Murder in a Hurry (14 page)

“He did this sort of thing often?” Weigand asked. He indicated the telegram.

“This
sort
of thing,” Faberworth said. “If you mean specifically about his will, no. The present will has stood for more than five years. But the method is characteristic.” He paused. “I feel I can say now, to you, that my late client was an odd man.” He paused, selecting a word. “Whimsical,” he said, with a faint accent of disapproval.

“You've no idea what he planned?” Weigand asked, indicating the telegram. Faberworth shook his head. He said, about that, Weigand knew as much as he, but to that Bill shook his head. He didn't, he suggested, know the terms of the present will.

“Mrs. Halder gets two million,” he said. “That's supposed to be net, taxes from the estate. A few minor bequests. The rest to the children, share and share alike.” He regarded Weigand. “A very simple will,” he said.

“No ifs?” Weigand asked. “No but whereases?”

Faberworth permitted himself a smile, as from one attorney-at-law to a man who might have been.

“No more than usual,” he said. “The law must live, naturally.” He smiled again. “A point on which we should agree,” he said.

“You said about five years,” Weigand said. “Was it very different before that?”

“His eldest son got more,” the lawyer said. “The others less, appreciably. Except the widow. She got the same.” The lawyer narrowed his eyes slightly and regarded Weigand with interest. “Why?” he asked.

It was, Weigand told him, always interesting in his business to know where the money went, especially when there was a great deal of money. He ended on a rising note.

“At a guess,” Faberworth said, “thirty million.”

Bill Weigand whistled.

“Quite,” Faberworth said.

“Five years ago,” Bill said, “how did the eldest son fall from favor?”

Faberworth nodded, as if he were pleased with Weigand.

“Junior,” he said. “Junior seems to have annoyed his father.” He shook his head. “My client annoyed very easily,” he said. “Almost—” He paused for a long time, looking at Weigand intently. “Almost irrationally,” he said. “I say that without prejudice, you understand. And—without witnesses.”

“Right,” Bill said. He waited.

“In fact,” Faberworth said, “both Junior and the junior Mrs. Halder annoyed my client. It seems they—ah—began to have a child.”

Weigand merely looked at Isaac Faberworth, who slowly nodded; who said, “Quite.”

“But,” Bill said.

“As it turned out,” the lawyer said, “their—ah—expectations were not fulfilled. But that they should have permitted the—ah—situation to arise, even problematically, displeased my client. Displeased him—disproportionately.”

“Why not fulfilled?” Bill asked.

Isaac Faberworth closed his eyes, allowed them to remain closed briefly, opened them again. He did not give further answer. But then he smiled at Weigand.

“You must understand,” he said, “that Mr. Halder was legally quite rational, entirely competent. About that there can be no question. That is understood?”

“Right,” Bill said.

“Beyond that,” Faberworth said, in the same grave voice, “I should consider him as peculiar as any man I ever met. Certainly as peculiar as anyone with thirty million dollars I ever met. And, some years ago, I knew him rather well.” He stroked the sides of his face with two fingers of each hand. “He had frequent need of legal services,” Mr. Faberworth said, with detachment. He paused again and Bill Weigand waited. “When I was a boy,” Mr. Faberworth said, “a boy in rather a small town, there was an old man who lived in a very large house. Quite the largest house on my route.” He looked at Weigand. “I threw papers,” he said. “That was what we called it. He was one of my customers and once every two weeks I had to collect for the papers. The house was full of cats.” He shook his head, toying with a strange memory. “I would have said then, a hundred cats. Probably not more than thirty. But—” He shook his head. “Most of them seemed to come to the door with the old man,” Mr. Faberworth said. “It was quite disconcerting. I have never cared properly for cats since, I'm afraid.”

He ceased abruptly to be the remembered boy; he became the middle-aged man.

“Mr. Halder often made me think of that man,” Faberworth said. “Chiefly, I suppose, because of their common addiction to animals. Of course, Halder gratified his addiction in a—a somewhat more reasonable manner. And he lived, in many respects, an entirely normal life, whatever that is. The old man with the cats didn't.” Momentarily, memory again unfocussed the attorney's eyes. “He must have washed very infrequently, if at all,” he said. “Mr. Halder, of course, was normally scrupulous. But neither of them cared for people.”

