13

Pam’s first thought had been of Jerry, and of the shock it must have been to him to find Floyd Ackerman dangling from a pipe. Jerry agreed it had been but, after a second drink, added that he would live, through it. Unlike Floyd Ackerman.

“The poor man,” Pam said. “Why? I suppose because he killed Mr. Blanchard and—and what? Remorse? Or merely fear that he would get caught?”

Jerry could not help her, except by guessing. He had thought Ackerman, talking on the telephone, was a man afraid. Certainly he had indicated that he was a man about to run. But, instead, he had killed himself. Bill might know more, when he came.

They had finished dinner, then, and were waiting for Bill Weigand. When the police had arrived at Ackerman’s apartment, Jerry North had told his story once, and told it briefly. Bill had said, “Right, you want to wait here or shall I come around?” Jerry had had no desire to wait there—wait in the way of technicians; wait while the thin body of Floyd Ackerman, dead by strangulation—dead, grotesquely, with his thick-lensed glasses on—was taken away.

Jerry hated to think of the glasses. It was not quite clear why they had added a final macabre touch—except that, when he had opened the hall door, the light had caught the lenses and been reflected from them, so that, for a hideous instant, the dangling man had seemed to be winking at Jerry North—winking as if they shared a secret between them. When he had finished remembering this—and not telling Pam about it—Jerry had had another drink.

It was almost nine when Bill came. He came alone; he looked tired. Always, they could tell how long Bill had been at it, and to some extent how it went, by the tiredness in his face. He looked, now, as if it had been going on for some time, and not going well. But when Jerry let him in, and raised enquiring eyebrows, Bill said they had found nothing to indicate that things were not as they appeared to be—that Ackerman had not killed himself.

He was offered a drink and took coffee, instead. He listed, briefly, the facts which did not contradict appearances.

The stool was where it would have been if Ackerman had stood on it, pushed it away when he was ready. The noose around his neck had been made by tying a bowline in the rope’s end and forming a loop by running the line through the bowline’s eye. In effect—in all that chiefly mattered—it had been a hangman’s knot. The other end of the rope had been passed twice around the pipe, and made fast. The thick pipe, left exposed as so often happened when the building was remodeled, had been more than adequate to support Ackerman’s light weight. It appeared that Ackerman had left some slack, but not enough for the purpose, which would have been to break his neck. So—he had strangled.

He had left no note. As often as not, they left no notes, especially when the decision came suddenly and the action, afterward, was almost immediate. The cord he had used was three-eighths of an inch in diameter (and hence had cut deeply into the man’s thin throat) three-ply, brown, natural fibre. More simply, it was such a strong cord as is frequently used to tie up heavy parcels. Ackerman might have received such a parcel and saved the cord—conceivably for the use to which he had finally put it; more probably for any use which might crop up. He might at some time have bought the cord to tie up some heavy parcel he was shipping—a box of books to someone, for example. The cord—or thin rope if they preferred—would have supported the weight of a much heavier man than Ackerman.

It was possible, of course, that he had gone out and bought the cord after making up his mind, which presumably would have been after his telephone conversation with Jerry. Which brought them back to that. So—

Jerry went over it again, trying to remember, trying to quote. It had not been coherent.

“Right,” Bill said, when he had listened. “You thought he was afraid? Of us—of the police—chiefly? That he wanted to tell you something and—run. Why you?”

“I don’t know,” Jerry said. “We’d met. I suppose he could have heard that we’ve been—mixed up in things like this. But I don’t know.”

“You told him you’d come? Asked him not to do anything until you did? Promised not to call us in?”

In effect—yes.

“You should have had more sense.”

Jerry knew he should have had more sense. He had done this much—he had told his secretary to call the police if she did not hear from him within an hour.

“The only thing,” he said, “Ackerman said he would be watching. Would hide if the police came. I believed him. And—he sounded scared, Bill. Scared to death.”

“He was,” Bill said. “Apparently he was. You waited—how long?”

