Killing the Goose (2 page)

The girl had been a filing clerk, doing routine chores in a large investment house. She had been about nineteen—slight and dark-haired, pretty because she was young; talking, they said, with the suggestion of a Southern accent. The police had never heard her talk; when men from a radio patrol car pushed their way into a confused, excited crowd in the coffee shop of the Hotel Greystone on Madison Avenue, a block above Madison Square, Frances McCalley had been beyond talking. She had been a collapsed object in a corner of a booth, with blood around her and a gash in her throat; she had been dead only a matter of minutes, those who found her thought. She had died, they could guess, a few minutes after she had pushed back a plate which still, when the first policemen arrived, held the remnants of a bacon and tomato sandwich on toast. Whoever had eaten with her had had liver and bacon. The plate was near the other plate. Some blood had splattered on the green-composition top of the table; there was a great deal of blood on the green composition floor under the girl's body. A cut throat bleeds.

“That was what they found,” Weigand said. “That and girls who knew her and were ready to talk. A girl who had stood beside her at the counter—it's a cafeteria—and seen her put the bacon and tomato sandwich on her tray; seen her take a custard cup for dessert when she couldn't get a baked apple because they were out of baked apples; seen her talking to the boy who killed her.”

“The boy—?” Pam repeated.

Weigand nodded. The boy who killed her—the boy who was in love with her and thought, they supposed, that she was two-timing him. Or was, for some other reason, emotionally disturbed to the point of murder.

There had been no problem about finding him; it was all routine. Three or four girls knew him by sight; one knew him by name. She had bumped into him a few minutes before the girl's body was found. He was leaving the coffee shop—going out so rapidly that he left the revolving door spinning wildly. The girl—one Cleo Harper—had been exasperated and looked after him, ready to say what she thought of him if he stopped. He had not stopped; he had gone on violently, his face, as she subsequently remembered it, “terrible—all full of hate.” She also recognized him as Franklin Martinelli, Frances McCalley's friend. She had wondered why he was so angry and had suspected a quarrel between the two. She had told her story to the police after Frances's body was found. It was found, she said, about ten minutes after she had seen the Martinelli boy, his dark face twisted, hurl himself out of the coffee shop.

That would have been enough—that and the suspicion held by the police that Italians are violent in emotional upheavals and apt with knives. It alone would have been enough to set them after young Martinelli. They did not need the statement of two girls in the next booth that they had heard angry voices through the partition and that the girl's voice stopped suddenly.

Mullins had it pretty much in hand by the time Weigand got to the cafeteria, late because he had been at lunch himself and there had been delay in reaching him. The boy had been sullen and stubborn—and he had seemed to be shocked and overcome with grief. Perhaps he was; murderers sometimes were, especially when they had killed violently, without thought. He had denied, of course, that he had killed at all. For a time he had denied the quarrel; then he had admitted it, but still insisted that they had made things up before he left and that then Frances was alive.

“She smiled at me,” Franklin Martinelli had insisted. “I tell you she smiled at me.”

He had left hurriedly because he was already late at the loft-factory where he worked as a shipping clerk. He had not wanted to be fired. Perhaps he had looked worried because he was late, and because he didn't want to lose the job. He was trying to save all the money he could before he went into the army, and he had to have the job. But anybody who said he looked scared or angry was making things up. Everything was all right between him and Frances.

“She smiled at me when I left,” he said, over and over. “She looked happy and smiled. Everything was all right.”

But nobody believed him. They made him tell it over and over again and shook their heads and said, “No, buddy, it wasn't that way.” “Come on, son,” they said. “Spill it. You may as well spill it.”

They did not hit him, with fists or rubber hose. They kept him sitting on a straight chair with a strong light on him and they made him tell it over and over again. And over and over again he told them he had not killed the girl; that she was alive and smiled at him when he left the restaurant; that he ran out of the restaurant, with the door whirling behind him, because he was late back at his job.

“All right,” they said. “Tell it over again, fella.”

