Murder Is Suggested (8 page)

“Hell,” Elwell said, “
I
don't know, captain. If these detective fellows went around to Finch and began asking him questions, he'd know somebody was interested. Maybe they'd tell you who. I don't know. Maybe—you say it might be homicide?”

“Vehicular,” Bill said. “Yes, they might be that rough on him. And certainly he would lose his driver's license for a long time. You happen to know what he does for a living? I mean, if he's a salesman, travels by car—”

“He's a golf pro,” Elwell said. “Fairly big time. Don't you play golf, captain?”

“No.”

“If you did, you'd have heard of Finch,” Elwell told him. “Tournament player. Won quite a few. I suppose he drives from tournament to tournament. Most of them do. Be a bit of a problem if he couldn't use a car, I suppose. So if he thought Jamey—but hell, you get what I'm driving at. Long way ahead of me, probably.”

Bill was at least up with him. It was tenuous. It was also interesting. Did Elwell know what firm of private detectives his brother had employed?

Elwell didn't. Elwell had, Bill thought, told them all he did know—this subject to a detective's reservations. (“A good detective is always more or less suspicious and very inquisitive.”—
Manual of Procedure, Police Department of the City of New York
.) Bill thanked Foster Elwell for his help, repeated expressions of sympathy, said they would get in touch with him if it appeared he might help further; left him in the lounge and went to a telephone booth. Mullins stood outside the partly open door of the booth.

Would precinct send a man to ask—Bill reached for Mullins's proffered notebook and read a name from it—if he had lunched with Foster Elwell the day before, and, if he had, at what time he and Elwell had parted? And, how far had they got through the papers in Jameson Elwell's office? Through, for example, his recent checkbooks?

They had. Was anything of interest? Did the name of any payee jump at them?

A few. Checks to Hunter, for example. Checks to one James Elwell. In both cases, these seemed to represent regular modest payments. “Like they were working for him,” the precinct man said. And one other payee had aroused some interest—Investigators, Inc. Bill knew? Pretty good size agency; supposed to be pretty much on the up and up.

Bill knew. The offices of Investigators, Inc., were in midtown. They might, Bill told Mullins, as well stop by there on their way elsewhere. “Sure,” Mullins said, “only if there was anything like that the State cops would of tumbled to it.” He paused. “You'd think,” he added. He considered further. “Only it would be sorta hard to check out,” he said.

Miles Flanagan of Investigators, Inc., said they would be glad to do anything they could that would help the police, as weren't they always? As for example?

Bill gave him the example.

Flanagan pulled his lower lip over his upper, indicating judicial contemplation. He said, yes, he had read about the professor. He said that under the circumstances, without prejudice, because normally they didn't give the names of clients—

“Come off it,” Bill Weigand said and Flanagan looked a little hurt, and said he was getting to it as fast as he could. But he did get there faster.

Professor Jameson Elwell had employed them to find out what they could about the accident—specifically, to unearth any evidence they could that Finch, not the girl, had been driving.

“Look,” Flanagan said, although Weigand had said nothing, “I told him it was cold—this was three-four months after it happened—and why had he waited so long? He said he realized it was late, and that I had an interesting psychological point about his delay—and I'll be damned if he didn't sound as if the point
did
interest him. I said we couldn't promise anything, and he said he realized that. I said the chances were he was just throwing his money away—”

“I'm sure you were highly ethical,” Bill Weigand said. “So—you took the case. And, as you expected, it was cold and you didn't get anything. Right?”

“For God's sake, captain,” Flanagan said. “You're in the business. You know how the cookie crumbles. If you think we didn't work on it—but hell. The girl dead. The people they ran into dead. Nobody at the party they'd been at could remember which of them was driving. The girl got thrown out, but so did Finch.”

“You didn't get anything?”

“Nothing to pin anything on. Finch had been drinking a good bit. The girl hadn't. He thought pretty well of himself as a driver and he hadn't had the Jag long. Sort of a new toy, which makes you wonder. But he says—”

“You did go to him?”

