Curtain for a Jester (10 page)

“Oh, yes,” Monteath said. “I've heard something about you and him, haven't I? A chap named—Weygand?”

“Weigand,” Pam said. “Bill Weigand. Had you?”

Monteath nodded. He did not amplify. Well, Pam thought, it's not a secret, of course. But still, he's been away. Even if we do get in the newspapers a little, sometimes, you wouldn't think …

“This friend of yours,” Monteath said. “He's a Homicide man, isn't he? Probably be in on this?”

“Oh yes,” Pam said. “He is. He's there now, probably. Or—or somewhere talking to people.” She paused for a moment. “People who were at the party,” she added. And she found she was watching Monteath's face.

But she could read nothing in it. He nodded slowly. Then he looked at their glasses, reached a hand toward the little bell. But Raul came out of the Oak Room before he touched it, found them and came to the corner. He greeted the Norths, told Monteath that their table was ready. At the table, Monteath ordered more drinks. “The perfects?” Raul asked, and Jerry nodded. “Wonderful martinis,” Pam promised. “Much better than outside. Unless they send them outside from inside, of course.”

Monteath looked at her. He nodded again, this time doubtfully.

“About Wilmot,” he said then. “I don't suppose your friend will have much difficulty finding out who was there?”

“Hardly any,” Pam said. “People will remember other people, of course. We told him about Miss Evitts and Mr. Baker. And that you were there, Mr. Monteath.”

“Of course,” Monteath said. “I assumed you had, actually.” He looked at Pam. Now he smiled. “I'll admit I wondered,” he said. “I realized it couldn't be helped. Still—” He shrugged. “Won't make me popular in the department,” he said.

They waited.

“Mine's a queer job,” he said. “We're supposed to avoid—er—unfavorable associations.” He smiled faintly. “Almost any association can be that,” he said. “And a man like Wilmot—” He ended with another shrug.

“You mean,” Pam said, “because he got himself killed?”

Monteath hesitated. He said, “Of course, that too.” But he did not amplify. The drinks came. They ordered food.

“Nobody can blame you just because you went to a party and afterward somebody killed your host,” Pam said. “I mean, you can't just not ever go anywhere. And how can anybody tell beforehand?”

“She means—” Jerry began, but Monteath smiled and shook his head slightly. He said it was perfectly clear what Mrs. North meant, and that her point was well taken. He hoped the department would be equally—observant. Nevertheless, a high value was placed on discretion.

“Will it matter much?” Jerry asked and was told that, probably, it wouldn't.

“They'll wish it hadn't happened,” Monteath said. “So do I. But—it did.” He considered his drink. “Your police friend will want to see me, I suppose,” he said. “As a matter of routine?”

“I'd think so,” Pam said, and Jerry nodded his head.

“I don't suppose you know whether he's got any—leads?” Monteath asked. “Probably hasn't. Yet anyway.”

“No,” Jerry said, “I shouldn't think so.”

“He was stabbed, according to what I heard on the radio,” Monteath said. “Was that right?”

Pam told him it was; told him something of what she had seen from the doorway to the big living room. She told him, too, why she had gone to the penthouse—something of the blank fear, or shock, in the eyes of Martha Evitts.

“Of course,” she said, “there was the business about the dummy first. You remember the dummy? The mannequin?”

“Oh yes,” Monteath said. “I remember the dummy, Mrs. North. Very—unpleasantly. I thought for a moment there—well, what Wilmot wanted me to think. That I'd killed a man.”

“It was a damn fool thing,” Jerry said.

“I thought so,” Monteath said. “Of course, I was a little—well, call it prejudiced. Probably seemed very funny to Wilmot.”

“He must have been a strange sort of person,” Pam said, and paused while the waiter delivered, to her, corned beef and cabbage. “My,” Pam said, “I must have been hungry.” The waiter left broiled sea bass with Jerry, eggs benedict with Arthur Monteath. The waiter withdrew. “A very strange sort of person,” Pam said. “To go to so much trouble for—well, it wasn't particularly funny, or anything, was it?”

Monteath shook his head.

“Unless it meant something more,” Pam said. “I keep wondering about the red hair.”

