The Dishonest Murderer (6 page)

Jerry kissed his wife, not casually, tightened his arms around her and then put her down.

“You know,” he said, “standing out there—there's something wrong with that lock, incidentally—I almost had something—” He nodded to her. “Almost had it,” he said. “Now it's gone.”

“Jerry,” Pam said. “Tomorrow? I want to go to bed.”

“It was about civilization,” Jerry said. “And—I don't know. Keys and keyholes. Like the rats, you know? The ones that jumped at little doors and finally got confused and—”

“Listen, darling,” Pam said. “I'm terribly tired of those rats. All my life I've heard about those rats, jumping at doors.” She paused. “All my life,” she said, “I've wanted to go to bed. And you want to talk about rats.”

Jerry North ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. He said, “Oh.”

“All your life,” he said, “you've wanted—what did you say?”

“I want to go to bed,” Pam said, and then stopped and looked at Martini, who had rolled over on her back, with her feet in the air, and was looking at them between her forelegs. “Wants to have her belly rubbed,” Pam said. She sat down on the floor and began to caress Martini. “Is the major cat,” Pam said. “Is the cat major. Is—”

Then the telephone rang. It rang with horrible loudness, with a kind of anger. Martini swirled from under Pam's hand, rolled to her feet, dashed into the hall, from whence the ringing came, and looked up at the box which held the doorbell.

“Confused,” Pam said. “It's the telephone, Martini. It's—Jerry, it's the
telephone!
”

Jerry had the telephone in his hand. He said “Yes?” to it.

But the telephone continued to ring.

“Jerry,” Pam said. “The other telephone. The house telephone. Who on earth?”

Pam North was on her feet. She was almost as quick as Martini had been. She was in the hall, at the house telephone on the wall. She said, “Yes?”

“Mrs. North?” a woman said. Her voice was young, now it was hurried, strained.

“Yes,” Pam said.

“This is Winifred Haven,” the woman in the lobby downstairs said, the words hurried. “May I come up?”

“Why,” Pam said. “Of—of course, Mrs. Haven.” But it was hard to take the request as a matter of course; hard to keep surprise out of her voice.

“I know,” Freddie Haven said, answering the tone. “It's—it's impossible. But—” She seemed about to go on, to change her mind. “I'll come up, then,” she said.

Pam turned back to the living room. Jerry was still holding, still looking at the wrong telephone. His look was reproachful.

“Simplification,” he said, in a grave, distant voice. He returned the wrong telephone to its receiver. “Too many everything. Keys. Telephones—”

“Jerry!” Pam said. “Mrs. Haven's coming up. Your admiral's daughter.”

Gerald North came wide awake at once. He looked at his watch. He said, “What the hell?”

“I don't know,” Pam said. “She's excited. Something's happened.”

“At twenty-five minutes to four,” Jerry North said. “In the
morning
.”

They heard the elevator stop at their floor. The sound of its doors reverberated down the corridor. They heard heels tapping down the corridor. Pam went to the door and opened it and Freddie Haven, coming toward her, said, “This is awful. Unforgiveable.”

The strain was in Freddie Haven's eyes, as in her voice, as in her face. Her face was almost colorless; it was marked with weariness, with shock.

“It's all right,” Pam North said. “Of course it's all right.” She held the door open.

Jerry was on his feet. He did not look sleepy any longer. His face grew intent as he saw Freddie Haven's face.

“It's all right,” he said, reinforcing what Pam had said. “What is it, Mrs. Haven? The admiral—?”

She stood, holding her fur coat around her, as if even in this warm apartment she still was cold, her face drained of color save for the brightness of her lips. The red of her hair was so deep that it was almost some different color, some new color. She shook her head, without speaking.

“Sit down,” Pam said. “Sit down.”

The young woman shook her head again, but it was not a response. She sank into a deep chair, leaned back a moment with her eyes closed. Then she sat up, quickly, nervously.

“Bruce is dead,” she said. She looked at them. “Senator Kirkhill,” she said. “He's—he's been killed. It's—horrible.”

“Oh!” Pam said. “I'm—I'm—”

“Somebody killed him,” Freddie Haven said. “The police say somebody killed him.” She looked at them, shock living in her eyes. “Meant to kill him,” she said.

