The Norths Meet Murder (20 page)

“As a matter of fact,” Mr. North said, after a sip or two, “there are a lot of these mallets about. It's the simplest way to break ice. Almost everybody we know has a mallet like this around somewhere. Somebody found them in Macy's basement, and passed the word along. The Fullers, Edwards—I suppose the Brents and this fellow Berex, if he has an apartment and makes cocktails, Pam's mother—hell, they're a lot more prevalent than croquet-mallets, if you were looking for croquet-mallets. They're pretty handy, if you want to bash people.”

“But what we wondered,” Mrs. North said, “was whether they would be heavy enough to bash? I mean, to kill—as Brent was killed? You think they would?”

Weigand lifted the mallet again and balanced it. He said he thought so. He would get expert advice from the Medical Examiner's office. He would pick one up at Macy's and have it looked at.

“Or,” said Mr, North, “you can borrow this one, if you like. And if you'll bring it back.”

Weigand said it was an idea. Then he said he thought he would just pick one up. Mr. North poured him another cocktail.

“Was,” Weigand said, “this what you people called up about?”

Mr. North looked at Mrs. North, who said part of it.

“The rest,” she said, “is Mrs. Brent and Berex. And what Jane told me about them.”

“Yes?” Weigand said.

The Norths had, it developed, run into Jane Fuller as they were leaving the store after looking at the dress Mrs. North thought she might buy. “He didn't like it, though,” Mrs. North said. “He said it bunched.” They had met on the ground floor, near the door, and Mrs. Fuller had said wasn't it awful about Stan Brent. “And you
found
him,” Mrs. Fuller had said, and the Norths had told her something about finding him.

“And then,” Mrs. North said, “I said wasn't it terrible for his wife, and Jane looked kind of funny and said, ‘Yes, of course,' as if she didn't think it was so very terrible.

“I looked at her,” Mrs. North said, “and she said, ‘Well, there was always Louis, you know—Louis Berex.' She said he and Claire were in love, and had been for months, and everybody expected her to get a divorce. She said one saw them together everywhere; that she had seen them together only last night.”

“Last night?” Weigand said.

Mrs. North nodded, and said she thought that was interesting.

“She said it was around six o'clock,” Mrs. North said. “And that they were walking together through Ninth Street, toward Fifth Avenue, and she was holding his arm and looked very white and tired.”

“Well,” said Weigand. “Hmmm.”

“So we thought we wouldn't say anything,” Mrs. North said, “and then we thought we ought to. And it fitted in with the lunch today and everything. And then we thought of the mallet, too, and decided to find out whether you had thought about mallets. So we had bacardis, because we always crush the ice for them, although the lime-juice isn't good for me.”

“About six?” Weigand said. Mrs. North looked surprised.

“Oh,” she said, “that. Yes, but that was just one time; she said they were together lots of times and that everybody knew they were that way. It might have been any time, like today at lunch; last night is just an
example
.”

Weigand looked at Mr. North and waited, but Mr. North shook his head. It was just an example to him. Weigand had something else in mind, though—then it came to Mr. North and he nodded suddenly.

“Barnes!” Mr. North said. “About that time and they were within a few blocks. Yes, I see.”

Mrs. North said, “Oh,” and looked worried.

“Maybe we shouldn't have,” she said. “You know I thought maybe we shouldn't.”

Weigand said they had, on the contrary, been right to tell him.

“You see,” he said, “they gave us to understand they weren't there. Berex was in his office, he said, and Mrs. Brent was home. At least her maid thought she was at home. It's interesting.”

Mrs. North nodded, interestedly. Then she thoughts of something, and it worried her.

“And Jane,” she said. “Jane when she saw them? Was she home too?”

“No,” Weigand said. “She wasn't home. She was uptown having her hair curled.”

The Norths looked at each other. There didn't seem to be anything to say. After a while Mrs. North spoke, and her tone cut Weigand out.

“You know what?” she said.

“Yes,” Mr. North said. “I know what.”

“I wish I hadn't ever found it,” Mrs. North said. “That's what I wish. It makes you do things you wish you hadn't.”

