Death on the Aisle Read online

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “I get the picture. And this was just after you came on-stage?”

  Hubbard nodded.

  He started back to his seat and turned. “You’re sure it was the right aisle?” he said. Hubbard nodded. “Which one?” Weigand insisted. Hubbard pointed. Weigand said, “Oh, of course. Your right,” and went back to his seat. “Right” and “Left” might be confusing in the theatre, he realized. Stage right was to the audience’s left; Hubbard’s “right aisle” was the aisle on the left as you entered the theatre. The aisle on which Dr. Carney Bolton had been sitting.

  Hubbard waited a moment longer and Kirk said:

  “All right, children. Take it from there.”

  They picked it up. John Hubbard and Alberta James were, it appeared, Wade and Sally Bingham; it was their father Ellen Grady, as Joyce Barber, was planning to marry. They were, it became evident, opposed to this—it was a duel between them and Joyce Barber; a duel very deft and biting.

  “This is where it starts rolling,” Kirk said, still crouched in the aisle. Weigand looked across at Penfield Smith. He could see little of Smith’s face, but what he could see had an expression of almost exalted approval. Kirk followed Weigand’s glance.

  “He likes it,” Kirk said. “He knows when he’s good.”

  The scene between Joyce Barber, Francis Carter and the Bingham children lasted about five minutes. Then Alberta James went offstage, Hubbard crossing to the door with her, an arm around her shoulders. A little later, F. Lawrence Tilford came on, rather pompously as it seemed to Weigand, in the character of Martin Bingham. Still later, Carter and then Wade Bingham exited, leaving only Bingham and Joyce Barber on the stage. Weigand listened to the smooth, flickering dialogue with half a mind and kept the rest on other things. Mullins, using a tiny flashlight, was taking notes—there was always, a slight vibration when Mullins took notes, and heavy, anxious breathing. Weigand watched for others who ought to be coming in.

  A dark figure sidled slowly through a row of seats from the extreme left—“my left” Weigand thought—aisle and took a seat a little off the left-center aisle. That would be—yes, that was Mary Fowler.

  “Time her,” Weigand whispered over his shoulder to Mullins. “That’s Miss Fowler.”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said.

  A much slimmer figure came through the same aisle and sat beside Miss Fowler and their heads went together. Faintly, Weigand caught the swing of hair—that would be Alberta James. The two got up and went back through the row to the aisle. They disappeared behind the boxes.

  “Can they get through to the stage that way?” Weigand whispered to Kirk. Kirk nodded.

  “There’s a door there,” he said. “Behind the boxes at the end of the aisle. One on this side too, which isn’t usual.”

  Weigand said, “Right.”

  “Where’s Ahlberg?” he whispered. Kirk jerked his head toward the rear.

  “About row ten, in the middle,” he said. “He came in a while ago.”

  A moment later, a man’s figure appeared in the aisle from which Mary Fowler and Alberta James had vanished. There was no mistaking Arthur Christopher even in the dim light.

  “Must have met them back-stage, about at the door,” Kirk said. Weigand nodded.

  “By the way,” he said, “you weren’t here during the other run-through, were you, Kirk?”

  Kirk shrugged.

  “I was all around,” he said. “It might as well have been here. I wander—get new angles. I was probably here part of the time.” He broke off, started again.

  “You won’t get an alibi for me, Lieutenant,” he said. “I can’t pretend to one. I could have been anywhere.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Too bad, but we can’t have everything.”

  “How true,” Kirk said. He straightened up and moved to a seat behind Penfield Smith. Smith turned his head and Kirk leaned forward. They talked and Kirk pointed at the stage. Then Smith pointed. Then they both got up, walked back up the aisle for about half its length and stood talking. Then Smith came down again and Kirk crossed through a row in the center section and walked down the left-center aisle to Christopher. He pointed and Christopher nodded. Christopher drew something which looked at that distance like an envelope from his pocket and wrote on it.

  Kirk left him, walked back up the aisle and sidled through another row of darkened seats. He reached a little glow in the darkness and sat down beside it. The glow became two glows, one larger than the other. That would almost have to be Ahlberg, unless there was an added starter; Ahlberg with a cigar, Kirk with a cigarette.

