A Key to Death Read online

  Webb said he couldn’t stop them. He sounded as if he would like to. They saw Dorothy Lynch, first. She had been at home, been in bed. “With a husband in the next bed,” she said. She was a little shaken, but under control. Mary Burton had said nothing the day before, when they left the evening before, which, looked back on, helped. “She was terribly broken up, poor thing. She kept crying and shaking her head. As if she weren’t thinking clearly.”

  “And Miss Moore?”

  “Like the rest of us. Upset. We had enough, didn’t we?”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “Did Mrs. Burton say anything to her, do you know?”

  Mrs. Lynch did not think so.

  “You have no idea—no idea at all—what Mrs. Burton could have known about Mr. Ingraham’s death?”

  How could she? Dorothy Lynch asked, and Weigand could not tell her. They let her go, and waited for Phyllis Moore; waited in Saul Karn’s office, and Karn, evicted to the library, placed marking slips neatly in legal volumes. Phyllis Moore came in and was very pale; her lipstick had a kind of violence on her curving lips, which now trembled just a little.

  She had gone home the evening before, when they had let her go. Home was in White Plains, in a two-room apartment. She did not share it with anyone. She had stopped, late, at a little restaurant she knew—a restaurant called Le Pingouin Gai, where the food was admirable and not expensive. She had driven there from the station, from there driven home.

  She had a car? She appeared momentarily puzzled by the question. Of course she had a car; if you lived outside the city, commuted, you needed a car. Buses took forever. The kind of a car? A small sedan. A Chevrolet.

  “Why all this?” she asked, not with antagonism evident, but seemingly in perplexity.

  They had to ask many things, most of them not relevant. Mary Burton had said nothing to her—nothing that, seen now in perspective, might help? She had not.

  “No one else? You went straight from the office to the train?”

  She hesitated, then, and the hesitation was evident. They waited.

  “Mr. Cuyler,” she said. “He—he asked me to have a drink. Said—” She hesitated again. She’s making it up, Bill thought. “Said he thought I needed one,” she finished, and then looked quickly, too revealingly, at Weigand, then at Mullins. Do you believe me? her eyes said, her waiting expression said.

  They did not.

  “You had a drink with Mr. Cuyler,” Bill said. “Caught your train? Had dinner at this restaurant? It must have been a late dinner.”

  “About nine,” she said. “A little after. It’s only half an hour by express.”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “And got home—around ten, say?”

  “I think so.”

  She had gone to bed about eleven; had got up at seven-thirty, come to New York and the office. When Mary Burton had not come by ten, she and Dorothy Lynch had not been greatly worried. “Everything has been—not the way it usually is.” But when she still had not come an hour later, or called in—then they had told Mr. Webb, and, at his instruction, called Mrs. Burton’s home. And—and heard she could not come to the telephone.

  “Right,” Bill said. “To go back, Miss Moore. Yesterday, from the office, Mr. Ingraham made a telephone call to the district attorney’s office. You have no idea about what?”

  “How could I?”

  “You weren’t on the switchboard.”

  “No—Mary—do you think I’d have listened?”

  “Mrs. Burton was on the switchboard?”

  “Yes. But he just asked for an outside line. She spoke about it afterward because—I suppose she felt he didn’t—well, trust her. But she wouldn’t have listened. None of us would.”

  She was steadier, now; better controlled.

  “You and Mr. Cuyler had a drink together,” Bill said, and his voice was sudden. “Was that unusual?”

  “Why,” she said. “I don’t—” Her eyes widened; she looked quickly at Bill Weigand, and more quickly away. “Why shouldn’t—?”

  “You’re hiding something, Miss Moore,” Bill said. “Not very well, either. What was special about your having a drink with Mr. Cuyler?”

  “He—nothing. Nothing at all. He thought I needed one.”

  She looked again from one to the other.

  “There wasn’t anything else,” she said. “Really there—”

  “You must have talked about Mr. Ingraham’s death.”

  “We—I suppose so. I don’t remember what we talked about.”

  “Speculated about who had killed him. Whether whoever it was went in from the main office, or through the back door. Wondered—wondered why, Miss Moore. You must have talked about that.”

