Hanged for a Sheep Page 17

  Suppose Stephen Anthony, possibly thinking he had an inheritance coming and wanting to hasten it, had decided to dispose of Aunt Flora. (This fitted with Anthony’s vague hints about affluence to come.) Suppose he had given her the arsenic, and had either miscalculated the dose—which was not out of his character—or had planned on one of those slow, methodical poisonings so popular, if criminal history was to be credited, among the British. And suppose Aunt Flora had realized what was going on and put a stop to it, partly out of pure annoyance with a man who was trying to kill her; partly to see that he didn’t, in the future, succeed. That was in character, too. Aunt Flora might be expected to be drastic, if she moved. She might be expected to use a gun. And she would, as a former ranch-woman, know how to tie a bowline.

  But there Weigand shook his head. This did not only fail to conform to the hunch; this was definitely anti-hunch. Because, while willing to believe that Aunt Flora might have killed Anthony, given so good a reason, he could not imagine any circumstances under which she would kill Perkins, of whom she had evidently been fond. And of whom, Weigand added to himself, she could have been sure. Because if what he had heard of Perkins’s devotion to Aunt Flora was true, Perkins would never have dreamed of reporting one of her murders. He would, Weigand thought, have been more apt to applaud.

  “Damn,” Weigand said, aloud. Mullins was right; this was a screwy one. He found himself wishing that Pamela North would have a brainstorm. He went back to checking over reports, marveling at the completeness, and on the whole the uselessness, of information collected by the toiling detectives of various squads and bureaus. What advantage was there in knowing, for example, that the bullet showed six rifling grooves, spiraling to the left, and was therefore presumably fired from a Colt automatic? Weigand sighed. Of course, he thought in fairness, it may be useful later. He went on with reports, and Mullins came in.

  Mullins tossed a packet of letters to the desk and Weigand pulled off the rubber band holding them. He ran through them, hurrying here and hesitating there. They were about what he expected—they were young and indiscreet and, reading them, the most resolute looker on the brighter side of things could not doubt that Clem Buddie and Ross Brack had been more than casual acquaintances—and more, for that matter, than close friends. The letters were, in the grimy league of Stephen Anthony, saleable, given a special market. But they had not been sold; Anthony had died with this financial anchor still to windward. And did that prove, since the letters had not been recovered, that Anthony had not been killed for the letters?

  Weigand decided that it did not, necessarily. Anthony might have been killed on the assumption he was carrying the letters and the murderer might have had no opportunity to search the apartment immediately afterward. (But he had had most of that night, hadn’t he? He may not have known where Anthony’s apartment was. Or he may have decided that the letters were in themselves harmless, a tool rendered useless by the extinction of the artisan. And he was right; the letters were, now, harmless for their original purpose, since the police had them and the police did not blackmail.) Weigand finished the letters and tossed them into the basket. Another piece of the puzzle had come to hand; in the final picture it might well have its place. But it did not, at the moment, in itself provide a key.

  Weigand found he had worked down to the desk. He lighted a cigarette, watched the smoke for a moment and stood up. Mullins stood up too and Weigand nodded.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Time to go calling, Sergeant. We’ll go see Dr. Buddie. And talk about medicines. We’ll take our little bottle with us.”

  13

  THURSDAY

  10:15 A.M. TO 11:35 A.M.

  It had stopped snowing, but it was still heavily overcast, and below the solid gray of high clouds darker clouds scudded toward the southwest. The northeaster held. Weigand, watching the people on the avenues buffeting their way uptown against it, skidding downtown with it at their backs, wished the Weather Bureau could afford to be less secretive. Presumably, German submarine commanders off the coast would have noticed, by now, that it had clouded up. But probably there was reason. Weigand liked to know what kind of weather was coming, but was willing to sacrifice the knowledge for the war effort. He was not, however, eager. Even last week’s weather map, he decided, would be interesting to see. If weather maps interested you.