“Yes,” Jerry said. “You do, don't you?”

“Well,” Pam said, turning to him. “Why the red hair, then?”

“I don't know, dear,” Jerry said. “I'm very sorry, but I don't know.” Monteath looked from one of them to the other. “The mannequin had red hair,” Jerry told him, and Monteath's face cleared. He said that, now, he remembered.

“Well,” Pam said, “it fell out, or off. A while after you'd gone, it went by our window. I thought it was Mr. Wilmot, at first.”

“Fell off?” Monteath repeated.

They told him what they knew. He shook his head. He said, after a pause, that Wilmot must have been drunk.

“I suppose so,” Pam said. “The sergeant said he was. Only—he didn't seem drunk when we all left, did he?”

“He'd been drinking,” Monteath said. “Perhaps he had another one or two after everybody'd gone and they caught up with him. I've known it to happen.”

“Yes,” Pam said. “Speaking of people being drunk. Wasn't it too bad—I mean, wasn't it unpleasant—about Mr. Wilmot's nephew? You said you knew him, Mr. Monteath.”

“No,” Monteath said. “I said I'd heard of him. He wanted to get into the department—career service. He'd more or less trained for it. He got turned down.”

“Why?”

Monteath shrugged well-tailored shoulders. (Even so, his jacket did not wrinkle at the collar. It was almost exasperating.) Monteath said he didn't know. He said that, when they decided a man wasn't cut out for the work, they could find a hundred reasons.

“Perhaps he went with the wrong crowd in kindergarten,” Jerry suggested. Monteath smiled faintly. He said that, nowadays, almost anything was possible.

“Perhaps,” Pam said, “he drank too much.”

“Perhaps,” Monteath said. “I really don't know, Mrs. North. Because I knew, or had known, his uncle, I was asked about Parsons. Said he was all right, as far as I knew. Heard later he didn't make it. Remembered about it when I saw him last night.” He paused. “Obviously, if he drank too much, they wouldn't consider him the type,” he added. “Possibly, on the other hand, he merely failed the physical.”

They ate for a time in silence. There was really, Pam discovered, a great deal of corned beef.

“How long do these things take, usually?” Monteath asked then.

“These things?” Jerry repeated and then said, “Oh, you mean Bill's investigations?”

Monteath nodded.

“Anywhere from—oh, a day to a year,” Jerry said. “Or longer. They don't close the files on murder. There's no way of telling.”

“I've got to get on to Washington,” Monteath said. “As a matter of fact—well, I've got a new assignment coming up, probably. I wondered how long—”

“Oh,” Pam said. “Not very, I'm sure. It's just routine for you, of course. Hardly even that. But—we'll tell Bill, if you like. I'm sure he won't want to hold you up.”

It wasn't really important, Monteath told them. Not a matter of hours, at any rate. He had merely wondered.

“In any case,” he said, “I promised to do something about the old boy's book. Speaking of the book—”

He spoke of the book; afterward of other things.

It was almost forty-five minutes later that Arthur Monteath looked at the watch on his wrist and seemed surprised. It was later than he thought. Unfortunately, he had an appointment. If they would forgive him?

They would. Jerry, as a matter of fact, had to get back to his office. They rose together. Outside the hotel, Monteath would drop them. But he was going uptown. They must take the first cab to answer the doorman's whistle. But it was he who had the appointment, was late for it. He acquiesced, and the doorman's whistle shrilled. The doorman stood in the middle of Forty-fourth Street and whistled and made gestures. A cab checked itself, swung in. The Norths would not reconsider; it would be only a matter of minutes. They would see Mr. Monteath again before he left for Washington.

Monteath got into the cab, said, “Waldorf,” to the driver. The cab pulled from the curb, the doorman resumed his shrilling. Monteath's cab went east in Forty-fourth.

And, from the parking garage across Forty-fourth Street, a nondescript sedan pulled out. It fell in behind the cab, crept after it; stopped behind it when, far ahead, the column was halted by red lights at Fifth Avenue.

“For heaven's sake!” Pam North said. “Look who it is!”

Jerry said, “What?”

“In the car,” Pam said. “Behind Mr. Monteath's cab.”

