Murder within Murder (18 page)

“Right,” Bill Weigand said. His voice indicated that it was all right.

“So when she met this guy in Maine, because he knew some people we knew and was an O.K. guy, she saw him now and then. As she would have if Ken had been here, as far as that goes. There wasn't anything more than that, to begin with.” He paused again, and then turned suddenly to Bill Weigand. “There wasn't anything more than that at any time,” he said, and he spoke emphatically. “That's what I won't be able to get across. It was just.…” He broke off and looked unhappy. After a moment of waiting, Bill made a suggestion.

“Suppose you try to forget this is your sister you're talking about, Mr. Gipson,” he said. “I think you're running into … a taboo or something. Pretend this is just any nice girl you know, in love with her husband overseas, meeting a presentable young man in the summer on vacation, going swimming with him probably, having a drink or two with him. None of it having anything to do with her and her husband.”

John Gipson listened and toward the end he nodded. He said he supposed Weigand was ahead of him; he said he supposed it was all obvious as hell.

“Only,” he said, “it doesn't seem obvious to Nora, and so it doesn't to me. She isn't just some … some nice girl you've met a couple of times and can call by name. She's somebody I'm fond of. She's somebody … different.”

That, Bill told him, was natural. Things were obvious only when they happened to other people. They were not obvious to you, when you were in them, or when people close to you were in them. Old stories are old stories only in the abstract, Bill said.

“Yes,” Gipson said. “That's the way it is. It's hard to explain. It would be easier if you knew Nora. She's not.…” He broke off again and suddenly seemed angry.

“You'll think she's a push-over, damn it all,” he said, “and she's never been in love with anybody but Ken. Not in love … in any way. It was just something that happened, God knows how.”

It wasn't that hard to understand, Bill told him, when the difficulty of making himself clear stopped John Gipson again.

“You have two healthy kids on vacation,” Bill said. “Good-looking kids. They're by themselves, in the sun, maybe, or some warm night on the beach. And all at once they look damned good to one another. One of them's a girl with her husband gone a long time … and … well, among other things, curiosity. Say she's never played around at all; not even as much as most. Say she's fallen in love with one man when she was a kid, and married him, and stayed in love with him. Still she'd wonder. And set things up just right, some time and some place … maybe after a couple of drinks … and I mean a couple … and … there you are. Sister or no sister, Gipson.” He smiled suddenly. “Hell,” he said, and for the moment he was not apparently a policeman. “It's not a tragedy. Even to Frost it wouldn't be, if he's worth a damn. It's … just one of the things that happen.”

Gipson nodded.

“Of course,” he said, “you're assuming it did happen.”

“Naturally,” Bill Weigand told him. “More or less as I say. Didn't it?”

“Yes,” Gipson said. “Pretty much as you say. And Amelia found out.”

“How?” Bill asked him.

Gipson shrugged faintly.

“She didn't say,” he told Bill. “But they didn't tell her, certainly. They were both … they both wished it hadn't happened. Nora particularly … she wished like hell it hadn't happened. But she didn't go into a tailspin, actually. Or if she did, she came out of it. She's not a schoolgirl. Making allowances for everything—her emotions, all that—she could figure it out more or less the way we do. She didn't go around mooning about it. And certainly she wouldn't confide in Amelia … didn't confide in Amelia. And—I don't know what you'll think of this, but it seems O.K. to me—she wasn't going to blurt it out to Ken. To make it all right with herself; fix her conscience up.”

“Right,” Bill said. “There are several schools of thought. But I'd play it that way, if I were your sister.”

You couldn't tell unless it were your own problem, Gipson said. But he thought he'd play it that way. And, anyhow, it was up to her. But Amelia found out.

“I can only think of one way,” he said. “Since nobody told her that we know of. Somebody … hell, somebody saw them. Maybe Amelia herself. She snooped a good deal. They were on a beach, and … well, somehow they got separated from the others. I … I suppose they couldn't help themselves. I suppose that, without knowing it, they wanted to get separated from the others.”

