Death on the Aisle Read online

  Weigand nodded at him.

  “Yes,” he said. He let Smith take it on from there.

  “Shall I repeat that I did not kill him, in spite of that?” Smith inquired. He put his glasses on and looked at Weigand. He left them on for half a minute and took them off and put them in his pocket. Otherwise he seemed entirely calm.

  “If you like,” Weigand said. “It’s a statement I’ve learned to expect.”

  “Naturally,” Smith agreed. “Yours must be an interesting occupation, Lieutenant Weigand.” He looked at Weigand closely. “I think you find it interesting, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “Quite interesting. Did you sit in the same seat throughout the first rehearsal this afternoon as you did in the second, Mr. Smith?”

  Smith took his glasses out and began to polish them.

  “Approximately,” he said. “That is—the same seat, or back a row or down a row. I didn’t notice exactly.”

  “And you stayed in it?”

  “Except for getting up once or twice to talk to Humpty, yes,” Smith said. “I may have walked down to the stage and back a couple of times. I stayed on that side of the house, however—I remember that.”

  “Why?” Weigand said. “I mean—why do you remember that, particularly?”

  “Bolton was on the other side,” Smith said. “I preferred not to have to talk to him. It disturbed me. I preferred to concentrate on the play.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “By the way,” he said, “it seems to be a very amusing play, if you don’t mind an outsider’s opinion.”

  Smith smiled at him.

  “I’m delighted to have an outsider’s opinion, Lieutenant,” he said. “After all, people who pay for seats are outsiders.”

  “And a very good cast,” Weigand said. “Or am I just a bad judge of acting?”

  Smith looked judicial. He put the glasses away. Finally he said that, considering everything, he thought the cast was shaping up very nicely.

  “Especially this Miss—what’s her name?” He made a business of looking at notes. “James,” he said. “The girl who plays the daughter.”

  Smith nodded.

  “Very nice little actress,” he said. “Very nice. Works well with Humpty too, of course.”

  “Of course?” Weigand repeated. He smiled slightly.

  Smith smiled back, and nodded.

  “Of course,” he repeated.

  Weigand devoted a moment to looking like a man who has encountered a new idea. He arranged to look a little puzzled. He arranged suddenly and frankly to share his puzzlement with Smith.

  “Somehow,” he said, “I got the idea that Bolton was making a play for Miss James—I don’t know where I got it. Out of the air apparently.”

  Smith shook his head and said that that was very shrewd of the Lieutenant. As a matter of fact—

  “Well,” he said, “it won’t be the first time in history that two men have made a play for the same girl, Lieutenant. Or that she has—hesitated between them.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “Only,” he said, “I shouldn’t have thought that Bolton was the sort of man who lets girls—hesitate.”

  Smith agreed that he didn’t, often. Possibly he was having difficulty with Miss James. Smith made it clear that he didn’t know and hadn’t investigated. Weigand cast again.

  “I should have thought that Miss Grady would be more his type,” he suggested. “More—polished.”

  Smith looked at him a moment. Weigand doubted whether he was extracting anything that Smith didn’t want to give, or that his finesse was escaping notice. Smith spoke, after a moment, and spoke drily.

  “Miss Grady has the same thought, I suspect,” he said. “Or had, up to 1:18 this afternoon.”

  Weigand looked at him with interest.

  “One eighteen, Mr. Smith?” he said. “Why 1:18?”

  Mr. Smith looked very bland and said, “Really, Lieutenant.”

  “When young Hubbard saw the cigarette fall,” he said. “As of course you know.”

  “Do I?” said Weigand.

  “Certainly you do,” said Smith. “Your sergeant here timed it very carefully. So, as a matter of interest, did I. I made it 1:18, didn’t you, Sergeant?”

  Mullins looked at Mr. Smith darkly. Mr. Smith returned a sunny gaze.

  “Listen, Loot,” Mullins said, growlingly.

  “All right, Sergeant,” Weigand said. “Skip it. Mr. Smith is merely observant.” He looked at Smith. “Merely observant, isn’t it, Mr. Smith?”

  Smith put his glasses back on and nodded brightly.

  “Of course, Lieutenant,” he said. “What else would it be?”