  Ellen Grady and Tilford were alone on the stage now, talking slowly, as if searching for words. The tempo of the dialogue was off; it no longer glinted. Tilford, as Martin Bingham, was slower, heavier, more matter of fact. He was, Weigand decided, intended to be—probably he had been cast to be. Then Ruthmary Jones, the colored maid, came on and began to clear away coffee cups. Only there were no coffee cups. She cleared away imaginary coffee cups, having answered an imaginary bell.

  “Props,” Pam told him in a whisper. “Isn’t it funny? There aren’t any yet. Because then they would have to put on a property man. So they just pretend. Like Thornton Wilder.”

  “What?” said Weigand. “Oh—that. Yes.”

  “Ask Mr. Wade and Miss Sally to come here a minute, please Gladys,” Tilford said.

  “I’ll ask them, Mr. Bingham,” Gladys said.

  She went off. After a moment, Alberta James and Hubbard came on. The tempo picked up again; the stage filled with undercurrents. It was a long scene and Weigand grew interested in it. Kirk was back beside him and he had not seen or heard Kirk coming.

  “Good enough to eat,” Kirk said. “Lovely scene.”

  “Yes,” Weigand said.

  The scene built up, quickening. Then it was broken, just before what might have been a climax. Driscoll and Ellen Grady came back through the door at Weigand’s right. They were talking. Hubbard caught up a line from Ellen, smoothly, and twisted it. A new tempo began, slow, then quickening. The scene built again, grew sharper and more intense than the one before. There was edged laughter in it, and under the laughter a twang of stretched nerves. Weigand was, he realized, in danger of forgetting the murder.

  Then the scene began to break again. Wade and Sally left the stage and, a few minutes after them, Carter. Bingham and the woman he wanted to marry—the woman who was tying his middle-aged life in knots, revealing motives in it which had long been hidden, linking it to the lives of thousands of other middle-aged men caught between new and old things—were alone on the stage. Now the tempo was slow again, and now it was quickening, building to a climax. Weigand was, in spite of himself, carried out of the world of murder into the world Penfield Smith was so artfully building in the lighted box. Bingham crossed to the window, looked out casually for a moment. Then the acting of Lawrence Tilford stiffened Bingham’s body. You could see Bingham’s attention caught and held by something outside; feel Joyce Barber’s words glancing unheard from some new isolation. Tilford turned suddenly and Weigand could see words forming on his lips.

  Then, from the rear of the theatre, there was a hoarse, galvanizing shout—wordless, then shaping into words.

  “Carney!” the voice shouted. It rose high, cracked a little. “Carney!” And then, lower but desperate in the silence. “My God, he’s dead!”

  In spite of himself, although now he knew what this must be, Weigand started to his feet; turned to run toward the sound. Besides him Pamela North said “Oh!” Shudderingly, and beyond her, and beyond Jerry, Weigand heard the gasp of a snatched breath from Dorian.

  Kirk spoke from the rear of the theatre. He spoke quietly, now.

  “And that, children,” said Humphrey Kirk, “was where I found the body.”

  V

  TUESDAY—5:10 P.M. TO 5:35 P.M.

  Humphrey Kirk had pointed out a door opening off the mezzanine and marked “Private” and then, at Weigand’s dir
ection, gone back to wait with the others on the stage. Uniformed men stood stolidly at the exits and in the aisles to see that they stayed there; squad men presented leathery red faces to the suspects and gathered by twos in conference. The people on the stage watched them and wondered uneasily, uncertainly suspecting that things affecting them went forward. Now and then one of the detectives looked hard at one of the people on the stage and then turned back to his companion and spoke seriously.

  “Watch Notre Dame,” one said after such a stare. “That’s all I’m telling you, Flaherty. Watch Notre Dame.”

  It would have consoled F. Lawrence Tilford, who had withstood the full, cold weight of Detective King’s regard, to know the burden of Detective King’s communication to Detective Flaherty; to know that Detective Flaherty’s portentous nod meant only that Detective Flaherty also thought Notre Dame was hot this year. Mr. Tilford unhappily construed the conversation otherwise: he put it instinctively into dialogue:

  Detective King: There’s our man, Flaherty.

  Detective Flaherty: (Nods in agreement) Yeh.

