Murder within Murder (15 page)

“Not that much of a hurry,” Gipson said. He did not, Weigand thought, seem alarmed. “Anyway, I wouldn't kill Amelia. Hell, we've known her all our lives.”

Weigand told him that that was hardly proof.

“However,” he said, “I haven't suggested that you killed your aunt. When did you see her last?”

“Days ago,” Gipson said. He crossed over to the table and mixed himself a drink. He looked at his sister's glass and saw it was half full. Then he looked at Frost's glass.

“Pour you some of your liquor, Ken?” he said. Kennet Frost nodded, and Gipson crossed to the sofa, picked up Frost's glass, poured Scotch into it and put in soda and brought it back. “Days ago,” he said. “However, I talked to her on the telephone yesterday. Asked her if she wouldn't change her mind and come through with my share. She wouldn't. Seemed perfectly natural; perfectly in character. I didn't think she would.”

“Why wouldn't she?” Weigand said. “Didn't she believe in your discovery? Invention? Whatever it is?”

“A new process,” Gipson said. “Having to do with plastics. Do you want to hear details?”

His voice implied that Weigand would not understand them if he did. Weigand shook his head. He said he did not want to hear them. He said if they became important in any connection, Gipson could explain them to somebody in the department who would understand.

“Of whom,” he said, “there are several, Mr. Gipson.”

“Are there?” Gipson said. “As to Amelia—I don't know what she believed. All I know is she wouldn't give me the money.”

“Which,” Weigand said, “probably annoyed you.”

John Gipson drank and said Weigand was damn right it did.

“Whereupon,” he said, “I brought her some nice fresh poison and said, ‘Drink this, will you, auntie?' and she said, ‘Of course, dear boy. Anything for a nephew,' and there we were.”

“Do you think it's funny, Mr. Gipson?” Weigand said. “It wasn't, you know. It wasn't at all funny.”

Gipson looked at Weigand, and Weigand's expression did not encourage light-heartedness.

“No,” Gipson said, “I didn't think it's funny, Lieutenant. Amelia wasn't a dream aunt in all respects, but I'd like to see you get the guy who killed her. Very much.” He paused and examined Weigand's face. “I didn't kill her, if you really think I did,” he said. “I don't know who did, except that it wasn't Nora and it wasn't Ken and it wasn't me.”

“All right,” Weigand said, equably. “Where were you today from noon until two o'clock—at about the time you were supposed to be meeting the major at the airport?”

John Gipson looked at the major, surprised.

“He got in on an earlier—” he began.

“I know,” Weigand said. “I understand why you weren't at the airport. Where were you?”

“Why?” Gipson said.

Briefly, Weigand told him why.

“That was a damned dirty trick,” Gipson said. “Rope the girl in, and then kill her because you had. Did he take back the hundred, too?”

Bill Weigand shook his head. He waited.

“I was having lunch most of the time, I guess,” Gipson said. “By myself, not wanting to horn in on these two. Then I went downtown to see a man.” He looked at Weigand. “Still hush-hush, that is,” he said. “But it was about two-thirty that I got there, so it wouldn't help anyway. No alibi.”

He waited, as if for a comment, but Weigand made none. Instead he asked, for the record, whether any of them knew any reason why somebody—not one of them—might have wanted to poison Amelia Gipson. The girl shook her head and Major Frost merely looked at Bill Weigand.

“She was a difficult person,” John Gipson said, after a moment. He spoke slowly. “She was very—righteous. She wanted other people to behave as—in accordance with her standards. Few people did. When they didn't, Amelia thought it was her duty to make trouble for them. I've heard she made trouble for several people. At the college, chiefly. But I don't know any details.” He looked at Weigand. “What I'm trying to say is that she wasn't an unlikely candidate for what she got,” he said. “She might have stepped on somebody too hard. That's all I can think of.”

Bill Weigand nodded. Then he turned to the girl again.

“I still want to hear about the letter, you know,” he said.

She had been nervous, and Bill Weigand had seen her nervousness and waited. She had dreaded it and now it had come. And now she turned to her brother and her eyes sought his help.

