Murder Is Served (14 page)

“And?”

Mullins looked at Bill Weigand. He let his shoulders rise and let them fall.

“Nobody signs in,” he said. “Nobody signs out. I wouldn't know, Loot. She was alone this morning when she came out. After two o'clock, the doorman's off and there's just a guy who sort of hangs around. You know. The elevator goes on self-operating.” He looked at Bill Weigand thoughtfully. “We can ask her,” he said. “Want we should?”

“Later,” Bill told him. “If we want to know. Go ahead.”

“Got a cab, drove to the restaurant,” Mullins said. “Nobody saw her go in, so maybe it's the way she said. She did get the same cab a coupla minutes later and went to Maxine's. You know—this place the girls go? Bubble baths.”

“Really?” Bill Weigand said. “Who told you?”

“There was a play about it once,” Mullins said. “The girl took a bubble bath. And they walked up walls.”

“Oh,” Bill said. “Yes. Right. And?”

“She stayed there,” Mullins said. “That's what they say, anyway. Had the works, I guess. Bub—”

Bill told Mullins not to let his mind dwell. Mullins looked at him sadly and said, “O.K., Loot.” He said, “But you can't blame a guy, Loot.”

“Right,” Bill said. “No blame. And?”

“After the—sometime around three-thirty she was drying off, or something—sitting around. They had a radio. And the news about Mott came over. She threw a fit.”

“What kind of a fit?”

“Yelled, carried on,” Mullins said. “Started to faint and so forth. Then she called us, and came around. That's as far as we took it. O.K.?”

“The cab driver,” Weigand said. “The one who took her to the restaurant—to the Male Ox. And took her on from there. How long does he make it?”

“That she was there? Not over a coupla minutes. He waited for a truck to get out of the way, started to pull out and she hailed him again. Not time to go in and kill a guy. Not the way he tells it.”

“He's O.K.? The driver?”

“He's an all-right boy, s'far's we know,” Mullins said.

“And he's pretty sure?”

“Yeah.”

Bill Weigand drummed lightly on the desk.

“It's too bad, in a way,” he said. “Pam won't be pleased.”

“Look,” Mullins said, “does Mrs. North think it was this babe?”

Weigand shrugged. He said a better word would be “hope.”

“These women,” Mullins said. He brightened. “Hey,” he said, “that was the name of that play.
These Women
. Some dame wrote it.”

“
The Women,”
Bill said. “Yes.”

“Quite a play,” Mullins said. “There was this girl and in one scene she took one of these bub—”

“Right,” Bill said. “I saw it, Sergeant. I know what you mean.”

“There was a hell of a lot of bubbles, though,” Mullins said. He was silent a moment, remembering. “This time,” he said, “it's the Mott dame, I guess. Don't you, Loot?”

“O'Malley does,” Bill told him.

“Still and all,” Mullins said, reasonably, “she was there, this other girl says. She scrammed out. She hated the guy. She gets the guy's money. She's running around with a Red.”

“Mullins!” Weigand said. “Where'd you get that, for God's sake?”

“The
Journal,”
Mullins said. “It says she's running around with a notorious Red who writes plays.”

“For God's sake,” Bill said. He tossed Weldon Carey's card to Mullins, who read it. “Well?” Bill said.

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins agreed. “It don't show here.”

“I suppose the
Journal
suggests Carey got orders from Moscow to kill Mott,” Bill Weigand said. “Does it say why?”

“No,” Mullins said. “It don't go that far.”

“Yet,” Bill said. He sighed. “However—” he said.

“The point is, where's the girl?” Mullins said.

It was indeed, Weigand agreed. It certainly was. He picked up the girl's card, identified by O'Malley's forceful red cross-mark.

