The Norths Meet Murder (23 page)

“Yeh,” Mullins said, “it's what I think. She could of.”

Weigand jotted down, under “Strong enough,” the words: “Opportunity? Maybe.”

“Weapon?” Mullins said. “You want to think about the weapon?”

“We can't,” Weigand said, “prove anything about that, one way or another. If it was an ice-mallet, anybody could have bought one and thrown it away afterward. It's the kind of weapon anybody could get, use and destroy or throw away. Maybe drop down an incinerator. Is there an incinerator at No. 34?”

“Sure,” said Mullins. “In the service hall. Sure.”

“And probably she had a mallet in the country,” Weigand said. “Or she might have had a croquet-mallet in the country, and brought it in and thrown it away, anywhere, going back out. Or not thrown it away, but just wiped it off and banged it in the dirt a few times. She is, incidentally, the only person we've run across who might have had a croquet-mallet handy. And there's another thing. She's been hitting things all her life—tennis balls, anyway. If she wanted to kill, she might naturally think of doing it by hitting.”

“Yeh,” Mullins said. “I'd been thinking that.”

Weigand wrote: “Weapon—available” on the sheet of paper. Mullins opened his mouth, but Weigand waved it shut.

“We could show a motive,” he said. “We could, really, show several. She's in love with Berex, whatever she says. Maybe she thought it was the simplest way of getting rid of a husband who is in the way. Although why not divorce, I wouldn't know.”

“They do, though,” Mullins said. “Mrs. Snyder, for instance. The sash-weight lady.”

“Yes,” Weigand said, “they do. But Mrs. Brent might have had a stronger motive—a couple of stronger motives. Maybe, in spite of Berex, she still loved Brent; maybe Berex was just revenge for Brent's playing around. And maybe she got desperate, after a while, at Brent's two-timing her and decided to bash him. That's happened too.”

Mullins said it had, sure enough.

“But the most likely motive,” Weigand said, “would be the insurance. That would combine with the first motive, too—explain why it was better to kill than get a divorce. If she killed and got away with it, she'd collect a hundred grand and she and Berex could spend it. That's a nice motive, all right.”

“Mrs. Snyder and Judd Gray,” Mullins said. “Like I was saying.” He thought a moment.

“Listen, Loot,” he said, “I think we've got it. I think we ought to pick her up.”

Weigand wrote down “Motive—plenty,” and leaned back in his chair. He crushed out his cigarette, and then lighted another. “Maybe,” he said. “We'll look at the others, though. Take Berex.”

Weigand leaned forward and wrote “Louis Berex” on the sheet of yellow paper. Mullins sighed.

“O.K., Loot, if you want to,” he said. “Could he of?”

Physically, Weigand said, it was hard to say. Berex was slight, slighter than Brent. But he was wiry and moved vigorously. Making allowance for the difference in strength natural between men and women, he was probably as strong as Claire Brent, although he was not so strong for a man as she for a woman. Probably, on grounds of physical ability, he would have to be counted in. Mullins nodded and said, “Yeh, I guess so.” Opportunity? So far as Weigand could see, Berex's was identical with Mrs. Brent's, equally hard to prove or disprove, equally certain to be supported by one person and by no more—and that one person obviously a prejudiced witness. He could have left Mrs. Brent sitting on the hill, looking at the pretty autumn leaves, borrowed her car, driven to New York, killed, driven her car back to the country and returned it to her, been driven by her to the railroad station in Brewster, caught a train back to New York.

But, and here was a point, if he were to be counted in on opportunity, did it not necessarily imply that he and Mrs. Brent were in it together, at least to the extent that she would countenance murder and provide an alibi for the murderer?

Mullins nodded, and said it sure looked like it.

It did, Weigand agreed, but it might be got around. Berex might have invented some urgent and hidden errand—such as a secret meeting somewhere near about one of his inventions—and have sold her on the story, particularly if she were in love with him, and ready to believe. He could, for example, have invented an important meeting with the engineers of the big United Electric plant a few miles outside Danbury. Her belief in such a story would, incidentally, explain more satisfactorily why she had lied in her first account. She wanted to keep Berex out of it entirely, not so much for the sake of her reputation, as to lessen any chance that his secret might be exposed.