  “I—I don’t remember.”

  “Why don’t you? It was only last night. A man you’d known for several years, worked for, is murdered. In an office just across a corridor.” Bill watched her. “A man you liked, Miss Moore. You did like him? Older, of course—but he had a good face; people seem to have liked him. He had a soft, friendly voice, people say and—”

  She had been sitting near the desk. She leaned toward it now, put her arms on it, dropped her head on her arms. She moved her head from side to side, as if she sought, so, to escape from something which hemmed her.

  “Don’t,” she said, “please don’t. Please. Please.” Her voice was muffled. “I can’t—”

  “Or wasn’t he that kind of man? Were people wrong about him? Maybe that soft voice of his wasn’t real. Under that gentleness—did you hate him, Miss Moore?” She did not seem to hear. “Did you hate him?”

  That brought the blond head up, the blue eyes wide. Then color came suddenly into her pale face.

  “Why do you say that?” she said. “He—he wasn’t like any other man who ever lived. I’d have done anything—anything in the world—to keep him from being hurt. And because I felt that way—because of me—of me—this awful thing—this awful thing—”

  She stopped.

  “You were in love with him?”

  “Francis says it wasn’t—yes, I was in love with him. And he wasn’t in love with me. Not the least bit. I was just—just a pretty enough girl who was a pretty good stenographer. He was kind and—oh, he tried to make it all right. Fixed it so I worked mostly for Mr. Cuyler—or Mr. Karn—so—so I’d get over it. And—”

  But again she stopped speaking, and then there was a kind of blankness in her eyes.

  “You said because of you. What did you mean, Miss Moore?”

  She shook her head, then. She shook it slowly, each movement seeming calculated, seeming final.

  “Is Francis Cuyler—”

  It was as if he had been waiting for this moment behind the closed door to the office, listening behind it.

  “Is Cuyler what?” Cuyler said, at the opened door. The girl did not turn. “So,” he said, “you got around to it, Phyl. I didn’t need to be afraid you’d go to the police, did I? That’s what you said. Remember? Because—how could you? Well—you found out how, apparently.”

  The girl did not turn. She spoke flatly.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t find out how. I—”

  “Well, Mr. Cuyler?” Bill Weigand said. “What did Miss Moore get around to?”

  Cuyler stood very tall just inside the office door. He pushed his black hair back from a broad, white forehead. The gesture was dramatic; seemed a prelude to dramatic speech, possibly in blank verse.

  “Come off it,” Cuyler said. “‘What did she get around to.’ What are you trying to give me?”

  “Miss Moore has told us you and she had a drink together last night, after you left the office. Because, she says, you thought she could do with one.”

  Cuyler pushed again at his hair, although now there was no need. He stared at the back of Phyllis Moore’s head, at its shining blond cap. She did not turn. “That’s all?” Cuyler said, finally, and the question seemed to be to the girl.

  “All that had to do with you, Mr. Cuyler,” Bill Weigand said,
when the girl said nothing. “But now—”

  “Now I’ve walked into it?”

  “Right,” Bill said. “I think you have, Mr. Cuyler.”

  Francis Cuyler shook his head, seeming to chide himself.

  “All right,” he said. “I thought you were bullying the girl.”

  “Did you?” Bill said. “Well?”

  “All right,” Cuyler said again. “She thinks I killed Ingraham. Said so last night. When I made her. She’s nuts—nice, but nuts. Not a very bright girl. I told you that last night, didn’t I, Phyllis. Nice and pretty and not very bright. She said she wasn’t going to say anything—just keep it our little secret. I thought she’d changed her mind.”

  “No,” Bill said. “She hadn’t. That’s why you bought her a drink?”

  “Why?” Cuyler said. “Oh—in a way. To get her to come out with it. She’d gone around all afternoon looking as if she were penned up with Dracula or somebody. For a dumb girl she’s got quite an imagination. For—”

  “Don’t keep on saying that,” Phyllis Moore said, without turning. “Just don’t keep on saying that.”

  “Well,” Cuyler said. “She can talk. Think of that.”

