Death of an Angel (11 page)

“Still,” Bill said. “Then you had been?”

Carr had come to New York from Chicago, getting in on the Century Thursday morning. Did Weigand want to know why he had come? Weigand nodded. He had come on business; to see a man about a dam. A dam in South America, this time. “We build a lot of dams,” Carr said. He had conferred, with the first man and then with others, until late Thursday evening, and had had dinner, and then decided to see “my old girl friend,” before he went back to Chicago. It had been almost midnight; he had gone to the hotel; found that Naomi was not at home, and had talked to her maid. The maid had told him about “this big party.”

“So,” Carr said, “I took a chance and called Snaith. You know Snaith?”

“No,” Bill said.

“Flesh peddler,” Carr said. “That the right term, honey?”

“Always,” Naomi said. “But
always
. Mr. Snaith is an artists' representative.”

“Caught him just as he was leaving,” Carr said. “Said how about taking me to this shindig and he said, sure, why not. I met him there and he took me in. Although, far as I could see, anybody could've walked in. We were in time for the big scene. ‘Going to steal your girl—'”

“That's like you,” Naomi said. “Exactly like you.”

“O.K. Let's say I'm sorry,” Carr told her. “Anyway, it seemed like a good time to get out of there. I got out of there.”

“Like a little boy with the sulks,” Naomi told him. “Oh, I saw you.”

He had been tied up the next day, and into the next evening. He had taken a late plane back to Chicago; had, early in the afternoon, read of Fitch's death and had flown back to New York. He had telephoned Naomi at once, but he had got only the maid, who had said that Miss Shaw was not talking to anyone. He had tried persuasion, and got nowhere. “I never got anywhere with these maids of yours,” he said, to Naomi. “You know that. They seem to think I'm bad for you.”

“Why shouldn't they?” Naomi asked.

“O.K.,” Carr said. “Anyhow, I said I was in town, and where I was, and asked this biddy to condescend enough to tell Miss Shaw that her former husband had called, and would help in any way he could.”

“How?” Naomi asked.

Carr paid no attention to that. He said apparently the biddy had condescended, since his former wife had called him up. “To accuse me of murder,” he said.

“I came over here,” he said, “and, like I told you, convinced her I didn't poison Fitch. Then she said she had called the police because—because she was afraid. I said—”

“You said a lot of things,” Naomi Shaw cut in.

“All right,” he said. “I was sore. You could always make me sore. Got a lot of fun out of it. Then I said, all right, we'd both wait until the police came and she could tell her story and I'd tell mine. And then she got this notion. This notion about not wanting to drag me into it. Anyway, that's what she said. Said to leave it to her. About then, you rang the bell.” He paused and looked at Naomi, and away from her. “Probably just wanted to give this performance,” he said. “The part about keeping me out of it—” He shrugged.

“That's right,” she said. “Don't give me any credit. That's right. Just another chance to show off.”

“I'd rather have it the other way,” he said. “You know that.” He waited a moment. She said nothing. “So I listened,” he said to Weigand. “I thought, actually, it was pretty damn good. Red herring, but not too red. But—you didn't buy it, so I decided there was no use in letting her get in any deeper, specially when I didn't have anything to worry about, so—” He paused for a moment. “Well,” he said, “that's the size of it. We've wasted your time.”

“Right,” Bill said. “If you can prove you were in Chicago. You've wasted a lot of time.”

“Oh,” Carr said, “I can prove that.” He spoke with confidence. Weigand looked away from him, looked at the girl on the sofa. Naomi Shaw was looking with an odd intentness at her former husband. It was, Bill Weigand thought, as if she were waiting for him to say more; almost as if she were willing him to say more.

“No trouble about that,” Carr said, and did not look at Naomi.

“Until then, you believed them?” Pam North said.

The Weigands and the Norths were having breakfast in the Norths' apartment, although it was somewhat after Sunday noon. It was not to be called “brunch,” because Pam wished it not to be called brunch. She said it made it sound like such a noisy meal. They had had strawberries and then eggs benedict, which Jerry prepared, it being an established thing that Pam could not make hollandaise, that it always separated.

