Hanged for a Sheep Page 19

  “I’ve only a moral certainty,” he admitted.

  “Why didn’t you bring this story to us at once?” Weigand wanted to know. Craig looked sorrowful and embarrassed; he agreed that he should have done so. But he had not wanted to accuse his half-brother, particularly since he had no evidence, not even the bottle. He had been afraid that his story would not be believed and that he would himself be arrested.

  “After all,” he said. “I did administer the poison. You would have had only my word; even now you have only my word, and an argument. Even now, I can’t be sure you believe me.”

  “It’s a reasonable explanation,” Weigand said. “I don’t know that I blame you for holding off. It has made things harder for us, of course. But I see your point.”

  “Then you believe me?” Craig asked. There was hope in his voice again.

  Weigand lifted his shoulders.

  “Part of it is theory,” he reminded Craig. “You don’t ‘believe’ in theory. But you’ve made a very interesting case, Mr. Craig. Very interesting.”

  “Then,” Craig said, and hesitated. “Is there anything else? Or are you through with me?”

  “For now, at any rate,” Weigand said. “You can go, Mr. Craig.”

  Weigand and Mullins watched Craig go. Mullins turned and looked at Weigand, enquiringly.

  “Do you believe him, Loot?” Mullins wanted to know. “It sounds O.K.”

  Weigand smiled.

  “I don’t think he tried to poison his mother,” Weigand said. “I never did think so. I think he was framed, as he says.”

  14

  THURSDAY

  11:35 A.M. TO 12:08 P.M.

  Sergeant Mullins waited for Bill Weigand to continue, but Weigand did not continue. He had returned to a chair, and the fingers of his right hand beat a gentle tattoo on the chair arm. Mullins waited and as the minutes passed he became restless.

  “Now what, Loot?” he enquired, and was startled at the sound of his own voice. Weigand returned from a distance and looked at him, at first without seeming to see him. Then Weigand saw Mullins, without favor.

  “Now,” he said, “we think. Or I think.”

  Mullins looked doubtful.

  “No more questions?” he said. “We don’t ask anybody about things?”

  “Who?” Weigand said. “About what?”

  Mullins thought it over.

  “I dunno, Loot,” he said, at length. “You think we know everything?”

  Weigand drummed on the chair arm for a moment before he answered. Then he nodded.

  “We ought to,” he said. “We know a lot. And can guess a lot. And where are we?”

  Mullins thought it over.

  “I think Craig,” he said. “He says he’s framed. Guys that say they’re framed—” The sentence ended because it did not need to continue.

  “Nevertheless,” Weigand said, “people have been framed. For what it is worth—I think Craig was framed. Don’t you? On the merits, regardless of precedent.”

  “You mean paying no attention to guys being lying when they say they’re framed?” Mullins enquired. “Just the way the story sounds?” He waited and Weigand answered “yes,” without saying it.

  “Yen,” Mullins said, “his story sounds all right. So it’s the doc.”

  “What’s the doc?” Pam North said from the door. She was holding Ruffy. Jerry was behind her and he was wearing a fur piece around his neck. The fur piece was Toughy, with bright eyes that looked like buttons and a tail which twisted up in a question mark.

  “The guy who did it,” Mullins said. “Only he got Craig to do it for him. What do you think, Mrs. North?”

  “The cats got tired up there,” Pam said. “All by themselves so much, and nothing new to smell. Did he?” This last was to Weigand. Weigand looked at her and then at Jerry. To the latter he said, “Close the door, will you?” Jerry closed the door.

  “Council?” Mrs. North said. She seemed pleased. “Is this when we count the votes? Did he? I want to know before I vote.”

  “Did your cousin Wesley put arsenic into the bottle so your cousin Ben would put it into your Aunt Flora?” Weigand amplified. “That’s what Ben says. Or he says that’s what he thinks.”

  Jerry leaned over and Toughy dropped off on a table. He found a small vase, built like a baseball on a stem and filled with short-stemmed tulips. He batted the nearest tulip and then decided to eat the leaves. He made a crunching sound.

  “Give,” Jerry said. “Sit down, Pam.”