“Letter?” Gipson said. “What—” Then he broke off. His eyes questioned Nora Frost and she nodded. There was concern in his mobile face—quick concern.

“A letter my sister wrote to Amelia?” he said. It had the form of a question, but it was hardly a question.

“You knew about it, I gather,” Bill said. “Yes—that letter. Your sister doesn't seem to want to explain it.”

“I know about it,” Gipson said. “It had nothing to do with any of this. It was private.”

Dryly, Weigand said he had gathered it was private. But nothing, he said, was private in a murder investigation.

“However,” he said, “if it doesn't mean anything, if it really hasn't anything to do with this, it can stop with me.”

Brother and sister conferred, without speech. Major Frost looked at his wife and then at Gipson, and his eyes were puzzled and unhappy. Whatever it was, Bill Weigand thought, he's not in on it; it's something they're keeping from him. In which case—

“However,” he said, “I can't force it from you, as you pointed out earlier, Major. I'd advise you to change your mind, Mrs. Frost. If you do, you can telephone me. But I'd change my mind before tomorrow, if I were you.” He paused to let it register. “Talk to your brother, Mrs. Frost,” he said, then. “I'm sure he'll advise you to get in touch with me.”

He stood up, then. He looked down at them.

“Of course you know it's only begun,” he said. “Murder cases don't stop.” He took a step toward the door and Major Frost arose and went ahead of him. “Not until they're finished,” Weigand added. He turned, then, and went out the door Frost had opened. He would have liked to hear what the three said to one another when the door closed, but that was impracticable. He thought he would pick up the gist of it as time went on.

9

W
EDNESDAY
, 5:45
P
.
M
.
TO
7:10
P
.
M
.

Jerry North opened the apartment-house door and said, “Hey, Pam,” which was a way of indicating that he was not alone and that Pam North should bear that in mind when greeting him. It was not always certain precisely what Pam would say by way of greeting when she thought he was alone. This time, however, she spoke from the living-room.

“It's come,” she said. “And it's the smallest—”

She came out into the foyer and said, “Oh, hello, Mr. Hill.”

Alexander Hill said, “Good evening, Mrs. North.”

“What came?” Jerry said.

Pam looked at him wide-eyed and asked if he couldn't see it. He looked at her more carefully. A tiny animal was perched on her right shoulder. It looked at him through bright blue eyes, with bright interest. It said “yow!” It kept on saying “yow!” not in displeasure, so far as Jerry could see, but merely to show interest, awareness and presence. It had a tiny face, which at first looked dirty, and the rest of it was a brownish white. Not all of it was visible as it regarded them from Pam North's shoulder.

“I think,” Pam said, “that it looks like a very tiny polar bear. What do you think, Jerry?”

“I think,” Jerry said, “that it looks like a very tiny Siamese cat.”

Pam looked at him and seemed disappointed.

“Oh, that,” Pam said. “Of course it looks like a very tiny Siamese cat. It
is
a very tiny Siamese cat. But I think it looks even more like a very tiny polar bear.”

Jerry picked the little cat off Pam's shoulder. It began to purr instantly on being touched; there was a great deal of purr for so very little cat.

“Of course,” Jerry said, “it also looks a little like a monkey.”

He held it in one hand. It climbed up his arm, hurriedly, as if it had just remembered an appointment. It sat on his shoulder. It bit his ear—gently, on the whole.

“And it acts rather like a monkey,” Jerry said.

“Polar bears can climb,” Pam pointed out and thought a moment. “Or can't they? Do they just sit on cakes of ice? Do you know, Mr. Hill?”

“What?” said Mr. Hill, who was looking with surprise at the cat. The cat looked in surprise at Mr. Hill, who wore a black beard. He was a small man, rather slight, and the beard was dominant.

“Polar bears,” Mrs. North prompted. “Cakes of ice.”

“So far as I know,” Mr. Hill said, “all bears climb. Is it a new cat?”

“It just came,” Pam said. “Of course it won't take the place of—”

“But it will,” Jerry said, quickly. “I mean, of course it won't be the same. But it will be something else—something different—in approximately the same place.”

