Death of a Tall Man (13 page)

“I don't know what they're doing,” the trooper said. “Do you want to see Lieutenant Weigand or don't you?”

Dorian and Jerry simultaneously opened the doors beside them. Pam followed Dorian out on the right side. Jerry went around the car and joined them in front of it.

“We—” Pam began. Then, as if it were a cue, lights seemed to go on everywhere. There were lights in most of the windows of the house and a light over the Colonial entrance; there was a bright light, under a shade, beating down on the cars in front of the garage.

“Found it,” the trooper said. “Come on, bub.” He looked at Pam and Dorian. “And ladies,” he said. He led them to the front door, opened it and raised his voice. “The lieutenant in there?” he demanded.

“Who wants him?” a strange voice said.

“People,” the trooper said. “Say they're friends of his. In fact, one of them says she's his wife.”

“Well,” the voice inside said. “Ain't that—”

The voice stopped as if somebody had stepped on it. Bill came to the door. He looked at the Norths and Dorian a moment. His face was grave.

“All right, Graham,” he said. The trooper saluted. “Get back to it,” Bill told him. The trooper turned and went back down the drive. It appeared he was guarding the driveway. “It took you quite a while,” Bill said, to the three of them generally. “Get lost?”

“Fog,” Jerry said.

“Funny,” Bill said. “We didn't hit any fog.” He smiled. “Not until we got here, anyway,” he added. “Come on in.”

They went in to the big central hall, with stairs leading up from it. Bill motioned to the right and they went into a long living room, with french doors along the opposite side.

“What a nice house,” Pam said. “See, Jerry, that's what I was talking about. With a terrace outside.”

“Yes, baby,” Jerry said. “I knew what you were talking about. It's fine.”

“Bill,” Dorian said. “Are you all right?” She looked at him. “Something's happened!” she said.

Bill nodded.

“We got him,” Bill said. “Now we haven't got him. Somebody was helpful.” They looked at him and waited. “Somebody turned off the lights on us,” he said. “At the fuse-box switch. Just as Mr. Gordon was about to explain things to us.”

“And he got away again,” Pam said. It was a statement.

“Since you don't sit around a lighted room with a pocket torch in your hand,” Bill said, “he got away, Pam. For the moment. It's a little confused. Everybody seems to have got away. That's why Graham is watching the entrance.” He smiled faintly. “Not that their cars would be much good to them,” he added. “We fixed that.”

“Look,” Pam said, “we just came in. We seem to have missed a lot.”

Up until about fifteen-twenty minutes earlier they had missed nothing of much importance, Bill told them. Except helping to count noses. There were quite a lot of noses. Bill counted them. Dan Gordon. Deborah Brooks. Mrs. Andrew Gordon. And a new one—Lawrence Westcott. A neighbor, by all accounts. Very good looking, in tweeds and a sweater, probably in his late thirties. A big man; a pipe smoker.

“No dog?” Pam said.

Lots of dogs, Bill assumed. But not with him. He had heard of Dr. Gordon's murder. On the radio. (“Was it?” Pam said. “It was,” Bill told her.) He had come over to see if he could do anything.

“Mrs. Westcott?” Pam said. “Or isn't there one?”

Westcott had not mentioned one, Bill said. It had not come up, however; not directly. He told them the rest of it.

The troopers—two of them—had been at the house since about nine, on Weigand's request. Merely to watch; to do nothing unless somebody tried to leave. Nobody had tried to leave. Bill and Mullins had picked up Debbie Brooks, guided to her by a radio car and trailed her, driving at a moderate speed, up the Saw Mill River Parkway and seen her turn right at Hawthorne Circle. They had lost her then, but had been undisturbed, because by then they were reasonably certain where she was going. They had been right; the troopers had timed her in, about fifteen minutes before Weigand arrived. He had reached the house, having to stop to ask the way in North Salem, at about a quarter of eleven.

Weigand and Mullins had driven up to the house, like casual guests, and had rung the front doorbell. Dan Gordon himself had come to the door. He had looked at them and said, “Well?”

“Like the trooper,” Pam said.