They looked at each other and let heavy disbelief show in their faces; they laughed a little, contemptuously. Weigand said that he had sat in on it for a while and decided the boy was going to hold out for a long time yet and left it to Mullins. When the boy broke and told it, Mullins would call him.

“It's horrible,” Pam said. “If he didn't do it—it's horrible. Because if he didn't do it, it was bad enough without that.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “If he didn't do it. Only it's a hundred to one he did do it—two hundred to one. And it was horrible about the girl. She was—well, she was sort of a pretty girl. And very young, Pam.”

He looked at her and then he looked at Dorian.

“Right,” he said. “It's tough—it's too damned bad. And do you want us to let him get away with it? Is it all right he stuck a knife in the kid's throat?”

He spoke rather harshly, for him; and rather defensively. Dorian smiled, not happily.

“It's just the poor kids, Bill,” she said. “The poor young kids. We know you can't do anything else.”

Bill Weigand, who had been leaning forward, looked into her face and into Pam's, and then he sat back and for a moment said nothing. When he spoke, it was in his normal tone.

“So,” he said. “There you have it. From the police point of view—routine. A poor fool kid kills a girl he's in love with because he gets mad at her. And we—”

He did not finish, because the telephone bell rang. Jerry crossed the room and dug under a table where the telephone lived. It seemed to be caught on something, and he jerked. There was an indignant yow and Toughy came out, his tail enlarged. He stopped, looked at Jerry reproachfully, scram bled suddenly on the carpet, ran headlong across the room, leaped to the windowsill, crashed into the venetian blinds, bounced, landed half way across the room, leaped convulsively into the air, dashed furiously at the sofa, climbed the back of the sofa and suddenly sat down. He began to wash his back. Toughy had awakened.

“My,” Pam said. “His tail must have been caught in the telephone wire, or something. Isn't he strange?”

Ruffy came into the living room at a dead run, evidently adandoning the bathtub in which, for days, she had decided to live. She leaped over the radio, put both forelegs around Toughy's neck in an embrace and rolled with him to the floor. Toughy landed underneath, flat on his back with a plunk. He lay there and began to eat one of Ruffy's ears. She hissed at him.

“Children,” Pamela North said. “Be good cats.” She explained to Dorian. “They're showing off, now,” she said.

“Please,” Jerry said from the telephone. “I can't—Oh, Weigand. Yes, he's here.”

He beckoned with the telephone and Bill took it. He said, “yes” and “yes.”

“All right,” he said, “we'll just have to keep after him. I'll be along after awhile. Anything else?”

He listened.

“What difference it can possibly make,” he said. “However—”

He listened again.

“We knew that,” he said. He listened further.

“And that,” he said. “But thank the good doctor. Tell him he's very thorough.” He started to cradle the telephone. He thought better of it.

“Mullins!” he said. “Hold it. Don't tell him that last.” He waited. “Right,” he said. “In a couple of hours. I'll be here, meanwhile.”

He cradled the telephone this time and crossed back to his seat on the sofa. They looked at him, enquiringly.

“Mullins,” he said. “The boy's still holding out. The M. E. says she died about an hour before his man saw her, which would make it about a quarter of one. He knew what she had to eat. But so did we. Bacon and tomato sandwich, coffee, a—”

Suddenly he broke off, with an odd expression in his eyes. And then, softly, he said that he would be damned. He said it slowly and with some surprise. Then he was back at the telephone and dialing; then he was speaking into the telephone with a new tone in his voice.

“Weigand,” he said. “Get me Mullins.” There was a moment's pause. Then Bill Weigand spoke again. “Mullins?” he said. “Read me that again.” He waited. “Are they sure?” he asked. He did not wait to be answered. “Don't ask them that, Mullins. Of course they're sure.” He held the telephone for a moment at a little distance from his ear and tapped on the table with the fingers of his free hand. Then he made up his mind.

“Mullins,” he said. “Let up on the boy. Hold him; put him in storage somewhere. And give him a cigarette and something to eat.” He listened. “Right,” he said. “Screwy is the word for it, Sergeant. I'll be along.”

He put the telephone down and turned and looked at the others, but not as if he saw them clearly.

