“Including your memories?” Stanley Pitt asked her. Pam noticed a small scar on his chin. But it wasn’t, of course, the same thing as—as running a hand through your hair. But everybody has something, which is one way of telling them apart.
“I seem,” Pam said, “a little short of memories.”
“By comparison with Miss Hartley,” Stanley said, “who isn’t? A pipe line to the past. Can’t I get you a drink?”
He could not. Pam had had enough. So, she thought, had all of them. Not that anybody was in the least tight. But still…
Over the other voices, that of Fern Hartley was raised. There was excitement in it. So it isn’t alcohol, Pam thought, since Fern hadn’t had any. It’s just getting keyed up at a party. She looked toward Fern, who was talking, very rapidly, to Jerry. No doubt, Pam thought, about what I was like in high school. Not that there’s anything he shouldn’t know. But still…
Fern was now very animated. If, Pam thought, I asked whether anyone here was one cocktail up I’d—why, I’d say Fern. Fern, of all people. Or else, Pam thought, she has some exciting surprise.
It was now eight thirty. A maid appeared at the door, waited to be noticed, and nodded to Phyllis Pitt, who said, at once, “Dinner, everybody.” The dining room was downstairs, on a level with the garden. “These old stairs,” Phyllis said. “Everybody be careful.”
The stairs were, indeed, very steep, and the treads very narrow. But there were handrails and a carpet. The stairway ended in the dining room, where candles glowed softly on the table, among flowers.
“If you’ll sit—” Phyllis said, starting with Pam North. “And you and—” They moved to the places indicated. “And Fern—” Phyllis said, and stopped. “Why,” she said, “where is—”
She did not finish, because Fern Hartley stood at the top of the steep staircase. She was a slight figure in a white dress. She seemed to be staring fixedly down at them, her eyes strangely bright. Her face was flushed and she made odd, uncertain movements with her little hands.
“I’m—” Fern said, and spoke harshly, loudly, and so that the word was almost a shapeless sound. “I’m—”
And then Fern Hartley, taking both hands from the rails, pitched headfirst down the staircase. In a great moment of silence, her body made a strange, soft thudding on the stairs. She did not cry out.
At the bottom of the red-carpeted stairs she lay quite still. Her head was at a hideous angle to her body—an impossible angle to her body. That was how she died.
Fern Hartley died of a broken neck. There was no doubt. Six people had seen her fall. Now she lay at the bottom of the stairs and no one would ever forget her soft quick falling down that steep flight. An ambulance surgeon confirmed the cause of her death and another doctor from up the street—called when it seemed the ambulance would never get there—confirmed it, too.
But after he had knelt for some time by the body the second doctor beckoned the ambulance surgeon and they went out into the hallway. Then the ambulance surgeon beckoned one of the policemen who had arrived with the ambulance, and the policeman went into the hall with them. After a few minutes, the policeman returned and asked, politely enough, that they all wait upstairs. There were, he said meaninglessly, a few formalities.
They waited upstairs, in the living room. They waited for more than two hours, puzzled and in growing uneasiness. Then a thinnish man of medium height, about whom there was nothing special in appearance, came into the room and looked around at them.
“Why, Bill!” Pam North said.
The thinnish man looked at her, and then at Jerry North, and said, “Oh.” Then he said there were one or two points.
And then Pam said, “Oh,” on a note strangely flat.
How one introduces a police officer, who happens to be an old and close friend, to other friends who happen to be murder suspects—else why was Bill Weigand there?—had long been a moot question with Pam and Jerry North. Pam said, “This is Bill Weigand, everybody. Captain Weigand. He’s—he’s a policeman. So there must be—” And stopped.
“All right, Pam,” Bill Weigand said. Then, “You all saw her fall. Tell me about it.” He looked around at them, back at Pam North. It was she who told him.