“Look,” Flanagan said. “I told you we worked on it. The professor didn't say anything about not going to Finch. Sure we went to him.”

“As insurance investigators, I suppose?”

“Well—” Flanagan said. “It could be he thought that. Only—the insurance boys had already been around. Nothing we could do about that. So, it could be he thought somebody else was nosing around about it. Since he seems to be a pretty bright boy. You play golf, captain?”

“No.”

“Ought to. It's a great game.”

“I'm sure,” Bill said. “He said it was the girl driving, of course?”

“Sure. Said just before they started out he decided maybe he'd had one more than he needed and asked her if she'd take over. If you drink, don't drive. All very—law abiding. Says he was half asleep when it happened and doesn't know how it happened, except maybe she dozed off too. Says she was a good driver, but not used to a Jag, and maybe that was it. Says he plain doesn't know. Acts all broken up about it. I'll give him that.”

“Or—scared?”

Flanagan pulled his lower lip again over his upper lip.

“Have it your own way, captain,” he said. “Oh—I read you. Have it your own way.”

“You reported this to the professor?”

“Sure—he was paying us. I said we were sorry and advised him not to waste any more money. Told him I didn't think we'd ever get anything that would stand up. And—”

He paused.

“That's all,” he said.

“Except one thing,” Bill said. “You were on this yourself?” Flanagan nodded. “You've been around,” Bill said. “What did you think yourself?”

“Off the record?”

“Off the record.”

“Because I wouldn't want to slander anybody.”

“Because you wouldn't want to slander anybody.”

“O.K.,” Flanagan said. “I think he was lying like hell, captain. I think he was driving and had had one too many and—well, could be he dozed off. And when he found out the girl was dead and he wasn't, and that nothing could hurt her more than she was hurt—well. You can see what he might have done, can't you?”

“Yes,” Bill said.

“Without liking it,” Flanagan said. “I don't say it makes him the All-American boy.”

“No,” Bill said. “You didn't tell him who was hiring you?” Flanagan looked hurt, and shook his head. “But he might have guessed?”

“Now how the hell would I know about that?” Flanagan said. He looked at Bill Weigand. He had surprisingly shrewd eyes. “I said he seems pretty bright,” Flanagan said. “Quite a bright boy, I'd say he is.” He paused again. “Might annoy him, mightn't it?” he said. “Having his word doubted and all that?”

5

Sergeant Mullins would seek out Rosco Finch and ask him whether he had killed Professor Elwell because it annoyed him to have his word doubted—and because the professor might have got him put in jail, which would have interfered with his golf. “Man would get rusty in five-ten years,” Mullins pointed out. “And seems like that's the way he makes his living.”

Bill agreed a man might get very rusty in five-ten years; perhaps so rusty he might have to find other employment.

“Funny name,” Mullins said and then, “I used to play it when I was a kid.”

Bill had been about to start the Buick's engine. He took his foot off the accelerator.

“Golf?” he said. It seemed, somehow, a little unlike Mullins, but one could never tell.

“Hell no, Loot,” Mullins said. “Me and golf? Finch.”

“Finch?”

“Sure. Card game. A lot of kids play it. Did anyway when I was a kid.”

Bill Weigand seined his mind. Something darted through it, slippery and elusive. Something of no conceivable importance, and for that reason the more annoying.

Finch? Rosco Finch? A game named Finch? Not, surely, a game named Rosco. Mullins had said—

“
Flinch!
” Bill said, the slippery fish netted. “That's what you played, sergeant.”

“In Brooklyn,” Mullins said, and spoke with dignity. “In Brooklyn it was finch.”

Mullins lifted the hand of authority, and a cab stopped. His hand on the door handle, Mullins relented.

“In Manhattan,” he said, “it could have been flinch.” He got into the cab.

Bill Weigand drove uptown. He parked on the sloping street in front of the two houses of the late Jameson Elwell. He went down the two steps from sidewalk to the front door of the house Faith Oldham lived in with her mother. A small sign beside the door said “No Peddlers.” He rang the bell and, after some time, the door opened.

