Murder Has Its Points (21 page)

“I know,” Bill said. “I suppose because she wanted a head start, don't you? Give us something to go on, but not too much. All right—why? She's yours, after all.”

“How the hell would I—” Jerry said, more or less automatically, and stopped. “I suppose,” he said, “a particularly lame dog, don't you? Or, one she thinks may be. She's always on your side, you know. Basically.”

“Oh,” Bill said, “of course. And often right.”

“Only, she sticks her neck out.”

“She sure as hell does,” Bill said, and added, “Damn.”

The last word saluted, angrily, the start of fog. Fog in the country is likely, is on windless nights almost inevitable, in late autumn, particularly where reservoirs abound. They were almost at the end of the parkway when there was the first puff of fog; they were through it with just time to notice it. But within minutes there was a patch—a patch, this time, not a puff. Bill checked speed slightly before they were through it, and the lights ahead showed clear again.

From the end of the Saw Mill on it was a most irritating fog—for seconds so dense that it could only be crept through and approaching cars, creeping too, were within feet before their headlights showed; then vanishing suddenly for several hundred yards, so that dipped headlights could be raised again and speed a little increased. Very exasperating, intolerably slow. There was nothing to do about it. They could only sit and hate it.

It was well after seven when, finally, they turned off Ridgefield's Main Street, went down and then up to the State Police barracks on a ridge.

“Nothing we've heard of,” the desk sergeant said. “All tucked in for the night, she seemed to be, last time we looked. Listen, Captain, you don't think she—”

“No,” Bill said. “That is, I've no reason to think so. You've kept an eye on the place?”

“Well,” the sergeant said, and hesitated. “Well—turned out we couldn't. Not the way we planned. Had to pull the man off. Helluva smashup over on Seven. Foggy as hell down there—it's in a valley most of the time—and some bastard tried to pass at sixty and—well, we had to cover. But—”

“Tell me how to get to the house,” Bill said. “And—somebody'd better come along. You've got somebody?”

“Well—wait a minute.” He got up from the desk and went into a rear room. He came back with a lieutenant. “We're short,” the lieutenant said. “We're always short. You really need somebody?”

“I'm out of jurisdiction,” Bill said. “Right—I hope I'll need somebody who isn't.”

“Trail along, Jonesy,” the lieutenant said. “Or—you want him to show the way?”

“Sergeant Jones had better show the way,” Bill said.

The lights came up the drive slowly; there was a kind of uncertainty in the movement, as if the car groped its way. The fog isn't that heavy, Pam thought, and in the same instant knew the thought was absurd. Even a light night fog—a veil of fog—is a blanket from within a moving car; a soft white blanket which throws treacherous light back into baffled eyes.

“Who ever can
this
be?” Lauren asked—asked anybody—and got up from her chair by the fire and walked down the room toward the door. She looked frail walking away from them, very slender indeed in the close-fitting black dress. “The poor darling,” Faith Constable said. “However she felt about Tony—” She left that unfinished.

The car came so slowly that it was still a little way down the drive, and beyond the hemlock hedge, when Lauren opened the door, and at the same time turned on the terrace light. She stepped out onto the terrace and stepped from the sight of those—of Pam and Faith and Gladys Mason—who still sat by the fire. The car groped its way into the turnaround and car lights went off. The car moved on for a few more feet and then it, too, was out of sight.

It was Pam who moved, to one side and toward the window, so that through it the car would again be in sight. But she had only started to move when there was the sharp, deadly crack of a rifle. In the same instant there was a scream, cut off.

Pam ran toward the door and was conscious, although she did not look back, that one of the others ran after her. It took her only seconds to reach the open door.

Lauren lay a little way outside the door, crumpled on the flags.

One door of the car was open. Beside the car, just beyond the full reach of the terrace light, two dark figures were locked together, and swayed together.

They were, Pam thought, struggling for something held between them.

She knelt beside Lauren, who moaned, and Pam said, “Lauren.
Mrs Payne!
” Only the low, wordless sound of moaning answered her.

Somebody was on the other side of Lauren, bent down over her. Gladys Mason.

