The Dishonest Murderer (16 page)

“If you can prove it, you're all right,” Jerry pointed out.

“North,” Admiral Satterbee said, and his tone was suddenly peremptory. “I didn't kill Kirkhill.”

“I'm not talking about that,” Jerry said. “I'm talking about—if this man, this Smiley, goes to the police, can he make you any trouble? Any real trouble? Beyond embarrassment? Can you prove where you were from—say about six o'clock last evening until the party started? The police will want to know, after they hear this story. As a matter of routine.”

They already wanted to know, the admiral told the Norths. He had already told them that he had had dinner at the club. That, presumably, he could prove. But—he had gone out early, walked—it had not begun to snow, then—found he was not yet hungry, stopped in a newsreel theater, stayed perhaps half an hour, then walked on. He had dined quickly, alone. Probably the waiter would remember that. But then he had gone into the club's library and read the afternoon newspapers for, possibly, an hour. The library had been almost empty; he was not sure he had been seen. He had picked up a taxicab in front of the club at a few minutes before nine o'clock, and got home at five after. He had noted the last time; he was vague about the others.

“Not satisfactory,” he said. “I see that. You still say go to the police? Tell them the whole thing?”

“Yes,” Jerry North said. “If it comes down to that, it will be your word against Smiley's, assuming he tries to go beyond the—what you tell us. Your word ought to be good.”

The admiral said he supposed so. He did not appear confident.

“As to where your daughter is,” Pam said, “didn't she tell anybody?”

Admiral Satterbee looked at her a moment, apparently arranging ideas. Then he shook his head.

“Watkins says she telephoned me earlier this afternoon,” he said. “Says she sounded—excited. I was out. Try to get a walk in when I can. Like to keep in shape.”

“But she didn't say where she was calling from?” Pam asked.

Admiral Satterbee shook his head.

“The anonymous letter,” Jerry said. “Have you got it?”

Again the admiral shook his head.

“Tore it up last night,” he said. “After I decided not—not to meddle. Burned it in the fireplace.” He indicated the library fireplace with a movement of his head. “Anyway,” he said, “it was typed. You couldn't tell anything from it.”

There was no use going into that, Jerry North thought. Nor did there seem to be anywhere else to go. Admiral Satterbee continued to look at the Norths, first at one and then at the other, as if there were more to be said, or more to be done. But it was not clear to Jerry what the admiral wanted them to say or do.

“Tell the police,” Jerry said. “Tell them the whole story. Before this man Smiley does, if you can. As for your daughter—”

But the door of the library opened and Watkins stood in it. He seemed perturbed. He begged pardon.

“Lieutenant Weigand wants to see you, sir,” he said. “He insists it's important.”

The admiral half rose; he looked at the Norths, and there was, it seemed to Jerry, suspicion in his face. But before he could speak, Bill Weigand had replaced the butler at the door.

Bill looked at the three, and did not seem surprised that two of them were the Norths. His face was grave; he nodded briefly to Pam, to Jerry, and turned to the admiral.

“This man Smiley,” Bill Weigand said. “The man you say you didn't see, Admiral Satterbee. He's been shot. Killed.” He paused a moment, his eyes on the admiral. “Or did you know?” he said. His voice was level and very quiet.

Admiral Satterbee, standing tall behind his desk, standing straight, merely looked at Weigand. His eyes seemed to go blank.

“About three o'clock,” Bill Weigand said, in the same tone. “A little before, a little after. In his office. While he was trying to get at his gun. Or did you know, Admiral?”

He waited, this time.

“No,” Admiral Satterbee said. “I didn't know. I—”

“But Smiley was here last night?”

Admiral Satterbee looked at the Norths. Momentarily, he hesitated. Pam North nodded her head.

“Yes,” Admiral Satterbee said. “He was here last night. I had—”

“Employed him,” Bill Weigand said. He turned, spoke into the living room. “All right, Sergeant,” he said. “Bring him in.” Weigand moved into the room, leaving the doorway free.

