Death on the Aisle (10 page)

“Speaking of Mr. Penfield Smith,” Weigand said, “how did he get along with Bolton?”

Kirk grinned at him, suddenly.

“He told you, didn't he?” he said. “Smitty couldn't bear him. His butting in was driving Smitty nuts. And when Smitty goes nuts—” Kirk looked at the ceiling and smiled reminiscently and shook his head. “Boy!” he said. “When Smitty goes nuts!”

“Was that all there was to it?” Weigand asked. His tone was carefully without expression. He was, he decided suddenly, “throwing the line away.” Kirk continued to regard the ceiling.

“No,” he said. “They didn't get along from way back. There was something—” He stopped suddenly and looked at Weigand. “Very nice going, Lieutenant,” he said. “You caught me napping. But what the hell—a hundred people can tell you about it. Or you can read about it in Variety, if you want to go through the files. It was this way—”

The way it was was that Bolton had done Smith a dirty trick some ten years earlier, before Smith had got going; when he was still trying to get going. So far as Kirk could remember it was on the occasion of Bolton's only appearance as an independent producer. Normally he was an “angel,” backing recognized producers. But this time he appeared in his own right as the prospective producer of an early play by Penfield Smith. He went so far as to buy the play. And then—well, did Weigand know how the Dramatists' Guild contract worked? Weigand shook his head.

“It requires advance payments,” Kirk told him. “You can buy a play by paying a hundred dollars down, and a hundred a month for a few months. Then you have to pay a hundred and fifty a month. And as long as you make the option payments the play is yours. Up to a year.”

“So?” Weigand said.

So Bolton went into it, presumably, on the up and up, really meaning to produce the play. But he wanted changes made that Smith wouldn't agree to and they quarreled. And then—

“Well,” Kirk said, “Bolton just hung on to the play. He told Smith he was going to. He sent his option checks on the last possible days of grace each month and laughed at Smith and wanted to know what Smith was going to do about it. Smith couldn't get his play back, you see. There was another producer interested, and he tried to buy Bolton off and Bolton just laughed. He held on to the play for the full year, which ran well into the spring. And by that time the other producer was tied up with another play and there was Smitty—stuck. He got around fifteen hundred for his play, and that was all he ever got, because it had some topical value and was no good the next year. And Smitty needed money bad in those days—needed it damned bad. He'd just got married and all that sort of thing; married, in fact, on the strength of “selling” the play to Bolton. And then they started a baby and there were complications—not Bolton's fault, of course, although he just laughed when he heard about it. And somebody else might have put the play on and had a flop and Smitty wouldn't have got even his fifteen hundred. However—”

“Mr. Smith didn't like it,” Weigand finished for him. Kirk agreed that Mr. Smith hadn't.

“He was sore as a pup when he found out that Bolton had money in this one,” Kirk said. “He thought Maxie was on his own when he signed the contract. He tried to withdraw the play, but he couldn't.”

Weigand nodded.

“By the way,” he said, “did Mrs. Smith get all right?”

Kirk shook his head.

“No,” he said, “Mrs. Smith never did get all right. Mrs. Smith up and died.” He pushed back the lock of hair and regarded Weigand.

“So I don't think Carney Bolton was so much of a guy, do you, Lieutenant?” he said.

Weigand said he didn't seem to have been so much of a guy.

“There are a lot more nice stories about him,” Kirk said. “You'll run across them, probably. So you see why I wasn't keen about—” He stopped, abruptly.

“About what, Kirk?” Weigand asked him.

Kirk shook his head.

“No soap, Lieutenant,” he said. “Just make it read: ‘About Carney Bolton.'”

“All right,” Weigand said. “I'll make it read that way. For now. By the way, do you happen to remember where you were when Hubbard saw the cigarette—you remember where that comes in the act, don't you?”

Kirk nodded and then shook his head, spreading out his hands, helplessly.

“Sitting somewhere out front, probably,” he said. “But I honestly don't know, Lieutenant. I was all over the place. That's the way I work.”

Weigand nodded and thought that was all, for the moment. He could go back and join the others. And would he, in passing, ask Mr. Smith to come back. Kirk, standing, looked down at Weigand.

