6

TUESDAY, 9:40 P.M. TO 10:15 P.M.

The surgeon worked under a bright light beating down on what had been Mr. George Merle. His instruments glittered a little under the light; he reached in with forceps and drew out what he had been looking for. He held it up under the light and examined it and dropped it into a basin, sloshing it. He picked it out with the forceps and looked at it again and nodded approvingly.

One slug which had terminated Mr. Merle had been much harder than Mr. Merle and was much less damaged. It would come in handy, Dr. Mayhew, Assistant Medical Examiner, decided. The ballistics men would not be provoked, as they sometimes were, by getting a battered slug from a battered cadaver. This one would please them; the marks of the rifling—yes, and the imprint of the firing pin—would show up nicely under their microscopes. All they needed now was another slug to go with it, which was no business of Dr. Mayhew.

It was almost ten o’clock at night, and the surroundings were unbeautiful. Dr. Mayhew sliced deftly at a pectoral muscle and whistled “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.” He sliced on. He dictated to an assistant, perched on a revolving stool, using a laboratory table for his notebook.

“Well nourished,” Dr. Mayhew reported. “Did very well by himself, this one did. Had a couple of drinks before he got it. Had a couple of drinks every now and then, possibly.” He whistled “I’ve got a beautiful feeling—”

“Late fifties,” he announced, breaking off. “Could have done with more exercise, probably. Nothing the matter with his heart.” He paused and looked at his work. “Except for the bullet in it,” he added. “Cause of death—hmmm. Destruction of the left ventricle; gunshot wound. Second gunshot wound in right breast. Punctured lung. Third gunshot wound three inches below second. Deflected by rib—and seems to have lodged in the spine. Probably pretty badly mashed up—the slug. The spine too, as a matter of fact. Thirty-eight calibre—the slug, not the spine …” He whistled several bars of “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.” His assistant listened morosely.

“Hell,” he said. “It don’t go like that. It goes like this.” He demonstrated.

“Usual appendicitis scar,” Dr. Mayhew said, with increased firmness. “Weight 160. Height five feet, ten. The man, not the scar. Very good manicure, by the way. And he didn’t use his hands much.”

“Hell, no,” the assistant said, jotting. “He was a banker.”

“Was he?” Dr. Mayhew said, not much interested. He had another shot at “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.” “That way?” he asked.

“George Merle,” the assistant said. “Banker and philanthropist. Fund chairman. Committee chairman. Board of Directors chairman. President of a bank. Come back to you, Doc?”

“I,” said Dr. Mayhew, “am an assistant medical examiner. I don’t get around—not with the live ones.” He stood up and looked at his work, which had been thorough.

He dropped his tools in a basin.

“All right,” he said, “you can tell the boys he’s ready to go.”

“Every available detective is working on the case,” Acting Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley said firmly. “Every available detective.”

Inspector O’Malley sat firmly behind his desk and looked at the reporters with honest eyes. The reporters looked back at him with skepticism.

“Listen, Inspector,” the man from the News said. “This isn’t just some stiff who got himself conked. This is George Merle. You know who he is?”

“Certainly,” said the inspector. “We are fully aware—”

“What we want to know,” the man from the Herald Tribune said with great patience, “is where you’re getting. Have you got any line on it?”

“Oh, yes,” the inspector said. “We’re making definite progress. We expect—”

“Look,” the Mirror man said, “we write it that way, Inspector. You just tell us—we’ll write it. Are you getting anywhere? Did he go to see the girl? Were they that way? Love nest?”

“You’re damned r—” the inspector said, and remembered suddenly. “We are investigating all angles,” he said, with enhanced firmness. He looked slightly harassed. He changed slightly.

“Listen, boys,” he said, and he was a boy among boys. “There ain’t—there isn’t a thing I can tell you. Not for the record. You know that.”

“What we want to know,” the Times man pointed out, “is—do you know anything.” He waited, as if for the inspector to understand. “You see,” he said, “Mr. Merle was a very important man, Inspector. The public is interested in him because he was a very important man. They want to know what the police are doing about his murder.”

Inspector O’Malley looked at them all, and his gaze grew slightly baleful. He looked hard at Sergeant Mullins, present as an emissary from Lieutenant Weigand, and Mullins, who seldom shrank, shrank perceptibly. Mullins was glad at the moment that he was not Lieutenant Weigand; he would have been reasonably contented not to be Sergeant Mullins. He felt like a buffer state.

