Curtain for a Jester (6 page)

When she turned, the movement was almost convulsive in its quickness. But it seemed to her that the foyer was dark, and that she groped through it to the closet, then to the door, and that the hall outside was darker still. She stumbled on the stairs, and caught herself, and when she reached the elevator she pressed the bell and kept her finger on it long after the car had started up—kept pressing it with a kind of desperation.

John Baker swore to himself. Martha had not told him she was coming there that morning. Not, of course, that it would have made any real difference if she had, although he might somehow have stopped her. The other, he had not been able to stop. Things had got out of hand.

That she had seen him, he was almost certain, although she had looked so shocked standing there, so shaken, that it was hard to tell how much she had seen and taken in. It was, all around, a bad mixup. She would, of course, get onto the police before—well, before it was time for the police.

The whole thing had gone haywire. There wasn't much to be done about it. He watched, out of sight, until Martha had gone through the foyer and he waited, after that, for a few minutes longer. Then he went into the living room and began to work. He worked fast, and as he worked he listened.

He had had some five minutes, which was more time than he had counted on, when he heard someone at the foyer door. He had expected more warning than that. It was a near thing. But he was on the terrace, looking in, when Sylvester Frank entered the living room.

The butler—who now was only a slight man in his thirties, wearing a business suit—stopped, too, as if he had run into something. But his face, from the distance at which John Baker stood, did not appear to change. He stopped; he looked at the body of his employer. There was, to be sure, a slight tremor of his body. It looked uncommonly like a shrug.

He stood for a moment, looking at the body. He walked around it, skirting the spreading blood. He stopped and looked around the room, and out through the doors, and Baker was out of sight, he hoped quickly enough. But he could not see without being seen. He waited a moment, and risked a quick look. Frank was at the telephone.

Whether Frank was calling the police or not—and Baker could only guess and wonder—there was at the moment nothing more to be done at the penthouse. Baker had done what he could; things had gone haywire. There was no immediate help for that.

There were more ways than one off the penthouse roof. Baker took one little frequented.

Pamela North had been sure there was another can of coffee. She had remembered distinctly that there was another can of coffee. She had known precisely where it was; it was where the coffee always was. It wasn't.

Jerry awakened to hear the news. Jerry groaned. He reported a headache.

“It's the most mysterious thing,” Pam said. “I can just
see
it there. Yesterday afternoon.”

“Oh
no!
” Jerry said.

She would, Pam North said, just go around the corner. It wouldn't take a minute.

“I'll get some clothes on,” Pam said, and started to. For a time, Jerry watched her, gloomily. Then he groaned again, but with less assurance—this was a reminiscent groan. He swung out of bed, said, “Ouch!” and then that they might as well both go. They could drink their coffee and buy it too. In due course they went, sat at a counter, drank coffee and ate eggs. Jerry revived, but not excessively.

“I suppose,” he said, after the second cup, “that you feel fine?”

“Yes,” Pam said, simply.

Jerry looked at her. She looked fine. He groaned again, mildly. He said it was an unfair world.

“Why go to the office?” Pam asked. “Let illiteracy flourish.”

Jerry was tempted. His conscience raised shocked hands. He would be no good anyway, Jerry told his conscience. His conscience shook its head. It isn't as if I had a hangover, Jerry told his conscience. I need sleep. “Pooh!” Jerry's conscience said. “Of course you have.”

Jerry hailed a cab. Pamela bought coffee—also oranges, bacon which would turn out to have really been cured and could be returned if not (and which had not, and was not returned), English muffins, a dozen eggs and a jar of red caviar. These things she carried home, as penance. It was a bright morning; it was almost as if New York City might, for once, have spring. It was, Pam thought, too bad about Jerry and mornings. Mornings were fine.

The morning still was fine, although the grocery bag was beginning to grow heavy, when Pam went into the lobby of the apartment building. It was fine as, having pressed the signal button, she waited for Joe to bring the elevator down. It was fine until the elevator door opened.

