Murder in a Hurry (10 page)

He spoke very seriously, very slowly, as if each word were important. And his tone, his gravity, made real to Liza what had been before a theory, a possibility.
Why
, she thought,
I
might be killed! I might die!
The idea was suddenly too large, too overwhelming, for her mind; it filled her mind, forcing everything else out of it; it was a strange and terrible, and entirely new, idea and then she thought, why, I'll never be so young again; never so young as before I thought of death as real.

Bill Weigand said, “I see you do.” Then she thought there was concern in his face. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Don't be too frightened.” He spoke gently.

“What we all need is a drink,” Pam North said. “Wait.” She got ice and whisky. Liza shook her head at first, but then said, “Yes, please.” Jerry North and Weigand let their glasses be filled with Scotch and water; Pamela North put approximately a teaspoonful of Scotch in her glass, added ice, filled with water, drank and said, “Ah!” Jerry grinned at her.

“I don't,” Weigand said then, “know how much you know of the Halder family, Miss O'Brien?”

“Almost nothing,” she said. “Except—except Brian, of course. We met at a—a sort of party. Why—” and her voice was surprised—“it was only about a month ago, really.”

“Right,” Weigand said. She might as well, then, hear what they knew; most of it would be in the newspapers in the morning, in any event. “As background to the picture,” he said. He pointed out that she, that all of them, knew about J. K. Halder himself. It must be evident to all of them that he had married twice.

Barbara and J. K. Halder, Junior, had been born, in that order, to Halder and his first wife. The first wife had died in 1915. Halder had settled down, apparently, to life as a widower, and to making his first few hundred thousands. Then, unexpectedly, in 1926, he had married a girl of eighteen—Mary Callan, or calling herself that, and then the very appealing girl of a boy-meets-girl play which was having an unexpected success. “She came out of nowhere in particular,” Weigand said. “A lovely child named, originally, Mary Gallagher. Everybody thought she was wonderful; would do wonderful things. She married Halder, and left the cast of the play. And, a little later, the play left Broadway.”

Mary Gallagher Halder was, the next year, the mother of a boy. “Your Brian,” Weigand told Liza. They were living in the Sutton Place house; everything seemed to be working out well, despite the disparity in age between Halder and his wife. And then, when Brian was a year old, Halder dramatically “retired” and, a few months later, left the Sutton Place house and went to live in the room back of the shop in West Kepp Street. “Just like that,” Weigand said. “Mrs. Halder says ‘he just decided that was what he wanted.'”

He had kept the Sutton Place house, given his wife and son a very ample allowance and, when his daughter, Barbara, and her husband lost most of what money they had in 1929, agreed willingly enough (as Mrs. Halder had) that they move into the house.

“He supported them too, largely,” Weigand said. “Whatever he was, he wasn't a miser. He—well, he just didn't like people. Didn't want to live with them; preferred his animals. Obviously, I suppose, he was what, if you have a sufficient amount of money, is called ‘eccentric.'”

“Brian told me once,” Liza said, “that his father lost all interest in him after he quit crawling around on all fours. He—Brian and I laughed about it.”

Weigand smiled. He said that Halder certainly seemed to have shifted his interest to quadrupeds.

Brian had, of course, been far too young for the war; had been in school and had remained in school. Then he had studied architecture at Columbia, but quit before he was graduated and gone into an architect's office, where he still was. Liza shook her head, slightly. He was still attending classes at Columbia, evenings and Saturdays, in the School of General Studies. He had merely—“well,” she said, “I suppose in a way he resented his father's attitude. This ‘take what you want so long as you don't bother me' business. Wanted to make his own way.” She paused. “He never phrased it so,” she said. “I'm guessing mostly.”

Weigand nodded; said it sounded reasonable. When Brian went to work, he had found a small apartment of his own and left the Sutton Place house, so that only the Whitesides and Brian's mother remained in it. Whiteside, incidentally, was a National Guard lieutenant colonel, perfectly willing to be called “Colonel.” So far as Weigand had determined, that was his chief occupation although now and then he bestirred himself to lose a little money in the market. “He has some money left, apparently,” Weigand said. “And his wife has—had—a good allowance from her father.”