A square man in his middle forties came into the doorway. Sergeant Mullins was behind him. The man, who looked like any business man, looked clean, well dressed, confident, nodded to the admiral.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Briggs,” Admiral Satterbee said.

VII

Saturday, 3:40 P.M. to 6:15 P.M.

After she had got into the taxicab a few blocks down Broadway from the building in which she had left a man who grinned at death, Freddie Haven merely sat for a moment. The taxicab, warm, redolent of cigar smoke, was for that moment less a vehicle than a refuge. But then the driver had turned and looked at her and had said, “Where to, lady?” and she had had to find an answer.

Apparently the police had already been told that the man Smiley had been murdered. Presumably, arriving so soon, they could tell within half an hour or so when he had been shot. Therefore, her reasons for avoiding the police became less exigent. But they did not cease to exist. She did not know how precisely a physician could set the time of death; she assumed that final precision remained contingent on circumstances, even if the body was quickly found. A physician might be able to say, for example, that Smiley had died between two and three o'clock. Then if her father had been in the apartment until two-thirty—

“Lady,” the driver said, his voice intentionally patient. “You want to go some place, lady?”

“The Waldorf, please,” she said.

She did not know why she had, so suddenly, thought of Howard Phipps. She did not really know him well, although she had seen a great deal of him. It was only that now, as in the early hours of morning when she had made that ill-advised visit to the Gerald Norths, she felt an almost desperate need to share with someone, someone responsible and skilled, the anxieties which obsessed her. It must be, she thought as the taxicab started up, because I suddenly feel lonely. It is as if Dad weren't around any more.

It was not so much—surely, she told herself, it is not so much—that she was by nature dependent. It was rather that, since she had been grown, she had always had someone with whom to share things: share happiness and sorrow, and the little fears of life, and the perplexities. There had been her father, after her mother died. Then there had been Jack, for so desperately short a time; then her father again. Now, for the moment, with her father thus involved, and thus surrounded and cut off from her, there was no one. So she had thought of the Norths, so now she thought of Howard Phipps.

Bruce had trusted Phipps, and relied on him. Bruce would not so have trusted anyone who was not competent, able to meet situations, what her father would call “savvy.” And, except for Celia, except for herself, Phipps had been closer to Bruce than anyone, would thus be more involved in these circumstances which, vaguely and inconclusively, appertained to Bruce's death.

The cab went up Seventh Avenue and past the narrow building, hemmed between big neighbors. There were three small police cars in front of it, now, and a large sedan which, presumably, had brought other men from the police. The taxi driver slowed and looked at the cars.

“Something's going on there,” he told her. “That's a squad car.” His head indicated the big sedan.

She said, “Yes,” in a voice which carefully revealed no interest. The driver, she felt, was disappointed; he speeded up, she thought, reluctantly. But he did drive on, drive past the building, and at the next east-bound street he turned to the right. He peered down the avenue as he turned, clearly hating to leave the scene of excitement.

It was about four o'clock when she reached the hotel and paid off the cab. She walked down the long lobby, strangely feeling herself conspicuous, feeling that people were looking at her. This is the way a fugitive must feel, she thought; a person who is running away must feel this exposure, this uneasiness.

She found a house telephone and asked to be connected with Phipps's room. There was a wait, and the sound of the telephone ringing. Then Howard Phipps came on. His clipped tones, his controlled voice, were immediately recognizable.

“Howard,” she said. “This is Freddie Haven. I'm downstairs. I—can I see you?”

There was the briefest hesitation. Then Howard Phipps said, “Of course, Freddie.”

“Shall I come up?” she said.

She had hardly finished the question when he said “no.” He would come down, he said; he would meet her by the house telephones; he would buy her a drink. “Wait there,” he said. “Won't be a minute.”

He was more than a minute, but he was quick. She stood near the telephones, waiting as he had asked. In three or four minutes he came toward her. He moved with familiar quick confidence; he smiled when he saw her, but the smile gave way quickly to an expression of gravity. He held out both his hands in greeting and she, responsive to cordiality, to sympathy, took them both. And then, surprisingly, she thought, why, he smells of perfume! The scent of perfume was, momentarily, very sharp. Then she could not detect it any longer; then she thought, it was one of those odd tricks of the senses. Some woman is near us, wearing a good deal of scent; there was some movement of the air, some eddy of the air.