Her eyes had been “staring”? Her face flushed? Her movements uncertain? Her voice hoarse? “Yes,” Pam said, confirming each statement. Bill Weigand looked from one to another of the six in the room. He received nods of confirmation. One of the men—tall, dark-haired but with gray coming, a little older than the others—seemed about to speak. Bill waited. The man shook his head. Bill got them identified then. The tall man was Stanley Pitt. This was his house.
“But,” Bill said, “she hadn’t been drinking. The medical examiner is quite certain of that.” He seemed to wait for comment.
“She said she never did,” Pam told him.
“So—” Bill said.
Then Hortense Notson spoke, in a tense voice. “You act,” she said, “as if you think one of us pushed her.”
Weigand looked at her carefully. He said, “No. That didn’t happen, Mrs. Notson. How could it have happened? You were all in the dining room, looking up at her. How could any of you have pushed her?”
“Then,” Clark Notson said, and spoke quickly, with unexpected violence. “Then why all this? She…what? Had a heart attack?”
“Possibly,” Bill said. “But the doctors—”
Again he was interrupted.
“I’ve heard of you,” Notson said, and leaned forward in his chair. “Aren’t you homicide?”
“Right,” Bill said. He looked around again, slowly. “As Mr. Notson said, I’m homicide.” And he waited.
Phyllis Pitt—the pretty, the very pretty, light-haired woman—had been crying. More than the rest, in expression, in movements, she showed the shock of what had happened. “Those dreadful stairs,” she said, as if to herself. “Those dreadful stairs.”
Her husband got up and went to her and leaned over her. He touched her bright hair and said, very softly, “All right, Phyl. All right.”
“Bill,” Pam said. “Fern fell downstairs and—and died. What more is there?”
“You all agree,” Bill said, “that she was flushed and excited and uncertain—as if she had been drinking. But she hadn’t been drinking. And…the pupils of her eyes were dilated. That was why she seemed to be staring. Because, you see, she couldn’t see where she was going. So…” He paused. “She walked off into the air. I have to find out why. So what I want…”
It took him a long time to get what he wanted, which was all they could remember, one memory reinforcing another, of what had happened from the start of the dinner party until it ended with Fern Hartley, at the foot of the staircase, all her memories dead. Pam, listening, contributing what she could, could not see that a pattern formed—a pattern of murder.
Fern had seemed entirely normal—at least, until near the end. They agreed on that. She had always remembered much about the past and talked of it. Meeting old school friends, after long separation, she had seemed to remember everything—far more than any of the others.
“Most of it, to be honest, wasn’t very interesting.” That was Hortense Notson. Hortense looked at Pam, at Phyllis Pitt.
“She was so sweet,” Phyllis said, in a broken voice.
“So—so interested herself.” Pam said. “A good deal of it was pretty long ago, Bill.”
Fern had shared her memories chiefly with the other women. But she had talked of the past, also, with the men.
“It didn’t mean much to me,” Stanley Pitt said. “It seemed to be all about Centertown, and I’ve never been in Centertown. Phyllis and I met in New York.” He paused. “What’s the point of this?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Bill Weigand told him. “Not yet. Everything she remembered seemed to be trivial? Nothing stands out? To any of you?”
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br /> “She remembered I had a black eye the first time she saw me,” Clark Notson said. “Hortense and I—when we were going together—ran into her at a party. It was a long time ago. And I had a black eye, she said. I don’t remember anything about it. I don’t even remember the party, actually. Yes, I’d call it pretty trivial.”
“My God,” Stanley Pitt said. “Is there some point to this?”
“I don’t know,” Bill said again, and was patient. “Had you known Miss Hartley before, Mr. Pitt?”
“Met her for the first time yesterday,” Stanley told him. “We had her to dinner and she stayed the night. Today I took her to lunch, because Phyl had things to do about the party. And—” He stopped. He shrugged and shook his head, seemingly at the futility of everything.
“I suppose,” Jerry North said, “the point is—did she remember something that somebody—one of us—wanted forgotten?”
“Yes,” Bill said. “It may be that.”
