Murder Comes First (10 page)

“What needs doing,” Pam said, “is finding Mrs. Sandford. Instead of chivying poor old ladies merely because—” But there she stopped.

“Right,” Bill said. “Because they carry cyanide around. And another poor lady died of it.”

“All right,” Pam said. “Why carry it around? Say Aunt Thelma used it and killed Mrs. Logan. So she keeps a whole bottle of it handy—for anybody who wants to look—in her suitcase. Labeled.”

“I know,” Bill said. “I said I wasn't satisfied. I'll admit I haven't been called off—yet. Also, I'd like to talk to Mrs. Sandford. She's in Kansas City, now. Or she was Friday.”

Both the Norths waited.

“A letter came this morning,” Bill told them. “Addressed to Mrs. Logan; signed merely with an ‘S.' It said, ‘Dear Aunt Grace: I'm driving on West. Don't worry about me. Tell Bart I'm all right and still thinking.' The envelope was postmarked in Kansas City, twelve noon Friday. We've asked the K.C. police to see if they can find her. Of course, she may have gone on by now.”

“Actually,” Pam said, “she may be any place by now.” Pam pointed out the existence of airplanes. “Not that I would on a bet,” she added. “They run into things. The ground, mostly.” She paused. “Speaking of airplanes,” she said, “why didn't the letter get here Saturday?”

That one had an easy answer. The letter had not been sent by air mail.

“Just signed with an ‘S,'” Pam said. “But I suppose you checked the handwriting?”

The letter, Bill told her, had been typed. Only the signing initial was handwritten. But, before Pam got ideas, they had no doubt the letter was from Sally Sandford. Grace Logan had kept her niece's recent letters and several older ones, written before Mrs. Sandford had left her husband to think about whatever she was thinking about. The letters were all typed, and all, at the most casual glance, on the same typewriter—an old one certainly, a machine with the letter “r” canted to the right and the letter “e” perceptibly below alignment.

“We've checked with Sandford this afternoon,” Bill said. “Showed him the letter. This was before we were told about the finding of the cyanide, incidentally. He identified the letter as from his wife; said the signature “S” was characteristic, and that he'd recognize the typescript anywhere. He said she always typed letters, on a portable Underwood she'd had for years.”

“Of course,” Pam said, “anybody who had the typewriter could write the letter. And anybody could forge a single initial, I'd think.”

“Right,” Bill agreed. “So?”

Pam didn't, she admitted, see where it got them. She merely said it was strange that there was a mystery about Sally Sandford, and at the same time a mystery about her aunt's poisoning, and Sandford's being followed.

“And my being,” she said. “Also, about why Mrs. Logan and Mrs. Hickey quarreled. Mr. Sandford thinks he knows that, incidentally.”

She told Bill about that. As she repeated what Barton Sandford had suggested, she suddenly stopped.

“Look,” she said. “Suppose Mrs. Logan was right. Suppose the girl is, as Mrs. Logan thought, ‘hard'—hard enough to—to eliminate obstacles. Particularly since, I suppose, Paul gets his mother's money?”

“Right,” Bill said. “Sally Sandford gets fifty thousand. He gets the rest. Perhaps another two hundred thousand.”

“Then,” Pam said, “why not? The girl. Or the girl and Paul. Or the girl and her mother. Oh, when you come to that, just her mother?” She began to tick off on her fingers. “Or Sally, for the money or something we don't know about,” she said. “Or even Sandford, so his wife would get the money? Or—”

“Because,” Bill Weigand said, “your Aunt Thelma had cyanide in her possession, opportunity, a motive of sorts.”

“Planted,” Pam North said. “Anybody could have got into her room. I could have. There's a little suspicion on her, and the murderer wants there to be more, so he does.”

Jerry pointed out that they were going in circles and went to make more drinks. The cats jumped to the chest to assist. Sherry put a paw on Jerry's hand, apparently to stop the movement of the mixing spoon; Gin happily smelled lemon peel; Martini made herself into a chunky boat, paws curled under her chest, and watched with enormous, unblinking blue eyes. Jerry spoke to her and she closed the eyes slowly and then reopened them. Gin, after apparently considering it, decided not to join the humans in a drink.

“All the same,” Pam said, when Jerry had passed the drinks, “they
are
my aunts. If nobody else is going to help them, I am.” She paused. “Oh dear,” she said. “Probably they tried to telephone me when they came back and found the men there and I wasn't here, but out being followed. I'm sure Aunt Pennina would try to call me. Or Aunt Lucy. If they knew our number.”

