by Andre Norton
There was no one about as Peter walked up on the porch and pushed the screen door gently. It flew back from his hand with a protesting shriek of its rusty spring. He cursed silently.
“Who’s that?” someone called.
“Only Peter Mohun,” he answered.
“Oh, Peter—come on out to the back porch. You’re in time for iced tea.” Peter walked through the hall and the long living room to the screened porch and paused in the open doorway. Thane Carey was sitting in a large armchair and Mrs. Sutton on the couch near him. She was darning socks. A tray with a pitcher of iced tea and some tall glasses stood on a table between them. There was no one else in the room.
The effect of this quiet domestic scene on Peter was one of acute anticlimax. He stood for a moment and stared at them blankly. Then he said hoarsely, “Carey—I’m sorry Margaret—but Carey, I must have a word with you—at once.”
Thane Carey stood up and came toward him. “Outside. I’m keeping an eye on the one door of the lab,” he said quietly. The two men disappeared.
A second later Margaret Sutton put down her sock and followed them.
The minute they were out of the house, Peter said: “I’ve got the evidence but I can’t stop to explain. Where is she?”
“Are you looking for Philippine?” Mrs. Sutton asked quietly.
Both men jumped and swung around to face her. Margaret Sutton looked first at Thane and then at Peter. When neither of them spoke she went on slowly: “Oh, I know. I have watched you watching her, Thane, but I knew long ago—even before you did, I’m afraid. I thought—oh dear, what difference does it make now what I thought. She’s been in the lab all day. She’s still there, isn’t she, Thane?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to arrest her, then?”
This time it was Peter who said, “Yes. We must. And at once.”
Margaret Sutton put her hand on Peter’s arm and he looked up at her quickly. How old she looks, he thought, and how inexpressibly sad and tired. “May I ask you one favour?” she said. “Let me talk to her first. She’s not to blame.” She looked steadily at the set faces that stared back at her.
The two men looked at each other and then Thane answered her. “Of course, Margaret, if you insist. But we will go with you—and we are both armed. You understand that?”
“Yes. I understand. But it isn’t necessary.”
They walked slowly along the path to the laboratory. Inside they stopped and listened. Then Mrs. Sutton called, “Phil, where are you?”
“Here in the herb room, Aunt Maggie. Do you want me? I’ll come in a minute.”
“No, I’ll come to you.” She turned to the men behind her. “I’d like to go alone.”
“No—” They both answered her at the same moment.
“Very well.”
As they entered the room, Philippine turned from the table. “I’m afraid I’ve been antisocial today, Auntie, but I got so behind in my work,” she said, and then stopped when she saw the two men.
“Have you anything to say to me, Philippine?” Margaret Sutton asked quietly.
“Anything to say to you? No, I don’t think so. What—what do you mean?”
“These men have come to accuse you of the murder of Catherine—and I told them that I wanted to talk to you first.”
“The murder. This is madness,” Philippine said calmly.
Peter looked at her face closely and could see no hint in it of either fear or anxiety. He stepped ahead of Margaret and spoke quickly: “It’s no good, Margaret, Philippine will fight for her life until all hope is gone. Won’t you?” He flung the words at the woman who now faced him.
“I have no need to fight, Peter. I am innocent.”
My God, I’ve never seen such superb acting, Thane thought as he watched her. “Very well then, how do you explain this?” He reached in his pocket and produced the stained handkerchief containing the fragments of jar and face cream.
“What is it?” Philippine asked with an expression of distaste.
“It is a jar of poisoned face-cream, or so I believe. Buried by you in Miss Hartwell’s back yard on Sunday evening after you had, as you thought, dispensed with Fredericka Wing. I didn’t stop to send it to the lab. I don’t need to, but Thane will get a report in due course. What’s more, I think this time, unless I’m much mistaken, you overlooked the little matter of fingerprints.”
