Death of a Tall Man (21 page)

“By the way,” Smith said, “I don't think you've met Miss Conover.” Miss Conover was the red-haired secretary. Weigand was glad to meet her; she was glad to meet Lieutenant Weigand. “I owe a good deal to Miss Conover, I imagine,” Smith said, and smiled.

“Perhaps,” Bill agreed. “Miss Conover is the one who—?”

“Yes,” Smith said. “Alibi Conover, I think of her now.” He sobered a moment. “In the end, of course, you would have found the right man,” he said. “I don't doubt that. But I suspect her memory saved me—inconvenience. Am I right?”

Weigand admitted, by implication, that he might be right.

“It's always useful to know the impossibles,” he said. “Along with the possibles. Narrows the field.”

“I was so glad,” Miss Conover said. “And to think if I hadn't been a little late getting back from lunch, I wouldn't have noticed the time.” She smiled at her employer; it was a joke. The two might have several jokes between them, Bill decided. Possibly more than jokes. Fleetingly, he wondered whether anything might be made of that, if it were needed. Anything which might raise a doubt in the minds of, say, twelve men and women. But almost at once he dismissed the idea. Smith and his secretary were too casual; too sure. Concocted stories were told with emphasis, with steady eyes and an air of deep candor. Only the truth could be told lightly, thrown away as a joke. Even Pam North, for all her prejudice, would accept the truth of Smith's alibi, whatever she might suspect about Smith and his secretary. Her doubts, however she tried to hold them, would slip through her fingers. As, he noticed, his had. It was worth the trouble to see, yourself, the people who made statements.

He had, Bill Weigand told Nickerson Smith, dropped around to see how the accountants were making out. He had dropped in to tell Smith that, so far, they had found no proof of anything but—well, call it ineptitude. Smith looked shocked.

“Really,” he said, as if the affirmation had led to his first doubt, “Andrew was honest. Completely honest. I never thought anything else. He—meant well.”

“But lacked experience,” Weigand said. “And judgment. Yes. It looks that way.”

He got out of the deep chair, wondering a little why he had got into it; why he had dropped in on Nickerson Smith. It could be, he reflected wryly, that he was beginning to let Pam North do his thinking for him; letting her raise doubts where there was no room for doubts. Clearly, there was no room for doubt here. His eyes, professionally observant, flicked over Smith's desk as he stood up. A fresh blotter, bound in leather. A desk set, with pens leaning stiffly toward the hand. A glass ashtray. A desk lighter. Boxes, to match the desk, for incoming and outgoing letters. All dignity and restraint. The physicians' supply business apparently did Mr. Smith very well. He smiled at Miss Conover and nodded; Smith told him to drop in again. Weigand nodded and said casually that he might and went out of the office and the building, and by car to his own office.

Mullins was there. He had just talked to Lieutenant Heimrich on the telephone. Everything was quiet at North Salem. Lawrence Westcott had come around about one and taken Mrs. Gordon somewhere for lunch, amid hearty explanations that she had to get out and not sit around brooding. She had gone, with no protestations at all. The little girl had played outdoors until a light drizzle began; now she was playing, under the eyes of her nurse, in the living room.

Daniel Gordon had had breakfast with Deborah Brooks and after it they had walked outside together, apparently talking. Then the girl had come into the house and wandered restlessly for a while and then gone to her own room. Gordon had stood on the lawn looking after her, had seemed about to follow, and then had struck off suddenly toward a secondary road which led away from the Gordon estate. He had been observed long enough to make it clear that he was setting out for a walk, drizzle or no drizzle.

There had been no attempt to follow him. The State Police had enough to do, Heimrich indicated. They had taken pictures, made measurements, looked for fingerprints. They had located the outdoor grill from which the spit rod had been taken, they had—

“Actually,” Mullins said, “they're just sitting on it, Loot. Waiting for us to do the heavy.” Mullins sounded aggrieved.