  The girl turned, then. She looked at Cuyler fully, slowly. Her face was puzzled again. She seemed surprised, and to be waiting in surprise.

  “I told you I didn’t,” Cuyler said. “You didn’t listen, but I told you. Also, you didn’t drink your drink.”

  She merely shook her head to that, and the gesture might have meant anything.

  “You just confuse people,” Cuyler said. “You—”

  “Wait,” Bill said. “You accused Mr. Cuyler of killing Mr. Ingraham. Is that right, Miss Moore?”

  She did not take her eyes from Cuyler’s face. She nodded her head.

  “On what grounds?” Bill asked her. “Something you saw?”

  She still did not speak, and after a moment Cuyler laughed briefly.

  “Good as your word, aren’t you?” he said. “No, she didn’t think she saw anything, captain. Or—didn’t say that, anyway. It was something else, wasn’t it Phyllis?”

  She still said nothing, still waited.

  “Thought I was jealous,” Cuyler said. “Because of her. Because of the play Ingraham was making for her—pretending not to; teasing her along, just the same. Being fatherly and—”

  “No,” Phyllis said. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t that way at all.” She turned, then, to Bill Weigand. “I told you how it was,” she said. She turned to Cuyler. “I did tell them that,” she said. “Nothing about you.”

  “However it was,” Bill said. “Were you jealous, Mr. Cuyler? I take it you deny killing Ingraham.”

  “You can,” Cuyler said. “About the other—” He again ran a long hand through black hair. “I’m a damn fool,” he said. “But—all right. Ingraham got in my hair. I as good as told him that day before yesterday. Told him I was quitting, that I was going to try to take Phyllis along.”

  “Take her along?”

  “As a secretary. She’s all right at that. Never think she’s dumb about—other things.”

  “Ingraham took it all right?”

  “He took it all right. Or pretended he did. This little—this pretty Phyllis, she wasn’t having any. Sure, I could go. I gathered that would be fine—But she was going to stay as long as Ingraham wanted her to and—oh, the hell with it. She made me mad.” He looked at her. “Real mad,” he said. He shook his head. “All the time,” he said, “I know one girl’s like another, or near enough. What’s so damn special about you?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing’s special.”

  “Not a damn thing,” he said. But his face did not repeat his words, and his black eyes did not. He seemed, for that second, to have forgotten Weigand, forgotten Mullins. Except for the girl, the room was empty. This did not last; he seemed to break from it. He turned to Weigand.

  “All right,” he said. “You’ve got your answer. I didn’t kill Ingraham. I don’t much mind his being dead. So?”

  He was not particularly antagonistic. He waited.

  “Where were you last night?” Bill asked him, and then Cuyler seemed surprised. He had had dinner, alone; he had gone, still alone, to the residential hotel in which he lived. He had read awhile and gone to bed, probably about midnight. He seemed puzzled.

  “Mary’s dead,” Phyllis Moore said. “She was killed last night. The way Forbes was.”

  Francis Cuyler swore then, not loudly. He shook his head. “Who the hell,” he said, “would want to hurt the poor old thing?”

  They couldn’t tell him that, Bill Weigand said. A general guess was easy—she had known something. A more specific guess—Bill shrugged.

  “You’ve got nothing?”

  They had some things. Bill told him of the discovery of Mrs. Burton’s body, of the wound which had killed her, of the bullet found.

  “The same gun?” Cuyler asked, and then Bill temporized, said they did not yet know, that tests were being made. That tests were not being made, since they would be useless, was something for the police to know. Bill hesitated, then, as if debating with himself whether to tell more. Finally, he told of the young man—the slim young man with a bouncy walk, a top coat which swung with his movements, who had been seen in the vicinity; seen driving from it. He did not question the sex of the person who, if “bouncy,” might have taken short steps, moved hips in a certain fashion.

  The question apparently did not, for Cuyler, arise. He listened, in the end shook his head, the gesture signifying that it was all too deep for him, too obscure for him. And with that, it seemed that he dismissed the matter, perhaps as outside his province. His eyes went back to the girl, who now sat facing him; who now was not so without color in her face, who was looking at the tall, black-haired man as if he wore some disguise she must penetrate.