“You need a drink,” Howard Phipps told her. “We both do.”

He took her to one of the cocktail lounges, ordered for both of them, did not let her speak of anything, stopped her by a shake of the head, until the drinks were in front of them.

“You need this,” he told her, again. “You look done in, poor kid.” It was strange to be called a “kid”; curiously it was consoling. “A dreadful thing,” he said then, his voice low. “An awful thing. I haven't had a chance—” He broke off. He smiled with a kind of hopelessness. “There isn't anything to say, is there?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. “About Bruce—nothing. Howard, I want you—”

And then, again, the fragrance came, as Howard Phipps bent toward her. It was a low-pitched scent, faintly musky; so feminine that, emanating from a man's clothing, it was improper, unnatural. And now there was no woman near them.

Emotionally she recoiled, even before her mind straightened out this oddity. Then her mind found a solution, made, at the same time, two discoveries. Within a few minutes, Howard Phipps had been holding some woman in his arms; holding her close, so that scent from her clothing had clung to his. That was the first thing; the second was that, without conscious thought, the name of the woman came into her mind. Within a few minutes of the time she telephoned Howard Phipps, he had had his arms around Breese Burnley. He had been holding her close to him. The low-pitched scent, the musky scent, was hers.

The conviction was so absolute that she did not further analyze it; did not tell herself, as she might have, that hundreds of women in New York used that scent, that any one of them might, after an embrace, have left this revealing fragrance on Howard Phipps's clothes. She thought: It was Breese Burnley. She must have been with him when I called. But—why didn't he have her join us? That would have been the ordinary thing to do. There was nothing between them, had never been anything between them, which would make him hesitate to say that Breese was with him, nothing in the fact to prove embarrassing to anyone. Yet—

“Anything I can do,” Howard Phipps said, answering her unfinished request. He shook his head. “It's an awful thing,” he said. “A horrible, unnecessary thing.” For a moment he seemed lost in the thought of Bruce Kirkhill's death. He returned. “What is it, Freddie?” he said. “What can I do?”

But now she did not say what she had planned, tell him what had happened, ask his help. Now Howard Phipps was someone else; now he had become, for the first time since she had known him, a person existing in his own right, complicated in himself. Before, she thought, he was merely a kind of projection of Bruce.

She made herself smile; she made the smile deprecating, a little embarrassed.

“I'm silly,” she said. “I—I just had to talk to somebody. Somebody who knew Bruce.” She paused. “Howard,” she said, “what's it all about? Don't you know—anything? It's so—so mixed up. So strange.”

“I know,” he said. “I've been trying to think. Why was he
there?
That's the strangest thing. I—”

“Was he meeting someone?” she said. “It—it doesn't matter now, Howdie. Was there some other—somebody else? Somebody he was meeting?”

“Down there?” he said, and his voice was surprised. “Some woman, you mean? But why, Freddie? It wouldn't make sense.” He drank. “Anyway,” he said, “there wasn't anyone else. You know that sort of thing about other men.” He smiled faintly. “Usually,” he said, “they tell you. One way or another.”

“There used to be Breese Burnley,” Freddie said. “I know that. But it was a long time ago. Wasn't it?”

He looked at her quickly; apparently he saw nothing in her face.

“There was never anything that mattered,” he said. “What there was was years ago.” His voice was casual; the casualness, she thought, was studied.

“Breese is lovely, of course,” she said. “Don't you think so?” Now she was very casual; she spoke as if abstractedly, as if she were hardly aware of what she was saying. He looked at her again. Her expression was abstracted.

“Sure,” he said. “Very lovely.” His tone, in turn, displayed lack of interest. He was filling with words a gap in thought. “About this other,” he said. “I've been trying to think of something. Some explanation.” He seemed to be thinking as he spoke. “There's only one thing,” he said, and turned toward her. “You knew about his brother? George?”