“Right,” Weigand said. “As we would, in their place. Why break your neck over somebody else's headache?” He listened to that and regretted it. Mullins remained doubtful, but he said, “O.K.”

“All the same,” he said, “they've got a killing too, Loot.”

“Which,” Weigand told him, “they naturally expect us to solve for them. So they merely sit on it, and wait.”

Mullins considered, and nodded.

“Listen, Loot,” he said. “How's about it being this guy Smith. Like Mrs. North thinks.”

Weigand sighed. Prejudice seemed to rule his roost. Slowly, with care, as if to a child, he explained why it could not have been Mr. Smith.

“Take it yourself,” he said, when he had gone over it. “You know a phony alibi the first time you hear it, don't you? Even if you can't prove it's phony?” He waited and Mullins, after thought, nodded. “Right,” Bill said. “So do I. We'll never break Smith's in a hundred years. Because it's the truth. He was in his office from, at the latest, three or four minutes after the doctor left his own office until the doctor's body was found. Three or four minutes wasn't—any way you can play it—long enough. For a good part of the time it isn't only the girl—and don't think a jury wouldn't believe the girl. It was a couple of customers. You want us to take that to the D.A. and say you and Pam North have got yourselves a couple of hunches?”

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “I guess it ain't Smith.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “So for God's sake—don't
you
get intuitional on me.”

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said, temperately. “I won't get institutional.”

9

T
UESDAY
, 5:30
P.M. TO
7:15
P.M.

Debbie Brooks had lain for a long time staring at the ceiling, her eyes seeing nothing. Too many things had happened, too suddenly. Andy was dead and that was hard to grasp. He was not dead the way people died; the way her father had died. Then there had been merely sadness, and a kind of emptiness where he had been. She had been unhappy, when he died and for a long time afterward, but it had been quiet. It was at once an emptiness and a weight, and slowly—very slowly at first—the emptiness filled and the weight lightened. But it had always been quiet in her mind. This was not quiet. Her mind was filled with it—with all of it—and all of it was moving in her mind, going over and over.

Andy was dead, but he had been killed. And Grace Spencer, who had seemed to know so much—to know so many of the things she had still to learn—and to be so sure—she had been killed, too. And she had been young; not young as Debbie herself was young, but still young. Young as the rest of them were not, except Dan, and not always Dan. Young differently from the way Eve was young and the way Lawrence Westcott—Mr. Westcott—was young. Although the three of them were, probably, almost of an age. But about Eve there was something different; something hard to reach. You could never really talk to Eve and be sure that she was talking about the same things you were talking about.

She was not certain about Eve and Mr. Westcott—not completely certain. They were both so far away. She thought—not yet. But she was not even certain of that. Eve had been fond of Andy. She was sure, that Eve had been fond of Andy. Once Lawrence Westcott had made a joke about Andy and had laughed, and Eve had not laughed and had said, “Larry! You mustn't.” But she had said it as if she had wanted to laugh, and had made herself not laugh. It was as if she and Lawrence Westcott, in spite of what she said, were sharing the laughter she would not permit herself to show.

Debbie thought of Eve and Westcott, and stared at the ceiling, her eyes blank. She tried to imagine murder; she tried to think how it would be to do something to someone, who was living—who might just have spoken—so that they would not be living. She tried to feel the way it would feel. How would Lawrence Westcott feel if he struck somebody, as someone had struck Andy, and felt the bones give under the blow—and knew that now nothing, nothing in the world, could change what had happened? But she could not decide how Westcott would feel. Eve would be sorry. She would think it was too bad. But, beyond that, Debbie could not decide how Eve would feel, either.

How much did the police know, she wondered. Did they know how often Lawrence Westcott came; how often he and Eve went away in his car, and how many hours, sometimes, they spent away? Did they know how they talked on the telephone—and how, sometimes, when Eve answered the telephone in the living room and heard the voice at the other end, she would look up at Debbie and smile and form, with her lips, still smiling, the words “Do you mind?” so that Debbie would go somewhere else? And did they know how, after such a call, Eve would so often dress quickly and go out in her car, driving very fast on the white gravel which led to the main road?

