Hanged for a Sheep Page 4

  Pam, moving more quietly than a cat, went around the sofa. If she were quick enough she might get him before he retreated again toward the front. She dropped, got a hand on him and heard Judy Buddie say, from near the door.

  “But, Clem, I had to make up something. I had no way of knowing—”

  “All right, darling,” Clementine Buddie said. She had evidently said it before; her voice held amused, affectionate impatience. “Of course you couldn’t know. Although why you settled on Mary Conover, when even Dad knows she’s pure—drip. Not that the poor dear will think about it, I expect.”

  There was a little pause. Pam started to get up before things went further. And then Judy said, in a different tone,

  “Why don’t you give it up, Clem? Give him up? Because, if you are talking about poison—.”

  Clem interrupted. Her voice had changed, too. It was light and amused, still, but the amusement was a thin film over something which was not amusement at all.

  “Hold it, Judy,” she said. “Hold everything, sister. One girl’s poison, another girl’s meat. And I hear enough from—from other people. If I want to see him. I want to see him.”

  “Wherein,” Judy said, rather dryly, “you and he appear to differ. If he did stand you up, as I gather.”

  “All right,” Clem said. Her voice wasn’t amused, any longer. “Skip it, darling. Something came up. He—he called me.”

  “Did he?” Judy’s voice was without particular expression.

  “Of course,” Clem said. She was angry, now. “Don’t get ideas, Judy. He’s—he feels the same way. And nobody had better spoil it.”

  “All I’ve done,” Judy said, “is to try to help. And been made to look like a fool for my trouble.”

  There was a little flurry. Clem was evidently displaying affection. Her voice—she can do a lot with her voice for a girl of eighteen, Pam thought—showed affection.

  “Of course, darling,” Clem said in a rush. “Of course you have. Don’t think it isn’t wonderful of you. It’s—other people.” She paused. “The snake, chiefly,” she said. Clem repeated it, describing the snake. She gets around, Pam thought. There was a little gasp from Judy.

  “Clem!” she said. “Not—him. Not the snake.”

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “I’m afraid he does,” Clem said. “The—the—”

  Words failed her, this time.

  “I’d like to—scotch him,” she said, and now she sounded as if she were almost crying. “I’d like to—I’d hate to tell you what I’d like to do, Judy. Because you know what he’s after.”

  “What he’s always been after,” Judy said. “From the first. But I don’t see what he could do. Or, I mean, how—who would he go to?” Her voice suddenly grew more anxious. “Listen, Clem,” she said. “He doesn’t know anything, really? I mean—there isn’t anything he could know?” And then there was another pause, and the answer—whatever it was—came without words.

  “Oh—Clem!” Judy said. “Darling—how?”

  “Could I?” Clem finished. Her voice was level, and there was a kind of hopelessness in it. “Oh, darling—such a sweet darling. You can’t really imagine, can you? Not really. My little sister!”

  But that wasn’t right, of course. It was really Clem who was the “little” sister; by two years the little sister. There’s only one thing makes a woman feel as Clem feels toward another woman, Pam thought. Older and—pitying. However unhappy, still pitying of those who have not their unhappiness. Poor Clem. And now there was no coming out.

  “An eaves-drip!” Pam told herself, bitterly. “Why do I? I’m really getting to—to snoop around.”

  And it hasn’t anything to do with the arsenic, Pam thought, as she heard the two girls—who seemingly had merely stepped inside the library for the moment of their talk, and were now going on again toward their rooms at the top of the house—as she heard them, after a moment, move out into the hall and begin to climb the stairs. Obviously, it has nothing to do with the arsenic. It meant that Clem was in trouble of some sort, and of a not obscure sort, and that Judy was her confidante. It meant that somebody called “the snake” was an ingredient in the trouble, but not the main ingredient, and that Clem would like to scotch the snake. But it was absurd to think that Aunt Flora was the snake, particularly since the snake was “he.” And it was Aunt Flora, if anybody, who had been scotched. “Scotch the snake, not kill him.” Which was what had happened to Aunt Flora.

  Pam gathered Toughy up and he tried to crawl to her shoulders, now, and was suppressed after a short tussle.

