Death on the Aisle (12 page)

“Where?” Weigand demanded. “How bad's he hurt?”

In the basement, Stein told him, leading the way. Evans was out, apparently concussion.

“It looks,” Stein said, “as if he'd fallen down stairs and landed on his head. That's what the boys say. They just found him. Only he wasn't near any stairs.”

“No?” Weigand said. “Where was he?”

He was in a sort of supply closet in the basement. It was a closet with a snap lock. And Evans was locked in when they found him.

“Locked in and knocked out,” Stein repeated. “Nice for Mr. Evans.”

They went down carpeted stairs from the mezzanine to the orchestra floor and then down more stairs to the downstairs smoking lounge—a long, rectangular room with chairs and sofas which looked more comfortable, Weigand suspected, than they would turn out to be, and a fireplace in which no fire had ever burned. They met Detective Brown of the precinct there, and he led them to an unmarked door at one end of the room. It opened on a steep, short flight of stairs, pitching down to a concrete floor. And then they were in a shadowy, shapeless area, broken by steel and concrete columns.

“This takes us under the main part of the theatre, Lieutenant,” Brown explained. “The orchestra seats are above us. If you go straight ahead, you can get under the stage. Over there to the left is a stairway leading up to the dressing-room corridor back-stage. It's pretty dark, ain't it?”

It was not so much dark as gray and full of shadows. Their feet scuffled on a gritty cement floor. Then, thinly, they heard the plaintive warning of a siren above.

“Ambulance,” Brown said. “We sent for it as soon as we found him.”

A cluster of flashlights off to one side identified the whereabouts of Evans and his finders. Evans was lying on the floor, with a rolled coat under his head, and was breathing heavily. Two detectives and a uniformed patrolman stared down at him. They drew back to make room for Weigand and Mullins. They stared down at him. Weigand knelt beside him. There was an ugly, lacerated bump on the right temple. Weigand touched it gently and the bones near it. It didn't feel like a fracture.

He stood back and looked at Evans. Evans was a little, gnarled man who might be in his sixties, with scraggling gray hair and a tooth missing near the front of his mouth. He wore a cheap blue suit, which was now covered with dust. There was a triangular rent in the knee of the right trouser leg.

“Well,” Weigand said, “he does look like a man who has fallen downstairs. But it would be quite a fall that would land him where he ended up. And behind a locked door.”

A door banged open somewhere and a light appeared at one distant end of what was, Weigand decided, more a grotto than a room. Somebody yelled, “Hey, where is it?” Somebody else said, “Over there, Doc.”

The white-clad interne followed the circle of a bobbing flashlight across to them. The interne said that they were certainly keeping the ambulances rolling. He knelt beside Evans, examined his eyes, felt his pulse, ran fingers lightly in the vicinity of the bruise.

“Concussion,” he said. “Pretty bad at the moment. But it doesn't feel like a fracture.” Another man in uniform joined him. His cap bore the word: “Bellevue,” and he carried a stretcher. He joined the interne in staring down at Evans.

“Musta fell downstairs or something,” the newcomer suggested. He looked at the faces around him. “Yeh,” he said, with renewed confidence. “He musta fell downstairs.”

They took Mr. Evans out to the ambulance, then, a patrolman assisting the driver with the stretcher. The interne started after them.

“How long before he can talk, Doctor?” Weigand asked.

The interne shrugged.

“Quite a while, at a guess,” he said. “Hours, maybe. Perhaps a couple of days. We'll let you know.”

“You do that,” Weigand said. He turned to Detective Brown.

“All right,” he said. “Where was he?”

Brown pulled open a door a few feet away. It opened on a closet full of cleaning brushes, cloths, cans of polish, cartons of paper drinking cups, cardboard boxes of disinfectant tablets. Brown waved at it. Weigand looked in.

“Sorta doubled up on the floor,” Brown explained. “Like he'd been dragged in and dropped, and the door pushed shut and the catch snapped.”

Weigand nodded.

“He didn't fall in there, certainly,” he said. “Maybe he didn't fall anywhere. Or maybe he was pushed.”

He called Stein.

“Get the boys busy here,” he said. “And get some pictures. I think somebody was after Mr. Evans.”