A slim young woman, holding a cloth coat tight about her, came out of the elevator. Her face was very white, her lips moved, white teeth rubbing them; the eyes in her drained white face seemed inordinately large, and seemed tormented. Before she took this in, Pam North started to smile, remembering. This was the girl last night in the awful—

But the smile faded. The young woman did not appear to see Pam North. She did not appear to see anything. It seemed to Pam that the girl moved unsteadily, as if in partial darkness. She brushed past Pam and went toward the door and the street. When she was near the door she began almost to run. It was as if she were running in darkness, although she was in fact running toward the sun.

Pam had turned to watch her. She turned back, now, to Joe. Joe was looking after the hurrying girl, and his mouth was open.

“She sure acts scared,” Joe said. “She's a girl works for Mr. Wilmot in the penthouse.”

“She was—terrified,” Pam said. “It was—something dreadful must have happened.”

She made no move to get into the elevator. All the fineness had gone out of the morning. It was chilly in the lobby, by the elevator.

“All right a while ago,” Joe said. “Comes maybe twice a week. Stenographer, I guess. Secretary or something. A little while ago I took her up and she was all right. Not chatty or anything, but all right.”

Pam waited.

“Then she starts ringing,” Joe said. “Just leans on the button, though I started fast as I could. I opened the door ready to ask where the fire was and there she was, looking like that. All the way down you could—well, sort of hear her breathing.”

“Evitts,” Pam said. “That's her name. Martha Evitts.”

“Could be,” Joe said. “Well—” He stood aside for Pam to go into the elevator.

“Something dreadful must have happened,” Pam said again. But she went into the elevator.

“Say he's a great man for jokes,” Joe said, closing the door, starting the car. “Booby trap jokes. Maybe—” He stopped the car. He said, “Here we are.” He waited. Pam got out. She went into her apartment. She put the bag of groceries on a kitchen counter. She stood looking at it.

But Pam North was not looking at it. She was not looking at anything. She was seeing a sensitive face, working in terror—in shock. She was seeing the blankness in large eyes. She tried to erase the picture from her mind; spent minutes in the effort, and abstractedly stored groceries in refrigerator and in bins. But the picture held, grew more vivid. Pam gave up, then, and, certain she had already wasted priceless time, almost ran from the apartment, along the corridor to the elevator. It seemed that Joe would never come with the car. But he came. He opened the door.

“No,” Pam said. “We can't just—do nothing.” She looked at Joe, then. “You saw her face,” she said. “She—people don't look like that unless—I don't know what. We've got to find out, Joe. Something's—awfully wrong.”

“Now listen, Mrs. North,” Joe said. “He's a tenant. We can't go barging—”

“So,” Pam North said, “am I. You want me to walk up?”

Joe hesitated. He shrugged. He closed the door and started the car. At the twelfth floor he stopped the car and opened the door. Pam went out; went toward the stairs to the penthouse. Joe looked after her a moment. “Damn it to hell!” Joe said, and went after her.

Pam rang and chimes sounded. She waited and rang again.

“Like I said,” Joe told her, relief in his voice. “Like I said, nobody's home.”

“You didn't,” Pam said, and tried the knob. It turned. She opened the door a crack, pressed the bell again, heard the chimes again, and then called through the crack of the door. “Anybody there?” Pam said. “Mr. Wilmot?”

“Look, Mrs. North,” Joe said. “You can't do that. It's private.”

But Pam already had. The door was open. She called again. She went into the foyer. Joe, torn between tenants, stood behind her in the open door. Pam went across the foyer and looked into the living room beyond. She gave a little, shuddering cry, and Joe crossed the foyer and looked over her. “Jeeze!” Joe said. He looked at Mr. Wilmot, on his back in blood. “Whatta you know?” Joe said. “Whatta you know?”

Pam backed against him, backing away.

“Take it easy, Mrs. North,” Joe said. “Just take it easy. Maybe it's one of his—”

“
No!
” Pam said. “Can'tyou see?”

Joe could see; he could see too well.

“I guess,” he said, “we gotta call the cops.” He started to go around Pam, into the room, in search of a telephone. But Pam stopped him. They should not go farther into the penthouse; they should not touch anything in the penthouse. “Come on,” Pam North said, and led the way out. Joe went willingly.