Mr. North nodded.

“But we couldn't help it,” he said. “It just happened. It was just the party. And, after all, you can't let murderers just—well, run loose. You have to think of that.”

Mrs. North said she was thinking of it.

“But that is theoretical,” she said. “Just ‘murderers.' But people you know aren't just murderers.” She paused, and thought. “Even if they are,” she said.

There was a little pause. Then Mr. North said that all the glasses seemed to be empty. He asked how Weigand had happened to become a cop and Weigand, after saying it wasn't interesting, said he hadn't planned to. He said he was going to be a lawyer, but the money ran out while he was in school, so he decided suddenly to be a policeman and went to the Police College. He was a patrolman for a long time, he said, and then a detective and finally a lieutenant of detectives.

“And you'll be a captain, and then whatever is next—an inspector or something—won't you?” Mrs. North said.

Weigand started to say one thing, and found himself saying another.

“Well,” he said, “yes, as a matter of fact. I probably will.”

Mrs. North nodded. She said it would be nice to know an inspector. “Or a Police Commissioner,” she said. “For parking by fire-plugs.”

Weigand dashed her hopes, on that. He said commissioners were different. He didn't, he said, expect ever to be a commissioner. But then, he added, inspectors were all right, too, for parking by fire-plugs.

15

T
HURSDAY

5:30
P.M.
TO
8
P.M.

Weigand had a qualm or two, as he left the Norths and, as he went down the stairs to the street, heard Mrs. North's voice faintly through the apartment door behind him. “I think he's nice,” he heard Mrs. North say, “and not at all—” Then he had gone out through the downstairs door and left the voice behind. “Not at all like a policeman,” he supposed she had finished, and he had an uneasy feeling that she had summed it rather too accurately. A policeman ought not, he thought, be disarmed by people merely because he could not imagine them doing anything so aggressive as murder. He had as good as told them that he took their word for things and that they were no longer on his books as suspects, and that was going further than a good policeman should go. He thought of Inspector O'Malley and had a third qualm. O'Malley would not approve fraternization with suspects. When O'Malley was going up, he was definitely a rubber-hose cop.

“But definitely,” Weigand said to himself, thinking of Edwards. But Edwards was in the clear as far as evidence went, and still on the books; the Norths had opportunity in plenty, perhaps motive, and were not on them. Weigand damned all hunches and found himself a new idea, and a telephone. Mullins was standing by at Headquarters to answer Weigand's call and say, “O.K., Loot.” He would get from the District Attorney's office a list of the cases Brent had handled during the brief period when he was an assistant district attorney, and check it over for familiar names.

“Before you eat,” Weigand directed. Mullins sighed, said, “But listen, Loot,” and then, when the telephone receiver stiffened in his ear, lapsed into formality and said: “Yes, sir.”

Weigand left the booth and the cigar-store which housed it, and stood on the sidewalk, thinking. He thought of all that he knew about the case, and had a hunch that he knew most of it, and that what else he had to know was somewhere near at hand if he could put a finger on it. Then he could crack down and really break it; once he knew where to crack, it would be easy. Somewhere in what he had already discovered, and heard, there was, he felt, a weak spot, if he could find it. But the trouble was that, as a policeman, you had to know first. You knew, and then you proved; once in a great while you knew, but couldn't prove. But evidence was raw, scattered stuff until you could shape it with knowledge.

You got to know from some fact, perhaps a very small fact, which did not fit with other facts. Or from something about character which you caught in an inflection, or a twist of expression or a breath drawn quickly or slowly. Once you really knew the people who might have done what had been done, you knew which of them had done it. The trouble was now, apparently, that he did not really know the people. He had missed something, or something had been well hidden. He ran over, in his mind, the people who had been about Brent when Brent was alive, and then realized that one face was missing entirely. He hadn't yet so much as set eyes on Jane Fuller, who had a long, redheaded husband with a quick temper, and who had not been having her hair done at Saks when Barnes was pushed off the subway platform.

