Death Has a Small Voice (15 page)

He looked up and Shaw was leaning toward him.

“You had a man following me?” Shaw said. His rumbling voice was harsh again.

“I wanted to know what you did,” he said. “I want to know what all of you have been doing.”

“All of—whom?” Shaw demanded.

“Rogers,” Bill said. “One or two others who”—he hesitated momentarily—“were in Miss Godwin's circle,” he finished. “Who, for one thing, might have been mentioned in the book she wrote.” He waited a moment, looking intently at Shaw. “The book that's disappeared,” he said. “The book which was, I'm told, autobiographical.”

“I don't—” Shaw began. He was calm again. Now he looked a little puzzled. But then he said, “Oh.”

“Right,” Bill said. “In autobiographical novels, people write about people who have been in their lives, of course. Perhaps Miss Godwin did, Mr. Shaw. Perhaps somebody—didn't like what she wrote.”

“That,” Shaw told him, “is crazy, Captain.”

It could be, Bill agreed. He had, in fact, been told that the book was innocuous. But—

“Who said that?” Shaw demanded.

Bill Weigand told him. Shaw's eyes narrowed momentarily. Then he nodded.

“So?” he said. “Wilson ought to know. It's his field, after all.”

Bill Weigand nodded. Professor Wilson ought to know. But he spoke with no apparent assurance, and Shaw waited.

“It's possible,” Bill said, “that whatever may have been—resented—was apparent only to the person concerned. Perhaps it revealed a secret of some sort which this person had shared with Miss Godwin; that she revealed in such a way that it wouldn't be a revelation at all to the ordinary reader.”

“Then,” Shaw said, “what would be the fuss? I mean—” He shrugged.

Fuss was an odd term for murder, but Bill Weigand did not voice the thought. He merely said he didn't know. He added, “Yet.” Shaw waited as if for him to continue. When he did not, Shaw stood up suddenly.

“Well,” he said, “that's my story. What do you do about it?”

“Oh,” Bill said, “find Mr. Rogers, of course. Ask him what it was all about. You want to make charges against him—assault?”

Shaw hesitated. Then he shook his head.

“The guy's crazy,” he said. “He's got enough trouble.”

Bill nodded. Shaw turned abruptly, and went out the door.

“What d'y know?” Mullins said. “It's a screwy one, all right. You mean that about the book? About some guy who's a character in a book and gets sore and—” Mullins gave it up, shaking his head.

“I don't know, Sergeant,” Bill said. “You don't like it?”

“Jeeze,” Sergeant Mullins said, and reached for a telephone which began to ring. He said, “O.K.,” and wrote a name and telephone number on a pad. He said, “Keep at it, fella,” and cradled the telephone.

“Seems you wanted this,” he said, and pushed the pad toward Weigand. “Name of the gal's agent. Literary agent.”

“Right,” Bill said, and, eyes on the pad, reached for the telephone.

His own voice awoke him. He was crying out something, but the words he used faded with the dream as he came awake. The horror of the dream remained, although the shape of the dream wavered, dissolved in his mind. Pam had been falling and he had stretched out his hands to save her, but as he touched her her body was impalpable between his hands—or was it that his hands were without substance?—and she fell on, screaming. But there was a trunk and it was Pam's body in the trunk, yet as he looked down on it the body changed and was not hers. “She'll be all right,” Bill Weigand said. “Don't worry” and then he was in an airplane, falling in tighter and tighter, ever more dizzying, circles. Pam was with him, falling too, but now there was no airplane and they were falling free in circles, she always beyond his reach. It was there, he thought, groping back, the dream ended. It had ended with someone screaming, and that had wakened him.

He was sitting in a chair in the apartment, his head twisted a little to one side. He called, “Pam?” while he was still only partly awake and from another room a cat began to talk, harshly. Jerry North looked at his watch; the hands pointed to five forty-five. He had not slept long. He remembered, now. He had sat in front of the telephone. For a time one of the cats had sat on his lap. He had told himself the telephone would ring and he would hear Pam's voice, or Bill's, saying that Pam was found. But the telephone had not rung. He remembered, now, that he had fallen asleep and awakened, thinking the telephone had wakened him, and reached for it and heard only the dial tone. Then he must have fallen asleep again, or asleep enough to dream.