“He'll love me for telling you this, Lieutenant,” he said. “I just drifted into it. Or did you push me in?”

Weigand shook his head and smiled faintly and did not answer. He watched Kirk go, looking after him speculatively.

“Listen, Loot,” Mullins said. “That guy's that way about this James girl.”

“Yes, Mr. Winchell,” Weigand said, staring at the door as it closed behind Kirk.

“And listen, Loot, this guy Bolton was making a play for her and Kirk didn't like it. Don't you figure it that way?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Weigand said. “That is just the way I figure it.” Then he said, “Come in,” to the person who was knocking on the door. Penfield Smith came in. He removed his glasses from his nose and a handkerchief from his pocket. He peered at Weigand and polished his glasses. He peered at Mullins and put his glasses on and looked at Mullins. He sat down where Weigand indicated and took off his glasses and continued to polish them. He was still polishing them when he spoke.

“I suppose by now, Lieutenant,” he said, “you know why I didn't like Dr. Bolton—why I heartily approved his demise?”

Weigand nodded at him.

“Yes,” he said. He let Smith take it on from there.

“Shall I repeat that I did not kill him, in spite of that?” Smith inquired. He put his glasses on and looked at Weigand. He left them on for half a minute and took them off and put them in his pocket. Otherwise he seemed entirely calm.

“If you like,” Weigand said. “It's a statement I've learned to expect.”

“Naturally,” Smith agreed. “Yours must be an interesting occupation, Lieutenant Weigand.” He looked at Weigand closely. “I think you find it interesting, don't you?”

“Yes,” Weigand said. “Quite interesting. Did you sit in the same seat throughout the first rehearsal this afternoon as you did in the second, Mr. Smith?”

Smith took his glasses out and began to polish them.

“Approximately,” he said. “That is—the same seat, or back a row or down a row. I didn't notice exactly.”

“And you stayed in it?”

“Except for getting up once or twice to talk to Humpty, yes,” Smith said. “I may have walked down to the stage and back a couple of times. I stayed on that side of the house, however—I remember that.”

“Why?” Weigand said. “I mean—why do you remember that, particularly?”

“Bolton was on the other side,” Smith said. “I preferred not to have to talk to him. It disturbed me. I preferred to concentrate on the play.”

Weigand nodded.

“By the way,” he said, “it seems to be a very amusing play, if you don't mind an outsider's opinion.”

Smith smiled at him.

“I'm delighted to have an outsider's opinion, Lieutenant,” he said. “After all, people who pay for seats are outsiders.”

“And a very good cast,” Weigand said. “Or am I just a bad judge of acting?”

Smith looked judicial. He put the glasses away. Finally he said that, considering everything, he thought the cast was shaping up very nicely.

“Especially this Miss—what's her name?” He made a business of looking at notes. “James,” he said. “The girl who plays the daughter.”

Smith nodded.

“Very nice little actress,” he said. “Very nice. Works well with Humpty too, of course.”

“Of course?” Weigand repeated. He smiled slightly.

Smith smiled back, and nodded.

“Of course,” he repeated.

Weigand devoted a moment to looking like a man who has encountered a new idea. He arranged to look a little puzzled. He arranged suddenly and frankly to share his puzzlement with Smith.

“Somehow,” he said, “I got the idea that Bolton was making a play for Miss James—I don't know where I got it. Out of the air apparently.”

Smith shook his head and said that that was very shrewd of the Lieutenant. As a matter of fact—

“Well,” he said, “it won't be the first time in history that two men have made a play for the same girl, Lieutenant. Or that she has—hesitated between them.”

Weigand nodded.

“Only,” he said, “I shouldn't have thought that Bolton was the sort of man who lets girls—hesitate.”

Smith agreed that he didn't, often. Possibly he was having difficulty with Miss James. Smith made it clear that he didn't know and hadn't investigated. Weigand cast again.

“I should have thought that Miss Grady would be more his type,” he suggested. “More—polished.”

Smith looked at him a moment. Weigand doubted whether he was extracting anything that Smith didn't want to give, or that his finesse was escaping notice. Smith spoke, after a moment, and spoke drily.

