Murder within Murder (32 page)

“What gives?” the dark man said, speaking to Farno. Farno's heavy shoulders went up and down.

“She saw you,” Farno said, enlightened, and used his soft body to push Dorian through the door. When she felt him against her she moved quickly, involuntarily, seeking to avoid the softness. Farno pulled the door to behind them. “Everybody always sees you, Piper,” he said. He looked at Piper. “You don't look like anybody, and still people always see you,” he said. “It beats me.”

It was a small, meagerly furnished room, and it smelled as if the windows were never opened. Dorian stood in the center of it, and looked at Piper briefly and then at Farno.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Now, miss,” Farno said. “Like I told you. We want to know what you saw where the guy jumped.”

“That was a lie,” Dorian said. “And it was a lie that Bill would be here. Lieutenant Weigand. Did you think that wasn't obvious?”

Piper snickered. It was an odd, pleased sound.

“Smart guy, ain't you,” the little man said to the big one. “Smarter than any dame.”

“Shut up,” Farno said. He slurred the words together. His little pale blue eyes fixed themselves on Dorian's face.

“We want to know what you saw,” he said. “Tell me what you saw, see?”

“And you'll let me go?” Dorian said. There was irony in her voice.

“Now, miss,” Farno said. “Sure.”

He was bland and smiling again. Apparently he welcomed that suggestion from her; apparently he thought she believed it. Dorian realized that what she suspected when they got into the car was true. The big man—this Farno who pretended to be a detective—was a very stupid man. And little Piper was a man who snickered.

And it was then, really for the first time, that Dorian was afraid. The muscles around her heart seemed to contract; it seemed for the instant that her blood ran slowly, checked.

The first hard fear lasted only for an instant. But when it vanished she was still afraid. She had not realized that mere stupidity could be so frightening.

“I didn't see anything,” she said. “What would I see? There wasn't anything.”

“Now, miss,” Farno said, “don't give us that. What did you see?”

“Nothing,” Dorian said. “The room—the open window. That was all.”

“Now, miss,” Farno said again, “what're you trying to give us? We know you saw something, see?”

“No.”

“Sure you saw something,” Piper said. “You and this other dame both saw something. Like she says, you—”

“Skip it, Piper,” Farno said. He moved close to Dorian, and put his right hand on her shoulder. The pressure was not so gentle now.

“This lady don't want to hear what somebody else saw,” he said, and his voice was still soft—and still like a kind of soft pressure. “This lady wants to tell us what
she
saw. Ain't that right, lady?” He paused, but not for an answer. He looked at Dorian with the small pale eyes, and the eyes seemed to have no expression. “Sure that's right,” he said. “Because she don't want we should get tough.” He shook her, not hard. “Ain't that right, lady?” he said. “You don't want us to get tough, do you?” He shook her again. “See?” he said. His voice was still mild.

The little man called Piper snickered again.

3

FRIDAY

5:20 P.M. TO 7:45 P.M.

Asking no special favors of traffic, Bill Weigand turned his Buick convertible off Park Avenue into Thirty-seventh Street and cruised slowly, looking for a place to park. Then, about midway of the block, a small coupe pulled away from the right-hand curb, fitted itself into traffic and rolled toward Madison. Bill Weigand decided he was lucky. The gap was not filled when he reached it, and he eased the Buick in. The driver of the little coupe had done him a good turn.

Bill locked the ignition, went up the street fifty feet or so and ran up brownstone steps. He went up as if it were important to reach the top quickly. Inside the house he went, still fast, up a flight to the second floor and outside one of the two doors on the landing he whistled on a certain note. He seemed to wait a second for something to happen, and when nothing did he looked a little disappointed. He unlocked the door and, as he opened it, whistled again on the same note. Nothing happened again. Then he called “Hey!” but without confidence. He tossed his hat toward a chair and went to a desk in the pleasant living room which stretched the width of the house, its windows looking out on a tree which seemed strangely content to be thrust through a square hole in the sidewalk of Thirty-seventh Street, and to find nutriment somehow among the twisting pipes and conduits below. The tree had the hopeful green leaves of June.

