Murder Is Suggested (19 page)

Hunter had been told, first by nurse, then by interne, finally by a resident, that he was being very ill-advised. It would, they told him, do his leg no good. He would, at the least, find movement very uncomfortable. He would probably re-open the wound, which might be a somewhat bloody business.

“Men have walked miles to dressing stations with worse wounds,” Hunter said, and signed the releases required, and smiled faintly at dubiously shaken heads. He had, however, accepted the loan of a cane.

“Actually,” the resident Weigand talked to said, “he was quite right about men walking farther with worse. As a matter of fact, the wound probably won't open if he's reasonably careful. And this isn't a jail, captain. His signature on the release frees us of any responsibility and—”

Weigand knew. He did not blame anybody. Had Hunter said why he wanted to get up from bed, leaving comfort and medical care, and hobble off into the night?

Nobody could answer until Weigand reached the corridor nurse. She remembered, and Weigand wouldn't believe it. He promised to try. All right, Hunter had said he had to go see about the cats. He said it was his night to see about the cats.

She had supposed, naturally, that he was delirious. But he had no fever and seemed, otherwise, quite composed. He had slept for several hours; the sedation, which had been mild, had worn off. He had said, “Get me my clothes, nurse. Thata girl.” It had not been that easy, but it had been easy enough.

And did that about cats mean anything to Captain Weigand? Because she was quite sure that that was what Hunter had said.

It meant something. Briefly, he told her what and her relief was apparent. She was, evidently, a young woman of orderly mind. “Oh,” she said, “one of those,” and went off to respond to a light which blinked outside a door.

Hunter had not, it was obvious, been abducted. He had, presumably, merely got worried about his cats. Dyckman Hospital is only a few blocks from Dyckman University and Weigand drove there and, after some little search, found a watchman, from him learned that psychological experiments on animals were conducted in Wing A of the Philosophy Building. Weigand crossed the campus, went among dark buildings—but here and there lights burned—and found another watchman, who said he hadn't seen Mr. Hunter, whom he knew, but that Mr. Hunter had a key and was in and out at all hours. “Like the rest of them,” the watchman said, rather morosely. If Weigand wanted to show him his shield? Weigand did, and the door was unlocked for him, and he went up two flights and down the first corridor on his right, which ended in a swinging door with glass in it. Dim light came through the glass.

Bill Weigand went into a sizable room which had wire cages down one side. In the center of the room was something which looked a little like a carousel, without wooden animals. There was also a long tube, a foot or so in diameter, with glass windows at intervals in its length. For cats to look out through, presumably.

There were some twenty cages and each held a cat—a black cat here, a red cat here, here a tabby. Bill walked down beside the cages and the cats' eyes glittered at him in the half light. One cat rose up and stretched and another spoke and a third rolled over on his back and held his legs up in the air. They seemed to be contented cats.

Bill walked the length of the room and opened the door of a small office, with desk and typewriter and, on one wall, a chart partially filled with figures. The chart was in columns, with a name at the top of each—Pete, Bill, Betsy, Mehitabel. To each cat his column, Bill assumed. And—dates and hours. He looked. The last entries for this date had been made at 1830. It was to be assumed that, then, the cats had been tucked into bed.

There was nothing to indicate that Carl Hunter had been there. Certainly he was not there now. It seemed that his explanation at the hospital had been disingenuous. Bill was a little disappointed, but not unduly surprised.

It was reasonably clear that Carl Hunter was up to something. It began to appear that the absence of a hold on Carl Hunter had been a more significant oversight than Bill liked to admit. Had he, Bill wondered—going back to his car, driving until he came to an open drugstore, finding a telephone in it—had he been taken in by the apparent candor of intelligent gray eyes, of generally straightforward appearance? Or, perhaps more specifically, by the assumption that a man shot at and wounded during a murder investigation—wounded by a bullet from the gun which previously had killed—is unlikely to be himself the killer?

Of course, Hunter might have something else than flight in mind. He might have remembered something, and gone to check on it. He might have known, in spite of his denials, who had shot him and gone to do something about that. And he might merely have decided to go while the going was good.