Jerry had waited in the apartment almost exactly ten minutes before he went into the other rooms, before he found Ackerman hanging. He—

He stopped suddenly.

“Bill,” he said, “if I’d looked earlier—found him earlier?”

“I doubt it,” Bill said.

“But you don’t know?”

“I don’t know. You saw nothing to indicate there had been anyone else in the apartment?”

Jerry North shook his head slowly. And Pam, sitting beside him on a sofa, put her hand over his, pressed his hand. “All right,” Jerry said. “I—” Again he broke off, and now looked at Bill Weigand, looked intently.

“I told you,” Bill said. “Everything is consonant with suicide.”

“Even the glasses?”

“He could see almost nothing without them, the M.E. says. Judging by the lenses. He would—well, he would have needed them to tie the knots.”

“Speaking of the knots,” Pam said, “what’s this one you call a bowline? I never heard of it.”

Bill told her, as well as the shape of a knot can be told without demonstration.

“He’d know how to tie one?” Pam said. “It sounds—complicated.”

Sounded more than was, Bill said. He smiled suddenly, and weariness ebbed from his face. He said that if she was looking for some special person—a sailor, perhaps? If so, they had nothing to indicate that Ackerman had ever been a sailor.

Pam said, “Really, Bill. Although I did see a movie the other evening—one of the old ones? On TV? And there everything depended on a man’s tying a square knot. A square knot. Even I—don’t I, Jerry?”

“At least half the time,” Jerry said, with gravity, but felt better, with Pam back. He thought of mentioning the laws of chance, but decided against it.

“All right,” Pam said. “Forget knots. Bill—you say ‘consonant’ with. A—a careful word?”

“A detective should always be sceptical,” Bill said. “Says so in the manual. But—no cigarettes still burning, Jerry? No faint odor of perfume?”

He spoke lightly. He sounded serious. Jerry North shook his head.

“Nothing heard? No distant closing of a door? No window eased down?”

“Nothing,” Jerry said, “except somebody going downstairs. Somebody I first thought was Ackerman, coming down from where he had been hiding. Only—Probably just somebody going out to market. Anyway, no pause outside Ackerman’s—” He stopped abruptly. He was being looked at hard.

“My friend,” Bill Weigand said, “it took you quite a time.”

Jerry looked at him blankly.

“To remember the footsteps,” Bill said. “Oh—I can see they wouldn’t have had any meaning. Unless, Jerry, you knew that the floor above Ackerman’s—the only floor above—is unoccupied. Nobody lives there, Jerry. Nobody goes down from there to the corner grocery.”

There was rather a long pause. Jerry dented it, slightly and after some seconds, by saying, “We-ll.” And then Pam, with some reproach, said, “Jerry!”

“Man or woman?” Bill said, and Jerry—feeling now a little put upon, and that this was not his day—shook his head. He said he couldn’t be sure. He had at first thought the footsteps those of Ackerman himself. So he could not, obviously, have been sure they were those of a woman. But, subsequently, he had explained them—with the fraction of his mind available to something of so little importance—as the footsteps of a woman on her way out to buy food for dinner.

“Jerry!” Pam said.

Jerry said he was sorry. He said that, at the time, he had not known Ackerman was dead.

“A murderer,” Pam said. “Only a wall away. And you just—sat there.”

“Hold it,” Bill said. “Hold it, Pam. There’s no evidence—”

“Killed the poor little—man,” Pam said, evidently having rejected “crackpot” out of deference to the dead. “Made it look like suicide. Heard Jerry coming. And—Jerry. Don’t tell me you rang the bell?”

“I’m sorry,” Jerry said. “I guess you didn’t bring me up right, dear.”

“You,” Pam said. “And, since he couldn’t come down, because you were coming up, went up and waited and—really, Jerry.”

“I’m very sorry,” Jerry said, doing what little he could to strengthen it. He looked at Bill Weigand.

“Right,” Bill said. “It’s possible, obviously.” He smiled, however. If there was faint tolerance in the smile, Jerry preferred not to notice it.