“Help me carry her,” Gladys said, and squatted, put her arms gently under the slender woman. “On your side,” she said, and Pam put her hands under Lauren's body. “Now,” Gladys said, and they lifted, and Pam thought, she's doing almost all of it. But should we have left her there until—?

Faith was standing in the door, looking at them, looking beyond them to the car.

There was sound from there now—the sound of feet scuffling on gravel. Pam did not look back, nor did Gladys. Between them, slowly, carefully, they carried Lauren into the room, down it a little way to a wide sofa. She kept on moaning.

Gladys bent over her.

“The shoulder, I think,” she said. “She's bleeding a good deal. We'll have to try to stop it.” Then she said, “Mrs. Payne? Can you hear me?”

She was not answered.

It was still slow going, but the police car they followed knew its way, and Weigand tail-gated. After a little less than a mile, the right-hand direction light on the police car began to blink. Bill slowed and followed onto a narrower, blacktop road. It was just as he finished the turn that he and Jerry heard, ahead of them, seemingly a little to the left, the sharp crack of a shot.

“God!” Jerry said. “Hurry.”

“It could be a hunter,” Weigand said. “Somebody out after—”

“Damn it, hurry!”

It was as if the car ahead heard him. The car jumped away from them; Bill's Buick jumped after it, and Bill hoped—hoped anxiously—that Jones knew the road as well as he seemed to think he knew it, and that they would have the road to themselves.

It was a short ride, too fast in fog. They were on the right shoulder once; again they were much too far to the left. But then the tail signal of the police car blinked again, this time on the left, and the car slowed abruptly, and began to turn.

For an instant, Jerry, on the right, saw—was almost certain he saw—the outlines of a car parked on the shoulder of the narrow road, a few yards beyond the turning point. Then, as Bill turned behind the police car up the drive, the parked shadow vanished.

Jerry clutched for something, anything, as the Buick checked. He caught himself against the dashboard padding.

The police car had stopped, at the same time pulling sharply to the right.

In its lights, and now in theirs, they could see a tall man running down the drive toward them. He seemed to run uncertainly and, after the lights caught him, to be running only because he had run before, now could not quickly stop himself. Then he began to run to the left, toward lawn and bushes; obviously toward concealment.

Bill wrenched at the door on his side and it began to open. But then Bill stopped its opening.

Sergeant Jones was already out of the police car; was running toward the tall uncertain man and, as he ran, tugging at the gun on his hip.

“I hope to God he doesn't—” Bill said, but by then the man who had been running toward them stopped running, turned back onto the drive, walked slowly. After a moment, he put his hands up. He said, “Don't shoot,” and his voice sounded very young, sounded frightened.

Jonesy took hold of him. He seemed to be shaking him.

There was room to pull up alongside the police car, and Bill moved the Buick there. The lights of both cars were on the State Police sergeant and the tall, thin man he held.

“I didn't do anything,” the held man said. “I—it wasn't me. I just—”

“Hold it,” Jones said, his voice hard, rough. He turned and looked toward the other car. “Says he didn't do anything,” Jones said, his harsh voice derisive.

Bill guessed.

“You're Mason?” he said. “Robert Mason?”

“I didn't do anything,” the tall man—the tall youth—said, and his voice shook. “Suppose I'm Robert Mason? I didn't—”

“Bring him along,” Bill said, and the Buick leaped at the slope of the drive, spitting gravel behind it. At the far end of the drive the house was long, glowed with light.

A man was on hands and knees on the gravel of the turnaround, near one of two cars standing in it. He seemed to be trying to get up. He shook his head from side to side.

As Bill and Jerry North reached him, bent to help him up, they saw that there was a gash on the side of his head. As they lifted him, blood splattered from the wound.

When they had got him to his feet, he slumped between them. They turned him so that light fell on his face.

“Self,” Bill said. “What the hell's he—”

He did not finish.

They had to carry James Self across the terrace, through the open door.

A man was kneeling beside someone stretched on a sofa; he was rubbing a hand he held; he was saying, “Lauren. Lauren!” But then, as he heard them enter, he turned, and almost instantly was on his feet and began to come toward them.

“The murdering bastard!”
he said. “I'll kill the—”

Jerry suddenly found that he was supporting the entire weight of James Self. He began to move Self toward the nearest chair.

Bill went to meet the advancing man.