J. K. Halder, Junior, and his wife, Jennifer, had an apartment of their own; the younger Halder was trying to follow in his father's financial footsteps; the police didn't yet know with what success, although he and Jennifer lived well enough, in a comfortable apartment at a good address. They were often at the Sutton Place house, as was Brian. “He's devoted to his mother, apparently,” Weigand said, and looked at Liza for comment. But she had none to make.

“As to the characters of all these people,” Weigand said, “you've all seen them; seen about as much of them as I have.”

“And you think—” Pam North began.

Weigand, apparently ahead of her, shrugged.

“—one of them did it?” he finished, for Pam. “I don't know, of course. It's a place to start. You heard them as to where they were when Sneddiger was killed. They're not much more definite about last night; they all seem to have been out and around. Brian was working, he said—working at home. Whiteside says that, after dinner, which ended earlier than they expected, he'd gone to his club for a rubber of bridge. Mrs. Whiteside stayed at home, alone. Mrs. Halder was ‘with friends.' She didn't want to go further; we haven't required her to, as yet. Jennifer Halder—”

“Mrs. Junior,” Pam said. “Isn't that simpler?”

Mrs. Junior, if Pam preferred, was at home in her apartment, also alone. Junior himself had, unexpectedly to her—“and not very convincingly to me,” Weigand said—gone downtown to his office. But his wife supported him when he said that he had had to leave some work unfinished to get to dinner and, when the dinner ended early, had seized the opportunity to return to his office and get on with it.

“You keep talking about the dinner,” Pam said. “As if it were special. Was it?”

“Well,” Bill Weigand said, “the old man was there. As a matter of fact, he seems to have arranged it.”

“Not,” Pam said, “not to tell them he'd changed his will?
Not that!
”

“Why no,” Bill said. There was amusement in his voice, momentarily. “Whatever made you think of that, Pamela?”

Pamela North made a small, quick face at him.

“It could be,” Jerry North said, with detachment, “something she's read.”

But Lieutenant Weigand was sober again. Actually, he said, all of the members of the family—and they had all dutifully shown up—denied knowing why Halder had arranged the dinner. He had asked—“asked” was as good a word as any other—his wife to invite the others. She had done so. They had arrived at the Sutton Place house around seven, Halder himself a few minutes later than the others; they had had a drink or two and had sat down to dinner at a quarter of eight. They had finished, had coffee; the old man had seemed more relaxed than usual, to have nothing on his mind—“actually,” Weigand said, “there seems to have been nothing particularly eccentric in his normal social behavior”—and, until about nine o'clock it had been an uneventful, apparently not too interesting, family gathering.

“And then, unexpectedly, the old man got up and left,” Weigand said. “They all agree on that. One minute he was talking, or listening; the next minute he stood up, said, in effect, ‘Well, good night' and went away. All of them say they haven't the faintest idea why and admit they wondered at the time, since abruptness of that sort wasn't the form his eccentricity usually took.”

“And he never said why he had arranged the party?” Pam said. “After—after going to all that trouble?”

The trouble Halder had gone to apparently amounted to sending a telegram to his wife, Bill Weigand told them. However—that was the way it had been. “The way they all agree it was,” he qualified.

“But look,” Pam said. “Somebody must have
done
something. Said something.”

Bill agreed that one would suppose so.

“But,” he said, “none of the others admits to having seen anything, or heard anything.”

“Admits,” Pam repeated.

“Admits is the word, of course,” Bill Weigand said.

“What was the matter with the telephone?” Jerry asked, and they all looked at him for a moment before Pam said: “Of course! What was? Temporarily disconnected, or something?”

“Oh, that,” Weigand said. “Why did Halder send his wife a telegram instead of telephoning her? Well, apparently he usually did. I suppose because it was more impersonal, avoided—lessened—contact. Anyway, he did. Mrs. Halder gave me the wire. Wait a minute.” He took a yellow Western Union form from his pocket and read aloud from it. “‘Please arrange all family to dinner seven Monday,'” he read. “‘J. K. Halder.'”

“Succinct,” Pam said, and Bill Weigand, putting the telegram back in his pocket, said, “Right.”

“And, of course, it proves Mr. Halder really did make the arrangement,” Pam said. “If somebody wanted to prove it. Only, of course, it doesn't really, does it? Because usually they merely count and don't even look up.”