“Is there anything else you two haven’t got round to passing on?” Bill Weigand said.

“I can’t think of any—” Jerry began, but again Pam said, “Jerry!” Jerry stopped, obediently.

“Miss Somers,” Pam said. “I said we ought to. That she—”

But this time Bill Weigand interrupted. He said, “Somers?” Then he said, “Damn. You did mention her before and I—damn!”

They waited.

It was nothing, he told them. Almost certainly nothing. That morning, while he had been talking with a lawyer named Notson, something had tugged at his memory and nothing in his memory had responded. Now he knew what had tugged—a name. The name of Somers; a name repeated. One Alex Somers, dying intestate; Blanchard his administrator. One Madeline Somers, keeper of a cat store. Presumably it meant nothing; was one of those coincidences which plague life, and investigations. Still—what about Miss Somers?

They told him of Miss Somers—of her revelation to Pam, that morning, that she was about to go out of the cat business and back to Los Angeles; the suggestion, by no means conclusive, that she had gone out of business very suddenly, and closed the shop. (Although at least one potential customer had undertaken to return.) It wasn’t, Pam admitted, much to go on. Miss Somers might merely have gone out to lunch—a rather late lunch.

“Or, of course,” she added, “gone out to deliver a cat. I do hope she didn’t sell Winkle.”

They both looked at her. They looked at each other.

“Nothing definite,” Pam said. “It just—came into my mind. That if we bought her—the little queen—we might call her Winkle.”

“Why?” Jerry asked, and made it simple.

“She felt like Winkle,” Pam said. “Don’t always ask me why.”

“All right,” Jerry said. “Gladly.”

“It’s subject to change,” Pam promised him. “And we don’t even know if we’ll get her. We want to look at her again. Tomorrow, probably. Anyway—Mr. Ackerman was there this morning. I’m almost sure it was he. Just as Jerry described him. If you’re trying to make a check on his movements.” She paused. “By there,” she said, “I mean at the cat store. With Miss Somers. Not that it means anything. At least, we thought it didn’t.” She paused again. “While he was alive, that is,” she said, finishing it off.

“Buying a cat?” Bill said. “Or—or what?”

“Now,” Pam said, “how would I know. You want me to intute?”

“By all means.”

“He said something about would she let him know, and she said she’d call him. So I supposed, something to do with the Committee against whatever it is. Probably, a contribution, because Gebby says she was one of them.”

Bill said, “Hm-mm.” He said, “Tell me about the place, Pam.”

She told him—a showroom; behind it, cut off by curtains what was—probably—well, call it a stock room. Where the cats are kept. Beyond that, she thought, another room—probably an office.

They waited.

“I was only in the showroom,” she said. “But she came back very quickly with the cats, so I thought the next was where they kept them. And she and Mr. Ackerman—I’m sure it was Ackerman—apparently had been in still another room, and I supposed the office. Where she keeps her checkbook. Does it make any difference?”

Bill considered. He said it probably didn’t. As a matter of fact—

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “it could clear up—or maybe fog up—one point. The suit Ackerman was wearing—a dark gray flannel—had recently been cleaned. Smelled of cleaning fluid. But—there were cat hairs on it. Fore and aft. No cats in his place. No cat hairs on the furniture, except one or two which might have come from his clothing, rather than the other way around. If he visited this shop—there would have been cat hairs to be picked up?”

“Wherever there are cats,” Pam said. “They do it all the time. Summer and winter. What kind of cat’s hairs?”

“Siamese, the lab boys think.”

They had assumed that Ackerman had got cat hairs on his clothing in Blanchard’s apartment, where it was to be assumed cat hairs abounded. Now, obviously, the assumption needed modification. He could have picked up cat hairs at the cat shop. Most probably, by sitting on a chair where a cat had sat.

“As,” Bill said, “I ought to know.”