  Mr. Tilford, who had been standing easily near the fireplace, found a chair and sat down and took out a handkerchief which matched his greenish socks and wiped a brow which also, he suspected, now matched the socks.

  Weigand had opened the door marked “Private” and led Sergeant Mullins into the office of the West Forty-fifth Street Theatre—an office which, in the old days, had been David Dortman’s own, part of David Dortman’s own theatre, part of David Dortman’s own tradition. Weigand, remembering, looked for the casting couch which had once enjoyed equal fame. It was gone; the office was now comfortable and impersonal, as if it belonged to a bank which did not know quite what to do with it.

  “Now, Mullins—” Weigand began, and somebody knocked at the door. Weigand made a remark and opened the door and glared at Detective Stein, on guard and messenger duty outside.

  “I thought I said—” Weigand began coldly, and then said, “Oh!” He looked at Pam North, who led the delegation, with Dorian just behind her and Mr. North, looking worried, bringing up the rear.

  “I told them we’d better—” Mr. North began. Pam said, “Sh-h-h.”

  “We’re going, Bill,” she said. “Tell them to let us. We’re taking Dorian down to our place to tell Martha five and see about the gin. And then you come down.”

  “Well—” Weigand said.

  “When you can,” Pam told him. “After all, you’re going to have to eat some time. You’re going to have to let all these people eat. And—listen!” She waited for them to listen. “We’ve got Noilly Prat!”

  “No!” Weigand said.

  “Genuine,” Pam told him. “Jerry found it at a little place on Eighth Street. Wasn’t that clever of him?”

  “Very,” said Weigand, meaning it. He paused. It wasn’t often anybody could offer martinis with real Noilly Prat these days. And he would have to eat. And it often paid to talk things over with the Norths.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll try—around seven-thirty, though.” He hesitated and looked at Mullins. “You want this?” he asked.

  “Listen, Loot,” Mullins said. His voice held appeal. Mrs. North looked shocked.

  “Aloysius Clarence?” Mrs. North said, in evident surprise. “Of course!”

  Mullins winced.

  “Listen, Mrs. North,” he said. “I know it’s funny. But it’s just a name, see?”

  “Of course it is, Al,” Mrs. North said. “Or would Clare be better?”

  “Yeh,” Mullins said. “Al.” He looked at Mrs. North darkly.

  “What’s this Noilly stuff?” he inquired. “Do you drink it? Like rye?”

  Mrs. North smiled at him, please. She promised there would be rye. Mullins looked relieved. He watched the Norths and Dorian disappear, with Stein going along to pass them out. A reflective pleasure remained upon his face. Then he saw Weigand looking at him and his face descended. He read the look.

  “Jeez, Loot,” he said. “All them times?”

  Weigand nodded unrelentingly. Mullins sighed deeply and got out his notebook. He looked at what he had written there, sighed even more deeply, and said, “Jeez” again. Then he squared his shoulders and said: “O.K., Loot.”

  Mullins had timed everything. He started to read and Weigand stopped him.

  “It was twelve minutes after four when they started?” he said, repeating the time Mullins had just given him. Mullins nodded. Weigand said, “Right.”

  “To make it simpler,” he said, “we’ll take these times as duplicating the times earlier in the day. We’ll make 4:12 equal 1:12. Right?”

  Mullins looked at him doubtfully and then even more doubtfully at his notebook. Then he brightened and said, “Yeh!” He looked admiringly at a man who could thus bring order out of chaos. He continued.

  At 1:12, revised time, Sand said, “Curtain,” and Ellen Grady, who was already on stage, began to speak. With her on the stage at that time were Percy Driscoll and Paul Oliver. Sand was sitting at a small table down-stage right; Kirk was in a seat in the third row. Mullins interrupted himself.

  “I didn’t try to get Kirk every time he moved,” he said. “He was all over the place. In sight, mostly. And Sand stayed where he was, looking at these papers.”

  “He was following the script,” Weigand said. “I noticed that. Go ahead.”

  “Well,” said Mullins, “they cussed each other out for a while—say, that Grady dame is something, ain’t she, Loot.” Mullins’ face lighted with reminiscent fervor. “I could go for that one, Loot.”

  “Don’t,” Weigand told him. “You’ll burn your fingers. Go ahead.”