Bill Weigand went to a desk and turned over letters. A couple he tossed aside, three he opened, scanned briefly and dropped back on the desk. Then, for a man who had moved with such quick certainty, he seemed oddly at a loss about what to do next. He looked around the room and shook his head. He picked his hat up from a chair and went down an inner hall and hung it up in a hall closet. He went past the bathroom door and to the big bedroom which crossed the rear half of the second floor of the house. He looked around it as if he expected to see something—as if he were looking for something. He heard footsteps in the hall outside and his attention quickened and, at almost the same moment, relaxed again. He looked at his watch and went back into the living room and looked at his watch again. He crossed to one of the windows and looked down on Thirty-seventh Street. By leaning close to the window he could look up the street toward Madison.

He sat down and lighted a cigarette and, after what seemed rather a long time to him, looked at his watch again. It had been six minutes. He leaned back, frowned, got up and went to the desk again. He looked at the letters he had read and read two of them again, abstractedly. Then he went back to the window and looked out on Thirty-seventh.

By twenty minutes after six he had looked at his watch half a dozen times, he had smoked two more cigarettes and he had once again listened to and been disappointed by footsteps in the outer hall. It was six twenty-five when he ground out the current cigarette with a hard, twisting gesture, as if the action put a period to something, and picked a telephone off a stand near the fireplace. He held the telephone on his knee and dialed and, when he was answered, said, “Hello, Pam.”

“Where are you, Bill?” Pam North said. “Because we're getting thirsty and you're supposed to be here.”

“That's the trouble,” Bill Weigand said. “We're going to be late, apparently. Dorian hasn't got here.”

“She's late,” Pam North told him. “Fifteen for the shampoo, half an hour for the set, half an hour under the dryer, half an hour combing out and fifteen to twenty for the manicure, except that might go with the drying. That makes—what does that make? An hour and fifteen minutes?”

“An hour and forty-five minutes or two hours,” Bill told her. “Depending on the manicure.”

“Whether it goes with the dryer,” Pam said. “Are you sure it's that long? Jerry!” There was a pause. Bill could hear Jerry North's voice, apparently at some distance. “He says he wasn't listening,” Pam said. “We'll have to take your figures I guess, Bill. And don't say anything about stubs!”

“Stubs?” Bill Weigand said. “I don't—”

“Check stubs,” Pam said. “Women in relation to. Just put it at two hours. She had an appointment at three. Where is she?”

“Oh,” Bill said, “she may have met somebody and stopped for a cocktail. I just wanted you to know we would be a little late.”

There was a pause and Bill waited.

“Look,” Pam said, “she was at a suicide today. Could that make any difference?”

“At a what?” Bill said. Unconsciously his voice went up a little in volume.

“A suicide,” Pam said. “A man she was going to see jumped out a window. But I don't suppose there's any connection, really.”

“Connection?” Bill repeated. “Between Dorian's wanting to see a man and his jumping out a window? I shouldn't think so.” His voice was dry on the last words.

“Bill!” Pam said. “You know what I meant. Between her being late, of course. Although she was all right at lunch.”

It really wasn't difficult. All the meanings were there. It was only that some of the words weren't.

“Probably,” Pam said, “it's merely that somebody was late this morning and it threw them all off. At Bonwit's. Probably the suicide doesn't enter in.”

“No,” Bill said, “I don't see why it should. Who jumped?”

“A Mr. Wilming,” Pam said. “Art editor at
Esprit.
Business anxieties, the radio said. Which means he was going to get fired.”

“And Dorian was there?” Bill said.

Dorian was there, Pam told him. She had gone to show Mr. Wilming a sketch. But he jumped before he looked at it.

“She said a very nice detective asked her just a few questions and let her go,” Pam said. “A Mr. Flanagan. A very polite detective, she said.”

“Flanagan?” Weigand repeated. “Oh yes. A precinct man. I know him. Very pleasant guy. He didn't pass it along to us.”

