“You can talk to me.”
“Afraid I can’t tell you much.” The lawyer’s eyes studied him.
“You’re Miss Lownes’s counsel. You’ll know about her business affairs.”
The attorney struggled to sit up. “She’s not—”
“Relax. She’s home. Be all right in a couple days, same like you. I just want to ask some questions about the business setup with her brother.”
“You think they might have a bearing on the fire?”
“Most arson does have a money angle. Nine out of ten incendiary cases are for insurance.” Pedley sat on the arm of a tapestried chair, swung one leg idly. “Ned Lownes carry any insurance?”
Amery shook his head slowly. “Not that I know of. Not enough to make a fuss about, certainly. He’d have been a bad risk.”
“Miss Lownes didn’t have her brother insured — with herself as beneficiary?”
“Certainly not.” The lawyer’s expression said the very idea was distasteful. “You seem pretty sure the fire was set.”
“Positive. First thing we have to do, to find who set it, is determine whether he was a pyromaniac or a firebug.”
“Don’t they operate much the same?”
The corners of the marshal’s lips came down; he moved his head from right to left, back again. “Pyro’s a pathological misfit who sets a blaze because of an irresistible impulse. Firebug does it for a reason. Usually a dollar-and-cents reason. Sometimes to cover up another crime.”
“I wasn’t thinking of motive.” The telltale wheeze came into Amery’s speech. “I meant their methods.”
“Methods differ, too. Your pyro always works alone. He’s afraid to tell anyone what he’s done; generally he doesn’t know what he’s going to do long enough in advance to get an accomplice. But the firebug has to work with somebody, or for somebody, if he’s going to make any money at it.”
Amery smiled thinly. “Unless he sets fire to his own property.”
“Of course. There’s another difference, more important. From my angle. Most pyros don’t have any system about the way they start their fires. They just cook up a scheme on the spur of the moment, when the fever hits them. But your professional usually has some pet gimmick he’s doped out to delay the starting of the blaze until he can get far enough away to establish an alibi. Maybe the setup varies a little from job to job, but the system is the same.” Pedley licked the burn on the back of his hand. “There was a gimmick in the dressing-room at the Brockhurst.”
“Ah—!” Amery sighed; some of the apprehension seemed to go out of the frosty eyes. “Something you can trace to a known criminal — because of the similarity in the modus operandi?”
“No. New one on me.” The marshal didn’t elaborate. “But I expect I’ll run into it again, or something like it. Might be in a few days, maybe a few months. If the person who torched the theater did it for dough, he won’t be likely to turn another trick until the money he got for that job is spent. On the other hand, if it was done to cover up a crime — say, murder—” He paused; the lawyer was staring up at the ceiling — “then he might strike again in a hurry.”
“Obviously,” Amery said gloomily, “you have somebody in mind.”
“We have some leads. Whenever a bug uses apparatus to get a delayed-fuse effect, the apparatus is evidence. Given enough evidence, we can put the party in a cell. Doesn’t mean we can’t use help. In the way of tips.”
“Sorry I can’t oblige you, Marshal. I haven’t a notion.”
“You were there when it happened!”
“I wouldn’t be here, otherwise.” Amery closed his eyes.
“You saw this Ned Lownes come in the theater, schwocked to the gills, and start ribbing his sister—”
“Oh, that.” The lawyer lifted a hand in deprecation. “That had been going on for weeks. Ned was sore at Leila — because of Gaydel.”
“The producer?”
“Chuck Gaydel. Yes.”
“Was this agency lad playing knees with her, or something?”
“Sleeping with her?” Amery grimaced; the movement of his facial muscles hurt the burn along his jaw. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Leila’s rather — oh — indiscriminate, that way. But that wasn’t what caused the trouble.”
“What was?”
“Ned resented Gaydel’s running the show; telling Leila what to sing, how to sing it, and so on. Left nothing for Ned except a back seat, you see.”
“They’d had disagreements about it? The producer and her brother?”
“Oh, yes. But Ned didn’t dare to blow off at Gaydel. He did that once; Chuck sent him to the dentist for repairs.”
Pedley moved to the bed. “They didn’t patch it up?”
“Well — I guess they did. But after that, Ned took his spleen out on Leila. That’s what was behind that nasty business on the stage, this afternoon.”
“A smart prosecutor,” the marshal said, “could make out a prima-facie case against this Gaydel, all right. He’d had a run-in with deceased, previously. He knew his way around the theater and the dressing-rooms. He could have rigged up this apparatus I told you about. And he was one of the last persons to see Lownes alive. But” — he leaned over the end of the cot — “all that leaves your client in a very bad light. If Gaydel fixed it so her brother’d get burned to death, she’d have to have known about it! Because she was there; she came downstairs with Gaydel after—”
“Stop!” Amery sat bolt upright, coughing. “By God, I won’t have you using my words to — to crucify Leila!” Little blue veins stood out on his forehead like fine lines in marble. “You keep your hands away from her, or—” a spasm doubled him up. Perspiration on the thin face made it leaden. The lawyer choked, fell over on his side in a paroxysm.
A nurse rushed in — glaring at Pedley — snatched at an ampoule.
“Get out of here! You must be crazy, stirring up my patient at a time like this!”
“Your patient—” Pedley went toward the door — “isn’t the only one who’s stirred up. Or the only one who’s been hurt. He’ll be up and around in a day or so. I’m going to see a guy who won’t be.” He turned. “Tell Mister Amery I’ll be seeing him.”
Chapter Six
Enough To Kill Two
On the way across town to the somber stone building on East Twenty-sixth, one question repeated itself in the marshal’s mind like a groove-worn record: Why had Leila been the only one to try to save Ned Lownes? Admit the man was a no-good heel. Still, in emergencies, people thought of saving life without regard to the merits of the person in danger.
Of course, if Terry Ross and Paul Amery and Hal Kelsey and Chuck Gaydel had all assumed that Lownes was already dead when he’d been lugged upstairs, that would explain their lack of ordinary human decency. But it would also imply a conspiracy to cover up his death by the fire. Which in turn must have involved Leila — yet the girl obviously knew her brother was alive or she wouldn’t have attempted his rescue. It didn’t add up.
He was still turning it over in his mind when he walked into the morgue.
“If you come calling on that Lownes feller, he’s still upstairs, Marshal.” The dour-faced attendant acknowledged Pedley’s arrival with a limp salute.
“Didn’t expect they’d be through with him, Mike. Where’s the inventory?”
“Right in here. I got a nice warm lower reserved for him.” Mike chuckled at the ancient jest as he opened the door to the cold room.
The things that had been in Lownes’s clothing were spread out on a soapstone slab alongside his suit, shoes, shirt, tie, underclothing. Pedley scanned the miscellany swiftly; long acquaintance with the clammy chill and its depressing accompaniment of iodoform and formaldehyde hadn’t overcome his natural repugnance.