Death of a Tall Man (28 page)

“That poor little man,” Pam said. “That poor little man.”

So Smith, posing as Oakes, had got in the second room, not the first. But that wasn't too bad. He got in the second room and waited—with the heavy, spherical base of a table cigarette lighter in his pocket. And, when Dr. Gordon finished examining Weber, when he came into the second room, Smith killed him. Probably he had stood inside the door and had struck Gordon just as the door closed behind him—while the oculist was still looking around an apparently empty room.

He made sure that Weber had left the first room; he could hear him as he left. Then he dragged Gordon's body back through the first room, into the private office and into the desk chair.

“Gordon's body was heavy,” Bill said. “But Smith is strong.”

“He sure as hell is,” Dan Gordon said, reflectively.

Smith took a chance of being seen as he took the body through the first examining room, as Weber had left the door open.

“You might have seen him,” Bill said to Debbie, but she shook her head.

“Not unless I leaned over the desk and tried to,” she said. “Not from a normal position.”

At any rate, there had been a chance. Grace Spencer might have happened by. But a murderer has to take some chances, and Smith took one. With the body in the private office, Smith did three things. He took off the white coat Dr. Gordon had worn and put it on; he took Gordon's glasses—which hadn't been broken, fortunately for him—and put them on. Probably he had trouble seeing through them, but he wasn't going to wear them long. And he took up the half sphere of the paper weight and pushed it against the wound he had made in Gordon's head.

“Why?” Pam said.

“To reinforce the assumption that Gordon was killed in the office, at his desk,” Bill said. “If the question ever came up. Because, using the method he did actually use, Smith couldn't have used the paper weight. How would he have got it?”

They thought a moment.

“All right,” Pam said. “Why not buy some glasses he could see through, instead of using Dr. Gordon's?”

Probably, Bill said, because there seemed less risk in using the doctor's own than in buying a pair which would have had to look like the doctor's. Somebody might have remembered his purchase, particularly as he would have had to be particular as to style. And, although he was in the business of supplying equipment to physicians, that did not include supplying glasses, so he would have had no special ease of access to what he wanted.

“Anyway,” Bill said, “that's apparently what he did do. Which is why we couldn't find the glasses. He disposed of them later, of course.”

Then with everything arranged in the private office, and both doors closed, Smith—in his white coat—went on through the remaining examining rooms and pretended to examine the patients. He knew the equipment, of course; he knew how it was used. Probably he had no real trouble in convincing the four men he examined that he was a doctor, proceeding normally.

“He didn't convince Flint,” Pam pointed out.

Bill smiled. Nobody, probably, would have convinced Flint. Flint was not open to conviction. But even Flint had merely objected that the examination was cursory; not even he had suspected that it was no examination at all.

So—Smith had finished Dr. Gordon's chore, wearing Dr. Gordon's white coat, Dr. Gordon's glasses and what he was able to assume of Dr. Gordon's manner. He had finished and, then, taken his only serious chance. He had opened the door leading from Room 6 to the backdoor corridor and, leaving the door open as a shield, stepped across the hall to the closet. For that moment, he would be in full sight of Grace Spencer, if she were at her desk. And she was. It was then, presumably, that she noticed whatever incongruity it was that had come back to plague her later—and led her to her death. But, at the moment, what Smith banked on had happened—she had seen what she was expecting to see: Dr. Gordon completing his examinations, hanging up his white coat, taking his hat, going out to lunch at a time which, later, would be easy to determine with reasonable accuracy. It had, in fact, been determined within a minute.

Outside, Smith had gone fast, to his own office. Probably, unless the indicators showed an up-elevator very near, he had gone up the fire stairs. In either case, it would have taken him two or three minutes to get from the back door to the desk in his own office. He had counted on Miss Conover to provide his alibi. She was due back at one. He knew her habits. She might be a little late, but she would, unless something very strange happened, be back by one fifteen. If she got there at one, he walked in on her—much too soon to have killed Dr. Gordon. If she came by one fifteen, she found him already at his desk, and the alibi was as good. Even if she had come at one twenty, Smith would probably have been safe.

Pam looked uncertain. Bill nodded at her.

“Think about it,” he said. “Here is what he would have had to do: Meet Dr. Gordon somewhere—say in the corridor—after the doctor had left his office. Wait two or three minutes, engaging the doctor in conversation, until the nurse came out and got into an elevator. Then persuade the doctor to go back into his office, walk down the corridor to the private office, get the doctor seated at his desk and not only kill him but make sure he was dead. Then, after he had checked to see that he hadn't left any evidence, after he had taken whatever precautions he could take not to be seen, Smith would have had to go out again and get back to his office. I'd hate to have to prove that, working as fast as he could, he could have done all that in a quarter of an hour. And—if Miss Conover got back even as late as one twenty, he would have had only twelve minutes at the outside. So, unless something happened to the girl during her lunch hour, he was pretty safe.”

Actually, of course, Miss Conover had got back at one thirteen and had looked at the clock and mentioned it. If she hadn't—well, Smith could have mentioned it himself, jokingly or chidingly. Anyway, to fix it in her mind. And so he was safe, sitting in comfortable assurance, with an alibi they couldn't break because, for the time it covered, it was true. It took the death of a tall man to trap him.

“And,” Bill said, “so far as I know—so far as, I imagine, we'll ever know—that death was fortuitous. It was, as far as timing went, mere chance. Because there is every reason to think that Oakes killed himself solely because he was incurably ill. He planned it. But as far as Smith was concerned, it was pure accident.”

They sat silent for a long minute, warm by the fire.

“Killing Grace Spencer was a mistake,” Pam said. “His own mistake. Wasn't it?”

