The Norths Meet Murder (6 page)

“Detective Stein, Lieutenant,” the voice said. “Got him, I think.”

Weigand was flooded with pleased astonishment, and demanded particulars. Stein was, he said, in a United Cigar Store on Sixth Avenue, about three blocks from Greenwich Place. It was only the third store he had tried, and the clerk was pretty sure.

“Fellow named Brent, he thinks it is,” Stein said. “A lawyer.”

Weigand told him to stick around; that he would be up. A squad car took him up. The clerk was certain, by now, and pleased with himself.

“He's been coming for three years, Mr. Brent has,” he said. “That's him, all right.” He pointed at a photograph, retouched to lessen the facial injuries as much as possible, taken in profile to hide them still more.

“That's the angle he always stood at,” the clerk said. “Put one elbow on the counter and talked a minute, he did. Came in almost every day and just stood there while I got the cigarettes; always the same brand, always two packs. He didn't ever have to order when I was on.”

His name was Brent, which was as far as the clerk could go. He could go so far because Brent had come in once or twice with friends who had called him by name. Once one of them had said, to Brent, something about “you lawyers” and after that, when they were talking, the clerk had asked Brent if he were a lawyer and Brent had said he was.

“I like to find out about customers,” the clerk explained. “Makes the job more interesting, somehow.”

Weigand agreed that it would do that, and started things rolling by telephone. It was easy to find the Brents who were lawyers. There were only three of them. It was easy to discover, by telephone, that two of the legal Brents were in their offices, deep, it proved, in conference, and that the third had not yet come in. It was not, indeed, difficult to detect an undercurrent of uneasiness and uncertainty in the voice of the secretary whose employer had not arrived—the secretary of Mr. Stanley Brent, of 34 Fifth Avenue, with offices in East Forty-second Street, who lived within such comfortable walking distance of the United Cigar Store on Sixth Avenue near Tenth.

Weigand came out of the booth, thought a moment and went back in, calling Headquarters and the squad room where the check of electric shaver purchases wearily continued. He told the detective who answered that they could lay off a while, and to find out if the name of Stanley Brent, 34 Fifth Avenue, was on the list. It was, and Weigand was pleased with himself. It was on the list of those whose telephones had not answered, but that had been almost two hours earlier. Weigand went around, with Stein.

5

W
EDNESDAY

N
OON TO
2
P.M.

There was nothing homely and nothing old about the apartment house at 34 Fifth Avenue; it belonged to a different era than the comfortable, spacious one which had given rise to the Buano house and its multiple replicas. The apartment house at No. 34 rose sharply in dispassionate façade and kept on rising for a long way. It was sleek and indifferent—the very model of what lower Fifth Avenue had become. A doorman gave the door a starting push for Weigand and Stein, making the action a haughty ritual. A uniformed attendant permitted them to ask that he announce them to Mrs. Brent, but his dignity slipped a little when Weigand gave his name and rank—Detective Lieutenant Weigand, from Headquarters. Curiosity and surmise passed hurriedly across the attendant's features and left troubled ripples behind them.

Mrs. Brent would see them; Mrs. Brent, after a slim, dark maid in a pale green uniform had momentarily intervened, saw them. Mrs. Brent was tall for a woman. Summer tan was still on her face and arms; smooth tan, well acquired. She moved with compact grace as, greeting them at the door of a long living-room, she led them a little way in and then turned, her eyebrows lifting politely. She said:

“Lieutenant Weigand? Yes?”

She said it, Weigand was gratified and a little surprised to observe, to him. Stein's recognition was condensed to an inclination of the head. Her eyes, Weigand noticed, were gray and steady and seemed to be ready for something. Weigand thought how to begin; began by suggesting that she sit down. It told her something, apparently.

“Stan?” she said. “Mr. Brent—?”

“It may be,” Weigand said. “We're not certain, yet. But a man who may be Mr. Brent has—has had an accident.”

She moved a foot or two and sat down.

“Dead?” she said. The voice had lost resonance. It was as if it were going on by itself. “He's dead?”