“Take it easy, Smythe,” Bill said. “Somebody's done enough for now.”

Blaine Smythe stopped. He said, “Where the hell've you been? He's killed—”

He threw his hands out, hopelessly. He turned back toward the sofa.

But now there was a woman kneeling there, tearing sheets, making a pad of sheets, pressing the pad down on the body of Lauren Payne. Lauren's face was startlingly white; lipstick on her lips was a kind of mockery. A black dress had been torn down from the left side of her body, and it was there the sheet pad was being pressed.

Jerry put Self down in a chair, and Self slumped in it. But then he opened his eyes and looked at Jerry and said, in a mumble, “Pushed it at me. Tried to make me—” Then he closed his eyes again, and appeared, once more, to lose consciousness.

Jerry turned away from the chair. As he turned his foot hit something, and what it hit skittered a few feet on tile flooring. What he had kicked, and kicked from a chair's shadow into light, was a rifle.

“Tell her to hurry,” the kneeling woman said to—people were beginning to become identifiable—Faith Constable. “There's still a good deal of blood.”

“She's hurrying as fast as she can,” Faith said, and then, from some distance, Jerry heard Pam say, “It's an emergency, operator. I don't know any numbers. A doctor—an ambulance—listen—I'm at the Payne house—on Nod Road—how do I know? Wilton. Ridgefield. How do I know? Listen—
a woman's dying
. Do you hear me? We've got to have help. I—”

Jerry saw her, then. She was at the far end of the long room, in a corner of it. She was standing by a table and her voice was high. There was anger in her voice. “If you'll only listen,” Pam said, and there was desperation in her voice.

Jerry started down the room toward her.

Then a car door slammed outside and Jones's harsh voice scraped into the room. “Get along in there, you,” Jones said. Then Robert Mason was propelled into the room, Sergeant Jones behind him.

Jerry was nearest. Bill had gone to the sofa, was bending down over Lauren, saying something to the woman who still tried to stop the flow of blood from Lauren's slender body. Bill was saying something to the woman, who looked up at him, shook her head.

“Sergeant,” Jerry said, and moved toward Jones. “I'll take this one. Get on the telephone in your car. We need an ambulance—a doctor.” He pointed toward Lauren, the others by the sofa.

Jones shoved the tall youth into Jerry North's hands. Jones ran across the terrace and the drive to the police car.

Bill had replaced the sturdy woman who had been giving what first aid she could. He was leaning close to Lauren, had lifted the sheet padding. He stood up, and the woman replaced him.

“It seems to be in the shoulder,” Bill said. “At a guess, nothing vital hit. If we can stop the—”

“She's dying,”
Blaine Smythe said, and spoke loudly—almost shouted the words. “The bastard's killed her. The way he killed Tony.” He was standing, on the far side of the sofa. At first, he did not seem to speak directly to anyone. But then he turned to Bill Weigand. “For God's sake,” Blaine Smythe said. “
I saw him, Captain!
This time I saw him.”

Bill looked at Blaine Smythe for a moment, and then shook his head.

“No,” he said, “I don't think Mrs. Payne is dying, Mr. Smythe. I'm not even sure she's badly hurt. Shock. And some loss of blood. I think Mrs. Mason's checked that—Mrs. Mason and the others, of course.”

“You're not a doctor,” Smythe said, his voice bitter.

“Right,” Bill Weigand said, “I'm not a doctor. Some experience with gunshot wounds but, as you say, not a doctor. A policeman, Mr. Smythe. I'll—”

He stopped and looked toward the door, as Sergeant Jones came through it.

“On their way,” he said, and looked around the room. “What the hell,” Sergeant Jones said, “goes on here?”

15

We look, Pamela North thought, like the cast—the rather large cast—of a play, assembled for a climactic scene. It ought to be a comedy; this large and uncluttered, this glass-walled room—this almost drawing room—is the setting for comedy. We should all be quick and witty, in an early Noel Cowardish fashion, and when the curtain comes down it should come down on a quip. Only, some of us are a little bunged up for comedy. She looked around the room, counting. Ten including Jerry and me, but we're really in the audience. This isn't Bill's way at all, Pam thought, but I don't see how, this time, he can get out of it.