“Our best men are working on the case,” Inspector O’Malley said, mollified by the shrinkage of Mullins. “Look, boys—I’m working on it myself.”

It had the form of an impressive announcement. But it did not have the effect of an impressive announcement. The Times looked at the Tribune. The Tribune raised eyebrows.

“How about Weigand?” the Tribune inquired.

“Weigand—the sergeant here—everybody,” O’Malley told him. “Under my direction—my personal direction.”

The News said, “Oh.” The News used a falling inflection.

“Look, Inspector,” the Mirror said. “How’s about seeing Weigand?”

The inspector was about to answer, when the door opened. A uniformed patrolman said, “Here’s a guy from PM, Inspector.” Everybody looked at the guy from PM, who was rather small but very certain. He looked only at the inspector.

“Inspector,” he said, “we hear that you’ve got two Negroes locked up in a precinct house charged with killing Merle. We hear you’re beating the hell out of them. How about it?”

“We—” said Inspector O’Malley. “You—”

“You don’t know,” the guy from PM told him. “That isn’t good enough for PM, Inspector. What are you doing to find out?”

“There isn’t a—” the inspector said. “We haven’t got—”

“‘No comment’,” the guy from PM said, with great sarcasm. “The good old ‘No comment.’ You can’t get away with that, Inspector. Not with PM you can’t. Frankly, my story won’t let you get away with the ‘No comment’ gag, Inspector. Frankly.”

The inspector stood up behind his desk.

“You,” he said, “get the hell out of here!”

He said it with vigor. Mullins jumped slightly. The guy from PM backed away from him.

“Don’t try it,” he said. “Don’t try it!” He spoke hurriedly. “Not with PM. I’ll—”

He kept an eye on Mullins and edged toward the door. He reached it and put a hand on the knob.

“So,” he said. “That’s the police answer. You ask a civil question—as a citizen, as a reporter—and what happens?” He pulled the door toward him. “You get thrown out!” he said. He spoke bitterly. “You—”

Mullins had not advanced. But he twitched slightly.

“—get thrown out,” the guy from PM repeated, even more-hurriedly. “All right. Wait until you read—” Mullins twitched again. “PM!” the guy from PM said, loudly and defiantly, and leaped through the door.

O’Malley remained standing. He looked at the others.

“All of you,” he said. “The hell out!”

They went, without hurrying. At the door the last of them, the man from the Times, turned back and shook his head sadly. He didn’t say anything. After they had gone, O’Malley glared for a moment at the closed door. Then he moved his glare to Mullins.

Laurel Burke, known sometimes as Mrs. Oscar Murdock, would be all right to visit, Bill Weigand thought, looking at her. A good place to visit, but, like New York. Very much like New York, he decided—difficult to imagine in another environment. She was blond, perhaps by intention; she had a broad low forehead and widely set dark blue eyes; her chin was firm and rounded. Possibly, if you thought much about it, you might decide that her face was heavier than faces needed to be. But no man was apt to spend that much time in analysis, at any rate of her face.

Bill thought, almost hurriedly, of Dorian, who was known always as Mrs. Weigand and had eyes with greenish lights and fully as good a figure. Dorian did not have hostess pajamas of quite this cut—quite this daring—and would hardly have worn them if she had. It was a matter of taste, but there was a little of the carnivorous in all men. Probably there had been, for example, in George Merle. Which might account for—

Her voice was carefully low; intentionally low. She might, Bill thought, practice from time to time on it, keeping the pitch down. There was hardly a suggestion, and that not in tone but in inflection, that once it might have been a voice for use in subway trains.

“Well, Lieutenant,” she said. “You’ll know me next time?”

He was not disconcerted. He agreed gravely that he would. He returned attack with attack.

“Mr. Merle knew a good thing,” he said. “You.”

She widened her eyes in vast surprise and bewilderment. She narrowed them in realization.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” she said.

She still stood in the door she had opened when Bill Weigand rang the bell. Weigand waited but she showed no inclination to move.

“Do you want to talk about it here?” he said.

She looked at him, considering. Her eyes were suspicious.

“Let’s see your badge,” she said. “If you’ve got a badge.”

Weigand showed her his shield. She looked at it and seemed convinced.

“All right,” she said. “Come on in.”

She swayed slightly and becomingly as she walked. It took all kinds of women to make a sex and she was one kind. Dorian would never allow herself to sway in just that fashion. It was a matter of taste, and a variety of tastes are possible to man. Laurel Burke’s pajamas fitted tightly over the hips and flared below them. She wore black house shoes on bare feet and the shoes were cut to disclose enameled toenails. The pajamas fitted affectionately above the waist. She went to a sofa and sat without looking at Weigand. She stretched back in it, and the pajamas, cut low in front, tightened over her breasts. She looked up at Weigand.

