Death of a Tall Man (34 page)

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.

“I told you—” she heard her father say, and heard the fat man interrupt him.

“Told Harry,” he said. “Not me. Harry ain't me, Admiral. Harry don't get things.” He paused. “Don't add things up,” he said.

“Come in here,” she heard her father say, as she went on up the stairs. “I don't know what you're after. I'll give you—”

“Take it easy, Admiral,” the man said. There was something like amusement in his fat voice. “Nobody said anything about giving.”

She had stopped on the stairs, listening. Her father was taking the fat man through the living room toward the library.

“The thing is,” the fat man said, “what do you want me to tell the cops? About this—”

Then they went into the library, and the door closed, and the voice was cut off.

She told the Norths how these things had happened, trying to make them as obscure, yet as significant, in the telling as they had seemed to her when they had happened.

But when she had finished, Jerry North looked at Pam, and shook his head.

“I don't,” he began. Then Freddie remembered what she had forgotten to tell, interrupted Jerry North, and told of the telephone conversation between her father and—someone. She repeated, as accurately as she could, the words she had overheard: Her father's “circumstances have changed”; the unknown man's, “begins to look like there's something to it” and “it's up to you. He's going to be your son—”

“He must have meant Bruce,” Freddie said. “Who else could he have meant?”

Jerry North nodded slowly. He looked at Pam, and saw a shadow on Pam's face.

“That,” Freddie said. “Then this—this awful man. He knew about Bruce—about Bruce's being—murdered.”

The word was a lonely and awful word, standing apart from other words. It carried terror in its syllables. “Murdered.”

“Your father seemed to know him?” Pam said, and Freddie Haven nodded, hating to have to nod.

“On the telephone,” Pam said. “Your father said that circumstances had changed. That was all?”

Freddie thought; then she spoke slowly.

“‘As of tonight,' he said,” she told them. “‘As of tonight, circumstances have changed.'” Then she looked at them, and waited. There was a kind of desperate hopefulness in her waiting.

“It doesn't have to mean anything,” Jerry told her, doing his best. But Pam North shook her head.

“Of course it means something,” she said. That's ridiculous, Jerry. Only—it doesn't have to mean the way it sounds. It could be—oh, anything.”

They looked at her.

“Well,” Pam said, after a moment. “Anything. Not that your father knew the senator had been—was dead. And that because he was dead—” The words trailed off, the sentence lost momentum.

“Dad didn't know,” Freddie said. Her voice was low, but there was desperate anxiety in it. She was telling herself that her father did not know; it had to be that he did not know. Because if he had known then all the evening he had been lying, by word, by implication, in his attitude toward her. “He couldn't have known,” she said. “But—what did he mean? Who are these men?”

The question was so easy to answer that answer was not needed. Men the admiral had hired for some purpose; men he had dismissed, their task done; men who, perhaps, did not plan to stay dismissed. It had been, Freddie had thought, like a Shakespearian cast. Now she thought again of Shakespeare; thought, “Enter two murderers.” She put her head down in her hands.

After a moment she raised her head and looked at the Norths. She looked first at Pam, then at Jerry.

“What can I do?” she said. Her voice was very low, very strained. “I've got to—to help Dad.”

“Go to him,” Pam said. “Ask him. Ask him what it's all about. Then—”

The door buzzer was loud in the apartment. The Norths looked at each other, surprise on their faces. “What the—” Jerry began, and Pam went to the door, pulled it open. Freddie turned her head, drew in her breath quickly.

It was a man Freddie had seen once before. He was thin, with a thin face, a soft hat canted a little to one side, partially shielding the face. He took the hat off, shook snow from it to the tiled floor of the outside corridor. He smiled at Pam and started to speak.

“Saw your lights,” he said. “Thought I'd—” Then he saw Freddie Haven and stopped speaking. He looked at Pam North and his thin face seemed momentarily puzzled.

“Good evening, Mrs. Haven,” he said, then. “I didn't expect—”

“Bill,” Pam said. There was a slight constraint in her voice. “We were just—just having a cup of coffee.” She looked at the coffee table. “With brandy,” she added, paying the bottle tribute. “You're—you're just in time.”

The man with the thin face looked at her, smiled fleetingly. He looked across at Jerry North and raised his eyebrows.

“By all means, Bill,” Jerry North said. “By all means.”

“Right,” Bill Weigand said. He came in, removing his overcoat. He was wearing dinner clothes. He looked tired, Freddie Haven thought, irrelevantly. He looked very tired.

Pam North felt the silver coffee pot, shook her head over it.

“Cold,” she said. “I'll have to make us some more. If there's one thing that's terrible with cognac it's cold—”

“Pam,” Jerry said. “Pam. Sit down, Pam.”

“The coffee's cold,” Pam said. “Cold as ice. It couldn't be colder if—” She looked at her husband, looked at Bill Weigand. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Go ahead, Bill.”

“Ahead?” Bill Weigand said. He seemed surprised and puzzled. “Ahead, Pam? I was just going by, saw your lights, thought I'd drop in for a minute since you were still up.” He looked at Jerry North. “Right?” he said.

“Bill,” Pam said. “We love you. We love seeing you. It's four o'clock in the morning.” She paused. “We've danced the whole night through,” she said, and then, as if she had surprised herself, “For heaven's sake.”

“Anyway, it's three o'clock,” Jerry said. “In the song. Go ahead, Bill.”

Lieutenant William Weigand's glance at Freddie Haven, a glance for a purpose, was so quick that it was hardly a movement of the eyes. But Pam North said, “Oh!”

I'm in the way, Freddie Haven thought; he came for something, to ask them something. He can't, because I'm here. And again, her breath came in a quick gasp. Then she stood up.

“I'll go,” she said. “I—I was just going.” She fought for poise, momentarily gained it. “It was so good of you to let me come, Mrs. North,” she said. She was almost polite, almost casual. “Now I really must—”

“What are you afraid of, Mrs. Haven?” Weigand said. “What frightens you?”

Freddie looked at the thin man she had seen for the first time that night; had seen in the anteroom of the morgue at Bellevue.

“Frightened?” she said. “I'm—I'm not frightened, Lieutenant Weigand.” She wanted to stop there, found herself still talking. “I was upset,” she said. “Can't you understand? Terribly upset. Shocked. I—I couldn't sleep, couldn't stay at home. I had to talk to somebody. I thought Pam and Jerry wouldn't mind; that they—”

“No, Mrs. Haven,” Bill Weigand said. He shook his head. “I'm sorry,” he said. “You just met them tonight, you know. You see, they left your party to join my wife and me. They mentioned having met you.” He shook his head again. “Having just met you,” he said. “They were hardly acquaintances. Right?”

She merely looked at him, her eyes wide; her eyes a little blank, as her mind whirled, seeking an answer. She saw Weigand shake his head.

“You may as well tell me,” he said. “Because—they will, you know.” He nodded. “Oh yes,” he said. “They won't want to, but they will, Mrs. Haven. Because, you see, they're on my side, if there have to be sides. Because we've known one another a long time. You see how it is, Mrs. Haven? So—what are you afraid of? What brought you here? For advice, wasn't it? Somebody told you the Norths have been involved in things? Have experience?” He paused and still she did not speak. “
You
tell me, Mrs. Haven,” he said. “It's the best way.”