“MOTT, Margaret (known as Peggy) Simmons; 24, actress.” There were no quotation marks around the word this time. “Born New Rochelle; daughter James and Florence Simmons, both deceased; father a lawyer, practiced in New Rochelle; grad. Barnard, Washburn School Dramatic Art; part last year in ‘Come and Get It' and good notices; summer stock until August, when let out; no engagements this year; married Mott November, 1946; left him August, 1947; no legal action; no reports of men since except CAREY, Weldon (see report) and possibly LEONARD, John; attended Saturday morning classes Dyckman U., extension, last year and returned this, studying dramatic subjects chiefly. Association with Leonard reported winter 1947, informant thinks not serious; association Carey began about April; apparently met in classes; she then still living in Mott apartment; saw Carey more frequently after returned to city from stock engagement and left Mott; (newspaper hint Mott interfered with career; not substantiated but checking; reason dismissal summer stock company being checked this connection); attitude toward Mott variously reported, some agreement she was bitter at him, but reasons not known; inherits residue Mott's estate under will made immediately after marriage and not changed; missing since murder and pick-up out; attached photo being distributed.”

Bill Weigand read the card twice; wondered what, unintentionally, by the mere fact of mention or omission, it overemphasized or, conversely, mitigated. He looked at the photograph, and Mullins looked at it over his shoulder. Mullins whistled.

Bill looked at the picture and nodded slowly, acknowledging the whistle and its justification. She was very lovely, he thought. The eyes, particularly, were inescapable. They were wide apart; a little more, Weigand thought, and they would have been too wide apart. But now the exaggeration was piquant, challenging. And the eyes themselves were unusually wide—or long—from inner to outer corners. The photograph was obviously theatrical, and this wideness of eyes might well have been accentuated by lighting, by make-up. But, with neither, the effect could hardly be less than unusual. The face explained why Mott had married Peggy Simmons. It did not explain why she had married him. Money? The hope he would use his influence for her in the theater? The desire to share the glitter around him? Bill Weigand did not consider seriously that she might have been in love with him. It did not occur to him that Mott had been lovable.

There ought to be little trouble in picking up a girl with a face like that. It was odd that they had not picked her up already. It was inevitable that they would soon, but Bill had never worried about that. Unless something had happened to her, which was not indicated, they would bring her along.

There was one more dossier, this one brief. Bill Weigand picked up the card.

“BREAKWELL, Cecily; 20 born Joplin, Missouri; in NY since last spring; stage aspirant but has had no parts; taking courses at Dyckman; working hat-check girl André Maillaux; only apparent involvement report to WW re statements by Mrs. Mott; social life largely with other students Dyckman; no police—”

The telephone rang and Mullins picked it up. He said, “Yeah?
O.K
.” and turned to Bill Weigand.

“They've got her,” Mullins said. “She showed up at this Carey's place. She's outside.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Get her in.”

He finished Cecily Breakwell's brief dossier and laid it with the others. He sat facing the door, looking over his desk. His fingers tapped quickly on the top of the desk.

It hadn't been make-up, Bill Weigand thought first, looking at the rather tail girl who came through the door—a tall, slender girl who, even now, walked with her shoulders up and, again now, with her head up; a tall blond girl with eyes set far apart, strangely long eyes. She was as lovely as her picture; there was something almost startling about her appearance. And now, Bill saw, she was very much afraid.

7

S
ATURDAY
,
10:50
P.M. TO
S
UNDAY
, 1:15
A.M.

The man who had brought her down from Carey's apartment in the police car had said very little after he had said they had been waiting for her, that they had expected Weldon Carey to be with her. He had not touched her, there had been in his words and his actions hardly any suggestion that she was a prisoner. He had said, “If you're ready, Mrs. Mott?” and had walked behind her to the car. It had been a large, dark car, like any other large, dark car, and going downtown they had not seemed to hurry. Only once, as if its patience had worn thin, did the car snarl at an intersection, and then traffic parted and the car went through.

