Murder Is Suggested (12 page)

Jameson Elwell's book was, Jerry said, a rather long book. He did not contend that he had told her everything in it If she wanted to read it—“And,” he said, “I brought you a copy, Bill.”

He put a thick book on the little table. Mullins moved his glass slightly away from the book.

“You can't,” Pam said, “argue we're not co-operating. Co-operate back.”

The waiter brought Mullins's old-fashioned. He was sent away for more martinis. Raul came from the restaurant entrance and looked around the lobby. He looked at the group in the corner. The group seemed as contented as any maitre d' could wish. He went in search of another quartet.

“Right,” Bill said. “Let's skip this business of hypnotism for a moment. Let the sergeant get back on his feet. So—”

They could, as it happened, skip it without necessarily skipping either Carl Hunter or Faith Oldham. Faith stood to inherit a quarter of Jameson Elwell's estate. Jameson Elwell's estate might run as high as half a million dollars. Judging by their attitudes when together, and by Faith's visit to Pam, they might well be planning marriage. Q.E.D.

“Did they know about it?” Pam asked.

Bill could not be positive, not yet.

Hunter had been unable to find anyone who had seen him in the bookshop, waiting for Faith, at three o'clock the previous afternoon for the simplest of reasons—he wasn't in it. Mullins—Mullins stirred faintly at the mention of his name—had found a clerk who knew Hunter well and was certain that he had come into the shop not earlier than three-fifteen. Which would have given him time enough, if he had been lucky with taxicabs. Confronted with this, Hunter had said that, O.K., he was not precisely in the shop, but was standing in front of it. Asked why, he had said, “Because it was a nice day.”

“Well,” Pam said, “it was a nice day. Which side of the street is the shop on?”

“Oh,” Bill said, “he'd have been standing in the sun, all right. If he was standing in front of the shop. And Miss Oldham got there about the time he says she did—about five minutes after he did go into the shop.”

“Timetables,” Pam North said, in discontentment.

Bill said he was sorry, but there they were.

The professor's brother, Foster Elwell, did not stand to inherit anything, but three of his children did. He told them about Foster Elwell, briefly. He had lunched, at the Pierre Grill, with the man he said he had lunched with. But the man thought he had left there about two-thirty. Again—lucky with taxicabs.

There was also a man named Rosco Finch. He told them, as briefly as possible, about Finch—about Finch and the activities of Investigators, Inc., at the behest of Professor Elwell. And of Finch's lonely practicing of drives at a country club in Connecticut.

It appeared, on the basis of enquiries made, on request, by the Connecticut State Police that Mr. Finch's practice must have been very lonely indeed. At least, the few members of the club staff on duty did not remember seeing him. So lonely, it appeared, one might almost read invisible. However—

“There,” Pam North said, “will always be a however, won't there?”

There would—however, the clubhouse was some distance from the first tee, and there was no special reason to think Finch would have driven from the first tee. The club had a largely commuter membership; the time was midweek, the time was also midautumn when golf courses in Connecticut are likely to lie unused under the brightest sun. So, Rosco Finch might well have done what he said he had done and done it unobserved.

“The more important thing,” Pam said. “Yes, Raul?”

“Your table is ready,” Raul said. “If you are ready.”

Pam stood up. She held her cocktail glass. Raul shook his head, gently. Pam put her glass down. Raul carried several menus in his right hand. He slapped them against his left palm. A waiter, obviously not there an instant before, materialized, rather as if out of a bottle. The waiter put the four drinks on a tray and stood at attention.

“Come in,” Raul said, and they went in, went to a table from which Raul flicked a sign which said “Reserved.” The drinks were apportioned, according to need and previous possessor.

“—is,” Pam North said, “was he actually driving the car? You talked to him, sergeant?”

The short walk seemed to have revived Sergeant Mullins.

“There isn't any evidence,” Sergeant Mullins said. “He says no he wasn't, like he has from the start. You can't give a guess to a jury, on account of it's not legal.” He paused to sip from his glass. “Ten to one,” Mullins said, “he was driving and had had a couple and went to sleep.” He considered. “Twenty to one,” he said. “And no way I can see to prove it.”

