Murder Has Its Points (2 page)

She was animated, suddenly. She seemed, to Pam North, to pull animation about her. A moment before—as Pam moved quickly toward the empty seat, only half conscious of its other occupant—Lauren had looked weary, drained. Pam remembered that now—now that animation became a cloak, shiny as a cellophane wrapper. One saw something; afterward assessed the seen. Lauren Payne had looked drained.

“A lovely party,” Lauren said again, and made her face sparkle with the loveliness of it all.

“I'm glad,” Pam said, remembering she was, by association, hostess. “A little—noisy.”

Lauren Payne did not deny that it was a little noisy. She said, “Who are they all? I mean—”

“I know,” Pam said. “I often wonder. Bookstore people. Newspaper people and there's always a hope of reviewers, but most of them don't. And gossip columnists and people who write columns about books. And people who work for reprint houses and this time, of course, people connected with the play.” Pam North searched her mind briefly. “And writers,” she said.

As she spoke she had looked around the crowded room, seeking guidance. Now she looked back at Lauren Payne.

And the animation had been wiped away. Pam was not certain that attention had not been wiped away with it. Lauren turned toward her again, and again Pam was conscious of an abruptness in the movement of Lauren Payne's body—a kind of jumpiness. It was as if—as if, somewhere, somebody had said, loudly, “Boo!”

“So good for Anthony,” Lauren said, and pulled animation once more about her. “So—so stimulating. I—”

She stopped speaking and looked up at a man—a very tall and handsome man, dark-haired, mobile of face—who had suddenly appeared and stood in front of them and looked down. Looked down, very specifically, at Lauren Payne; looked at her as if he were, in some fashion, measuring her; in some fashion questioning her.

“Fine,” she said. “Perfectly fine, Blaine.” She smiled up at him—smiled a smile of animation.

He looked at her with continued seriousness, still in appraisal. He was, Pam thought, looking at her as a doctor might at a patient, seeking in face and body, listening for in voice, hints for diagnosis. I might as well not be here, Pam thought. Here, I intrude. I might much better not be here.

“You know Mrs. North, of course?” Lauren said.

The handsome dark man—he must be, Pam thought, about Lauren's age; certainly far younger than Anthony Payne—looked at Pam as if, for the first time, he realized two women were sitting on the sofa. For a second the intenseness of his scrutiny did not alter. Then he smiled. Smiles change all faces; his was more changed than most. He said, “Mrs. North,” and in a tone of pleasure. One could not fault the tone. One had, of course, no reason to believe in it. He did go to the trouble. There was that.

“Blaine Smythe,” Lauren said. “With ‘y' and ‘e.'”

“But Smith for all that,” Smythe said. “The fault of ancestors.”

There was a little of England in his speech. It was not emphasized.

“Very jolly party,” he said. “Quite a thing for Tony.”

“I was just telling Mrs. North—” Lauren said, and Pam, seeing a chance, stood up.

“And I,” she said, “had better circulate in it. So nice, Mr. Smythe. Mrs. Payne.”

This time she could exit, although this time with no line left behind. She looked back, before the crowd surrounded her. Blaine Smythe had sat down beside Lauren. He was leaning toward her. He seemed to be talking very quickly. Pam had a feeling that he was talking firmly. Me and my feelings, Pam thought, and continued her search for Jerry.

She sighted him at some distance and, for a time, it was as if she had sighted a mirage. Progress toward him was difficult; one inched along an obstacle course. Item: A food columnist who was compiling a cookbook which Jerry hoped to publish. Cookbooks never fail. Would Pam tell Jerry what a wonderful party it had been, in spite of the (so understandable) dryness of the canapés? Item: Had Pam met Faith Constable, of whom, of course, she knew, as didn't everybody? Faith Constable—of whom Pam most certainly knew, as who did not?—was a quick, somehow shimmering, woman in (it had to be, but challenged belief) her middle fifties. She, further, had a starring—anyway, co-starring—role in the forthcoming production of Lars Simon's adaptation of
Uprising
. She was also, although now Mrs. Constable, the first wife of Anthony Payne.