Then it was in the open. And, with it in the open, the six looked at one another; and there was a kind of wariness in the manner of their looking. Although what on earth I’ve got to be wary about I don’t know, Pam thought. Or Jerry, she added in her mind. She couldn’t have told Jerry anything about me. Well, not anything important. At least not very…
“I don’t understand,” Phyllis said, and spoke dully. “I just don’t understand at all. Fern just—just fell down those awful stairs.”
It became like a game of tennis, with too many players, played in the dark. “Try to remember,” Bill had told them; and it seemed they tried. But all they remembered was apparently trivial.
“There was something about a boy next door,” Phyllis Pitt remembered. “A good deal older than she was—than we all were. Next door to Fern. A boy named—” She moved her hands helplessly. “I’ve forgotten. A name I’d never heard before. Something—she said something dreadful—happened to him. I suppose he died of something.”
“No,” Hortense Notson said. “She told me about him. He didn’t die. He went to jail. He was always saying ‘oh.’ ” She considered. “I think,” she said, “he was named Russell something.” She paused again. “Never in my life, did I hear so much about people I’d never heard of. Gossip about the past.”
Stanley Pitt stood up. His impatience was evident.
“Look,” he said. “This is my house, Captain. These people are my guests. Is any of this badgering getting you anywhere? And…where is there to get? Maybe she had a heart attack. Maybe she ate something that—” He stopped, rather abruptly; rather as if he had stumbled over something.
Weigand waited, but Pitt did not continue. Then Bill said they had thought of that. The symptoms—they had all noticed the symptoms—including the dilation of the pupils, might have been due to acute food poisoning. But she had eaten almost nothing during the cocktail period. The maid who had passed canapés was sure of that. Certainly she had eaten nothing the rest had not. And she had drunk only ginger ale, from a freshly opened bottle.
“Which,” Bill said, “apparently you opened, Jerry.”
Jerry North ran his right hand through his hair. He looked at Bill blankly.
“Of course you did,” Pam said. “So vigorously the bottle cap flew off. Don’t you—”
“Oh,” Jerry said. Everybody looked at him. “Is that supposed—”
But he was interrupted by Pitt, still leaning forward in his chair. “Wait,” Pitt said, and put right thumb and index finger together, firmly, as if to hold a thought pinched between them. They waited.
“This place I took her to lunch,” Stanley said. “It’s a little place—little downstairs place, but wonderful food. I’ve eaten there off and on for years. But…I don’t suppose it’s too damned sanitary. Not like your labs are, Clark. And the weather’s been hot. And—” He seemed to remember something else and held this new memory between thumb and finger. “Miss Hartley ate most of a bowl of ripe olives. Said she never seemed to get enough of them. And…isn’t there something that can get into ripe olives? That can poison people?” He put the heel of one hand to his forehead. “God,” he said. “Do you suppose it was that?”
“You mean food poisoning?” Weigand said. “Yes—years ago people got it from ripe olives. But not recently, that I’ve heard of. New methods and—”
“The olives are imported,” Pitt said. “From Italy, I think. Yes. Dilated pupils—”
“Right,” Bill said. “And the other symptoms match quite well. You may—”
But now he was interrupted by a uniformed policeman, who brought him a slip of paper. Bill Weigand looked at it and put it in his pocket and said, “Right,” and the policeman went out again.
“Mr. Notson,” Bill said, “you’re production manager of the Winslow Pharmaceutical Company, aren’t you?”
Notson looked blank. He said, “Sure.”
“Which makes all kinds of drug products?”
Notson continued to look blank. He nodded his head.
“And Mr. Pitt,” Bill Weigand said. “You’re—”
He’s gone off on a tangent, Pam North thought, half listening. What difference can it make that Mr. Notson makes drugs—or that Mr. Pitt tells people how to run offices and plants better—is an “efficiency engineer”? Because just a few minutes ago, somebody said something really important. Because it was wrong. Because— Oh! Pam thought. It’s on the tip of my mind. If people would only be quiet, so I could think. If Bill only wouldn’t go off on these—
“All kinds of drugs,” Bill was saying, from his tangent, in the distance. “Including preparations containing atropine?”