There was the slight pause which was, Liza was beginning to realize, the customary tribute to Pam North's syntax. And yet it was not difficult: the actuality of the telegram might be supposed to prove the validity of the arrangement; it need not because someone other than Mr. Halder might readily have sent it and signed Halder's name; it would be difficult to identify the person, Halder or another, who had handed in the message, if it had been handed in, since Western Union clerks usually counted, without looking up at the sender, the words in a message. It wasn't, Liza decided, really clearer phrased so; it was merely longer.

“Anyway, there's always the telephone,” Liza heard herself saying. “To, I mean—”

“Of course,” Pam said. “Much more likely. Only, easier to trace, wouldn't it be, Bill? A record so they could charge?”

“Right,” Bill said. “We're checking. I think we'll find Mr. Halder actually sent the wire. We may not.”

“Nobody admits knowing why?” Pam asked.

“Nobody,” Bill said. “After all, he may merely have wanted to see them about nothing in particular.”

They seemed to come to dead end. There was a pause.

“And nobody admits to knowing Sneddiger?” Jerry North was saying.

“Except Brian Halder,” Weigand said. “He met him once. As a matter of fact, he seems to have kept a little more in contact with his father than the others did. But Brian denies having seen Sneddiger for a couple of weeks. And the others say they never saw him before, although Mrs. Halder—Brian's mother, I mean—admits she had heard of him.”

“They all—looked?” Pam said.

“Right,” Weigand said. “After Miss O'Brien made the identification they all—looked. All normally upset, so far as one could tell. Nobody more than that.”

“All the same,” Pam said, “one of them should have been.”

“Oh yes,” Weigand said. “Yes, I think so. It's hard to see it any other way.”

6

Tuesday, 11:40
P
.
M
. to Wednesday, 1:35
A.M.

Lieutenant Weigand drove Liza home, in a convertible Buick which looked like any other convertible Buick, except that there were red-lensed lights where fog lights might have been. During the short drive through comparatively uncrowded streets, Weigand did not talk of the murder. He asked how long she had known Dorian, how they had met, in the casual tones of acquaintanceship. “Dorian's wonderful, she's tops,” Liza said and, without taking his eyes from the way ahead, Bill Weigand smiled and said that sort of remark was one for which he had never found an answer. “Except,” he added, “‘Right,' which never seems particularly responsive. I do agree, of course.”

“She put me on to this chance with the cat book,” Liza said. “With Mr. North. He said he likes the sketches, incidentally. Do you—do you suppose he does?”

“Of course,” Weigand said. “Otherwise he'd hardly have—also, I saw them. I like them myself. I even recognized the cats, you know. Whereas, in life, I'm constantly confusing Martini and Gin.”

“Oh, there's lots of difference,” Liza told him. “The eyes, the expression, to say nothing of Gin's being so much longer and having a tail like a whip.”

He could see it in the drawings, Weigand told her. That's why he thought they were good. And, while he remembered it, here they were. He gave her the wrapped drawing pad as he stopped the car in front of the apartment building. He started to get out to open the door for her, but she had it open and smiled and shook her head. “Good night,” she said, and Weigand said, “Good night. Take care of yourself.” She smiled and nodded and went into the building, carrying the package.

Weigand watched her for a moment and then put the Buick in gear. She'll be all right, he decided, particularly as eyes were being kept on the others. He did, he thought, letting the clutch in, wish there were more eyes available. But he did not think anything would happen tonight. The pressure wasn't on yet. He thought it wasn't on.

Liza went up in the elevator, down the corridor to the door of her small apartment. She tried to keep her thoughts at the level they had reached in the car. There was no good brooding about it, hitting herself in the head with it. There was nothing she could do; there was—She opened the door and went in and flicked on the lights. Then she found that, anxiously, almost fearfully, she was looking around the little living room. But it was empty, as it should have been; undisturbed, as it should have been. So was the kitchenette in its closet; so the bedroom, into which she and a chest and a three-quarters bed fitted with such nice precision. She got herself a glass of milk from the refrigerator and sat down to drink it, pushing off her shoes. She unwrapped the pad and began to look at the drawings. They are good, she thought; pretty good, anyway. I can make them—