Murder within Murder (26 page)

He smiled at them, a sad smile which pointedly accepted the transitory nature of human life.

“Mrs. Burt?” Jerry said to Bill, and his voice was quick and worried. His eyes demanded information from Bill Weigand. “Was Pam right after—” he began, but Bill cut in. He shook his head, almost impatiently.

“Was a man with them?” he asked the doorman. “A middle-aged man, about average height, gray hair? Very quiet in manner?”

The doorman shook his head.

“Just the two of them,” he said. He thought about it. “There was a man like that around,” he said. “But he went out later—several minutes later. He got a taxicab.”

Bill Weigand turned to Jerry and his expression was tentatively reassuring.

“Burt,” he said. “As long as he wasn't with them—” His tone finished it. Jerry looked at him and said he'd be damned.

“For Burt,” Weigand said, “read Purdy. Who used sodium fluoride on his wife. Who wasn't killed in a plane accident after all. Or so Mullins says.”

“How—?” Jerry said, and then moved after Weigand, who was on his way. Mullins answered from behind Jerry.

“Picture,” Mullins said. “Like the lieutenant says, I never forget a face. Don't you, Loot?”

Weigand was ahead of them, moving toward the police car parked at the curb. He did not answer.

“Anyway,” Mullins said, as they hurried, “that's what the Loot says. That I never forget a face. And I worked on the Purdy case.” He held the car door open for Jerry North. “A little, anyhow,” he said. “So when I saw the picture of the Burts—the one the Loot had taken—I knew the guy was Purdy.”

Weigand started the car with a jerk. He headed uptown.

“Their apartment?” Jerry said, guessing.

Weigand said, “Yes,” without turning his head. When traffic halted at the next corner, he touched the siren and they went around it.

“Apparently,” Weigand said, still not looking around, “Mrs. Burt has decided to talk. And I don't think her husband will like it.” He turned right. “Or the person she talks to,” he said. He went across the down lane of Park Avenue with his siren growling and turned north. Jerry North leaned forward in the rear seat, urging the car on.

It was very still in the Burts' living-room after the man they had been calling Willard Burt asked his question. They were three people sitting at their ease in a handsome room, furnished with dignity. Murder had never come more quietly into a room, nor behaved in better taste.

Neither woman spoke, so, after a polite pause, Mr. Burt continued.

“You see, Mrs. North,” he said, “there will be no cause to suspect me of anything. It will be a clear case of murder and suicide. You will have discovered that my dear wife killed Amelia Gipson and will have charged her with it—very incautiously, of course. But then—you are not a very cautious person, are you, Mrs. North? And she, being trapped, will shoot you and then herself. Emotional, of course—not really a logical thing to do. But then you are not very logical, are you, my dear?”

He waited for one of them to say something, but they both merely looked at him. Pam's eyes were quick and frightened, but very alert. Helen Burt's eyes seemed to see nothing.

“I will come in somewhat later and find you both,” he said. “Through the front door this time. Not by the service entrance. I will be very shocked, of course—very grieved.”

“You won't get away with it,” Pam told him. “You're—you're crazy, you know.”

Willard Burt looked a little surprised; almost hurt. He shook his head.

“You have very conventional views, my dear Mrs. North,” he told her. “Very—limited views. I am not in the least crazy. I am very logical. I have always been very logical. My dear wife is really quite wealthy, you know.”

He's willing to talk, Pam thought. He really is a little crazy; he wants to boast. If I can stall him—She looked quickly, trying not to seem to look, at the objects near her—at a metal lamp on the table by which she was sitting; at a glass ashtray.

“It really wouldn't work, Mrs. North,” the gray man said. “By the time you picked anything up, you would be dead. Don't you know that? Bullets travel so rapidly, Mrs. North.”

Pam North did not answer. She did not seem to hear.

“Miss Gipson worked it out,” she said. “You weren't so good after all. Were you?”

He smiled at that. He said it was chance. He said there was always room for chance.

“I was rather completely described before,” he said. “In the newspapers. There are some things it is quite impossible to change, of course. And Amelia had—such a suspicious mind, didn't she, Helen? She thought I was after your money first, didn't she, my dear? And then she noticed things—the way I spoke, that I was the right age, that—”

Mrs. Burt interrupted. She spoke dully.

