Murder Has Its Points (22 page)

Ten, including them. Lauren Payne, propped by pillows on a sofa; pale still, but not so strangely pale; wearing a house robe of a coppery tone a little deeper than her shining hair. And Blaine Smythe, sitting in a chair by the sofa, looking anxiously at Lauren, giving the impression of hovering over her.

Blaine had been the one who, most emphatically, most anxiously, had protested Lauren's decision. It had been a simple decision, simply phrased. “I want to stay. I'm going to stay.” After a time the doctor had merely shrugged; had said, “All right, Mrs. Payne. I can't make you be sensible.”

But the doctor, who had arrived surprisingly soon after Sergeant Jones had telephoned for help, had seemed more annoyed than concerned. He had examined Lauren's shoulder and said, “Nice clean wound, anyway,” and lifted her gently and looked at the back of her shoulder and said, “Ummm, didn't come out too bad. Move your arm a little, Mrs. Payne. Hurt too much? So.” He had examined further. “You'll be all right,” he said. “Better take you in to Norwalk, though. Just to be on the safe side.”

“No,” Lauren said then, “I want to stay. Until—I'm going to stay.”

The doctor would not advise it, but—skip Norwalk hospital. At least until morning. He'd know more in the morning. He bandaged as he talked. Rest—go to bed. He'd give her something to help her sleep. If there was somebody who could stay with her? “You,” he said, and looked at Gladys Mason. “You seem competent enough. At least, you don't seem to have done all the wrong things, and lost your head. Eh?”

“Of course,” Gladys Mason said. Her voice was dull again, not quick as it had been when she had, rather unexpectedly, taken charge.

“No,” Lauren said. Her low voice had gained some strength. “Not until—until it's settled. If you'll help—”

Gladys had helped—had supported her out of the room and, after a time, back into the room, now wearing the coppery housecoat.

Blaine had used the time of their absence to protest—to the physician, to Weigand, to Faith Constable. Lauren couldn't be allowed to do this. She was worse hurt than she thought. It was criminal to let her do this, brutal to let her do this. He had, finally, succeeded in annoying the physician.

“You talk too much,” the physician said, and there was a growl in his voice. “If she had to go to the hospital, I'd take her to the hospital. If she had to go to bed and have a nurse, I'd see she went to bed and had a nurse. Actually, it's a superficial wound. A good deal of bleeding, but people can spare a bit of blood.”

“She was unconscious,” Blaine Smythe said. “You talk as if it was only a scratch.”

“Shock,” the doctor said. “Some get it and some don't. You're going to have a black eye in a few hours. You know that? Now, let's look at this one.”

“This one” was James Self, who was conscious by then and had started to get up out of the chair and subsided back into it. Since then he had merely sat, his eyes half closed, his body slumped. When the doctor started to examine the gash on the side of his head, Self said, “Leave it alone, for God's sake.” The doctor had not left it alone.

Certainly too much bunging up for drawing-room comedy, Pam thought. And, a uniformed State Police sergeant sitting in a straight chair near the door, with a rifle across his knees. Not a comedy character at all. She shivered slightly. Poor Robert Mason, silent, in a cheap suit which gaped from the back of his neck, slumped forward in his chair, hands—hands somehow too large for the rest of him—dangling between his knees. The poor, lost boy. But—safe boy now. Everybody safe but a man named James Self; the rather abrupt, not too pleasant, man named Self. So, now it was really simple. All over but the arresting.

Only, why then didn't Bill merely arrest Self, or have the trooper arrest him, and let them all go home?

A silly damn fool way to go about it, Bill Weigand thought, half sitting on a long table, facing all of them. Theatrical and, heaven knew, cluttered. And the sort of situation in which, almost inevitably, everybody starts talking at once, once anybody starts at all. So far, nobody had, except James Self. James Self's remark had been brief, and final, and uttered a little groggily.

“You're a goddamn liar,” Self had said, to Blaine Smythe, after Smythe had said, “I saw him, Captain. This time I saw him.”

Everybody had waited for Self to continue. Self had not continued.

Start somewhere, Bill told himself, and lighted a cigarette. Find out, as Sergeant Jones had suggested, what the hell went on here—what had caused this assemblage, which amounted almost to a convention, in the middle of nowhere; what had so muddled what he had begun to think an essentially simple thing, to be disclosed by a couple of reasonably simple questions.