  “Yeh,” Mullins said. “I guess maybe I would. O.K. They cussed each other out for a while, and said a few lines from the play, and Kirk jumped up and down and then this guy Oliver went off the stage. The Grady dame went over and sat on the windowseat and kept looking out like she expected to see somebody coming. That was at four—no, one-fifteen. Then, couple of minutes later—1:17—this Hubbard guy comes on. They talk a little and then Hubbard comes down and says he saw a cigarette about where the dead guy was sitting. He musta seen it about 1:18.” Mullins broke off.

  “You figure that’s it, Loot?” he said. “Was that when somebody bumped him?”

  The fingers of Weigand’s left hand patted gently against the desk before which he was sitting. They patted in due order, beginning with the little finger and ending with the thumb. After the thumb patted the shining wood, Weigand said it could be.

  “Or,” he said, “maybe we’re supposed to think that.” He looked reflectively at Mullins. He said there were alternative theories. Mullins looked doubtful and said, “Yeh,” without conviction.

  “Such as this,” Weigand said, helping him. “Say, for some reason, the murderer wanted us to think that was the time. He could sit back there and move the cigarette as Hubbard saw it moved, hoping it would be seen.”

  Mullins’ face brightened and then clouded.

  “Yeh, Loot,” Mullins said. “But where’d it get him? He’d have to be there, and if he was there anyway, where’d it get him? I mean—.”

  “How would it help an alibi?” Weigand clarified. “I don’t know, Mullins. But there are a lot of things we don’t know. Go ahead.”

  Mullins went ahead. Alberta James came on stage at 1:20 but stayed only a minute. As she left, F. Lawrence Tilford came on. Tilford, Grady, Hubbard and Driscoll were on together until 1:28, when Driscoll went off. At 1:32, Hubbard went off, leaving Tilford and Miss Grady alone on the stage. At 1:40, Ruthmary Jones came on; at 1:41, she went off and at 1:42, Hubbard and Miss James came back on. Tilford, Miss Grady, Hubbard and Miss James were on then until 1:48 when Miss Grady went off. She came back three minutes later with Driscoll. Hubbard and Miss James left almost at once. Driscoll went off at 1:55, and Tilford and Miss Grady were alone on the stage until 1:58, when Kirk shouted.

  Weigand drummed the desk.

  “The others?”
he asked.

  Ahlberg came in and down the right aisle to a seat at 1:21. Miss Fowler came in at 1:22, and Miss James joined her at 1:24. They went back-stage almost at once, apparently passing Christopher, who came in at 1:25. Miss Fowler returned to her seat twenty minutes later and stayed in it until the body was discovered. Smith came to his seat, from the back-stage, at 1:27, and stayed in it thereafter.

  Weigand’s fingers continued to drum. Then he spoke abruptly.

  “Well, Sergeant,” he said, “who killed Carney Bolton?”

  Mullins stared at him.

  “Listen, Loot,” he said. “You mean to say you know? You got it from these times and things?”

  Weigand looked at him, and grinned as suddenly as he had spoken.

  “I’ll tell you about that, Mullins,” he said. “I don’t know a damn thing more than I knew before. How about you?”

  Mullins looked disappointed, and said, “Oh.”

  “I thought maybe—” he said. “Only I guess it couldn’t be.”

  “But,” Weigand said, “these times may mean something when you boil them down. Put a fire under them, Aloysius.”

  “Now listen, Loot,” Mullins said. “Ain’t it enough that Mrs. North—”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Take it away, Mullins. Find out just when everybody could have slipped around to the back, come down and stabbed Bolton. Figure he was there the whole time, dead, or alive, from, say, about 1:10 to 1:58, when Kirk found him dead. Or—” He suddenly stopped.

  “Or suppose,” he said, “that Bolton wasn’t dead until Kirk found him. Suppose he was alive until 1:58 and that Kirk stuck an ice-pick in his neck and then yelled so that nobody could hear any sound Bolton made!”

  Mullins looked at Weigand and blinked.

  “What about the cigarette, if it was that way?” he wanted to know.

  Weigand shook his head. Perhaps, he pointed out, the cigarette had nothing to do with it. Perhaps Bolton had merely been sitting there smoking quietly and lowering the cigarette from his lips at intervals to knock the ash off in the cup, suppose—Weigand stopped.