  They went north and across town to Park, and up Park. They stopped in front of a large apartment building and went into a ground floor apartment which had its own entrance from the street, and an unassertive brass plate saying: “Wesley Buddie, M.D.” A middle-aged woman in a white uniform met them among copies of the National Geographic. She looked expectant.

  “No,” Weigand said, “we haven’t an appointment. But—”

  “Then I’m afraid the doctor can’t see you today,” the doctor’s protector told him, firmly. “He sees patients only by appointment.”

  That, Weigand told her, was natural. But they were not patients. They wanted to see Dr. Buddie on—another matter.

  The woman looked at Mullins and came to the correct conclusion.

  “If it’s something about parking?” she said. “Or air raids? Or things like that? I could take care of it, probably.”

  “It ain’t parking,” Mullins told her. He was gruff; it always a little annoyed him that his occupation was so apparent. Mullins thought of himself, in moments of introspection, as a man who might be anything. But everybody else thought of him simply as a cop. It irked.

  “No,” Weigand said. “It isn’t parking. Tell the doctor that Lieutenant Weigand would like a few minutes. He’ll understand, I think.”

  The protector seemed to doubt it. She looked with determination at Weigand, who looked back mildly but otherwise did not respond. She waited for him to go away, and he did not go away. He was, her look told him, being exceedingly irregular. She should, his look replied, give his name to the doctor. She went from the reception room, displeased, and returned, still displeased. The doctor would see them, she reported. Her tone implied that it was most irregular of the doctor.

  Dr. Wesley Buddie was sitting at a wide desk in the next room—a wide, orderly desk. He was a wide, orderly man. He nodded at Weigand and said, “Lieutenant.” He nodded at Mullins and he nodded at chairs. The detective sat down and Dr. Buddie waited, politely. He took off his nose-glasses and held them in his hand, and tapped the desk top gently, indicating a receptive, dispassionate state of mind. Weigand laid the little green bottle on the desk. Dr. Buddie looked at it. Then he looked at Weigand and continued to wait.

  “Have you ever seen it before?” Weigand said. Dr. Buddie did not seem surprised by the question, nor did he seem greatly interested.

  “The preparation?” he enquired. “Or this particular bottle? Certainly I’ve seen the preparation.”

  “And the bottle?” Weigand was patient.

  Dr. Buddie raised his eyebrows, Weigand nodded and he picked up the bottle. He turned it over, looking at it. He shook his head.

  “Really,” he said, “I have no way of knowing. I don’t remember it, specifically. I may have seen it. Why?”

  “Because,” Weigand told him, “the arsenic came out of it. The arsenic that was given your mother.”

  Dr. Buddie looked at the bottle again, shook his head again and put the bottle down on the desk, pushing it toward the detective.

  “I know nothing about that,” he said. “If you are, in this very tactful manner, asking if I poisoned my mother—no, I didn’t. If I wanted to poison anybody, I wouldn’t use arsenic. I would use something better. But I haven’t poisoned anyone.” He paused and half smiled. “Except of course in the way of practice,” he added. “And always with the best intentions.”

  Weigand picked up the bottle and made no response to the physician’s professional jest. He turned it over in his hands, in turn, and pointed to the small, crescent-shaped label which read: “Professional Sample.”

  “You’ve seen that before, at any rate,” he
said. “Or labels like it.”

  “Naturally,” Dr. Buddie told him. “I get ’em by the case. Samples of headache medicines and antacids and laxatives and nose drops and all the things that poor damn fools take. Apparently on the assumption that I will dish them out to patients.”

  “Do you?” Weigand asked.

  Dr. Buddie smiled.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “When I know they won’t do any harm, and if the patients haven’t anything the matter with them. If they complain of headaches, for example, I tell them to take aspirin or, if they don’t like aspirin, suggest something else—maybe even give them one of the samples. Supposing, naturally, that there is nothing really wrong. Most of the stuff I have thrown away.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “Now, specifically, this,” he said, pointing at the bottle. “Did the manufacturers send you this—not this particular bottle, necessarily, but bottles of this compound? You’ll see why I wonder. Presumably it was sent to a doctor—passed through a doctor’s hands, at some point. I have nothing to indicate that it passed through your hands. But you’re a doctor and a member of the family.”