“He decided it was suicide, Dorian said,” Pam told him. “It seems poor Mr. Wilming was not only going to be fired, but had lost his mother recently. So apparently he just sat at his desk, smoking, and all at once went over to the window and jumped out. His cigarette was still burning when Dorian got there.” There was another momentary pause, but this one was somehow different from the one which had interrupted Pam North a moment before. Possibly it seemed different because of Pam's quickened breath—the faint, soft sound he heard of her breath being drawn in.

“Bill!” Pam said then, and her voice was quite different; it was excited. “I don't believe it! Your Mr. Flanagan didn't
think!”

“Don't believe what?” Bill said. He listened to her with half his mind; the other half listened for footsteps in the outside hall.

“That he would just leave his cigarette to burn out,” Pam said. “It—it isn't right.”

“No?” Bill said. “Not right?” He thought he heard footsteps; he decided he didn't.

“Bill!” Pam said. “Listen. He would put it out. Stub it out! Don't you see? When he made up his mind. He wouldn't just leave it there as if—as if he were coming back to it! Nobody would.”

Bill heard—thought he heard—the door closing downstairs.

“Look, Pam,” he said, “I think she's coming now. If she is we'll be along in half an hour or so. Right? And you can tell me about the cigarette.”

“But—” Pam said.

“Goodbye, Pam,” Bill said. “We'll be along.”

But after he had hung up, the person who had come in downstairs was not Dorian after all, and he sat down again in the chair he had left when he went to the telephone. He sat restlessly. He lighted another cigarette and, as he did so, remembered he had been smoking when he had gone to the telephone. He looked at the ash tray. A cigarette, hardly a quarter smoked, had been stubbed out in the tray. The end which had been lighted was black and splayed out. Weigand looked at the cigarette he had put out, with some violence apparently, before he went to the telephone. As he looked at it, a line formed slowly between his eyebrows.

“I didn't see anything,” Dorian repeated, and her voice was dulled now. “I tell you—”

The man named Farno shook her again. He was not gentle now. And then he slapped her across the mouth. His hands did not let her fall back from the blow.

But they had not really hurt her. Her hair which, only a little while before, Henri of Bonwit's had so much admired, standing back in approval of his own handiwork, saying, “Voilà, madame!”—her hair had fallen out of its cunningly contrived perfection. Her mouth was swollen a little from slaps by the big soft hand. But she was not really hurt.

“I didn't see anything,” she said and tried to put a hand up to touch her mouth. The man named Farno forced the hand down.

“She wants us to get tough, Farno,” Piper said. “I guess she wants us to get real tough.” He snickered.

In some ways Piper was the worse of the two. He had not touched her. He had only enjoyed what Farno had done to her. Farno himself did not seem either to enjoy slapping her or to regret it. It seemed to be business with Farno. To Piper, and she shrank from the thought, it was a kind of game—a pleasant game.

“Maybe we ought to get real tough, see?” Piper said, and again he gave the strange, unpleasant little laugh. “A cigarette, maybe?”

Farno did not loose Dorian but he turned to Piper and seemed to examine him.

“Some day they're going to lock you up for keeps, Piper,” he said. “You know that? You get such a kick out of things.”

“Now Farno,” Piper said. “Now you oughtn't to say—”

“You don't think of things like they was jobs,” Farno said. “See? Like they was something we get paid for.” He half addressed Dorian, now. “He gets personal, lady,” Farno said. “See? Me, I don't get personal.” He shook her, not hard. “It's just we want to know something,” he said. “Something you know. I don't get any fun out of it.”

He seemed, she thought, oddly—under the circumstance almost horribly—anxious for her to believe him. If they had to get tough, if it came to cigarettes, Farno would not get any fun out of it. He would just be doing a job. And now she did not know which, really, was the worse of the two, and she felt the blood draining down from her brain, felt blackness coming in, circling in, from the sides.

“You and your cigarettes!” She heard—distantly heard—the bigger of the two saying to the smaller. “Now she's fainting!”

She was lying on the floor and the blackness went away, at first in waves, then fading to gray, to light. And she heard a snicker.