“Not any more,” Pam said. She looked around the room. “Not any more,” she said again. There was, for a moment, nothing said. “All right,” Pam said herself. “I won’t let myself. You said, ‘fore and aft’?”

“Back of coat,” Bill said. “Seat of trousers. And—front of trousers.”

“Of course,” Pam said. “He sat on a chair a Siamese had been on and then—then put the cat on his lap and—”

She stopped. Bill had narrowed his eyes, apparently in doubt. He did not actually shake his head, but shaking of the head was somehow implied.

“It’s possible,” he said, in a tone which suggested the absence of the word “barely.” “Or, he may have brushed against something, I suppose. The point is—he didn’t like cats. Tried to kick one of Blanchard’s.”

“Why the—” Pam said, and stopped. “Missed, I hope?” Jerry said, “The cat take appropriate counter measures?”

“Dodged,” Bill said. “Hissed. Probably would have swished if he’d had anything to swish.”

“Oh,” Pam said, “a Manx. I do think cats ought to have tails, but I suppose it’s their own business. You mean, he wouldn’t have taken a cat on his lap. Some people are very strange. How, then? Because it’s very difficult to sit on your own lap. I mean—”

She had, Jerry told her, put it very well.

“Bill,” Jerry said, “what you really think was he was murdered. Strangled—strung up when he was unconscious. By the person who—who heard me coming, went up another flight out of sight until I’d gone into the apartment, went back down again after the coast was—damn.”

There was no use going on worrying about that—about a thing which was no more than a possibility.

“Which sure needs explaining,” Jerry said, still morose, self-blaming.

“To do that,” Pam said, and spoke slowly—“to strangle him, and hold the body up and—hang it up—a person would have to be strong, wouldn’t he?”

“Right,” Bill said. “At any rate, reasonably strong. But, actually, Ackerman weighed very little. And once the cord was over the pipe—well, it’s easier to pull down than to lift.”

Pam nodded, to show her comprehension of the mechanics of the matter.

“But still,” she said, “have to hold him up—move him around—come in contact with him?”

“Right,” Bill said. “And if the murderer had cat hairs on his clothes, some of them would come off on the victim’s clothes—Ackerman’s clothes. His suit had texture, would pick up hairs.”

“And,” Pam said, and spoke even more slowly, “all at once Miss Somers closes up shop and—Bill! She’s one of the heirs of this Somers this lawyer told you about and somehow—” She stopped. “Only,” she said, “how? And why, for that matter?”

And Bill Weigand, this time, did shake his head.

“We’ve got a much better one,” he said. “Graham Latham. A man who needs money. And who now, through his daughter, gets money. And—I haven’t told you this—spent part of Saturday night at Blanchard’s apartment, playing bridge. And—Blanchard’s apartment is an ideal place to pick up cat hairs, including the Siamese. I did myself, and Mullins did and—”

The telephone rang. “The North answering service,” Jerry said, and went to answer. He said, “O.K., sergeant,” and Weigand went to the telephone. He said, “Right, Mullins,” and for some seconds listened in silence. Then he said, “Right, morning will do,” and added that he’d be in his own apartment in half an hour or so, and that Mullins might, also, go and get some sleep. He hung up the receiver.

His face was not tired any longer. His face was satisfied.

“Latham called in,” he said. “We’d asked him to come to town to fill in a few gaps, give a few more details. Called to say he’d be glad to, but would tomorrow do? Because—because it seems Mr. Latham has sprained his back and driving is rather uncomfortable with a sprained back, and there aren’t any more trains tonight. Sprained it lifting something, he says.”

“Lifting?” Which was Pam, getting it straight as straight.

“Right,” Bill said. “Lifting. It’s the usual way.”

“Back instead of knees,” Jerry said, in a voice of experience. “Lifting what?”

“Mr. Latham,” Bill said, “thinks it must have been a chair. Says the pain came on slowly, and he did lift a chair this morning and—he can’t think of anything else he did lift.”

He smiled, rather contentedly.

“Perhaps,” he said, “we’ll be able to jog his memory.”