A Pinch of Poison Read online

  “Heir!” she said, triumphantly. “That’s what she was looking up—heirs. Or—what’s hepatoscopy?”

  Weigand told her. She shook her head.

  “Heirs almost certainly,” she said. “Or—or heat, of course. Because she wanted to know why it was so.”

  “Was so?” Mr. North echoed.

  “Hot, of course,” Mrs. North told him. “Only in that case it doesn’t fit in, does it? It must have been heirs, only that doesn’t fit in with my theory. And I’m pretty sure about my theory.”

  Everybody looked at her in surprise, and she nodded firmly.

  “I’m pretty sure,” she said. “Ever since I knew it started with Michael.”

  “Which,” Weigand told her, “you of course only think you know.”

  She shook her head. She was, she said, sure as anything that it was Michael.

  “And,” she said, “he was kidnaped, of course.”

  “What?” said Mr. North, anxiously. Weigand said, “What?” at almost the same time, and with almost the same tone. Mrs. North looked at them triumphantly.

  “Of course,” she said. “Don’t tell me you missed that. By Mrs. Halstead, or by somebody Mrs. Halstead was—well, was in with. And the man who brought Michael to the agency was a Federal agent.”

  “A what?” Mr. North said. “A Federal agent? Listen, Pam, I don’t think—”

  Mrs. North waved a stop signal at him.

  “He had re-kidnaped him,” Mrs. North said. “But he didn’t want to do it officially because they were still looking for the rest of the gang. So he pretended not to be a Federal agent and brought him to the Foundation. And—” She stopped suddenly, her eyes rounding. “Listen,” she said, “I’ll bet I know something else. It’s David McIntosh’s son!”

  They all looked at her.

  “My God, Pam!” Jerry North said, in slow awe. “How did you ever—I mean, how did you?”

  “Well,” Mrs. North said, “it’s all clear—except maybe about McIntosh. I’m not awfully sure about that.”

  “No,” Weigand said. “No, Pam, I can see you mightn’t be.” He ran a hand through his hair, thinking how often he had seen Jerry North make the same gesture. “Why kidnaping, Pam?”

  It stood to reason, Mrs. North said. Here was a little boy and a woman who sounded just like a kidnaper. She paused.

  “Kidnapess?” she said, doubtfully.

  Her husband and Weigand and Dorian Hunt shook their heads slowly, unanimously.

  “And, of course, Lois Winston found out,” Mrs. North said. “Something happened when she was out there—maybe she really went to see Mrs. Halstead yesterday, as well as Mrs. Graham—that made her realize it was a kidnaping. And she gave herself away, somehow. So they followed her to the roof and killed her.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well,” Mr. North said, “what do you think of that, Bill?”

  “Oddly enough,” Bill Weigand began, and got a calculatedly hurt look from Mrs. North. “Oddly enough, we don’t know it isn’t so. Mrs. Halstead’s place wouldn’t make a bad hangout; we don’t always hear at once about kidnapings—often not until the parents have tried to get the child back on their own. Wipe out the McIntosh angle—you just put that in to make it harder, Pam—and the Federal agent, and it’s a theory.”

  Pam looked pleased.

  “I can’t say I believe it for a minute,” Weigand added. “But it’s a theory. Very pretty theory. And it washes out a lot of bothersome things, like Buddy Ashley.”

  “Well,” Mr. North said, “that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Because of course it is Buddy Ashley. I hate to agree with O’Malley, but you can’t get away from it. The rest is all—well, just put in to make it harder. Not put in by anybody, you understand—the rest is just irrelevant material which always crops up in murder investigations, when you cut across people’s lives. You’ve said as much yourself, Bill.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “So,” Mr. North said, “wipe out Michael, and with him Mrs. Halstead and the Grahams. Just don’t make it harder. Here’s Buddy Ashley, who’s afraid his sister is going to give things away to his mother; give away the marriage, which she found out about at the Municipal Building yesterday morning. If that happens, and if the sister makes a damaging story out of it—and he thinks she will—he doesn’t get his money. Maybe he needs money. So he bumps her off. Either he puts poison in her glass at the roof, or he fills her thermos bottle at the apartment with it, figuring she’ll drink it sooner or later. And one time or another she does drink it. And there’s the setup.”