“Very pretty,” Weigand said, conversationally. “Very pretty indeed. As I said, Mr. Merle knew a good thing.” He paused, looking down at her. “And don’t ask me what Mr. Merle,” he suggested.

She seemed unperturbed.

“I know a Mr. Merle,” she said. “Slightly. Otherwise, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Except that you’re talking like a cop.”

Weigand pulled a chair up and sat on it. He waited while she finished.

“In case you don’t know,” he said, “George Merle was killed this afternoon. In your apartment.”

Her eyes widened, she gave a small gasp, she leaned forward toward Weigand. She said, “No.”

“Yes,” Weigand said. “Somebody shot him.”

He waited. She looked as if the news were a surprise, as if it were shocking. She looked as if she could, for the moment, think only of the central fact of George Merle’s death.

“Oscar—it will be a terrible blow to Oscar,” she said, as if to herself. She seemed to remember Weigand. “My husband,” she said. “He was devoted to Mr. Merle. He’ll—he’ll be terribly upset.”

Weigand made a sound which might mean anything and waited. She seemed to be recovering from her first surprise.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “You said something else. Something about—” She paused, apparently trying to remember.

“I said he was shot in your apartment,” Bill told her, patiently.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what you said. I don’t know what you mean. I’ve been here all afternoon—it’s—”

“The apartment on Madison,” Weigand said. “The one over the antique shop. Your former apartment, if you like that better. The one you had with Mr. Murdock. Your—husband.”

She looked at him; her eyes measured him.

“Well,” she said. “Well? I thought you were a homicide dick.”

“I am,” Weigand told her.

“You sound like the morals squad,” she said. “Or something. Who says Ozzie isn’t my husband?”

“Ozzie,” Weigand told her.

She twisted her lips down; then she twisted them up, making it a smile—a derisive smile.

“Trust a man,” she said. “Trust them not to be worth trusting. Ozzie’s a heel.”

Weigand had no comment.

“All right,” she said. “The apartment I used to live in. As Mrs. Murdock—without being Mrs. Murdock. And Merle was killed there. So I suppose I killed him.”

People jumped to conclusions, Weigand thought. His voice was tired.

“I haven’t supposed you killed him, Mrs. Murdock,” he said. “Did you?”

“Make it Burke,” she said. “Miss Burke. No. Why should I?”

“Laurel Burke,” Weigand said, not as an answer. “Laurel—beginning with L.”

“The man can spell,” Laurel remarked to the room, in a tone of wonderment.

“And,” Weigand said, “somebody with the initials O.M. wrote Merle a note telling him that somebody with the initial L would be at the apartment at about five. To get a check. And Merle went and was killed.”

She looked at him for rather a long time before she answered. She drew in a deep breath and her breasts rose pointedly against the silk of her pajamas.

She moistened her lips before she spoke, and when she spoke her voice was less low pitched.

“No, damn it,” she said. “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t anywhere near there. He didn’t bring me the check. He—” She broke off. She started over.

“I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “What do you want me to say?”

What she had said was all right, Weigand told her. If true.

“I’ll swear it’s true,” she said. “Anywhere I’ll swear it’s true.”

“All right,” Weigand said. “You weren’t at the apartment. You didn’t meet Merle—or shoot him. You didn’t take the check.”

“No,” she said. She said it dully. “No.”

“Somebody did,” Bill Weigand told her. “Somebody met Mr. Merle there and shot him. Somebody took the check. If he brought a check. How well did you know Mr. Merle, Miss Burke?”

She shook her head; for a moment she seemed a long way off. Weigand repeated. “How well did you know Mr. Merle, Miss Burke?”

“Just through Ozzie,” she said. She moved slightly. “He came to the apartment a few times to see Ozzie. He knew about Ozzie and me.”

She was not speaking dully now. She was speaking carefully—slowly, as if she were thinking it out.

Bill Weigand waited a moment after she had finished. Then he shook his head.

“That’s not good enough,” he said. “You don’t seem to get the situation, Miss Burke. I can take you in as it is—as it is right now. On the basis of the letter. And let you try to work your way out of it. Unless you sell me a better story.”

“That’s the way it was,” the girl said. “Really.”

“No,” Bill said. “Not unless Ozzie is lying. He says Merle was never at the apartment.”