The man had said he was Detective Sergeant Stein. He had said that Lieutenant Weigand had some questions he thought she might be able to answer. After that he had sat beside her in the back seat of the car and said nothing, although now and then he had looked at her and there had been interest, speculation, in his thin sensitive face. He did not look in the least as she had supposed “they” would look. The man driving the car had been, like the one beside her, in civilian clothes, and he had said nothing at all except, “O.K., Sergeant,” when Stein said to him, “Downtown.” The man driving had looked at her, a little as if he expected to remember what she looked like, but there had not been anything hostile, or anything frightening, in his expression. But she had been very frightened; it was almost as if the lack of anything overt in the actions of these two men had made her more frightened than she would have been if they had acted in the way she had vaguely supposed policemen did act. As they were, they seemed too sure, too unresentful, above everything else, too impersonal.

They had not, as she had expected, gone down to police headquarters. They had taken her to an unpretentious building in the West Twenties, and upstairs into a room where there was one man at a desk. Sergeant Stein had nodded to this man, and, without anything being said, he had picked up a telephone and, with no preliminary, said, “Mrs. Mott's here, Sergeant.” There had been a momentary pause, then, and the man at the desk had said, “O.K.” and nodded to Stein and gone back to reading what appeared to be a legal document. Then Stein had moved to another door and motioned her to go through it, and then had stepped, only politely, not menacingly, behind her.

The new room was smaller than the other and when she entered she was facing a man sitting at a desk, looking up at her. As she came in he stood up and nodded and said, confirmingly, “Mrs. Mott.” There was another man, behind him and to one side, who was sitting on the sill of a window which apparently opened on a narrow court, because, very close beyond it, there was another lighted window. The man who had been sitting on the sill stood up when the other did, but said nothing.

The man now standing behind his desk was, again, not what she had expected. He was around forty, she thought, and about average height or a little more; he had a thin face, like Sergeant Stein, but the planes of his face were firmer. His voice was low and rather pleasant when he spoke to her, but it, also, had a kind of impersonality.

“I'm Lieutenant William Weigand, Mrs. Mott,” he said. “We have some questions we'd like to ask you. About the death of your husband.” He looked at her a moment. “I'm one of the officers detailed to investigate his death, you understand,” he said. “There are certain things we have to try to find out about.”

She tried to speak, but the words seemed to stick in her throat. She merely nodded. He did not seem surprised at this.

“All right, Stein,” he said, over her, to the man behind her. “Did you have dinner?” The man behind her did not speak, but apparently he shook his head. “Better get it,” Lieutenant Weigand said. “By then we may know more.”

She heard the movements of Stein going out. He closed the door.

“Sit down, Mrs. Mott,” the man behind the desk said. “Have a cigarette if you like. This may take a little time. Oh—Mullins.” The other man in the room took a step forward. “This is Sergeant Mullins, Mrs. Mott,” the lieutenant said. “He'll make notes of what you tell us.” Sergeant Mullins, a bigger man, with a face which seemed to have weathered red, nodded.

She did not immediately sit, and while she stood Lieutenant Weigand continued to stand. She started to speak, swallowed, managed to speak. The voice did not sound to her like her voice.

“Am I arrested?” she said, and had to swallow again. “Charged with—with killing Tony?”

The lieutenant seemed surprised.

“Why no,” he said. “We wanted to ask you some questions. You didn't—appear. So we had to send for you.”

“Do I have to answer questions, then?”

He seemed to expect this.

“No,” he said. He smiled faintly. “Did you think we were going to beat information out of you, Mrs. Mott? Try to? But—are you afraid to answer questions? For any reason?” He looked at her. “Sit down, please,” he said. The command was in his voice, not in the form of the sentence. She sat down.

“Are you afraid of what we may ask?” he repeated.

She shook her head. Her neck was oddly stiff.

“Right,” the lieutenant said. He sat down, too. He was unhurried and seemed calm, but she noticed that the fingers of his right hand, which lay on the desk, tapped out a little, soundless rhythm.

“Were you afraid we would charge you with killing your husband?” The man behind the desk spoke rather quickly. “Is that why you didn't go home? Or—get in touch with anyone? Except Mr. Carey?”

“I didn't kill him,” she said.

“But you were afraid we'd think you had?”

“I—I suppose so.”

“Why?” The word was sudden, unadorned, and for the first time the voice was really demanding.

“I—I don't know.”

“Were you there? When he was killed?”