11

Sergeant Mullins drove the police car, which was not marked as such, along a narrow blacktop road, as he had been told to by a man at a filling station, and kept his eyes open. The sign was of wrought iron and read “Graham Latham.” He turned on the driveway, through the gap in the stone wall. Iron gates which might have stopped him stood open. The drive wound through lawns, among trees. The drive, Mullins thought, could use a few loads of gravel. The grass could stand cutting. Nevertheless, all very plush.

When the drive made its last turn but one, Mullins could see the house. A large house—in fact, a tremendous house. A brown shingle house, in front of which the drive circled. There was a porte-cochère and Mullins stopped the car in it, and walked up two wooden steps—which could have done with a coat of paint—to a white door. He pressed the button and, distantly, inside, a bell rang. He waited, briefly, and a man answered the door. The man said, “Morning?”

He was a wiry man of medium height, with gray hair in a brush cut and a crisp gray mustache. He was deeply tanned. He had unexpectedly full red lips and the faint, conceivably encouraging, smile behind which he waited showed very even, very white, teeth.

“Miss Latham?” Mullins said. “If she’s in? My name is Mullins. Called earlier—”

“Right you are,” the wiry man said, and pushed the screen door toward Mullins. “Anything we can do.” He shuttered the faint smile. “About poor Johnny, of course.” He shook his head slowly. “Bad thing,” he said. “Damn bad thing. Come along in, eh?”

Sergeant Mullins went along in—went into a large, square hall, walked on a worn carpet.

“I’m Latham,” the wiry man said. “Hilda’s father, y’know. Tells me you and some captain gave her a bit of a going over.”

His tone made light of this.

“Walked into a bit, didn’t she?” he said. “Not that I mean into it, of course. In here, if you don’t mind. She’ll be along any minute.”

They went into a room off the hall. It was a large room, with a large fireplace at the far end, with french doors along one side. Two of the doors were open, behind screens; they opened onto a terrace. A rather weedy terrace.

“Too early to offer you anything, I expect,” Graham Latham said and then, his voice raised, “Hildy? Your visitor’s here.” He directed this information through the open french doors. Apparently from some distance, a girl said, “Coming.”

“Cigar?” Latham said, and Mullins said “No thanks.” Latham moved—moved well, moved quickly—to a table and opened a box and took a cigar out of it, bit off the end, lighted the cigar. The cigar was appropriate to his face, Mullins thought. Cigars aren’t to many faces. Latham wore a blue polo shirt and walking shorts and blue stockings which stopped just below his knees, and the clothes, too, were appropriate, although the man probably was nearing sixty. He didn’t look it, Mullins thought. He’d kept himself in good shape.

Hilda Graham came from the terrace into the room. Yellow gladioli trailed from her left hand. She wore slacks and a loosely fitting sweater, and was a girl who could wear slacks. She said, “Good morning, sergeant. With you in a minute,” and to her father, “Last of them, I’m afraid,” and then she went on across the room and out of it on the other side, into the hall. She came back quickly, without flowers. “Had to put them in water,” she said. “Now, sergeant?”

Mullins looked at Graham Latham, briefly. “Don’t mind if I sit in,” Latham told him, did not ask him. But he was pleasant about it. “Watching brief,” he said, and added, “as they call it. Eh?”

“Why not?” Mullins said, assuming there was nothing, in any case, to be done about it. Mullins had worn a blue business suit. It felt a little stiff on him. “Won’t take long,” Mullins said.

“Sit down, sergeant,” Hilda Latham said, and herself moved to a chair. The deep red hair swayed as she moved. Quite something, she is, Mullins thought. And knows it. And why not? She sat down and leaned a little forward in the deep chair. The chair’s dark slip cover was somewhat worn. “That’s right,” Latham said. “Take your choice, sergeant.” Mullins took his choice. He chose a straight chair, and sat squarely in it.

“One or two points,” Mullins said. “Captain Weigand thought you could clear up, maybe.”

“Like,” Mullins said, “did you know Mr. Blanchard left you half a million dollars, Miss Latham?”

