Death of an Angel (20 page)

They had, Mrs. Nelson said, decided to go down and have a look at their prospective property—and problem. They had found Mrs. Hemmins, and she had taken them through the apartment. Followed by Toby, the cat. Mrs. Hemmins had been wearing a black dress.

“Very proper and everything,” Mrs. Nelson told Willings, who not only spoke her language, but looked the part. “Only—”

Only—Mrs. Hemmins had looked several times at the watch on her wrist. “As if she wanted us to go. I supposed she was expecting someone. So we didn't stay long—just long enough to look around. Because I feel so strongly that people who
impose
on servants—”

“Write it out in the morning,” Bill said, looking at his own watch.

He went home, then. He found Dorian, very lovely in a pale green negligee. He had time to kiss her once before the telephone rang.

Dogged would do it, Jerry North supposed. He would keep a stiff upper lip and his shoulder to the wheel—and his hand to the plow, for that matter—and even the weariest Braithwaite would wind somewhere safe to print. If only the man could, even once, encounter an infinitive without splitting it. From stem to stern. He was, he thought, beginning to think like Mr. Braithwaite. But thousands of readers were waiting. Braithwaiting. Jerry laid Page 342 face down and started on Page 343. Pam said something from the bedroom, where he had assumed her sleeping. Probably, wasn't he ever coming to bed? Probably, didn't he know it was past midnight?

Jerry had been writhing in one of Mr. Braithwaite's sentences, and Pam's words came to him dimly. He reached the end of the sentence and was conscious of a vague dissatisfaction. Not with Braithwaite—there was nothing vague about that. This was the slightly guilty consciousness of having missed something. Listening back, it did not feel as if Pam had said it was getting late, or even that, if he got no sleep, he would be no good the next day. It sounded—

Forget it, Jerry told himself. Now and then she says things to herself. For emphasis, probably. He stiffened his upper lip, and started the next sentence. “Ragweed.” “
Rag
weed?” There wasn't anything about ragweed in the sentence. Mr. Braithwaite's heroine was retreating up winding stone stairs, preparing for the—unsuccessful, if he knew Braithwaite—defense of her virtue in the tower room. There was nothing about ragweed in it. Why, then, had he suddenly thought, “Ragweed”? He—

Jerry North took off his glasses and laid them on the Braithwaite manuscript. He moved very carefully. He went out of his study and across the hall and to the open door of the bedroom.

Pam North was very wide awake. She was sitting up in bed. She looked at Jerry in some surprise.

“Pam,” Jerry said. “You said something?”

“Did I?” Pam said. “I'm sorry, dear. I know I do sometimes. How is Mr. Braithwaite?”

Jerry gestured Braithwaite aside.

“Listen,” he said, “did you say something about ‘ragweed'? By any chance?”

“Ragweed?” Pam said. “What about ragweed. Oh, that. No, I don't think so. Anyway, I've got way past that, now. That was
hours
ago.”

“Just a minute ago,” Jerry said. “What about ragweed?”

“Goldenrod's better,” Pam said. “More apposite. Because a field of goldenrod is really very pretty.”

“Please,” Jerry said. “Please, Pam.”

“Oh, it's nothing,” Pam said. “Or, actually, it's very obvious. Nobody hates goldenrod. Enough to kill it, I mean.”

“I don't …” Jerry said. “Wait a minute. Ragweed! Goldenrod?” He almost snapped his fingers. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “people do. Or try to.”

“Not personally,” Pam said. “What I mean is, you don't go out to a stalk of goldenrod and—and pull a knife on it. Say, ‘That for you, goldenrod.' It isn't personal. It isn't as if he was afraid of them. They merely get in his nose. And sinuses, probably.”

“Pam,” Jerry said, and spoke very carefully. “You're talking about Wyatt? And cats?”

“Of course,” Pam said. “I don't think you ought to try to read Mr. Braithwaite when you're so sleepy. What did you think I was talking about?”

Jerry went into the room. He sat on his bed and looked at Pam in hers. He steeled his mind against distraction.

“All right,” he said. “Let's have it.” She grinned at him. “With a straight face,” he said.

“Sam is allergic to cats,” Pam North said. “They give him symptoms.
But
—he isn't an ailurophobe. He doesn't hate them, as people who are uncontrollably afraid of them do. So, he wouldn't wantonly kill a cat. And Mrs. Hemmins' cat was killed wantonly.”

