The Dishonest Murderer (20 page)

“I don't,” Jerry said, “see what being a man's got to do with it.” He took a drink. “But she has something,” he said.

Bill Weigand nodded.

“Right,” he said. “You'd expect most of them to know—his daughter, his fiancée, his secretary, his housekeeper. And Miss Burnley, if he—if they saw as much of each other as they seem to have.”

“How much,” Pam said. “For innocent ears?”

“Plenty, apparently,” Bill said.

“What's she like?” Pam said. “Otherwise, I mean.”

“Otherwise?” Bill repeated, and then said, “Oh.” “Very polished young woman,” he said. “Covered with the best grade enamel.”

“But seething underneath?” Pam said. “A hidden volcano?”

“For heaven's sake!” Jerry said.

Bill Weigand said he hadn't been underneath. For all he knew—

“She sounds dreadful,” Pam said. “So—so dishonest.”

They all looked at her. Jerry North ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. He said, “Listen, Pam.”

“Calculating,” Pam said. “Banking her fires.” She looked puzzled. “Just what is a banked fire?” she asked, of the others in general. But when Jerry, in a bemused tone, actually started to tell her, she said, “Rhetorical, Jerry. Some other time.” She turned to Bill.

“Would Dorian like her?” she asked. “Would I like her?”

Bill Weigand shook his head.

“Would Jerry?”

“Er,” Bill said. “She's a very attractive wench.”

“Listen,” Jerry said, but Pam shook her head at him.

“Otherwise?” she asked Bill.

Again Bill shook his head.

“Calculating,” Pam said. “Conniving. Not letting her face show what her right hand's doing.” She stopped and seemed to regard this remark. “Anyway,” she said, “not honest. Not—candid. Is she?”

“I shouldn't think so,” Bill said. “But listen—”

“But supposed to have been in love with the senator,” Pam said, not listening. “Really volcanic underneath when he decided to marry Mrs. Haven instead. And then—what are you waiting for?”

“Pamela,” Bill Weigand said. “I admit she isn't a person either you or Dorian would particularly like. Now, if I follow you, you decide she killed Kirkhill.” He looked at her. “Really,” he said.

“Not because of that,” Pam North said. “Because she's dishonest. Who else is? Not Mrs. Haven. Not the admiral. Imagine a dishonest admiral!” She paused to give them the opportunity. “Not Mr. Grainger, because people who stammer never are.”

“What?” Jerry said.

“Dishonest,” Pam said. “It would be much too difficult. Not the secretary, I shouldn't think, although it
is
funny about Babylon. And, of course, we're looking for someone dishonest. A dishonest murderer.” She looked around at the others. “You all see that,” she said. Jerry and Bill Weigand looked at each other, but Dorian looked at Pam North and nodded slowly.

“The old clothes,” she said. “The part of town. The whole bizarre setup.”

“Of course,” Pam said. “To mislead. Dust in our eyes. In other words, a kind of sleight of hand. So that we'd look in the wrong place.
Fundamentally dishonest.
And what did you say once, Bill? ‘Make the character fit the crime'?”

“Not I,” Bill said. “That is, I quoted. It was Heimrich. But really, Pam! Are you arguing that it's that easy?”

Pamela North looked, for a moment, a little hurt. Then she said she didn't see what was so easy about it. When you looked at it, she said, it was perfectly logical. “Step by step,” she assured them.

There seemed nothing to add to this. They welcomed Hugo, coming to proffer a table in the café.

He seemed so certain, Freddie Haven thought, thinking of Lieutenant William Weigand. It was as if, in what was to her only the confusion of an eddying fog, he was moving along clear paths, toward a destination already apparent. There would be no way of stopping him, no way of changing his course. There was not even any way of telling how much he already knew, because he did not seem surprised at anything which was said. It was as if he expected certain things to be said, planned to have them said. She felt that it was hopeless to try concealment; that any move toward concealment she, or any of them, might make would be counted on in advance, planned against, even used.