Bill shrugged. They couldn't know without knowing how much Grace Spencer had guessed. That they wouldn't know. But she was one of the calculated risks.

“And,” he said, “I don't know quite how we would have tied him up with that. It was pretty open. He parked his car down the road, came across lots, got her out somehow and killed her. He took advantage of the lights being out. But if they hadn't been he probably would have rigged up another opportunity. Then he went back, got his car and drove around for an hour or so. Then he drove to the house and made an entrance. It was always obvious he could have done that, but there was no reason to think he had—as long as we couldn't think he had killed Gordon. Even now, I don't suppose we can prove that one.”

“How did he know she was here? In North Salem?” Pam said.

Bill shrugged.

“Deduction?” he said. “Or, he went around to her apartment to see her, after she had indicated, in his presence at the doctor's office, that there was something which disturbed her, and saw her starting out in her car and followed her? Or, guessing where Dan was, guessing that we'd show up here, he came around, too, with no plan except to keep an eye on things—and took advantage of an opportunity? We won't know, Pam, until he tells us—unless he tells us. Fortunately, it's nothing we have to know.”

There was another, longer pause. Again it was Pam North who ended it.

“So many things come up,” she said, looking at her empty glass. “I should think it would be simpler not to kill anybody.”

They digested this remark. Debbie and Dan looked at Mrs. North with some puzzlement. Jerry put a hand out and let it rest on her shoulder.

“Much simpler,” he said, his voice slow. “Much simpler. For everybody.” He looked up at Bill, standing by the fire. “Will you convict him?” Jerry said.

Bill thought about it a moment. Then he nodded. It was the old story, he said. Now they knew who, and how, they would get evidence to explain it to a jury. It worked that way, almost always. People had seen things, and remembered them. Somebody might remember seeing Smith come out of the doctor's office; might remember seeing him take off the doctor's glasses. Someone might have seen him going into his own office. A dozen little things which must have happened might now be remembered—now that they knew what to look for, knew what must have happened.

Pam was hardly listening. She was looking at Deborah and Dan, sitting very close together; looking at the fire they did not, after all, really need. She thought they would be sitting so, often now, and for a long time. She hoped so. And then a new thought entered her mind, fluttering its wings. She sat up suddenly.

“Jerry!” she said. “We've got to go home.”

Jerry said he knew. He said it rather sleepily, and did not stir.

“Now,” Pam said, and stood up. “Martini hasn't anybody to talk to. It will make her furious.”

“Martini can—” Jerry began, and looked at Pam. Her eyes were gathering Bill Weigand in, too. Sometimes, Jerry thought, it was almost easier to understand Pamela North when she said nothing. Now she was saying, using no words, that they should leave the two alone by their fire. It was very easy to understand her. Jerry got up. But he thought, practically, of a problem.

“Our clothes,” he said. “They're still wet.”

“They'll lend us these,” Pam said. “Everybody can send everything back later.”

“Of course,” Debbie said.

“But—” Jerry said, and looked at the hostess coat Pam was wearing. “Won't the drive be—”

Pam lifted her slim shoulders under the white coat. She said probably. She said it was too bad. She said it couldn't be helped.

“After all,” she said, “murder is very hard on clothes.” She thought a moment. “Especially on mine,” Pam North said.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries

I

Friday, December 31 9:05 P.M. to 11:35 P.M.

There is nothing to worrry about, Freddie Haven told herself. There is nothing to think about twice. You are not a young girl, she told herself; not a child, full of imaginings, making much of little because it concerns this man. You are a grown woman, contained and poised; you were married, in those other days, to a man whose eyes laughed and whose voice had confident laughter in it, and this is not, cannot be, the same thing. This is a grown-up thing, made of warm affection, of shared understandings; this is more loving than being in love. In this there cannot be the quick excitement, the unreasoning fear and unaccountable delights. This time you cannot be frightened about nothing.

Freddie Haven looked at herself in the dressing table mirror. After a second she began to comb her hair. It was deep red hair; in some lights it was almost too dark to be called red. Satterbee hair. Freddie was used to knowing that it was beautiful, and unexpected. It clung to the brush, fell from the brush in soft waves; it lay sleek round her head, the ends curling under at the back, as her fingers twisted them. “You look fine, Freddie,” she told herself. “You're a fine looking young woman. You're a credit to Bruce.”

Even if it had been Bruce, she told herself, there would still be nothing beyond explanation. He had changed his plans. That was all. For some reason he had taken an earlier train from Washington. A hundred things could have brought him; he had interests in so many things. There was no reason he should tell her of a change in plan which did not affect her. At ten o'clock—“tennish”—he would come to the party, as he had said he would. Nothing had changed that mattered to them, or he would have let her know.

Even if it had been Bruce—but, of course, it had not been. Was she going to be that way again? Was she going to see Bruce in every big man, with shoulders set a certain way, seeing him where he could not be? She remembered, her hands idle again, looking into the dressing table mirror, seeing nothing in it, how often, how cruelly often, she had seen Jack—in a room, on the street—long after she knew she would never see him again. She was not going to get once more into that sort of turmoil. This had been—what did one say?—a “fancied resemblance.”

She took the incident out of her memory and looked at it. She had been coming home in Aunt Flo's car from having tea in Aunt Flo's big, square, irretrievably institutional house in the Navy Yard. They had come across Brooklyn Bridge and, leaving it, gone through Foley Square, then up Lafayette Street. They had gone along fast, with almost no traffic; she had been warm and furred in the back of the big car, looking without attention at almost deserted sidewalks, hardly noticing where they were. And then she had seen this big man who, for an instant, had looked like Bruce Kirkhill. She had seen him only momentarily while the car stopped for a light. Almost as soon as she had seen him, the light changed and the car started.