“Miss Grady has the same thought, I suspect,” he said. “Or had, up to 1:18 this afternoon.”

Weigand looked at him with interest.

“One eighteen, Mr. Smith?” he said. “Why 1:18?”

Mr. Smith looked very bland and said, “Really, Lieutenant.”

“When young Hubbard saw the cigarette fall,” he said. “As of course you know.”

“Do I?” said Weigand.

“Certainly you do,” said Smith. “Your sergeant here timed it very carefully. So, as a matter of interest, did I. I made it 1:18, didn't you, Sergeant?”

Mullins looked at Mr. Smith darkly. Mr. Smith returned a sunny gaze.

“Listen, Loot,” Mullins said, growlingly.

“All right, Sergeant,” Weigand said. “Skip it. Mr. Smith is merely observant.” He looked at Smith. “Merely observant, isn't it, Mr. Smith?”

Smith put his glasses back on and nodded brightly.

“Of course, Lieutenant,” he said. “What else would it be?”

Weigand said he couldn't imagine, and that Mr. Smith could join the others. “For now,” he added. “No doubt I'll want to talk to you again later. I may want to take advantage of—your habit of observation.”

Penfield Smith went. Weigand stood in the door and spoke to Stein. Where the hell, he wanted to know, was this guy Evans, the custodian? Stein shrugged and spread his hands. A couple of the boys were looking for him. Apparently he had gone out somewhere.

“I want him,” Weigand said. “Gone out or not, I want him.”

VII

T
UESDAY
—6:15 P.M. TO 7:25 P.M.

Mullins was looking inquiringly at Weigand when the lieutenant closed the door.

“Evans?” Mullins repeated. “Who—oh, yeh, the janitor. Why him, particularly?”

“Custodian,” Weigand said. “I gather he doesn't personally janit.” He paused and considered that Pam North apparently was creeping into his speech. “And because I want anybody whose habits suddenly change when somebody's done a murder. Evans normally is always around, everybody says. Today he isn't around. And today a man's been killed.”

“Yes,” said Mullins. “Who next? Meanwhile?”

Weigand stopped to consider and regard his watch. There were too many waiting to include in continuous questioning without a break—a break for dinner, chiefly. And also, Weigand decided, a break for him. It was fine to get suspects tired and nervous. But detectives also could get tired, and when they were tired miss things. He told Mullins to ask Mr. Kirk to come in a moment. Mr. Kirk, after a moment, came, brushing back his forelock.

“Are you done here for the day?” Weigand asked him.

Kirk said he had been going to come back and talk about that. Normally, yes. But he had planned an evening rehearsal, before all this happened.

“We're dragging a little,” he explained. “Nothing serious, but I want to get back on schedule.”

“And now?” Weigand said.

Now, Kirk told him, more than ever. He seemed worried.

“The children are going to pieces, Lieutenant,” he said. “They're all out there beginning to jitter and get their minds off the play. I'd like to pull them up short; get them back to work before they go up like balloons. They're funny children, Lieutenant.”

Weigand thought it over. Then he said, “Right.”

“Not that we can let the murder wait for the play,” he said. “We'll have to keep at them, here or somewhere else. But they may as well work between whiles. What do you want to do?”

“Let them go now,” Kirk said, promptly. “Give them a call for—say eight o'clock. All right?”

“All right,” Weigand said. “Let the cast go. Ask Mr. Ahlberg, Mr. Christopher and Miss Fowler to stay around for a few minutes. Or, ask Mr. Ahlberg to come in here and Mr. Christopher and Miss Fowler to stick around. After we've finished with them, we'll get something to eat and take the rest of them later.”

“Right,” Kirk said. “Mr. Christopher's in a pet.”

“Is he now?” said Weigand. “Think of that.”

Kirk pushed back the red forelock, grinned at Weigand and went out, with the faintest parody of a flounce. Mullins laughed and Weigand smiled.

“Nice guy,” Mullins said. Weigand said he seemed to be. Mr. Ahlberg came in, round and anxious. Weigand said there were a few questions. Ahlberg looked increasingly anxious.

“Troubles,” Mr. Ahlberg said, desperately. “Always troubles. If it ain't money it's murder or some critic can't digest his dinner. Always troubles.”