  “The description doesn’t suggest anyone?” Bill asked, after the pause had lengthened.

  “What?” Cuyler said, and seemed to return from a distance. “Oh, that—no. I can’t say it does. Nobody I know.”

  They had got no further when, a few minutes later, they left the office. Bill was not sure that either of the two was fully aware that the police did leave it, although Cuyler made a gesture, said something about being around if wanted. He and Mullins had not, Bill thought, really held their audience, toward the end.

  “She’s about the right size, all the same,” Mullins said, in the library, outside the door of Saul Karn’s small office. “And he’s got it bad. About her.”

  “Right,” Bill said, and watched Saul Karn enter the library from the corridor. Karn was also the right size; he was not, however, to be described as bouncy. He walked precisely toward them, and removed his rimless glasses and waggled them, also precisely. He said that this was a dreadful thing about poor Mary, and was agreed with. “It appears she must have known something,” he said, and was told it did. He presumed they had questions as to his whereabouts at the crucial time and, for the record, they had. He had been at home, in Mount Vernon, with his wife. He had been asleep when summoned to the office to survey its devastation. They were surprised only that he had a wife, and this surprise they concealed.

  “I have something here you might want to see,” Karn said then. “A letter. I came across it this morning while going through the documents. We felt—Mr. Webb and I—that you should see it.”

  He held out, then, a single sheet of paper, folded, and from the look some time folded. It was a letter, written in long hand, addressed to Forbes Ingraham, care American Express, Paris, signed in hieroglyphics. “Mr. Schaeffer’s signature,” Karn told them, and gestured at the letter, now in Bill Weigand’s hand.

  “Dear Forbes,” Weigand read. “Glad to hear you’re getting a few days to amuse yourself. About our position on the Commonwealth rights, I agree completely. Our friend Fergus is an impatient little man, but he always is. I’ve put him on the back of the stove, pending your return. It’ll do hi
m no harm to simmer.

  “Poor Mary got me a connection in Portland Oregon yesterday when I wanted one in Portland Maine. Situation normal, as the boys say. Mine is also, but I’m taking it a little easier than usual, on suggestion. Not running for subway trains, and that sort of thing. Of course, I haven’t run for a subway train for years, but I do as I’m told. You begin to, at my age.

  “We’ll expect you on the eighteenth.”

  The signature, Samuel Schaeffer’s if Karn said it was, followed. Bill Weigand shook his head.

  “You think it means something?” he asked. “What, Mr. Karn? Mrs. Burton’s mistake? But—didn’t she make a good many? Or is there something significant in Commonwealth rights, or this—” he refreshed his memory—“the impatient Mr. Fergus?”

  Karn shook his head. The Commonwealth rights had to do with clearance on a motion picture, based on a client’s book, being made in England. Mr. Fergus was another client. Karn’s glasses brushed him aside, or chopped him down.

  “The contents of the letter,” Karn said, “are entirely trivial. They appear to be entirely irrelevant. And that is rather the point, isn’t it? Since Mr. Ingraham had locked it up in the safe, instead of filing it. Or, for that matter, throwing it away after he received it.”

  “In the safe?” Bill repeated.

  “Precisely,” Karn said. “Among the things disturbed last night. Which is an unexplained circumstance, I felt—and Mr. Webb agreed when I raised the point. A letter of no importance, brought back from France by Mr. Ingraham, carefully locked up, as if it were of considerable importance.”

  Weigand looked at it again. It was dated early in December; if the eighteenth mentioned was of that month, the letter had, presumably, been sent air mail.

  “Unless, of course,” Karn said, “a matter of sentiment was involved. Presumably, Mr. Ingraham received the letter about the time, or perhaps after, we were forced to cable him of Mr. Schaeffer’s death. But, that does not seem to me an entirely adequate explanation.” He looked up at the ceiling. “No,” he said, “not really adequate.” He looked again at Bill Weigand. “None of us here,” he said, “was aware that Mr. Schaeffer’s health was in any way impaired.”