Weigand swung the beam of a flashlight slowly about the shadowy cavern. It caught dimly, and remained, on the short stairs down which they had come from the lounge. Weigand said, “Um-m-m” and walked over to them. He focussed his light on the floor at the foot of the steps and called, “Mullins!” Mullins went over and looked down.

“Blood, ain't it?” he said. He looked up the stairs and then down again to the faint mark on the cement floor.

“Looks like he tripped and pitched down,” Mullins said. “Landing on his head. Don't it, Loot?”

Weigand nodded and said it did.

“Or,” he said, “was chucked down. Or pushed down.”

“Yeh,” Mullins said.

“And,” Weigand said, “perhaps taken for dead and stowed away in the closet just to confuse things. He must have looked pretty bad—particularly to the person who pushed him.”

“Yeh,” Mullins said. “You might take him for dead, if you was in a hurry. Particularly before he started to breathe heavy.”

Mullins looked at Weigand, and there was reproach in his stare.

“Listen, Loot,” he said. “We got another screwy one. A sure enough screwy one, Loot.”

Weigand nodded slowly. It looked, he had to admit, as if they had.

VIII

T
UESDAY—7:35 P.M. TO 8:45 P.M.

Jerry North was beating a canvas bag of ice on the hearth and Dorian was sitting on the sofa watching him. Mrs. North's head appeared around the kitchen door and said, “Hello, you're late,” to Bill Weigand and Mullins. Weigand said there had been complications.

“Complications and concussions,” Mullins said, unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him and he looked surprised. Then he smiled, pleased.

“Canapes,” Mrs. North said. Her face saddened. “Remember how Pete loved them?” she said. She looked very sad. Jerry North looked sad with her. Jerry said that, after all, Pete had been getting old. Pam said they all did, that was the trouble, and the next time a Siamese.

“Only,” she said, “it will get old too, unless we do first. I sometimes wonder. Who got concussed?”

“A man named Evans,” Weigand said, and Pam North said, “Oh.” Then she said, “Oh, not
Evans?
” Weigand nodded. “Not the man who made us put out cigarettes?”

“Well,” Weigand said, “I suppose so. The custodian.”

“Oh, no!” Pam said. “But he was nice.” She paused and considered. “In a way,” she added. “Crunchy.”

“Crotchety,” said Mr. North. “Is he badly hurt? And who did it?”

Weigand said they thought he'd come around. And that they didn't know.

“Presumably, in case somebody did do it, the person who killed Bolton,” Weigand said. “Only it is possible that Evans just fell downstairs. And, conceivably, partially recovered consciousness a minute or two later and got to the closet under his own power, because he had some purpose we don't know about. And then fell again and pulled the door closed in falling, so that the lock snapped.”

“Stumbled over a coincidence, probably,” Pam said, still in the kitchen door. “And then it dragged him into the closet. Really, Bill! Jerry, come here. I want you.”

Jerry North looked a little surprised and then said “Oh.” He went into the kitchen, following Pam. Then he stuck his head out.

“Oh, Mullins,” he said. “Come here a minute, will you?”

Dorian looked after Mullins and smiled at Bill, who took her hands, held out to be taken, and pulled her to her feet. With his lips against her hair he said that it was a dirty shame. Dorian clung to him a moment, and didn't say anything. Then she said, “What does it matter, really, as long as we know?”

“It matters,” Weigand told her, “a hell of a lot. Don't be so pure, baby.”

“Well,” Dorian said, “if you prefer
dead
bodies.” She drew back enough to look up at Bill Weigand. “I don't know why it is, Bill,” she said, “that you make me say things like that.”

“Don't you, Dor?” he said, and grinned at her. She put her head back where it had been. She murmured something into his coat and Bill said, “What?” Dorian emerged, looked at him through eyes which had, for the moment, no greenish cast whatever, and said: “How long will it take?” Bill shook his head.

“I don't get it.” Mullins' voice came from the kitchen. Dorian shook gently with laughter in Weigand's arms.

“I don't know,” Bill said. “But we'll hurry it!”

“And then, as soon as you catch a man and start him for the electric chair we can—oh,
Bill!
” Dorian drew back in real earnest this time, and stared up at him. The green was back in her eyes. Bill shook her, gently.