Now, because he had, he felt an almost unbearable guilt. He felt that he had betrayed Pam and that the betrayal was irretrievable, and this conviction became a heavy shadow in which he moved. Logic would not lighten this shadow and, indeed, his mind made little attempt at logic. He stood up, abruptly. He leaned over the telephone, and dialed a number and got a heavy voice in answer, a tired voice.

“He's on the phone,” the voice said. “You want to hold on?”

“Has he heard anything?” Jerry asked, and the voice said, “Not that I've heard, Mr. North. He'll call you. Or do you want to wait?”

There was no point to waiting; there had been no point to calling. That Bill Weigand was doing what he could, with men all over the city helping, did not need to be said; he did not need to telephone to find it out. That, when anything was discovered, he would be told was as obvious.

“I'm going out,” Jerry said. “I'll call him.”

Until he said it, until he replaced the telephone in its cradle, Jerry North had not known he was going out. Even now he was not certain where, when he left the apartment, he would go. But he could not stay there longer and wait—merely wait. Pam's mine, he heard his mind saying. She's mine. I've got to find her. It's my job. Pam's mine.

He was in the dark street before he knew what his plan was. He looked for a taxicab then, and found the streets empty. He began to walk, walking north, and as he walked he quickened his steps until he was almost running.

They had not thought of that. They had assumed—at any rate, he had assumed—that whoever had got Pam at the office when she had been playing the record had got the record too. But perhaps he had not. Perhaps Pam had had warning; had had a moment. Pam was quick. She might have hidden the record.

His mind hurried, now, as his body did. If she had managed to hide the record, a good deal would be explained. If she had merely heard it, if whatever story it told was by now in her mind only, the record destroyed, then—then she would not be alive. But if the record still existed, and only she knew where it was hidden, then she might be kept alive until—

And she was alive. She had to be. And—a few hours before, she almost certainly had been, unless Lyster was lying, unless—

She was alive because she had to be.
Had
to be. She was alive because the story on the record still existed; existed in a voice, or more than one voice, and in the grooves of a plastic disc.

It had started at the office; Pam's part in it had started there. At the office he would find—

“Yes,” Bill said. “I realized he would be. I'm very sorry. It is important, Mrs. Osman.”

“I don't know,” the woman—a young woman by her voice's sound—said. “I really don't know, Mr.—”

“Weigand,” Bill said, for the third time. “Captain Weigand. Of the Homicide Squad. In New York. Please tell your husband—”

“All right,” a man's voice said. “All right, Amy. I'll—”

“He says he's the police,” the woman said. “Something about Homicide.”

It had taken time to get an answer from the residence of J. Bradley Osman, on Mercer Street, in Princeton, New Jersey. Mr. and Mrs. Osman had played bridge late that night; they slept soundly. It was taking more time to wake them up.

“All
right
, Amy,” Osman said. “All
right.
” It was evident that he had come in on an extension. “I'll—”

There was a disturbance on the line, “—trying to get—” an operator said. “Hello,” Osman said. “You still there? What's this about homicide?”

“You're Miss Hilda Godwin's agent?” Bill asked.

“Sure,” Osman said. “Don't tell me she's got mixed up in homicide. Just when—”

“Miss Godwin's been killed,” Bill said, and waited until Osman swore, in incredulity, in apparent shock. He listened further; he said he was trying to find out.

“I need help,” he said. “You were handling a novel she'd written. Something she called, ‘Come Up Smiling'?”

“Yes,” Osman said. “What's that got—”

“Have you got a copy of it?” Bill asked. “A copy of the manuscript?”

Osman said he didn't get it. Bill was patient. He explained briefly. The book might give them a lead. They had been unable to find a copy.

“The Hudson Press has one,” Osman said.

The Hudson Press hadn't. Bill explained again.

“Lost it?” Osman said. His voice was even more shocked, it seemed to Bill Weigand, than it had been when the agent learned of his client's death. “Lost the
manuscript?
” Osman seemed incredulous, as well as shocked.

“I'm afraid so,” Bill said, still patient “Have you got a copy? I suppose you have.”