Weigand said he supposed so. Weigand had politely, unnecessarily, introduced himself and Mullins. Dan Gordon had been surly. That was the word for it, Weigand thought. He seemed to be, generally, a surly young man. He had said, specifically, “what the hell?”

“We want to talk to you,” Weigand said. “Didn't Miss Brooks tell you?”

“Suppose you leave her alone,” Dan Gordon said. “Or do you like to scare little girls?”

He had said it nastily. Then, without waiting for them to answer, he had said they might as well come in. He had taken them to the living room. Deborah Brooks, Mrs. Gordon and Westcott were there—Debo rah was standing in front of a chair as if she had leaped out of it. She looked very young, and frightened. Dan Gordon had gone to her at once, and put an arm around her, and she had put her face against his coat a moment and then lifted it.

“Well?” he had said, again.

Weigand had said the obvious things—it was murder, an investigation of murder; they had to see everyone and ask all the usual questions. “And,” of course, Weigand had said, “we have to ask what made you run away, Mr. Gordon.”

Gordon had glared at him. Weigand had noticed that the young man was perspiring; that his forehead was wet.

“He didn't run away,” Debbie said. Her voice was frightened, but still eager. “You don't understand.”

“No?” Weigand said.

“All right, Debbie,” Dan Gordon said. His voice was gentle, suddenly. “It's all right, darling.”

“Of course,” the girl said, and looked up at him. Her eyes were wet. “Of course, Dan.”

“Is it?” Bill said. “I'm afraid—”

He had been interrupted then by the ringing of the front doorbell. Dan had started toward the door; Bill had shaken his head; Mullins, finally, had opened it. Grace Spencer had come in. She seemed hurried. She spoke, it seemed, before she saw who was in the room. “I had—” she began. Then she caught herself. “I didn't know,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

She had come in, and everybody had sat down while Weigand sorted things out. He sorted Westcott out; he passed him over for the time. When he asked if there was anybody else in the house, Mrs. Gordon had said, “only Eileen—my little girl.” And her nurse. And Mr. and Mrs. Gustaf. Mr. and Mrs. Gustaf were the “couple.”

Weigand had thought things over and decided to start on Dan Gordon. Gordon, irritably; admitted there was some place they could talk. He had led Weigand out of the living room, across the central hall, into a study beyond. Weigand closed the door; found there were two other doors leading into the small room, and closed them. Gordon had sat down in a deep chair and watched him. Weigand had crossed and looked out through the french doors which were on the far side of this room, also, and then had gone back and sat in another deep chair opposite Gordon. There were only deep chairs in the room. Weigand offered Dan Gordon a cigarette and noticed that the fingers which took it trembled. Weigand had lighted Gordon's cigarette and his own. They had smoked silently for a minute or two, each waiting for the other. Gordon waited longer.

“Now,” Weigand began, finally. Then the lights went out.

Bill Weigand had lost time getting out of the deep chair. Not much, but enough. He heard movement, and was blind and lunged toward Gordon's chair. But Gordon's chair was empty. After a little Bill's eyes adjusted and then there was enough moonlight coming in through the french doors to make it apparent that the room was empty. If somebody had been giving Dan Gordon another chance to get out from under, he had taken it.

Bill went back, fast, toward the living room and almost ran into Mullins, who was coming fast out of it. There was a good deal of confusion, Bill admitted. Both of the troopers had come on the run and had been sent out again, to immobilize the cars which had brought Gordon, Deborah Brooks and Grace Spencer to the house. Westcott, it appeared, had come across country, afoot. Mrs. Gordon's big Cadillac was in the garage. Dan's convertible, also a Cadillac, was headed toward the garage door, but not inside. A Ford coupe—Debbie's by its position—was alongside. An older Plymouth—Grace Spencer's, that would be—was behind it. The troopers took care of those, and posted themselves so that they could watch the house, after a fashion. It was not too good a fashion; the house rambled, possessing wings and minor protuberances. There were no positions from which two men could watch it all.

Weigand and Mullins had had flashlights by that time. They did not need them to discover that the living room, moonlight flooded, was empty—unless, to be sure, people were hiding in the dark shadows cast by chairs and tables. They brushed those shadows away with the light from their torches. Nobody. Then they started searching.