In that event, he would hardly get far. They almost never did or, if far, for long. It would be a nuisance, of course. Deputy Chief Inspector O'Malley would bellow. Bill would have to cross that bellow when he came to it.

The telephone in Hunter's apartment, which was not far from the university, was unanswered. Bill considered. He looked up another number, and dialed it, and again a telephone rang unanswered. He let this one ring longer—they might be asleep in the Oldham house. They might be asleep on the second floor and the telephone might ring, dimly, on the ground floor. But, given all reasonable time, nobody answered.

Which was mildly interesting. Faith Oldham and her mother might, of course, have gone downtown to a theater, or to a movie. There is no special reason for two adult women to be home at—he looked at his watch—at eleven-forty. They might be playing bridge, or canasta for that matter, with friends. They might be—anything. It was evident that they were not at home. And Faith and Hunter might be somewhere together. And Hope might be with them? The last seemed a little doubtful.

He rang the Elwell house, and waited, again, for at least sufficient time, and nobody answered there, either. Delbert Higgins, whose presence might be expected, was evidently elsewhere. Or very soundly asleep. Or not wanting to be bothered answering the telephone. Or—anything.

Bill called precinct, which had no word of Hunter. He called his own office, which reported that the Connecticut State Police, asked to go beyond the formality of a report, had admitted not being too convinced, either, that Rosco Finch hadn't been driving a Jaguar in April and wrecked it, and ended three lives. And had pointed out that being unconvinced is nothing to base charges on.

Weigand drove to Hunter's apartment, and climbed three flights of stairs and pushed the bell button. He pushed it for some time, tried the door and then, quite illegally, used a key he was not supposed to possess to unlock the door.

The apartment was small, neat and empty. Hunter had not come home to change his clothes, which one would have expected, since the right trouser leg of the suit he was wearing had a hole in it, and blood on it. Or—if he had, he had not left the damaged suit. Bill could see no reason why he should not have, since the blood on it was his own. There were a good many books in the small apartment, including a good many on hypnotism. There was a typewriter with a sheet of paper in it. There was a single sentence typed on the sheet. “Mehitabel, although evidently superior in Experiment C, failed completely in the two ensuing experiments, conceivably because she does not especially care for liver.”

One lived and learned, Bill thought, and continued his quick search. No gun in evidence. Bill had not supposed there would be. A good many manuscripts, presumably also concerned with cats. Perhaps not, of course; it might well be necessary, in time, to read what Carl Hunter had written—on cats and other subjects. It wasn't yet. Bill left things as he had found them, and locked the door, and went down to his car and sat in it.

He sat for a few minutes and rubbed his forehead with the ball of his right thumb. It didn't seem to be coming together—a lot of pieces; no pattern. Finch and the Jaguar, Ames and Faith, Faith and Hunter, Elwell and—Enough for two patterns; perhaps for half a dozen. A policeman's lot is not—

It was as if his mind had fingers and snapped them, quite on its own. It was so sudden, so easy, that Bill considered it with skepticism. But then he said to himself that he'd be damned, and that it was a pattern and perhaps
the
pattern. He talked to his office on the car radio. Mullins was to be rousted out—he was bunked down in the squad dormitory. Or was supposed to be? Was. He was to be told where to meet Weigand. He was to use a patrol car and step on it.

It took time to quiet Hope Oldham, and at best their success was relative. She became more coherent, but her frail hands did not cease their constant, twisting movement. And there was no stability in her, no real steadying. She would agree with Jerry that they had, really, no assurance that Hunter had left—or escaped from?—the hospital. But, a moment later, she would be shaking again, and saying over and over, “She's gone to him. Gone to him. He'll do what he did before.”

And what he had done before was to kill Jameson Elwell. For the money Faith was to inherit from Elwell. Murder Elwell, get the money by marrying Faith, then kill Faith to make the money entirely his. “I know,” Hope Oldham said. “I
know!
”

It was not much good to tell her that she couldn't “know.” It was not much use to reason with her, although they tried it.

“Listen,” Jerry said. “Will you listen? Even if Hunter's what you say he is, if he killed Jamey so Faith would get the money, she's safe as long as she isn't married to him. Don't you see? Her death now wouldn't serve any purpose.”