“Now who's stumbling over a coincidence, Dor?” he said. “Suppose I'm a mail carrier. Suppose it's just when I get back from carrying the mail. Public service.”

“I know,” Dorian said. “It
sounds
all right. Only you're not carrying the mail.” She continued to look up at him. Her hands tightened on his arms, then relaxed. “Well,” she said, “this is the way it is. And I can't do anything about it, can I?”

“No, Dor,” Bill said. “Not easily.”

“Then it has to be all right,” she said. “I mean—I can just take it as all right, can't I?” Her hands were behind his shoulders, pressing him to her. “Really,” she said, so softly that he could hardly hear her, “really it's lovely, Bill. Only catch him quick.”

“All right, children,” Pam North said from the kitchen door. “If we're all tactful in that kitchen much longer Martha will never get dinner ready. And we had to explain it all to Mullins.” She looked back at Mullins, who appeared following her. “Birds and bees,” she said. “Love, Mr. Mullins.” Mr. Mullins, as one who hears a forbidden word in polite company, flushed. He said, “Aw!” Pam looked at him, turning.

“I think he's
sweet
,” she said. “And so big, too!”

Jerry appeared with a tray of shaker, glasses and little dishes.

“Let him up, darling,” Jerry said. “He's had enough!” He grinned at Mullins, who grinned back.

“Hell,” Mullins said, “I can take it, fella.”

Jerry put the tray down on a coffee table and began to pour. He twisted lemon peel over glasses and passed them around. Pam sipped and said, “Um-m-m!” She said you could tell it was really Noilly Prat, and wasn't it a pity that they invaded Neuilly. Everybody looked at her and Jerry said, anxiously, “What, Pam?”

“N-e-u-i-l-l-y,” Mrs. North spelled. “Where Neuilly Prat comes from. Came from. A little town in the south of France.”

They all looked at her. Then, without speaking, Jerry North got up and went to the kitchen. He returned with a bottle and pointed out the label. Pam looked at it and said, in a very disappointed voice, “Oh.” Jerry sat down and resumed his cocktail.

“But Jerry,” Pam said, “you told me this was
real
Neuilly Prat. Imported. And it's just pretending.”

“Listen, Pam,” Jerry said. “It's Noilly. It's always been Noilly. Since the world began.”

“Why Jerry,” Pam said. “How can you? Just to make us feel better!” She tasted her drink. “It's a very
good
imitation,” she said. “Only not from Neuilly. You can tell that.”

“Darling,” Jerry said. “It was always Noilly. Not Neuilly. What do you think ‘Prat' means.”

“Well,” Pam said, “after all, Jerry.”

“Look, children,” Dorian said. “Why not just skip it? And Bill will tell us about Evans, and who killed Dr. Bolton. And then some time, when there's a lot of time, we'll go into Noilly Prat. Thoroughly. We'll put Sergeant Mullins on its trail.”

“Not me,” Mullins said. “I hold with rye.” He held with rye during a long swallow. “Mount Vernon, this is,” he said. “Named after a guy.”

“All
right
,” Weigand said. “Do you people want to know about Evans?”

Three cases earlier, Weigand had abandoned as untenable the correct position that a police officer should not talk about cases to civilians. He had succumbed, as nearly as he could remember, to the Norths' tacit assumption that they were, when murder arose, associate detectives; and when Dorian appeared, for Weigand so brightly, she had been absorbed into the body of unofficial advisers. So Weigand told them about Evans. Without much pressing, while the cocktail shaker emptied, while broad Martha set the table and beamed at Mullins, of whom she was particularly fond, he told them also about the inquiry to that moment.

His report continued to the table. They listened to it over crabmeat cocktails and through clear soup and into roast ducks. Then Mrs. North held a fork of duck suspended and said it would be better if there weren't so many.

“I think it's very good as it is,” Mr. North said, tasting it. “So many what, Pam?”

“People,” Pam said. “The case, not the duck, silly. I think Martha's very good with duck, myself.”

It would, Weigand agreed, be better if there were fewer people. Murder cases would always be better if there were fewer people.

“If,” Dorian said, “we have to have them at all, I'd settle for two people. One to do and one to be done to. Then Bill could just arrest the survivor and there we'd be.” She paused. “He could take the rest of the time off,” she added.