  Weigand said he couldn’t imagine, and that Mr. Smith could join the others. “For now,” he added. “No doubt I’ll want to talk to you again later. I may want to take advantage of—your habit of observation.”

  Penfield Smith went. Weigand stood in the door and spoke to Stein. Where the hell, he wanted to know, was this guy Evans, the custodian? Stein shrugged and spread his hands. A couple of the boys were looking for him. Apparently he had gone out somewhere.

  “I want him,” Weigand said. “Gone out or not, I want him.”

  VII

  TUESDAY—6:15 P.M. TO 7:25 P.M.

  Mullins was looking inquiringly at Weigand when the lieutenant closed the door.

  “Evans?” Mullins repeated. “Who—oh, yeh, the janitor. Why him, particularly?”

  “Custodian,” Weigand said. “I gather he doesn’t personally janit.” He paused and considered that Pam North apparently was creeping into his speech. “And because I want anybody whose habits suddenly change when somebody’s done a murder. Evans normally is always around, everybody says. Today he isn’t around. And today a man’s been killed.”

  “Yes,” said Mullins. “Who next? Meanwhile?”

  Weigand stopped to consider and regard his watch. There were too many waiting to include in continuous questioning without a break—a break for dinner, chiefly. And also, Weigand decided, a break for him. It was fine to get suspects tired and nervous. But detectives also could get tired, and when they were tired miss things. He told Mullins to ask Mr. Kirk to come in a moment. Mr. Kirk, after a moment, came, brushing back his forelock.

  “Are you done here for the day?” Weigand asked him.

  Kirk said he had been going to come back and talk about that. Normally, yes. But he had planned an evening rehearsal, before all this happened.

  “We’re dragging a little,” he explained. “Nothing serious, but I want to get back on schedule.”

  “And now?” Weigand said.

  Now, Kirk told him, more than ever. He seemed worried.

  “The children are going to pieces, Lieutenant,” he said. “They’re all out there beginning to jitter and get their minds off the play. I’d like to pull them up short; get them back to work before they go up like balloons. They’re funny children, Lieutenant.”

  Weigand thought it over. Then he said, “Right.”

  “Not that we can let the murder wait for the play,” he said. “We’ll have to keep at them, here or somewhere else. But they may as well work between whiles. What do you want to do?”

  “Let them go now,” Kirk said, promptly. “Give them a call for—say eight o’clock. All right?”

  “All right,” Weigand said. “Let the cast go. Ask Mr. Ahlberg, Mr. Christopher and Miss Fowler to stay around for a few minutes. Or, ask Mr. Ahlberg to come in here and Mr. Christopher and Miss Fowler to stick around. After we’ve finished with them, we’ll get something to eat and take the rest of them later.”

  “Right,” Kirk said. “Mr. Christopher’s in a pet.”

  “Is he now?” said Weigand. “Think of that.”

  Kirk pushed back the red forelock, grinned at Weigand and went out, with the faintest parody of a flounce. Mullins laughed and Weigand smiled.

  “Nice guy,” Mullins said. Weigand said he seemed to be. Mr. Ahlberg came in, round and anx
ious. Weigand said there were a few questions. Ahlberg looked increasingly anxious.

  “Troubles,” Mr. Ahlberg said, desperately. “Always troubles. If it ain’t money it’s murder or some critic can’t digest his dinner. Always troubles.”

  “As the sparks fly upward,” Weigand said. “What did you and Dr. Bolton confer about after lunch today, Mr. Ahlberg?”

  “Confer?” Ahlberg repeated. “Me and Bolton?”

  “Confer,” Weigand said. “He hurried back from lunch to see you. Why?”

  “Oh,” Ahlberg said. “That. I didn’t wait. I went to the Astor and had lunch and forgot Dr. Bolton, except I got nervous indigestion from thinking about him. He was trying to ruin me.”

  “Really?” Weigand said. Mr. Ahlberg didn’t need encouragement.

  “He should write a play,” Mr. Ahlberg said. “He should write his own plays. Always beefing—always wanting to fire somebody. Kirk. Grady. The colored lady.”

  “Really?” Weigand said. “Why?”