“It may not be Mr. Brent,” Weigand said. “We don't know—there were circumstances. Was he home—” Weigand hesitated. “Was he home last night, say? Or yesterday?”

Mrs. Brent shook her head, and said she didn't know.

“I just got back,” she said. “I was in the country. I've been in the country since Saturday, until just now—closing the house. But I thought Stan would be here this morning, and his office—”

Her voice still seemed to be going on of itself.

“I was going to call you,” she said. “Somebody, I mean—the police. He hasn't been at his office since Monday morning.” Her hands clenched and unclenched on the arm of the chair. “Tell me—” she said.

Weigand told her part of it. But it might not be her husband. It was merely a possibility. Her husband was about forty? His hair and eyes were brown? He—? Mrs. Brent nodded with each question, and her eyes grew wider and seemed to grow shallow. It was horrible to tell people things like this, Weigand thought, and now she knew; there was no doubt, really. Her voice was still deadened when she spoke—deadened and certain.

“The man—” she said. “The man who was killed? In the papers?”

“We don't know,” Weigand said. “That's it—we don't know. You'll have to tell us. I'm sorry, Mrs. Brent, I'm—” But there was no word to fit. “I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to come with us,” he said. He was formal, as a policeman. He would, at the moment, have liked to be something else; he would have liked to sell cigarettes to cheerful, chatting men who leaned elbows on showcases. These were the worst moments in a murder case. You grew used to the ones who were killed, used to bodies and coldness and horrible things. But you never got used to the ones who were still living; never learned what to say to them.

Mrs. Brent stood up. Weigand nodded imperceptibly to Stein, and the other detective moved so he could reach a hand to Mrs. Brent's shoulder, if it were needed. But it was not needed. Claire Brent walked quite evenly to the hall and adjusted the hat the maid handed her, slipped into the coat. Her voice was quite level when she spoke to the maid, saying she would be gone for an hour or two. All the way downtown in the taxicab the doorman got for them, with the dignified cordiality reserved for tenants and now extended to the companions of tenants, Claire Brent sat quietly, with her hands still in her lap. At the morgue she waited with unswerving quiet while the refrigerating drawer was opened and the body moved to a marble-topped table under a light. Even when the face was uncovered, she only nodded, slowly and with a horrible stiffness. Then her two hands on the sides of the table tightened for an instant and relaxed and Weigand caught her before her loosened body reached the floor.

“And that,” he said to himself, “is that.”

He sent Stein home with Mrs. Brent and Stein called a doctor and directed the frightened maid. Mrs. Brent was conscious again by that time and her eyes were open, looking at nothing. They still had a strangely shallow look, and it was impossible to believe that she was seeing anything through them; anything that was there and then.…

Weigand went on to Headquarters, reported, set things rolling again. Two hours later the newspapers were excited with the news that Stanley Brent, Yale graduate and attorney, member of the firm of Strahan, Mahoney and Brent, was the man found murdered so curiously in a bathtub in the village; found “nude” the previous day, in case the readers had forgotten, by Gerald North, connected with the publishing firm of Kensington & Brown, and Mrs. North; husband of Claire Brent, before her marriage Claire Askew and well known a few years before as a tournament tennis player who once had reached the quarter-finals at Forest Hills before she was eliminated by Helen Jacobs; father of no children, member of several clubs. He was generally thought of, the papers said, as one of the more promising of the younger members of the city's bar. He had had a short but brilliant career several years before as an Assistant District Attorney. A former State Supreme Court Justice spoke very highly indeed of Mr. Brent, as a prosecutor and as a man.

Detectives settled down on the law offices of Strahan, Mahoney and Brent. They learned from Brent's secretary, who fluttered with excitement and now and then wept, that Brent had left the office at lunch-time Monday, saying he would not be back and not saying where he was going. She had canceled several appointments for him, at his direction. She had wondered when he did not come to the office Tuesday and had told Mr. Mahoney. (Mr. Strahan had, it seemed, been dead for several years.) Mr. Mahoney had suggested that she telephone Mr. Brent's home, which she had done, getting no answer. Mr. Mahoney had then said that, probably, Mr. Brent had gone to the country to help Mrs. Brent with the closing of the house, and been prevented from telephoning, or thought it unnecessary. She had telephoned the apartment again that morning, and still got no answer, and had been about to ask Mr. Mahoney for further instructions when Mrs. Brent telephoned and was told her husband had not been at the office since Monday.