They did know that, Bill told her. Aunt Thelma had written it down, identified Pam's name, in firm, neat figures, on a pad by the telephone in her room. Whether they had, in fact, tried to call Pam, Bill Weigand didn't know. He doubted whether they would have been given the opportunity.

“Then—” Pam began, and the telephone rang. She answered it, handed it to Bill Weigand, who listened, said, “Right,” said that they might be asked to keep at it for a bit. He put the receiver back.

“The Kansas City police don't find Mrs. Sandford at any of the likely places,” he said. “They don't find evidence she's been at any of them, under her own name, anyway. They'll keep on checking. She ought to be told about her aunt's death.”

Pam nodded. She said, “Bill, can I see
my
aunts?”

Bill was doubtful. He used the telephone again, Gin assisting. He asked, listened and looked a little surprised. “Well, that makes two of us, Tommy,” he said. He listened. “Not the right two, as you say,” he agreed. He replaced the receiver.

“Thompkins isn't satisfied entirely,” he said. “He can't quite swallow the motive. The inspector's satisfied; the D.A. himself is satisfied. However, Thompkins has managed to get this much—the Misses Whitsett have been taken back to the hotel. More or less because they're too respectable for jail until everybody's damn sure. They checked Cleveland for the respectability.”

“Of course they are!” Pam North said. “They're my
aunts!
”

The aunts would be watched in the hotel; had been advised to stay in it. Meanwhile, two detectives from the D.A.'s Bureau had flown to Cleveland to dig there into the past of Thelma Whitsett and Mrs. Paul Logan. So, Pam North could see her aunts.

“We'll all go,” Pam said, and started up. Bill Weigand hesitated a moment. But then he said, “Right,” and they finished drinks and went.

The aunts were having dinner in Aunt Thelma's room. Aunt Thelma offered coffee to Pam and Jerry; after a moment of, evidently, somewhat dour consideration, she included Bill Weigand.

“Although,” she said, “it's nothing but hotel coffee.” She paused. “
New York
hotel coffee,” she added.

“Thelma thinks none of this would have happened except in New York,” Aunt Pennina said calmly, buttering a roll. “I keep telling her—”

“Nonsense, Pennina!” Thelma Whitsett said, sharply. “There is no cause to defend New York. What I say is perfectly true. There would have been no such nonsense in Cleveland.”

She looked sharply at Bill Weigand, ready to pounce upon any disclaimer of this obvious fact. Bill merely nodded with interest.

“In Cleveland,” Aunt Thelma said, “the person is considered. That inspector of yours, young man!”

It appeared that, in regard to the inspector, words failed Thelma Whitsett.

“It's all just like a play,” Aunt Lucy took the opportunity to say. “The trial of somebody or other. There was this young woman who was suspected of murdering somebody and the young district attorney—”

“Lucinda!”
Thelma Whitsett said. “That inspector of yours, young man. An entirely preposterous man! Merely because I decided, after consideration, not to marry Paul Logan.”

“Aunt Thelma,” Pam North said. “The cyanide.”

“Someone put it there,” Thelma Whitsett said. “Obviously, the man who killed poor Grace for her money. Anybody could see that.”

“I read the most fascinating book once—” Lucinda Whitsett offered. Thelma rejected her offer sharply.

“Well, young man?” she said to Bill Weigand. “Let him speak for himself, Pamela.” Now her voice, suddenly, seemed strained.

“Inspector O'Malley is an excellent policeman,” Bill Weigand said. “He has every reason for suspecting you, Miss Whitsett. He has, in fact, every reason for charging you with homicide.” His voice was mild. “I have no idea what would be done about it in Cleveland,” he said.

“If this were not so inconvenient,” Thelma Whitsett said, “it would be laughable. Has this inspector of yours any idea of the difficulty in obtaining suitable reservations in Palm Beach?”

“Listen, Aunt Thelma,” Pam said. “Listen all three of you. You mustn't pretend this way. Don't you see?”

And then Jerry North saw what Pam had no doubt already seen; what probably Bill Weigand had seen. Miss Thelma Whitsett was frightened. She was very frightened.

“Don't you see,” Pam North said, “it won't just go away, my dears. It—” She looked at Bill. “Tell them,” she said.