“So,” Bill Weigand said, “I take it, Mr. Self, you deny shooting Mrs. Payne? And, of course, her husband?”

“You can take it,” Self said. “I've nothing against Mrs. Payne. Never had. Just a woman out of luck.” He paused and looked across some feet at Lauren Payne, who had closed her eyes. “Far's I know, anyway,” Self said. “As for Payne, he was an all-American rat. I'm not, however, a rat-catcher.” He fingered the bandage on his head. “He's got living teammates, apparently,” Self added, and looked at Blaine Smythe. Smythe continued to look, anxiously, at Lauren Payne. He did not look at Self.

“Right,” Bill said. “You didn't shoot Mrs. Payne. Didn't kill Mr. Payne. What brought you here?”

“Ask Mrs. Payne,” Self said.

Bill turned toward Lauren Payne, and she opened her eyes.

“I don't know,” she said. “I don't know what he means.”

Her deep voice was very low; it was clear, but it seemed that she spoke with an effort. Which was, certainly, reasonable enough.

Self looked at her steadily for some seconds. Then he started to get up from the chair, pushing with his hands on the arms. Suddenly, he gave it up and slumped back again into the chair.

“Have it your own way,” he said, and his voice was weary as the woman's. “For now.”

Then he, too, closed his eyes. Bill started toward him, and Self opened his eyes. “I'm all right,” he said. “Bloody but unbowed. Let them get it out of their systems, why don't you?” He closed his eyes again.

“Right,” Bill said. “Mr. Smythe, you want to get it out of your system? You saw Mr. Self fire the shot? At Mrs. Payne?”

“You're damn right. Stopped the car, opened the door part way, fired from inside. Then got out, holding the gun.” He turned toward Weigand, gestured toward the door. “The one the sergeant's got,” he said.

“Right,” Bill said. “Where were you?”

“Running at him. He was getting ready to fire again. I was too late the first time but the second—I grabbed him. If I hadn't—she was just lying there—the second time—”

He reached out toward the slight woman whose eyes were closed in a white face. He touched her hand, but then withdrew his own. Then he said, “Are you all right, Lauren?”

She nodded her head without opening her eyes.

“Where did you run from, Mr. Smythe?” Bill asked him, and for a second, as he turned back toward Weigand, Smythe seemed puzzled.

“Oh,” he said, “I see what you mean. I was behind the hedge.”

“Why?”

“Well—” Smythe said, and hesitated. “All right, I was afraid something like this might happen. I wanted to stop its happening.” He paused again. “All right,” he said. “The date I told you I had. It was here. With—with whoever came to hurt Lauren.”

“You thought Mr. Self was planning to hurt Mrs. Payne? Why?”

Then Blaine Smythe looked away from Weigand and toward Gladys Mason and her son, who sat side by side. Gladys had a hand on her son's arm. The gangling boy did not seem aware of this. Smythe looked at them for a moment, and then back at Weigand.

“No,” he said, “not Self. I was wrong. It's one reason I was—slow. I—I didn't expect a car, you see. Didn't think the kid had a car. Thought—all right, I was a damn fool. A blundering damn fool. Lauren might have been—for all I did to stop it, he might have killed her.”

He spoke bitterly. He looked again at Lauren, as if, Pam thought, he sought understanding. Lauren did not open her eyes. The poor thing, Pam thought, this
is
too much for her. She's—she's all drained. The doctor ought to have made her—

“You mean you were expecting Mr. Mason,” Bill said. “Why? What would he have against Mrs. Payne?”

Again Blaine Smythe hesitated, again looked at Lauren Payne, and again she seemed not to notice.

“All right,” he said. “I've got to tell them, Lauren. She—she was looking out the window. In her hotel room. She saw somebody going into the hotel across the street. Somebody—limping. She wasn't sure but—it looked like the kid. He limps, you know.”

“No,” Weigand said. “I didn't know that. Do you, Mr. Mason?” The boy did not move. “Mr. Mason?”

“Sometimes,” Robert Mason said. “When I'm tired.”

“You knew Mrs. Payne had seen somebody she thought might be you?”

“I don't know what she thought. I wasn't there, so she couldn't have seen me. But, what she said to Mother—” He stopped, looked at his mother.