“In Halder's case, how seriously should that be taken?” Bill asked.

The attorney put the tips of his fingers together and regarded them.

“This side of anything really approaching—ah—mental incapacity, quite seriously,” he said, at length. “He said once, publicly, something to the effect that people made him sick. Not a literal statement, of course. But I always felt he meant it much more than people usually do when they say things like that. He used to argue that people—the human animal generally—had proved so completely inadequate, made such a mess of things, that if it had any decency it would—ah—voluntarily withdraw.”

“Nevertheless,” Bill pointed out, “he had three children himself.”

“Quite,” Faberworth agreed. “Of course, his—ah—conviction grew stronger as he got older.”

The two men sat silently for a moment.

“Do you know of anything—any particular event, or events—which strengthened this conviction?” Bill Weigand asked, then.

Faberworth shook his head. He said he thought that convictions often grew stronger, more rigid, as men grew older.

“Of course,” he added to this, “it is perhaps as often the other way around.”

There was another pause.

“I imagine he was to some degree fond of Felix Sneddiger,” the lawyer said. “At any rate, they played chess together. Now he's dead, too.”

“Right,” Bill said. He did not amplify.

“He always named the animals fancifully,” Faberworth said. “I'm telling you what little I know about him, always without prejudice.”

“And,” Bill said, “without witnesses.”

“Quite,” Faberworth said, and smiled. “Without witnesses. Three or four years ago they were all named out of Shakespeare, although I had never supposed Halder had any special literary interests. Then they began to get Greek names. Chiefly out of the Orestes-Electra legend. Did you know?”

Weigand nodded.

“The Scottie named Aegisthus?” Faberworth said. “The one he gave his wife? The black cat, recently, named Electra? And I think there was another cat, a Siamese, named Pylades. Orestes' friend, you remember.”

“Yes,” Bill said.

“He called the cockers, the ones he kept in the window, The Furies,” the lawyer said. “I believe they had other names but, collectively, they were The Furies.”

“You seem to have been familiar with the shop,” Weigand said.

“I dropped in now and then,” Faberworth said. “I live in that part of town.”

“Did you gather that the names had special significance?” Weigand asked, when the attorney did not continue. “It seems a little confused. The boxer, the one who's sick, is named Clytemnestra, for example. But Electra's a cat.”

Faberworth shrugged. He said he did not suppose the analogy, if there was one, was supposed to go quite on all fours. “Except literally,” he added. “As a matter of fact, of course, the name is given to a female dog, you notice. And the lady was, one gathers from Aeschylus, something of a—” He paused, with unnecessary delicacy.

“Did he sell the animals?” Weigand said.

Again Faberworth shrugged. Not, he said, when it could conveniently be avoided; avoided without too much appearance of eccentricity. He preferred to give them away.

“Do you know if he planned to give the boxer to anyone?” Weigand asked. “Before she got sick.”

“No,” Faberworth said. His voice was flat, not encouraging.

“Was there ever an animal named Orestes?”

“He said something about getting the cat, Electra, an—ah—companion,” the lawyer said. “I don't know whether it would have been—ah—”

“A brother?” Weigand asked.

“Really, Lieutenant,” Faberworth said. “Aren't we—ah—carrying this a little far?”

“Probably we are,” Weigand said. He paused. “You have no idea what he planned about his will?”

“As I said,” Faberworth said. “Nothing. Except that he planned to change it, as you see.”

“So anyone might have gained?”

“Quite. But someone else would have had to lose.”

“And you've no idea whether one of the family had annoyed him? Or, rather, which one had, if any?”

“No idea at all,” Faberworth said, and moved his chair back from the desk. Weigand pushed his own back and stood up.

“But some trivial thing might have annoyed him?”

“Oh yes,” Faberworth said. “Some quite trivial thing. Again, I speak without prejudice.”

“And you have no idea at all, Mr. Faberworth? Not even something that—wouldn't be evidence?”