She did not want it to be Eve, or even Lawrence Westcott. Unless it had to be somebody she knew; unless it had to be somebody else.

It was raining. She could hear the rain against the window. And Dan was walking somewhere in the rain, as he so often walked nowadays. He had said, “Go in, Debbie. I've got the fidgets,” and then he had smiled at her, but as if she were someone else, and had watched her walk toward the house. She had looked back as she opened the door and had seen him start off, walking very fast; walking almost as if he were angry. She had seen him walk that way so often since he had come back.

She knew about it. Andy had explained it to her, slowly, gently. It was nothing that would last. It had a name. Combat fatigue. It was not anything tangible, although it had evidences which were tangible. You could call it anything—it was nervousness, uneasiness in the world, a shadow of old anxieties lying across the mind. It was the memory of old fears. And it would pass. She had understood that; she understood it now. And the corollary which Andy urged—that she and Dan wait to marry until they could start on surer ground—she understood that, too. It was better for Dan; better to make only familiar adjustments, first. It was better for her, because Dan could not yet be different, and she would not always understand. She would think she could, but she could not. There would be quick angers and quick words; there would be that unconquerable restlessness. And, however she tried to remember that these things were not really Dan, there would be times, if they were married, when she would not be able really to remember that they were not Dan. Even now that was true. Today, for example. She had been hurt when Dan sent her away, so he could be alone. Walk alone. She had understood, but she had been hurt all the same. And when people were married, Andy had told her—still gently—there would be a new kind of intensity between them; a new kind of sensitiveness. If people were married at all. It was hard to explain, but words meant more then; gestures meant more. You saw things that you would, before, have overlooked. “If it takes at all,” Andy had said, and smiled—and, it seemed to her, smiled at something he remembered from a long time back.

She had believed Andy; believed that what he said was said candidly, for their good. But Dan had not agreed; he had been violent in disagreement, as he was now so often violent about so many things. He had wanted her to ignore what Andy said, and when she would not, when she was unhappy at his insistence, and showed it, and still would not—he had demanded that Andrew Gordon withdraw his advice. He had demanded this, she knew, several times. And each time he had been unsuccessful, and each time he had been angry. The anger lasted only briefly; it was a violent irritation more than anger. Dan was often irritated; that was part of it.

He had been angry each time, but only within very recent weeks had he been more. Then it was intangible; it was guessing to say what other emotion there was, or could be. But she had thought he was suspicious. Of some thing, of some one. Presumably of Andy. She had said, only a few days ago, “But, Danny, he's only thinking of us” and Dan had said, “Of
us?
You're sure it's of us?” and had looked at her as if he were trying to read something in her eyes. Apparently he had not, because in a moment he had smiled and said, “Forget it, Debbie. You're a baby. Of course he's fond of you.” He had not explained any further, although she had tried to get him to. Perhaps there was nothing more to explain.

But if Dan was angry at his stepfather—if he had been angry at him the day before, if he had met him when he was angry—it was because of Andy's advice to her about their marriage. Not because of anything else; not because of money. The police wouldn't understand that; it was too intangible even to explain to the police. And—

Lying, staring at the ceiling, her fingers had tightened suddenly on the spread.

It wouldn't help to explain it to the police. Even if it were something to make clear. Because it would give them two things—two motives. It would make them believe more than ever that it was Dan. They were wrong; they had to be wrong. Oh, please, somebody—
make them wrong.

Because it can't be Danny, she thought. I won't
let
it be Danny.

Then she had tried to make her mind blank and, failing that, she had thought only about Dan walking in the rain. She had tried to think what he was seeing, in the gray spring, with the light growing dimmer long before it should. She thought of the rain, falling gently, and of Dan Gordon walking through it, down a road. And then, quite suddenly, she must have fallen asleep, because reality and dream intermingled, and she was walking down a lane with Danny and they were holding hands, and nobody had been killed and nobody was unhappy.