It was opened by a slight woman in a print dress, who at first seemed to be a very young woman and then, in almost the same moment of observation, did not. She was a woman in, at a guess, her late fifties; perhaps even in her sixties. She had very brown hair—too brown hair. A dye job by some beauty shop around the corner, Bill guessed; not a job one of the big shops would have countenanced. The print dress too youthful, although there was nothing the matter with the figure it covered. The eyes, which he looked down into—since they looked frostily up at him—were blue, coldly blue.

“Can't you read, young man?” the young-old woman asked him. Her voice was a little thin. She pointed at the enameled sign which said “No Peddlers.”

“I'm not selling anything, Mrs. Oldham,” Bill said, thinking he took no chance. The blueness of eyes was the same. But there was no coldness in Faith Oldham's eyes. Not, certainly, when she thought of “Uncle Jamey.” Not, for that matter, when she looked at Carl Hunter.

“I'm a police officer, Mrs. Oldham,” Bill said. “Investigating Professor Elwell's death. I wonder if you could give me a few minutes? You and your daughter, if she's here?”

“At school,” Mrs. Hope Oldham said. “But there's nothing we can tell you.”

“Probably not,” Bill said. “My name's Weigand, by the way. Captain Weigand. We have to ask a lot of useless questions, I'm afraid.”

“I don't see—” Mrs. Oldham said, but then, “All right, come in if you have to. But it can't be too long, because I was just going out.”

She led him up a flight of stairs, opened a door and went into a living room at the front of the house. She sat down in a chair by one of the two tall windows—a chair from which she could look out the window. Something in her movements made Weigand believe that the chair she had gone to was “her” chair; that she sat in it a good deal, and looked out the window a good deal.

“All right,” she said. “What do you want to know, captain? That you think I or my daughter could tell you?”

It was possible, Bill told her, and sat down to face her, although without invitation—it was possible that Professor Elwell's assailant could have come through this house, gained access from it to the laboratory on the top floor, gone from there to the office. It was not certain; they had to check everything.

“Through a locked door?” Mrs. Oldham said.

There are keys to unlock doors. She had one to the front door; so, presumably, did her daughter. Her daughter had a key also to the laboratory.

He saw new frost in the blue eyes. He kept talking. Keys sometimes get misplaced; it is a matter of minutes only to cut new keys with the old available; almost any hardware store can do it in minutes.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I'm sure I've never misplaced, as you put it, my door key. As to the door upstairs, I wasn't honored. Not I. You'll have to ask Faith about that. And she isn't here.”

“Assuming somebody had the necessary keys,” Bill said, “could he come through the house without you or your daughter hearing him, or seeing him?”

That was, she told him, a foolish question. It depended on where she and her daughter were in the house, or whether they were in it at all. If they were in one of the rear rooms, say, with the doors closed—of course someone could go up, and come down for that matter, unseen and unheard.

“But if you mean yesterday,” Mrs. Oldham said, “and I suppose you do—neither of us was here when it happened.
If
it happened the way you told my daughter. She went off somewhere at a little before three and I went a few minutes later.
And
locked the door. Went out to do the errands.
She
never has time for errands.”

Bill nodded his head. He said he had supposed that to be the way of it, since neither of them had heard the shot, which they could hardly have helped doing if they were in the house.

“Well,” she said, “as to that. The laboratory—what he called the laboratory, and I don't know why, I'm sure—is soundproofed. Anyway, that's what Faith tells me. So how can you be sure we'd have heard the shot, especially in the other house?”

That was very true, Bill told her, in a tone which complimented. They would have to make some tests. (He supposed that, eventually, they would. But Elwell had been shot while he sat close to a window. Sound passes readily through window glass.)

On another subject—he had heard that Elwell and her late husband had been great friends. Presumably, then, she had herself known Elwell at least fairly well. Could she—

“You see, Mrs. Oldham,” Bill said, “one of the things we try to do is to find out everything we can about the victim in a case like this. Sometimes very small things prove significant.”