  “When I’m wearing a suit, darling,” Pam said. “Not when I’m practically bare.”

  And then she went out into the hall and heard a door close at the top of the house, which meant that Clem and Judy were safely in their rooms. She went on. This time she got both cats in at once. She read Jerry’s letter again and then, finding a correspondence block in one of her bags, she sat hunched in bed and answered it. She told him about Aunt Flora and the arsenic, and about the major’s fondness for cats, and something, although not all, about Clem and Judy. And then, with the news supplied, she told him about other things. She had no idea how late it was when she had finished, because she had forgotten to wind her watch. But it felt late.

  She was just falling asleep, smiling over Jerry’s letter and what she had said in answering it, when she heard a door slam. It sounded a good way off, but in that case it must be a heavy door, pulled hard.

  “In the middle of the night!” Pam thought, just as she was falling asleep. “People oughtn’t to.”

  4

  WEDNESDAY

  8:15 A.M. TO 9:05 P.M.

  Pam awakened suddenly because light was coming at her from an unfamiliar angle. She couldn’t be at home, because that was not the way light came at home, so she must be in the country. But it wasn’t right for the country, either—oh, yes. Aunt Flora’s. Pam came awake and looked at her watch, which couldn’t be right because it said 11:45. And it couldn’t, obviously, be either 11:45. Then she remembered that her watch had stopped last night when she was writing Jerry. Probably it was late and she was disrupting a household schedule.

  So she said “later” when her mind suggested a bath, and dressed quickly and slipped out without letting the cats escape.

  “I’ll bring you breakfast,” she told them. “And some nice clean newspapers. You just wait.”

  Aunt Flora had told her that breakfast was any time, in the breakfast room. It was behind the drawing room, on the second floor, which you could call the first if you counted the kitchen-servants quarters floor, as a basement. Feeling pleasantly alive, and inclined to think that the major was probably right about the arsenic, Pam went quickly down the two flights. She was surprised when the clock in the hall showed only a few minutes after eight. She wasn’t late, then. And the breakfast room proved that she was early, because as she went in one door Alice, the maid, was just coming in from the pantry with dishes and a cloth. Pam said good morning and the maid smiled and said “Good morning, Mrs. North.” The table, long enough to take the family, was set only far enough out from the wall to leave room for chairs and Pam, thinking to keep out of Alice’s way, went to sit behind it.

  Then she thought that possibly it would be easier for Alice, and involve them both in less conversation, if she went into the drawing room until breakfast was ready, as evidently it wasn’t now. Unconsciously, she put her hands down to push back the chair so that she could stand and then, although she had begun to lift herself, she froze as she was, half crouching and it got suddenly much colder in the cheerful little room.

  Because, soft and unmistakable against Pam’s right hand, hair was brushing. Hair that had a slight oiliness to it and was only coarsely soft and—. Pam, pushing herself to the side, looked down. And then she shrank and said “Oh! No!” and looked up to find Alice staring at her. And then, as if in slow motion, she saw the tray of dishes begin to fall from Alice’s hand and saw the maid’s
mouth open. While the maid’s scream was still beginning, Pam realized that Alice could see under the table what she could only feel. Then, frantically, Pam had pushed the table aside so that she was freed and was staring down at the body lying limply across a chair, half hidden by the table drawn close to it.

  It was the body of a man and it was horrible. What should have been the back of the head was a red, shapeless mass, with tatters of black hair. And from the head, blood had run down the hanging arms and had, while it was still liquid, flowed along red fingers to the carpet, and widened there into a pool, almost black against the red of the carpet. Pam was, for the moment, very sick, and her ears were filled with the frantic, high screaming of Alice.

  It was Sand who called the police, she thought. His old voice was thin and trembling. He came back and said “the police say not to touch anything, please,” and took Alice away. Ben Craig was there by then, and Major Buddie, and once the major stood with his arms extended, barring the door to somebody—probably to Clem and Judy. And then Pam brushed past him, not quite so sick now, and after a moment she found a telephone in the cloak room opening off the entrance foyer.