Pam North made coffee, then; Jerry North brought brandy. While they waited for the coffee, Freddie started to speak, but Pam had shaken her head, said, “Wait!” They drank coffee, brandy in it. Some color came back into Freddie Haven's face.

“Now,” Pam said.

They waited a moment while Freddie Haven, shock slowly leaving her brain, her body, arranged her thoughts. Then she tried to smile. The smile was unreal, tormented.

“I want you to help me,” she said, finally, her words chosen. “Mrs. Burnley—somebody—said you were—that you—” She paused, the words lost.

“That we were detectives?” Pam said. “Investigators? Something like that?” She shook her head. “We're not,” she said. She looked at Jerry North.

“We know a police lieutenant,” Jerry said. “A man named Weigand. We've been—involved. But your friend is wrong. We're not detectives. I'm a publisher. Pam's—” He paused and looked at his wife. Pam was what? Housewife? True, legal—ridiculous as description. “Pam's not a detective,” he said.

Freddie Haven looked from one to the other. She looked at Pam North.

“I thought, tonight,” she said. “I thought you—saw things, understood things. That I was worried, that something was wrong. Afterward somebody said—” She broke off. “I was going to be married to Bruce,” she said. “They say he was—murdered.” She looked at them, as if there were an answer to this.

Jerry North had been standing, looking down at her. Now he sat down in a straight chair.

“Mrs. Haven,” he said. “Listen. Will you listen?”

She nodded, her eyes on his face.

“If that's true,” Jerry said, “if Senator Kirkhill was murdered, the police will find out about it. Find out who did it. That's what you want? That's why you came to us?”

She shook her head.

“No?” Jerry said. He felt thrown off.

“That's only part of it,” she said. “Can I tell you?”

Jerry hesitated, he wanted to say “no.” “Of course,” Pam said. “Listen, Jerry.”

“It's about my father,” she said. “He—I'm afraid he—he knows something he hasn't told the police. Isn't going to tell the police.” She looked at Jerry. “He's a dear,” she said. “He's—an innocent.”

Jerry North looked at her blankly. Innocent? He repeated the word aloud and she nodded.

“Your father?” he said. There was incredulity in his tone, and in his mind. Vice Admiral Jonathan Satterbee, “Johnny Jump-up,” was not an innocent. The word was absurd. He was a man of wide experience, wide knowledge, marked skill at his trade. He had been important in the Pacific—not Halsey, not Spruance, certainly not Nimitz. But his book about the Pacific war, the book on which Jerry had bet an advance which now and then slightly alarmed him, was not the book of an “innocent” man, if by the word his daughter meant a man without experience, without “savvy.”

“You don't know,” Freddie Haven said. “I know how it sounds. He's a wonderful man. He was a fine officer. He's been everywhere. But—” She shook her head. “He's been sheltered,” she said. She almost smiled. “All of them have,” she said. “Army men, Navy men. Dad's wonderful, he's special—but he's one of them.”

She looked at them, at Jerry, at Pam. She shook her head. She said they didn't understand.

“It's all so—arranged,” she said. “Their whole lives are arranged. They live in a place with a wall around it. Look—I've been Navy all my life. All my people, almost all my people, have been Navy. A man like Dad, even a brilliant man—I think he is—gets to feeling that he's different from ordinary people. He's had—oh, security all his life; authority for a long time. He didn't have to do ordinary things. He just—took them for granted. He doesn't really know about people, except other people in the Navy—other officers in the Navy. In the world outside he's—he's innocent.” She paused and shook her head. She told them she said it badly.

“He thinks things are simpler than they are,” she said. “That—oh, I don't know.” She paused, seemed to nerve herself. “He didn't like Bruce,” she said. “He didn't want me to marry Bruce. Bruce was a different kind. He—he'd lived outside the wall. And he was a politician. Dad hates politicians.”

“Listen,” Jerry North said. “My God, Mrs. Haven! Are you trying to tell us—”

“Of course she isn't, Jerry,” Pam said. “But—you think he's got involved, somehow? Is that it? That the police won't—understand? That he won't know how to explain?”