Freddie, lying on the chaise longue in her room, the lights low, tried to fight against this conviction. This man with a thin face, with a level voice, was not, could not be, what she was thinking him. He had certain methods; by doing certain things, asking certain questions, he achieved calculated results. He was trained for that, professional in that. But under this there was merely another human mind, sometimes baffled—as hers was now; sometimes, from incomplete observations, reaching conclusions which were incomplete, or even inaccurate. He was like anyone else—like William Blake. She thought of Blake with no surprise, as an example which came naturally to her mind. Blake, too, was intelligent, was trained. But things which were not really essential would distract him—the expression in eyes, the shapes of faces, his own sympathy, his own emotions. She had hardly talked with Blake, but she accepted these things about him as obviously true. She did not try to understand why this was so.

She felt, lying there, her eyes closed, very tired and, now, dispirited, rather than frightened. Her thoughts no longer ran, around and around, in the squirrel cage of her mind. All fleetness seemed to have left her mind; it seemed difficult to understand even simple things. She felt that each thought came with a slow effort; it was as if she were moving, heavily, draggingly, through deep sand, each step to be made only by a conscious, wearying attempt.

She had begun to feel this way after Weigand and the Norths had gone. Briggs had gone at once, after them. Howard Phipps had stayed a few minutes, saying little; seeming let down, puzzled. Then he had said, in a tired voice, that he would have to get back to it; had said, vaguely, that it was all a mess, and had gone, she supposed, back to the Waldorf and whatever he was doing there to knot up the straying ends of a public career hacked through. Celia had come down, hearing Curtis Grainger's voice; had smiled with effort, the smile strange on her drained face, and Grainger had gone to her quickly, taken her to a corner of the big living room. They had sat there talking, his arm around her. Was that before Phipps had left, or after? It was an effort to remember.

Her father had walked out of the library with the others, but then had stopped just beyond the door and shaken his head with an effort at a smile, and had gone back into the smaller room, closing the door behind him. It was then that Freddie had gone up to her room. Marta had followed her, tried to persuade her to eat something and, failing in this, had gone away with shaking head.

It was hardly thought, this plodding effort which had ensued in Freddie Haven's mind. She had tried, for a while, to determine where Weigand's search was taking him; tried to follow, through this mud, in this fog, the path on which he seemed, to her, to be moving with such assurance. She tried to put together what she now knew, what she had heard. But she could not concentrate. She could only hear voices—the voices of her father, of Phipps, of the man named Briggs. (When she thought of Briggs, she thought inescapably of the man who was dead, and who still grinned at her across his desk. She tried to close her mind to the thought, force the image away.) She heard Pamela North's light, quick voice, intervening when, with the picture of Smiley too vivid in her mind, Freddie had almost given herself away. But most of all she heard the voice, level, unsurprised, of Lieutenant Weigand.

The heavy, plodding wakefulness merged, after a time, imperceptibly, with heavy, plodding sleep. But her mind did not sleep. It toiled on in dreams. She was in a room and, all around her, were voices, sometimes recognizable but without source. The voices were making her play a kind of arduous, exhausting game. She had, within a certain time—the time vague, undefined, yet limited—to put together into a coherent whole what these voices were saying. The words she heard were part of a story, and to win the game, the losing of which would bring some dreaded, but also undefined, catastrophe, she had to put what the voices said together in a certain order. “Circumstances have changed,” a voice said, and it was her father's voice. “I just changed Bruce into a man with grinning teeth and you must not call the police.” The last started in her father's voice, but then the voice changed into one she could not identify, and another voice broke in saying, “But
darling
I hate you, darling” and then there was a voice which smelled of scent (and this was entirely reasonable and to be expected), saying, “You killed him in the public library, because it was on page three o'clock and where were you, Admiral, because there was so much snow?”