  Perhaps she could still catch Bill, she thought, and dialed his home. When she heard the answer she spoke quietly, but tried not to hurry her words.

  “Dorian,” she said, “is Bill there?—it’s—it’s terribly important. This is Pam.”

  There was momentary lightness in Dorian Weigand’s voice as she acknowledged this last, unneeded, item of information. But Pam could hear her calling, “Bill.” Then she heard running feet and what sounded like a window being raised, and again, more distantly, “Bill!” Then Dorian was back.

  “He’s coming,” Dorian said. “Probably thinks I’m being raped—I had to yell down to him. He’d started. What is it, Pam?”

  “Oh,” said Pam, her voice a wail. “It’s murder, Dorian! And I thought it wasn’t going to be. And I need Bill.”

  Then, or in a moment or two, Bill Weigand was at the telephone and saying, “Yes, Pam?”

  “It’s murder,” she said. “George Sand called headquarters or the precinct or something. But we need you. It’s horribly bloody and I found it.”

  “George Sand?” Weigand repeated. “What, Pam?”

  “The butler,” Pam North told him. “It really is, and it always—Oh, Bill! We haven’t time for that now. You’ve got to hurry. Even if it isn’t Aunt Flora.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “I’ll hurry. Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Pam said. “A man. Nobody I know—but—but maybe I do, really. Because we haven’t turned it over and from the back it’s—oh, Bill! And Jerry’s way off in Texas.”

  “Right,” Bill said again. “Where is it?”

  Pam gave him the address of Aunt Flora’s house.

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said. “Five minutes. Keep them away from it, if you can, Pam.”

  Then he was gone. Pam found a chair and sat down. Sand could keep them away from it. Or the major. Or even Cousin Ben. She had to give her insides a moment’s calm.

  But it was only a moment. Then the doorbell rang violently and, because she was nearest, she went to the door, and threw it open for the uniformed men who stood there.

  “Bill’s coming,” she told them. They looked puzzled. “Bill Weigand,” she said. “Lieutenant Weigand, of Homicide. I called him. I’m Mrs. Gerald North.”

  “The hell you are,” said one of the men.

  The first policeman went, as Pam directed, back to the breakfast room and then, in a moment, people began to come out into the drawing room—Clem and Judy and then Cousin Ben and after them Major Buddie, not in uniform. One of the policemen came as far as the door after them, and stood looking darkly. The four stood irresolutely for a moment and the policeman said, speaking loudly because the air was quivering now with the sound of police sirens, “You can sit down. Sit down, everybody. We’ll take care of everything.”

  It sounded consoling, Pam thought, and sat down. More consoling than convincing, however. She sat with Ben and the major and the girls and nobody said anything. Men came through the foyer and went along to the door under the stairs which led to the pantry and hence to the breakfast room. Sand and Alice, the maid, came in through the door which led directly from the breakfast room to the drawing room. Still nobody said anything, but only sat, everybody but Major Buddie looking a little smaller than life, and listened to the sirens as more police cars piled up in the street outside. Then Aunt Flora, in a red something, appeared at the hall door and stood looking at them.

  “Well?” Aunt Flora said. “Enough to wake the dead! I’m surprised at you, Alden.”

  The major and Ben stood up and the major spoke. He said, “Sit down, mother.”

  “It won’t wake the dead,” Pam said, unexpectedly. And then to the major, who seemed most in control of things, “Who is it?”

  The major looked angry. His face was red.

  “Won’t let us look,” he said. “Nonsense, eh? Wouldn’t expect it of Sand.”

  There were flashing lights now from the door leading to the breakfast room. That would be the photographers. And a bell clanged outside—that would be the ambulance, coming or going. Then Pam heard a familiar voice and after a second Bill Weigand stood in the doorway. Pam got up and went across to him and said, “Hello, Bill.” Then she turned and faced the others.

  “This is Lieutenant Weigand, everybody,” she said. “Of the Homicide Squad. An acting captain, really.”

  “All right, Pam,” Bill Weigand said. His hand touched her arm. “Quit shaking, Pam,” he said. His voice was quiet and confident, as if she would quit shaking once he told her to. She quit shaking.