“It's a damn big house,” Weigand told Dorian and the Norths. “Bigger even than it looks from outside. It twists and turns.”

They twisted and turned with it. Then, down a corridor, they saw the light from another flash, and yelled at it. Westcott, big and burly—and calm—turned the light on himself for identification and said it was a hell of a note.

“Eve's with the kid,” he said. “Kidnappers, she's afraid of.”

It seemed to be stretching an irrelevant fear a good distance. But perhaps it wasn't. Reasonably, it would be in a mother's mind. As an explanation, it would stand up.

“Power failure,” Westcott told them. “Happens all the time in the country, you know.”

Bill didn't know. He said so curtly. It happened, chiefly, during thunderstorms. Where was the thunderstorm?

“What else?” Westcott said. He sounded interested.

If he couldn't guess, there was no point in explaining. Weigand assumed he could guess, if he wanted to.

“Where did you go?” Weigand asked.

“With Eve.”

“And the others?”

Westcott shrugged, dim in the reflected light from the torches. Weigand let it go for the moment. It could be true. Very possibly it was true. In any event, it was secondary.

Westcott did not know where the fuse boxes were; he assumed in the basement. He looked at Weigand when he was asked and shook his head.

“Everybody was in the living room,” he said. “Everybody was surprised.”

“No, Loot,” Mullins said. “The girl wasn't there. She—” He paused. “She had to be excused.”

That had been a minute or two after Weigand had taken Dan Gordon out. Mullins, considerate—and probably, Bill thought, a little embarrassed—had approved her departure. She had been gone another minute or two when the lights went out.

“The little fool,” Bill said. “Twice is too much.”

They blundered in search of the main fuse boxes, which presumably would be in the basement. They opened wrong doors; they found stairs going down and went down them and came back up, because they led into a storeroom which led nowhere—and contained no fuse boxes. They found the kitchen and opened a door beyond it and a blurred, accented voice wanted to know who was there. The voice belonged to Mr. Gustaf, who was short and heavy and in a nightshirt. His hair was a fringe, standing up around the circumference of his head like a bristling fence. It was apparent that Mr. Gustaf had been asleep.

With Weigand's torch light on him, he reached to the wall at the left of the door, and Weigand heard a wall switch click. Nothing happened. Gustaf looked surprised. Then he looked frightened. It took time to bring him out of it. Then he went back, rumbled an explanation to someone inside—someone who was, they would assume for the time, Mrs. Gustaf—and came back with trousers over the nightshirt and slippers on the broad feet. He led them to the fuse box, which was in the basement. It was a triple box, for three circuits. Each circuit had its own knife switch. All were down.

“Veil!” Mr. Gustaf said, with what appeared to be hurt surprise in his voice. He pushed them back up again. In the basement, nothing happened. Then Mr. Gustaf found a switch and pushed it. Light returned. Upstairs, when they got there, there was no lack of light. They called one of the troopers in, then, leaving the other at the road. They sent Mr. Gustaf back to his room, and told him to stay there. They took—were taken by—Westcott to the little girl's bedroom. Mrs. Gordon was there; the child's nurse, middle aged and comfortable, was there. The little girl, with hair like her mother's—but softer, flowing as it wished—was asleep. Bright hair spread over her pillow; her face was flushed. Near relaxed fingers lay an object which must have started life as a felt animal. A rabbit, perhaps. It had been around.

Evelyn Gordon looked frightened—and wondering. She spoke very quietly, not waking the child. She said, “What?” and waited. Bill Weigand shook his head; he indicated Westcott. He could answer that. “Stay here, all of you,” Weigand said, and went out and closed the door—very gently, so as not to waken the child.

It was not a new house. There was a minimum of open space, particularly on the second floor. There were many rooms, with closed doors. And there were only three of them to look. They left Mullins to start upstairs. Weigand took the trooper and went down again.

“Then you came,” Bill said.

“So somebody threw the main switches so Gordon could get away,” Pam said. “And he got away.”

“Why somebody?” Bill said. “Deborah Brooks. The sweet young thing.”

“Well,” Pam said, reasonably, “she is. Or isn't she?”

The sweetness was wearing thin, Bill told her. She kept getting in the way.