“She said the methods were the same,” she said. “All the way from the time we met. But it was when I happened to mention to her what he'd said about the roaches that—that she told me. Of course, she never knew—not really knew. She didn't pretend to. But she wanted me to hire a detective to find out.”

The gray man looked at her and his eyebrows drew together.

“The roaches, my dear?” he said. “I don't understand.” He paused. Then—and it was an inconceivable thing to Pam, watching him—he reddened a little. He's embarrassed, Pam thought. He's actually embarrassed!

“Oh,” he said. “I remember now.”

“He saw roaches in the apartment,” Mrs. Burt said. “But nobody else saw them. And he said we'd have—”

Pam was nodding.

“Have to get some roach poison, didn't he?” she said. She looked at the gray man. “You were really a fool, weren't you?” she said. “So—childish. Making the same mistake twice.”

He was annoyed. And that he should be annoyed—angry—was mad—coldly, horribly mad. As she looked at him now, Pam felt herself begin to tremble. Because now he was lifting the little gun.

He started to speak, and instead of words there was a kind of scraping sound in his mouth; he tried to speak and his lips, his whole face contorted.

“Duh-duh-duh-d,” he said, and then stopped and tried again. “Duh-duh—” He made it. “Don't say that, you—” he said, getting the words out through his stammer. “Duh-duh-don't—”

He stopped and seemed to steady himself and then he spoke, very slowly—very carefully—without a stammer.

“I abandoned that, of course,” he said. “I had another method for my dear wife; I realized I was repeating myself. But for Amelia—there was so little time, you see.”

He was explaining it. He was telling them that he was really a very good murderer. It should have been funny. And it was horrible.

And as he explained—as he justified himself—he lowered the little gun again, although still it was ready.

“Amelia hurried me,” he said. “She shouldn't have hurried me. And the little fool who let me have her key—she tried to hurry me, too. He paused and looked at Pamela North. He spoke even more slowly than before. “I don't allow myself to be hurried, Mrs. North,” he said. “Not by anyone. You have tried to hurry me, Mrs. North.”

And now the gun came up again and, as she saw it rising, Pam threw herself from the chair and, as she dived toward the floor, clutched at the heavy glass ashtray. Her fingers touched it and writhed for a hold, and the smooth glass evaded them as if it were alive. And then she heard a gun. And then everything was black.

14

T
HURSDAY
, 8:45
P
.
M
.
AND
A
FTER

Pamela North's head ached and there was a large bump just at the hairline on her forehead. She looked at Jerry and Bill Weigand, sitting comfortably where they could look at her as she lay on the sofa, and their expressions of gentle commiseration did not appeal to her.

“All right,” she said, “I knocked myself out by diving into the leg of the table. All right. But anyway, I was there.”

“Of course, Pam,” Jerry said.

“And,” Pam said, “I was warm. Which was as much as any of us were. Except poor Amelia, of course.” She reached up and stroked the tiny cat which lay on her shoulder. “We were all stupid, weren't we, Martini?” she said. “And they were as stupid as anyone.” She considered. “More,” she said. “Anyway—I got the right family.
And
the right idea.” She paused again. “Underlying, of course,” she said.

“We were all there, finally,” Bill Weigand told her. “I don't pretend to be proud of it—of any of it. But we did get there.”

“The United States Cavalry,” Pam said. “Mullins to the rescue. With his trusty automatic.”

Bill Weigand was equable about that.

“Better late than and so forth,” he said. “Mullins did save your life. And Mullins never forgets a face. Which was what started the cavalry.”

Pam smiled, then.

“Dear Mullins,” she said. “I'm appreciative, Bill. Only my head does ache. And Mullins hit just his hand?”

“Just his hand,” Bill agreed. “And the gun more than the hand. He just needed a bit of—wrapping up. We wrapped him up. He's been talking ever since, by the way. Seems very anxious to explain himself. Feels that it was very unfair things didn't work out better. Keeps saying he got hurried toward the end, and that he can't bear to be hurried.”

