Murder Is Suggested (18 page)

“We'll all have—” Pam began, but Jerry had thought of that, also. They all had.

“I—“Mrs. Oldham began and Jerry, his voice very gentle, said, “Finish it first.” She finished. “Now,” Jerry said. “Your daughter is—she's gone some place? You're trying to find her?”

“I thought she had come here,” Mrs. Oldham said, and now her voice was reasonably steady. “I know I should have telephoned. Not just—forced my way in on you. At this hour, too. But I was so certain. I said to myself, ‘Of course! That's it. Mrs. North was so kind earlier, so understanding, and now—of course she's gone there.' It was as if something
told
me. And—”

She stopped suddenly.

“She
was
here this morning?” Mrs. Oldham said, and spoke very quickly, with a return of excitement. “It wasn't just something she—told me? To throw me off the track?”

“She was here,” Pam said. “To—” It was Pam's turn to stop, to consider. To find out, through her, what the police thought, specifically about Carl Hunter? That was, Pam supposed, the answer. (Although there might, of course, have been more to it.) “She just wanted somebody to talk to,” Pam said. “She's so upset about Jamey and—”

“But not,” Mrs. Oldham said, “not her own
mother.
Somebody she hardly knew at all!”

Which was certainly true.

“Well,” Pam said.

“Sometimes,” Jerry said, his voice still gentle, “sometimes it's easier to talk to people one isn't close to, Mrs. Oldham. One feels freer. With no past associations to—intervene.”

“Her own
mother
,” Mrs. Oldham said, as if she had not heard. “The poor, poor child. What have they done to her, Mrs. North? What have they
done
to her?”

She seemed to be working herself back into the mood of near hysteria. Certainly she was proceeding in anything but a straight line.

“Who?” Pam North said, seeking to direct traffic. “Who do you think has done something to her?”

“And for that matter,” Jerry said, “done what?”

Now she looked at both of them, first at Pam, then at Jerry. Her eyes were very light blue; they did not hold tears. Her sobs, then, must have been part of a kind of nervous chill. She had not really been weeping. Probably it would be better for her if she could. But—about what?

“I'm sorry,” Mrs. Oldham said. “It's the shock of—of realizing. I'm afraid I'm not very coherent. But—”

And then she started to get up from the chair.

“I'm terribly sorry to have barged in this way,” she said, the idiom contemporary, the tone unexpectedly formal. “So late in the evening. Bothering you with things which can't possibly interest you, really. Although you have been very kind.
Very
kind. Since Faith isn't here—”

“Mrs. Oldham,” Pam said, “if there's anything we can do to help.” The young-old woman hesitated. “Look,” Pam said. “Your daughter's gone away somewhere and you don't know where. You're worked up. But probably nothing's happened to her. Of
course
nothing's happened to her.”

Pam got assurance into her clear voice; spoke as if she knew.

“It isn't—” Mrs. Oldham said, but then let herself sink back into the chair. “I do feel you want to help. Both of you.”

“You speak,” Jerry said, “as if something violent had happened. As if your daughter had been—
taken
away. But you surely didn't think we—we had done anything to
make
her come here?”

“Like,” Pam North said, to her own surprise, “dragging her by the hair?”

Mrs. Oldham did not appear to hear that, which was probably as well. She said, to Jerry, that she hadn't meant that, of course, and that he didn't understand.

“I don't,” Jerry said. “If there's any way we can help. But we'll have to know, first, what's happened.”

They would, of course, think she was only a foolishly worried woman. She realized that. Anybody would think that who didn't—well, really know how things were. Because on the surface nothing had “happened” except that Faith Oldham had got a telephone call and, afterward, gone out without telling her mother where she was going.

“As if,” Hope Oldham said, “she didn't
trust
me. And, didn't care how much I worried.”

“Well,” Pam said, “she isn't exactly a child, Mrs. Oldham. It's more considerate to tell people where you're going, of course, but one can't always.” Her remark started a faint echo in Pam's echo-prone mind. Of course, “after every meal.” It is pleasant to settle such things as one goes along.

