Murder Is Suggested (7 page)

“Doctors are stuffy,” Mullins told Bill Weigand. “Wasted ten minutes getting around to it. No, he didn't know Elwell had anything seriously wrong with him. Matter of fact, he hadn't seen Elwell for some three years and then it was about nothing much, and Elwell seemed O.K.”

“What was it then?”

Not that it mattered.

“Cat bit him,” Mullins said. “You fool around with cats—Minor infection. Doc treated it.”

It didn't matter.

“People ought to leave cats alone,” Mullins said. “Speaking of which—did you know Jerry North published the professor's last book?”

“Yes,” Bill said and to that, after a considerable pause, Mullins said, “Oh,” in a certain way. “Not,” he added, “that they're not nice people, Loot. Only—”

“This doctor wouldn't know whether Elwell had been to see another man?”

“No. I asked him. He said he doubted it, but it was up to anybody what doctor he went to.”

Mullins had read from the preliminary autopsy report—read words over which he had stumbled slightly. Would Elwell necessarily have known that he was ill, or how ill he was? Not necessarily; in fact, probably not. In another few months—

“The accident?”

“Somebody,” Mullins said, “ought to do something about the Merritt Parkway.”

It was a statement with which Bill Weigand did not disagree. But it was not clear that, in the violent death of Elizabeth Elwell, twenty-four years and two months old when her life ended during the early morning of April twenty-sixth, the inadequacies of the Merritt had been much involved.

A Jaguar, being driven toward New York at around eighty, had gone out of control, crossed the center strip, crashed into a sedan headed east. A man and a woman, driving home to Norwalk after the theater in New York, and an after-theater supper, had been killed in the sedan. Elizabeth Elwell had been killed in the Jaguar—more exactly, had been killed as she was thrown from it to unrelenting pavement. Her fiancé, one Rosco Finch, in the Jaguar beside her, had been only slightly injured.

Finch and the girl had been driving back to New York after a party in Westport.

“Finch drunk?”

“It doesn't matter,” Mullins said. “Finch wasn't driving. The girl was driving. She had a few drinks but not enough to make her drunk. If she had normal resistance. Concentration in the blood”—Mullins consulted notes—“a little less than a tenth of a per cent. Just lost control.”

It had not been on a curve, but on a straightaway. It had, however, happened just as the Jaguar came over the top of a Merritt Parkway hill. Something might, of course, have showed up ahead—a car moving slowly in the fast lane, for example. The Jaguar's brakes had gone on just before it left the pavement and ploughed into the grass of the center strip. Finch didn't remember seeing anything, but he wasn't watching the road with much attention. In fact, he thought he had been dozing.

“Her car?”

It had been Finch's car.

“But she was driving?”

“That's what he says.” Mullins looked at Bill Weigand and raised his eyebrows.

“Nothing,” Bill said. “Oh, it's usually the passenger who gets thrown out. But not always.”

“He was, apparently,” Mullins said. “First. Landed on the grass. It was soft, the way it is in spring. You think it ties in?”

It didn't seem to.

They drove from Twentieth Street north to Forty-fourth, and across to the Harvard Club. Mr. Foster Elwell was waiting for them in the lounge. The lounge had an unawakened air.

Foster Elwell was a big man; an athlete who had softened with the years. There had, obviously, been a good many years—at a guess, Foster Elwell was several years older than his brother had been. He had a ruddy face and, probably, a blood pressure. He got out of a deep chair with the quickness of a man who rejected physical defeat. (Which conceivably, Bill thought, was not too good for him.)

He looked from Bill to Mullins and back to Bill, and his eyes questioned.

“No,” Bill said. “We don't know yet, Mr. Elwell.”

“It's a knockout,” Foster Elwell said. “I don't mind telling you it's a knockout. A thing like this. To happen to Jamey.” He shook his head. “
Jamey
,” he repeated. “Of all the people in the world.”

Which was almost always said; which was almost always poignant, as it was now. Somebody else—somebody far away—somebody read about in the newspapers. Such distant things could be believed.

