Death Has a Small Voice (6 page)

It was longer before he came a third time. This time she merely sat as she was, huddled on the floor, and shook her head to all he said; shook her head even when he said, “You must be getting very thirsty, by now.” He did not remain long the third time. He whispered, “All right, I can wait,” and the light went out.

When Pam looked up again, the thin edge of light was fainter. She realized that the shortened day of late October was nearing its end. This time yesterday, Pam thought, I was getting on the train in the country, or off the train. This time yesterday, I was going home. There was water on the train—cold water at the end of the car; paper cups to hold the water. But I wasn't thirsty and I didn't drink any water. And there was water at home, all the water in the world, and ice for the water, and I wasn't thirsty and didn't drink the water. And somewhere in this house there is water in pipes, water flowing; somewhere there's a tap and if I turned it water would rush out, frothing a little from the pressure. I could hold a glass under it and water would gush into the glass and flow over the top as I cooled the glass and wash down over the hand I held in the glass in and—

How long this was, she did not know.

Now she heard a sound. It was the sound of his footsteps again. He was coming back. If she said, “Yes, I'll tell you,” he would give her water. Then he would go. and find the record with his voice on it—did he think there was more than that? Did he think his name had been used? Why didn't he ask? Because she would lie, of course; he knew she would lie. Why should she tell the truth, if his name had been used? If it had been, he would have to kill her. He—

He would find the record and destroy it and then, since he had killed once, he would kill again. Why shouldn't he? But first he would give her water. He would have to do that. He would—

But the steps did not, this time, come to the door of the bin. They started toward it; then veered away. They stopped. Then there was the harsh sound of something, apparently something heavy, being dragged on a cement floor. This lasted for a few moments and stopped. Then it began again, with a difference. Pam, who had at first listened dully, listened now with concentration. She got to her feet and, moving as softly as she could, went to the side of the bin nearest the sound and pressed close to the boards, listening.

Now, she thought, he was pulling the heavy thing up a flight of cement stairs. She could hear his breathing, and once a grunt of effort. Then that sound stopped. When sound started again, it was the screeching drag of something on level. This was very brief. Then there was the sound of a closing door.

There was an interval then of perhaps fifteen minutes before the next sound. It was of a door being opened and then closed; footsteps came after that, and this time came to the door of the bin. She turned to face the door, and the light glared at her.

“All right,” the man whispered. “Come out!”

She did not move.

“Come out,” he whispered again. “You'd better.” There was threat in the whisper.

Pam North did as she was told. The light receded as she moved toward it, and she walked through the door. She took another step, saw dim light in a basement, saw an oil burner, thought, that's why the bin was empty, and then, from behind, something heavy, stifling, was over her head. It bore her down, it stifled her. Then she was pulled backwards.

It had been difficult to explain to Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley. It was no easier to explain to the vigorous, youngish man with a crew haircut who sat across the desk; the man who said that he had no doubt whatever that Captain Weigand knew his business, but where did Hilda Godwin come into it? If he knew where she was, he would tell the captain, naturally. His curiosity would remain.

“This burglar,” Gilbert Rogers said, “gets killed. He's stolen a Voice-Scriber like that one”—he indicated—“from Hilda. I can see you want to give it back to her or, anyway, tell her where it is. But what's the rush?”

Bill Weigand looked reflectively at the Voice-Scriber on Mr. Rogers' desk. He did not see it; he nevertheless looked at it, as a platform speaker, improvising, may now and then look abstractedly at the ceiling. Youngish Mr. Rogers had, of course, put his finger on it. What was the rush?

There was an interruption. A trim and blond young woman came into the office and, seeing Weigand, said, “Oh” and prepared to leave. Rogers said, “Yes, Miss Agee?” and the blonde said, rather rapidly, “I'm sorry Mr. Forbush sent these in from Boston and said maybe you'd like to listen to them and you were out but I didn't know there was—”

“All right, Miss Agee,” Rogers said. “Leave them. I'll listen to them.”

Miss Agee put three square envelopes, one on top of the other, on Mr. Rogers's desk. She straightened the edges, making the pile neat. She went out. Bill Weigand looked abstractedly at the pile of stiff envelopes, not seeing them.