Detectives settled down in Brent's office; experts with training as accountants began going through books. Mr. Mahoney spluttered and was calmed. Nothing confidential would trickle through the police hands and minds. But the police wanted to find out things—names of clients, details of appointments, names of correspondents who might, as correspondents sometimes did for one reason and another, write personal letters to a lawyer at his office. When they left they took a good many things with them—check-books, appointment blanks, not a few letters which were, clearly, extremely personal. Back at Headquarters they made out reports, attaching exhibits, and sent them along to Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley, who looked at them with a detached air and sent them to Detective Lieutenant Weigand.

Inspector O'Malley then saw the press and reported that he and the men working under him were, they felt, making rapid progress. Without saying so, he left the implication that an arrest was extremely imminent. This implication encountered the tough, experienced minds of reporters who knew Inspector O'Malley, and many other policemen. The implications bounced, at which nobody was surprised, not even Inspector O'Malley.

Weigand was at his desk when the reports came in, and decided to defer them, for the moment. People first, Lieutenant Weigand believed. Then documents. Then, with both people and documents in mind, people again. He looked at his watch, confirming his suspicion that it was lunch-time. He lifted a telephone and instructed the police operator to get Detective Mullins on the wire. Detective Mullins came on the wire. He said:

“Hey, listen, Loot, you said—”

Weigand said he was sorry, but that things were happening. Mullins could eat breakfast while he ate lunch and meet him—well, meet him at 95 Greenwich Place. They would go on from there. Mullins groaned.

“O.K., Loot,” he said, aggrievement in his voice.

Weigand went on to lunch. After lunch he walked a dozen blocks, thinking. There was not, he found, much to think about, as yet. But, at any rate, he had the victim; had something to work on. He would talk to a few people now, before they thought too much, get what he could find from the desk Brent almost certainly had in his apartment. Then he could spend the evening putting things together, if they would go together. The trouble with this business was, he thought to himself, that you never got enough sleep. You never knew enough facts, either.

Lieutenant Weigand went down into a subway entrance, hung to a porcelain strap and stared for a few minutes at a map of the Independent Subway System, and emerged at West Fourth Street. From there it was only a few blocks to the Buano house. When he got there, Mullins was standing in front of it, leaning on the railing and looking suspiciously at a negro houseboy who had come out of a house across the street to polish the doorknob and look suspiciously at Mullins.

Weigand gathered Mullins up and together they summoned Mrs. Buano. She had never heard of Stanley Brent. He had certainly not occupied the house while she owned it. She had been consulted by Mrs. North on Monday about a party in the vacant apartment—“studio”—on the top floor, had seen nothing odd in the request and had readily agreed. Yes, Mrs. North had said she was going up to look at the apartment, Mrs. Buano had told her that the door was unlocked; it had not been locked since the previous tenant moved out. Why, when you came to that, should it be locked? There were the four walls, nothing else and, in any case, the front door of the house was always locked. Nobody could get in.

“Well,” Weigand said, “somebody did. Right?”

Mrs. Buano, a middle-aged, incisive woman, with coiffed gray hair, agreed that somebody had, more the pity was. It didn't, she pointed out, help the house—thank heaven the Norths weren't apt to be frightened away, however. She did not, it became clear, blame them for finding the body. It was, as a matter of fact, just as well they had, since it had to be found sometime.

“That might have been a long time, as a matter of fact,” Weigand pointed out. “With the bathroom door closed, and the apartment door closed—heavy doors, heavy walls, top of the house. And the bathroom has a ventilator, of course? Right?”

Mrs. Buano agreed. Ventilators were required by the building code. Weigand nodded.

“And with a window open, too,” he said. “The murderer may have counted on its being a good while before anybody noticed. You wouldn't have gone up in the normal course of things, would you?”