“He may have attacked the murderer.”

“Jerry!” Pam said. “And you a cat man! Oh, defending kittens, of course. But not defending people. We have to admit that.”

“All right,” Jerry said. “We have to admit that.”

“Then,” Pam said, “wantonly. But still—why? Because the cat was there—there and alive? A kind of sadism? That's too easy, isn't it? Or, because there's somebody else who's
really
a cat hater?”

“Well,” Jerry said, “that's possible, isn't it?”

“Oh,” Pam said. “Possible.” Her tone dismissed it. “Anything's possible, I suppose. Or—because somebody wanted to put it on Sam Wyatt?”

“Well—” Jerry said. “As you say, anything's possible.”

“Some things much more than others,” Pam said. “Everybody who knows Sam knows about this allergy of his. And, most people think it
is
the same thing as ailurophobia. You know they do.”

“I don't suppose most people think much about it one way or the other,” Jerry said. “But—probably you're right.”

“So,” Pam said, “the murderer is some woman who knows Mr. Wyatt, knows about this—ailment of his, and so killed the cat for good measure.”

“Good measure? And—wait a minute. You said—”

“Mr. Wyatt had already found Mr. Fitch's body. He had a motive. Mrs. Hemmins had made this mistake about his having symptoms
before
she let him in the apartment. He's a little odd anyway. He's an ailurophobe. Ergo, he kills cats. That's what's supposed to be thought.”

“Wait,” Jerry said. “Please wait, Pam. Why a woman? And, why are you so sure Mrs. Hemmins made a mistake?”

“Because,” Pam said, “a woman killed Mr. Fitch.
And
Mrs. Hemmins. Not Sam Wyatt.”

Jerry ran a hand through his hair.

“Killing the cat is the last thing Sam would do, of course,” Pam said, rather obviously making it all clear to a plodding mind. “Because it would point to him. So, if he didn't kill Mrs. Hemmins, Mrs. Hemmins made a mistake. I don't see how it could be any clearer.”

“Because then he didn't kill Fitch?”

“Of course. Whoever killed Mr. Fitch killed Mrs. Hemmins. Because she had found the tea-towel.”

“I'm not sure,” Jerry said, “that Braithwaite isn't easier. Not so—stimulating, perhaps.” He looked at her. “I speak purely of intellectual stimulation, of course,” he added.

“It's a great time to tell me,” Pam said. She clasped her hands behind her head.

“Perhaps I spoke too soon,” Jerry said. “Anyway—what about the tea-towel?”

“Wadded up,” Pam said. “People get in habits about them. Some people, when they've finished with a tea-towel, and it's damp—from wiping dishes, you know—”

“Yes,” Jerry said. “I know, Pam.”

“From hearsay,” Pam said. “However—some people would no more think of not hanging a damp towel up, carefully, to dry than they'd think of flying through the moon. Other people just wad them up and drop them somewhere. Because they're so glad the dishes are done.”

“A man might do that.”

He still missed the point, Pam told him. Of course a man might. Probably would. But, in this case, it was an instance of an established habit—something so habitual that it was instantly identifying. Had been to Mrs. Hemmins. Therefore, it was somebody who had often been in the small serving pantry off Fitch's quarters on the second floor of the duplex and, had often wiped dishes there and had always wadded the tea-towel up. In other words, a woman friend.

Jerry shook his head, but he shook it slowly.

“The only reason Mrs. Hemmins would have had the tea-towel in her hand,” Pam said, “was to show it to someone. She did that only because it meant something. It wasn't a particularly interesting tea-towel; it meant something because it was wadded up. Is it clear so far?”

“I guess so,” Jerry said.

“So—she found it in Mr. Fitch's little serving pantry after he was killed. Somebody had used it to—” She paused. “Well—” she said.

“Things had been cleaned up,” Jerry said. “The tray the stuff was served on—to avoid fingerprints on the glass—had been washed. And dried, I suppose.”

“That's it,” Pam said. “I just couldn't think for a minute. She found it there—probably when Mr. Wyatt went to the lower floor to telephone the doctor—and it meant something to her. Meant—the identity of the murderer. She saved it and tried blackmail.”