“Any way I can help. Any damn way at all,” Foster Elwell said. “Get my hands on the son of a bitch who'd do a thing like that.”

“We'll get him,” Bill promised, and hoped they would. They almost always did. Of course, there had been another Elwell and they hadn't. Which was a coincidence without meaning. Which had better be.

“I'll do anything I can,” Foster Elwell said. “I don't know what it'll be. My brother and I—we were close enough, but we didn't see each other a lot. Know what I mean? Once a month, maybe—once every six weeks. Last time was—” He thought. “Labor Day,” he said. “He came out to the place.”

He knew of no enemies his brother might have had, of no circumstance in his brother's life which might have led to this. Everybody liked Jamey; he couldn't imagine anybody not liking Jamey. And the things Jamey did for people—

“Right now,” he said, “my son Jimmy's in college because—” He stopped, as if he had started something he preferred not to finish. “All right,” he said, “I'm retired. We've got just about enough to live on decently. I don't say we wouldn't have put Jimmy—he's our youngest—through college somehow, but all the same—And he helped with Janet. She's married now. Fine young man but they're out in Scranton and—”

He stopped.

“Getting along,” he said. “Have to expect it, I suppose. Fact is, this whole thing's got me—fuzzy. Having a cocktail, Grace and I were, just like any evening and the telephone rings and—I tell you, captain, it's a knockout. I know I sound like a meandering old fool. But—”

It was natural, Bill said, and that Elwell was not meandering. And what Elwell said about his brother echoed what everybody said.

“He must,” Bill said, “have been a fine man.”

“The best.”

“He had a good deal of money?”

“Yes. Funny thing, isn't it? Here he was, a professor—supposed not to know about things like that. And here I am—or was—a broker. Supposed to know a lot. And he starts with his part of what dad left us and everything he invested in—wow! And I start with the same amount and—well, there you are. Doesn't make much sense, but there you are.”

“Do you happen to know how he left his money? We'll check up on that, of course, but if you happen to know?”

“Yes,” Elwell said. “Told me that last time I saw him. Split four ways—my kids, there's Foster and Jimmy and Janet, and this daughter of his old friend. Girl named—” He hesitated.

“Faith Oldham?”

“That's it. Faith Oldham. All to the younger generation. A great believer in the younger generation. Always doing something to help kids. And now some son of a bitch—”

It was evident, then, that something had occurred to the big man.

“Hey,” he said, and leaned forward in his chair. “What the hell're you getting at? About how he left his money? Sounds to me as if you—”

Bill shook his head.

“Not getting at anything,” Bill said. “One of the things we always have to find out about. You can understand that, Mr. Elwell. A routine thing.”

“Better be,” Elwell said, but then leaned back. “Sure,” he said. “I realize you have to ask about it.”

About those who stand to profit, directly or indirectly. It was as good a time as any other, and Foster Elwell wouldn't like it. Foster Elwell didn't like it; said, “Now what the hell business is that—” and stopped. He said, O.K., he hadn't spent all the previous day in Westport. He had driven in to New York to have lunch with a friend—“on business, I've still got a little business”—and back after lunch. He had lunched in midtown; he was not sure what time he had started to drive back, but it must have been around three, because he had got home between four-thirty and five. It had been about five-thirty, or a little later, that the telephone had rung, and it had been the city police to tell him. And if Weigand wanted to check up on him, he could ask the man he had lunched with and the man was—

Mullins jotted down the name of the man, as he had jotted down a number of things.

“Mr. Elwell,” Bill said, “did you know your brother was a sick man? A very sich man?”

Elwell shook his head. He said, “How sick?”

“He would have lived six months,” Bill said. “Perhaps a year.”

Elwell said, “Jesus,” and then, “What a lousy break.” And then, “I suppose it showed up in the autopsy?”

“Right,” Bill said. “You didn't know about it? He never said anything about it?”

“No,” Foster Elwell said, and spoke in a dull voice. “Last time I saw him, he looked fine. Said he felt fine. And all the time—” He shook his head and there was uneasiness in his face, the shadow of fear. You get along and it comes closer; each new example brings it closer still.

