Murder Comes First (3 page)

“To call
me
selfish!” Grace Logan thought, and sat down quickly in an ordered, empty room. “And to go when I need her most!” And to go, she did not let herself quite think, but could not avoid a little thinking, leaving these doubts in my mind—these doubts about the boy. Grace Logan, who had stood up so well because she had the strength to stand up, erased the doubts. Everything she did for young Paul was what was best for him, and done because she loved him and he was all she had left. It was Lynn who made her mother hard; hardness was contagious. Rose was, of herself, gentle, understanding. All of it proved, if any of it needed proving, that she was right in the stand she had taken. But it left her alone.

If it hadn't been for the other thing—the obscure, puzzling other thing—she would have been patient enough to make Rose understand. She was too worried to be patient, that was the trouble. She—

She heard footsteps on the stairs and went to the door to greet her guests. Mary, the maid, was hanging their coats in the hall closet below.

Thelma led the way up the stairs and Penny came next and then, with the familiar eagerness on her face, Lucy. Lucy had really outdone herself this time. What a hat!

“My dears!” Grace said, patting Thelma's arm, putting an arm around Penny, reaching down toward the ascending Lucy. “My dears! How
nice!
”

“You've done it over,” Thelma said, looking around the room. “So beautiful!” Lucinda Whitsett said. “I've always loved this room,” Penny said, and sat comfortably down in it. “So homelike, for New York.”

“She always does things so beautifully,” Lucinda said. “Even when we were little girls at home. Remember—”

That started them. Even Thelma, although with brief excursions into the problems of judging cocker spaniels, softened in the warm bath of memory. Lucinda thought, as she so often thought—and said—under similar circumstances, that they had been like
Little Women
. (And Thelma said, as she commonly said, “Nonsense, Lucinda.”) Thelma remembered a pony Grace had had, and how she envied her the pony; Pennina remembered picnics on the joined lawns and a boy named Harry, unremembered by the others. “He thought you were wonderful,” Pennina told Grace. “I wanted him to think I was.” She smiled comfortably at the memory.

“Not the last time,” Thelma said, a little bleakly, and Grace, rather precipitately, rang for tea.

“I,” said Thelma Whitsett, “would like to use your bathroom, if I may.”

It was characteristic of Thelma, Grace Logan thought as she said “of course,” said that Thelma knew the way—it was characteristic of Thelma that she did not want to “wash her hands.” Her avoidance of circumlocution, particularly in matters of greater significance, was an oddly pleasant thing about Thelma, Grace thought, watching the eldest of the Whitsett sisters leave the room, erect and single-minded. It left you knowing where you were, at any rate.

“Dear Mrs. Hickey isn't home?” Lucy said, filling a hiatus.

“I'm so sorry,” Grace said. “She'd have loved—” But then she stopped. There was no point in temporizing. “I'm afraid Rose has left me,” she said. “She's going to live with her daughter. Lynn, you know.” Her voice changed a little, hardened a little, when she spoke of Lynn Hickey. “I suppose Rose felt—” She paused again and shook her head. “I don't really know what she felt,” Grace Logan said, temporizing after all. “Perhaps she felt cooped up here.”

“A very pleasant coop,” Pennina Whitsett said, and Mary came in with tea, began to arrange it on a table in front of Mrs. Logan. “Very,” Pennina added, looking at layered sandwiches, a napkin covering what might be—what turned out to be—hot biscuits; looking at chocolate cake.

Mary had forgotten the vitamin capsules again, Grace noticed. Or, perhaps, thought the occasion of sufficient dignity to justify departure from routine.

“It looks lovely, Mary,” Grace said and then, “I wonder if you'd mind getting my capsules? In the medicine cabinet in my bathroom, you know.” Of course she knew; she was merely—thoughtless. Grace sighed, and then remembered. “When Miss Whitsett returns,” she said, but that was needless, because Thelma Whitsett then returned. Mary, after an inspecting glance at the tray, went.

“Goodness,” Thelma Whitsett said. “What a lot of tea!” She looked at Pennina. “Remember, Pennina,” she warned. Grace Logan poured tea; Mary returned, with a brown bottle, put it near Grace, and passed embroidered napkins, Haviland plates, sandwiches, biscuits, cups of tea. Conversation ebbed.