  Weigand gave. He gave in summary, but here and there he left in a detail. The Norths listened, Pam scratching Ruffy’s ears. Ruffy began to purr and, apparently out of sheer good will, Toughy joined her. The room vibrated slightly and Mullins looked interested.

  “They’re awful little to make so much noise, ain’t they?” he enquired, pleased. “Makes me think of the old ‘L’—if you was on the other side of town, that is.”

  “Please,” Pam said. “But it is funny. They do it inside, somehow. And sometimes when you can’t hear it, you can feel it. They just sit still and vibrate.”

  “Meanwhile,” Jerry said, “we sit still and vibrate. Don’t we, Bill? Do you know?”

  Weigand did not answer directly.

  “He does,” Pam informed them all. She looked at Weigand without favor. “It seems to me,” she said, “that you just call us in to tell us, like Watson.”

  “Sherlock,” Weigand said.

  “I was thinking of us,” Pam told him. “We’re like Watson. You’re self-centered, Bill. Only you don’t seem terribly sure, somehow.”

  Weigand looked at her and smiled faintly.

  “Elementary, my dear Watson,” he said. “I’m not very sure. And I can’t prove it.”

  Pamela North lifted Ruffy to the table with her brother, who decided he would rather bat her than the tulip. Ruffy ignored him and began to smell the tulips, one by one. They seemed to please her.

  “Well,” Pam said. “Where are we? Or don’t we know? As to motives and things, and alibis.”

  “There aren’t any alibis,” Weigand told her. “No real alibis. That makes a nice start. No clocks, no where-was-who-when. Which ought to make it simpler.” He stared abstractedly at the cats. “And which doesn’t,” he added. They waited. He continued abstracted.

  “I think,” Pam said, “it was somebody from outside—I mean from outside the house. Probably somebody inside the family from outside the house. Because the door wasn’t locked.”

  Weigand returned to her, regarded her theory—which he seemed to find hanging in the air between them—and said, “Oh, when Jerry came, you mean?” Pam nodded.

  “Somebody came in from outside to kill poor Harry,” she said. “And so the door had to be unlocked.” She thought it over. “I don’t get that,” she said, frankly. “What am I talking about?”

  “The door was unlocked when Jerry came last night,” Bill Weigand reminded her. “Somebody had tripped the catch, so it didn’t lock when the door closed. Therefore, somebody came in, either with the aid of somebody or because he had tripped the lock himself when he went out earlier. Which does indicate that he had no key. But—”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Jerry cut in. “It doesn’t have to be last night. It could be left over from the night before. And so it could have been tripped to let Anthony in, so he could be killed.”

  Weigand nodded and said, “Precisely.” Pam looked doubtful.

  “Somebody would have noticed,” she objected. The three men shook their heads at her, in unison.

  “No, baby,” Jerry told her. “Not necessarily—not unless somebody tried it from outside, on the assumption it might be unlocked. Anybody who assumed it was locked would merely use a key, which would let him in just as well as if it were locked.”

  Pam looked at them and, after a moment, said: “All right.

  “Then,” she said, “it was somebody inside the family inside the house. Which could be anybody.” She paused. “Except me,�
�� she added. “And Jerry, because he was in Kansas City. When I thought the telephone company had been so bright. Which is just as well, because we had motives, too.”

  Jerry looked at her and shook his head.

  “If you mean your inheritance,” he told her, “the answer is no. Because that applies only to Aunt Flora, and we weren’t here then. It didn’t make any difference to us if Stephen Anthony lived.” He looked at Weigand. “What is the sequence?” he asked. “Or isn’t there any?”

  That, Weigand admitted, was the question.

  “Suppose,” he said, “we lay it out and look at it, starting with Aunt Flora. See what we know.”

  “All right,” Pam said. She reached to the table, just as Roughy was about to push the ball-shaped vase over the edge. She removed Roughy to her lap and replaced the vase. “Where are we?”

