Murder Has Its Points Read online

  “To take a trip around the world?”

  He smiled, now. The smile was somewhat bitter, but it was a smile of sorts. Pam smiled back, assuming banter somehow intended. She shook her head.

  “Atlantic City? For”—he looked momentarily at the ceiling and seemed to count on his fingers—“four weeks and three days? Until we open?”

  Pam shook her head again. She smiled again. She thought, Jerry will get away again.

  Lars Simon sighed heavily. It was a sigh planned for notice.

  “Mrs. North,” Lars Simon said. “Promise me something. Never sign a collaboration agreement with a novelist. Not one that lets him sit in. Not one that gives him anything to say about—anything. Anything at all. Promise?”

  “Absolutely,” Pam said. “Faithfully.”

  “You have nice hair,” Simon said. “Look at mine. Novelists. You do promise?”

  “Never sign a collaboration agreement with a novelist,” Pam said. “Cross my heart.”

  Presumably, Lars Simon also had had a few. Pam again felt herself deprived. Of course with people just met it is often hard to tell. This is, in Pam’s not too limited experience, especially true with writers.

  “My good deed for the day,” Lars Simon said. “When you see your husband next, Mrs. North, tell him that I had a wonderful time at his wonderful party. If you see Mr. Payne—” He paused; he spread hands in a gesture of hopelessness. He said, “No. You’re too little. And the wrong sex. And—” He shrugged. Unexpectedly, he thrust his hand forward and Pam took it. His was a wiry hand, alive in her own. He said, “Be of good cheer,” and, abruptly, released her hand, turned, and went. Pam looked after him. She said, “Well.”

  “Interesting young man,” Bertie Watson said. “Doesn’t care too much for our Mr. Payne, apparently. Gets in his hair, would you say?”

  “Precisely,” Pam said. “Precisely what I’d say, Bertie.” There were three other people standing in the small circle of which Lars Simon had, rather vividly, been a center. Pam had never seen any of them before, so far as she could recall. Neither, apparently, had Bertie Watson. Spectators, evidently. People who just happened to be there. Pam smiled at them, told Bertie that she would be seeing him, went in the direction opposite that taken by Lars Simon.

  Jerry had disappeared again. Selfishly at the bar? While she—

  No. In a corner. With the afternoon’s lion. Also, she had begun to think, to several the afternoon’s pain. Pam shuddered at her own pun and tried open-field running, although necessarily at a walk, toward her husband and the singularly maneless lion.

  Anthony Payne was a big man and a solid one. He had a roseate face and a jutting chin. He was also, and completely, bald. For some reason Pam had not been able to pin down, this baldness gave him a formidable appearance. He looked, Pam had told Jerry after her first meeting with his valuable author, rather like a frontiersman who had lost a round to an Indian.

  He was now jutting his chin at Jerry, who listened, smiled faintly, nodded his head from time to time. Jerry looked past him, saw Pam, and his expression told her to come right along. She tried to. She said, “Sorry”—an afternoon for light sorrow—and “excuse me” and “if you don’t mind, please” and advanced twenty feet and the channel closed.

  What closed it was the thin back of the busboy in the white coat—the one for whom, earlier, Pam had felt sympathy until she thought of Jerry’s onetime washing of dishes.

  The boy—the extraordinarily thin boy—was standing rigidly, his gaze fixed on—Well, from the angle, on Gerald North, publisher, and Anthony Payne, author—author who had, as Pam had said of him, also after first meeting, taken Africa under his wing.

  Pam cleared her throat, and the boy stood rigid, did not move. She said, “Please?” and said it gently. Said it, it became evident, too gently, since there was no response. She touched a thin arm under a white coat and the boy turned and, for an instant, glared down at her. Then the glare faded and he said, “Sorry, miss,” and moved aside, holding a tray with two highball glasses on it.

  Pam went through. The glare bothered. A—an expression of hate? But not for her. That was obvious. A—a leftover glare, lingering for an instant on a young face? He could hardly have been looking so at Jerry. He’d better not have been. If the thin young man thought he could—

  Jerry reached for her arm and held it gently and said, “Hi. Having fun?”

  “Hi,” Pam said. “Hi, Mr. Payne. Jerry, did you know that Mr. Will—”

  “Yes,” Jerry said.

  “Did you?”

  “No. I didn’t. I’ve just been telling Tony—”

  “Gardner Willings,” Payne said, “thinks he’s God Almighty.”