“The other question,” Jerry said, “did he know this Investigators whatever-it-is was working for Professor Elwell?”

“Probably,” Sergeant Mullins said, and finished his drink. “He could have guessed.”

Pam counted by tapping the fingers of her right hand on the tablecloth. She said it seemed to come to four, already. “Faith,” she said, “Mr. Hunter, Jamey's brother, now this Mr. Finch.” She shook her head. “Four makes a clutter,” Pam said. “And to think that such a dear as poor Jamey—” She did not finish the obvious, as she often does not. She sighed and shook her head again.

Which, Bill Weigand said, brought up a point. Were they sure that Professor Jameson Elwell had been all they thought he was? The kindly, generous man they thought he was?

“
Bill!
” Pam said, in protest. “Of course he was.”

Bill looked at Jerry North.

“I certainly thought so,” Jerry said. “In our dealings with him at the office, in what Pam and I saw of him outside—yes. Of course—” He shrugged, the shrug saying that certainty in such matters was not so easily to be achieved. “
Jerry!
” Pam North said, speaking to a Judas. Jerry smiled at her and she took an indignant sip from her martini glass. “I take it,” Jerry said to Bill, “that you've come across a minority report?”

Bill had. He summarized briefly. Pam said that it was outrageous, that she didn't believe a word of it and that there must be something the matter with Mrs. Oldham to make her say things like that. She also hoped that Bill didn't believe such nonsense for a moment.

“You have ordered?” Raul said. They had not; they did. “Something light,” Pam said. “Oh—it's corned beef and cabbage day. Corned beef and cabbage, Raul.” She turned to Mullins. “It's always wonderful,” she told Mullins. “A chef's salad, I guess,” Mullins said.

Bill did not believe or disbelieve. A new field had, certainly, been opened by Mrs. Oldham's assertions. Suppose the assertions merely spiteful; suppose them untrue. The matter had still to be looked into, since the character of a victim is always a central factor of a crime. So—so he had gone to talk to Eugene Wahmsley, dean of faculty, at Dyckman.

He had found a central room on the sixth floor of the administration building—a room with a rail across it, and an efficient middle-aged woman at a desk beyond the rail, and several typewriters clicking; an office in all respects very businesslike. And Professor Wahmsley would, certainly, see Captain Weigand, who was expected. If Captain Weigand would come this way?

He went, through a gate, across the big room, to a corner office. Wahmsley stood up behind a desk and asked Weigand how things were coming, and what he could do to make them come better, if that was, as he assumed it was, the idea.

“Dr. Wahmsley,” Bill said, “is it possible that Professor Elwell was not—not all he appeared to be? All people seemed to think he was?”

He was told that that was an unexpected question; he was invited to sit down; he was offered and accepted a cigarette.

“Anything is possible, I suppose,” Wahmsley said, then. “If you want my opinion—I've already given you my opinion. Elwell was a brilliant man. He was a good man. I take it you've come across another opinion?”

“Yes,” Bill said. “Is it possible that Professor Elwell appropriated the ideas of other people?”

“Oh,” Wahmsley said. “He built on what was already there. There's no other way I've ever heard of. But—appropriated? I suppose you mean without credit? Without—” And then, abruptly, he stopped. “Oh,” he said. “Hope Oldham.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Mrs. Oldham.”

Wahmsley said he might have known. He inhaled thoughtfully, he exhaled with decision. He said that he could, he supposed, guess what Mrs. Oldham had said. That the ideas in Elwell's books were really the stolen ideas of Professor Frank Oldham? That Elwell's apparent kindness to Hope Oldham and her daughter was the grudging product of a guilty conscience? That Jameson Elwell had been, in effect, a fraud?

“Yes,” Bill said. “Also that Elwell played the stock market on Oldham's advice, which seems to make Mrs. Oldham feel that the money is really hers. Also, in some fashion not very clear to me, that Elwell took advantage of the innocence of the girl—Faith.”

“Hope Oldham,” Wahmsley said, “is a strange case. Perhaps not really a strange case. I've known others like her. Probably you have, too. Any lack of success is due, not to any personal lack of ability to achieve success, but to—to the chicanery of others. You know the type?”