  “But not the family doctor,” Dr. Buddie told him. “That goes without saying.”

  “Never?” Weigand wanted to know.

  “Never,” Dr. Buddie told him. “Physicians don’t treat their own families, Lieutenant.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “To get back to the bottle—did you ever get samples of this stuff, whether you passed them on or not?”

  “No,” Dr. Buddie said. He said it flatly. Weigand wanted to know if he was sure.

  “Yes,” Dr. Buddie told him. “Quite sure. Because it’s been on the market for years and they don’t need to send out samples. The samples are to introduce a product, usually. This doesn’t need introduction. But if I had got a sample, I might very well have passed it on—it’s harmless; it may even be of some value. Chiefly mental, naturally.”

  “Mental?” Weigand repeated. Dr. Buddie nodded.

  “Make them think they feel better in the mornings,” he said. “Most people need something to make them think they feel better in the morning. Stuff like this has a nice, fresh taste. Makes you belch. Makes you think it’s doing you a lot of good.”

  “And doesn’t?”

  Dr. Buddie shrugged. If you thought it did, it did, he said. Always assuming there wasn’t anything really wrong, except eating too much and not exercising enough and having too much time to think about yourself. It was, further, mildly antacid.

  “Looks more exciting than bicarb of soda,” he explained. “Mumbo-jumbo of course. But that may be useful. Seems to help keep mother ticking, for example. Does her no harm, apparently.”

  “Then I gather,” Weigand said, “that you don’t try to discourage her from taking fruit salts, citrate salts—whatever it is? Right?”

  “Why should I?” Dr. Buddie said. “Keeps her amused. She’s got a mildly acid condition, anyway, as you would expect. Healthy old lady, however. Enjoys life. Enjoys her ailments. Likes to dose herself. I keep an eye on her, of course. Call it a semiprofessional eye. Now and then I send her something new to take.” He smiled. “Always a great improvement for a few days,” he added. “Typical case, my mother.”

  “Hypochondria?” Weigand wanted to know. The physician lifted his shoulders slightly.

  “Technically, of course, hypochondria,” he agreed. “But it’s a big name for it. She merely makes the most of little aches and pains. Keeps her interested. Most people do that, in one degree or another. Real hypochondria is—well, an advanced degree. More like Ben. Although even he is reasonably mild about it. And of course he has got a sinus condition. Most people have.”

  “And takes things for it?” Weigand asked. Dr. Buddie nodded.

  “Nose drops,” he said. “That sort of thing. I send him things from time to time, too. Things that won’t do any harm, and may soothe. Things to put in hot water and inhale, with very encouraging smells. And the steam vapor is a useful palliative. Doesn’t matter what you put in it, as long as it amuses you.”

  Weigand found himself rather liking Dr. Buddie.

  “You mean,” he said, “that it is merely the steam which helps? And that the other stuff hasn’t any real value?”

  Dr. Buddie shrugged.

  “‘Real’?” he repeated. “How do I know—how does anybody know? Physically, no—it just makes a smell. But people like medicinal smells—makes them think they’ve got hold of something. So their minds get better, and they get better.” He looked at Weigand, and smiled slowly. “Secrets of the profession, Lieutenant;” he said. “Not to be quoted against me. There are few ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers in medicine, Lieutenant. That’s why doctors make bad witnesses.”

  “So,” Weigand said, “to promote—well, call it mental health—you do sometimes send samples of proprietary medicines to your mother? And to Ben?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Buddie said. “Harmless things, to ward off hypochondria. Or enhance it. I don’t know. Naturally, I use discretion. But most of these things”—he waved at the bottle—“are simple and harmless; most of them represent complicated ways of taking aspirin and bicarbonate.”