“Voice-Scriber records,” Mr. Rogers said, when Bill continued to look. “As I was saying—”

Bill saw the envelopes at which he had been looking—the squarish envelopes, each containing a recorded voice.

“They're mailed that way?” he asked.

“Sure,” Rogers said. “Forbush up in the Boston office—” He stopped, because Bill Weigand did not seem to be listening. Bill reached out and picked up the topmost envelope. He read: “Do Not Bend.” He read: “Voice-Scriber Record.” A
squarish envelope
. Actually, a completely square envelope. Martha had said—

“Some authors dictate,” Bill said. “Apparently Miss Godwin did?”

“She may have,” Rogers said. His tone asked, “What difference does it make?” He considered. “I believe she did, now and then,” he said. “You don't think your burglar stole a book? He didn't. We've got the book. At least,
a
book. I doubt whether she's started another. You can't tell about authors, of course.” He sighed, perhaps at his own thoughts. He waited.

“We have to try to trace down every connection,” Bill said. “Even connections as remote as this. We're looking for, talking to, everybody we can find who knew Harry Eaton. We're trying to find out where Eaton was yesterday, and the day before—who he saw, what he did, what he had for breakfast Sunday. Among other things, of course, we'd like to know when he broke into Miss Godwin's house. You see, we don't know what may turn out to be useful. Snappers-up of unconsidered trifles.”

“Shakespeare,” Mr. Rogers said. “
Winter's Tale
, I think. Hilda may be anywhere. Probably she is. She comes and she goes.

“So we were told,” Bill said, and Gilbert Rogers said, “Um?”

“A man named Wilson,” Bill told him. “Bernard Wilson. Tall, good looking, forty-odd.”

“I know Wilson,” Rogers said. “Damned near everybody knows Wilson. Creative writing at Dyckman, you know.”

Bill shook his head.

“Professor of,” Rogers told him. “Also critic, essayist, general consultant in the world of literature. And Rhodes Scholar. As a matter of fact, he gives us opinions now and then. He knew Hilda in the great days, you know. Where did you run into him?”

Bill explained where he had run into Professor Bernard Wilson. Rogers smiled. “Going to give her tea, was he?” he said. “That would interest her. Tea!”

Three-fourths of all questioning, perhaps of all conversation, is irrelevant, Bill Weigand thought. This, however, seemed to be going a little far. Nevertheless, he repeated, “The great days?”

“The first fine careless rapture,” Rogers said. He did not bother to identify. “Hilda's lyric life. About five years ago—that is, she started eight years ago when she was about seventeen. Very precocious. She kept at it until about four years ago, and stopped. Poetry, she thinks, is for the young. At twenty-one our Hilda decided she was outgrowing it.”

“She was very good, I'm told,” Bill said.

“She was wonderful, to put it simply,” Rogers said. “In all ways, I'm told—I didn't know her in those days. Although—” He broke off.

“But you spoke of a book,” Weigand said. “A book of hers you have. A collection?”

Rogers shook his head.

“A novel,” he said. “She's taken to prose in—well, in what I suppose she thinks of as middle life.”

“You people are going to publish it?” Bill asked.

“Oh, I think so,” Rogers said. “It's the familiar first novel pattern, I'm told. I haven't had a go at it yet. I've been away. I'm told some of it is—” He broke off. He reminded Bill Weigand that they had been talking about burglary, not literature. “There is a difference,” Gilbert Rogers added, with perhaps unnecessary firmness.

Weigand nodded. He asked if Rogers had known Miss Godwin long.

“About three years,” Rogers said.

“Well?”

Rogers lifted his eyebrows. Weigand smiled faintly; he said he was thinking in connection with her possible whereabouts at the moment.

“Oh,” Rogers said. “Well, she may have picked up and gone anywhere, as I said. If it were summer, I'd suggest the country—she's got a small place, not much more than a week-end place, up near South Salem. But that's closed up, now. Of course, she may be around town anywhere—you just started to look today, didn't you?”

“Right,” Bill said. “No doubt she'll turn up at the house. We'll keep ringing.”