These words, meaningless, full of meaning, became pieces of paper, and she had to pick up the pieces of paper from the floor of the room and put them together, matching the torn edges, but as soon as she found pieces which matched the pieces changed shape in her hands. You have to hurry, hurry, hurry something said, and she hurried so that she could hardly breathe. But then she was in a small room and a hand reached into the room holding a glass and a voice said, “You have to drink this, you know, and you have to hurry if you want to help your father,” and she reached out toward the glass but the glass fell between her hand the other hand, and papers spilled out of it. There were words on the papers and they were at first in a language she could not understand, and then they seemed to be written backward and then, as she looked at them, the words were the names of people. One of the names was Aunt Flo, and another Fay Burnley's, and the third was that of William Blake. There were many other names, some of which she did not recognize, and now she knew that she had to pick the right name—that there was one name which was right, and all the others were wrong, and that if she made a mistake, or even if she waited too long, the walls of the room would close in and—

Then she was awake; quite wide awake. Celia Kirkhill was standing beside the chaise longue, looking down at her. Celia's eyes seemed unnaturally wide open and the skin of her face looked drawn, flattened against the bones of the eye sockets. Celia was dressed in a wool frock; why, Freddie thought, she has changed since the others went.

“I didn't know you were asleep,” Celia said. She sat down on the edge of the chaise longue. “Curt told me he thought Breese was in love with Dad. Why did he say that?”

It was oddly as if they were continuing a conversation already begun, as if they had previously been talking about this.

“Something she said when he was taking her home,” Freddie said. “Something she did.” She reached out a hand, took the girl's slender wrist. “It doesn't matter now, Ce,” she said. “Don't worry about it, dear.”

“Dad didn't feel anything about her,” Celia said. “Not anything. Not for a long time. She was pretending. If it was anybody—” She paused. Freddie waited. “If it was anybody, it was Howdie,” Celia said. “I—I saw them once.”

It didn't matter, Freddie told her. It didn't matter any more.

“It's all mixed up,” Celia said. “Terribly mixed up.” She began to cry. She did not sob, but tears formed in her eyes and began to creep down her face. “Freddie,” she said. “It's so awful. So awful.”

“I know,” Freddie Haven said. She pressed the girl's wrist. “I know, Ce.”

“He sounded so—so happy,” Celia said. “When he called me in the morning. Just to talk to me. So happy to be coming up. He said, ‘Give my love to Freddie, baby.' He said—”

“Don't, dear,” Freddie said. “I know.”

Celia did not appear to hear her.

“He was getting away earlier than he had expected,” Celia said. “He thought he might get here earlier. There was something they had to do and he didn't know how long it would take. But he thought it might not take long and he would—”

“I know, Ce,” Freddie said. It is so hard the first time, Freddie thought; so hard when things change, when you first find out that things change. “You just have to try to start over,” she said, but it was more to herself than to the girl beside her.

“It was all
planned
,” Celia said. There was a kind of incredulity in her voice. It could not be the way it was, because it had been planned another way. “It was all planned, Freddie.” She paused a moment. “Freddie,” she said. “Dad loved you. He—he was so happy. Underneath this—he was worried a little about Uncle George, but underneath he was so—looking forward to things so.”

“Uncle George?” Freddie said. “His brother?”

“Dad worried about him,” Celia said. “Things weren't ever right about him. Dad had to—”

“Celia,” Freddie said. She was suddenly wide awake. “You said Bruce had something to do. In New York? Was it about your uncle? You said—” she tried to remember the words. “Didn't you say
they
had something to do? That that was why he was coming earlier than he had planned? Was it about your uncle?”

She was conscious of a new quickness in her own voice. She saw Celia become conscious of it.

“Why,” she said, “I don't know, Freddie. I—I think it was something he said made me think it might be about Uncle George. But I don't think—”

“Try to remember,” Freddie said. She sat up, manoeuvred to sit beside Celia, put an arm around the girl's slim shoulders. “Try to remember, Celia. Bruce was coming up early for some special reason. Was it because of your uncle?”

“I thought it was,” Celia said. “I can't remember why. I don't think Dad—Dad said that. Wait a minute. He said something about ‘the same old thing' or ‘the same old trouble.' He was always having to help Uncle George, get him out of some sort of trouble. That's why I thought—”