  It was a long speech for Mr. North. He drank the last of his coffee thirstily. Then he looked at Weigand with expectant confidence. Weigand nodded.

  “That’s always been the safest guess,” he agreed. “I never denied it. But other things have kept coming up. And there are a couple of points in favor of Ashley. One of them, I’ll have to admit, is Madge. I think she’s on the level. There’s a chance that Ashley feels about her as she seems to feel about him. In that case, if she isn’t a digger, it’s hard to see why he’d murder his half-sister for the money. Remember, he gets the income from it in any case; it is merely a question of the principal.”

  “Is he hard up?” Mr. North asked.

  Weigand nodded. Investigation indicated that young Ashley was hard up.

  “As people get hard up in his league,” he added. “He owes a lot, some of it to guys I wouldn’t want to owe. But he’s still eating, obviously. And nobody’s pressing him too hard, that we’ve discovered.”

  Mr. North said, “Um-m-m.”

  “You know what it’s like?” Mrs. North said. The others paid attention.

  “It’s like coming in the middle of a picture,” she said. “I mean a moving one. There are a lot of people doing things and you don’t know why, or who you’re in favor of and who against. And so you have to just work things out.”

  “Just to work things out,” Mr. North said. “I know what you mean. I hate to come in in the middle—never makes sense.”

  Mrs. North shook her head.

  “I think I prefer it,” she said. “It makes things seem so interesting—so much more interesting than things really are in movies. You can just sit there and imagine, and think maybe it is going to be different. Even when it isn’t, in the end, you’ve had the fun of thinking.”

  “Well,” Weigand said, “all right, Pam. You think it was kidnaping; Jerry thinks it was Ashley. You think, also, that it was David McIntosh’s son, and a Federal agent and like coming in in the middle of a movie. Right. What do you think, Dorian?”

  “I’m afraid of what I think,” she said. Her voice was low. “You see, I’m afraid it was the Grahams. I’m afraid Lois Winston was looking up heredity.”

  “Yes?” said Weigand.

  “Suppose,” Dorian said, “that the old man—old Cyrus Graham—really is insane, and that his insanity is really inheritable. Suppose Miss Winston found it out and was going to report it. They wouldn’t place a child in a home where there was insanity, would they?”

  The question was to Pam.

  “No,” Pam said. “Obviously they wouldn’t, I should think.”

  “But,” Dorian said, “suppose they’re desperate to have the child—suppose Mrs. Graham is desperate and her husband is devoted to her and, in addition, not quite sane. Perhaps they think that if they kill Miss Winston the truth won’t come out. Maybe they figure they can fool the next worker and get the child. So Mrs. Graham gives her something to drink with atropine in it at the house that afternoon, and it doesn’t work until much later. Is that possible?”

  “It might be,” Weigand admitted. “The time the poison needs to take effect doesn’t seem completely clear. A few minutes, or a few hours—depending on the dose, and the patient’s susceptibility, which may vary. I suppose it isn’t impossible.”

  He spoke doubtfully.

  “I can’t quite see it,” he said. “The motive seems, even supposing that Graham is insane, al
together too weak. It would require that they were both insane, anyway—because on your theory, Mrs. Graham is in on it, even to the extent of being the actual killer. I’ll admit they might both be a little off, but it seems like a lot of coincidence. Only—”

  “Yes?” Dorian said.

  “It would be simpler if we supposed that Graham administered the poison at the roof,” he said. “He could have—anybody could have. Suppose that Mrs. Graham is entirely innocent. There’s still a catch. So far as we know to the contrary, Graham merely went to the roof by accident. Suppose he did, and got an insane notion to kill Lois Winston so the insanity wouldn’t come out. Does he just happen, accidentally, to be carrying poison around?”

  Nobody said anything for a moment, and then Mrs. North spoke.