“I'll call,” Pam said, in the elevator, going down. “I—I know the right ones.”

“Jeeze,” Joe said. “Somebody sure—” He stopped speaking. At the fourth floor he stopped the car.

“Want me to—?” he began, but Pam shook her head. She ran back to the apartment, and into it. Three cats stared. She said, quite politely, to the cats, “Don't bother mamma now,” and went to the telephone. She dialed a number in the Watkins exchange and, when she was answered, said, “Can I speak to Captain Weigand, please?” as politely—as numbly—as she had spoken to the cats.

She heard a familiar voice. She said, “Bill, this is Pam,” and gave him time only to begin an answer.

“Bill,” Pam North said, “I'm terribly sorry but-but I'm afraid I've found a body. With—with a knife in it.” She paused; she swallowed. She saw blood spreading from a plump man, spreading on a green floor. “It's a Mr. Wilmot, Bill,” she said. “There was a great deal of—”

She broke off. She waited a moment, and things got a little better.

“I think you'd better come, Bill,” Pam said. “It's right here on top of the building.”

She called Jerry, then. She felt he would want to know.

The block in front of the building was already filled with cars, with people, when William Weigand, acting captain, Homicide, Manhattan West, turned his Buick into it. He found a spot near enough the curb. Mullins got out on one side; Weigand on the other. By common impulse, they looked up, but not toward what Pam North had described as the top of the building. They looked toward windows on the fourth floor. Pamela and Gerald North, side by side, were leaning out of a window, looking down.

“This'll tie Arty in knots,” Sergeant Aloysius Mullins said, referring to Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley, bearing with fortitude the thought of Inspector O'Malley tied in knots. “There's that to be said for it, Loot I mean captain,” Mullins said. He lifted a hand in salute to the Norths. “With the Norths in it,” he added.

“It'll be screwy,” Weigand finished for him, leading the way. “All right, sergeant.”

They went among the curious, past uniformed men at the door of the apartment house, past a uniformed man in the lobby. They went up in the elevator, not stopping at the fourth floor. That would come later. They climbed the stairs to the penthouse.

It was surprising—it was always surprising—how so many men could get so little in one another's way. In the doorway from the foyer, Bill Weigand stopped for a moment, watching a scene with which he was long familiar. Mr. Wilmot's last party was well attended.

The precinct was, as usual, fully represented. The detective district—in this case the First, with headquarters at the Charles Street Station—had provided a three-man contingent, headed by Captain Rothman. The police photographers were at it, the fingerprint men were industriously dusting. There wasn't yet—Weigand moved into the room to let new arrivals enter—there was now an assistant district attorney from the Homicide Bureau and a detective from the same. “Hello, Flannery,” Weigand said to the latter. Rothman came over. “M.E.'s not here yet,” he said. He looked at Mr. Wilmot, still on his back, still wearing a black-handled knife in his chest. “Bled a lot, didn't he?” Rothman said. “How's Arty?”

“As usual,” Weigand said.

Rothman expressed sympathy. He said it looked as if this—he indicated—had been dead quite a while. He said, “You know about him, don't you?”

“Right,” Bill said. “By reputation.”

“The playboy of the Western World,” Rothman said. “Rather a nuisance in his early days.”

“Well, the joke's on him this time. You got the squeal?”

“Friends of mine live in the building,” Weigand said. The two watched. There was as yet nothing more required of them. Mullins, talking with a precinct man, wrote in his notebook. “People named North,” Bill said.

“The ones who get in Arty's hair?”

“Right,” Bill said. “He considers them-irregular. He—”

But then the man from the medical examiner's office came. He looked with distaste at the blood. He said, to the photographers, “You boys about through?” and one of the photographers took just one more. The physician moved in, then. He looped a cord around the knife and drew it out. He looked around with it, and a man from the lab took it. The doctor examined; he took temperature; he probed the wound. Photographers shot elsewhere; elsewhere fingerprint men dusted. Overlooking all, a sketch-artist made a diagram. After a time the doctor stood up. He turned to Rothman and Weigand, and the assistant district attorney and the bureau detective joined them.