Murder within Murder (16 page)

Jerry nodded to that, gave Mr. Hill his drink, and began to mix martinis. But it would also, he pointed out, be better for the murderer.

“Oh,” Mr. Hill said, “that.” He dismissed it.

“What Mr. Hill wants to do,” Jerry explained, emptying ice out of the cocktail glasses and filling them with very pale martinis, “is to look over the notes she made on the other cases.”

“Precisely,” Mr. Hill said. “
Pre
cisely. There is room for speculation, there. What unappreciated slip of what unknown murderer may Miss Gipson not have detected as she browsed among these almost forgotten records of yesterday's hatred, revenge and greed? What may she have seen, that had not been seen before, about the stammering Mr. Purdy, the dapper little doctor named Merton and his hoarded cultures of death, about the dim figure who, for reasons never guessed at, ended the life of the pretty girl from the Midwest who had come to New York with her only capital, beauty, and her days so mercilessly short?”

“I don't know,” Pam said. “What?”

“What?” Mr. Hill said.

“Oh,” Pam said, “I thought you were asking us.”

Jerry looked at her and, almost imperceptibly, shook his head.

“Oh,” Mr. Hill said. “I was just giving an idea. Something like that I think, don't you, North? If it isn't solved, of course.” He paused and spoke slowly, almost as if to himself. “It will be disconcerting if it is solved,” he said. “Very disconcerting.”

“Of course,” Pam told herself, “he's merely thinking about the success of the book. And the future of his own speculations.”

But she looked at Jerry. Jerry sipped his cocktail and she thought he looked rather puzzled. But she could not catch his eyes.

“Pam has a theory,” Jerry said, then. “Very interesting. Perhaps not impossible. She thinks it was Mrs. Willard Burt. The one who wrote the letter I mentioned.”

Mr. Hill looked at Pam North with surprise and, it seemed to her, some incredulity.

“Why?” he said.

“Because she's really Helen Merton,” Pam said. “Her name is Helen, you know. Suppose it was really she and not her husband who killed off her family. Was there any reason it couldn't have been?”

Mr. Hill looked at her thoughtfully.

“Not that I remember,” he said. “Although I don't know that the point was ever raised. It's—ingenious.”

“She's about the right age,” Pam said. “She could have gone away somewhere after she divorced the doctor and come back—perhaps with another last name—and married Mr. Burt. And Amelia Gipson, who knew her before, may have put two and two together and realized that it was really she who had killed off her parents and brothers and sisters, for the money. And she may have threatened to expose her and given her a chance to explain. Which would be the reason for the letter Mrs. Burt wrote. And then Mrs. Burt killed her.”

“It is ingenious,” Mr. Hill told Gerald North. “Very ingenious. And not impossible. Precisely. Not impossible.”

He looked thoughtfully at Mrs. North.

“What two and two did she put together?” he wanted to know.

Pam shook her head. She said that was the trouble. She said that, obviously, it wasn't complete. She said, “Ouch!” Martini had run up Pam's stockinged leg. “Martini!” Pam said. “You hurt, baby.” She picked the tiny cat up and put it in her lap. It climbed her and sat on her shoulder and began to talk, loudly, into her ear.

“I wish
you
stammered,” she said, to the cat. “It might slow you down. Did he, really?”

“Mr. Purdy?” Mr. Hill said. “Oh yes. Quite badly, I understand. But he still found women with money to marry him.”

“Did he?” Pam said. “More than one?”

So he understood, Mr. Hill told her. A friend of his who had investigated the case said that that was one of the things the police were looking into when Purdy was killed in the crash as he tried to get away. They thought there had been at least one other case which was too close a parallel to be mere coincidence.

“You mean,” Pam said, “he did it professionally?”

Mr. Hill said that there had been reason to think that he had; that the police had thought he had.

“You'd think, then, that he'd have been more careful,” Pam said. “More—professional.” She shook her head. “It seems like a very difficult way to make a living,” she said. “Marrying women with money and killing them off.”

“It turned out to be,” Jerry said. “They'd have caught him except for an accident.”

Alexander Hill shook his head. He said they didn't understand. He said it was the excitement, the challenge.