  “He should direct,” Mr. Ahlberg said. “He should act all the parts. He should produce too, maybe. Always what other people do is wrong with Dr. Bolton. Like this morning, he flares up and says he’s pulling out.”

  “Withdrawing his backing, you mean?” Weigand asked. Mr. Ahlberg was proving very interesting.

  “Absolutely,” said Maxie Ahlberg. “Take out the money. And the set not paid for and opening in a week. Always troubles. So I went to the Astor.”

  Weigand was a little puzzled. Mr. Ahlberg had gone to the Astor for a long lunch instead of meeting his partner for an important conference?

  “Sure,” said Mr. Ahlberg. “I know Bolton.” He paused. “I knew Bolton for years,” he corrected. “Always he flared up, usually he calmed down. When he was upset I didn’t confer with him.”

  It was, Mr. Ahlberg insisted through several more questions, as simple as that. Several things during the morning rehearsal had upset Carney Bolton to the point where he threatened to withdraw his money. He had instructed Ahlberg to meet him immediately after lunch to talk it over. Ahlberg had decided to ignore the instructions, hoping that later Bolton might have calmed down, might even have forgotten his whole intention. Mr. Ahlberg had had a long lunch, meeting several friends, and had then returned to the theatre and let himself in through the front door and come down to a seat.

  “Like I did later,” Ahlberg said. “When you re-enacted it, like it says in the papers.”

  Ahlberg, questioned carefully, was less talkative about the relations of others in the company to Bolton. He had heard of Penfield Smith’s difficulties with the physician; he thought it had been a dirty shame. Maybe Bolton was making a play for Miss James; who could tell? Mr. Ahlberg’s shoulders disclaimed knowledge. Miss James was a nice little actress; a very sweet kid. Better she should pay more attention to Humpty Kirk, who was a nice boy. Mr. Ahlberg forgot to be worried and beamed paternally when he considered Mr. Kirk and Miss James.

  “By the way,” Weigand said. “Were the front doors locked when you came in? I assume you have a key?”

  They were. Mr. Ahlberg did have a key. So far as he knew nobody else did, except probably Bolton.

  As to the time of his entrance through the lobby, Mr. Ahlberg was pleasingly certain. He had looked at his watch as he opened the outer doors and his watch had showed 1:20, maybe 1:19. And now, at any rate, his watch was right with Weigand’s, which was, because Weigand had set it half an hour before for just such purposes, almost certainly right with God. Weigand audibly approved of Mr. Ahlberg, who knew not only where he was going, but when.

  “As a matter of routine,” Weigand said, “did anybody see you? At the doors? In the lobby?”

  Ahlberg saddened and shook his head. When he was opening the doors, anybody might have seen him. “Half the people on Broadway.” But he didn’t know. He had seen nobody he knew then or until he joined the rehearsal group. Weigand told him not to worry about it, and let him go.

  Mr. Ahlberg went. Mullins, looking after him, said he was a nice little guy.

  “It seems to me, Mullins, that you are getting very fond of people here lately,” Weigand said. “You want to watch that. How are you going to give guys a going over if you love them all?”

  “Now listen, Loot,” Mullins said.

  “However,” Weigand added, “Maxie does seem like a nice little guy. Of course, that doesn’t say he didn’t kill Bolton.”

  Mullins thought it over, and nodded.

  “Keys to the front door,” he said. “He could’ve come in any time and nobody seen him. But look—if he bumps Bolton where’s his money coming from for the show?”

  “Well,” Weigand said, “didn’t you ever hear of insurance, Sergeant? Of partners mutually insuring themselves in each other’s favor? I suspect we’ll find that that happened here. And in that event, Bolton dead would be worth more to Ahlberg than Bolton alive and planning to withdraw his backing.”

  Mullins thought it over. Mullins said “Yeh!” They summoned Mary Fowler.

  Miss Fowler seemed sunk in calm; at peace on the bottom of a troubled sea. She stood in the doorway solidly, looking with quiet interest at Weigand out of protuberant eyes. When he invited her to sit she sat, and thereafter did not move. She seemed free from those nervous compulsions which keep most men and women uneasily in motion even when invited to repose. She thanked the lieutenant for the chair and waited. Her unhurried dignity gave Weigand no obvious approach.