“No,” Osman said. “She only sent one. I sent it along to the publisher. She's going—” He stopped. He swore, more briefly. “She was going to send me another copy. Wanted me to try the magazines, although I don't know whether—” He stopped. “Why don't you look around and find one of hers?” Osman asked. “I'd think that would be simpler—”

“We have,” Bill said. “Through her house in town. Her house in the country. We haven't found a copy.”

They hadn't looked, Osman said. That was the trouble, they hadn't looked. They didn't know authors.

“Never knew an author to throw anything away,” he said. “Anything they'd written, I mean. First draft, revision, second draft, third draft. Three, maybe four, copies from a typist. They keep 'em
all
. Keep piles of them. Never knew one who didn't. There's something sacred about a manuscript, you'd think. You'll find half a dozen.”

“We haven't,” Bill said. “I assure you, Mr. Osman. You really mean half a dozen?”

Osman hesitated a moment.

“Probably,” he said. “She's been—” He corrected the tense again. “She'd worked on this thing for a couple of years. Told me she'd done two drafts and settled for the second. Two complete drafts, I mean. Part of it she typed herself; recently she's been trying this gadget Dictating machine thing, you know.”

“Yes,” Bill Weigand said. “I know.”

“So she'd have a ribbon copy of each version,” Osman said. “And a carbon, probably. Then she'd have—well, she ought to have left anyway two carbons of the final draft. After she'd had it copied, I mean. It had been copied. Nice clean script. So that makes—” He paused to count. “Six anyway,” he said. “Not counting the one you say the publisher's lost. Must say that doesn't happen often. Kick 'em around, fuss around with them, take months. Yes. Lose them. No.”

“This one they did, apparently,” Bill told him. “And, as I said, we can't find any other copies.”

“Got to,” Osman said. He was awake enough now. “Somebody's got to. My God. A great book. A
great
book. Could be Book of the Month. My God, man, we've
got
to find it.”

Bill hoped they would. Meanwhile—could Mr. Osman tell him something about the book?

“A great book,” Osman said. “Could be—”

“I've gathered it was autobiographical,” Bill said. “To some extent, at any rate. Did you think that? You've read it, evidently.”

“Well,” Osman said. He sounded wary. “Not what they usually mean when they say that, Captain. A lot more than that. Good story, beautiful style. Moving and funny too, sometimes. I wouldn't want to say it was autobiographical. Not in the usual sense.”

“Mr. Osman,” Bill Weigand said. Now the patience was very evident in his voice. “Listen, Mr. Osman. I'm not a publisher. Not a critic. I'm just a policeman. Say it's the greatest book anybody ever—”

“Now,” Osman said, “I didn't say that.”

“What I want to know,” Bill said, “is—did she get most of the material from her own life? Is it, basically, about herself? About people she's met? Maybe been in love with? You know what I mean.”

“Well,” Osman said. “Yes, I suppose so. Most novels are, you know. First novels particularly. Where else does a writer go for the stuff he uses? Make up plots, sure. Make up people—not entirely. How can they? Sometimes they take a little piece of somebody here and another little piece of somebody there. Come up with Mr. Jones. Mrs.—Zilch.”

“Sometimes,” Bill said, “don't they more or less take characters whole? Disguise them a little; give them different professions, describe them differently? Particularly when the book's partly autobiographical.”

“Well,” Osman said, “yes. I suppose so.”

“And—Miss Godwin did that? In ‘Come Up Smiling'?”

“Well,” Osman said, “maybe.”

He was told that he must see what Weigand was getting at. A writer is killed. Simultaneously, all the copies of a novel she had just finished disappear. The novel was, to some extent, autobiographical. It described people who might be alive. Perhaps—

“Well,” Osman said, “I do see what you mean. Knew a woman once—perfectly nice gal, far's I could see—that happened to. Married a writer, had a quarrel with him. His next book—whew! Ran into him at a restaurant, somewhere, this gal did and spit in his face. Actually. Give you my word. Can't say I blame her much, either. Of course—spitting. Still—all her life, probably, people'll be saying ‘Mrs. Whatever-her-name-is? Oh—weren't you the one who—?' Then they'll stop and look embarrassed and—”