  “Well, young man,” Aunt Flora said. “So she sent for you, did she? In spite of what I told her?”

  She seemed to be talking to Weigand, but she was evidently talking to Pam. And Pam answered.

  “It isn’t that, Aunt Flora,” Pam said. “It isn’t the arsenic. This is something else—a man. In the breakfast room.”

  “Absurd,” Aunt Flora said, with vigor. “Perfectly absurd. What’s he doing in there, dearie?”

  “Well,” Pam said, “he’s dead, darling. I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Should think you would be,” Aunt Flora said. She seemed about to go on, but Weigand held up a hand. He spoke quietly, but Aunt Flora stopped talking.

  “You’re Mrs. Buddie?” Weigand asked. “Pam’s aunt?” He did not wait for her to answer, but said, “Right.

  “I’ll want some of you to look at him in a minute,” he said. “As soon as the Medical Examiner has finished. It won’t be pleasant but—.”

  “What do you think we are, young man?” the major broke in, testily. “Bunch of old women, eh? Think we’ve never seen dead men before.”

  “Well,” Weigand said, his voice still quiet. “Many people haven’t, you know. I gather you have, Mr.—is it Buddie?”

  “Major,” the major said, more testy than ever. “Naturally it’s Buddie. What would it be, eh?”

  “Smith,” Weigand said. “Or Jones. Well, Major, we’ll let you—.” He broke off as somebody spoke to him from the room behind. He said, “Right, Mullins.” Then he turned back and spoke to the major. “All right, Major,” he said. “Suppose you have a look, since you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” the major said. “Of course I mind. Nasty business. Nasty head wound, from the looks of it. What do you think I am, man? Eh?”

  Weigand looked at him, half smiling. The major made throat sounds, but marched toward the door. Weigand let him go through, told the others to wait a moment, and followed him. There were the voices of several men from the breakfast room. Then the major came back, looking not so ruddy. He looked at Aunt Flora in embarrassment. He cleared his throat. Then he spoke hurriedly.

  “It’s that husband of yours, mother,” he said. “Got himself killed. Sorry to tell you. Hate to be the one—.”

  “Don’t mumble, Alden,” Aunt F
lora said. She looked at Major Buddie with interest. “Didn’t kill him, did you, son?” she enquired. She seemed to expect to be told.

  “Oh,” Clem said, very suddenly. She stood up, slender in a long, fitted blue robe. “The snake—somebody’s killed the snake.” She turned to her sister. “Darling,” she said. “Somebody’s killed the snake!”

  Judy looked pale. She held out her hand toward Clem. “Don’t, Clem,” she said. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I should think not,” Aunt Flora said. “So you called him ‘snake’ did you—you—you—flibbertigibbet. I’ll have you know—” She broke off. “Anyway,” she said, “it was very disrespectful, dearie. When he was your—” She paused again to consider. “Your step-grandfather,” she said. “Poor Stevie.” She did not, it was clear, care to pretend great grief.

  “She’s just interested,” Pam thought. “I suppose she’s just run out of other feelings.”

  Bill Weigand was back in the door again. He looked at her a moment.

  “Pam,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you a minute. To start with. Not here. Right?”

  “Yes,” Pam said. “Of course. Can we use the library, Aunt Flora? And—and I’m terribly sorry about poor Stephen.”

  “All right, dearie,” Aunt Flora said, sitting down in a swirl of red. “Of course you are. Everybody’s sorry. But nobody’s surprised, are they?” She looked around her family. “All down on poor Stevie, weren’t you? All of you. Thought he was after your share, didn’t you? All of you.”

  “Mother,” Major Buddie said, “you talk too much. Too much nonsense, eh?”

  His mother stared at him. Then she stared at Ben. Ben was still standing, looking a little shocked.

  “Well,” she said. “Say something, Ben. Unless you shot him.”

  If Ben planned to speak, Lieutenant Weigand’s words stopped him. Weigand still spoke quietly, but his voice had a new timbre.

  “What makes you think he was shot, Mrs. Buddie?” Weigand asked. “Nobody said he was shot.”