Murder within Murder (20 page)

“No,” Bill Weigand said.

“Or this former professor—Spencer?” That was from Jerry.

Bill said he had told them he didn't have a hunch. He said Spencer was obviously in the running. He had merely given them the odds.

“Not counting Mr. Hill,” Pam said, “we have how many? The nephew and niece. That's two. Mr. Spencer, that's three. Will you count Mrs. Burt?”

Certainly he would count Mrs. Burt, Bill Weigand told her.

“Because she could be Helen Merton, or just because she wrote the letter?” Pam said.

Because she wrote the letter, Weigand told her. When you boiled it down, there was no reason whatever to think she was Helen Merton.

“Or any of the things you think,” he added. “That it was really she who killed her family, and that Amelia Gipson knew her before and identified her,
and
found something which had been missed earlier to throw suspicion on her. It's pure—hypothesis.”

But, Pam reminded him, he had gone to the trouble to get the photograph. Bill said it was very little trouble; he said he wouldn't deny his curiosity had been aroused.

“Can I keep the picture?” Pam said. “Maybe something'll come to me.”

Bill nodded. He said he was sure something would come to her.

“It always does,” Jerry said. “Something.”

“You two,” Pam said. “Are you coming to look at the cat, Bill?”

“I'm going home to look at a bed,” he said.

“How's Dorian?” Pam asked him.

Bill said that Dorian was fine—and out of town.

“I'm going home to sleep,” he said. Pam said, “Oh.”

The Norths walked home slowly, not talking much. Pam said she thought Bill was stuck, and Jerry said that he would probably come unstuck, since he usually did. In the apartment, the kitten talked to them sternly, but forgot to be aggrieved when they sat down and it could climb to Jerry's shoulder and, from there, bite his ear.

“She likes your flavor,” Pam said, watching them. “That's good.”

Jerry took the little cat from his shoulder and put it on Pam's, which was conveniently within reach. The little cat bit Pam's ear.

“And yours,” Jerry said contentedly, as Pam said, “Ouch!” “For that matter—”

“I think,” Pam said, “that it's bedtime for small cats. Come on, Martini. I've given her the guest-room,” she said. “I think she ought to have a room of her own.”

She put the little cat in the guest-room and came back and sat down beside Jerry. When she leaned back, her head rested on his shoulder. She leaned back.

Jerry North looked at the headlines in
The Times
and then at the book page. Orville Prescott had reviewed the wrong book. But the advertisement had a good spot. Jerry put the paper down, poured himself another cup of coffee and looked at Pam. She was studying the photograph. He continued to look at her, with approval, and she looked up.

“Well,” he said, “have you made up your mind?”

Pam shook her head.

“I'll have to go look at her,” she said. “Or wait until Bill gets a photograph of her now.”

Jerry advised the latter. He said it might be a little complicated to go to Mrs. Burt and say you wanted to look at her because she might be a murderer.

“Oh,” Pam said, “I'd have to have an excuse, of course. I left my vanity. I mean my compact.”

“Did you?” Jerry said. “The silver one?”

“No,” Pam said. “The one I got because I left the silver one somewhere else. Only then I found it again. I'm very careful with it now. This was the other one.”

“Did you leave it at the Burts'?” Jerry said.

“Somewhere,” Pam said. “It might have been the Burts'. Actually it was probably your office, and you might have somebody look. But I don't know it wasn't the Burts'.”

“I wouldn't,” Jerry said.

Pam said she knew he wouldn't. The question was, should she?

“No,” Jerry said. “You shouldn't.”

Pam said she didn't see what harm would come of it. Jerry said she never saw what harm would come of it. But harm sometimes did.

“Never really,” Pam reassured him. “Only almost.”

“Once I got a broken arm,” Jerry said. “And once I got banged on the head. And once you got chased by—”

“I know,” Pam said. “That's what I mean. Only almost. He didn't catch me.”

He had, Jerry told her, come too damn near.

“This is a frail woman in her late forties,” Pam said. “What could she do to me? Even if she wanted to? And if I look at her and she isn't, then we're out of it, because it's the only hunch I have.”