She heard Clark Notson say, “Yes. Sure.”
“Because,” Bill said, and now Pam heard him clearly—very clearly—“Miss Hartley had been given atropine. It might have been enough to have killed her, if she had not had quick and proper treatment. She’d had enough to bring on dizziness and double vision. So that, on the verge of losing consciousness, she fell downstairs and broke her neck. Well?”
He looked around.
“The ginger ale,” Jerry said. “The ginger ale I opened. That…opened so easily. Was that it?”
“Probably,” Bill said. “The cap taken off carefully. Put back on carefully. After enough atropine sulphate had been put in. Enough to stop her remembering.” Again he looked around at them; and Pam looked, too, and could see nothing—except shock—in any face. There seemed to be fear in none.
“The doctors suspected atropine from the start,” Bill said, speaking slowly. “But the symptoms of atropine poisoning are very similar to those of food poisoning—or ptomaine. If she had lived to be treated, almost any physician would have diagnosed food poisoning—particularly after Mr. Pitt remembered the olives—and treated for that. Not for atropine. Since the treatments are different, she probably would not have lived.” He paused. “Well,” he said, “what did she remember? So that there was death for remembrance?”
Phyllis Pitt covered her eyes with both hands and shook her head slowly, dully. Hortense Notson looked at Weigand with narrowed eyes and her husband with—Pam thought—something like defiance. Stanley Pitt looked at the floor and seemed deep in thought, to be planning each thought between thumb and finger, when Weigand turned from them and said, “Yes?” to a man in civilian clothes. He went to talk briefly with the man. He returned. He said the telephone was a useful thing; he said the Centertown police were efficient.
“The boy next door,” Weigand said, “was named Russell Clarkson. He was some years—fifteen, about—older than Fern Hartley. Not a boy any more, when she was in high school, but still ‘the boy next door.’ He did go to jail, as you said, Mrs. Notson. He helped set up a robbery of the place he worked in. A payroll messenger was killed. Clarkson got twenty years to life. And—he escaped in two years, and was never caught. And—he was a chemist. Mr. Notson. As you are. Mr. Clark Notson.�
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Notson was on his feet. His face was very red and he no longer looked younger than he was. He said, “You’re crazy! I can prove—” His voice rose until he was shouting across the few feet between himself and Weigand.
And then it came to Pam—came with a kind of violent clarity. “Wait, Bill. Wait!” Pam shouted. “It wasn’t ‘ohs’ at all. Not saying them. That’s what was wrong.”
They were listening. Bill was listening.
Then Pam pointed at Hortense. “You,” she said, “the first time you said doing ohs. Not saying ‘Oh.’ You even asked how one did an oh. We thought it was the—the o-h kind of O. But—it was the letter O. And—look at him now! He’s doing them now. With his fingers.”
And now she pointed at Stanley Pitt, who was forming the letter O with the thumb and index finger of his right hand; who now, violently, closed into fists his betraying hands. A shudder ran through his body. But he spoke quietly, without looking up from the floor.
“She hadn’t quite remembered,” he said, as if talking of something which had happened a long time ago. “Not quite.” And he put the thumb and index finger tip to tip again, to measure the smallness of a margin. “But—she would have. She remembered everything. I’ve changed a lot and she was a little girl, but…”
He looked at his hands. “I’ve always done that, I guess,” he said. He spread his fingers and looked at his hands. “Once it came up,” he said, “there would be fingerprints. So—I had to try.” He looked up, then, at his wife. “You see, Phyl, that I had to try?”
Phyllis covered her face with her hands.
After a moment Stanley Pitt looked again at his hands, spreading them in front of him. Slowly he began to bring together the fingertips and thumbtips of both hands; and he studied the movements of his fingers intently, as if they were new to him. He sat so, his hands moving in patterns they had never been able to forget, until Weigand told him it was time to go.
DETECTIVE: MOM
MOM SINGS AN ARIA
James Yaffe
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 141