  “But you never sent this product?” Weigand asked again. The doctor shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Neither with arsenic nor without it. As a matter of fact, mother used to use it until a year or so ago, when she decided she liked Wilson’s Citrate Salts better.” He really looked amused. “They’re the same thing, chemically,” he said. “Or so near as doesn’t matter. Wilson’s stuff is blue; this stuff is green. They taste about the same, however.”

  He tapped gently with his glasses on the desk.

  “So there would have been no point in my sending her this, Lieutenant,” he said. “She already knew it. And, as I said, it isn’t a new product and samples aren’t being sent out. That bottle came from a druggist’s shelf, originally, I imagine. Without the arsenic. Is there much arsenic, by the way?”

  Weigand hesitated a moment, decided it was not a secret, and shook his head.

  “Not enough, apparently,” he said. “That’s what they tell me.”

  Dr. Buddie did not seem surprised.

  “Obviously mother got a small dose,” he said. His tone held no comment on this fact.

  “Would you suppose,” Weigand said, “that the size of the dose was an accident? Fortunate for your mother; unfortunate for the person who was trying to kill her?”

  Dr. Buddie’s shoulders rose and fell. He enquired how he would be supposed to know.

  “Obviously,” he said, “if it was an attempt to murder her, it was a mistake on the part of the poisoner. It seems a rather silly mistake, even for a layman. But laymen have peculiar ideas about drugs, often enough.”

  “About arsenic?” Weigand said, doubtfully. “With all the accounts of arsenical poisoning available? It seems—improbable.”

  Dr. Buddie looked at him. His eyes told nothing, and his tone told no more.

  “Does it, Lieutenant?” he enquired. His tone dropped flat.

  The two looked at each other for a moment. It was Dr. Buddie who resumed.

  “As a physician,” he said, “I would obviously know the dosage. If I were trying to kill somebody by poison, I would kill him. Possibly if I wanted to make it appear that a layman had done it, I would even use arsenic, counting on you to assume that a physician would use a better poison. I could have procured arsenic easily and put it into the bottle with Folwell’s stuff and sent it to mother and she would, presumably, have taken it. Or put it in her medicine cabinet, where somebody else might have prepared a dose and given it to her. I see your point, Lieutenant.”

  “It isn’t necessarily my point,” Weigand told him. “Certainly it is a possibility. I take it that you didn’t do any of these things?”

  “No,” Dr. Buddie said. “I certainly did not. A statement which is obviously without value, as you do not need to point out. Why should I have done any of those
things?”

  Weigand said he wouldn’t know. Or wouldn’t know if the doctor didn’t.

  “Money,” Dr. Buddie said. “Naturally—it was so obvious that it did not occur to me for the moment. You think I tried to poison mother to get my share of her money. In that case, why didn’t I make a job of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Weigand said. “Why didn’t you?”

  “If I’d tried it, I would have,” Dr. Buddie told him. Suddenly he stood up and stared down at Weigand.

  “Damn it, man!” he said. “Surely you’re not such a fool!”

  Weigand told him to sit down, and Weigand’s voice was easy and his words unhurried.

  “Detectives have to ask questions and get answers,” he said. “It’s the way they have—the only way they have, doctor. I haven’t said I think you poisoned your mother. I grant the weight of your arguments against it. So far as I know now you would have been a fool to use arsenic at all and know too much to use too little. Therefore, it would appear that you did not try to kill your mother with arsenic for her money.”

  His tone was quiet and reasonable; he seemed to be explaining the obvious.

  “If new developments show that you may have given your mother poison without an intention of killing her,” he went on, “we will consider the point when it comes up. If it appears that you tried to kill her, but not for her money, I’ll ask you about that. When I want to know things, I’ll ask people questions, doctor. You and your brother the major, and your nieces and your nephews and your aunts. And so polish up the handle on the big front door.”

  Dr. Buddie had sat down. He stared at Weigand.

  “Don’t tell me that you quote Alice in Wonderland, too,” he said. He said it anxiously.

  “Never,” Weigand told him. “Well, almost never.” He stood up and Mullins, who had tilted his chair against the wall, let it fall to the floor and stood up too.