“All right,” Pam said. “I know that's true. But she does remind me of Ruffy, because she's a cat. I suppose that's why I keep thinking of her as a very small polar bear.”

Jerry blinked slightly and looked, involuntarily, at Alexander Hill. Hill, he thought, was looking a little dazed. Jerry was familiar with the look; he had worn it.

“I think,” Pam said, “that we ought to call her Martini. Then we can call her Teeny for short and she'll come to either, because after all it's the vowels.”

“What?” Mr. Hill said, in a somewhat strained voice.

“They answer to vowel sounds,” Jerry explained. “They don't really seem to hear the rest. When we had Pete he would come just as quickly if we merely said ‘Eeee.' If he wanted to, naturally.”

Mr. Hill looked at Gerald North with a somewhat fixed expression.

“Perhaps,” he said, “I had better come back some other time and look over the Gipson notes. Only I'm anxious to get on with it, you know. But, I mean to say … at such a moment.…”

“Oh,” Pam said, “we just bought her. It's not a moment, particularly. Except, of course, we're interested. What do you think of the name, Jerry. Because look at her tail.”

Jerry looked at her tail. It was very straight and, at the moment, Martini was wearing it straight up. It bristled somewhat and looked like a spike on the end of the little cat.

“She wears it cocked,” Pam said. “Cocktail. So Martini, naturally.”

“Or Manhattan,” Mr. Hill said. “Or even Stinger.”

It was clear that he was getting into the spirit of the thing. But both of the Norths looked at him in honest surprise. Mrs. North, particularly, looked as if she could hardly believe her ears.

“Oh,” she said, “you couldn't name her anything like that. Those. Not such a
nice
little cat.”

“Oh,” Mr. Hill said.

“Speaking of drinks,” Jerry North said, “if you'll take Martini, Pam, I'll make them.”

He plucked Martini off his shoulder and gave her back to Pam. Pam put her on the floor and she ran off.

“She runs like a rocking horse,” Pam said. “It must be because her hind legs are longer than they ought to be and she doesn't understand it yet. Of course, they ought to be longer than they ought to be, because all Siameses' are.”

Rather quickly, Jerry asked Alexander Hill what it would be and, very quickly, Mr. Hill said rye and water, if it wasn't too much trouble. They went in the living-room after the little cat. As they entered, it flattened itself on the carpet and, with almost terrifying intensity, began to stalk toward them. It got close to Pam's feet, jumped straight up in the air and came down twisted a little sideways. The tiny tail also twisted with the tiny cat.

“All right, Teeny, I'm dead,” Pam said. She picked the little cat up. Jerry went into the kitchen after bottles and began to come out with them.

“Mr. Hill is going to write the Gipson case,” he said. “For the book. As well as the.…”

He went back again.

“As the first story in the book,” Mr. Hill said. “Piquant, don't you think?”

“In the book Miss Gipson was doing research on?” Pam said. “The one you and the others are putting together—but of course.”

“Piquant,” Mr. Hill said. “Definitely.” His expression changed slightly as he regarded his own thoughts. “Also a natural,” he said. “It ought to make the book if we can work fast enough. Of course, it will be all the better if it isn't solved.”

He seemed to wait for Pam North to say something. She said, “Why?” and decided that that was the proper thing for her to have said. Mr. Hill brightened and nodded, approvingly.

“Precisely,” he said. “
Pre
cisely. Because there will be freedom of speculation. Added zest. Don't you think?”

Pam North said she saw what he meant.

“Only of course, Bill wants to solve it,” she pointed out. “And, naturally, he's a friend of ours.”

“It will be better for the book,” Mr. Hill said, with finality. “Much better. And I have no expectation that it will be solved. None whatever.”

“Haven't you?” Pam said.

“No,” Mr. Hill said. “None whatever.”

“Well,” Pam said. “They usually are.”

Jerry came back in with a tray and put it down on a table. He poured rye into a jigger, looked at it and poured it into a glass. He put in ice.

“Are what?” he said. “Much water?”

“Very little, please,” Mr. Hill said. “Solved, Mrs. North thinks. I was saying that I thought the Gipson case wouldn't be. And pointing out that we'll do better if it isn't.”