“For all you know, then,” Jerry said, and he was very calm. “For all you know some friend called her and said, come over for a drink. Or a cup of coffee. And you weren't around and—”

Mrs. Oldham was shaking her head from side to side. She had been around.

She had, to be sure, been in the tub. This had been—oh, about ten. “I always take a hot bath before I go to bed,” Mrs. Oldham said. “It makes it so much easier to sleep. Because of course I never take anything.”

Pam nodded her head, acknowledging the rectitude of that non-behavior, resisting the temptation to remark that she didn't either, for the most part, but did not regard this as a special mark of virtue.

“You were in the tub,” Jerry said, “and?”

She had heard the telephone ring. She had got out of the tub as quickly as she could, and dried herself briefly, but by then the telephone had quit ringing—

“You didn't know your daughter was in the house?” Pam asked her.

“Why do you say that?” Mrs. Oldham said. “Yes, I knew she was downstairs. Reading, probably. She has to read a great deal for all these courses she's taking.”

“Then why—?” Pam began, but stopped, because Jerry was shaking his head at her.

“You got to the phone,” Jerry said. “And?”

She had gone to the extension on the second floor, and found that her daughter had already answered. She heard her daughter say, “All right, I'll come over,” and then cut the connection.

She had got a robe on, and gone out into the stair hall and called her daughter's name down the stairs and been just too late. The front door was closing, closed. She had gone downstairs, then, hurrying, and opened the door and looked out, and not seen anyone.

“Of course,” she said, “I couldn't go out on the sidewalk and really look because I wasn't dressed.”

It still, to Jerry, sounded as if Faith Oldham might have been invited to join a friend—for a drink, for a cup of coffee. He said so. He said that, possibly, Faith had thought her mother already asleep and had not wanted to waken her. It was, also, he pointed out, possible that Faith was home by now and wondering where her mother was.

“I wish I could believe that was all it was,” Hope Oldham said. “I do wish I could.”

Part of it, at any rate, could easily be checked. Jerry asked for a telephone number, got it and dialed it. A telephone rang in the Oldham house. Jerry let it ring for some seconds before he hung up. It didn't, he pointed out, prove anything.

“No,” Mrs. Oldham said. “It's no use. She's—she's gone to him. That's the dreadful thing. Deep down, I knew it all the time. He's—he's made her come to him. The poor, poor child!”

Jerry spoke for both of them. Jerry said, “He?”

The expression in the pale blue eyes seemed one of surprise.

“Why,” she said, “that Carl Hunter, of course. That dreadful—
evil
—man.” She looked from one to the other. “You didn't even suspect,” she said, and her tone was incredulous. “He—
took you in, too
.” She shook her head, slowly, as if in despair. “He and the professor,” she said. “Two evil men. And evil turned against evil.”

The Norths looked at each other and Jerry shrugged. It was Pam who repeated. “Evil?”

“Twisting people's minds,” Hope Oldham said. “Making them do—horrible things. Getting
into
their minds, breaking down all the right things—the true things.” She paused; she looked at them and shook her head again. “You don't know about such things,” she said. “I tried to tell that friend of yours—Weigand? His name's Weigand, isn't it?—what kind of a man Jameson Elwell was. I could tell he didn't understand. Didn't even believe me. And this Hunter—”

She stood up suddenly.

“I've got to go,” she said, and her voice now was shrill. “I've got to find her before he makes her be—makes her do some other dreadful thing. I've—”

It was obvious to Pam that hysteria had once again gripped Hope Oldham.

“Wait,” Pam said. “There's something you've forgotten. Mr. Hunter—whatever he is, if he's all you say he is—can't do anything to anybody. Not now. He's in the hospital.” She paused and repeated the word very slowly. “Hospital. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps Faith has gone to him. But—don't you see?—there are all sorts of people at the hospital. Nurses and doctors and—and all sorts. So—what can he do? Supposing he wants to do anything?”

“They couldn't stop him,” Mrs. Oldham said. She spoke quickly, almost feverishly. “Nobody could. Anyway—I called the hospital. He's got around them, too. They said he couldn't be disturbed. She's there with him and—”

She did not finish that. “I've got to go,” she said. “Find them.”