“I thought they were probably telling the truth,” Bill said. “Even now—” He lighted a cigarette, and said yes to hot coffee.

“Why?” Dorian asked him. Bill looked thoughtfully at his wife, whose eyes were greenish, who had moved with her coffee to a sofa and sat with one long leg tucked under her, and so made a lap for the cat named Sherry—and often, because of the way she clung to laps, referred to as “The Limpit.” “Since,” Dorian said, “it doesn't sound too terribly probable. I mean, the whole feel of it.”

That, Bill told her, was precisely it. Granted that, retold—of necessity summarized, since he had, finally, been with Carr and Naomi Shaw in her apartment for almost two hours—the interview seemed theatrical, even concocted. But—at the time, it had not felt that way. At least, not until Naomi Shaw had looked with such intensity, such an air of expectation, at her former husband. Grant, further, that she had playacted, and Carr had played along—still, what Dorian called “the feel of it” had been authentic. Part of the feeling, Bill said, was that they had never got over each other; that when they were together there were special currents between them. And that, he thought, they did not act. He was not, further, at all convinced that Carr had acted at any time. Also, he said, Carr had had a reservation on a late plane to Chicago Friday night, and he had had one on a plane back Saturday afternoon. He granted that such matters could be arranged.

“By a stand-in,” Pam suggested.

That would, certainly, be the most simple way. Although it might also prove to be the most risky way. But they had no evidence about that, one way or another. They would get it.

“It was merely,” Pam said, “that all at once you had a hunch they'd left something out? Something important. Even before Jerry and I told you?”

“Yes,” Bill said. “That she expected him to tell more than he did. Or was afraid that he would. It looks, now, as if what he didn't tell about was this meeting you and Wyatt saw.”

“If Fitch did leave her money,” Jerry said. “If she and Carr were in cahoots.”

It appeared he had left her money. At least, he had told her he was leaving her money. Weigand had asked about that, and Carr had stared at him coldly, and Weigand had been unaffected by the stare. Fitch had told his fiancée that he planned to change his will. That had been several weeks before. A few days later he had told her that he had changed his will. So, at any rate, Naomi Shaw had told Weigand.

“I didn't want him to,” Naomi Shaw had said. “I said money wasn't the point at all and we were going to get married so soon, anyway.”

Fitch had laughed at that, according to Naomi Shaw. He had told her she was no businesswoman; had, lightly, told her she would, now, have to learn to be. He had explained. As things stood—had stood—the money would go to relatives—relatives all right enough in their way, but only that. After he and Naomi actually were married, the law would insure her dower rights. But, there remained an interval—an interval in which something might happen. (Would not, of course. Still might, of course.) “He—he said he might fall off a horse. He laughed about it.”

She had not, she told Bill Weigand, really understood why it was so important. That, she thought, had surprised Bradley Fitch. He had been, for one of the few times she had known him, painstakingly serious. There was a great deal of money. He had not made it. But he was responsible to it. He had said it so—responsible
to
the money. He had—this Bill Weigand gathered from what the girl said—to see that, even if only for a few weeks or days, the money was taken care of. So, he had made a new will. After they were married, he would make another will, in which Naomi Shaw, known also as Mary Shaftlich, and as Mary Shaftlich Carr, would be more simply designated as “my wife, Naomi Shaftlich Fitch.” Things would be kept in order.

He had not told her the exact provisions of this interim will. Whether he had told his relatives of it, she did not know. The only relative he saw much of was a cousin, Alicia Nelson. Perhaps he had told her. Captain Weigand should find that easy enough to discover. He had agreed.

But, so far, Mrs. Nelson had not been interviewed. She and her husband were not at their home in Rye. They were away for the weekend.

“Um-m,” Pam North said to that and, on being looked at and waited for, said, “Just um-m.”

How many other relatives there were, and the closeness of other relationships, they did not yet know. They would, undoubtedly, find out.

“Like dragon's teeth,” Pam North said. “All coming up in surrogate's court.”

“Like—?” Jerry said and then, “Oh. Of course.”

At the time Fitch was killed, around eleven o'clock Saturday morning, Naomi was, she said, having breakfast. Her maid could vouch for that. She had heard of his death a little after noon, from Wesley Strothers. “He was so—so sweet,” Naomi said. “I suppose I should have insisted on playing the matinee, at least, but he just wouldn't have it.”

