Murder within Murder

by Frances Lockridge

  Men came through the lobby carrying a basket. The clerk looked at it; he had seen it before.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Curtains.”

  Then he looked at his own hands. He moved his fingers, carefully, with intention; testing their sentience. And then, oddly, almost gloatingly, he smiled.

  Bill Weigand did not go back to the room. He went down to the police car in which he had told Pam North she could sit. There had been no need for either of them to assure the other that she was not going up to the room in which Florence Adams lay with her black hair in blood. Bill told Pam, briefly, what he had found.

  “They won’t come to us,” he said. “They think they’re being so damned bright—so damned bright.”

  Pam nodded, not saying anything. Her eyes were sober; she seemed to be looking at someone or something far away. She was silent as the police car turned downtown. She nodded when Bill said he would drop her anywhere she liked, and then she said, “The apartment, I guess, Bill.”

  “Probably,” Bill said, and Pam knew he was thinking aloud, “she let somebody borrow her key—somebody who told her a good story and paid her a hundred dollars.”

  Pam’s eyes came back, and they were enquiring.

  “In her purse,” he said. “A hundred dollars in tens and a little bit more. I should think that’s where she got the hundred. But she read in the News that Miss Gipson had been murdered and got scared about her part in it. She went to the hotel, figuring we wouldn’t find her. As we didn’t—in time. Then she tried a shakedown.”

  “Or,” Pam said, “wanted an explanation.”

  “Or both,” Bill Weigand said. “She must have got some sort of explanation, anyhow. Somebody strung her along until he could get her and kill her.”

  “He?” Pam said, “I thought it was a woman, because you know why.”

  “She,” Bill said. “He or she. It was a little gun, anyway.”

  “And?” Pam said.

  “There was no perfume in the room,” Bill said. “Oh—the body smelled of something. Not the right thing. The room—well, the room smelled of cordite. And blood.”

  Pam was silent until the car stopped outside the apartment house in which the Norths lived. Then, instead of getting out immediately, she sat a moment.

  “Mrs. Burt had just come in,” she said. “Hadn’t she? Helen Burt? The maid thought she was out.”

  Or, Bill pointed out, could have been giving them the usual stall. Pam shook her head at that; she said it didn’t sound like the usual stall.

  “I think she had just come in,” she said. “So—”

  “So she could have been at the hotel,” Bill finished for her. “Yes. I thought the maid didn’t know, too. She could have been at the hotel. She could have been anywhere. And her husband had just come in, too. And so had, I suppose, several thousand other people in New York.”

  “I know,” Pam said. “It just isn’t impossible.”

  Obviously, Bill Weigand agreed, it wasn’t impossible. Obviously Mrs. Burt’s movements were interesting. So were the movements, he pointed out, of several other people—of John Gipson, Nora Frost, of Philip Spencer; of, for all they knew, a dozen other people whose names they didn’t know.

  Pam got out and Bill Weigand got out with her and got back in.

  “Of course,” Pam said, through the window, “it could have been one of the writers. Alexander Hill or Mrs. Abernathy or Mr. Robinson or even the Munroes. Although I don’t think the Munroes, because they’re married.”

  Bill Weigand looked at her, and his eyes widened.

  “For God’s sake why?” he said.

  “She saw them,” Pam told him. “Since she came here. She had contact with them. It might be anybody she had had contact with.”

  “Including,” Bill said, “the doorman at the Annex? The clerk? The waitress at whatever tea shop she went to? The library attendants? The—”

  “Oh yes,” Pam said. “Of course, I said ‘might.’”

  Bill Weigand was thankful for that, and said so. He still looked puzzled.

  “Why not the Munroes?” he said.

  “They collaborate,” Pam told him. “People don’t, on murder. Not when they’re married. Jerry and I wouldn’t.”

  It seemed a little inconclusive, Bill told her. But for what it was worth, he thought it probably wasn’t the Munroes.

  “Or any of the others,” he said. “People who write about murder don’t murder.”