The girl’s eyes widened; she looked startled. She looked at her father, who sat up straight in the chair he had been comfortable in and said, “My God!” He looked at his daughter for some seconds. He said, again, “My God,” and there seemed to be wonder—conceivably admiration—in his voice.

“No,” Hilda Latham said. “I—are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “That’s what the will says. You didn’t know?”

She shook her head, the dark hair swaying.

“Good old Johnny,” Graham Latham said. “My God.”

But, as he looked at Sergeant Mullins, waiting, his eyes narrowed somewhat. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes were the crinkles many smiles leave behind them. He was not, now, smiling. He was, Mullins decided, considering.

“It seemed,” Mullins said, “like a good deal. To the captain, that is. He sort of wondered whether you had expected anything like that. Seems you hadn’t.”

“Not like that,” the girl said. “Certainly not—half a million dollars?”

“Uh-huh,” Mullins said.

“Of course,” Latham said, “poor old Johnny hadn’t kith or kin. There’s that, sergeant. And he’s always been fond of Hildy. Avuncular, y’know.” He looked at Mullins. “Like an uncle,” he said.

“Sure,” Mullins said. “And he never said anything about leaving you money, Miss Latham? Didn’t even sort of hint?”

“No,” the girl said. “Oh—I wouldn’t have been surprised to get something. He was generous. And, as daddy says, there wasn’t—wasn’t anybody really close. But—as much as that!” She shook her head again.

“That’s the point,” Latham said. “Something—yes. But—My God!”

And then, as if involuntarily, he looked around the big room. He surveyed it, Mullins thought, as a householder; as a householder who saw blemishes. And who, now, could look at them without pangs.

“What would you have expected?” Mullins said. “Just at a guess, Miss Latham? Under the circumstances?”

They both looked at him. There was a rather long pause. It occurred to Mullins that they did not want to rush into anything. Or even to edge into anything.

“What do you mean, circumstances?” Hilda asked, and her father looked at her quickly. Sharply? Because, in her voice, there had been a note of wariness, of defense.

“Why,” Mullins said, “like you said—both said. The circumstance of feeling toward you like an uncle.” He paused and looked at them slowly. He managed to look surprised. He also looked formidable. “What did you think I meant?” he said, slowly.

“That’s right,” the man said, and was quick. “That’s all we—”

“Not,” Mullins said, “the way a man would feel toward a young woman who meant a lot more to him than—than a niece? A girl as pretty as you are, Miss Latham? A girl who had a key—”

Latham stood up, the movement abrupt.

“I don’t like that,” he said. “Don’t like any part of it.”

“Well,” Mullins said, and did not move. “Sorry about that, Mr. Latham. What don’t you like?”

“The implication. That Hildy would—” He did not finish that. “You’d better get out of here, sergeant.”

“Sure,” Mullins said, and did not move. “I could do that. Will if you want to make a point of it. Come back with some of the local boys. Then we can all go into town and have a nice cozy little—”

“Daddy,” the girl said. “You’re giving the sergeant—” She hesitated. “The wrong idea,” she said. “That we’ve got anything to hide. That—”

The wiry man looked down at her. Something, Mullins thought, passed between them. Almost as abruptly as he had stood up, Latham sat down again. He said, “Sorry. Got the notion you—” And shrugged.

“O.K.,” Mullins said. “Maybe I put it the wrong way. Miss Latham—did Mr. Blanchard want you to marry him? And did you say, maybe, that you would, maybe? And then did you meet this Mears fellow and—”

Latham moved as if to stand up again, and the girl took charge. She said, “No, daddy,” and then, “there isn’t anything—wrong about it. Nothing to be—ashamed of.”

She turned to Mullins, then.

“I suppose,” she said, “there are dozens of ways you could have found out. How doesn’t matter. Yes—Johnny did ask me to marry him. And—I was fond of him. There wasn’t anybody else. Then. Nobody he didn’t make look like—like a small boy. And—”

“Hilda!”

Graham Latham leaned forward in his chair as he spoke his daughter’s name, stopping her. He repeated the name, as sharply as before.