Grace Logan herself did little more than nibble at a sandwich, although she drank tea. She was so seldom hungry and, watching Pennina Whitsett, who ate with great propriety but without dilly-dallying, wished she more often were. Perhaps the vitamin capsules took care of it. They were supposed to. She lighted a cigarette, to pass the stipulated fifteen minutes between food and what was, presumably, concentrated health.

“Mrs. Hickey has left dear Grace,” Lucy Whitsett said and then, to the offer of a cigarette, “No, dear, I'm afraid I never do.”

“Left?” Thema said. “Why?”

“She wanted to go live with her daughter,” Grace Logan said. “I'm afraid I'd begun to bore her.”

“It took her a long time to find out,” Thelma said. “Ever since Paul died, wasn't it? Five years?”

Thelma remembered when Paul died. What had she felt? Grace wondered. She said it had not been quite that long; Rose Hickey had come to live with her, as companion, as friend, about a year later.

“Four years then,” Thelma said. “You'd think she could have found out in five minutes.”

“I'm sure,” Pennina said, and swallowed. “I'm sure Grace couldn't bore anyone.”

“Nonsense,” Thelma said. “Anybody can bore someone.” She paused. “Not that I suppose Grace did,” she said. “There must have been something else. Quarrel?” The last was to Grace Logan, not about her.

Grace merely shook her head, at first. But then she hesitated.

“Perhaps we had a slight disagreement,” she said. “About—well, about her daughter and young Paul.”

“You mean
that's
still going on?” Thelma asked.

“Not really,” Grace said. “At least—”

“You mean it is,” Thelma told her. “Well—why not, Grace?”

“So many reasons,” Grace said, and kept her voice light. “They really aren't suited. She's so—” She paused, willing to let it go at that. But Thelma said, “So what?”

“Competent,” Grace said. “So—so self-assured. And, I'm afraid, a little hard. Young Paul is so sensitive, you know. So—so gentle.”

Thelma said, “Um-m.”

“He is, really,” Grace said, and unscrewed the cap from the brown bottle, shook a capsule into her hand. “Vitamins,” she said, and repeated the phrase which had occurred to her a few minutes before. “Concentrated health.”

“You look well enough,” Thelma told her. “Don't believe in dosing, myself. But I told you that last spring. A change might be good for Paul. Some responsibility.”

“Dear Thelma,” Grace said. “We can't make people over.”

“Nonsense,” said Thelma Whitsett, who thought you could; who thought that, very often, you should.

“And Sally,” Pennina Whitsett said, as if she had not been listening, but offering a path leading away from disagreement. There was, she thought, so little reason for disagreement.

“Dear Sally,” Lucy said. “And her wonderful husband. The one who writes.”

“You make it sound as if she had a selection,” Thelma told her sister. “And he writes about biochemistry.”

“He expresses himself,” Lucinda said. “So wonderful.”

“I'm afraid largely in formulas,” Grace Logan said. “Sally's—Sally's fine.”

There was something in her tone, and she heard it; she had not been casual as she planned. She put the capsule between her lips and washed it down with tea. “She's out of town now,” she said. “Otherwise, I'd have tried to get her over. She's so fond of all of you.”

Thelma said, “Um-m” to that.

“Do you mean,” she said then, “that she and that Sandford are splitting up?”

“Heavens no,” Grace said. “Whatever made you think—I—I—”

She put her hand to her head.

“I'm afraid I'm not—” she said, and the words were oddly blurred. “Dizzy—I'm—”

But then she opened her mouth, as if suddenly the air in the room had failed, as if she were trying to gasp it in.

“Grace!” Lucy said, and, oddly, she was the first to move. “Grace! What—?”

But then Grace Logan's slender body moved convulsively, one foot kicked up and the neat shoe struck the tea table. A cup near the edge slipped off to the carpet, did not break, poured itself empty.

Grace Logan fell back in her chair; for an instant her body arched, then seemed to collapse. For a second longer her eyes stared wildly, as if she desperately sought help. And then there was no expression in her eyes. She gasped for air for a moment more and blueness came into her skin, making her face hideous.

