A Pinch of Poison (27 page)

Weigand nodded.

“And his wife's,” he said. “Born in legal wedlock, all on the up and up. That was the trouble, really.”

“Listen, Bill,” Mr. North said. He sounded a little exasperated. “Suppose you tell us about it. First, how did you find out?”

“Well,” Weigand said, “to be honest I never did find out all of it—until Graham started talking, of course. I guessed part of it—the main part. As soon as I knew that Michael was really the Grahams' son I had it, of course. Just as Lois Winston had it, when she made the same guess for the same reason. The details filled in afterward.”

“All right,” Mr. North said. “If you will begin in the middle. How did you know Michael was really the Grahams' son?”

“Protanopia,” Weigand said. Mrs. North nodded, contentedly. He smiled at her. “Got that, didn't you, Pam?” he said. “I thought you would.”

“Michael is color blind,” Mrs. North explained. “Red blind.”

Weigand nodded. “Red blind” hardly said it, he told her, but it was close enough.

“And so,” he added, “is Mrs. Graham's father, Benoit. I was tipped off to that when I was driving with him and he said the lights had changed, so we could go ahead. Actually, the lights we could see hadn't changed. The cross traffic lights had turned red, too, and the driver ahead jumped the gun, as most drivers will when the police aren't around. And, you see, color-blind drivers, when they're stopped by red lights—which don't show red to them—go by what other drivers do.

“That gave me a start on it. The rest, about Benoit, was confirmation—nice to have in court, but telling me nothing I hadn't guessed. Benoit was given a ticket in Danbury for passing a red light. You see, there weren't any other cars around to tip him off. They held him—they're strict there, just now—and when he claimed to be color blind they gave him a test. He was.”

Mr. North looked puzzled.

“I don't see—” he began. Weigand's nod stopped him.

“I got the fact that Michael is color blind, too, from the record,” Weigand said. “But again I only got something I expected. The hint had come earlier, when Michael wouldn't pay any attention to Pam's purse. Generally children go first for anything red; it used to be argued that red was the favorite color of all children. They think now, incidentally, that it is merely brightest to most children. But Michael wouldn't touch the purse. To him, probably, it was just sort of gray and uninteresting. He fastened on the watch, which was bright and fascinating.”

Mr. North started to speak, but Weigand held up a hand.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I'm coming to it. Color blindness of this type is transmitted in a sex-linked inheritance pattern. That's what Lois was looking up in the encyclopædia, incidentally. Under ‘Heredity,' of course. It's all there. It is transmitted like hæmophilia. Women don't show it. Mrs. Graham isn't color blind. But her father is, and some—not all—of her sons would be. Michael happens to be. I remembered something about that, and looked up the rest. I was following, incidentally, precisely the path Lois followed—to her death. Because she, already knowing that Michael was color blind, met George Benoit Tuesday afternoon. She wasn't supposed to; never would have, probably, if some traffic officer in Danbury hadn't stopped Benoit. It was chance—just one of those things.”

“How did she find out?” Mr. North asked. Weigand shrugged.

“Graham wasn't there,” he said. “We haven't questioned Mrs. Graham much, as yet. But it isn't hard to guess—Benoit told her. His mind was full of being held up in Danbury, because it was important to his plans, and he talked about it. He explained his color blindness, possibly. It was nothing to conceal, as far as he was concerned. And it is possible that, until Miss Winston showed what she knew—she may have said something about its being an odd coincidence, before she realized herself what it might mean—the Grahams didn't realize how this inherited vision defect was giving away their plot.”

“Oh,” said Dorian. Her voice was shocked. “She was in it, too? Mrs. Graham, I mean?”

Weigand nodded, slowly.

“In part of it, anyway,” he said. He paused, thoughtfully. “I don't think she was in the murder, Dor,” he said, gently. “Graham insists she wasn't, and I'm inclined to believe him. Technically, of course, she was an accessory after the fact. She knew—she guessed, even if he didn't blurt it out—what had happened.” He looked at Dorian thoughtfully. “This isn't official,” he said. “This is just among friends. I doubt if she will ever be tried for anything. With the motive she has—a natural longing to have her own child—it isn't the same as the motive her husband had—we'd probably never get a conviction. Even if we wanted to.”