“Mrs. North is quite right, Miss Whitsett,” Bill Weigand told Aunt Thelma. “It won't just go away. You can't push it away. It isn't laughable at all.” He stood up and looked down at Thelma Whitsett. “Grace Logan is dead,” he told her. “You were there. You saw her die. You could have killed her.”

“No!” Thelma Whitsett said, and for a moment her resolute face seemed about to crumble. “Grace was—young man—Grace was—”

“Grace was a friend of ours,” Pennina Whitsett said, when her sister's voice broke. “We wished only good things for Grace, Lieutenant Weigand. We were all girls together. We—we are old women now.”

Her voice was very quiet. She looked at Weigand gently, very steadily.

“I'm sure you will understand,” she said.

“—someone else,” Lucinda Whitsett was saying then, and nobody had heard the start of her sentence. “It is like something I read once. There was this Mr. Gribland or some such name—”

Thelma Whitsett had recovered her composure. She said,
“Lucinda!”
in a sharp tone. Lucinda Whitsett said, “Yes, Thelma,” and stopped.

“Miss Whitsett,” Bill said. “A minute ago you said that it was you who decided not to marry Paul Logan. ‘After due thought,' you said, or something like that. Wasn't it really that he—well, wasn't it he who changed his mind, after he met your friend Grace Rolfe? Whom he then married?”

“I—” Thelma began, but stopped when Pennina Whitsett spoke.

“Don't dear,” she said. “Poor dear Paul—he wasn't what you thought, you know. It's been better as it was. But—but everybody in Cleveland knows, dear. There's no use going on with it. Not with Pamela and Gerald and—and their friend.”

“Right,” Bill Weigand said. “Not with anybody, if it isn't true. Logan left you for Grace Rolfe, you hated her then and for years and—”

“And,” Thelma Whitsett said, “went insane because I was jilted a quarter of a century ago? Bought cyanide somewhere? Killed one of my best friends?” Her voice was firm again, almost derisive. She turned to Pam.

“I'm sorry, Pamela,” she said. “I'm afraid your friend's a fool.”

“It's because,” Lucinda Whitsett said, “all men think men are so important. It's in all the books you read. So if a woman doesn't—”

Aunt Thelma's
“Lucinda!”
must have come then by force of habit, Pam North thought. Because in a way Lucinda Whitsett was making perfectly good sense. She was even making very useful sense.

It was Bill Weigand, however, who answered. He smiled slightly at Lucinda Whitsett.

“You may have something there, Miss Lucinda,” he said.

“Of course she has,” Pennina Whitsett said, and found another roll and began to butter it.

But none of them was able to explain the cyanide. Miss Thelma Whitsett no longer, to be sure, insisted that the police had themselves planted the poison, being now inclined to join Lucinda in suspecting the real murderer. It was clear, however, that police chicanery remained, in Thelma Whitsett's mind, a distinct possibility. “Things happen in this town,” she pointed out, adding that it wasn't like Cleveland. Pennina Whitsett said, reasonably, that she supposed it was the murderer, since who else would gain, and that it was too bad they had stayed so long at Wanamaker's, since otherwise they might have caught the man in the act. (All three of the Misses Whitsett seemed firmly to assume that a man had poisoned their friend.)

“If you hadn't insisted on stopping in the middle to have lunch,” Thelma told her sister, “we might have.”

“I got hungry,” Pennina Whitsett said, equably.

But the three admitted that nothing was disturbed in any of their rooms; that, except for the poison tucked under clothing in Thelma Whitsett's suitcase, there was nothing to indicate an intruder. It did develop, however, that none of the Misses Whitsett had locked her door when she left the hotel, all of them assuming that the doors locked automatically behind them. “They do in Cleveland,” Miss Thelma said. “It's the proper way.” It was not, however, the way of the Hotel Welby.

“As a matter of fact,” Bill Weigand said, “none of the doors was locked when the boys got here. There's that. It's a point for the—” He stopped abruptly, having too obviously been on the verge of continuing, “for the defense.”

“It won't come to that,” Pam North told her aunts. “I won't let it.”

But when, having thus reassured the aunts, Mr. and Mrs. North and Weigand went down in the elevator, Pam found herself wondering just how she was going to avoid letting it come to precisely that. She was not encouraged when Bill, after checking in by telephone, reported that he had been told to take off the two days he had coming. If not official notice that the Logan case was considered closed with what they had, this was the next thing to it. “Ouch!” Jerry North said, and Bill said, “Right.”