“Strothers called again, while I was there,” Bill told the Norths and Dorian.

Bill had been standing to leave; Carr, after a questioning look at Naomi, had said, “O.K. But I'll be around,” and stood also. Then the telephone rang. Naomi Shaw flowed across the room to it, hesitated a moment, said, “Yes?” and then, “Oh, yes, Wes.” She spoke very softly, the hesitancy—the hesitancy which had defied so many descriptions—was evident. Her voice was sad—much sadder than it had been when she talked to her former husband, to Bill Weigand.

“Oh, Wes,” she said, after she had listened for several seconds. “I don't know, Wes. It's all so—so new—so hard to—” She had not finished. She had listened again. In the same sad, soft voice she had said she
did
understand. She
did
appreciate. She listened again and said, “Oh—I couldn't. Not
next
week,” and again stood, gracefully, the fingers of her free hand just touching a table top, and listened. “Perhaps,” she said, then. “Perhaps, Wes. I—I may as well, mayn't I? Now that it's all—all—” It appeared she ran out of words at that. She listened again. “All right,” she said. “Monday, then,” and then, after a brief pause, “You're very sweet, Wes.” She replaced the receiver, gently. She stood for some seconds, looking down at the telephone. She turned from it, and it was, Bill said, as if she had reached a decision. She had looked at Bill Weigand and at the browned, square man who had been her husband, and it was as if she hardly saw, or did not clearly remember, them.

But after another few seconds she said, “Oh. Wes Strothers. He has to know, of course.”

“The show must go on,” Carr had said, and Bill Weigand had expected the duel between them to be renewed. But the girl had merely, tiredly, shaken her lovely head, not in negation, but in, Bill thought, weary acceptance—acceptance of cliché, and of fact. She had looked, not at Carr, but at Weigand, and had said, “Haven't you finished, now?”

Bill had, for that place, that time. He went, and took Carr with him. But he had finished with Carr, also, for the time. He dropped Carr at Carr's hotel on lower Fifth Avenue.

“So,” Dorian said, “she's going to go on in
Around the Corner?
”

So, Bill told her, he gathered from what she had said to the play's producer. It would, Pam North said, please Sam Wyatt. It would please a good many people—in time, a good many thousands of people.

“I may as well say it,” Pam North said. “It's an ill wind. Will she get a lot of money, Bill?”

There was a lot of money, Bill told her. Enough so that even a part of it would be a lot. Enough so that, if Mary Shaftlich continued to be Naomi Shaw, it would be because acting was more than a means to livelihood.

“It is,” Dorian said. “Everything she does proves it. All she did last night.”

The telephone rang. The call was for Bill, and Dorian said, as much to the cat called Sherry as to anyone, that it never failed. “Never,” Dorian said. “Never.” She stroked the long, delicate bone—the seemingly so fragile bone—of the little cat's slender jaw. Sherry purred, more or less in her sleep.

“Right,” Bill said into the telephone. “I'll go around and see.” He hung up, with that.

“It's never been known to fail,” Dorian said again, this time to her husband.

“The cousin,” Bill said. “Mrs. Nelson. Has something to tell us.”

“I suppose,” Dorian said, “in Rye?”

Mrs. Nelson was not in Rye. She was at the Barclay. So, it might not be too long.

“I'll be here,” Dorian said. “If they'll have me. Or at home.”

Bill kissed the top of her head. He went. “Why I ever married a policeman,” Dorian said. She was told, by Pamela North, that she knew perfectly well. “Oh—that,” Dorian Weigand said, and scratched Sherry behind the right ear. But then Sherry spoke in a querulous voice, and at once dropped to the floor, where she stretched, rather elaborately, and scratched behind the same ear. “You're an ungrateful cat,” Dorian told her. “Anyway my foot was asleep.”

She stood up and also stretched, less elaborately but with almost equal grace.

They had another cup of coffee around and Jerry went to commune with Mr. Braithwaite, who could never remember, from one page to the next, what his characters looked like; who had, too often for comfort, made the forgetful authors' category in
The New Yorker
.