  “There’s another flaw in it,” she said. “Apparently there’s no secret about Cyrus Graham’s thinking there is insanity in the family. He apparently tells anybody he sees, just as he told you, Bill. So where’s the big secret they are murdering to keep?”

  “I supposed that Cyrus really is insane,” Dorian reminded her. “And that it is really hereditary insanity. Mrs. Graham pretends it isn’t, but possibly Lois found out?”

  “How?” said Mr. North. “I should think it would take a long period of observation, even for a qualified psychiatrist, to determine that. And, anyway, I don’t think that insanity can be inherited.”

  “That,” Weigand said, “would be worth knowing. I’ll—”

  But Mrs. North got up.

  “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” she said. “No, that’s wrong—sauce. Anyway, we’ve got an encyclopædia, too.” She vanished, thumped from the hall, said, “Damn,” and returned with a heavy book.

  “Volume 12,” she said. ‘“Hydroz to Jerem.’ What’s ‘Jerem’?”

  Nobody knew.

  “Well—” Mrs. North said, and turned up a light. “Let’s see—insanity. Instinct in man, insects, insectivora—here it is—insanity.”

  “Why,” inquired Mr. North, “do you suppose she always backs into books? She backs into newspapers the same way.”

  Nobody answered, except Mrs. North, who made a shushing sound.

  “Insanity,” Mrs. North said. “U-m-m. Here we are. ‘Predisposing cause. (1) Heredity. It has to be admitted that few scientific data are before us to establish on any firm basis our knowledge of the inheritance of mental instability.’ They don’t seem very sure of themselves, for an encyclopædia, do they? And so on and so on and so on. ‘It seems that the absence of an hereditary taint makes the occurrence of insanity much less probable than the presence of it makes the occurrence probable.’ What does that mean?”

  “Read it again,” Mr. North suggested. She read it again.

  “I seem to get it,” Mr. North said. “It seems to mean that if you haven’t insanity in the family you stand a pretty good chance of not going nuts. Whereas if you have insanity in the family, you still stand a pretty good chance of not going nuts. You’re a lot surer of staying sane if you have no family background of insanity than you are of going insane if you have.”

  “That sounds almost as bad,” Mrs. North told him. “But I get it, I guess. Now—‘in all studies there is lacking some method of determining what are the fundamental units that can be transmitted by heredity. It is probable that these will be found to be not actual diseases, or even definite predispositions to such, but factors that can develop into either insanity or other conditions (character anomalies, criminality, genius, etc.) according to the interaction of environmental influences.’”

  “My God,” said Mr. North. “Authors! We’ve got a man who writes just like that.”

  “Then,” Weigand told him, “if you publish people like that you ought to be an authority on them. What does he mean?”

  “I think he means that a certain potential instability may be inherited, but not insanity itself,” Mr. North said. “He’s very cagey.”

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “That’s what I gathered. He apparently doesn’t think that there is much likelihood of direct inheritance of insanity. Very interesting. And where were we?”

  “I should think that Lois would have had to be a lot surer than that before she said anything,” Mrs. North said, practically. “Much surer than she could have been, if the authorities are so—upset about it. And anyway, from all I’ve heard, Mrs. Graham is a nice woman and terribly fond of children, so it’s clear she didn’t. Don’t you think so yourself, Dor?”

  “I’d rather,” Dorian admitted. “I don’t like my theory, really. But, of course, some very objectionable people are fond of children, Pam—some of them are even fond of dogs. Only I’ll admit the motive seems pretty obscure, in this instance.”

  Weigand agreed.

  “So?” he said.

  “I gotta theory, Loot,” Mullins said, unexpectedly. “It was this guy McIntosh. Who had a better chance? Who lied about making reservations? Who didn’t do anything until it was too late?”

  Mullins’ voice sounded pleased.

  “Why?” Weigand asked him.

  “Well,” Mullins said, “I’ll have to admit that ain’t so good. But maybe he did kill her because she was standing him up—wouldn’t marry him and just kept kidding him along. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened, Loot.”