“You’re talking too much,” he said, when she looked at him and waited. “The sergeant here isn’t—it’s not any of his concern.”

“I—” the girl said, and at the same time Mullins, in a much heavier voice, said, “We-ll—”

“Well,” Mullins said, “I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Latham. We’re interested in all sorts of things. You’d be surprised what interests us. And then, Miss Latham, this fellow Mears came along? The one you said yesterday was—whadja say? A kid, wasn’t it?”

“Hilda!” her father said again, again with command in his tone. But this time it did not stop her.

“All right,” she said. “All right, Sergeant Mullins. Doug came along. This kid came along.”

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “And so you told Mr. Blanchard all bets were off? And he said—what did he say, Miss Latham? That it was O.K. with him?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Sure,” Mullins said. “Said for you to go right ahead and that he thought you were doing the right thing and all like that. Didn’t make any—pitch?”

“He understood.”

“Sure,” Mullins said. “An understanding man. When did you break it to him, Miss Latham? Yesterday, maybe?”

“I—” she said, and hesitated. “Yes, yesterday. But—I think he knew before. Things like that—I think he knew before. Or guessed.” She looked at Mullins, then, with her head raised. “I’d never told John that I loved him,” she said. “He—he didn’t ask me to.”

“He didn’t try to talk you out of it? Not any?”

Scepticism was in Mullins’s voice. It was put there with care.

“No,” she said. “Oh—he said I must be sure it wasn’t—wasn’t just something I’d get over. But as to talking me out of it—” She shook her head, and the deep red hair swirled.

“Sergeant,” Latham said, “are you a gossip columnist? On the side?”

“No,” Mullins said. “Just a cop, Mr. Latham. A cop wondering about things. Whether, maybe, Mr. Blanchard would have been quite so generous if your daughter, after she’d had time to think it over, had said, finally, that she was sorry and it was no soap. Might have cut half a million down to—oh, his grandmother’s ring. The one with a topaz in it.” Mullins looked at the tanned man who didn’t look his age. He looked steadily. “Dead men can’t do any will changing,” he said. “Where were you yesterday morning, Mr. Latham? Here with your daughter—you were here yesterday morning, Miss Latham?”

She nodded her head and looked at her father. And waited. Her greenish-blue eyes seemed to Mullins to narrow just perceptibly as she waited.

“What the hell business—” Latham said and then, suddenly, his full lips parted in a smile and he said, “Sorry, sergeant. Silly thing to say. Particularly since I was going to tell you, as soon as we got around to it. I was in town night before last. Playing bridge.”

He paused, evidently for a question. Mullins did not ask the question.

“With poor old Johnny,” he said. “And a couple of other chaps, of course.”

He waited—waited as a man might who expected what is called a double take.

He got none. Mullins said, “Well,” in a voice of mild interest.

“Until about midnight,” Latham said. “And—at Johnny’s apartment, sergeant.”

“Hmm-mm,” Mullins said. “And then—I take it you didn’t drive back here that night, Mr. Latham? It’s quite a drive.”

“No. Stayed at the club. The Princeton Club. Left early and drove back home before the traffic picked up. Got here about—oh, well before noon.”

“Uh-huh,” Mullins said. “Left about when, Mr. Latham?”

Somewhere around eight, Latham thought.

His daughter had left to keep her luncheon engagement in Forest Hills before he arrived?

“Yes,” Hilda said, answering for both of them. “I drove in in the bug.”

“One of these days that bug of yours is going to fall apart,” Latham said. “All together and nothing first, like the old chaise, eh? Only, the way things are now, we’ll be able—” He caught himself becoming cheerful, apparently. He said, “Poor old Johnny. Hard to believe he’s gone.” He sighed.

It was hard to believe a good many things, Mullins thought, half an hour later, beginning the long drive back. He’d turn a lot of things over to the loot and see how he made out.

Jerry, seeing his wife waiting in the Algonquin lobby, debated briefly whether he would be the conventional husband of folklore. He decided to leave the comic-strip personality to those of comic-strip mind. Going up to her, smiling down at her, he said it was a very pretty new fall suit and that he assumed she had been able to walk right out in it.