Bill nodded his head.

“As to the specific charges,” Wahmsley said. “The first—that Elwell absconded with Oldham's abstract ideas. That's nonsense. They weren't even in the same field, you know. Oh—cognate fields, in a sense. Philosophy and psychology. But all fields in which the mind is concerned are to some extent cognate, aren't they?”

“I'd suppose so,” Bill said.

“Before poor Frank died,” Wahmsley said, “his wife used now and then to—hint things like that. It embarrassed Frank a good deal. Among other things, it was, in a back-handed sort of fashion, an apology for Frank. And Frank needed apologizing for about as little as any man I've ever known. I told you that—we considered him one of our—well, say, stars. Oldham of Dyckman. So it was so pointless, so much without meaning.”

“Then why—” Bill began, but Wahmsley did not encourage him to finish.

Wahmsley said, “Precisely, captain. There are, as we all know, different criteria of success. Oldham certainly did not make as much money as his wife would have liked. Not, I'm afraid, by a very long way. A professor's salary—well, you've heard about professors' salaries, no doubt. The royalties from publications in the field of philosophy are not exorbitant. As you probably would guess. And I'm afraid that, in all financial matters, Oldham was a babe in arms. Which answers your question about Elwell acting on his friend's advice. To put it bluntly, Jamey would have had more sense—did have more sense.”

“Did Oldham share his wife's opinions? You suggest he didn't but—”

“I'm quite sure he didn't,” Wahmsley said. “Oh, I've no doubt she suggested he did. I certainly never saw anything to indicate he did. I find it difficult to imagine that anything like that would ever have occurred to Oldham. As far as she is concerned—”

This time he interrupted himself. He got up and walked to a window and looked through the window. He came back. He said he might as well tell Weigand something else.

When Oldham died, and it was found out that he had left his wife and young daughter inadequately provided for, Dyckman had felt responsibility. “We,” Wahmsley said, and did not specify further. There were at Dyckman, as at any other large university, a number of administrative jobs to be filled—from file clerks to student interviewers. “It's amazing how much of a kind of superior clerical work there is to be done in a place like this,” Wahmsley said.

Briefly, a job had been found for Mrs. Oldham—a job in which no special skills were needed, except the special skill of being intelligent. She did not have to file, to type; she did not have to make decisions of major importance. But she had to make some decisions, to meet a good many people and listen to them, and understand them.

“Well,” Wahmsley said, “we made all the allowances we could, because of the special circumstances. More than we would have made for most. You don't want details but—say we finally had to admit to ourselves that Hope Oldham just wouldn't do. That there wasn't any place we could fit her in. And—not because she isn't intelligent. She is, in her way. But it's not, I'm afraid, a very—useful way. And she proved to be very difficult to get along with. A certain—call it give and take—is necessary in a place like this, as I suppose it is everywhere. Hope Oldham, I'm afraid—” He did not finish that sentence. He said, “We had to let her go.”

“And?”

“It was quite unpleasant,” Wahmsley said. “At least—I wasn't too directly involved, but I gather it was. A good many—charges. As one would expect, of course. Where things had gone wrong, it was because of failures of other people. Or, in one or two instances, the fact that they cheated. All very unpleasant. And, I'm not quite sure why I've told you all this. Except—well, they say every little bit helps.”

As to Elwell's having, in any fashion, taken advantage of Faith Oldham's inexperience—Wahmsley found that flatly unbelievable. As a matter of fact, from what he knew of the girl—which wasn't much—he thought her a much more competent young woman than one might judge from her rather fragile appearance. “Childlike outwardly,” Wahmsley said. “I should doubt she is inwardly. But, I've only met her a few times. She's scholastically quite superior, if that means anything.” He looked at Weigand through blue smoke. “Which I'm not at all certain it does,” he said.

Bill Weigand told part of this to the Norths, at their table at the Algonquin. Pam nodded her head, holding a forkful of corned beef in abeyance.

“I know the type,” she said. “The poor things. If at first you don't succeed, blame, blame again. Of course, they do stir up trouble. Which I suppose satisfies something.” She conveyed corned beef to mouth.