Murder Has Its Points (19 page)

Bill said, “Hi, Jerry. What?”

“What Pam's up to. She's left the damnedest message and, apparently, gone to Ridgefield with Faith Constable. Listen—”

Bill Weigand listened. As a result, he felt somewhat dazed. He said, “Read it again, will you?” and listened while it was read again.

“Is there,” Jerry said, “something the matter with your legs? Something you need to be told about?”

“It doesn't make sense,” Bill said. “As for my legs, no. I—you're sure it says
my
legs?”

“You heard it,” Jerry said. “‘Tell Bill there's something the matter with his legs.'”

“Your girl must have got it wrong.”

“My girl,” Jerry said, “is efficient. She is of a practical turn of mind. She thinks in simple declarative sentences. This, on the other hand, is Pam. Pure Pam. Only more than usual. Do you suppose there was some reason she couldn't say what she wanted to? I thought perhaps—”

He told Bill his theory that Pam might have been being listened to. He said, “Look. If anything happens to Pam—”

“Take it easy,” Bill said. “Nothing ever does, really.”

“The hell it doesn't. She's got herself into more—”

“I said ‘really,'” Bill told him. “Hold it a minute, won't you?”

Jerry held it a minute.

“You don't,” Bill said, “tell somebody there's something the matter with his legs. If there's something the matter—”

“Of course,” Jerry said. “It's one of those damned relatives. “I've been up to my ears in them most of the—”

“Huh?”

“Relative pronouns,” Jerry said. “Never mind about my ears. The legs aren't yours. They're somebody else's. As in, ‘I saw John Smith this afternoon. Tell Bill there's something the matter with his legs.' Probably that's what Pam thought she had said.”

Jerry became conscious of a kind of absence at the other end of the telephone wire. He waited and the absence continued. He said, “Bill?”

“Let me think, will you?”

“By all means,” Jerry said, and waited.

“I thought I had something,” Bill said. “It's slipped out of reach. As for your sentences—why not, ‘I saw the man who killed Payne'? And then the business about the legs?”

Jerry North said, “Damn,” and heard his own voice go up. “Oh damn it.” He stopped himself, breathed deeply. “You mean,” he said, and spoke very carefully, “Pam found out who killed Payne? And—
that he was the one listening when she phoned me?
”

“Take it easy.”

“If it were Dorian you'd—”

“I said, take it easy. If it had been the murderer, she'd hardly have mentioned his legs in front of him, would she? Not Pam. Wait—Lauren Payne had a front room at the hotel. Apparently she was in it—left the party early. If she had been looking out the window—if our man had been going into the hotel across the street—a man with something wrong with his legs—a man she knew, and a man with something against her husband—
Wait!
She went to see Pam this morning. Wanted to find out whether she'd said anything. Perhaps she had. Perhaps Pam remembered. Perhaps—”

“The hell with perhaps,” Jerry said. “All right. Grant them all. She's gone up there. Into—into what, Bill? I'm not going to sit around and—wait while you think. I'm—”

“For God's sake,” Bill said. “Get hold of yourself, Jerry. Nobody's going to sit around. I'll pick you up and we'll go have a look-see.”

“And meanwhile?”

“Meanwhile,” Bill said, “the State cops are keeping an eye on things. Simmer down, my friend.”

Bill put the telephone back in its cradle and sat for a moment looking at it. Then he got up and walked to the door of his office and opened it and looked into the squad room. Mullins was still there.

“Sergeant,” Bill Weigand said, “there's something I wish you'd do. Shouldn't take you too long. I'm going up to the Payne house with Jerry North. So if you'll—”

State Trooper Cutler had backed his car off the road onto what had once been a cowtrack, providing footing between fenced field and road. It had been years since cows had trod it, but it was still firm, and a place to make a car inconspicuous. From the car, Cutler could see the Payne house on a hill opposite. It was lighted up. Pretty house. Cutler wouldn't want to spend a winter there. Not with all that glass. But probably the Paynes hadn't needed to. Probably they'd gone to Florida or somewhere in the winter. Somewhere warm. His radio squawked. It said, “Car Twelve. Calling Car Twelve.”