“You’re insane—all of you,” Philippine said quietly. “I have no idea what you are talking about. I do know and I have told you that Margie Hartwell poisoned Catherine—then if, as you say, that face cream is poisoned she must have poisoned herself that way. I wondered what she had done.”
“But Philippine,” Mrs. Sutton said suddenly, “Margie wouldn’t poison herself with face cream. She wouldn’t hurt her poor face any more. Oh no, Philippine. You see—I saw—”
She stopped suddenly, and before she could go on, Philippine spoke and Peter now observed that for the first time her face had gone white and that her voice was hoarse and strained, “If you must go on talking this nonsense, I suggest that we go into the house and sit down. Aunt Maggie ought not to stand on that ankle.”
“A good idea,” Thane said quickly. He nodded at Mrs. Sutton and she turned without speaking and led the way to the door. “You go next, Philippine,” he said, “and Peter and I will follow.”
The little procession moved toward the door and outside on to the path. Then, without warning and with the speed of lightning, Philippine pulled a small revolver from the large pocket of her white coat and stepped aside to face them. The move was so unexpected that neither Thane nor Peter had time to move.
“Stand where you are,” Philippine said fiercely, “all of you, and if you move a finger I shall shoot—and to kill.”
Peter tried to reach his revolver and a shot whisked by his left ear. He cursed himself for an idiot.
“I meant what I said,” Philippine continued quietly. “Now put up your hands, please.” Thane and Peter made no further effort at resistance and Philippine took the revolvers from their pockets and put them into her own. Then she backed away toward the jeep that stood behind her in the driveway.
“My God, I never wanted to kill as much as I do now,” Thane muttered.
Philippine had now reached the car, and was slipping in under the wheel when suddenly Margaret Sutton, whom everyone had forgotten, stooped down and picked up one of the large stones that edged the flower bed by her feet. As she flung it toward the figure in the car, a second shot rang out and the older woman fell forward on to the grass verge of the driveway. At the same instant the jeep leapt forward with a deafening roar, Peter ran to Margaret, and Thane grabbed another rock and charged helplessly after the departing car.
Peter watched the stain spread on Margaret’s white collar and felt for her pulse. Then he stood up and called after Thane. “It’s no good, Carey. Come and help me here.” Then as Thane came toward him, he added: “Margaret’s only got a shoulder wound, but it’s no thanks to us. However, I did take one precaution.”
A second later the crash came. Mrs. Hartwell appeared from the door of the house like a jack-in-the-box and Thane and Peter lifted Margaret Sutton gently and carried her into the living room.
“Philippine can’t have survived it, I’m afraid,” Peter said. “I left my lovely Ford in the middle of the drive—just around the corner and she was going at a good clip. Anyway, Jim’s there to pick up the pieces. But we were a couple of mugs, Thane. I never dreamt she was armed and neither, I think, did you.”
“Hadn’t a clue. My God, what a dame!”
“You said it, wise guy, you said it. A cool customer—and how.”
They left Mrs. Hartwell to sit by Margaret Sutton while Peter went to call Dr. Scott and Thane hurried off down the driveway.
Chapter 16
What had Peter said? “I’ll come loping over with all possible speed—wherever I am—”
Well, he hadn’t come. Fredericka had tried to rea
d, but it made her head ache. She had looked at her watch at least a hundred times and she had called Miss Sanders almost as many. But there was no sign of Peter.
As the afternoon wore on, the room grew heavy with the summer heat and Fredericka’s arm and foot in their plaster cases throbbed and itched maddeningly. She turned over her pillows once more and lay back against them. The room was so white and clean and bare and smelt so persistently of disinfectant. There wasn’t even anything to look at except a small and very lazy fly making its unhurried way across the ceiling. She closed her eyes and groaned.
The door opened and she sat up eagerly. But it was only Miss Sanders with a tray. “I brought you some iced tea. It’s getting hot again and this room always does seem to steam up in the summer. I wouldn’t have put you in here if I’d had any say about it.”