“I told him,” she said. “I was wrong to tell him. But—”

“What did you tell him?”

Slowly, as if each word were heavier than the one before, Mrs. Mason repeated what she had told her son.

“Something the matter with his legs,” Weigand repeated, and looked at Pam North. He said, “Oh.”

“Well,” Pam said, “we wanted to see that Bob-by—”

Weigand continued to look at her.

“All right,” she said, “only he didn't, did he? So—” He continued to look. “All right,” she said. “I'm sorry, Bill. I grovel. We all grovel.”

“Mrs. Payne,” Weigand said, “you did see somebody? Somebody with something the matter with his legs? Somebody you thought might have been going into the King Arthur, to a place from which he could shoot your husband?”

“I don't remember what I said,” Lauren said. “I don't remember saying anything.”

“Or—seeing anything. This man. I suppose it was a man?”

“I don't remember,” she said. “Oh—perhaps I did. Perhaps—perhaps it will come back to me. I'd taken something, you see, and it's all—foggy. But perhaps—” She sighed, leaned back.

Bill asked her if she was sure she was up to this; sure she shouldn't be away from it, in bed. She said, “Not yet, Captain. Not until it's—” And did not finish the sentence. Bill waited a moment. She moved her head from side to side, as if even so slight a movement exhausted her.

“This is too much for her,” Smythe said, and spoke sharply. “You can't go on with this.”

“She'll have to decide,” Bill said. “She apparently has. Mr. Mason—”

Robert Mason did not look up. He gazed at the floor, between his dangling hands.

“Bobby!” his mother said, and he looked at her. “Answer him, dear,” Gladys Mason said. He looked at her. “Answer him.” He looked at Bill Weigand.

“What brought you here?” Bill said. “And, why did you run?”

“She said she saw me,” the thin-faced boy said. He looked at Bill Weigand, his eyes dark. “I wanted her to look at me so she'd know she'd made a mistake.” He paused. “I keep thinking,” he said, almost as if he spoke to himself, “I keep thinking maybe I'll get a break.”

“You didn't see her?”

“Not until now. Until you and the cop dragged me in. You want me to ask her now? All right. Mrs. Payne, did you see me across the street? Carrying a gun, maybe? Only, I haven't got a gun. Not any more, I haven't. And I wasn't—Mrs. Payne, why don't you listen to me? Look at me?”

Lauren leaned against the back of the sofa. She did not open her eyes. “Leave her alone, damn you!” Blaine Smythe said. “She's said she doesn't remember.”

Robert Mason continued to look at Lauren. But she did not look at him, and he turned back to Weigand.

“She wasn't here earlier,” he said. “I came up—”

He had, he said, come up to Ridgefield by bus. He had sought and got directions to the Payne house, and had walked to it—walked the three miles to it—and found no one there. He had waited around for a while—maybe an hour, maybe longer. He hadn't noticed. He had got hungry; had walked back to the village; found a bakery-delicatessen and got a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He had thought he might as well give it up, go back to New York. But he had found there was no bus for a long time and decided he might as well go back to the house.

“I was coming up the drive,” he said, “and I heard this shot. So—I didn't want to be around if there was another shooting. Another shooting somebody might try to pin on me. So—all right, I ran.”

“Before you ran, you didn't see anything?” Bill asked him.

The boy hesitated. You could almost see his mind work, Pam thought—see a frightened mind scurrying.

“Somebody jumped up from behind—well, I know now it's the hedge. Then, it was just a shadow—a shadow of someone running—against a—a sort of dark wall.”

“After you heard the shot.”

“Sure. I thought—well, I thought whoever had been hiding behind the hedge was the man who had fired the shot. And there I was maybe—oh, fifty feet away—and I couldn't prove I hadn't—and she'd said—maybe she'd said—she saw me going into the other hotel so—so I ran.”

He had gained some animation as he spoke. It left him suddenly. He said, dully, “That's all,” and began, again, to stare down at the floor.

“Mrs. Payne,” Bill Weigand said and she, like the boy, seemed not at first to hear him. He repeated her name, and she opened her eyes and looked at him.

“You still don't remember?” Bill said. “You've seen Mr. Mason now. Was it he you saw? Has it, as you say, come back to you?”