Faith was, admittedly, fun. The malicious often are. Did Pam know that Gardner Willings was there? With, Faith would suppose, blood in his eye. The eye, of course, dear Tony had blackened. “Tony's dear, dirty little mind,” Faith said, fondly. Did Pam darling know—

Jerry wasn't where he had been. He had been talking to a man who, from that distance, appeared to be Livingston Birdwood (Productions) who was half-giver of the party. He and Jerry, Pam suspected, might be now, belatedly, asking each other why the hell? Now Birdwood—if it was Birdwood—was moving somberly toward the bar, and Jerry was not—

Yes, there he was. Talking to Tom Hathaway. Not thirty people, not half a dozen obstacles, away. He was even within smiling distance; he looked between people, over people, saw Pam and smiled at her. The smile was somewhat abstracted, but there. While he smiled across at Pam, he listened to. Tom Hathaway, and now and again nodded his head. Hathaway seemed to be talking earnestly. Pamela North pointed herself and started. And, from a knot of people, a hand reached out—like the tentacle of a mildly absent-minded octopus—and took her arm. She looked. She said, “Hello, Bertie. I'm trying—”

Albert Watson was art director of North Books, Inc. He was white-haired and sixty, and entirely affable. He said, “Man here says he hasn't met you. Told him he should. Eh?”

“Of—” Pam said.

“Famous playwight,” Watson said. It occurred to Pam that Bertie had had several. Everybody but me's had several, Pam thought. “Present Mr. Simon,” Bertie said. “Lars Simon. Famous playwright.”

Pam said, “How d'ye do, Mr. Simon. I—”

“Making the play out of Tony Payne's book,” Bertie said. “Having his troubles, he says.”

“Oh?”

Lars Simon was a slight, quick man. He had receding black hair. He put his right hand to his forehead and pushed the heel of the hand back hard against his head. Probably, Pam thought, he'd rubbed the hair off.

“God,” Lars Simon said, simply. “You know Payne, Mrs. North?”

“Not well,” Pam said.

Lars Simon now put both hands to his head and pushed. A wonder, Pam thought, he hadn't rubbed it all off.

“Clutching at straws,” Simon said. “No influence with him then? Your husband?”

“None,” Pam said. “I doubt whether Jerry—why, Mr. Simon?”

“Too long,” Simon said, and looked at Pam with what appeared to be desperation in his dark eyes. “Take me all night. If you—say—told Payne to drop dead it wouldn't do any good?”

“No.”

“To take a trip around the world?”

He smiled, now. The smile was somewhat bitter, but it was a smile of sorts. Pam smiled back, assuming banter somehow intended. She shook her head.

“Atlantic City? For”—he looked momentarily at the ceiling and seemed to count on his fingers—“four weeks and three days? Until we open?”

Pam shook her head again. She smiled again. She thought, Jerry will get away again.

Lars Simon sighed heavily. It was a sigh planned for notice.

“Mrs. North,” Lars Simon said. “Promise me something. Never sign a collaboration agreement with a novelist. Not one that lets him sit in. Not one that gives him anything to say about—anything. Anything at all. Promise?”

“Absolutely,” Pam said. “Faithfully.”

“You have nice hair,” Simon said. “Look at mine. Novelists. You do promise?”

“Never sign a collaboration agreement with a novelist,” Pam said. “Cross my heart.”

Presumably, Lars Simon also had had a few. Pam again felt herself deprived. Of course with people just met it is often hard to tell. This is, in Pam's not too limited experience, especially true with writers.

“My good deed for the day,” Lars Simon said. “When you see your husband next, Mrs. North, tell him that I had a wonderful time at his wonderful party. If you see Mr. Payne—” He paused; he spread hands in a gesture of hopelessness. He said, “No. You're too little. And the wrong sex. And—” He shrugged. Unexpectedly, he thrust his hand forward and Pam took it. His was a wiry hand, alive in her own. He said, “Be of good cheer,” and, abruptly, released her hand, turned, and went. Pam looked after him. She said, “Well.”

“Interesting young man,” Bertie Watson said. “Doesn't care too much for our Mr. Payne, apparently. Gets in his hair, would you say?”

“Precisely,” Pam said. “Precisely what I'd say, Bertie.” There were three other people standing in the small circle of which Lars Simon had, rather vividly, been a center. Pam had never seen any of them before, so far as she could recall. Neither, apparently, had Bertie Watson. Spectators, evidently. People who just happened to be there. Pam smiled at them, told Bertie that she would be seeing him, went in the direction opposite that taken by Lars Simon.