Weigand crossed Sixth Avenue and went toward the Fuller house. A maid let him in; a maid would see if Mrs. Fuller could be seen. The maid returned to report that Mrs. Fuller could, in the upstairs livingroom. Weigand went up, with the maid ahead of him, and into a large, low room with glass brick in front in place of windows. Mrs. Fuller stood up.

She was a slight, vividly colored young woman, perhaps around twenty-five, and she was wearing rust-colored slacks and a soft, silken white shirt, with a design which looked like a monogram, but turned out not to be, embroidered on a pocket. She had black hair swept up at the back, and a heart-shaped face. She said, “Yes, Lieutenant?” She did not say anything about sitting down, so Weigand stood up. He said there were just one or two things. He said he understood that she knew something about Berex and Mrs. Brent that he should know.

“And,” she said, “who told you that?”

“It doesn't matter,” Weigand said.

“No,” said Mrs. Fuller, “because of course I know anyway. It was Pam North, wasn't it? And she said you were very attractive.”

Mrs. Fuller did not say whether she agreed with Mrs. North on this point, but she looked Weigand over.

“Sit down, why don't you?” she said, and sat down herself. The chairs on the second floor, like those on the first, were modern, but they gave a greater impression of lightness. Weigand sat down.

“Well,” Mrs. Fuller said, “if Pam thought you ought to know, all right. Louis Berex and Claire Brent are that way. They've been that way for months. Everybody knew about it.”

Including, Weigand wanted to know, Brent? Mrs. Fuller nodded her head vigorously.

“From the first, I think,” she said. “He told me about it weeks ago, anyway; asked if I had noticed anything. I said anything what? And he said I needn't stall, so I didn't. He said it was all right with him as long—” She stopped, suddenly.

“As long as—?” Weigand inquired.

“Listen,” Jane Fuller said, “what do you know—about Stan and me, I mean? What did Ben tell you.”

“A good deal,” Weigand said. “From his point of view, naturally.”

“From
our
point of view,” Mrs. Fuller said. “Absolutely from
our
point of view. We didn't agree about what to do about it, but we agreed about where we wanted to get.” She paused. “In case you were thinking otherwise,” she said, “I wasn't in love with Stan Brent. In case you wanted to know.”

“Right,” Weigand said. He said that that was what he gathered. So Brent had said as long as—?

“As long as I was around,” Mrs. Fuller said. “But I wasn't. I don't know whether he even thought I ever would be, or just pretended to. He was—oh, well, say he was hard to get. I mean to understand, to know about.” She paused again, and tucked one foot under the other knee. “Part of it was just to annoy Ben,” she said. “Stan thought it was fun to make Ben flare. I told him not to, often enough; I told him it mightn't stay so much fun.” She stopped then and drew her breath quickly. Then she smiled suddenly.

“That,” she said, “was a silly thing to say, particularly to a policeman. I didn't mean anything, really. Except that Ben might—well, try to beat him up.” She paused, with a reflective look in her eyes. “And Ben could have,” she said reminiscently. “But not
with
anything, except his fists. Ben wouldn't
use
anything—I mean, Ben wouldn't go around hitting people with blunt instruments. So if you've been thinking that—?”

Weigand said he wasn't thinking anything, in particular. Just finding out. He said that they were wandering, anyway, from Louis Berex and Mrs. Brent. He wanted what she knew about them.

They had, she told him, met at a party somewhere. “Probably at that Edwards man's,” she said. And had started, almost at once, running around together, not making any great effort at concealment. Everybody, she said, knew about it.

“And it didn't make any difference to anybody?” Weigand wanted to know.

Mrs. Fuller looked surprised.

“No,” she said, “of course not. Why should it? It was obviously their business.”

“You think they were—that is, lovers?” Weigand asked.

“Oh, yes, of course.” Mrs. Fuller seemed to have no doubt.

Weigand let the point go, for the time, and raised another. “About last night,” he said.

“Last night?” Jane Fuller echoed. “Oh, my seeing them. Well, I just did. They were walking through Ninth Street, probably going to her place. She looked white and tired, I thought.”