She waited. She said, “You see now, don't you, darling? Hell hath no fury.”

“I suppose,” Jerry said, “you mean Phyllis Barnscott? You've come round to her?”

“Oh,” Pam said, “I started with her, really. As soon as I realized it wasn't Sam. Because, while I love Bill, of course, I thought it was mean of him to tease Dorian the way he did at the Algonquin.”

Jerry ran a hand thoughtfully through his hair, He had thought Pam started with ragweed. Ragweed had come into it—

“So,” Pam said, “I'm not stimulating any more?”

She could not, Jerry decided, be left under so absurd a misapprehension.

11

Monday, 1:25
A.M.
to 12:20
P.M.

It had taken Bill Weigand some little time to get there. He had garaged his car, and had had to wait while a sleepy attendant was aroused, while the Buick came—with a kind of reluctance—down a spiraling ramp from the third floor. By the time Bill had driven to Naomi Shaw's small house, others of his trade almost filled the house. Mullins met him at the door.

“Hard to get anything out of her,” Mullins said. “Not that she doesn't talk.” He sighed. “Never heard anybody talk so fast.”

Bill went ahead of Mullins into the living room. A uniformed sergeant stood in front of a woman of middle age, who had pale red hair, who wore a dark blue dressing gown, who talked and wept. “Yes'm,” the sergeant said, and nodded. “That's right, ma'am. Don't you worry.”

The sergeant turned to Weigand when Weigand reached them. “All worked up,” the sergeant said. “Name's Blythe. Mrs. Nellie Blythe. She's—”

“—forgive myself,” Nellie Blythe said, and her plump hands fluttered. “Never. If I'd only—”

“—been going on like this ever since I got here. Maybe we ought to get a doctor.”

They would see, Bill told him.

“Well,” the sergeant said, “wish you luck, captain. You talk to the captain, now, ma'am. Tell him what happened.”

“Nobody's
doing
anything,” Nellie Blythe said, and put her hands over her eyes and swayed backward and forward on the straight chair she sat on. “The poor lamb'll be—oh dear, oh dear. In-a-trunk, like-as-not.” Her speech was very rapid, and indistinct.

“Mrs. Blythe,” Weigand said. He drew a chair up and sat in front of her. “Listen to me.” She did not appear to hear him. “Mrs.
Blythe!
” he said, raising his voice. “You want to help, don't you?”

“The poor lamb,” Nellie Blythe said. “The-poor-poor-lamb.” But she looked at Bill Weigand. “Can't you do something?” she said. “Can't you do
any
thing?”

“I have to know what happened,” Bill said. “Start at the beginning.”

“I've told it over and over,” she said. “Nobody
does
anything. At the bottom of the river by now, like as not. I'll never forgive myself—never. The pretty sweet thing and after all these years of taking care of her and saying, ‘I can't think what I'd do without you, Nellie dear,' and pressing out her pretty little dresses to say nothing of—”

The words ran together.

“Tell me what happened,” Bill said. “Start at the beginning. What time was it?”

“—taking her breakfast in every morning and—what did you say?”

He leaned toward her. He said, very slowly, very carefully, “What time did this happen?”

“I looked at the clock,” she said. “It was a quarter of one. When I first heard them. Shouting, he was, and threatening and—”

It took time. It took patience. Patience can be hard to maintain when one is tired; a story can be hard to get from a woman who is almost hysterical.

Naomi Shaw had come in before eleven that evening. She had come in alone. There had been nothing the waiting Nellie Blythe could do for her. She had seemed in good spirits. She had sent Mrs. Blythe to bed, and Mrs. Blythe had climbed the stairs to her room on the third floor, and undressed and gone to bed.

She had been awakened by raised voices, a man's dominant. The voices came from the living room below. She could not, at least at first, make out words. And, at first, she heard only the man's voice, not Naomi's. “Such a pretty soft voice she had, the lamb.” At first, Nellie Blythe had felt no alarm.

“She'd let whoever it was in,” she explained. “That's what I thought. I ought to have known. I'll never forgive—”

“There was no way you could have known,” Bill told her. “No doubt she had done the same thing before.”

“If you mean—” Mrs. Blythe said.

He meant nothing, he told her. Theater people keep late hours. They are gregarious. He meant only that.