Jerry said “Wait,” this time. He said that, too, was something easy to check on. Probably Hunter was asleep; he might have been given a sedative. It should be easy enough to find out. He looked up the number, he dialed. Answered, he said that he wanted to enquire about a Mr. Carl Hunter. He waited for some time.

“Mr. Hunter,” a mechanically pleasant voice told him, “is doing as well as can be expected.”

“I wonder,” Jerry said, “if I could be connected with his room? I realize it's late, but it's rather important for me to talk to him. And I understand his injury isn't—”

“One minute, please,” the pleasant voice said.

It was a minute—it was more than a minute. And the next voice was not a woman's formally soothing voice. A man spoke. He said, “I understand you want to talk to Mr. Hunter?”

Jerry said he did.

“Who's calling?” the man said, and Jerry told him who was calling.

There was another long pause. It was as if the man had turned away from the telephone, covering the transmitter with his hand. But then he spoke again.

“Sorry,” he said. “Mr. Hunter can't be disturbed.”

Hung up on, Jerry hung up. He turned and looked at Pam, at Hope Oldham. His face was puzzled, reflecting a puzzled mind.

“They're—” he began, and reconsidered. “It sounds,” he said, “rather as if they're keeping something back. Maybe Hunter's worse. Maybe—”

He did not finish. He dialed again. After a little time he was answered by a voice—a somewhat sleepy voice—which he knew well.

“Is he ever?” Dorian Weigand said. “No, Jerry. He was in, too late for dinner. Now he's gone, too early for breakfast.”

Bill had gone about ten minutes earlier. She had been in bed, three-fourths asleep; he had been undressing. The telephone had rung. He had said, “Right, I'll be along,” and dressed again and leaned over to kiss a sleepy wife.

“Wh—” Dorian had begun but he had said, “Go on to sleep, darling. Tell you all about it in the morning,” and then had gone.

“The sort of thing that happens all the time,” Dorian Weigand said in the disconsolate tone of one much put upon. “Tell Pam she doesn't know how lucky she is.”

Bill Weigand might have gone any place, for any purpose. His sudden return to duty did not, necessarily, have anything whatever to do with Faith or Carl Hunter or, indeed, the Elwell case. But as his wife and the frail, excited woman looked at him, Jerry felt growing uneasiness. They had been very guarded at the hospital; very—careful. Because Hunter wasn't, in fact, there any more? It seemed disturbingly likely.

“I'm afraid—” Jerry began, but Hope Oldham, standing now, her little hands clenched convulsively, interrupted.

“They've let him go!” she said. “
Let him go!
To
kill somebody else!
Faith. Because she—”

11

News that Mr. Carl Hunter had checked out of Dyckman Hospital, almost as easily as he might have checked out of a hotel, came roundabout to Captain William Weigand.

To begin with, it was some time after Hunter had left that word of it reached a hospital official who realized that the police might be interested. He had, naturally enough, called Spring 7-3100, which is the number listed in the Manhattan Telephone Directory, and had got a male operator. And the male operator, also naturally enough, had never heard of Mr. Carl Hunter, the activities of the Police Department of the City of New York being many. Several other persons had met death under suspicious circumstances on that day and the day before; Professor Jameson Elwell was by no means unique. There had also been numerous burglaries, a few cases of armed robbery and no end of other matters.

So there was no reason why the name of Carl Hunter should at once mean anything to the telephone operator. He did not say “Huh?” precisely, and certainly not “So what?” But it did take some little time for the information to reach precinct, which was interested, verified the fact and, sensibly enough, telephoned Hunter's apartment, where it might be expected he had gone. There was no answer. Homicide, Manhattan West, was next; Weigand came then. A little over an hour had elapsed.

There had been no hold order on Hunter, for reasons which had seemed adequate. For one thing, they had no charge to hold him on, and none in immediate prospect. A police preference that a man remain where he is has no force in law. Hunter was a free agent until somebody said he wasn't, and said why. For another thing, a man shot in the leg at eleven-thirty in the morning does not usually get out of bed at a little before ten at night and walk away. For a third thing, Bill admitted to himself—driving toward Dyckman Hospital at a little after eleven—he had slipped up.