“He—” the girl said. “I don’t believe he said that.”

“Right,” Bill said. “You don’t believe he said it. I do. We can take you both down. You can ask him. If you get a chance. We can say you and he were in it together.”

Her eyes widened. She stood up suddenly and her voice, too, went up.

“We weren’t in anything together,” she said. She almost screamed it. “Not in anything. You can’t make that stick.”

Weigand did not meet her mood. His voice was level, casual. He said they could try.

“If Ozzie said that,” she said, “it was—it was because he didn’t know. He—”

“Didn’t know what?” Weigand said. “That Merle was visiting you? While he was paying your apartment rent—while Ozzie was? Is that what Murdock didn’t know?”

The girl looked at him and now her eyes were narrow—speculative. She raised her hands and pushed back her hair, which fell in curves around her face. The movement rounded the silk against her body. She let her hands drop and suddenly she shrugged just perceptibly. She sat down again. Her voice regained its studied depth as she spoke.

“Suppose it was,” she said. “Suppose—what you want to suppose. Why would I kill him? Suppose I was crossing Ozzie up.”

“You were?” Bill said.

“Suppose I was,” she said. “Suppose the old boy thought I was—well, thought I was something he wanted. Suppose he made a good bid and I decided a girl’s got to live. Would I tell Ozzie everything?”

“Not if Mr. Merle was satisfied with things that way,” Bill said. “Was he?”

“He was—suppose he was scared as hell,” she said. “Scared people would find out if he—if he got me an honest-to-God place to live. Suppose he wanted me to go on with Ozzie as—as a way to cover up. Suppose he came through with enough—”

“To make it worth your while not to hold out for an honest-to-God place to live. And the rest of it,” Bill finished. “Are you saying that was the way it was? A dirty trick on Ozzie?”

“What the hell,” the girl said. “You only live once. Is it any of your business?”

“Not that part of it,” Bill Weigand told her. “Unless you killed Merle.”

“Why would I?” she said. “With things that way I wouldn’t have any reason. I’d want to keep him alive. But Ozzie—”

“But Ozzie wouldn’t,” Weigand said. He looked at her. She was something to look at; but he was no longer even speculatively carnivorous. “So you want to throw us Murdock,” he said.

“I’m not throwing you anybody,” she told him. “I’m just telling you the way things could have been. Nobody’s going to hang it on me. I’ve got to look after myself.”

“You seem to,” Weigand told her.

“What the hell,” the girl said, “who doesn’t?”

Bill Weigand could think of a lot of people who didn’t; he could think of casualty lists. But there was no point to it.

“Right,” Weigand said. “So this is your story.”

He sketched it for her, and as he did so he admitted to himself that it fitted well enough—fitted with the few pieces of the puzzle he had so far found—with Merle’s interest in antiques, for example, counting that interest as another cautious blind; it fitted, perhaps, with Merle’s character, assuming—as more or less Weigand did assume—that Merle’s public austerity was privately superficial. If he had been aroused by Laurel Burke, however frostily, he would go to lengths to keep it quiet. He would, perhaps, accept a situation which might have depressed a more forthright man. And it was, at least in theory, possible that Oscar Murdock, if he found out about it, might not be so complacent. That was so far only a theory, unsupported by facts.

“I don’t say Ozzie shot him,” the girl said, when Weigand finished. “I just say he might have had a reason—if he found out about us. He never said he found out.”

“But if he found out, you think he might have done it?” Weigand said. He looked at her after he had spoken.

“You don’t think I’m worth it?” she said, unexpectedly. Consciously, she raised her arms, clasping her hands behind her head. She looked back at Weigand. Her look was a challenge.

Bill Weigand smiled, without amusement.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I really wouldn’t know.” He looked into her challenging eyes. “And, baby, I’m not going to try to find out,” he added. “So you can quit stretching.”

Without violence, Laurel Burke told Weigand what he was. When she had finished, he laughed at her. She started up and then, as quickly, dropped back on the sofa.

“What the hell,” she said. “You wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”

Weigand sat for a moment, looking at her. Then he stood up.

“I don’t know,” he said, “whether I’m going to buy your story or not. It’s a very pretty little story. I can still think of other little stories—not so pretty. Or just about as pretty. So I wouldn’t try to go anywhere, if I were you.”

“You’ll be back, Lieutenant?” she said.

Somebody would be back, he promised her. He would be—or someone else would be.

“So just wait around,” he suggested. “Just wait around.”