“None whatever, Lieutenant,” the lawyer said, and smiled and held out his hand. “None whatever. Without witnesses. Or not. No idea at all.”

8

Wednesday, 2:15
P
.
M
. to 6:10
P
.
M
.

After Weigand left, Liza O'Brien had sat for a time looking at nothing. Pam North had poured her fresh coffee and, hardly tasting it, Liza drank. She tried to make the confusion in her mind stand still, tried to make turmoil fall into pattern.

“It's all bits and pieces,” Pam said. “I know. It will come right.”

But the words were meaningless to Liza, the optimism without substance. Serves me right, Pam thought, looking at the girl, seeing her words rejected. Talking like God's in his heaven. Pollyanna passes. How do I know it will come right? Because, Pam thought—still looking at the girl—her young man isn't what you'd expect; he's so much more everything. And, of course, he hasn't told all of it, particularly not what he thinks. And he's so fond of his mother. As if—

But that was reasonable, Pam North had thought, continuing. A young wife with a young child, a much older husband; step-children older than she. Turning to the child, and he turning to her as he grew, because they were both so young for what they were, she as wife and step-mother, he as half-brother to a man and a woman already grown. Almost another generation, Pam thought; almost as if they were the same generation, somehow. Would he hate his father?—or fear him, resent him? Could that resentment lead—Pam rejected the train of thought. She felt somehow that it might leak from her mind into that of Liza, herself so young, trying so hard to make things fit as she wanted them to fit. The poor baby, Pam North thought.

Martini resented Pam's preoccupation; people were made to think of cats. Martini, sitting in front of Pam, looking up at her, spoke in a voice of anger. Pam did not notice and Martini spoke again. When, still, human attention was improperly directed toward merely human concerns, Martini reached up a dark brown paw and touched Pam's knee. Then, slowly, Martini permitted her claws to emerge. “Ouch!” Pam said. That was better. Martini spoke again, with command.

“Well, come up,” Pam said.

Martini went up. She looked into Pam's face, still with insistence, still with something like anger in her round blue eyes. “Good girl,” Pam said. “Nice Martini. Martini is the major cat.”

The Siamese, mollified, turned, arranged herself on the roundness of Pam's leg, hooked gently just at the knee to stabilize herself. She then, from a point of safety, regarded Liza O'Brien, who now was looking at her.

“All Monday night I tried to get her out,” Liza said. “You know. Practically the whole night. Does she know that now I haven't anything to draw with?”

“Probably,” Pam said. “It's a way they are. One of the ways.”

The girl and the cat regarded each other.

“Mrs. North,” Liza said, “I ought to know. I almost do know. But, precisely—the Greek tragedies? Clytemnestra was killed by her children. I know that. But—”

“Agamemnon came home,” Pam said. “He was a king of—of I've forgotten where. He'd been to the wars, oh for years. His wife was Clytemnestra and she had been ruling. But it was one of those things—there was Aegisthus.” Pam paused. “It happened to a lot of GI's,” she said. “We don't seem to get better, do we—more honest, more loyal? Aegisthus and Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon. Then they abused Electra, Clytemnestra's daughter—and Agamemnon's, of course. Then Orestes, Electra's brother, came home from somewhere and the two of them killed Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in revenge. Then they were pursued by Furies.” Pam paused, considering this. “Aeschylus gives rather more detail,” Pam said, “but that's the gist of it. Somebody's pointed out that it's a police court story at bottom—maybe a lot of people have pointed it out.”

“I remember, now,” Liza said. “A horrible story.”

“Yes,” Pam said. “But actually, there isn't any parallelism, except the name of the dog.”

But Liza merely looked at her.

“Well,” Pam said, “of course Mr. Halder is dead. Only it's probably simpler than we think. Things are, usually.” She paused. “Well,
usually,
” she said. “Sometimes, of course, they're more complicated.”

Liza smiled, faintly. Then she put her coffee cup aside and said it was time she went home. “I can never thank you,” she said, and stood up. “And can I come back later—in a few days, maybe—and finish the cats?”