Jerry looked; Jerry shook his head. So far as he was concerned, the car held the blur of a man. The left ear, to be sure, was discernible. It was not, however, identifying. Jerry said, “Nope.”

“Mr. Baker,” Pam said. “Of all people.
Following Mr. Monteath!
”

“Listen, Pam,” Jerry said.

But Pamela North was positive. Jerry knew she never forgot faces. (To this Jerry did not directly respond.) Anyway, she had had a good look. The sedan contained Baker—John Baker, the man in rompers, the employee of the late Mr. Wilmot, the co-victim with Martha Evitts of Mr. Wilmot's humor. He was following Arthur Monteath. He had, moreover, been waiting to follow Mr. Monteath.

Gerald North used the word “fortuitous,” but he used it without confidence. It would be unfair to Pam North to say that, at that, she snorted. She was not constructed to snort. But she made a sound.

“If we could only get a cab,” Pam said, and joined the doorman in waving. But it was some minutes before they were in a cab, and by then it was useful for transportation, but not pursuit. It took them toward Jerry's office.

“We'll have to tell Bill, of course,” Pam said. “I'll call him when I get home.”

“You're sure it was Baker?”

She was. Then she should call.

“But there's more, isn't there?” Pam said. “Why the lunch? Not to talk about tennis. Not even to talk about the ambassador's book. You saw that?”

Jerry had wondered. He admitted that.

“He'd found out we knew Bill. Figured we'd know what was going on. Why?”

“Possibly,” Jerry said. “You're guessing, Pam. As to why—he wants to get away, to Washington. Wants as much as he can to avoid notoriety. Thinks we might help.”

“Um-m-m,” Pamela North said. “I suppose so.” She was silent for a block. “You know what we forgot?” she said, then. “We forgot to ask him if he knows a man with red hair.”

“Listen, Pam,” Jerry said. “Everybody knows at least—” The cab stopped. “Keep your flag down,” Jerry told the driver. “The lady'll keep the cab.”

The lady did, and went home in it. But, when she telephoned, Acting Captain William Weigand was not available. Nor was Sergeant Mullins.

“Never when you want them,” Pam told Martini, who answered briskly, if not directly to the point.

They had the contents of the late Mr. Wilmot's filing cabinet, and it was not clear that it got them anywhere in particular. It appeared that Mr. Wilmot's home had been to some extent a second office—most of the filed correspondence had to do with the business of the Novelty Emporium. It had to do with orders for Mr. Wilmot's somewhat peculiar merchandise, with offers of merchandise suitably novel, with orders for the raw material of such merchandise. There were carbons of several letters in German and three in French.

They had the “wad” of drawings, which was actually an orderly enough sheaf of blueprints. The drawings appeared to be designs of—well, “gadgets” was the word which jumped to the mind, and lodged there. Technical men no doubt would come up with something more precise, given time. They would be given time.

They had twenty-eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars in bills of various denominations. It was, Sergeant Mullins remarked, a nice round sum. It was also a considerable sum to find in anyone's wall safe. It was of especial interest to find it in the safe of a man who had just been murdered.

Which of course did not, Acting Captain William Weigand reminded himself, as he drove his Buick into the tunnel to Queens, mean that the contents of Byron Wilmot's safe had necessary connection with the fact of Byron Wilmot's murder. The simple fact was that, when a man was murdered, everything about him became, for the time being, of especial interest. The interest was, at first, distributed—spread thin. That Mr. Wilmot had written letters in German to, apparently, a manufacturing company in West Germany might prove as interesting as the fact that he had died with twenty-eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars in his wall safe. It was true that, from a quick glance by a man who knew German only moderately, the letters were concerned with arrangements to have manufactured in Germany certain articles which Wilmot had proposed to sell in the United States. Unless Wilmot had been killed by a rival manufacturer, one who carried free competition somewhat to extremes—

“Of course,” Sergeant Mullins said, from his seat beside Weigand, “it could be payoff money.”

It could, Bill Weigand agreed, coming out of the tunnel to Long Island. It could also be a sum kept available to satisfy demands for compensation by those joked against. It could be, merely, money that Byron Wilmot had kept around so that he wouldn't run short over weekends.

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “So we don't know.”