Murder Has Its Points by Frances and Richard Lockridge

wanted to resolve a doubt. Bill said, “Yes, I can read. Your character Ponsby was Anthony Payne?”
    â€œPublicly, I deny it,” Willings said.
    â€œDid he recognize himself?”
    â€œAs the chaser the girls laughed at? Sure he did. So he tried to put me into Uprising . Couldn’t swing it, of course. Not up to it.”
    â€œHe was a chaser?”
    â€œAnd how.”
    â€œThey did laugh?”
    â€œThe bright ones. Faith did. Laughed him out of her life.” He drank. “Not all,” he said. “There’re always half-wits.”
    â€œHis present wife. Widow. She’s one of the ones who didn’t laugh?”
    Willings shrugged his heavy shoulders and turned to his drink. It occurred to Bill Weigand that he had begun to bore the—justly—famous Mr. Willings. It is the fate of a policeman to bore many.
    â€œNo laughing matter, being married to Payne,” Willings said, into his rum drink. “How would I know? Don’t know the lady.”
    Which seemed to take care of that.
    â€œMet her couple of years ago,” Willings said. “Came down to the islands and looked us up. More damn people look us up. Thought, ‘Poor gal doesn’t know what she’s in for.’ Thought, ‘Too tender for the bastard.’ Thought, ‘Shame to waste her on the two-bit phony.’ Only met her that once. Had Sally use the gag, after that. ‘Willings is at work,’ with proper awe. Good at it, Sally is. Hear her, and you’d swear she believed it. Well?”
    The last seemed to toss something into the air. Bill was not entirely sure what.
    â€œShe’s a good-looking gal,” Willings said, himself catching whatever it was he had tossed. (Sally, whoever Sally might be, or Mrs. Anthony Payne?) “Tender. Also, she’s got money. Could be why the bastard married her, couldn’t it? Not that I’ve anything against their having money. One of mine had money, you remember. Samantha, that was. Money’s a good thing to have.”
    Weigand remembered nothing about Samantha, never having heard of her before. There seemed no use in mentioning this to Willings, who clearly thought that all the world would remember Samantha, who would have acquired fame by osmosis. To those who had much to do with Gardner Willings it must sometimes be hard to remember that Willings was the institution he took himself to be, or close to it.
    â€œHowever,” Willings said, “I wasn’t thinking of Lauren particularly. He had this new one, you know. Pretty little thing and I’d guess about twenty. Tender. Half-witted, of course, or she’d have seen through him. But—tender. Too young to laugh. Not bright enough. But—pretty as hell.”
    Bill Weigand waited. Willings seemed, now, entirely ready to keep himself going. Willings is willing, Bill Weigand thought, and rather wished he hadn’t.
    â€œCouple of nights ago,” Willings said. “Having dinner with a man named Self. Starting some sort of magazine. Good stuff. Stuff nobody’ll want. Wants me to do something for it. Me .” He paused, apparently in wonderment. “And I may,” Willings said. “Just may. Nice kid, this Self boy. Reminds me of—” He stopped and drank and, for a moment, looked beyond the drink, at nothing—at the past.
    â€œAnyway,” Willings said, “Payne came in with this girl—little dark girl with big dark eyes. Looking at the bastard with—” He paused. “As if her eyes saw greatness,” he said. “The poor, pretty, benighted little idiot. And Self started to stand up. Damn near knocked the table over. And then, just sat down again and looked at them. Good scene, and some time I’ll do it the way it ought to be done. Confrontation, see?”
    â€œRight,” Bill said. “Because the girl was with Payne?”
    â€œWhat else? His girl. Looking that way at this pink