  This, Weigand told them, was what they knew:

  Mrs. Flora Buddie, who had shortly before ejected her fourth husband, Stephen Anthony, had been given a small dose of arsenic in a digestive powder about two weeks previously. She suspected poison, although her physician was willing to diagnose merely a violent digestive upset. Her suspicions had been proved correct. The poison apparently was administered in something she ate or drank that morning, and since no analysis was made of unconsumed food or drink, it might have been in anything. The finding of the bottle, however, had proved that the dose, too small to cause more than acute discomfort, had been given in Folwell’s Fruit Salts.

  Mrs. Buddie apparently did not remember who had given her the salts. Weigand paused and looked at Pam. “Wouldn’t she?” he asked. “You know her?”

  Pam thought it over.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “She expects things just to—appear. As long as they do, she doesn’t bother. Only sometimes she does. It might be either way, but she might forget.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “We’ll assume for the moment she did forget, particularly since at that time she didn’t know where the poison came from. She didn’t have anything to focus on, I mean—maybe she thought it was the orange juice, or the coffee. Anyway, we’ll assume she didn’t. And the bottle disappeared.”

  To group the things they knew by the events to which they related, instead of chronologically, they knew that the salts containing the poison had been administered by Craig. The bottle bore only his fingerprints, a fact which he insisted showed that he had been framed. He told a story, which could neither be proved nor disproved, that he had received the bottle through the mail and that it purported to come from his half-brother, Wesley Buddie. This Dr. Buddie denied. Either might be lying; both might be lying or each might be telling the truth as he saw it. Because it was always possible that some third person had sent the bottle to Craig, making it appear—with the aid of a little easy forgery—that Dr. Buddie had sent it. All they knew about this was what they had been told; the stories diverged but were susceptible to reconciliation.

  The bottle had disappeared, without anyone, except Ben, noticing its absence. Mrs. Buddie had kept her own counsel for almost two weeks, but she had invited Pam North, apparently planning to use her as an amateur detective. On the night of Pam’s arrival, she had told the other members of the family of the attempt to poison her.

  On that same night, her estranged husband had been shot and killed in the breakfast room.

  The following night, Harry Perkins, who had been hiding out—with the help of Sand—had come to Pam’s bedroom door, given her a package—“which you promptly lost,” Bill Weigand interjected, disapprovingly—and promised to give information. He had been hanged before he gave it. Later Pam’s room had been searched; still later, with the help of the cats, the bottle had been found. Presumably, it was the package which Perkins had given to Pam.

  “And which I lost,” Pam said. “Don’t forget that—Lieutenant. Also, I heard a sort of bump—like a door slamming—the first night I was here. And didn’t know what time it was.”

  “Also,” Jerry said, “you hit me on the head with a vase. Because you thought I was the murderer.”

  “You two,” Pam said, “sometimes make me so mad! I could—I could—.” She looked down at Toughy, still in her lap. “They pick on me, darling,” she said. “Scratch them!” Toughy looked up at her with languishing eyes and resumed his purring, which he had absent-mindedly interrupted.

  “And hit you with a vase,” Bill Weigand repeated, very gravely. “We also know that the murderer can tie a bowline; that he had an opportunity to take and secrete Nemo’s leash; that he still has the gun he used to kill Anthony; that he does not repeat his method, which is an old wives’ tale anyway; that he fired up at Anthony, who presumably was standing over him and that—although this is merely a deduction—he killed Harry Perkins because Perkins knew who he was and was going to tell. We don’t know how Perkins knew.”

  They digested that. Mullins shook his head.

  “Me,” he said, “I don’t get it. Any of it. I think we ought to ask some more questions. We don’t even know why.”

  “Why what, sergeant?” Pam enquired.

  “Why anything,” Mullins said, succinctly.

  Weigand shook his head. He said that, on the other hand, they knew too many “whys.” They knew “whys” for practically everybody.

  “Assuming the most probable,” he said, “we assume that somebody did try to kill your aunt, Pam, and failed because they knew too little about arsenic. Then the motive for any member of the family is the commonest motive in the world—money. Your aunt has it; her potential murderer inherits from her; her potential murderer wants the money now. So he kills Mrs. Buddie. So—Now for Anthony, there are two possibilities: Either his murder had a connection with the attempt on your aunt, Pam, or it didn’t. If it did, probably he was killed because he knew who had given your aunt arsenic. Because, even though the attempt failed, the fact that it had been made would—well, enrage Mrs. Buddie.”

