Murder Is Suggested (9 page)

“My late husband,” Mrs. Oldham said, “thought Elwell was a great friend of his. Thought so until the day he died, the poor, trusting man.”

Which was entirely unexpected. Bill let surprise show on his face.

“Oh,” she said, “I know what they've been telling you. Don't think I don't. Maybe a lot of people were taken in. Maybe they wanted to be, too. A man makes a lot of money,
however
he makes it, and you'll find plenty of people to say what a great man he is.”

“That's true, of course,” Bill Weigand said. “But everybody I've talked to so far seems to have had—” he hesitated momentarily—“very high regard for Professor Elwell.”

“I don't doubt it,” she said. “
People!
” Her tone dismissed “people.” “I suppose you've heard what a kind, generous man he was to let the widow and daughter of his dear old friend live in this house. Without paying rent?”

“Well—”

“Of course you have. Even my own daughter says things like that. Believes them, for all I know. If it was anything, it was conscience. C-o-n-s-c-i-e-n-c-e. Only, maybe it was something else.”

“Conscience?”

“A lot of people could tell you,” she said. “Oh—I suppose they won't. Let sleeping dogs lie. Don't bring up unpleasant things, especially about such a good, kind man who has so much money. However he made it.”

“I understood,” Bill said, “that he made it in the stock market.”

“Of course he did,” Mrs. Oldham said. “Have you got a cigarette, young man?” He had; he gave her a cigarette, and lighted it. “And based everything he did on theories my late husband worked out. Did you think Jameson Elwell was bright enough to do it on his own?”

“Well,” Bill said. “Yes, I did, Mrs. Oldham.”

“You see?” she said. “Even now—the—the
image.
My late husband often used the word about Professor Elwell.”

“Did he? And these theories—about stock market trends, I suppose. Your husband was interested in that sort of thing?”

“As a hobby,” she said. “An intellectual exercise. Child's play to a mind like his—a truly great mind.”

“But I gather,” Bill said, “that he didn't himself play the market. That is—”

“Make money out of it, you mean?” she said. “Certainly not. He considered it merely a form of gambling, of course. Was perfectly content to see his old friend”—there was a certain inflection on the word “friend,” as there had been earlier—“make whatever he could by stealing somebody else's ideas. Of course that was before—but I suppose you're one of those speak-no-ill-of-the-dead people?”

“I could hardly be,” Bill said. “Not in my trade, Mrs. Oldham. Before what?”

“All right,” she said. “This kind, wonderful Professor Elwell of yours didn't stop with that. That my late husband wouldn't have minded. Ideas—that was different. Captain—
half the ideas in Professor Elwell's books were stolen
—yes,
stolen
—from my late husband. And—everybody knows it, captain. You just make them admit it. That's all you have to do.”

“You do,” he said, “put the professor in quite a different light, Mrs. Oldham.”

“High time somebody did,” she said.

“Your daughter didn't feel this way.”

“My daughter,” she said. “The poor innocent child. Just a child, captain—a trusting child. But thank heaven Arnold will be around to protect her when I'm gone.”

It occurred to Bill Weigand that he had seldom seen a person who looked less on the verge of going. He did not mention this. He said, “Arnold?”

“Arnold Ames,” she said. “The man she's going to marry, of course. One of
the
Ameses, fortunately. And such a dear boy.”

“Ames?” Bill repeated. “I thought she and young Hunter—”

“
Carl Hunter?
” she said. “What ever put that idea in your head? Oh—she sees him now and then, of course. And she's sorry for him, probably. But as for anything more—
really,
captain.”

Bill said he must have been wrong.

“About a good many things, I wouldn't wonder,” she said.

“It looks that way,” he said. “I must say your daughter—”

“Oh,” she said, “Jameson Elwell could fool people—particularly young, inexperienced people. I told you that just now. Softsoaping—that's what they call it nowadays, I understand.”

She had given him a good deal to think about, Bill told her, standing up. A good deal to look into. He had merely hoped to find out if, in the house, the “coast had been clear” the day before. It was interesting to find out it had, with both her and her daughter out. He had found out so much more.