They waited for him to speak and when he did not, Pam spoke.

“What's the matter, Bill?” she said. “Is it blowing up on you? Didn't the boy do it?”

Weigand shook his head, slowly.

“I don't know,” he said. “Mullins says it's screwy. You see—she'd eaten a baked apple.”

He looked at the others, who looked back at him, evidently unenlightened. He gave them time. Then he explained.

“It's a catch,” he said. “I told you we knew everything, even what she had to eat. Maybe we knew too damned much. You see, she didn't have any baked apple. She wanted one, and there weren't any. So she took a custard. And now the M.E.'s office finds out she had a baked apple. Where'd she get it?”

“Probably,” Dorian said, reasonably, “she went back to the counter and had another try and got a baked apple. I don't see—”

“Right,” Weigand said. “I don't either. Not certainly. Maybe she did just that. And maybe somebody else was there and brought her a baked apple. Because the kid—this Franklin Martinelli—swears she didn't leave the table while he was there, and he's confirmed—a dozen times, probably, that she had a sandwich and a cup of custard and coffee.”

“But,” Jerry said, “you didn't believe him before. Why believe him now?”

Weigand nodded, and said it was a point. Maybe the Martinelli boy was a very bright boy; maybe he'd figured something out. But he would have to be very bright to know that it would matter whether Frances McCalley had a baked apple with her lunch.

“It would take figuring,” Bill said. “I doubt whether the kid figures that way—figures that if she didn't have a baked apple with her regular lunch, didn't leave the table during the time he was there, showed up with a baked apple in her stomach—that all this would mean maybe he didn't do it after all.” He paused, considering. “It's funny,” he said. “Where did she get the apple?”

“Somebody brought it to her,” Pam said. “Maybe the person who killed her. Maybe somebody else. Or did she leave the table, but perhaps after the boy had gone, and got the apple herself. Could she see the counter? Where the things were, I mean? From where she sat?”

Weigand shook his head. He admitted he hadn't noticed.

“Because,” Pam amplified, “maybe she saw somebody bring the apples in. And went and got one. Anyway, it isn't so routine as it was, is it? Perhaps it wasn't the Martinelli boy.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “So we're giving him a rest. And instead of sitting here, basking comfortably, telling sad stories of the death of gangsters, I've got to go around and get to work. Tracing a baked apple from—from the counter to the morgue.”

“Bill!” Dorian said, firmly. “For heaven's sake, darling!”

Bill smiled.

“Nevertheless,” he began. Then the telephone rang again. He looked quickly at Jerry, who waved a hand; he said, “Lieut. Weigand speaking” into the telephone. He looked pained and held the receiving end a couple of inches from his ear.

He looked at the others and made the word “Inspector” with his lips. He said, “Yes, Inspector?”

He listened. He whistled softly. He said, “Right.” He listened again.

“Right away, Inspector,” he said. “But how about the McCalley case? In the Greystone's coffee shop.” He listened. “No,” he said, “I'm not sure it is. Something else has come up. A question of a baked apple.”

Across the room they could hear the telephone splutter. Grinning slightly, Weigand held it farther from his ear.

“Right,” he said. “But I'm not joking. I'm not sure it's the Martinelli boy, and the reason is a baked apple. However—”

He listened further, said, “Right” again, and replaced the telephone in its holder. He stood up.

“Inspector O'Malley,” he said. “In person. From a house on Gramercy Park. They found Miss Ann Lawrence dead there. Somebody hit her with a poker. A brass poker, O'Malley says.”

“Lawrence?” Pam said. “Ann Lawrence? Ought we—”

Weigand shrugged. He said the Inspector seemed to think so. Apparently she had been important, since the Inspector went around in person; apparently she had money, since she lived in a house—her own house—on Gramercy Park. And apparently the Inspector was now ready to turn it over to Weigand.

“To assist,” Weigand explained, gravely. “To do the routine. And after I get there, our O'Malley will decide he has already done the important thinking, got everything well in hand, and had better leave detail to me. So he will go and play poker with the boys.”