Hanged for a Sheep (20 page)

“Presumably,” Jerry suggested, “he got the bottle after it was used—after the contents were used—on Aunt Flora. The same day, probably, since the bottle was missing. It was missing that day, I gather?”

“So do I,” Bill Weigand told him. “I couldn't prove it in court, probably. It's—it's one of those tenuous things a lawyer can make confusing. But I gather the bottle appeared one night, was used the next morning, and disappeared some time that day. At any rate, it wasn't there when Sand brought back the usual bottle of citrate salts. So presumably Harry Perkins took it. Then he kept it two weeks, being careful not to get prints on it, and gave it to Pam last night. And then got himself killed. And then somebody tears Pam's room apart looking for the bottle.” He broke off and stared at them. “It looks almost,” he said, “as if somebody were determined we would find the bottle and pay attention to it. And that looks as if somebody wanted to lay the poisoning on Craig. So we get Craig, who is the only one to whom the bottle points, as the only one who wouldn't want us to find it.”

He sighed and crossed back to his chair and sat down. He looked up at Mullins.

“Sit down, Sergeant,” he said. “And don't look so damned hurt. It isn't your fault.”

Mullins said “O.K., Loot,” and sat down. He stared reproachfully at the bottle. Nobody said anything. Then Pam said, “What's in it?”

“Folwell's Fruit Salts,” Mullins read. “What the hell's that? And it says: ‘Professional Sample.'”

“Some new kind of salts, apparently,” Weigand said, a little abstractedly. “Something just being introduced. And—” He stopped suddenly.

“That fits, anyway,” Pam said. “Aunt Flora is always trying new things. She had to take something before breakfast every morning to wake up her stomach. That's what she says it does, anyway. This is probably about the same thing she usually takes—citrate salts, fruit salts. Anything that fizzes, because—” Then Pam stopped, because Weigand was looking so intent that the other two were looking at him and not, she thought, listening to her. She stopped and looked at Weigand.

“Professional sample,” Weigand said. His voice was speculative. “Which means—something the manufacturers send to physicians, hoping that the physicians will try it out on patients. I knew a dentist once who had a whole cupboard filled with samples of dentifrice. He never gave them away but—” He stopped again, and looked pleased. “And,” he pointed out, “we have a doctor in our midst. Dr. Wesley Buddie.”

“Not in our midst,” Pam corrected. “Not tonight.”

“Near enough,” Weigand told her. “Only—” He looked at his watch. The watch said ten minutes after two. Then he looked at the bottle. Mullins looked at it too, still a little resentfully.

“Perhaps not tonight,” Weigand agreed. “Because it occurs to me that the bottle may really contain Mr. Folwell's fruit salts. And nothing else. Which would be a note.”

Mullins glared at the bottle, as if he were now willing to suspect it of anything. He stood up when Weigand spoke to him.

“Send it down, Mullins,” Weigand told him. “Have the prints photographed and have them run a test on the contents. For arsenic, first, obviously. Tell them we want a report first thing in the morning, and we don't have to know, to start with, how much arsenic. But tell them we'll want that, of course, as soon as they can run a quantitative.”

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said, morosely. He carried the discredited bottle out again, still in the handkerchief. He left the Norths sitting in and on one chair, looking expectantly across at Weigand, alone in another.

“What do they all say?” Pam asked, when Weigand remained thoughtful. “Or haven't you asked them?”

“They all say they were fast asleep in trundle beds,” Weigand told her. “No, I haven't asked them. Except your Aunt Flora. But now—” He shrugged. “However,” he said, “they may as well have a chance to say it. All together. Come along.”

He led them down to the drawing room and stepped ahead of them through the door. The major was pacing the floor in a dressing gown of appropriately military cut; the girls were sitting on a sofa and Bruce McClelland was standing near them, and nearest—Pam noted with interest—Judy Buddie. Chris Buddie sat by himself, reading. Ben Craig merely sat. Sand hovered. Weigand stopped inside the door and the Norths, entering around him, stood nearby. Weigand stared at the family, which stared back, except for Chris, who continued to read.

“Well,” Weigand said, “one of you killed Harry Perkins. Right?”