  “No,” Weigand said. “That’s quite true,” he told the others. “There have been plenty of cases—rejected love, even in modern times. But usually the murderers weren’t exactly McIntosh’s type. They were usually little, injured men, so weak and insecure that they had to prove themselves in blood. Sometimes they go to their girls’ homes and kill themselves on the doorstep, for revenge. But none of that sounds like McIntosh.”

  “Well,” said Mullins, stubbornly, “you don’t know, Loot. Maybe he’s that kind of a guy, underneath. He’s a rich guy, remember, and never had any knocks. Maybe the first one was too much for him.”

  Weigand nodded. He couldn’t, he agreed, prove it wasn’t so.

  “At the moment,” he said, “I frankly can’t prove anything. And yet—”

  Mrs. North took him up.

  “You think it’s all in?” she said. “That you, and now we, have had a chance to see everything there is to see and that—well, that we’ve been blind?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Weigand said. “I have a vague sort of hunch that it’s all spread out and—what did you say, Pam?”

  “What?” said Pam. “Why, just what you just said. That we have had a chance to see everything and—”

  “Oh, I remember,” Weigand said, “‘and that we’ve been blind.’”

  He sat for a long minute and looked at her. Then he smiled slowly and looked from her to Dorian and then to Jerry North, still smiling faintly.

  “No,” he said, “I think you may be wrong, Pam. I think perhaps I see a light.”

  Pam sounded excited.

  “Do you, Bill?” she said. “What does it show?”

  Weigand smiled at her still, although the smile was fading. It had quite faded when he spoke.

  “Oh?” he said. “The light? Why, it shows danger, Pam. It—”

  The shrilling of the telephone bell tore his words.

  12

  WEDNESDAY

  ABOUT 9 P.M.

  It was strange to discover that, even on such an errand as this, discomfort still mattered. It was a wry and irrelevant fact, and obscurely unsettling. There should be a great and terrific dignity on such an errand, the murderer thought. Now you set yourself off, darkly, from other men and women; now you carried death in your hand. In the hand, gripped hard, was death, and in the mind was death and it was strange that when death moved with you all little things did not draw away, abashed by the dark, fearful majesty of the moment. “I am going out to kill,” the murderer thought. And still there was discomfort, belittling the moment.

  The murderer dragged feet through wet, tall grass in the darkness, finding a way with feet and with the hand which di
d not carry death. Wet bushes slapped and distracted with their small, impotent annoyance. Water sloshed through shoes and garments clung, cold and impeding, around legs. The world dragged at the murderer, as if to hold death back. But death could not be held back; once you have killed you must, if it is needed, kill again. And now it was needed. The murderer’s mind fixed on the need and clung there.

  Long ago, the murderer thought, I did all this before—long ago, when I was twelve or so, all this happened over. That night it rained and I was lost and after a while it was like this. Then the world was too big and all the walls fell back and there was nothing I could reach. And everything was unreal then, and I stood off and saw myself and I could not get back into myself for a long time, until somebody brought a light. It is that way now, the murderer thought, and for a moment the murderer stood still, in tall, wet grass. The murderer saw this other person standing there, clutching death. That is myself, the murderer thought.

  It was only for a moment and then the murderer went on. It had been dark for a long time, but that was the false darkness of the storm. The clouds were rolling off now and there were wet stars left behind, but now it was really dark, with the darkness of night.

  “I can’t see my hand before my face,” the murderer thought and held up the hand which clutched death. The murderer giggled softly because the thought was so irrelevant and inadequate and stale against the moment. “I can’t see my hand before my face,” the murderer thought. “My hand before my face. My hand before my face.” The words became a rhythm and in the rhythm the murderer could forget the other little, futile things. The surface of the murderer’s mind played with the words, over and over, and was occupied. The murderer forced through a low, uncared-for hedge and stopped. “My hand before my face, my hand before my face,” the murderer’s mind said over and over.

  There was a light in the house. It was a pale, yellow light and the murderer watched it for a moment, not moving. The light was blotted out a moment and then reappeared, as if someone had moved between the window and a lamp. In the darkness the murderer moved forward slowly, carefully. The weedy grass was not so tall, here, but still the murderer’s feet sank into it, sank to soft, yielding ground.