“I suppose,” she said, “I did straighten you out about some things. Just remember—a lot of people know what the professor was really like. You'll find out if you ask them.”

Bill said he would ask them. He said he could find his own way out. He paused at the door and turned back.

“By the way,” he said. “One thing I almost forgot. Was your daughter ever hypnotized by Professor Elwell?”

She looked at him in apparent astonishment.

“Never!” she said. “Hypnotism! I wouldn't have permitted it. Not in a thousand years. That awful,
evil,
business!”

He thanked her again and went out and closed the door behind him. It was a heavy door; the house belonged to an era when men built heavily. Rooms on this floor, and on the ground floor, could be closed off from the stair hall by four such heavy doors, and probably usually were. So—anyone who took the trouble to walk quietly could climb two flights of stairs and nobody the wiser, whether anybody was in the house or not.

Bill climbed the second flight and used the key he had taken from Faith Oldham and let himself into the laboratory. It was empty. He crossed the room, thinking about keys. Elwell would, of course, have had a key to the front door of the house the Oldhams lived in, since it was his house. If Elwell, then quite possibly his daughter. If his daughter, then quite possibly the man she had been going to marry, Rosco Finch. (Bill resisted the temptation to think of him as “Flinch.”) It was worth bearing in mind, for what it was worth.

Bill went through the “closet” into the office, which was not empty. Two men, one at the desk and the other at the typewriter table, were going through papers. But of them looked at Weigand sharply, and relaxed, and he said, “Hi. Getting places?”

They looked at each other. “Nothing that sticks out much,” the man at the desk said. “You want to—”

“Not now,” Bill said.

He picked up the telephone on the desk and called his office. Mullins had located Rosco Finch at his apartment near Washington Square and made an appointment with him and gone to keep it. Mr. Gerald North had called, and wanted the captain to call back when he had the chance, but had added that it was nothing pressing. Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley wanted to be filled in. “Reporters,” Sergeant Stein, holding down the desk, reported succinctly.

“You didn't,” Bill said, “happen to mention that Jerry North had called?”

“Good God no,” Stein said. “You think I'd do a thing like that?”

“No,” Bill said. “Anything else?”

“They threw the book at Puggy Wormser,” Stein said. “Hit him with it, too.”

“Good,” Bill said, not really caring much. “I'm going up to Dyckman. Have another talk with a Professor Wahmsley, if he's free. Tell Arty we're being eager beavers.”

He replaced the handpiece. He took it up again, drew a telephone number out of his mind, where he had filed it the day before, dialed it, asked for Professor Eugene Wahmsley, was asked politely to wait a moment, got “Miss Spencer speaking” and asked again for Wahmsley, heard “Surely” and then heard “Wahmsley,” in a crisp voice.

“Sure,” Professor Wahmsley said. “About half an hour'll do O.K., captain.”

Sergeant Aloysius Mullins was sorry he couldn't tell Rosco Finch what Investigators, Inc., was supposed to be up to.

“For all I know, Mr. Flinch,” Mullins said. “They haven't been up to anything. But we get this squeal—this complaint. So they tell me, see what you can find out. They're licensed, you know. We ride herd, in a way of speaking.”

“Finch, not Flinch.”

“Sure,” Mullins said. “They did send a man around to see you about—it was about this accident last spring, wasn't it, Mr. Flinch? None of our business, and anyway that's all cleaned up. Hate to bring it up again, Mr. Flinch.”

“
Finch.
Yes. Anyway, a man who said his name was Flanagan, said he worked for something called Investigators, Inc., came around. Asked a lot of fool questions about—about me and—Liz.” He hesitated, Mullins noticed, on the girl's name. That was understandable enough. A man would.

“What we want to know,” Mullins said, “did Flanagan pretend he was representing an insurance company? That's the sort of thing we don't like.”

Mullins hoped Flinch wouldn't ask why they didn't like it. Since “they” could hardly care less.

“Why?” Finch said. “Why do you people care one way or the other?”

“Misrepresentation,” Mullins said, giving each syllable the full treatment—tolling the word. Spoken so, it sounded somewhat like a new type of felony.