Jerry had disappeared again. Selfishly at the bar? While she—

No. In a corner. With the afternoon's lion. Also, she had begun to think, to several the afternoon's pain. Pam shuddered at her own pun and tried open-field running, although necessarily at a walk, toward her husband and the singularly maneless lion.

Anthony Payne was a big man and a solid one. He had a roseate face and a jutting chin. He was also, and completely, bald. For some reason Pam had not been able to pin down, this baldness gave him a formidable appearance. He looked, Pam had told Jerry after her first meeting with his valuable author, rather like a frontiersman who had lost a round to an Indian.

He was now jutting his chin at Jerry, who listened, smiled faintly, nodded his head from time to time. Jerry looked past him, saw Pam, and his expression told her to come right along. She tried to. She said, “Sorry”—an afternoon for light sorrow—and “excuse me” and “if you don't mind, please” and advanced twenty feet and the channel closed.

What closed it was the thin back of the busboy in the white coat—the one for whom, earlier, Pam had felt sympathy until she thought of Jerry's onetime washing of dishes.

The boy—the extraordinarily thin boy—was standing rigidly, his gaze fixed on—Well, from the angle, on Gerald North, publisher, and Anthony Payne, author—author who had, as Pam had said of him, also after first meeting, taken Africa under his wing.

Pam cleared her throat, and the boy stood rigid, did not move. She said, “Please?” and said it gently. Said it, it became evident, too gently, since there was no response. She touched a thin arm under a white coat and the boy turned and, for an instant, glared down at her. Then the glare faded and he said, “Sorry, miss,” and moved aside, holding a tray with two highball glasses on it.

Pam went through. The glare bothered. A—an expression of hate? But not for her. That was obvious. A—a leftover glare, lingering for an instant on a young face? He could hardly have been looking so at Jerry. He'd better not have been. If the thin young man thought he could—

Jerry reached for her arm and held it gently and said, “Hi. Having fun?”

“Hi,” Pam said. “Hi, Mr. Payne. Jerry, did you know that Mr. Will—”

“Yes,” Jerry said.

“Did you?”

“No. I didn't. I've just been telling Tony—”

“Gardner Willings,” Payne said, “thinks he's God Almighty.”

Payne had a high-pitched voice. It did not go with the chin.

“And,” Payne said, “if he thinks, if anybody thinks, I won't say what I want to say about the overrated son of—” He left it there, presumably out of deference to Pam's sex. A curious and unexpected reticence, Pam thought. “We were talking about that review of mine,” Payne said. “Hear Willings is telling people he's going to make me eat it. Like to see him—”

“Take it easy, Tony,” Jerry said. “He's still at the bar, lapping. As for the review—nobody's arguing you shouldn't say what you want to say. Only—”

Pam had read the review. She had thought of it when she saw Gardner Willings so largely enter. It was why she had thought that, if Jerry didn't already know that Willings had arrived, invited or—more probably, now confirmedly—uninvited, Jerry had better be told.

The review, written by Payne, had appeared two Sundays before in the book review section of the
Globe-Express
. It had been of Willings's new book—
Ancient of Days
, about the slow (and to Pam not too interesting) death of an African tribal leader. And the review must have—Jerry had told her that the talk was it rather prodigiously had—given pause to the editors of the book review section.

The editors, like those of many review sections, thought it well to have novelists review the books of other, and if possible similar, novelists. This resulted, for the most part, in affable reviews, soothing alike to the reviewed, their publishers and potential readers. It proved novelists without jealousy of, or malice toward, their like. Pamela North summed it up perhaps more succinctly. The rule, she had once told Jerry, was simple: Never bite the hand that might bite back.

In his lengthy discussion of
Ancient of Days
, by Gardner Willings ($4.95), Anthony Payne had, to put it gently, ignored this rule. He had begun softly enough, using the play-it-safe, or weasel, “perhaps.” “In view of this new novel by the widely acclaimed Mr. Willings, it is perhaps time to do some admittedly agonizing reappraisal,” Payne had begun. “It is not a pleasant task, but—”

Payne had gone on for some hundreds of words, and there had been nothing in any of them to indicate that he found his task unpleasant. He had mentioned the “now stale obviousness of the once acclaimed style.” He had referred to Willings as a “self-elected authority on the dark continent.” He had also called Willings “the synthetic he-man of American letters.”