Murder Has Its Points by Frances and Richard Lockridge Read Free Book Online

play—the one Mr. Simon’s doing. She said Mr. Payne had a ‘dear, dirty little mind.’ But not as if she cared.”
    Hathaway laughed, briefly. He had done publicity for Faith Constable a few years before. He doubted very much whether she minded the condition of Payne’s mind, or ever had.
    â€œMarried years ago,” Hathaway said. “Not for long. Perhaps two years. She divorced—Reno type. I’d guess because she thought Payne wasn’t going anywhere. Thirty years ago he wasn’t.” He turned for confirmation to Jerry North.
    Thirty years before, Payne had shown no great indication that he was going anywhere. He had written one novel, about life—his life, too obviously—in a small Ohio town. Published; sale of possibly two thousand. He had, after several years—and after Faith—written another, about an actress married to a struggling young writer, and throwing him aside as an impediment. Quite bitter, in a still childish fashion. Sales not quite as good as the first. North Books, Inc., had published neither, not then being in existence.
    Payne had then, for some years, worked on a magazine staff, with a few by-lines; setting no pages afire; proffering no more novels. He had gone to Africa on an assignment; he had discoverd Africa. “Sometimes,” Jerry said, “he seemed to feel he’d invented it. Or, at least, staked it out. Willings had an earlier claim, of course.”
    â€œAnd,” Pam said, “wrote better books.”
    Nobody denied that.
    â€œAll the same,” Jerry said, “Payne’s first African book helped when we could use help. So—”
    â€œHe married again, along there some time,” Hathaway said. “At least, when I was getting stuff a while back for a new biography, he said something about his second wife. I thought he meant Lauren, and said something which showed it, and he said, ‘No, I don’t mean Lauren. My second.’ I waited and he said, ‘Skip it.’ So I skipped it.”
    They were finishing coffee by then. They were, by then, almost alone in the Oak Room.
    Bill Weigand regarded his empty coffee cup, without seeing it. It did appear that, at the party, there had been several people who shared Pam’s view that Anthony Payne was something of a twerp. A man who was merely “contemptuous.” A man who thought it would be pleasant if Payne dropped dead. A woman who thought Payne had had a “dirty little mind,” but had not seemed concerned about this. A woman who had appeared to Pam to be upset, possibly frightened. Of her husband? A writer who had wanted Payne to eat his words, in indigestible form, and been humiliated, made to appear ridiculous. Still—still the chances were high that a target had been hit, only incidentally a man.
    â€œJerry,” Pam said, “did you do something to a busboy? To make him hate you?”
    â€œBusboy?”
    â€œThin. Dark. Picking up used glasses. In a white jacket with a dark patch on the shoulder. From trays. A—”
    â€œDo something to?” Jerry ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. “What on earth would I do to a busboy?”
    â€œThere’s that,” Pam said. “So it must have been Mr. Payne. You were together—it was before Willings—and he—the busboy—stood and glared at you. At both of you, that is. As if he hated.”
    Briefly, she gave details. Jerry shook his head. Jerry hadn’t noticed, hadn’t felt a glare. So far as he could remember, Payne had showed no consciousness of being glared at.
    â€œOf course,” Pam said, “it could be he didn’t like any of us. That all of us were just a bunch of dirty glasses. If I were a busboy I’d feel that way, I think. With other people having fun. But still—”
    They separated outside the Algonquin, the Norths going downtown to their apartment; Tom Hathaway uptown to