“Heart attack,” Thelma said, and she was up, now. “Get—”

“It's no use, dear,” Lucy said. She was kneeling beside Grace Logan's chair. “I'm afraid it's no use now. And—and I don't think it's a heart attack, Thelma. Because—because she smells of peaches.”

Thelma was beside the chair by then. She bent over Grace Logan's body.

“Pits, Lucinda,” she said. “Peach
pits
. But that's—that's impossible!”

“It ought to be, Thelma,” Lucinda Whitsett said. “Oh, it ought to be!”

Pam North telephoned the Hotel Welby at a quarter after five, seeking news of aunts and getting none. She told Jerry it was strange. “Because,” she said, “six thirty is dinner time.”

“My God,” Jerry said.

He was told that once wouldn't hurt him, and expressed doubt that this was true. He pointed out that six thirty was in the middle of cocktail time. Then he brightened, and pointed out that, if this was to happen, they had better begin early. He hurried.

But they were only in the middle of the first when the telephone rang and Pam, saying “Here they are now,” answered it. For a moment the voice on the telephone was strange in her ears; it seemed to shake, the words were hurried.

“Pam dear,” the voice said. “This is Aunt Lucy. I—I guess we can't have dinner with you and Gerald. Oh, it's so dreadful. You see, Thelma—”

“Aunt Lucy!” Pam said. “Something's happened? to Aunt Thelma?”

“Not yet,” Lucinda said. “At least, I don't think so. I'm downstairs telephoning. They said it would be all right, but there's—I think there's one of them out there.”

“Aunt Lucy!” Pam said. “What—”

“But they're so suspicious,” Aunt Lucinda said. “And anyway, I don't think any of us could eat. It's all—all so dreadful!” The light, suddenly old, voice broke.

“Dear,” Pam said. “Tell me. What's happened to Aunt Thelma.”

“They—they're going to——Oh,
Pam!
”

Pamela North waited.

“—arrest her,” Aunt Lucinda said. “It—it just can't be happening. It
can't
be!”

“Arrest her?” Pam said, her own voice rising. With her head she gestured to Jerry to get on the extension telephone in his study. He nodded, and went. “What on earth for?”

“Pamela,” Aunt Lucinda said, “I'm afraid—dreadfully afraid—murder.”

“My God,” Jerry said, on the extension telephone.

“She
loved
Grace,” Lucinda said. “We all did. The other—why, it was twenty-five years ago.”

“Aunt Lucy,” Pam said. “Who has been—you say,
murdered?
”

“Cyanide,” Lucinda said. “It smells of peaches. No, of peach pits. Apparently it was in a capsule. It was supposed to be vitamins and—oh, Pam—she said it was ‘concentrated health.' And—and it killed her. And Thelma had been in the bathroom and then they found out about Paul and there's a man from the district attorney's office and—Pam, what shall we
do?
”

“We'll come,” Pam said. “Where are you?”

She was, they all were, at Grace Logan's home. It was just west of Fifth Avenue in the Fifties.

“West?” Pam said, doubtfully. It seemed improbable. But Aunt Lucinda was certain of that. A private house.

“It's between enormous buildings,” Lucinda said. “No yard at all. Oh Pam, can you come?” And Gerald too, of course?”

They could. Pausing only while Jerry gulped what remained in his glass, they did.

“I'm so glad it's west,” Pam said, in the taxicab. “Otherwise it wouldn't be Bill. Because he's west, you know.”

Jerry hoped Aunt Lucinda was right.

“She sounds a little—” he began, and Pam said she knew.

“But,” Pam said, “I've always wondered whether she really is.”

About the address, at any rate, Aunt Lucinda was right.

The house was indeed west of Fifth, where few private houses any longer were. It was a four-story house and a narrow one; wedged between much taller and much broader business buildings, Grace Logan's little house stood with its elbows tight to its sides, a subdued little house which, normally, one might pass a dozen times and never see. But now a good many people were seeing it; they stood on the sidewalk across the street and stared at it, and at the police cars in front of it. Uniformed policemen told them to get along, now, nothing to see here. But they waited all the same.

The Norths' cab stopped in front of the house, and was waved on. But by then Pam North had the door on her side open and was getting out. “No, lady,” a patrolman said. He looked at Jerry, “No soap, buddy,” he told Jerry.

“Lieutenant Weigand,” Pam North said. “It's my aunt, you see.”