  “Make her mad as hops,” Pam agreed. “It would me.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Which presumably would mean, at the least, that the person who had poisoned her could expect to get no money from her, now or in the future. It might mean that he would be arrested for attempted murder, to boot. But with Anthony out of the way, there was nothing to stop him—or her—from making another attempt on Mrs. Buddie.”

  “Try, try again,” Pam agreed.

  “On the other hand,” Weigand went on, “Anthony was a candidate for murder on his own account. He was a blackmailer—he was blackmailing the major, almost certainly. He may have been blackmailing Clem or her sister, Judy. Bruce McClelland—by the way, which one of the girls is he after? He said Clem but—”

  “I know,” Pam said. “It’s been puzzling me, because now he acts as if it were Judy. I think he found out too much about Clem and then met Judy that night and decided she was the one, really. And anyway, finding out—so he really knew—about Clem and Brack would—well, sort of dash him. So now I think it is Judy. Does it matter? I mean to them it does, I guess, but to the murder?”

  It depended, Weigand said, on when Bruce McClelland had made the shift, if he had made it. Supposing he was still in love with Clem, or thought he was, at the time of Anthony’s murder, he had a motive—protecting her from a blackmailer. Otherwise, he shared the motive that everybody else had—a desire to silence Anthony before Anthony had a chance to expose him. “Even your aunt has a motive for Anthony,” Weigand pointed out, and explained the possibility he had already outlined to himself. Pam and Jerry looked doubtful, but Jerry finally nodded.

  “She might, at that,” he said. “She’s quite an old girl.”

  Pamela was silent. She was stroking the cat abstractedly and staring off into space.

  “As for Perkins, to round it off,” Weigand said, “the motive is obvious. He knew who had attempted one murder or accomplished the other, or who had done both.”

  “How did he know?” Pam asked. She was still staring across the room, seeking advice, it se
emed, from the panels of the closed door.

  “Oh,” Jerry said. “Saw or heard something suspicious. Perhaps he was around somewhere when—”

  “Not Perkins,” Pam said. “It doesn’t matter about that. That wasn’t what I was wondering about. I knew something was wrong and it kept going around in my head and that’s it. How did he know? Because nobody had told him, and he couldn’t see.”

  They all looked at her, now. She turned toward Jerry.

  “The fingerprints,” she said. “He couldn’t have just seen how many there were because Bill says he only glanced at it. And nobody had told him. And yet he knew. But if it was the way he said, he couldn’t know they were the only ones. Because you can’t see them until they’re developed, can you, Bill?”

  She turned to Bill.

  “Not usually,” he said. “Not on the bottle, Pam.”

  “Then he must have known somehow before,” Pam said, “and that means—Jerry! You didn’t really close the door!”

  “But I did, Pam,” Jerry said, and then, with the others, he half turned to stare at the door. It was not entirely closed, and now it was opening wider.

  There was a frozen moment while they stared. And then Benjamin Craig stood in the door. He still looked unaccountably placid, but now he had a gun in his hand. It was pointed at the two detectives and the Norths, and it was moving slowly from side to side. It occurred to Pam North, rather horrifyingly, that Benjamin Craig looked like a suburban gardener with a hose, abstractedly spraying water on the lawn. And she felt—and this was more horrifying still—that Benjamin Craig would, if it suited him, spray bullets from the automatic in his hand as casually as the gardener he so grotesquely represented would spray water from a hose.

  Craig spoke, and his voice was unhurried and almost friendly—and the friendliness of the voice was most horrible of all. He nodded at Pam, and then the gun, pointing at her, hesitated in its regular movement.

  “I made a mistake, Cousin Pamela,” Benjamin Craig admitted. “I shouldn’t have known about the fingerprints. You are quite right about that, cousin; sometimes you are really rather bright. He told me that before I shot him—just before. It was the last thing he said, as I remember. He said: ‘Now yours are the only prints—’ and I shot him before he finished.”