  If anything was inconclusive, Pam told him as the car started, that last was.

  Mullins was waiting for Weigand at the office. Mullins looked, Bill Weigand decided as soon as he saw him, as if he had something.

  “Well,” Bill said, “did Backley tell you who did it, Sergeant?”

  Mullins was not dashed, which meant that he was more than usually confident.

  “Maybe he did, Loot,” Mullins said. “It could just be he did.”

  Mullins had seen the attorney who handled the Gipson estate and who was most familiar with its ramifications. He had found nothing new there; he had retraced the ground Stein had covered efficiently. But, because Backley knew both John Gipson and Nora Frost, who had been Nora Gipson, Mullins had been able to go farther. He had, for one thing, given Backley the gist of the letter Nora had written her aunt the day before Amelia Gipson died.

  Backley had looked grave. He was a smallish man with a resonant voice and a face built for proper gravity. He made deprecatory sounds with his tongue and lips. He shook his head. He said that it was an extremely unwise letter to have written.

  “Particularly,” Mullins said, “to a dame that’s going to get killed.”

  The circumstances, Backley had agreed, made the letter particularly unfortunate. “But we must bear in mind that Mrs. Frost had no intimation that her aunt was to—die,” he told Mullins.

  Mullins remained silent.

  “I sat that one out,” he told Weigand, reporting. “He looked at me kinda funny and wanted to know did I think she did. I said we had no reason for thinking anything at this stage of the investigation. Right?”

  “Right,” Bill Weigand agreed. He smiled faintly to himself.

  Backley had, judicially, recognized that he had no right to insist on a more definite answer. He had said that he, obviously, would regard any such suggestion as preposterous. To that Mullins had said merely, “Sure,” dismissing it. He had asked whether Nora Frost—Major and Mrs. Frost—needed money.

  On that point, Mr. Backley had been confident and assured. He had hoped that Mullins—he had hoped that he himself—would never need money more than the Frosts did at that moment. Kennet Frost, to begin with, had a very substantial income. Very substantial. Nora Frost, in the second place, had found her share of the income from the estate more than ample. She had had—the Frosts had had—no reason whatever for not wishing Amelia Gipson a long life; no reason whatever for wishing to accelerate the distribution of the trust established by Alfred Gipson. Whatever the letter referred to—and Mr. Backley was frank, he was almost eager to say he didn’t know—it did not refer to money. At any rate, it did not refer to the estate.

  “I never thought it did,” Weigand said. “It doesn’t sound like a letter about money. It sounds like a letter about the emotions.”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “There was no harm in asking him.”

  Clearly, Weigand agreed, they had to ask him.

  “Then,” Mullins said, “we went on to John—the nephew, John is.”

  “I can keep them straight,” Weigand promised him.

  “The nephew,” Mullins repeated, keeping it straight anyway. “The chemist. Seems he was working on something top secret for the government at a laboratory up in Connecticut. I think it was something about atoms and—”

  “Everybody now thinks all research is about atoms,” Weigand told him. “However—maybe it is.”

  Backley had said that much, said that John Gipson was well enough paid and engrossed in his work and had been willing to let
it stop there. Mullins had also been ready to let it stop; it had been chance, more than anything, which had led to another question.

  “Just sorta to fill in,” Mullins said. “I asked him if Gipson was doing anything else. I didn’t see why he should be.”

  Mr. Backley had looked even more judicial and had put the tips of his fingers together and regarded them, evidently seeking guidance. He apparently had found it.

  The fact was, he had told Mullins, that John Gipson was also, in his spare time, conducting experiments of his own. Not on atoms. On plastics, Mr. Backley understood. He did not understand much else, except that John Gipson felt he had hit on something. With the war over, he expected to be released from government service. He wanted to go on with whatever he had on plastics. Mullins had got it, then.

  “He wanted capital,” Mullins had said, flatly. “This was the time to get into whatever the racket was, with things picking up. He didn’t want to wait until—how long would he have had to wait?”

