Read Online The Norths Meet Murder by Frances Lockridge - Free Book Online Page B

his name around. Edwards, he said, was one name they could rule out—it might be Smith or Jones or Finklestein, but it wouldn’t be Edwards. Mrs. North said she saw what he meant.
    â€œBut why leave any name?” she said. “Why leave anything, any slip? Why put the slip in the mailbox, as the murderer must have done, instead of just throwing it away?”
    It was Weigahd’s turn to nod, puzzled. He had, he agreed, got that to worry about. At the moment he couldn’t think of the reason. He picked up the slip and looked at it, still using the tweezers, and shook his head over it. Then he slipped it into an envelope.
    â€œIt’s a clue, all right. It was quick of you to notice it, Mrs. North. It may tell us things. Now, a couple of other points. Did you know a man named Stanley Brent?”
    Mrs. North shook her head, decisively. But there was something about the decisiveness—
    â€œEver hear anything about him?” he asked, more sharply.
    â€œSomebody—” Mrs. North began, and stopped. “No,” she said, “that was somebody else. No, I never heard of Mr. Brent.”
    There was, Weigand thought, a change in her manner. He slipped that change in manner into a mental envelope, to be considered later.
    â€œAnd Edwards,” he said. “Do you know anybody named Edwards?”
    â€œThree,” said Mrs. North. “It’s a common name. Only, one of them’s the laundryman.”
    Still, Weigand said, he might as well take down the names of the three Edwardses Mrs. North knew, including the laundryman. The laundryman was, it turned out, William Edwards. Then there was a Dr. Richard Edwards, who was Mrs. North’s dentist. And Mr. Clinton Edwards, who was a broker or something.
    â€œWe knew him best,” Mrs. North said. “We’ve been there to dinner.”
    Weigand nodded, absently.
    â€œMonday night, as it happens,” Mrs. North said. “That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”
    Weigand nodded, although it seemed a rather mild coincidence. He was wishing the name had been one less common than Edwards; it would be helpful, he thought, if men’s names differed as infallibly as their fingerprints. There would be columns of Edwardses in me telephone book; columns not in the telephone book. Mrs. North knew three—out of thousands. Still—He would, he supposed, have to check up on them. Meanwhile—Meanwhile, there was, next, Mrs. Brent to question, if she could see him. It wasn’t pleasant, but it had to be got through. And there would be Brent’s desk at home to be looked over, if he had a desk at home. He would have, Weigand thought. Life was full of duties.
    Leaving, Weigand met Mr. North, who was coming, on the stairs. Mr. North looked faintly surprised for a moment, then nodded and inquired how things went.
    â€œI wish I knew,” Weigand said, going on downstairs.

6
    W EDNESDAY
    2 P.M. TO 5:15 P.M.
    Emerging from the house, Lieutenant Weigand looked to Mrs. North, who was watching through a front window, precisely as if he were in the custody of Mullins. Looking down on and after Weigand, as the two walked up the street, Mrs. North realized that it was going to be difficult to think of him as a detective. “For everybody,” she said to herself, thinking it probably helped him. He looked, seen from this angle, very slight, although he was tall enough, and rather surprisingly young. His hat was canted forward anxiously, somehow, and he walked lightly, like a much younger man. Mrs. North tried to think who he looked like, “because everybody, almost, looks like somebody,” she told herself, and for a moment could not place any resemblance. Then she decided he was like, more than anyone else, an associate professor at Columbia they had met a few weeks before and who had turned out to be, for a professor at any rate, amazingly gay and frolicsome.
    â€œHe’d be frolicsome, too, if