“Did he know about it?” Foster said, and Bill Weigand said that Professor Elwell might have known and might not have known; that the assistant medical examiner said there might, as yet, have been no symptoms.

“Maybe he was lucky,” Elwell said. “Maybe it was a break, in a way. But—it hasn't anything to do with what happened, has it?”

“Not that I can see,” Bill said. “Except the obvious—if whoever killed him had known how short a time he had to live the killer might have waited. But that's only a guess, of course.”

The big man nodded slowly, as one does to note the obvious. There was a considerable pause and, since Bill thought Foster Elwell might be about to speak, Bill did not break it.

“Look,” Elwell said, “I said that as far as I knew everybody liked Jamey. That I couldn't imagine anyone not liking him.”

“Yes,” Bill said.

“There's one man who maybe didn't like him much,” Elwell said. “You know about Liz?”

“His daughter? Yes. Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth,” Elwell said. “Everybody called her Liz. My time they'd have called her Beth, maybe Betty. Nobody thought Liz was pretty enough. Shows how we—” He brought himself back; shook his head dolefully at this new evidence of his tendency to meander. “This man she was going to marry,” he said. “Rosco Finch. Hell of a name, ain't it? Says he wasn't driving when it happened. Jamey thought he was. Matter of fact, Jamey's been trying to prove he was. Hired some detective fellows.”

Bill said that that was interesting—damn interesting. And what had made Jameson Elwell think that?

“Maybe,” Jameson Elwell's brother said, “mostly because he wanted to. He realized that himself. On the other hand, there are tricks about driving a Jag. Person who's used to—oh, say a Buick. A Cadillac—has to learn the tricks. As far as Jamey knew, Liz hadn't learned them.”

“But,” Bill said, “would he know?”

There was that. Jameson Elwell had realized there was that. On the other hand, he and his daughter had been good friends; usually, when something new interested her, she talked about it to him. And, she was interested in cars. And—she hadn't talked about Jaguars.

It was, certainly, anything but conclusive. Foster Elwell realized that; his brother had realized that.

“Mostly, I guess,” Foster Elwell said, “it was just a hunch of Jamey's. Partly because he didn't want to think his daughter had killed two people, and herself, by being—irresponsible. But there was more than that—I'll give Jamey that, and that he knew about the way minds work. His job, you know.”

Bill knew. He said, “Yes.”

“Ordinary person,” Elwell said, “tells you somebody else is a certain kind of person, and you say to yourself, ‘That's just what he thinks.' Know what I mean? Jamey said it and, damn it all, you believed him. At the bottom, I suppose, he was just sure that his daughter wouldn't drink too much if she was going to drive, and wouldn't drive too fast for conditions and wouldn't lose her nerve. Tell you how he put it. He said she was ‘emotionally' a good driver. And that drivers like that don't go over the top of a hill at eighty, particularly at night.”

“Miss Elwell hadn't been drinking,” Bill said. “At least, she had been, but not enough to matter. Unless she was particularly susceptible.”

“Not Liz,” Elwell said. “Show me one of them is, nowadays. I don't say she ever drank much. But now and then—hell, now and then everybody has a few, if they're normal. Liz never showed anything. Know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Bill said. “But—it isn't much to go on, Mr. Elwell. Your brother was fond of his daughter, probably. Didn't like having to remember—well, that she was irresponsible. Had killed a couple of innocent people.”

“Sure,” Elwell said. “I said that. Also—he realized that himself. Wasn't much he didn't realize. Of course—the car was this fellow Finch's. Mostly a man owns one of those jobs, he likes to drive it himself. Why he owns it, as much as anything. Also, he was driving when they left that evening, Jamey said. He looked down from upstairs and watched them drive off, and Finch was driving. Doesn't prove anything about who drove later on. I'll give you that. Look—I don't suppose there's anything to this. Only—put Finch on the spot a bit if Jamey was right, and could prove it. Wouldn't it? Lose his license, for one thing.”

“More than that,” Bill said. “Possibly more than that, anyway. Might be vehicular homicide, if it looked bad enough. Did Finch know your brother was having the thing investigated?”