His tone was conversational. The major whirled and glared at him.

“Nonsense!” the major said. “Damn foolishness!”

Judy Buddie made a little sound that was half “no!” and half mere startled sound, and Bruce bent to put a hand on her shoulder and turned his head to look indignantly at Weigand. Chris put down his book and stood up and Clem Buddie leaned forward and stared at the detective. Sand hovered more nervously. Ben Craig looked at Weigand, with no apparent hostility, and did not move.

“I had men outside,” Weigand told them. “They didn't see anybody come in.” There was a sound of movement from Pam North and what looked like the beginning of speech. Then Pam said “ouch!” and looked at Jerry and said, “Oh!”

“Also,” Weigand told them, “I had a man inside. But he thought it would be a fine thing to have a cup of coffee and a sandwich down in the kitchen. So all he knows was that nobody came up from the kitchen. So one of you had a clear field to kill Perkins.” He paused to let it sink in. Nobody said anything.

“Now,” he said, and his voice had edge, “there's no use asking whether any of you was up and about, because you're all going to tell me you were sound asleep. Right?”

Nobody said anything.

“Right,” Weigand said. “So we'll leave that until tomorrow. And none of you heard anything. And you all loved Harry Perkins devotedly and wouldn't have harmed a hair of his head. And none of you even knew he was in the house. Right?”

Somebody did say something. It was, unexpectedly, Sand.

“I'm sorry, sir,” he said. “I knew he was in the house. I—I helped him hide. In the basement. He—he insisted on it, sir.”

“Did he?” Weigand said. “And I suppose the police—” He stopped, apparently tired. “All right,” he said. “You hid him. We'll go into that later, too, Sand. But I suppose it was natural. He said he was afraid, didn't he?”

“Something like that, sir,” Sand told him. “I—I thought he was, sir.”

“He was,” Weigand said. “With cause. And he didn't come to us because he knew, or thought he knew, something which would incriminate a member of the family. He was very loyal.” He let that sink in. “He is now very dead,” he added. “Loyalty didn't work both ways. If I were one of you, and not the murderer, I'd remember that. However—”

They looked at him, restlessly, uneasily.

“I want to find out only one thing, now,” he said. “Then I'll let you go back to bed, if you want to. And this time I'll have a man on each floor.”

He looked at the major, and shook his head.

“You would,” he said, cryptically. The major stared at him.

“Would what, eh?” the major demanded.

Weigand shook his head. He looked at the girls.

“Your grandmother has a ranch in the West you've both been to summers,” he said. “Right? You rode” and that sort of thing. Right?”

The girls looked puzzled, but Judy nodded.

“So what?” Clem demanded, conceding it. She stood up, now. Weigand paid no attention to her.

“You,” he said to Bruce. “Were you a Boy Scout? Or you?” the last was to Christopher Buddie. Bruce shrugged and nodded. Chris looked rather embarrassed.

“In days of innocence,” he said. “When I was young and helpless.”

“Right,” Weigand said. He looked at Craig and for a moment said nothing.

“Did you go to the ranch too?” he asked. Craig leaned back and looked up at Weigand and shook his head.

“Only once,” he said. “It was—strenuous. Why?”

Weigand ignored the question.

“Were you in the last war?” he asked, instead.

“I don't get it,” Craig told him. “But yes. I was in the Navy, for a while.”

Weigand looked interested.

“As a yeoman,” Craig went on, comfortably. “Yeoman's mate, first class.”

“Right,” Weigand said. He sounded dissatisfied. He looked around at them.

“That's all for tonight,” he said, curtly. “I'll see you tomorrow.” He turned and left them. Pam and Jerry followed him into the hall.

“There'll be men around,” he told them. “Nothing more will happen tonight.”

His voice sounded tired. As the Norths left him and climbed up toward the guest room, he was giving Mullins orders. Mullins no longer had the little green bottle. He looked disillusioned.

12

T
HURSDAY

9:30
A.M. TO
10:15
A.M.