“Mr. Hill?” Jerry said.

Pamela North shook her head. She said she had about given up Mr. Hill.

“Well,” Jerry said, “I wish you'd leave Mrs. Burt to Bill.”

Bill was not interested, Pam told him. That was the trouble. She might as well cross Mrs. Burt out, if she was out.

Jerry looked at his watch, made sounds of consternation and stood up. He kissed the back of Pam's neck, told her to be good, and started for the door.

“Wait a minute,” Pam said. “The cat's on you.”

Jerry stopped and took Martini off his right shoulder. Martini clung and scolded. He put her on Pam's right shoulder and she began to purr. It was only when he was in a cab on the way to his office that Jerry remembered he had planned to get Pam to promise not to go look at Mrs. Burt.

“Mrs. Burt is not in,” the maid told Pamela North. “I don't expect her—”

“Oh,” Pam said. “I'm sorry. I—”

“I'm sorry,” the maid said. “Shall I say you called, Miss—er—Mrs.—”

“North,” Pam said. Then she rather wished she hadn't because Mrs. Burt, when the maid told her, would wonder why Mrs. North had called.

“I think I left my compact when I was here yesterday,” Pam said. “With Lieutenant Weigand, you know. And I happened to be passing and just thought I'd—”

“I don't think so,” the maid said. “I'd have seen it when I straightened up. What kind of a compact was it?”

“Plastic,” Pam said. “With a monogram. PN.”

“No,” the maid said. “I don't think so, Mrs. Nord.”

“North,” Pam said. “In that case, don't bother Mrs. Burt.”

“Good morning, Mrs. North,” a slow and calm voice said. Mr. Burt was standing in the door from the living-room to the foyer. “Won't you come in? I heard something about a compact.”

Pam told him about the compact. She said the compact apparently wasn't there.

“Well,” Willard Burt said, “we must be sure of that, Mrs. North. Perhaps we can find it. It may have slipped down somewhere.” He spoke very deliberately, so that there seemed to be tiny pauses between the words. It reminded Mrs. North of the way someone else spoke, but she did not remember who it was. She thought chiefly that she was now faced with a probably exhaustive search for a compact which was almost certainly somewhere else. And that she was wasting time, since she would not get to look at Mrs. Burt. She said it wasn't important enough to bother about, and Mr. Burt said that of course it was important enough to bother about.

“In any event it is no bother,” he said. He waited then, expectantly, and Pam went in.

“I was sitting here,” she said, going to the chair. “It may just have slipped down behind the cushion, of course.” She moved the cushion and looked. “It didn't,” she said. “I must have left it somewhere else. I'm always leaving them around, Jerry says.”

Mr. Burt looked several places. He said that it appeared she must have left it somewhere else.

“As your husband said,” he told her. “I assume, in any event, that the Jerry you speak of is Mr. North?”

“Yes,” Pam said.

“His must be an interesting occupation,” Mr. Burt said. “Tracking down the perpetrators of crime.”

“What?” Pam said. “Oh—no. Jerry's a publisher. North Books, Inc. He's not a detective.”

Mr. Burt said he had jumped to conclusions. A foolish habit of his. Because she was a detective, he had assumed that her husband also was.

“But I'm not either,” Pam assured him. “We just know a detective. Bill Weigand. Sometimes we just—oh, we get involved, somehow. Because we know him, usually. But this time, of course, because Miss Gipson worked for Jerry. Doing research, you know.”

“Of course,” Willard Burt said. “I read that in the newspapers. North Books, too. I didn't make the connection.”

There was no reason why he should, Pam told him. She thanked him for his help, and apologized for the bother. She moved toward the door. But Mr. Burt did not follow her.

“It seems to be a very interesting case,” he said. “Not that I know much about murder cases. But naturally, since Helen had written that letter which the police misconstrued, I've been reading about this one. I trust Lieutenant Weigand is making progress?”

Again the methodical manner of his speech reminded Pam of someone else, and again she could not remember of whom it reminded her.

“Oh yes,” she said. “Of course, much of it is confidential. Our being friends with Bill doesn't change that. Like a doctor.”

