Michael Collins - The brass rainbow

“Where are your rooms?”

“In the rear. Of course, I have the whole place now.”

“Your rooms are so separate that you didn’t see or hear Walter or Miss Fallon, and you didn’t see Jonathan go out?”

“The apartment is solidly built.”

“So it comes down to the fact that after breakfast you saw and heard nothing. You didn’t see Jonathan again.”

He looked at me. “I’m tempted to say ‘so what?’ You knew that. Why bring it up?”

“Because no one who really knew Jonathan saw him after breakfast, except Walter and Deirdre Fallon.”

If I expected a reaction, I didn’t get it. His theatrical face was immobile. His eyes seemed to retreat into a distance inside his head. He waited, sipped at his drink.

I drank. “Weiss didn’t know Jonathan. He was nervous, it all happened fast. He saw a man of the right build, in a bathrobe, and with a beard. Later he saw photographs of a body on the floor, and a dead man on an autopsy table.

“The doorman saw a man with a beard in Jonathan’s clothes with Miss Fallon. It was cold. Jonathan would have been wearing an overcoat, a hat, maybe a scarf, the works. I’d bet my life that Jonathan walked past the doorman without speaking. Miss Fallon probably greeted the doorman, and maybe spoke to Jonathan as they passed. Illusion.

“At the restaurant it’s Miss Fallon who’s well-known. She probably introduced Jonathan. It’s odds-on that the people at the Charles XII had never seen Jonathan before. Was he ever in that restaurant, Ames?”

“Not that I know. I’d say not.”

I waited. He said nothing more. He sat and looked at his now empty whisky glass as if he wondered where the whisky had gone; as if he wished that more would somehow appear without the effort of moving, of getting up and pouring more.

“Do I have to say it?” I said. “Jonathan was dead before you left this apartment that morning.”

“And the medical report?”

“A hundred variables could throw the M.E. off by an hour either way with Jonathan not found for so long. Cold, for instance. Weiss said the study was cold.”

Ames stood and went to the whisky. “All the windows were open. I closed them.”

“It didn’t really matter that much, not with the body undiscovered until six o’clock. It was sure to remain hidden at least that long. Only you and Jonathan had keys, and you’re a man of routine.”

“So I am. No, Jonathan couldn’t be found until I came home.”

“Extra insurance,” I said. “What counted was that witnesses, including Weiss, would say that Jonathan was alive as late as one-fifteen or even one-thirty if anyone believed Weiss.” I finished my drink, set the glass away from me. “Weiss served two purposes, and maybe the frame-up wasn’t even the first idea. First there was Weiss as a witness to prove Jonathan was alive at one-fifteen. That way everyone in the family was ruled out. The frame was another, better idea.”

Ames carried his drink to his chair, and lighted a cigarette. “You’re saying Jonathan was killed at eleven-thirty or so. Walter and I left. Paul Baron was called, and came here unseen. He then contacted Weiss, and also supplied an impostor to act as Jonathan. The impostor went to lunch with Deirdre, showed himself to the doorman, and was here to meet Weiss?”

“The impostor wore a bathrobe because Jonathan’s right clothes were bloody. Baron had the impostor pick a brawl with Weiss. Weiss ran, Baron replaced the body and went out the back way with his faker. He got rid of the faker one way or another.”

“One way or another? Yes, I see.”

“Baron had removed the bloody rug and cleaned the floor.”

Ames stared at me. “It strikes me as an involved scheme.” “No,”

I said. “Under the circumstances it was simple, almost foolproof. Baron knew a hundred drifters he could get in minutes, and who’d do almost anything for a thousand dollars. He knew Jonathan. All he needed was a man the right age and size. A beard can be supplied in ten minutes in midtown Manhattan. Once you were gone, he had no one to worry about who really knew Jonathan.”

“But on the spur of the moment?”

“That’s what makes me so sure. No one could have planned it in advance that well. He’d wait a year for just the right circumstances. It had to be spur of the moment; it grew out of the circumstances. He had a murder to cover fast. He had a body with a beard but otherwise ordinary enough, an empty apartment, and $25,000 on hand. It was just about all he could have done to fit the needs, and he found an impostor as easily as he found Weiss to play the patsy.”

“How did he know he could get Weiss so quickly?”

“He didn’t. Any messenger would have done. Pure chance.”

“Why would Paul Baron do all that? Take such a risk?” “Money, the big chance. He had a petty blackmail going, but once he had a murderer who let him cover and frame Weiss, he had a lifetime deal in his pocket. And he had the knife to back his play. That missing knife never sounded right. Now I know why it was missing. It had the killer’s prints on it, and Baron took it.”

“You mentioned a telephone call that, presumably, told Baron of the murder. As far as I can see, everyone here was his enemy, his victim. Why call him for help, and then help him?”

“Someone here was in with him. His partner all the way.”

“Partner? Then you rule out Walter?”

“No. He could have let himself be squeezed to bleed Jonathan.”

He moved and set his glass down carefully on the table. I watched him. I had no way of knowing how he was taking it all.

“You’re toying with me, Fortune. You’ve talked in generalities, no names. You’ve mentioned Walter and Deirdre, but we all know they were here, they admit it. If what you think is true, then they must be involved in it, but not necessarily as murderers, correct?” He waited, but I said nothing. He stood up abruptly and went to the liquor bar. He poured a straight shot and drank it. His back to me, he leaned with both hands on the bar. “The way you describe it, someone else could have been here with Walter and Deirdre. Anyone. Unseen and unknown.”

“A third person would have to have gotten past the doorman earlier, but it could have happened, yes.”

He faced me. “Then there’s me. I was here. It would all shield me, too.”

“You were here,” I said.

He continued to stare at me. Then he turned again, poured another shot, and downed it. He was holding himself rigid now. “What do you want me to do, Fortune?”

“Take a drive with me,” I said. “It isn’t just Jonathan anymore, Ames. Not even Jonathan and Baron. Two more bodies are on the list. One of them doesn’t matter much, but the other was a stupid, scared little girl who never really started living. Now she’s dead because she was just a possible threat to someone, and that someone is still running loose.”

His back was a ramrod. “North Chester?”

“Yes. I have a car.”

He turned. “All right.”

He got his coat and hat and we went down to my car. I told him to drive. Even a man with two arms is pretty helpless when driving. I didn’t think he had killed anyone, but that was theory and guesswork. I could be all wrong.

We went across to the West Side Highway, passed the George Washington Bridge that was an endless moving stream of lights, and drove on through Riverdale to the north. Outside the city the snow was an unbroken expanse of white that reflected the lights of the rows of suburban houses and the colored neon of the shops and taverns.

Ames drove fast, skillfully, and in silence. The rigidity had not left him. He was a man with a lot on his mind, the effete aristocrat just about gone. He was offstage now, as much as any actor can ever be. I couldn’t tell what he had on his mind, and he wasn’t going to tell me. He was waiting, maybe only to find out what I really knew or had guessed, before he did anything. I didn’t know what he knew, or had guessed, or how he felt about it. I didn’t know how he would act when the time came to stop me or help me. Maybe Ames didn’t know either.