“Please,” Mr. North said. “Please—
begin at the beginning!
”

“Right,” Weigand said. “I know it sounds complicated. It isn't, really. It begins, of course, with old Cyrus Graham, and his belief that there is transmissible insanity in the Graham family. Whether there is or not—and after the way Graham acted this afternoon I'm not so sure there isn't—he made it clear that if the Grahams had a child, they didn't get his money. He has a lot of money; his son wanted it a lot, partly because he saw a chance to get ahead in Henri et Paulette if he had some capital. But—Mrs. Graham wanted a child a lot. She had that—oh, that basic craving for a child that some women have. Then, about four years ago, old Cyrus had a stroke and the doctors said he was going to die within a matter of weeks. And so—” He paused.

Pam nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I see. She decided not to wait any longer; to take a chance.”

“Right,” Weigand told her. “And by the time they knew that Cyrus might live for months, it was too late. Too late, anyhow, for anything Mrs. Graham would consent to. So there they were—the baby coming, old Cyrus—”

“Not going,” Mrs. North said. “But the money going.”

“Yes,” Weigand said. “That was the way of it. So Graham made his plan, and his wife, because she was willing to do anything to keep the baby, and because she wanted to do what Graham wanted—and because there wasn't, she felt, anything really wrong in it—agreed. The plan was simple, at first. They would merely conceal the baby's birth—she went ‘on a trip' when the time came—and arranged for boarding care until the old man died. But, again, the old man didn't die. It turned out to be not only months, but years—and all the time Margaret Graham was kept away from her baby around whom her whole life centered. After a while, she got desperate. She told Graham he had to fix things some way, she didn't care how, so she could have her son. But if he didn't fix them, she was going to have Michael anyway, whatever happened to the money. So he had to fix it.”

Mr. North, motioning to Weigand to go ahead, spooned cracked ice from a thermos pail into a shaker, added gin and dry vermouth, and mixed. He poured martinis into glasses and twisted lemon peel over them. Weigand let the cool cocktail trickle down his throat.

Faced with his wife's ultimatum, Weigand told them, Graham had decided on a plan. They would adopt their own son—adopt him legally and by a method which would give the curious, alert old man in the wheelchair upstairs no faintest ground for suspicion. They would adopt the boy, not privately but from an agency publicly engaged in placing children. They would make it appear that only chance brought them Michael, instead of some other child. Then Cyrus could not possibly suspect the truth.

To accomplish this, Graham had first taken Michael from the boarding home he had been in—out of town, it was, for greater safety—and found some place for the child nearby. He had inquired around, carefully, and hit on Mrs. Halstead. Then he had posed as Richard Osborne, wearing dark glasses, letting his beard grow for a day or so, and pretending physical weakness, and arranged for Michael to be boarded with the old woman. They had waited for a time, then, to give Mrs. Graham a chance to meet Michael “accidentally” in the park. When that had been done, Mrs. Graham went to the Foundation and told about the little boy with the old woman, exaggerating conditions somewhat but not excessively. She arranged it so that, if the little boy did come under the Foundation's care, they would inevitably think of her as a suitable foster parent. She put in an application for a child—ostensibly for any suitable child. But, naturally, she would not have accepted any child but Michael.

“A little later,” Weigand continued, holding out his glass for more, “Graham got himself up again as Richard Osborne and visited the Foundation, telling his cock-and-bull story and arranging for the child to be taken under care. He knew enough—he'd gone to the trouble to find out enough—about the practices of such agencies to feel sure that, when a worker saw the conditions of Mrs. Halstead's, the Foundation would think it best for the child to act on his authorization and remove it.”

“Don't,” Mrs. North said, “call Michael ‘it.'”

“What?” said Weigand. “Oh, all right. Where was I?”

They told him.

“Well,” he said, “it all went according to plan, at first. The agency investigated and was about ready to place Michael, when Miss Winston's suspicions were aroused. And that meant, Graham instantly saw when his wife called up that afternoon and told him she was afraid Miss Winston suspected, that an investigation would be started. Now—any investigation would be almost sure to reveal the plan.