“What?” Mr. Burt said.

“Like being friends with a doctor,” Pam told him.

“Naturally, a doctor doesn't tell much about his cases, and no names. It's that way with a detective, too.”

Mr. Burt agreed that that was natural.

“One thing that struck me,” he said, “was the coincidence. That she was, in a sense, investigating murder when she was murdered. An ironic touch.”

Mr. Burt wanted to talk, apparently. It was to be expected. It would be natural for him to wonder about a case in which his wife was involved; about which his wife had been questioned. It was natural that he should try to pump her. And it occurred to Pam that, since she couldn't do what she had come to do, she might pick up something from Mr. Burt. Because, if his wife had been Helen Merton, he might very well know it; he would almost certainly know it.

Pam agreed that it was ironic. Her tone did not close the conversation.

“Of course,” Willard Burt said, “the police have no doubt thought of that. But I wondered whether she might not possibly have happened on something in one of the old cases that was—well, perhaps dangerous to know. But no doubt the police have thought of that possibility.”

“Oh yes,” Pam said. “I think they have. But I don't think they are really very convinced it was that way.”

Probably, Willard Burt said, there was a much simpler explanation; a more direct explanation. He supposed that, in such cases, the police looked first to see who would profit. The niece and nephew in this case.

“Although,” he said, “my wife's met them and thinks them quite charming young people. However, I suppose even charming people—”

He let that hang. Pamela nodded.

“Of course,” she said, when he did not continue, “I don't really know any more about it than you do, Mr. Burt. But I thought the—coincidence—you spoke of was very interesting. I'm glad somebody agrees. Because it does seem possible she stumbled on something—oh, say in the Fleming case. Or the Wentworth case.”

“Fleming?” Mr. Burt said. “I don't think I ever heard of the Fleming case.”

“A doctor named Merton,” Pam told him. She looked at him with interest, and tried not to let interest show in her eyes. “He was accused of killing his wife's family. With typhoid germs. They never proved he had.”

She could not see any change in Mr. Burt's face as she spoke.

“No,” he said, “I never heard of that one. Or—what was it—Wentworth?”

Pam told him, briefly, of the Wentworth case. Midway, he nodded.

“Yes,” he said, “I did hear of that one, although I was in California at the time. She was a very beautiful girl, from her pictures.”

Pam agreed she had been.

“Actually,” Mr. Burt said, “wasn't Miss Gipson reading about a poison case when she was taken ill? It seemed to me there was something like that in one account I read.”

Pam nodded.

“That was really coincidence,” she said. “She was reading about another woman who had been poisoned with sodium fluoride. A Mrs. Purdy. By her husband, they thought.”

Mr. Burt looked as if he were trying to pin down an elusive memory.

“Purdy,” he said. “Purdy. It seems to me—wasn't he later killed? When he was trying to escape the police?”

That was it, Pam said. Mr. Burt, although he did not, seemed to snap his fingers.

“I remember now,” he said. “He slipped up, somehow. I remember reading about it. Couldn't explain why he had the poison around, or something like that.”

“No roaches,” Pam said. “It was sodium fluoride, too, and you use it for roaches.”

“That's right,” Mr. Burt said. “I don't know how I came to remember that. I suppose because it was—such a trivial thing. Such a silly way for him to fail.” He nodded, apparently pleased with his memory. “Perhaps whoever killed Miss Gipson will make some such silly slip. I'm sure we all hope so.”

Pam agreed they did. There seemed to be no way, now, to prolong the discussion, or to get it back to the Merton case. She stood up, and decided to have another try.

“It's odd you don't remember the Merton case,” she said. “It was very widely written up. Mrs. Merton apparently thought her husband was guilty, because after the second trial, she got a divorce. I suppose she stood by as long as she could.”

“Women do that,” Mr. Burt said. “So often.”

It was a pious sentiment—and a sentimental tribute. But it was not what Pam wanted.

“I've sometimes wondered,” she said, “how it must have influenced her life. Such a dreadful situation—the man you were married to, accused of murdering your parents and brothers and sisters. Dreadful, particularly if you thought he had—or knew he had.”