Lieutenant William Weigand, Acting Captain of the Homicide Squad, sat down at his scarred desk and regarded it with disfavor. He looked through the small, dirty gray window at the large, dirty gray world, and was disgruntled. It had stopped snowing, but it had not cleared and the wind still came out of the northeast. It was not a particularly good day to be alive, and 8:15 had not been a good morning hour to face it. And instead of staying in a small warm place and talking to Dorian after he was up, he had had to come to a grimy, drafty place and talk to Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley, who wanted him to arrest somebody. Forthwith.

Weigand suspected that he had been spoiling O'Malley. There had been a time when O'Malley would, with only the grumbling natural to an inspector, let a week go by between discovery of murder and arrest for same. But recently Weigand had been lucky; once he had a solution and a suicide within twelve hours. O'Malley did not approve of the suicide, nor did Weigand himself. But O'Malley approved, perhaps inordinately, of the speed. He had almost told Weigand so; he had gone so far as to say that Weigand was beginning to show the stuff and that he himself, inspector in charge, could hardly have done better if he had been personally on the job instead of, as was naturally the case, the brains behind the job. Since O'Malley, at the race track for the afternoon and elsewhere for the evening, had not even heard of the job until it was finished, this seemed to Weigand even more than usually unfair.

But Weigand was used to the ways of inspectors and, in particular, the ways of O'Malley. They came worse than O'Malley, as a matter of fact. O'Malley, save for prodding and advice, to which it was unnecessary to listen with absorption, let him go his own way. Even now, Weigand was pleased to remember, O'Malley had no fixed idea as to who might better be arrested. He was a little inclined to favor Major Alden Buddie, but he had something to say, also, for Miss Clementine Buddie. His real preference, openly expressed, was Ross Brack, but he admitted he did not quite see how that could be managed, except on general principles. O'Malley felt general principles would be adequate, but was doubtful about the D.A.'s office.

“A funny bunch up there,” O'Malley said, dourly. “What the hell do they want?”

The question was rhetorical, which did not stop O'Malley himself from answering it.

“Evidence,” he said. “Something for the shysters to wrangle over. When I was your age—”

When O'Malley had been Weigand's age it appeared that evidence was not so much in use. They were good old days and O'Malley spent several minutes remembering them favorably. Then he told Weigand to quit wasting time and bring somebody in, and Weigand said he would do what he could and went to do it. He went back to his desk and stared at it and called for Mullins.

Mullins did not like the look on Weigand's face. The Loot was tired and—nervous looking. He seemed to be fighting himself, and the case; his face looked as if he were fighting the case, and as if the case had got in a low punch. He greeted Mullins with a “Well?”

“It just came in, Loot,” Mullins said. “It's arsenic, all right. In the bottle. Only not very much. Not enough, they say.”

“Not enough for what?” Weigand said. “Who says?”

Mullins was equable. The lab boys said. Not enough in the indicated dosage to kill the patient. The dosage advised on the label was a tablespoon in water. But in a tablespoon of the powder in the bottle, there would be less than half a grain of arsenic. Which would make anybody sick, but could hardly be expected to kill anybody who was not already half dead. Even if the dose were doubled, the quantity of arsenic would not be lethal. Mullins looked at Weigand doubtfully.

“Who,” he enquired, “would want to poison somebody just a little? I don't get it.”

Neither, Weigand admitted without enthusiasm, did he. Things got no better fast. It was much harder to think of a reason why somebody should half poison than to think of a reason for poisoning completely.

“Makes it look like a practical joke,” Mullins said. “Only a guy who would joke with arsenic would be a sort of funny guy.”

It would, Weigand admitted, show an odd sense of humor. But the whole thing was odd, from first to last. It was perhaps simplest to suppose that the poisoner had merely made a mistake; that he thought the amount of arsenic in the standard dose of the salts would be lethal. Perhaps he had even read of poisoners who defeated their own purpose by giving too much poison.

“It don't seem bright,” Mullins said. He sat down.

Weigand let the remark lie, and after a moment Mullins went on. The fingerprint boys, with the bottle back in the office, had photographed and enlarged the prints on it and compared them, scientifically, with the prints of Ben Craig. They had thus succeeded in verifying what they already knew. They now, however, had it in proper form for trial, if it came into trial.