  Backley had made further deprecating sounds with tongue and lips over that; he had looked grave and disapproving. But he had said that the money would be divided, as he had already told Mullins, when Nora was twenty-five. And Nora was now twenty-three.

  “Two years might make the hell of a lot of difference if young Gipson was onto something,” Mullins said.

  Backley had said he feared Sergeant Mullins was inclined to jump to conclusions. He said he did not know, actually, that Gipson was onto anything.

  “But he thinks he is,” Mullins said. “Don’t he?”

  Backley thought that over, and nodded.

  “And he wants capital?”

  Backley nodded again.

  “And he don’t want to let outsiders in by sharing whatever he’s got,” Mullins had guessed.

  Backley did not nod this time. he looked very disapproving. He said that he had no information on that point. But he did not enter a denial.

  Mullins had guessed then that Gipson had gone to his aunt, asking for his share—or a large part of his share—in advance. And had been refused. Was that it?

  Backley stopped talking then. He said that he felt they were now in the realm of matters confidential between lawyer and client.

  “Which is as good as an answer, ain’t it?” Mullins wanted to know. There was triumph in the question.

  Bill Weigand nodded slowly. It was as good as an answer. A denial would have violated no confidence. Only if Mullins had hit on the truth, or part of the truth, would there be reason for Mr. Backley’s recourse to legal ethics.

  So—John Gipson had a motive. He might believe—he might be right in believing—that his aunt was standing between him and real money—real money in the realest sense; the kind of money for which many men would do strange things, and had.

  And John’s sister, Nora, had written a strange letter.

  It was time to talk to these young people. He knew enough now. It was high time. He looked at his watch. If O’Connor had caught them at the airport when they met the major, who had been due in at one o’clock, he had had plenty of time to report in. And he would have arranged an interview, which was what he was there for—or partly what he was there for. Weigand took a sheaf of papers out of his “In” basket and looked through them. O’Connor had reported, all right. He had reported that neither John Gipson nor his sister had appeared at the airport, and that no Major Frost—no major of any name—had got off the plane. The nearest O’Connor had come was a colonel, who was a regular, worked in Washington, and was named Jones. It was not very near.

  A tall young man with blue eyes and wings on the left breast of his tunic looked at Bill Weigand and said, “Yes?” His tone reserved decision.

  “Major Frost?” Bill said.

  The young man agreed he was Major Frost. Bill Weigand identified himself.

  “Oh,” Major Frost said, “about Nora’s aunt.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Mrs. Frost was coming to see us. Or I thought she was. There was a misunderstanding, apparently. So I came to see her.”

  “Come ahead,” Major Kennet Frost said. “We were just having a drink. You can have one with us.”

  He turned and went back into the apartment, assuming Weigand would follow him. It was an apartment with a sunken living-room and there were two steps down from the tiny foyer. There was an ornamental iron railing partway around the little platform onto which you entered. Bill Weigand followed the young major of the Air Force down into the living-room.

  “This is that detective, Nora,” Kennet Frost said. “Weigand. Lieutenant Weigand.”

  Nora Frost was slender and very lovely, with soft brown hair which seemed to flow around her face. She had large brown eyes and she widened them slightly at Bill Weigand. She said, “Oh.” She said, “Oh, dear.”

  “We expected to find you at the airport,” Bill said. “Meeting the major. The boys must have misunderstood.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You went there? Please sit down, Lieutenant.”

  Major Frost sat down on the sofa by his wife. Weigand sat in a deep chair, more or less facing them.

  “Scotch?” the major said. “I’ve got some Scotch. Understand it’s been hard for you people to get.”

  His tone tacitly, inoffensively, opened a gulf between Weigand and himself—Weigand suspected it opened a gulf between the Army Air Force and all other persons everywhere. Particularly all civilians. It was a gulf which would shrink, Weigand thought. He hazarded a guess.