Gipson was trying to work it out for himself; trying to explain it to himself, Bill thought. He would go on trying for quite a while, probably. So would his sister, a good deal more acutely.

“Anyway,” Bill said, “your aunt did find out. And then?”

“She told Nora she'd found out,” Gipson said. “It … it must have been quite a scene. Amelia had strong views about morality, you know. Like some old maids have. Hers were unusually strong views, I always thought, and she was never one to make allowances. So it must have been quite a scene. Nora didn't go into it much. Except that Amelia insisted Nora tell Ken about it, at once.”

“Because it was the only right thing to do,” Bill said. “Of course.”

Gipson said that was it. Because it was the right thing to do. No matter how many people got hurt; no matter how little good it did anybody.

“Nora's pretty honest,” Gipson said. “She could have pretended to agree … as far as that goes, she could have pretended she
had
told Ken. That would have put it off. But instead she said she wasn't going to tell Ken. So Amelia said that in that case she would. And Nora said, in effect, over her dead body.”

He broke off and his eyes widened somewhat.

“Over Nora's dead body, I mean,” he said. “Even so, it doesn't sound so good, does it?”

Bill Weigand didn't go into how it sounded.

“And?” he said.

“Well,” Gipson said, “about that time Ken got shifted and Nora managed, somehow, not to let Amelia know his new address. I suppose if she had, Amelia would have cabled him. ‘Nora unfaithful. Think you should know,' probably. But there was no hiding that he was coming home pretty soon, and Amelia said she would tell him then. First time she saw him, probably. Makes a pretty picture, doesn't it? You can see why Nora isn't … wasn't … too fond of her aunt.”

He broke off, and looked at Weigand, waiting comment.

“And hence the letter,” Weigand said.

“Hence the letter,” Gipson agreed. “You'll see it fits. You'll see—anyhow I hope you will—how the kid came to write as she did.”

Weigand nodded.

“Right,” he said. He paused. He went on. “And of course you see where it leaves her,” he said. “Her aunt was going to tell Major Frost something he might not be able to take; something that might destroy your sister's marriage. Or that she might be afraid would. You see how it looks—in the abstract, that is. Amelia Gipson was killed before she got a chance to see Major Frost.”

There was a very long pause, then. John Gipson returned to his intent gaze at the wall. When he spoke, it was dully.

“Oh,” he said, “I get it. So does Nora, for that matter. But she was the one who wanted you told … some time when Ken wasn't around. She couldn't tell you this afternoon, obviously. I—to be honest—I thought maybe we could get away with not telling you. But I suppose she was right.”

“Oh yes,” Weigand said. “She was right. As far as that goes.”

Well, Gipson said, there they had it. It was on the table, face up. All at once, Weigand thought, he seemed rather relieved. He was almost cheerful when he spoke again.

“So now we're both in it,” he said. “Nora and me. She to keep the awful truth from Ken. I to get money for my new invention. Motives. No alibis I know of.”

“Right,” Weigand agreed, equably. “Motives. No alibis for the killing of the chambermaid. And since we have no real idea when poison was substituted for medicine in your aunt's apartment, nobody has any alibi for that.”

“Well,” Gipson said, “what do you do now?”

“I just keep on poking into things, Mr. Gipson,” Bill told him. “That's all. Picking up what I can, where I can. Trying to make it all fit in.”

There seemed to be no answer to that that John Gipson could think of.

“Well,” he said, “do you want me any longer?” He stood up.

“No,” Bill told him. “Not unless you've something more to tell me.”

Gipson began to shake his head. Then he stopped and said there might be one thing.

“You want to pick up what you can,” he said. “How about a chap named Spencer, Philip Spencer?”

“Well,” Weigand said, “what about Spencer?”

“I don't know,” Gipson said. “He says he was there. He knew Amelia.”

Mr. Spencer had been there, Weigand agreed. He had known Amelia Gipson.

“Only,” he said, “how do you know? Because we haven't given it out. When did he say that?”

“When he called Nora up,” Gipson said. “Right after you left this afternoon. To—what did he say? Offer his condolences.” Gipson paused, reflecting. “Nora said he didn't sound as if he meant it.”