“Because he stammers,” Pam said. “Don't bite ears, Martini. When he's hurried he stammers, and that embarrasses him. It's—it's a kind of phobia. Is he crazy, Bill?”

Bill Weigand shook his head. He said no crazier than most murderers. Rather businesslike, on the whole, although with a tendency to slip up. He'd fooled them nicely on the crash business, for example—he, and a lot of luck. He had had an hour's layover in Kansas City when he was trying to fly out of reach; he had found a man who, for a hundred dollars, would take his place in the plane, answering to his name and all. So that the police would keep chasing him on across the country while he turned south and holed in. Which would have confused them, even without the crash, in which the substitute was burned to death—and to unrecognizability.

“You'd think, to hear him talk, that he planned the crash, too,” Bill said. “He likes to think he's a great planner. When his luck is good, that is. Miss Gipson's identification of him was just bad luck, of course.”

“Which it was, after all,” Jerry North said.

“Right,” Bill agreed. “Sheer bad luck. As long as nobody suspected him, he was all right. But if any suspicion started an enquiry—even if the suspicion was wrong; even if somebody thought he was Judge Crater—he was out of luck. Because, of course, we'd picked up Purdy's fingerprints, just as he thought.”

There was a little pause. Jerry and Bill had drinks beside them, and both drank. Pam said she was feeling better, and thought she'd have a very light Scotch. Jerry made her a very light Scotch.

“Really,” she said, “Amelia was brighter than any of us. Which is odd.”

Jerry grinned for a moment, and then said that Amelia Gipson had been very bright.

“Also,” Weigand said, “she was prying. She went into things—particularly when she thought people were misbehaving. She had a very suspicious mind. And she jumped at conclusions—as I imagine she did in Spencer's case, the poor devil. She thought in this case that somebody had married her dear friend for her money chiefly, perhaps, because she really preferred to think the worst of people. Everything fitted when she got the idea that Burt was Purdy, but she was still guessing.”

“And we,” Pam said, after a pause, “just guessed all over the place. About the niece and nephew. About the perfume. About Mr. Spencer.” She paused again. “What about him?” she asked.

“Just drunk,” Weigand said. “Drunk—and unhappy. And in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He considered. “As, probably, he always will be,” he said. He lifted his drink, his eyes distant.

“He is one of the things—exposed—by all this,” he said. “As always happens. Murder cuts across the face of things; the investigation of murder cuts again. We lay things open. By accident. We bring a man like Spencer out of the safe numbness he was living in; out of the safe obscurity. We find out something we don't need to know—don't want to know—about a girl like Nora M. Frost. We find out—”

Pam broke in. She spoke softly.

“What about Nora?” she said. “Was it what … I guessed? That she was afraid Miss Gipson would tell her husband?”

Weigand did not answer, in words. But his silence was an answer.

“But that's silly,” Pam said, “because she'll tell him herself, I think. Whatever it was.” She looked at Bill Weigand and then, because his expression seemed to contradict her, she nodded. “She'll think she shouldn't,” Pam said. “She'll think it—it isn't fair. But she will. I'm pretty sure she will.” She looked at Jerry, this time. “Women do,” she told him.

He smiled at her and said, “All right, Pam.”

“Well,” she said, “they do. They can't not, even when they try.”

“All right, Pam,” Jerry said again. They looked at each other and after a moment Jerry smiled.

“It's a very consoling thought,” he told her. “I'll keep it in mind, Pam.”

Pam made a face at him, and then winced, because making a face hurt. She dropped that, and turned to Weigand.

“What did we do, really?” she said. “Except Mullins?”

Bill Weigand shrugged.

“Kept the pressure on,” he said. “Looked into things. Asked questions. Made people nervous—and finally, made a murderer nervous. It happens that way. We asked questions, dug into things, fished around in the past—and one of us remembered something. He could—feel us around him, all the time. Pushing. He never knew when we'd find something—or what we'd find. So he couldn't simply stand by any more and merely watch. He had to try to find out what we were up to. He had to talk too much—to you, Pam. He had to kill too much. He had to break into your office, Jerry, to find out whether there was anything in Miss Gipson's notes which would incriminate him. Because we, like Miss Gipson, were prying into things.”