“If she is in town,” Rogers said, “I can tell you the most likely place to find her—at—” He looked at his watch. It seemed to surprise him. “About six,” he said. “A little over half an hour from now.” He looked pointedly at his desk, which was not clear. “Try the Four Corners. She'll drop in for a drink, probably. Even if she doesn't, her crowd will. You know Four Corners?”

Bill did. He apologized for the time he had taken. Rogers said it was nothing; he rose behind his desk. He was a big man; he might have been an amateur boxer at his university, which, from his speech, Bill Weigand took to have been Harvard. He gave Weigand a hard handshake to remember him by. “Come again any time,” Rogers said. Harvard and Groton, Weigand thought, assuming precedent to be sound. Bill Weigand went from the large building of the Hudson Press and drove down Madison Avenue, and down Fifth, to the Village. He parked his car near the Four Corners Restaurant, and went to a telephone booth in a stationer's on the corner. He telephoned the Norths' apartment. Martha was still there. Mrs. North had not returned.

Bill went to the Four Corners, and into it, and to the handsome oval of the bar. He compared those already there with his memory of the publicity picture Gilbert Rogers had shown him. Hilda Godwin wasn't at the bar. Probably he was early.

He ordered scotch on the rocks from the nearest of four bartenders and, when it was poured, said, “Miss Godwin isn't around?” The bartender looked at a clock. “Little early yet,” he said. “She—” He broke off. He said, “Evening, Professor,” and Bill Weigand turned. Bernard Wilson said, “Evening, Harry” and started toward a group at the end of the bar before he saw Weigand. When he saw him he stopped, looked puzzled for a moment and then said, “Oh. Find her yet?”

“Not yet,” Bill said. “And you?”

“No,” Bernard Wilson said. “Not I.” He half raised his hand in salute, and sauntered to join the group. Probably, Bill decided, it was Hilda Godwin's “crowd.” He looked at it, sipping his drink.

The term “crowd” exaggerated. There had been four; now there were five. The arrival of Bernard Wilson upset the balance of sexes. The arrival of Wilson would also, in all probability, simplify Weigand's procedure. He sipped and waited; the thought about square envelopes which contained Voice-Scriber records; of a squarish envelope received by Pamela North and taken with her when she went. Went or, preposterously, was taken? From her own apartment? With no chance to cry out? Bill mentally shook his head.

Wilson was talking to the two men and two women he had joined. Both of the other men, sitting on bar stools, seemed to be tall men. Both were, Bill guessed, in their thirties. One was blond; he had a long, narrow head, sharp features and thin, expressive lips. The other was a dark man, his face square and ruddy, his shoulders heavy. They sat with the women between them. Nearest the dark man, as if by designed contrast, the woman had long hair, light red, curling to the shoulders of her green dress; nearest the sharp-faced man was a, woman whose hair was gray, but a kind of shining gray, molded in waves to a beautifully shaped head.

They offered movement when Wilson joined them, but he shook his head. He could not, his attitude indicated, stay; rearrangement would be a waste of time. The bartender brought him a drink he had evidently not needed to order; he drank a third of it and leaned along the bar to talk to the others. As he talked, the others looked at Weigand. The thin man shrugged to something Wilson said. Wilson turned toward Bill and motioned. Carrying his glass, Bill Weigand walked along the oval bar to them.

“I've been telling them about the burglary,” Bernard Wilson said, in his carefully ordered voice. “That you are trying to find Hilda.” He moved one well-shaped, large hand to identify “them.” “They're all friends of Hilda's,” he added.

“So you're a cop,” the thin-faced man said, a British voice emphasizing, enjoying, familiarity with the quaintness of American argot “I can't say you look it.” He considered Weigand with a directness more often reserved for the inanimate. “Look like a gent,” he remarked. “Doesn't he, Maddy?”

The girl with the reddish hair was a very pretty girl. She looked at Bill Weigand with the knowledge of her prettiness in her eyes.

“He has to try to be rude,” she told Weigand. “He has to try very hard. Nobody pays any attention, of course.”

“Darling,” the thin-faced man said, and his flexible mouth smiled, twisted. Its movement was like a wink at Bill Weigand. “It's really no trouble, y'know.”