  He was, he told her, sorry to have had to keep her waiting. He regretted the inconvenience which was, however, inseparable from murder investigations. She said “Yes, Lieutenant,” in an unhurried and huskily musical voice. It was a voice, Weigand thought, which should belong to a beautiful woman. He asked her about the afternoon.

  She had, she told him, gone out to lunch when the morning rehearsal broke. She had hoped to talk with Mr. Kirk about the costumes during the morning, and confer with Miss Grady and Miss James. There turned out to be no opportunity. She had gone home for samples, then up to Forty-eighth Street and had lunch at the Tavern. She had not hurried getting back; Mr. Kirk had had an appointment for lunch which would, she supposed, keep him so late that he would want to start rehearsing as soon as he got back to the theatre. It was a few minutes after one before she herself got back. This wasn’t unusual; she usually took her time over lunch, having no reason for promptness. She had gone first to the front doors, and, when she found them locked, had gone down the passage at the side of the theatre to the stage door.

  “As I did later during the re-enactment,” she said.

  Weigand nodded.

  “Why did you think the front doors would be unlocked?” he asked. “Weren’t they usually locked?”

  “No,” she said. “Not ‘usually.’ Sometimes they were locked, sometimes they weren’t. And sometimes when they were, Mr. Evans would be in the lobby and would open them.” She smiled slightly. “After a good deal of grumbling,” she added.

  “But today he wasn’t?” Weigand supposed.

  “Yes,” she said. “He was; but he wouldn’t hear me—I’m sure he did hear me, because I tapped on the glass with a coin and he looked around. Then he pretended he didn’t hear me, or see me either, and walked off.”

  “‘Because he knows it teases,’” Weigand said. “Did anyone else see you, Miss Fowler? We have to check up on these things.”

  “Of course,” Miss Fowler said. “And as it happens somebody did. A mounted policeman; and his horse. He seemed a little suspicious—the policeman—and said something about the doors being locked and to try the stage entrance. I stopped and said something to him, I think, and petted the horse. Then I went through the stage entrance and out front until Mr. Kirk and the others should be free.”

  “And Miss James joined you,” Weigand said, “as she did when we ran through it?”

  Miss Fowler nodded. Miss James had found a material she wanted to have used for her first-act dress and wanted Miss Fowler to pass on it. Miss Fo
wler had gone back and they had taken it to the stage door and looked at it in daylight. She had stayed with “Berta” for a quarter of an hour or so and had then gone back and watched the rehearsal through to its unexpected climax.

  Weigand suddenly drew the piece of orange silk from his pocket and held it up.

  “Was this it?” he said.

  Mary Fowler looked at it with quiet interest.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “It was a blue material—a blue crepe. Not at all like this.”

  Weigand said, “Right,” and let the silk fall on the table. It lay there brightly, but Miss Fowler, after her first appraisal, did not seem to notice it. Weigand took up another line.

  “Did you know Dr. Bolton well?” he inquired. Rather to his surprise, she nodded.

  “Quite well, some years ago,” she said. “He was my physician at one time, when I was on the stage myself. And we were quite good friends for a time.”

  Weigand nodded, waiting for her to go on. She looked at him inquiringly.

  “But that was several years ago,” she said. “I hadn’t seen much of him lately—since I quit acting.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “By the way,” he said, “would you care to tell me whether he was interested in anybody in the cast—specially interested, I mean? I suspect you would have noticed.”

  She smiled.

  “I see you know his reputation, Lieutenant,” she said. “There was usually some woman in whom he was—specially interested. I suppose this time it was Miss Grady. But I haven’t had much opportunity to notice—I’ve only dropped in and out, of course. Still, I should think it would be Miss Grady. She’s a very beautiful young woman.”

  “Not Miss James?” Weigand asked.

  Miss Fowler shook her head, rather emphatically.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “She isn’t at all the type for Dr. Bolton. I’m sure he wasn’t interested.”

  Weigand nodded. He fingered the orange silk.

  “By the way,” he said, “are you sure you haven’t seen this before? It seems to come in your department.”

  He held it out to her.