Slowly, not quite certainly, Freddie Haven nodded. “Something like that,” she said. “I don't know. There was a man—” She stopped. “I'll tell you about it,” she said. “Maybe you can tell me what to do.”

She told them about going to the morgue, with her father, about identifying Bruce Kirkhill's body. Afterward, for a very few moments, they had been questioned. “A police lieutenant,” she said. “A man named Weigand.” She looked at them.

“Bill Weigand,” Jerry said. “He's the one we know.”

“He didn't take long,” Freddie said. “He was considerate. He just asked about this evening—when had we expected Bruce, had we heard from him, did we have any idea why—” She broke off again. “You don't know,” she said. “It's strange—horrible. He was wearing old clothes, second-hand clothes. He—he died in a doorway down on lower Broadway somewhere. He'd been given chloral hydrate. A lot of it. He just went into this doorway and—and after a while he died.”

She put her face down in her hands, hiding it, hiding herself from the world. She raised her head.

“We didn't have any explanation,” she said. “I didn't. Dad said he didn't. Then we went home.”

They had put Celia to bed in the apartment and, after a time, given her a sedative. Mrs. Burnley had stayed with her and Curtis Grainger, impotent, angered by his impotence, had been walking the living room, throwing cigarettes, half smoked, one after another, into the fireplace. He had gone after the admiral and Freddie got home; at her request, with dull acceptance, obvious lack of interest, he had agreed to drop Breese Burnley at her apartment. Howard Phipps had gone. Breese said he had telephoned to someone—the police she thought—had sworn in a dazed way at what he had heard and then had gone out. Curt Grainger had added that he thought Phipps had gone to the hotel, to make telephone calls to Washington.

Ten minutes after they came home, the admiral and his daughter were alone in the living room. The numbness Freddie had felt, the dead incredulity that this was happening to her, had begun to wear off.

“I'm sorry, Winifred,” the admiral said, standing in front of the fire, looking at her.

Freddie merely nodded, then. There was no point to words. She nodded again when her father said she ought to try to get some sleep.

“That police fellow will be around tomorrow, y'know,” Admiral Satterbee said. “Not done with it, I'm afraid.”

She shook her head. They weren't done with it. But there was still nothing to say. She turned and started toward the foyer, toward the stairs to the floor above. Her father's voice stopped her.

“Freddie,” he said. She turned back, stood, waited. He seemed for a moment not to know how to go on.

“Have to be prepared,” he said. “You know that? Things will come out, y'know. Bound to. Have to be ready to stand up to them.”

She merely waited for him to go on. The words were distant things, almost meaningless.

“Nasty things,” the admiral said. “Things you won't like. About Kirkhill.”

That reached her.

“No!” she said. “There wasn't anything like that about Bruce.” She moved a step toward her father, looked up at him. “What things?” she demanded.

Again he hesitated. Then, loudly, the door buzzer sounded. The admiral moved quickly into the foyer and opened the door. A man came in.

“Just like that,” Freddie Haven told the Norths. “He came in. As if he didn't need to wait to be asked. As if—as if he came in by right.”

He had not been a large man; the tall admiral towered over him. He was rather fat, not well dressed; he had kept his hat on until he was well into the foyer. There had been snow on the hat and the man had snapped it off, casually, on the foyer carpet. The man's face was fat, loosely fat. He had not shaved that day, and when he had last shaved it had not been careful. The beard was long in the creases in his cheeks. His eyes, which were light blue—arrestingly light blue—had seemed small in his fat face; small and set incongruously wide apart.

Admiral Satterbee, Freddie told the Norths, did not make any effort to stop the man's entering. Nor did he, for a moment, say anything. The man with the fat face spoke first.

“I figured you'd want to see me,” the man said. His voice was soft. (“Buttery,” Freddie told the Norths. “Soft and buttery.”)

The admiral merely looked at the man; then he turned and looked at his daughter.

“Go up, Freddie,” the admiral said. “Go up to bed.”

It was a command. She started to obey it, had to move toward the fat man before she could move away from him. He smiled at her; his smile was unpleasant. “'Evening, miss,” he said, in the buttery voice. She did not reply, did not seem to look at him, started up the stairs.