He made it as calm as he could, spoke as if it were obvious. And he was told he didn't understand, that neither of them understood. They didn't understand Hunter any more than they had understood Elwell. They couldn't know what Hunter was capable of. They—

“Wait,” Pam North said, taking her turn, trying in her turn to lessen the strange tension which had built up in the pleasant living room, where they had been sitting in such relaxed peace only an hour before. “Wait—you say you didn't know about the inheritance. That Faith didn't know. Then how would Mr. Hunter—” Pam caught up with herself, and said, “Oh,” before Hope Oldham, in one of her moments of sudden reasonable calm, said that she thought that would be obvious enough for anyone.

“The professor told him,” Mrs. Oldham said. “It was all part of—of the plan. You don't understand. The old man—it was enough for him to control people, to twist them. To—have power over them.”

Which was, of course, absurd. Pam and Jerry North exchanged a glance, each reassuring the other that this, at any rate, was entirely absurd. Of course, the desire for power, with no other reason than itself, was—Of course it was absurd.

“I suppose,” Jerry said, “in Jamey's case at least, you mean—what do you mean? That he hypnotized your daughter? In that way controlled her? But—she told Pam she had never been hypnotized, and Pam was—you were convinced, weren't you?”

“Yes,” Pam said. “Only—well, there
is
that other thing. Induced amnesia.”

Jerry wished that he had not given Pam the book to read. He somewhat, indeed, wished he had never published Jameson Elwell's book.

“Of course he did,” Hope Oldham said. “Now you're beginning—there are evil things, Mrs. North. We try not to believe in them, but there
are
evil things. Things come out of darkness.”

It did, Pam thought, seem a little darker than usual in the living room. And of course Mrs. Oldham was only an hysterical woman. Of course there was nothing to any of this. She must keep telling herself.

“Hypnotized her,” Mrs. Oldham said. “Made her—feel what he wanted her to feel. Believe what he wanted her to believe. Turned her against Arnold, against me. If she had been herself, do you think—could anybody think—she wouldn't have realized how fine Arnold Ames is? How—how common, how
low
Hunter is? That with Hunter she would be—throwing everything away?”

“You believed this all the time?” Jerry asked. “Were sure this—this influencing of your daughter—was going on? And—all the time that Hunter had killed Jamey?”

She had not said that. She did not pretend that. It was only when she herself heard of the money Elwell had left Faith that she saw the whole thing clearly. “Then,” she said, “I knew. It was like a light going on. And now—where
is
she? What is he—”

“Wait,” Pam said, “if you feel this way, why don't we call the police? They'll find her—probably they're looking for Mr. Hunter now—and if they know about her—”

And Hope Oldham, her hands twisting again, her voice shrill, said, “No, no,
no!”,
each time with greater emphasis, and held her twisting hands up as if to push away some physical threat. Which didn't make any sense at all.

“I don't—” Pam began, but Jerry interrupted. He spoke quietly again, slowly. He said that Mrs. Oldham had forgotten one thing—left one thing out. Hunter himself had been shot; shot from behind, wounded. He could not, from what Jerry knew of it, have shot himself. Of course, he supposed it could be a coincidence but—

“Well,” Jerry said, “I don't believe it. I think it was part of—of the rest of it. And that means there was somebody else—somebody else with a gun—and—”

“
Don't
,” Hope Oldham said, and her face contorted. “Don't you see that, either? And you ask why I don't go to the police. How can I?”

Jerry shook his head. But Pam said, her voice steady, but a little higher than it usually was, “You mean you think your daughter shot Mr. Hunter? Carefully, so as not to hurt him badly. So—so that we, and the police too, would think what Jerry just said? That the fact Mr. Hunter was shot at means he wasn't the one who killed Jamey?”

“Why,” Hope Oldham said, and was in that instant as calm as either of the Norths—possibly calmer. “Why, of
course.
He hypnotized her and made her do it—gave her the gun to do it with. To clear himself. And
make her guilty too.
Because, it would be a crime to shoot anybody, even a man like that and—it would be, wouldn't it, even if she weren't really responsible? Didn't really know what she was doing?”