  Payne had a high-pitched voice. It did not go with the chin.

  “And,” Payne said, “if he thinks, if anybody thinks, I won’t say what I want to say about the overrated son of—” He left it there, presumably out of deference to Pam’s sex. A curious and unexpected reticence, Pam thought. “We were talking about that review of mine,” Payne said. “Hear Willings is telling people he’s going to make me eat it. Like to see him—”

  “Take it easy, Tony,” Jerry said. “He’s still at the bar, lapping. As for the review—nobody’s arguing you shouldn’t say what you want to say. Only—”

  Pam had read the review. She had thought of it when she saw Gardner Willings so largely enter. It was why she had thought that, if Jerry didn’t already know that Willings had arrived, invited or—more probably, now confirmedly—uninvited, Jerry had better be told.

  The review, written by Payne, had appeared two Sundays before in the book review section of the Globe-Express. It had been of Willings’s new book—Ancient of Days, about the slow (and to Pam not too interesting) death of an African tribal leader. And the review must have—Jerry had told her that the talk was it rather prodigiously had—given pause to the editors of the book review section.

  The editors, like those of many review sections, thought it well to have novelists review the books of other, and if possible similar, novelists. This resulted, for the most part, in affable reviews, soothing alike to the reviewed, their publishers and potential readers. It proved novelists without jealousy of, or malice toward, their like. Pamela North summed it up perhaps more succinctly. The rule, she had once told Jerry, was simple: Never bite the hand that might bite back.

  In his lengthy discussion of Ancient of Days, by Gardner Willings ($4.95), Anthony Payne had, to put it gently, ignored this rule. He had begun softly enough, using the play-it-safe, or weasel, “perhaps.” “In view of this new novel by the widely acclaimed Mr. Willings, it is perhaps time to do some admittedly agonizing reappraisal,” Payne had begun. “It is not a pleasant task, but—”

  Payne had gone on for some hundreds of words, and there had been nothing in any of them to indicate that he found his task unpleasant. He had mentioned the “now stale obviousness of the once acclaimed style.” He had referred to Willings as a “self-elected authority on the dark continent.” He had also called Willings “the synthetic he-man of American letters.”

  (The editors had hesitated long and thoughtfully over that one, but had let it stand.)

  Reviews of fiction do not, of course, disturb many—they raise tempests in few and smallish teacups. But there had not been so many startled yaps from indignant readers emitted since John O’Hara, many years before, had compared Hemingway to Shakespeare, to the latter’s disadvantage. And Willings, in New York for the publication—instead of in the Virgin Islands, where he had lived for years, and created many legends and more wisecracks—had told a good many people that he would make Payne eat not only the review, but the entire section in which it appeared—a section profitably heavy with advertising.

  “After all,” Payne said now, “he’s a has-been who never was, and if he wants to make—”

  It was after seven, and the party had thinned somewhat. High-pitched voices carry, particularly when they are used with emphasis.

&nbs
p; There was a stirring at the bar, a ripple among the still-packed drinkers. There was, suddenly, comparative silence in the end of the room the Norths and Payne stood in—a silence broken, with painful distinctness, by the tag-line of a story which, in more prudish days, would not have been told in mixed company. (Which, Pam thought, God knew this was.) After the tag-line, unfortunately spoken by a woman, had trilled out, the silence was momentarily almost complete.

  It was broken by a wordless sound which might have been made by a large and very angry cat.

  2

  There was a convulsion at the bar, as if a very localized earthquake had occurred there. Men swayed outward from a center; a woman said, shrilly, “Ouch!” And a large, square man came from the eye of the disturbance—a man with a crisp red beard; a man wearing a light gray suit and a dark blue shirt. Folded newsprint bulged one of the pockets of the suit’s jacket. Oh dear, Pam North thought, he’s really going to.

  Gardner Willings, advancing on his all-too-evident prey, did not adopt open-field running. Gardner Willings opened the field, as a plow a furrow. He leaned slightly forward as he walked, heavy shoulders set for impact. Pam looked at Anthony Payne. It occurred to her that Mr. Payne seemed to grow perceptibly less large. His chin no longer really jutted. If anything, it nestled. But, nevertheless, he stood and waited. Had he not—see The Africa I Know, by Anthony Payne (North Books, Inc. $3.95)—once stood firm against enraged tribesmen? Pam looked again at Gardner Willings. Better, she thought, enraged tribesmen.