Cutler picked the receiver up, switched over, said, “Car Twelve.”

“Where are you?”

“Stake-out on Payne house. Nothing happening and—”

“Three-car smashup on Seven above Branchville. Sounds like a bad one, Owney. Get going, huh?”

Trooper Owen Cutler said, “Will do.” And did.

13

The reflectors in a sign picked up the car lights, spelled out a name: “Payne.” Pam turned the car off the narrow blacktop, sharply up a graveled drive. The drive stretched more than two hundred yards ahead; it climbed and curved gently. The long low house was a long band of light on top the ridge. It seemed to float there.

Pam drove fast on the drive, urging the car. For the last few miles a sense of urgency had held her. Faith Constable, sitting beside Pam, had leaned forward, as if to speed the car. In the back seat, a dark shadow among shadows, Gladys Mason had sat quietly. Since they had stopped for directions at the drugstore, the mother of the boy they were trying to find had seemed to hide inside herself.

They had taken the Norths' car because it was the only one—unless, as Faith had uncertainly suggested, they wanted to hire a Carey car, with a man to drive it. There had been no point in that, Pam had said. “Cumbersome,” she said. “What would we do with him?” They had had no difficulty—except the difficulties of darkness, toward the end of narrow, winding roads—in reaching Ridgefield. That far Pam—because Jerry had an author living in Redding and they had been to her house—knew her way. But when they reached a fountain on Route 35—a fountain sheathed, for the winter—what they next did was anybody's guess. Pam turned left, driving toward lights up Ridgefield's Main Street.

It was almost seven o'clock by then and most of Main Street appeared to have gone to bed. In the unassertive stores on Main Street, a street on which once had thudded the heavy feet of British soldiers, marching down from the burning of Danbury, night lights burned dimly. Except for a news store, except for a drugstore. Pam tried the drugstore.

The soda clerk knew where the Paynes lived. “Awful thing about poor Mr. Payne.” Pam was headed the wrong way. Turn—all right to U-turn at the traffic light, in a lane between parked cars—and drive two blocks or so to Branchville Road. Had a number—Route 102. Mile or so on it and, to the right, Nod Road. No number. Couple of miles more on Nod Road, beyond Whipstick Road, and the Payne house was a couple of hundred yards back, on the left—about three miles altogether. “You can't miss it,” the soda clerk said, with confidence. Pam was less certain; even after she had got it repeated, committed to memory, she was not certain. Whipstick Road probably would throw her off; it sounded like a road which might.

“Can't miss it,” the soda clerk repeated, firmly. “Like I told the other two.”

Pam had turned to go back to the car. She stopped. She said, “The other two?”

“Like you, miss,” the soda clerk said. “She needs people to stand by time like this. Tough to be out there all alone. At a time like this.”

“Yes,” Pam said. “Other friends of hers, of course. Men? Or women?”

Both the others who had asked had been men. The most recent, about half an hour ago. Tall guy. Dark. Had a car outside. “Course, I don't know. There could have been a lady in the car.” He had, with proper impartiality, told him what he had told Pam, how to get to Nod Road. The man had gone out to the car and driven off.

The other had been earlier. Also a tall guy—tall and thin; younger, he thought, than the second enquirer. He had come in about two, or a little after. “Right after the bus stopped. Bus from New York.” He might have come on the bus. On the other hand, he'd probably had a car. Most people had cars, didn't they? Hard to find a place to park at that earlier hour. Shoppers.

“Did you happen to notice,” Pam said, “whether either of them limped?”

The soda clerk put his head back and closed his eyes, in the attitude of one deep in remembrance. He opened his eyes and adjusted his head and said, “Can't remember that either of them did. But I didn't pay much attention. Pretty busy the first time and a lot of the kids at the counter the second. Neither of them was what I'd call crippled, if you know what I mean. But whether they limped—” He shrugged to end the sentence.

Either, but most probably the first, might have been Robert Mason, seeking to close a dangerous mouth. Pam had told the two women in the car and Mrs. Mason had drawn a slow, shuddering breath and gone back into herself. “Hours ago,” Faith Constable said. “He may—” She did not finish.

“We came as fast as we could,” Pam said. “As soon as we—as we had reason.”