“You mean,” Bill said, “that Mr. Spencer called up a perfectly strange person to express his sympathy at her loss of an aunt?” He made it sound unlikely; he thought it sounded unlikely.

Gipson shook his head.

“Not a perfectly strange person, actually,” he said. “He used to teach English or something at Ward College, out in Indiana—where Amelia taught, you know. And Nora went there for a couple of years. She had some classes under Mr. Spencer and, of course, Amelia's being on the faculty got Nora to knowing a good many of the teachers better than she would otherwise.”

Bill Weigand was interested. His interest was not reflected in his voice when he said he had not known that Nora went to Ward College.

“Oh yes,” John Gipson said. “Amelia persuaded father. I don't know … maybe Amelia got a commission, or something. Maybe she just wanted Nora under her eyes. Nora got out after a couple of years.”

Weigand said, without echoing the assertion in his tone, that it was interesting. He asked when Nora had been at Ward.

“Let's see,” Gipson said. “The year before the war started. And the next year. That would be '40–'41 and '41–'42.”

“Right,” Weigand said.

“You know Amelia got Spencer kicked out of his job?” Gipson said.

“Oh yes,” Bill Weigand said. “I know that, Mr. Gipson.”

He regarded Gipson, and now he was abstracted.

“Did Spencer ask to come around and convey his condolences in person?” he wanted to know.

Not exactly, Gipson told him. But he had said he would like to attend the funeral services the next afternoon. Tomorrow.

Bill Weigand received this information without comment. He nodded abstractedly when Gipson said that if there wasn't anything else, he was going to get himself some dinner. Abstractedly, he watched Gipson go. Sergeant Mullins came in, as if he had been waiting to come in. He looked tired and rather morose.

“Listen, Loot,” he said. “All those people who was at the library. Did you expect to get anything out of them?”

“Not particularly,” Bill Weigand told him.

“O.K.,” Mullins said. “Because so far as I can see, you ain't goin' to. You want the details?”

On a hundred and thirty-three people? Weigand wanted to know. He shuddered slightly.

“After all, Sergeant,” he said, “you're a sergeant. I'm a lieutenant. What's the theory of the executive? Leave details to subordinates. You, Mullins, are a subordinate.”

Mullins said that Weigand was telling him. He said it somewhat morosely.

“Therefore,” Bill told him, “I leave the people at the library to you—all of them. And what do you get?”

“Nothin',” Mullins said, still morose. “The boys have seen most of them and I've seen the boys' reports. Nothin'.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Then we wash them up?”

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “Unless you want—”

Weigand said he didn't.

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “The guy who was just in here … was that the nephew? Gipson?”

It had been, Bill told him. Briefly, he sketched John Gipson's story. When he had finished, Mullins whistled. He thought and whistled again.

“You know, Loot,” he said, “every time the Norths get into—”

Bill grinned. He said he knew. He said he had heard it before.

“Now we got, how many?” Mullins said. “Spencer, because he was sore at the Gipson dame for getting him thrown out of his job. O.K.?”

Bill agreed. His finger ticked off one on the desk top. “And he may attribute the death of his wife to the loss of his job,” he added. Mullins said, “Yeah.”

“Two,” Mullins said, “Gipson. Because he wanted the money. Which is good enough for me.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “It's good. And we could figure that all this carefully told story about his sister is told primarily to put us on her trail, and take us off his. He may have insisted that it be told, although he says she did.”

Mullins said that that would be a lousy trick to play on a sister. Bill pointed out that sodium fluoride was a lousy trick to play on any auntie. Mullins said, “Yeah.”

“Three is the sister,” Weigand said, then. “Assuming it all happened just as Gipson says it did. Assuming she is as much in love with her husband as he thinks she is. Assuming she's very emotional, has been very stirred up during the last few years, as who hasn't, that she saw only one way of keeping her aunt from talking. It might add up to murder.”

“Hell yes,” Mullins said. “If she's that kinda dame.”