Free Curtain for a Jester by Frances Lockridge

jolly sort of man,” Baker said. “Full of fun, you know? It doesn’t seem possible. It really doesn’t, captain. Not to any of us.”
    â€œIt seldom does, Mr. Baker,” Weigand said, and Pam North said, “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Baker?” He looked at her. “We met last night,” Pam said. “At the party. You were dressed up as a little boy and the pretty girl with you—Miss Evans, wasn’t it?—”
    â€œMiss Evitts,” Baker said.
    â€œOf course,” Pam said. “As a witch. So—” She paused. She looked at Bill Weigand, who smiled slightly with his eyes, whose eyes said, “Yes, Pam, I remembered.”
    â€œOne of Mr. Wilmot’s jokes,” Baker said. “We—we certainly fell for it, didn’t we?” He smiled, somewhat ruefully; a man remembering when he had been the butt of a famous jest. He sobered. “When you think that all the way home—to Miss Evitts’s, I mean—we were laughing about it.” He shook his head, noting the irony of laughter under such conditions.
    â€œYou took it so well,” Pam told him. “I’m afraid most people—for example Jerry and I—” she indicated Jerry, for the record—“would have been—put out.”
    â€œOh,” Baker said, “we both know-knew-Mr. Wilmot. If you knew him, you couldn’t be—put out, as you say. But—this doesn’t help, does it?” The last was to Weigand.
    â€œWell,” Weigand said, “while we’re on the subject. You and Miss Evitts left the party together? You took her home? When was that, about?”
    â€œWhy—” Baker said, and paused. He looked at Weigand for a second, his face blank. “Oh,” he said. “We left, I’d say, a little after one. You were getting ready to go then, Mrs. North. Wouldn’t you say a little after one?”
    â€œYes,” Pam said.
    â€œWe found a cab and I took Martha home,” Baker said. “She lives up near Columbia. It was—oh, almost two when we got there, I think. She lives with two other girls in an apartment, and I went to the door with her. Then I went home. That is, I’m living in a hotel down in the Chelsea area. Convenient to the shop, you know. I went down by subway and I got in—oh, about two-thirty. The clerk will know, because I had to pick up my key.” He stopped. “Is that what you wanted to know, captain?” he said. “You don’t think either of us—?”
    â€œWe have to check on everybody,” Weigand told him. “By the way—Mrs. North has told me about the masquerade costumes you and Miss Evitts wore. She got the impression that you were quite upset about it. Even angry, perhaps. You say you weren’t?”
    â€œNo,” Baker said. “Oh—I was embarrassed. Who wouldn’t be? Perhaps I looked—upset. But that was all over in a minute.”
    â€œAnd Miss Evitts?”
    â€œI told you, we laughed about it afterward.”
    â€œMr. Wilmot had told you it was to be a costume party? And suggested what you wear?”
    Baker nodded.
    â€œHe played a lot of jokes,” Baker said. “Had a lot of fun.” He paused. “Never a dull moment,” he added, and Pam North looked at him for an instant with new intentness. But there was no change in the youthful candor of his face.
    Bill Weigand nodded.
    â€œEventually,” he said, “we’ll have to dig into everything. Mr. Wilmot’s business, even. Find out all we can about him. About people he knew, people who might have had something against him. About his finances. You don’t know anything, offhand, about his business dealings that might be helpful?”
    Baker shook his head. The Novelty Emporium couldn’t, he thought, have anything to do with Mr. Wilmot’s—murder. Again he used the word with disbelief.
    â€œAs I