She swung the car from the curb, U-turned at the light. She drove faster than she should on a village street; on Branchville Road faster still, although Branchville Road is curving, not wide. She almost missed Nod Road and had to back to turn into it. It had, hurrying on a still narrower road, lights boring into darkness under arching trees, seemed farther than the man had said. But, finally, the car lights picked up the sign. Gravel spurted under rear wheels as Pam sent the car up the drive. Near the house, the drive went through a gap in a thick hedge. That was why, from below, the house had seemed to float. It floated above the hedge.

There was no other car on the drive, which looped in front of the long house—a house which, as they stopped in front of it, seemed all glass. A porch roof, cantilevered over a terrace, seemed to be tipping a hat to them.

Pam was first out of the car, but had to go around it. By the time she reached the terrace, Faith Constable was holding the rear door open. Mrs. Mason got out of the car slowly, as if she dreaded to leave the car—the safe shadows of the car.

They were only halfway across the wide terrace when the door onto it opened. Lauren Payne stood with the light behind her, her coppery hair shining in the light. A black dress hugged her slender body. She stood so for a moment, light-outlined, and then said, in her low, husky voice, “Why—hello.”

It had seemed, when she opened the door, that she expected them; it had been almost as if they were invited guests, a little behind their time. But when she spoke, she spoke with surprise. But then, a little vaguely, she said, “Why, how nice. Faith dear. Mrs. North.” She looked at Gladys Mason, her smile one of uncertainty.

“You're all right?” Pam said, and Lauren looked at her for a second, as if puzzled, and then said, “All right?”

It had been, Pam thought, a strange thing to ask a woman violently widowed only twenty-four hours before.

“Why yes,” Lauren said, “I'm all right, I guess.”

She drew back from the door and said, “Come in.”

They went in.

“This is Gladys Mason, dear,” Faith said. “She's—” She hesitated.

“I was Tony's second wife,” Gladys said, and her voice was dull. “A long time ago.”

She looked around the room, as if her eyes sought something.

It was a long room, two sides of glass. There was a big fireplace in one wall, and a fire laid in it, but not lighted. There was no place in the room for a man to hide, or for a frightened, angry boy to hide.

“Do come and sit down,” Lauren said, and led them down the room to chairs near the fireplace. Then she shivered a little, and said, “Wait,” opened a narrow door in the wall near the fireplace and took out a foot-long, narrow box. She got a very long wooden match from the box and struck it and leaned down and touched the little flame to paper under wood. A larger flame leaped up. “Do sit down,” she said, again, and they sat down. But after a moment, Lauren stood up again and walked to the glass which faced the terrace and looked through it. She came back. “I thought I saw somebody coming,” she said.

A car's lights, Pam thought, would be brightly visible as a car came up the drive, at least until the hedge intervened. The lights would hardly be something one “thought” one saw.

“We shouldn't just have—barged in this way,” Pam said. “Probably you're expecting—”

“Nobody,” Lauren said, quickly, in the voice too deep for so slight a woman. “It was good of you to come. I must get you something. I'm sorry—I'm not thinking very clearly, I'm afraid. I'll—”

She started to move away, apparently to get them something.

“Dear,” Faith Constable said, “we came because—”

But Gladys Mason interrupted her. The woman in dull clothes spoke in a dull voice.

“Mrs. Payne” she said, “did you see my boy? Was that what you meant?”

Lauren turned back. She said, “See your boy? What do you mean, Mrs.—” she hesitated over the name, came up with it. “Your boy?”

“Robert,” Gladys Mason said. “He—he was a bus at the hotel. A tall, thin boy. Dark. Is he the one you meant?”

“I'm afraid—” Lauren said, and came back to her chair by the fire. “Should I know what you're talking about, Mrs. Mason?”

“The boy,” Gladys said, and there was no change in her voice—she spoke methodically, with almost no inflection. “You don't remember?”

“We weren't at the hotel long,” Lauren said. “You mean the Dumont? We didn't eat there. Tony said the food was terrible. He was like that about—things.”

“Not then,” Gladys said, and now there was a little impatience in her voice. “That's not what I'm talking about. Mrs. Payne, don't you remember me?”