“There wasn't a war when he was the right age,” he said. “Or if there was—I suppose he could have been in the first one—he didn't get in it. This took the place. It was a dangerous way to live.”

It turned out, Pam said, to be a way to die, but then she shook her head, correcting herself. Flying in a commercial airplane had proved the way to die, so far as Purdy was concerned.

“It might have been,” Mr. Hill agreed. “That was part of it—part of the challenge. He put his mind against all the other minds; he played an elaborate game of wits with the rest of society. There was always danger in his life and danger is—” He broke off, and his eyes looked through Pam. “Men realized that once,” he said. “The great excitement of life is the risk of losing life. Not as we all must some time—dully. But facing a challenge—putting all your skill to work, trusting to all your luck, gambling. The same thing you get in a game, only a thousand times more intense. Not a cup at stake—or money—or your name in the newspapers. Life at stake. The strange, almost unbearable excitement of mortal combat.”

He stopped and nodded to himself.

“Some soldiers know it,” he said. “Along with the boredom. Flyers must have known it—their skill, their luck against death. Moments of indescribable brightness. Even terror must be a kind of brightness.”

“I've been scared,” Pam said. “It wasn't a kind of brightness.” She remembered. “It was more a kind of darkness,” she said.

Hill shook his head at her.

“Not for everybody,” he said. “Obviously. Most of us want to be safe and sane. At most, to drive a car too fast—the obvious things. A little keying up does for most people. But there are some—I think Frank Purdy may have been one—for which the little things aren't enough. They want to play the most dangerous game of all—and murder, in our ordinary life, is the most dangerous game a man can play.”

“However,” Jerry North said, “I don't suppose he minded the money.” Jerry spoke dryly.

Obviously, Alexander Hill said, the man had to live. He could not enjoy facing the sharp edge of danger if he were going hungry in old clothes.

“A certain—elegance—would be necessary,” Mr. Hill said, with assurance. “Otherwise, how be debonair?”

“Look,” Mrs. North said, “have you any reason to think that Mr. Purdy felt any of these things? That he wanted to be debonair or live a dangerous life?” She shook her head. “After all,” she pointed out, “he was named Purdy.”

She was surprised that Mr. Hill nodded almost eagerly.

“Precisely,” he said. “
Pre
cisely. An ordinary name; not a romantic name. Don't you see that that may very well have been it? That if he had been named—oh, memorably—he might never have felt the need for excitement? His whole life may have been a revulsion against a dull and ordinary name—a name without history, without association.”

“No,” Pam North said, “I can't say I do, Mr. Hill. Do you, really?”

“I.…” Hill began. Then he stopped suddenly and his manner changed. “Forgive me,” he said. “A literary fancy, obviously. Actually I suppose Purdy killed vulgarly for money. Another vulgar action in a vulgar world.” He looked at Mrs. North and smiled. It was not, Pam North thought, a particularly friendly smile. “Common sense,” he said. “You return me to actuality, Mrs. North. Of course, my speculation was farfetched.”

“I merely meant,” Pam said, feeling that somehow she had failed one of Mr. Hill's better moments, “that Mr. Purdy sounds as if he had been a rather ordinary person. Only with peculiar habits.”

“No doubt,” Mr. Hill said. “No doubt. You will forgive an old romancer. It is—occupational.” He looked at her and smiled again. “I assure you,” he said, “that my feet are quite firmly on the ground. Quite firmly.”

“Drink?” Jerry said.

Alexander Hill did not mind if he did. But he drank quickly; he said that this was very pleasant, but that there was work to be done. If he might have the notes? He wanted to read them that night; he wanted to write this macabre introduction to a book of crimes as soon as he could get about it. Jerry went to get the notes.

“Won't you have to wait to see how it comes out?” Pam asked Mr. Hill. “I mean—suppose you just get started and it's solved?”

Mr. Hill nodded. He said there was that. But he said that it did not matter greatly. The fact was there; the mood would grow from it. It was the mood that was important. How it came out was incidental.

“But,” he said, “I shall write, I think, on the assumption that the case will not be solved. At least, not immediately. I shall, if it is at all possible, maintain the mood of mystery.”