  Willings bowled aside a gossip columnist who had not been quite quick enough. Willings stopped, at the last possible moment, in front of Payne. He looked at Payne. He leaned even closer and looked at him from inches.

  “Seem to have teeth,” Willings said, loudly. He reached a large, red-haired hand out toward Payne as if to make sure. Payne drew his head back. He said, “See here, Willings,” in a voice which seemed even more highly pitched than before.

  “Cream and sugar?” Willings said. “Or mix it with pap. That’s it—pap.” He turned slightly and spoke loudly to nobody in particular. “Bring pap,” he said. “Pap for Payne.”

  Nobody moved. One waiter shook slightly, as if about to move, but thought better of it.

  “Listen, Mr. Willings—” Jerry said, still standing beside Payne. I wish Jerry’d move away, Pam thought. One of them might miss.

  “You,” Willings said. “Drop dead. Whoever you are. Or, you want to help him?”

  He took the folded newsprint out of the bulging pocket. It was the Globe-Express literary supplement of two weeks before. There was no doubt of that. Folded lengthwise it a little resembled a club. Book advertising grows heavy in mid-November.

  “Butter?” Willings said. “It’ll run to butter. Don’t want to make it hard for you, you pig-nit.” (Pig-nit?) “Apple worm. Synthetic, huh? I’ll synthetic you, you—you—” he looked at Payne as if he saw him for the first time. “Hairless toad.”

  He waved the still folded copy of the Globe-Express book review section back and forth in front of Payne’s face. Then he thrust it toward Payne’s mouth.

  “Eat,” he said. “For what you are about to receive, Payne in the anatomy, may the medicine men you never came within miles of make you—”

  He did not finish. He lunged toward Payne with the folded paper. It was as he did this that it became apparent that he was very drunk. As he lunged he swayed.

  And as he lunged, Payne hit him—hit him on the chin. It did not seem to those watching that the blow was a hard blow. But Gardner Willings reeled back and was on the floor before anybody could catch him.

  He sat there for a moment and began to shout. He didn’t bother to invent insults this time. He used those at hand—those always at hand. As he shouted at Payne, he started to get up.

  The paralysis which seemed to have set in everywhere ended then. Several men grabbed Willings and helped him up, and held him. Jerry and, emerging suddenly, Tom Hathaway, held Payne although (Pam thought) needlessly. Payne, in fact, looked not only frightened but vastly surprised.

  Willings stopped talking. He stopped a scarcely begun struggle to be free.

  “All right,” he said, in a quite ordered voice, “I won’t hurt the two-bit phony.”

  He tossed the book section on the floor. He kicked it away with contempt. He looked again at Payne, and this time his gaze seemed very different. There was, this time, a coldness in his fixed stare at the hairless man. And then, for the first time, Gardner Willings became a formidable man, and a rather frightening one. Before, in a somewhat dreadful way, it had all been a little funny. Now—now there was nothing funny about the way Willings looked at Anthony Payne.

  I wouldn’t, Pam thought, want to be the man who knocked Gardner Willings down, turned the tables on Willings, made Willings look—look like a clown. Because, Pam thought, in spite of everything—pose and bluster and everything—Gardner Willings is a dozen Anthony Paynes. I wouldn’t want to be Payne against the other eleven.

  Willings turned and walked away—walked very straight, very steadily, and people got out of his way. Willings walked out of the Gold Room and it was only after he was out of the room, out of sight, that the buzzing started. Even then it had an oddly artificial quality, like the’ ad-lib crowd-murmurs of a stage scene.

  Pam had moved away from Jerry and from Payne, being allergic to falling gladiators, especially large ones. She moved back.

  “Sorry,” Jerry said to Payne. “Wouldn’t have had this sort of thing happen.” He looked around the room, which was suddenly much emptier than it had been only a minute or two before. Those associated with the press—gossip columnists of Broadway, commentators on the literary scene—were getting out of there. There was no doubt to what purpose. “God knows,” Jerry said, and shuddered slightly. It is always to be hoped that literary cocktail parties will engender publicity but—

  “Blustering bully,” Payne said. Color had returned to his face. The jaw jutted again. “Time somebody stood up to him.”

  Gerald North looked at Payne. He looked at him as if Payne somewhat surprised him.