“Oh,” Finch said. “Yes, Flanagan did give me that impression. I don't know that he actually said it straight out.”

“Slippery customers,” Mullins said, with the air of a man who hates slippery customers. “Wanted to know if you were sure you weren't the one driving the car, I shouldn't wonder.”

“That was all settled a long time ago,” Finch said. “If you know anything about the accident, you know that.”

“Sure,” Mullins said. “We know it. The Connecticut police know it. Which makes us wonder—”

Rosco Finch was a tall, tanned man in his early thirties—a man with sun-bleached hair; a man with a well-ordered face and a somewhat small mouth. A good-looking man, all the same. So far as Mullins could determine, a man unperturbed. A late sleeper, apparently; he wore a robe over pajamas.

“—what these customers were up to,” Mullins said. “You must have wondered yourself, Mr. Flinch. Or did you believe Flanagan was from the insurance company?”

“I do wish,” Finch said, “you'd manage—” He shrugged, giving it up. “O.K.” he said. “My insurance company, the insurance company these other people had—” He stopped. “I keep trying to forget it,” Finch said. “The way—the way everything looked.”

“Sure,” Mullins said. “I know how you feel, Mr. Flinch. People had already been around from the insurance company so you couldn't help feeling it was a bit fishy?”

“Well,” Finch said, “I guess I did. More after he'd gone than while he was here. You know how you begin to wonder about things?”

Mullins nodded his head.

“But,” Finch said, “it didn't really matter a damn. I'd told it often enough and—there wasn't anything I was trying to hide. It was all in the papers, anyway. Liz was Professor Elwell's daughter—and well, people who follow golf—hell, you know how it is.”

“Sure,” Mullins said. “One of the things we're trying to find out, Mr. Flinch—who were they representing? Or claim to be representing? We've checked back with both insurance companies and no soap.”

“O.K.,” Finch said. “I can't say I'm surprised. But—what were they up to then, sergeant?”

“What we're trying to find out,” Mullins told him. “Figured you might—well, when you thought it over—might be able to come up with something'd give us a lead. You can't think of anybody'd be stirring things up again. Somebody with a grudge against you, maybe?”

“Grudge against me?”

“Just guessing,” Mullins said. “Could be there'd be an angle there. Somebody trying to make out you were driving, when all the time it was the girl. Man like you, competing for these prizes. Quite big prizes, aren't they?”

“Some of them are,” Finch said. “I don't get what you're driving at.”

“Somebody you've beat out of a prize,” Mullins said. “Or maybe would some time. I mean—you're pretty good at this golf, they tell me. Maybe somebody who ain't so good—did you think of that at all, Mr. Flinch?”

“That's preposterous,” Finch said.

About which, Mullins thought, he's certainly right enough. Mullins managed, however, to look doubtful. He said, “Well—”

“I wouldn't waste time on that, sergeant.”

Mullins said, “Well—” again; a man half convinced. He looked worried.

“All the same,” he said, “people like Flanagan don't waste time unless there's money in it. Of course, there's the shakedown. Or, he could have thought there was. Get something on you—be able to make it look as if you had been driving the car. He might think you'd pay up to keep it quiet. Vehicular homicide and all. But then, he'd have been back, wouldn't he? And he wasn't?”

Mullins shook his head, a man bemused.

“There wasn't any suggestion of that,” Finch said. “Listen—vehicular homicide?”

“Could be,” Mullins said. “Connecticut's pretty tough, Mr. Flinch. You've got a New York license, I suppose. But still—”

“As a mater of fact,” Finch said, “I've got a Connecticut license. Do some teaching at a club up there when I'm not on the circuit. But hell—
I wasn't driving
.”

“Sure you weren't,” Mullins said. “That's what makes it so screwy. You haven't any notion what this customer Flanagan was after? Any at all?”

Finch shook his head. He said he was sorry he wasn't being more helpful—

“Hold it a minute,” Mullins said. “Here's another angle—suppose somebody wanted to prove this girl—this Miss Elwell—
wasn't
driving. See what I mean? Clear her name. And maybe there'd be more to it than that. Some angle we don't know about.”