“The rest, he said, was obvious. When his wife telephoned Tuesday afternoon and told him what had happened, Graham made light of it—insisted that all he would need to do would be to talk Miss Winston out of it. He said, however, that he had better see her that evening, if he could. Fortunately for his plan, Miss Winston had spent some time merely chatting with Mrs. Graham and had given her a sketchy outline of her evening's plans—”

“As anyone might,” Mrs. North said. “Talking about the heat, and how to get away from it, and about going to roof gardens.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “Miss Winston had actually mentioned the Ritz-Plaza roof and the Crescent Club to Mrs. Graham as likely places where she and McIntosh would go for the evening. Graham found this out from his wife. Then he telephoned to both places and reserved tables in McIntosh's name near the dance floors. He couldn't, you see, merely take a chance that Lois and McIntosh would happen to sit where he could pass their table without arousing suspicion; that was something he had to make sure of. He suspected, rightly as it turned out, that McIntosh wouldn't question a reservation—would just accept it as in the natural order of things.

“When he had made the reservations, Graham took enough of the atropine sulphate and twisted it in a cigarette paper and put it in his cigarette case. Then he told Miss Hand to go to the other restaurant, and promised to pick her up there after his conference.”

Mr. North looked puzzled.

“Why bring Miss Hand into it at all?” he wanted to know.

Mrs. North looked at him sadly and shook her head.

“So he would have a dance partner, of course,” she said. “So that—”

“Right,” Weigand cut in. “And he had to park her some place while he found out whether Lois and McIntosh were going to the roof or over to the club on the East Side. So he went around to the apartment house where Lois lived and waited until the girl and McIntosh came out. He saw them get a cab and go straight across Park Avenue. Then he knew that, if they were following out their original plans—and he had to take a chance that they were—they were going to the roof. If they had been going to the Crescent Club, they would have turned north in Park Avenue and then turned back toward the East River. So, hoping he was right, he picked up Miss Hand, made his excuse about the cooling system in the other restaurant, and took her along to the roof. It must have been a relief to him to see McIntosh and the girl there, and at a table convenient for his purposes.

“The rest was fairly simple, as long as he kept his nerve and his wits. He did. He danced with Miss Hand—probably several times, until there was a time when McIntosh and Lois were on the floor, too. Then he maneuvered so that, as the music stopped, he and Miss Hand would be near the McIntosh table. Miss Hand went ahead, of course—he could, if he needed to, direct her so that she would pass the right table. He came along behind, took out a cigarette—and the paper of poison—and flipped the powder into Lois's drink. In the general movement and confusion—the music had ended, remember, and dancers were going back to their tables all over the room—there wasn't any real danger that he would be noticed. He wasn't noticed. Miss Hand, for example, was never even aware that he had hesitated.

“Graham and his secretary stayed at their table a little while and then went back to the office and did their work. He couldn't have been much interested in it—he'd already done his real work for the evening. He found out that he'd done it successfully when the early editions of the morning papers came out. He must have figured he was pretty safe when Buddy Ashley and Miss Ormond turned up as red herrings.”

Weigand stopped and finished off his cocktail. He appeared to have finished.

“And Mrs. Halstead?” Dorian prompted.

“Just stumbled into it,” Weigand said. “She saw Graham on the street and recognized him—maybe from the way he walked—as ‘Osborne.' Tuesday evening, after I had seen her, she went around to the Graham house and accused him of being Osborne. He denied it, of course, but could see that she didn't believe him. Maybe she threatened to tell us. So he killed her. Actually seeing her die hit him hard, apparently—I think that murder, rather than Lois's, haunted him, and finally made him break after we had him.”

“And Mrs. Graham—she knew all the time?” Pam was curious.

“Oh yes,” Weigand said. “She knew. That's why she tried to kidnap Michael, finally. Miss Winston had let drop where the child was, I suppose. He was all that Mrs. Graham cared about by that time—she was distracted, and had only the one burning idea—
get Michael
. So she got him.”