  “You’re being released, Major?” he said, pleasantly. Major Frost frowned momentarily. He was hardly older than his wife, Weigand thought. Twenty-five at most would do it. He had been very confident, very assured, very expert, but that was in another world. It was tough on kids, Bill thought. But the insistence of the Police Department that he remain civilian had been tough on him, so it evened up, in a way. He looked at the ribbons on the major’s tunic. One of them was the ribbon of the Distinguished Flying Cross. The major had been very good, in that other world.

  “Terminal leave,” Major Frost said. He smiled, suddenly. “I’ll have trouble with Scotch too, I suppose. By the way, it was merely that I got on an earlier airplane.”

  “And telephoned me from the airport,” Nora Frost said, quickly. “So John and I didn’t go out. I met Ken for lunch and of course I should have called your office, Lieutenant, but—”

  “We were busy,” Frost said. “I’d been out there twenty-four months. And anyway, I don’t know what she can tell you, Lieutenant.”

  “Neither do I,” Weigand said. He picked up the Scotch and soda his nod had accepted. “We have to—explore all possibilities, you know.”

  “I hadn’t seen Amelia for days,” Nora said. She spoke quickly, almost hurriedly. She took up her glass and finished the pale drink that remained in it. She held it up and Kennet Frost took it and went to a table which held a silver tray and bottles. He made her a fresh drink and brought it back.

  “I can’t believe anybody would have wanted to kill her,” Nora said. “Why should they?”

  That was one of the things he was trying to find out, Bill said. Meanwhile, Mrs. Frost would have to believe that somebody had killed her. Somebody had substituted sodium fluoride for one of the powders she apparently was in the habit of taking.

  “Dr. Powers’ Medicine,” Nora Frost said. “She’d taken it for years. She used to take boxes of it up to Maine when we went there in the summer. You remember, Ken?”

  “Yeah,” Kennet Frost said. “Anyway, I remember your telling me about it. You said she was always dosing herself.”

  He was a polite young man, and had been to the right places. So there was not quite contempt in his tone. But people who dosed themselves were a long way from his circle.

  Weigand said he supposed that many people knew of Amelia Gipson’s habit, and Nora Frost said everybody who knew her, she should think. She sipped her drink. She stretched lovely legs out in front of her and looked at them.

  “Don’t thin
k I’m not sorry about it,” she said, still looking at her legs. “I am sorry. Amelia was—she was somebody I’d known all my life. She was—family.”

  “You were fond of her?” Weigand wanted to know.

  She looked at him.

  “Not particularly,” she said. “Except—because she was family. She more or less brought me up.” She smiled faintly. “As I’ve no doubt you know,” she said. “I never thought much about her until recently, I suppose. As—as a person. She was just Aunt Amelia, who brought me up, and who spent summers with me up in Maine while Ken was gone.”

  She stopped, because Kennet Frost was looking at her. It was a look Weigand had no trouble interpreting. Major Frost thought his pretty wife was talking too much.

  “All right, Major,” Bill said. He spoke lightly, easily. “Mrs. Frost’s attitude is quite understandable.” He paused and his smile faded. “Miss Gipson was poisoned,” he said. “Somebody wanted to kill her and did. This wasn’t a result of—a lack of particular fondness, as Mrs. Frost puts it. She was killed because somebody thought it was necessary, for his own purposes, that she be out of the way.”

  “You asked if she was fond of her aunt,” Frost reminded him. His tone was suspicious. He would fight for Nora, and he had proved to be a good fighter. In that other world. It was interesting that he thought she might need fighting for.

  He was merely, Weigand said, trying to find out how well Mrs. Frost had known her aunt. It was useful, he said, to find out as much about people who had been murdered as could be found out. The way to do that was to talk to people who had known them well.

  “Character enters into murder,” Weigand said. “The character of the victim, as well as the character of the killer.”

  “It’s all right, Ken,” Nora Frost said. “The lieutenant knows I didn’t kill Amelia.”

  Weigand shook his head at that, but a smile tempered the implication. He said that, abstractly, he didn’t know that anyone had not killed Amelia Gipson. He would not know that, he pointed out, until he knew who had killed her.