Pam merely nodded, and looked a little abstracted. Jerry came back with the notes, and Alexander Hill rose almost immediately. The cat jumped, after alarmed preparations, from Pam's lap and advanced on Mr. Hill's foot. Mr. Hill looked at it and moved his foot. He moved it rather quickly, because Martini had merely begun her stalk. She sat down, looked disappointed, and then turned suddenly and bit her tail. She paid no further attention to Mr. Hill and Mr. Hill went away.

“That's a very funny man,” Pam said, after she had heard the elevator door close.

Jerry was pouring fresh drinks. He said there was no doubt that Mr. Hill was a very funny man.

“However,” he said, “he writes a mean piece. Which is what we want. Drink up.”

Pam drank up. Jerry refilled their glasses. The cat clambered up his trouser leg, its eyes round and blue and excited. It went out his arm, clinging, and smelled the drink in his glass. It drew back and said “yow!” It returned along his arm, holding tight, glancing down at the floor in what looked like trepidation. It reached his lap and began to purr.

“Now there,” Pam said, “is somebody who does live dangerously. Martini. But you have to be a cat.”

Jerry shook his head. He said that millions of men and women and children had been living dangerously—dreadfully too dangerously—for years.

“I mean in peace,” Pam said. “In ordinary life.”

What did she mean ordinary life, Jerry wanted to know. Because it was peace which was extraordinary, not war. Had been, always.

“Perhaps not now,” Pam said. “Not any more. Perhaps now danger is too dangerous.”

Jerry said he hoped so. He said that, in spite of everything, he had grown fond of the human race. He did not say it as if he meant to be humorous. Pam looked at him quickly. She got up quickly and went over and leaned down and kissed the back of his neck. Neither said anything, but Jerry looked up and smiled at her and began to stroke the tiny cat. Pam smiled back at him and went back to her chair.

“Speaking of Mr. Hill,” she said. “Does he really believe all that? And is it true?”

Jerry shrugged. He said that he didn't know Hill well enough to be certain. He might. It was a literary fancy; Mr. Hill did not expect people to take him seriously. Which did not prove that he was not, really, serious.

“As to whether it's true,” he said, “I don't know. I suppose there's truth in it.”

“Did you ever feel that way?” Pam said.

Jerry shrugged. He said not very strongly. Not since he was much younger.

“But you wanted to get into it,” Pam said. “I know you did.”

That had been for other reasons, Jerry said. As she knew, he said.

“Altogether?” Pam said.

“Oh yes,” Jerry said. “As far as I know.”

“I think,” Pam said, “that Mr. Hill really feels that way. He's very small, for a man. It might be—like Mr. Purdy's name. That could be why he wears a beard.”

“To give distinction,” Jerry said. “Yes, I've always supposed so. In his case. Not that he needs it.”

Perhaps, Pamela North said, he wanted to be distinguished in some other way; perhaps he wanted to live some other way. Perhaps he—oh, wanted to fly an airplane in combat. Be a knight. Live dangerously.

“Perhaps,” she said, “he was really talking about himself. Perhaps.…”

She stopped suddenly.

“Did he know Miss Gipson?” she said.

Jerry looked at her. His eyes widened. He said, “For God's sake, Pam!”

“All right,” Pam said, “did he?”

Jerry said that they had met, certainly. As he told her. Miss Gipson had gone to see Mr. Hill to talk over the case he was going to write. He didn't suppose they had become fast friends from that.

“Or,” he said, “fast enemies. Listen, Pam—”

Pam said she was only exploring possibilities.

“Suppose,” she said, “Mr. Hill was really talking about himself. Suppose he really decided that he wanted to be in danger to … what did he say? Face the bright edge of danger. And suppose he decided that he might as well begin by killing Miss Gipson.”

“Nonsense,” Jerry said. “I never heard—”

“And of course,” she went on, as if she did not hear him, “he does profit in a way. He gets a story to write … a very good story. And I think he would appreciate the irony … writing up, ostensibly from the outside, a murder of which he was really on the inside. Speculating about motives, approaching the truth and shying away from it, tempting discovery and avoiding it, leaving—”