

“Right,” Bill said. “As long as you didn't kill him, don't worry.”

“But,” Maillaux said, and looked very worried, “I find the body? Yes?”

Bill sighed faintly.

“Even so,” he said. “Even so, M. Maillaux. If you had no reason—yes?”

The last was to Mullins, who had reappeared at the door.

“There's a girl,” Mullins said. “The hat-check girl. She wants to tell you something. She keeps saying she has to leave and—”

“All right,” Bill said. “Let her in, Sergeant.” Maillaux started to get up. “Stay if you don't mind,” Bill said. He smiled. “Sobering influence,” he said, remembering the hat-check girl. Cecily Breakwell floated in. She was a little flushed and seemed excited. She saw Maillaux and did sober.

“Lieutenant!” she said. “I have to tell you—”

She was pretty, quick, consciously (Bill Weigand thought) piquant. She seemed to poise, temporarily, in front of the desk. Bill stood up, indicated a chair. She poised, temporarily, in the chair.

“It's dreadful,” she said. “Really dreadful. To think of Mr. Mott—”

“Yes,” Bill said. “You wanted to tell me—?”

“She hated him,” Cecily Breakwell said. The words seemed to scamper out of her small, pretty mouth. “I have to tell you. I didn't want to but I said to myself, ‘Cecily, you have to tell the police, you really have to' because it isn't anything that they would—”

She stopped and looked at Bill Weigand with her lips slightly parted. She looked at Maillaux.

“I'm terribly afraid I'm excited,” she said. “Terribly excited. It's nerving myself to it, you know. Because Peggy is so sweet, really. I keep telling myself she couldn't have meant what she wrote. About hating Mr. Mott, you know. About wanting to kill him. But that's what she did write, for Professor Leonard's class in psychology. In the term paper, you know.”

“Peggy,” Bill said. “That would be Mrs. Mott?”

“Oh yes,” Cecily said. “They were separated, you know, and she hated him. And when we had to write this paper about emotions, she wrote about how she hated him. I sit next to her, you know, and I couldn't help glancing at her paper and it was dreadful. Frightening, you know, because it sounded so much as if she meant it.”

“This paper,” Weigand said. “A kind of an examination?”

“Oh yes,” Cecily said. “For the term grade, you know.”

“She wrote about hating Mr. Mott? By name? I mean, she mentioned who it was she hated?”

Cecily looked for a moment as if she were thinking.

“Oh I think so,” she said. “I'm almost sure. And anyway, I knew, of course. And then in the elevator she said something about it to Mr. Carey—about what she'd written, you know—and then looked as if she wished she hadn't. Mr. Carey said, ‘For God's sake' or something like that and was very angry at her.”

“Mr. Carey?”

“Weldon Carey,” the girl said. “They see a lot of each other, you know. Mr. Carey and Peggy. I think they're in love, you know.”

Bill Weigand said he saw.

“About this paper,” he said. “You just read snatches, I suppose? Just sentences here and there?”

“Oh yes,” the girl said. “I had to write my own, you know. I wrote about—well, about love.”

“Did anybody else see what she'd written, do you think?”

“Oh, I don't think so. We write on the arms of the chairs, you know, and I was right next. Of course, Professor Leonard saw it. That's what she wrote it for.”

“Of course,” Weigand said. “I realize that.”

“Maybe it doesn't mean anything,” Cecily said. “It was just writing, you know. But it sounded so—so real. As if she really wanted to kill Mr. Mott. And then, somebody did. And in the elevator she mentioned a knife, that she wanted to kill him with a knife. A lot of us heard her. And he was killed with a knife, so I said to myself, ‘Cecily, whatever you think you've got—'”

“Right,” Bill said. “You couldn't do anything else. Thank you, Miss Breakwell.”

“Oh, I hope I was right,” Cecily Breakwell said. “I felt I had to.”

“Of course,” Bill said. “Thank you, Miss Breakwell.”

She went, piquantly, to the door and through it. Bill Weigand found that both he and Maillaux were looking after her.

“A type,” Maillaux said. “She would like to be an actress, no?”

“Probably,” Weigand said. “Do you know Mrs. Mott?”

“But yes,” Maillaux said. “She was with Tony last winter. Before we became associates. She is beautiful, that one.
Charmante!”

“Did she hate Mott?”

Maillaux shrugged. It was more elaborate than his previous shrugging.

“I am not aware,” he said. “Together they were charming, you perceive? One does not enquire.”

He was being very correct, Bill thought. He was not so sure that Maillaux was being as illuminating as he might be. There was a suggestion of the conventional about Maillaux's correctness. It was possible that the suggestion was there by intention.

And then Mullins opened the door again, but this time Pam North was visible beside him and he did not need to say, as he did say, “Mr. and Mrs. North, Lieutenant.”

“Bill,” Pam said. “Mr. Leonard says it's stolen. The blue book. From his desk and—” She saw Maillaux and stopped. Maillaux was standing. Weigand introduced Maillaux and the Norths. Pam laughed suddenly, lightly, and said she was sorry.

“But,” she said, “do you know that Mullins calls you Mr. Male Ox, Mr. Maillaux?”

Maillaux looked at her with round, puzzled eyes.

“Only,” Pam said, and now she was speaking to Jerry rather than to the others, “isn't that a contradiction in terms, really? Because aren't oxen—”

“Yes, dear,” Jerry said. “I've always understood so.”

M. Maillaux, Bill Weigand thought, looked more puzzled, more disturbed, than he had at any time. It was, Bill thought, an appropriate tribute to Pamela North.

Bill Weigand said, “Thanks, M. Maillaux” and Maillaux went out, walking lightly. Bill listened, then, while Jerry told of his talk with Professor Leonard, of the report that the blue book, containing its hymn of hate, had disappeared from an office desk. He listened while Pam explained that they had started for Bill's office, thought better of it, and come to the restaurant. “Because,” Pam said, “it seemed important. Is it?”

Bill looked at them a moment, lightly drumming on the desk. Then he said, “Apparently.”

“If she mentioned her husband by name, obviously,” Pam said. “If she said, ‘I'm going to kill Tony Mott.' Did she? The professor says she didn't.”

“Even if she didn't,” Bill said, “it's still interesting. Still—incriminating. And the girl who was sitting next to her in class thinks—isn't sure, but thinks—she did mention Mott.”

“Which makes Mr. Leonard a liar,” Pam pointed out. “Why would he be?”

Bill shrugged at that, and Pam answered it herself.

“If he was trying to protect her,” Pam said, “then he might. He might even, I suppose, bring the whole thing up as a way of protecting her, but not say she had mentioned Mott because if anything happened to Mott it would be—well, too direct. Maybe he thought we could do something to stop her—you could, Bill—but didn't want to tell us too much in case we couldn't.”

They digested that. Bill said, “Maybe.”

“But where would it get anyone?” Jerry said. “Because Leonard had read it, and copied part of it.” He paused. “He says,” he added.