“I had a bet with myself,” Pam said. “I bet you would. I won. I’m glad you like it and I could and it wasn’t at all expensive, considering. After lunch, could you take time to look at a cat?”

If they didn’t take too long over lunch, Jerry said, as they went into the Oak Room.

“She’s really a bargain,” Pam said, as they sipped. “More than the suit, to be honest. Marked down from I don’t know what.”

“To?”

“Forty dollars,” Pam said. “Admittedly, she has what some people might call a stripe. But on the other hand, she’s not pointed. Not as they go. She puts them on a pedestal. One at a time, of course.”

That took some explanation, over corned beef and cabbage. Jerry agreed that it was an odd way to sell cats and that he, too, would have expected a bin. He said he supposed it came under the head of merchandising.

“Packaging, really,” Pam said, in the taxicab bound, slowly and tediously, north. “The poor little things. Probably it would have been quicker to walk. But I had to get new shoes, too, to go with the suit. You didn’t notice them, incidentally.”

It is Jerry North’s opinion that women set far too high a store on shoes, and that one pair of shoes looks, on the whole, very like another. He said they were very pretty shoes and went beautifully with the suit.

They walked down two steps to the door of the breeders’ nook. There was a shade pulled down on the door. The shade had one word lettered on it. The word was “Closed.”

“Well,” Pam said. “She was certainly quick about it.”

That, also, needed explanation. Pam explained on the way downtown. She said that Miss Somers looked rather young to retire—particularly between ten in the morning and—“What time is it now?” It was two thirty in the afternoon.

“Between ten and two thirty,” Pam said. “But I suppose once a person decides—” She became silent. Jerry waited.

“Nothing,” Pam said. “Except that Saturday she didn’t say anything about having a cat sale and if she wanted to sell cats you’d think that would be the first thing to mention, wouldn’t you? And this morning, even, she would be selling cats for a few weeks, and certainly tomorrow, when we were supposed to go in. Before I thought of our having lunch together, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Which may,” Pam said, “be all she’s gone to, and there was nothing to indicate she had an assistant. Did I tell you your Mr. Ackerman was there this morning?”

She had not. She did. She said that, of course, Gebby had said that she, which was to say Madeline Somers, was also a member of the bunch of crackpots, which was to say The Committee Against Cruelty. And that Ackerman had probably gone around to get a contribution or something. And that—still? Did Jerry think?

Jerry would, he told her, think that she was making bricks without straw. Or, for that matter, clay.

“Nothing to tell Bill, then?”

He doubted that Bill would be interested to hear that Miss Madeline Somers’s cat store was closed, possibly for lunch. Or that Floyd Ackerman had been at the store that morning. If Pam was sure it really was Ackerman. And—

“Another thing,” Pam said. “About Gebby. Of course it doesn’t mean anything, but—”

“Mac,” the cab driver said, “I can’t stand here. The cop’s looking at me already, and he’s one of the mean ones.”

They were in front of the building in which North Books, Inc., has offices. Jerry said, “I’ll try not to be late,” and Pam, “Keep your flag down. I want to go to—”

As the cab continued south, Pam told herself, again, that, of course, it didn’t mean anything. Only—Dr. Oscar Gebhardt, cat specialist, was, often had said he was, entirely opposed to hospitals for cats. He had not had a hospital for years; he operated on cats in his office on Park Avenue, he brought cats home, still unconscious, for convalescent care; he regarded hospitals as very bad for cats, who thrive best in familiar surroundings and known hands, who also are subject to infectious diseases which may sweep through a cat hospital.

What did not mean a thing was that he had, apparently, sung another song to John Blanchard—a song in praise of a research center which was, nevertheless, to be at least partly a hospital for cats, among other small animals. And been left a considerable sum to—to orchestrate his song.

“Not Gebby,” Pam told herself, firmly, as she paid the hack driver, remembering that the city tax was part of the fare, not part of the tip.

“It’s perfectly ridiculous to think that Gebby—” Pam told herself in the elevator and checked her mind.

It is not, of course, in matters of this kind, perfectly ridiculous to think of anything.