I’m just patient to her. I’m not Fredericka Wing with the solution of the South Sutton murders in my helpless hands. I’m not Peter’s Dr. Watson to her, or to anyone else. I’m just nobody at all. Oh, dear God, where is he? Suddenly she was aware of the silence in the room and she said quickly, “Oh, Nurse, bless you for that tea, and forgive me for not saying so at once. The fact is I’m fed up with waiting. You see I’ve remembered something and I know it’s important to Colonel Mohun to know it. And now—now he just won’t come—”
It was apparent to Miss Sanders that her patient was near tears. “There’s no need to carry on so, Miss Wing,” she said firmly. “You’ll only get yourself into such a state that you won’t be able to talk to Colonel Mohun when he does come. Now drink up your tea, like a good girl.”
Fredericka fought back the silly tears: “Please can’t you stay with me a few minutes, Miss Sanders? I can’t read and there’s nothing to look at, and I hate to think.”
Miss Sanders lowered her large body into the chair by the bed. Fredericka sipped her tea slowly and tried to think of things to talk about but conversation lagged, and presently her nurse got up. “I mustn’t sit here. I’ve all my other patients to see to I’m afraid. Shall I get you some aspirin for your head?”
“No. No thanks. The tea was wonderful. I’ll be all right now.”
Miss Sanders, obviously relieved, took her unhurried departure, and again Fredericka was left alone with her thoughts.
It was dark when Peter finally came. Fredericka had, at length, fallen into an uneasy sleep, but she woke to hear slow footsteps coming down the corridor. That could not be Peter, she decided, and turned over to try to sleep again. Then the door opened and she sat up, blinking at the sudden light. Then she saw his face, and she was startled out of her own mood of hurt and self-pity. He wore no coat and his shirt was torn and stained with sweat. His hair was uncombed and his face was gray and lined. He looked old and utterly exhausted as he sank heavily into the chair. For a long time he said nothing.
Fredericka reached out her good hand and touched him gently on the arm. “Are you all right, Peter?” she asked helplessly, knowing that he was not all right.
“Yes, in body,” he said slowly. “Do you suppose this place could produce a brandy?”
Fredericka pressed the silent button that was the modern vision of a bell and they both waited without speaking until, after what seemed a very long time, a young nurse put her head in the door.
“Miss Sanders?” Fredericka asked impatiently.
“She’s off now—since eight o’clock.”
“Oh—please could you get some brandy. I’m afraid Colonel Mohun—in fact we’re both—rather ill—” The nurse looked at them suspiciously for a moment and then disappeared.
Peter stared at Fredericka blankly and then said slowly, “The sight of you is good. There was one moment when I didn’t think I’d ever have it again…”
Fredericka reached for his hand and held it tightly in hers until the nurse returned with two small medicine glasses of brandy on a tray. She put this down on the bed table with a look of bewildered disapproval.
“Is there anything else you want, Miss Wing?” she asked Fredericka, but she looked at Peter, who shook his head and waved her away.
“Thanks so much,” Fredericka said quickly, and, when the girl had gone, she added: “Drink both of them and don’t try to talk. There’s no hurry.”
When he had taken all the brandy, slowly, and with obvious pleasure, he offered Fredericka a cigarette and took one for himself. Then he said quietly: “It’s all over.”
“I thought it must be from the look of you. Can you talk about it?”
“Yes. In a minute. Tell me first what you wanted me for.”
“It seems unimportant now, but I did think it might be the evidence you needed. You see, I tried to do what you told me to. I went backwards in my mind over everything and particularly that last night. And then I realized that it couldn’t have been a third person who hit me. It must have been Philippine.”
“Yes. It was. But how did you work it out?”
“Well, you said I had been hit with her flashlight—I suppose it must have had bits of me on it and bits of her. That seemed reasonable until I remembered that she had said, “I’ve dropped the flashlight,” or something like that, and then instantly I was hit. There just wasn’t time for anyone to have picked it up. So if it was that flashlight that hit me, she couldn’t have dropped it at all but must have just switched it off and used it herself.”