  “Yes,” Jerry said. “I suppose so, Tony. Only—”

  Payne turned and waited. It seemed to Pam, watching, that his expression was truculent.

  “Nothing,” Jerry said. “Let’s get ourselves a drink. Pam?”

  “By all means,” Pamela North said.

  Business at the bar had noticeably slackened. It was possible to have drinks made to order, and to the Dumont’s usual, and admirable, formula. It was even possible to find a table to sit at while drinking. Jerry had fallen silent; even when Hathaway and, later, Livingston Birdwood joined them, he continued to appear abstracted. Pam could guess why. He was reading headlines probably at the moment being written.

  “Gardner Willings K. O.ed.” That, or something like that, would be one of them. “Noted Writers in Party Brawl.” “Book Review Leads to Fisticuffs.” “Anthony Payne Invited to Eat Words; Declines with Fists.”

  Pam put a hand on Jerry’s, under the table. “Read ’em and weep,” Pam said, softly. Gerald North’s response was brief. “God,” Jerry said. He finished his drink and beckoned a waiter.

  Payne, also, seemed abstracted, as if he were having second thoughts. As well he may, Pam thought. He seemed, further, to have developed a sudden and considerable thirst. Dutch courage? But Willings was, now, long gone.

  And so, Pam thought, looking around the room, half listening to Hathaway’s assurance that there was really no harm done, to Birdwood’s skeptical “hmmm,” is almost everybody else. Only two waiters, now; several busboys now, and most of them by no means boys. The thin youngster whose face had momentarily showed hate—of whom?—was not in sight, although now was certainly a time for busboys. Lauren Payne was not in sight—no doubt she had developed the headache Pam had herself thought of acquiring. The man who had looked anxiously at her—oh yes, Blaine Smythe—he also was not to be seen. Nor Faith Constable; nor Alice Draycroft. Of course not
Alice—Alice was working; long ago Alice must have gone for a quick, before-performance, dinner. Lars Simon had—at least she was sure he had—left before the brawl. Pity to miss the fireworks, which he probably would have enjoyed. (Even if, in the end, Anthony Payne had eaten nothing so indigestible as newsprint.) Everybody she had—no, there was Pink Chiffon. Pam hoped that the woman she was talking to was, this time, really the wife of an author. (One who could be compared to Ned.)

  Jerry looked at his watch and shook his wrist and looked at it again.

  “What say,” Jerry said, “we get some dinner? Tony? Birdwood? Tom? Find Mrs. Payne and—”

  Payne shook his head. His wife had “gone up.” Headache. Probably taken something to put her to sleep. Subject to headaches, poor thing.

  “Here?” Birdwood said, with doubt. He was younger than one would have thought, since he was “Productions, Inc.” He was tall and rangy and had deep-set eyes.

  Payne shook his head, violently.

  “No,” Jerry said. “Somewhere—quieter.”

  They went out of the Gold Room and through the lobby and stood on the sidewalk in front of the Dumont among others waving for taxis. They had, Pam thought, picked a bad time. All that remained of the party seemed to have joined them. They’d be hours getting a taxi. And they all needed food by now. Anthony Payne especially, Pam thought. Payne did not seem entirely steady on his feet. Jerry took his arm.

  The Dumont’s doorman stood, perilously, in the middle of the street and blew a shrill whistle furiously, and, as need arose, dodged expertly. Down the street a cab stopped; started up again, and its roof light went on. The doorman beeped at it almost hysterically; grabbed it as it approached. And the lead-off couple, looking smug to all who were still to wait, got in and were driven off. Jerry waved in the air and the doorman nodded his head, but then gestured at others who waited. It will be forever, Pam thought.

  Their “party”—try to think of something else to call it—was a group of five, wedged some distance from the curb, with Payne swaying slightly in the center—swaying and, at intervals, turning from side to side. He was also talking. He was talking about Willings. He had now, it appeared, reached in his own mind a satisfactory explanation of Willings. Willings was crazy. He turned to Pam and said, “That’s it. The poor old bastard’s gone nuts.” Pam said of course, and that that was probably it. “Crazy as a loon,” Payne said, and turned to say it to Jerry, who held his arm. “Sure,” Jerry said. “That’s it.” “Ought to be locked up in a loony bin,” Payne told Tom Hathaway. “Right you are,” Hathaway said. “Only explanation.” “Been showing in his work for years,” Payne said to Livingston Birdwood, who looked discomfitted and said, “Hm-mm.”