The Long Skeleton by Lockridge Frances & Richard

Author:Lockridge, Frances & Richard [Richard, Lockridge Frances &]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

At five – thirty Friday evening, Bill Weigand rang the Norths‘ apartment and got no answer. He had rung it an hour earlier, and got a man with an Italian accent, who had said, ”Nobodya here, mister ,” and hung up. It had been, on the whole, a frustrating afternoon – an afternoon of chaff and very little wheat. Such afternoons are to be expected, but need not be welcomed.

Mullins had not found Judge Parkman. He had talked to a good many people who might be expected to know where Judge Parkman might have gone. None of them had known. Mrs. Parkman declined to see Mullins, or to explain why she would not. So, if the ruffled judge had been the visitor Amanda Towne expected – or had planned to meet – he could not be given the opportunity to insist that (a) he had never been near the place or Miss Towne or (b) that he had been there, and she was fine – just fine – when he left. So, frustration, presumably temporary.

Seattle had not yet helped. Hot Springs was still checking back. Chicago had added additional information, which tallied with the information Weigand already had – with the supplementary report that James Fergus had been on the losing side of a minor civil war at CBC in the late ‘thirties, and that was what had happened to James Fergus. Mr. Lovelace, who might have walked off with a key to the Norths’ suite at the Breckenridge, still tarried short of Galveston. A waiter at Bleeck’s remembered that a couple answering the description of Mr. and Mrs. Gerald North had indeed arrived at the restaurant around five o‘clock the previous afternoon, and had ordered – and drunk – martinis. And had eventually been joined by a man answering the description of Captain William Weigand of Homicide, Manhattan West. Which was nice to know.

Jerry’s author, Mr. Byron Kingsley, who had admittedly talked to Amanda Towne shortly before her death, and who coincidentally came from Arkansas – which made three of them – was not at his hotel. He would be given a message asking him to call Captain Weigand at his convenience.

Tony Gray breakfasted at one o‘clock in the afternoon in a small apartment in the Murray Hill area. He had known Amanda Towne for a year or so; he worked for the network, and was assigned to her show, as a “legman. ” Which meant that he found out whether people who offered themselves as “People Next Door,” or were offered by others, would be likely to have anything to say, and to be able to say it.

“Ad lib, you know,” Gray told Weigand, who accepted a cup of coffee. ”Some of them talk an arm off. Others freeze – like this poor old dame Wednesday. This Grandmother of the Year. God.”

Amanda had been a very smooth operator. He had never seen a better. ”Not even Mary Margaret.” You couldn’t ask for a better person to work with than Amanda Towne.

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