“That’s exactly what she did do. It was careless of her. But the attack on you was not carefully thought out. She had to remake a lot of plans because of you. Moreover she must have felt that she could afford to be careless since she intended to do the job up brown and silence you completely. She had no idea that the well was dry, you see. Otherwise she’d have finished you off before she pitched you into it.”
“Oh, Peter!” Fredericka clutched his large hand more tightly. “Somehow I feel I would have known that it was Philippine much sooner if only I hadn’t—oh, dear—I liked her so much.”
“That was the secret of her amazing success. Everyone liked her—except, of course, Catherine Clay. She could bank on being liked and indeed cultivate her own likableness as she cultivated her poisons in that laboratory of hers—”
“Did she poison Margie, then?”
“Oh, yes. And in the most diabolic way. You see that story that she told you about coming on Margie filling capsules in the lab was true, the other way around. It was Margie who discovered Philippine and, being Margie, she asked questions. Whatever answers she got satisfied her at the time and Philippine wasn’t unduly worried then, because she intended to have Catherine’s death look like an overdose of dope either by accident or design and that would have been by injection not capsule. She intended to recover the little silver box and any remaining poisoned capsules after Catherine’s death and before the police found them. If she had succeeded, Margie would never have thought anything more about surprising Philippine in the lab.”
“But Philippine couldn’t get at the corpse.”
“She may have done. I believe she trailed Catherine around because I found out from Roger that they were not together on their herb hunt but went in separate directions. Unfortunately for Philippine’s plans, Catherine had dropped the box in the long grass near your back door. Philippine may well have looked for it and not been able to find it.”
“And then it turned up—too late.”
“Yes. But it might not have been too late even then. It was Margie who told Philippine that the box had been found. And, in fact, the silly child remembered then that she had seen the box in Philippine’s hand that day in the lab and said so. At that time no one had suggested poison in the vitamin capsules and Margie didn’t put two and two together. But Philippine knew that she must recover the box with the extra capsules and, failing that, that she must get rid of Margie who would be able to connect them with herself. She decided to use Margie to recover the box by refusing to believe that it was the same one. Margie tried to get it from you and failed, as we know. Then the fact of poisoning became kno
wn. Margie must have put her two and two together and Philippine then had to carry out her plan of getting rid of Margie who might, at any moment, turn informer.”
“But why didn’t Margie turn informer at once?”
“I’m not certain. Philippine is too far gone to give us a confession so this is mostly conjecture, but I would say that she had some hold over the child. She may even have made Margie believe that if she went to the police with her story, they would believe Philippine’s word against hers. Philippine probably threatened to say that she had found Margie in the lab with the box and capsules and pin the murder on to her as she did do, later, in her story to you. Margie’s passionate hatred of Catherine was well known. Philippine’s was not.”
“Oh God! If we’d only known. Oh, Peter, I was so much to blame.”
“No more than any of the rest of us,” Peter said bitterly, but he let go of Fredericka’s hand and gripped both arms of the chair fiercely. “It’s the way she killed the child that is so terrible. I suppose if we’d seen the Nazis at work in a concentration camp as she did, it wouldn’t seem so demoniac—”
He stopped speaking and, after a moment, Fredericka said quietly, “Oh, Peter, please tell me what she did do. I—I can’t stand it either.”
“She must have told Margie that she had at last discovered a face cream that would cure her acne. Margie believed her implicitly because she thought Philippine a sort of wizard with her herbs and potions. What Philippine had discovered was that some one of her damned old herbs could poison through the skin—I confess I’m guessing now, but Thane’s chemist will soon know all—”
“Oh, Peter—no!”
“Oh, Fredericka—yes,” Peter answered grimly. “You see the beauty of this hideous plan. She used the poison that would kill the child as a bribe to keep her quiet while it was killing her. The difficulty was that the poison was slow. I believe she told Margie that she would give her this miracle cure in return for the child’s silence. Margie kept her part of the bargain—”