“It could be that way,” Weigand said. “With a little time, anyone could invent a perfectly satisfactory story for Berex to tell her.”

In that event, of course, she would give an alibi to Berex to prevent anyone's suspicion that he was, really, engaged in secret negotiations—or whatever he had said he was engaged in. “That's just one story he might have told, of course,” Weigand said. “It might be any of a dozen others.”

Mullins said, “Yeh,” but rather doubtfully.

“If you ask me, they were both in it,” he said.

The weapon, Weigand went on, rubbing his ideas against Mullins, was still one that anybody might have had.

“Suppose,” he said, “we figure that anybody we suspect could have got the weapon, or, for that matter, anybody we don't suspect. Right?”

Mullins said it was O.K. with him.

Then, Weigand said, they came to motive, and there they were all right, again, assuming Berex and Claire Brent to be in love. It might have been, although Weigand doubted it, chivalry—avenging the marital betrayal of his beloved on the betrayer.

“Hooey!” said Mullins. “That don't sound right.”

Weigand agreed that it didn't, although he could, he assured Mullins, give him cases in which murder had resulted from such a situation—when a hotheaded lover had avenged bloodily a slight to his mistress.

“Yeh?” said Mullins.

Weigand said, O.K., they could skip that, for the time being. There was a better motive—the hundred grand.

“Like I said,” Mullins said. “They were in it together.”

That, Weigand pointed out, was not necessarily true. They might have been. On the other hand, Berex might have been in it alone, figuring that if he killed Brent he would get Mrs. Brent and the hundred thousand along with her. Or, possibly, even without the hundred thousand—just eliminate the husband and marry the wife. Perhaps Mrs. Brent, for some reason, would not try to get a divorce, and Berex, with or without the hundred thousand in mind, in addition to his desire for the lady, might have decided on the shortcut.

“That's happened, all right,” Weigand said.

Mullins agreed that that had happened, all right.

“Listen, Loot,” he said, “I think it was the two of them together. That's how I think it was.”

“Then why,” Weigand said, “would Berex leave in the mailbox the slip of paper with Edwards' name on it—and with his own fingerprints on it? And with enough of the letter X on it to lead us to him? Why did he do that, Mr. Bones-Mullins?”

Mullins wrinkled his brows, sighed deeply, and then brightened.

“To lay it on Edwards,” he said. “The piece of the letter he didn't cut off was just an accident and he forgot about the fingerprints. He was trying to lay it on Edwards, because he had it in for Edwards.”

“Did he?” Weigand said.

Mullins said he didn't know.

“I dunno,” Mullins said. “He could of had. Or maybe he just had to use some name that Brent would know, and picked on Edwards', not caring much either way what happened to Edwards.”

“Then why didn't he destroy it afterward?” Weigand said. They looked at each other, and Weigand looked almost as much pained as Mullins.

“He must have wanted to pin it on Edwards,” Mullins said. “That's the only way it makes sense.”

Weigand nodded, and said it looked like it. But why the fingerprints? Mullins said that Berex probably just didn't think of them.

“Then why,” Weigand said, “were they upside-down?”

Mullins said, “Jeez, Loot.”

“Well,” Weigand said, “it might be this way. Berex might have got the prints on the paper at some other time, perhaps when he was pulling a sheet of paper from the pile. Perhaps sometime he pulled a sheet out, and decided not to use it for some reason, and shoved it back, leaving his prints. Then, by accident, he used that particular sheet when it came to cutting out the slip, but when he was actually cutting it he was very careful about prints, and when he slipped it into the slot at the Buano house, he was still careful and used tweezers or some such instrument, never dreaming his prints were already there.”

“It could be,” Mullins said.

Then, Weigand went on, say Berex decided on murder, either with or without Claire Brent, and prepared the slip of paper the day before, went to the country, telephoned Brent from there and made an appointment with Brent in the name of Edwards, met Brent at the scene of the appointment—the Buano house—and killed him, left the slip to lay a false trail to Edwards and then drove back to the country, completing his alibi. Mullins said it could be. Then Mullins thought of something else.

“That slip,” he said. “Doesn't it count Claire Brent out, figuring her as having done it by herself? Wouldn't she have thought it would lead to Berex, who she's sweet on?”

Weigand pondered, and agreed that it was a point. But she might merely have clipped the piece from a letter Berex had written her, not noticed that she clipped a bit of the X onto the slip and never thought of his prints being on it.

“She couldn't see them, of course, until they were brought up,” Weigand added.

“Yeh,” Mullins said. “I guess they did it, all right.”

“Both of them?” Weigand said. “Or just Berex? Or just Mrs. Brent?”

Mullins shook his head, and said Weigand had got him there, all right. Then he thought of something else.

“How about the postman?” he said. “The guy Barnes, who was pushed. Did they push him, too?”

Weigand figured, he said, that whoever killed Brent killed Barnes, and he also figured that they would never prove anything about Barnes until he proved everything about Brent. Certainly, Berex and Mrs. Brent were in the neighborhood at the time, and certainly both had told stories which put them somewhere else.

“But we'll never prove anything about Barnes,” Weigand said. “We'll stick to Brent. Only if we get the right person for the Brent killing, he has to have been able to kill Barnes, too.”

“Listen, Loot, you're making this sort of hard, ain't you?” Mullins said. “It's screwy, anyway.”

Weigand agreed, but not that he was making it hard. Somebody else had made it hard. He was just trying to soften it up. So—

“D'y want to go on to the others, Loot?” Mullins asked. “It looks to me like we got 'em already.”

Weigand said he thought they had better look at the others, too.

18

F
RIDAY

M
IDNIGHT TO
2
A.M.

They looked at Edwards. He was a big man, and if he was also a soft man it would take no great hardness of body to hit an unsuspecting man over the head and not too much more to drag him from one room to another and hit him again. Say, Weigand and Mullins agreed, he could do it. He could have secured a weapon with no difficulty. But—

“Why?” Weigand asked Mullins, who said, “Yeh, why?”

Weigand turned up a copy of the report of the auditors who had, at Edwards' so generous invitation, been looking over the records of the Berex trust fund; the fund which had, to start with, been a frail enough thread to tie the expansive party giver to the murder of a man who was, inconveniently, not Berex at all. The report left the thread more frayed than ever. The accountants had not, to be sure, entirely finished, but so far as they had gone, could find nothing in the accounts which gave any ground for suspicion. Edwards had, apparently, managed well, and paid over income regularly. Nothing which resembled a motive for murder of Brent by Edwards had turned up.

And could he have been at the place of murder at the time fixed? Apparently not; Edwards was, by all accounts, and by all evidence, wrist-deep in lobsters at the moment. There was also the slip of paper with Edwards' name on it, obviously left so that it would be found.

It had seemed to point to Edwards, but, looked at more closely, as they now looked at it, it pointed away from him. It had brought him at once into an investigation from which he might, otherwise, have been omitted altogether, or reached only casually. Weigand remembered Mrs. North's happy assumption that the murderer had left his name, and grinned over it. Murderers didn't, in his experience, leave their names. Certainly not intentionally; certainly not if they were men as astute as he suspected Edwards to be.

“We can wash him out,” Weigand said. “Right?”

Mullins nodded sagely, if a little sleepily, and said, “Yeh.” Then he brightened a little.

“There's that guy Kumi,” Mullins said. “He's something to think about.” Mullins' tone turned that duty over to his superior. Weigand looked at him, blinked and suggested that he send somebody for some coffee. Mullins looked relieved and went to find somebody, while Weigand thought of Kumi. Perhaps he could have done it; he was a solid, vigorous little man, who might, in spite of his denials, know jiu-jitsu. He could have got a mallet.

“Hell,” Weigand said to himself, “who couldn't?”

Could he have been on hand? Weigand thought it over, and nodded. Perhaps he could have been, at that. With Edwards husking his lobsters, enthralled by cookery, Kumi might very easily have left the apartment, done his spot of murdering, and returned without Edwards' being the wiser. Motive? He picked out Kumi's statement from a pile of papers and skimmed through it. He nodded to himself. Taking into account everything—racial pride, Kumi's alien psychology, perhaps other things which had not yet come to the surface—and you could give him a motive.