A Pinch of Poison

by Frances Lockridge

  Weigand and Miss Crane smiled after him. He was, they agreed, an amiable child. One could see why he had instantly attracted Mrs. Graham and why she had wanted to get so much small sunniness out of a dark house. Weigand was rising again as Mrs. North returned. Then he remembered something and took from his pocket the reservation list Nicholas had given him. Would Miss Crane, he asked, run down it and see whether she recognized any names as connected with Miss Winston? She looked doubtful.

  “There’s always a chance,” he said.

  Miss Crane looked down the list, shaking her head. She was almost at the bottom before she stopped and reread a name. Then she held it up so that Weigand could see and pointed. Weigand read.

  “Well,” he said. “Now that is interesting.”

  “What?” said Mrs. North.

  Weigand showed her the name well down on the list.

  “Barton Halstead,” she read.

  She looked at Weigand, without surprise.

  “Perhaps,” said Mrs. North, gently, “this will teach you to pay some attention to what I tell you.”

  8

  WEDNESDAY

  11:30 A.M. TO 1:15 P.M.

  Before he left Mary Crane’s quiet office at the Foundation, Weigand sought a more precise description of Michael’s father—always assuming, he thought, that the man who had introduced himself as Richard Osborne was the father of Michael. He did this on the theory of cleaning up, so far as possible, as he went along. He still could not believe, in spite of Mrs. North, that Michael would prove to have much to do with his problem. And even if Michael did, Weigand realized after Miss Crane had done her descriptive best, Michael’s father was apt to remain nebulous.

  When Osborne had complained of his eyes, Miss Crane said, she had had her secretary switch off the overhead lights, so that only a desk light and shadowy illumination from a window which opened on a court had remained. As a result, it had never been particularly clear what Osborne looked like. He was youngish, she thought, but his hair was beginning to show gray. His face was thin and shadowed; he hadn’t shaved for a day or so, apparently. The dark glasses effectually hid his eyes, and with them those telltale lines which gather around eyes, telling of age and health and, often, of disposition. He was shabbily dressed, but it was hard to put a finger on the shabbiness—a blue suit, rather worn; run-down brown shoes; a tie which had been knotted too often. Miss Crane reviewed her description privately and said she was sorry.

  “He looked ill and he looked thin,” she said. “He might have been almost any age from the middle twenties to the middle thirties. I’m sorry; there was nothing about him that stood out, except that he was obviously ill. You could tell that from the way he moved.”

  “Or, of course,” Weigand pointed out, “that he wanted you to think so. An uncertainty of movement could be assumed. Even a day’s growth of beard makes any thin man look unhealthy.”

  “Yes,” Miss Crane said. She was vexed with herself. “I should have observed more closely, but of course I expected further information. We are waiting for a report on him from the Veterans Hospital.”

  She had no reason, Weigand told her, to think it was particularly important. Probably, as a matter of fact, it would turn out not to be particularly important.

  Pam North walked to the elevator with him and rode down. She said why didn’t he come to dinner, and that they would have Dorian if they could.

  “And Mullins,” she said. “I miss Mullins.”

  Weigand said it would have to be left open, and that he would bring Mullins if possible.

  “Don’t forget Michael,” Mrs. North said, and waved eagerly at a taxicab.

  “What?” said Weigand.

  “Important,” Mrs. North told him, leaning from the window of the cab as it started up. “I think it’s Michael—”

  Mrs. North and the taxicab went around a truck and vanished. Weigand found a telephone and got Headquarters. Things were going along. Mullins was assisting, personally, in the search for a man who had bought atropine sulphate. A report on the contents of the glasses from which Lois Winston had drunk at the Ritz-Plaza roof had come in. One of the glasses had contained water. The contents of the other was more complicated. Headquarters read over the report to Weigand. It was detailed and confusing.

  “Did they say what that meant?” he inquired.

  They had. It meant rum, Coca-Cola and a little lime juice—in other words a Cuba Libre.

  “No atropine?” Weigand insisted.

  “It don’t say so,” Headquarters told him. Weigand said, “Damn!” Then he dictated a wire to be dispatched to a Veterans Hospital in Arizona, inquiring about one Richard Osborne. He left word that if Mullins came in, he was to be held. He hung up and stared at the telephone. Then he dialed another number and got David McIntosh. There was, he told McIntosh, one question. Was he certain that Lois had had only one Cuba Libre?

  “Yes,” McIntosh said. Then he paused. “Come to think of it,” he said, “I’m not absolutely sure. What happened has put it out of my head. She may have had two—I’m not certain.”

  Weigand thanked him without enthusiasm and hung up. So young Frank Kensitt’s carefully gathered evidence was worth precisely nothing. The drink left on the table was innocent, but there might have been an earlier one which was guilty—guilty, and removed when the second was served, and long since vanished. And now there was no evidence to show whether the poison had been administered at the roof or elsewhere. “Screwy,” Weigand told himself, in the absence of Mullins. He looked up another number and dialed again, getting a voice at the Ashley apartment. Then he got Anna. He wanted Anna to remember something.

  “After Miss Lois came home yesterday afternoon, did she drink anything?” he wanted to know. There was silence while Anna thought. Then there was guesswork. Miss Lois might have had a drink with Mr. Randall and his friends when she first came in. Afterward, in her room, she might have drunk water from the thermos on the table by her bed. Anna wouldn’t know.

  “The thermos was full when I was there,” Weigand told her.

  That, Anna told him, was natural. When Miss Lois had gone out, Anna had straightened up in the room. She had turned back the bed. She had also emptied and refilled the thermos. Was it full when she emptied it? She hadn’t noticed. She was sorry.

  “There was no reason why you should,” Weigand said. “Although I’m sorry too. Has Mrs. Ashley returned?”

  Mrs. Ashley had. She was in her room, lying down. She had been almost hysterical earlier and a physician had been called to care for her. He had, Anna supposed, given her a sedative.

  “If she’s well enough, I’d like to talk to her later today,” Weigand said. “Will you tell her, please?”

  Anna would tell her. Weigand hung up again, feeling that he was hurrying on a treadmill. He telephoned Headquarters again and directed that a man be sent to check on recently issued marriage licenses and told what was to be looked for. He found that Mullins had returned and got him on the phone. Mullins said that things were moving and that here was a funny thing, Loot. It seemed, he said, like David McIntosh had been making reservations all over town.

  “What?” asked Weigand.

  The manager of the Crescent Club, on the East River, had telephoned in to volunteer information, after he had read of the case in the newspapers. David McIntosh had telephoned to the reservation office there a little after six the previous evening and engaged a table, stipulating that it be near the dance floor. He had never claimed the table.

  “Screwy, ain’t it?” Mullins said. Weigand said it was.

  “Mr. McIntosh seems to have been a little confused,” Weigand said. He considered. “Or,” he said, “somebody has been making reservations for Mr. McIntosh; somebody who wanted the girl and him to sit near the dance floor.”

  “That don’t make sense,” Mullins told him, firmly. Weigand said it might.

  “If a table is near the dance floor,” Weigand explained, “a lot of people pass it, going from their ta
bles to dance and coming back. Doesn’t that mean anything, sergeant?”

  Mullins digested it and said, “Say!

  “For dropping things in drinks,” he said, “it would be about perfect, Loot.”

  “Right,” said Weigand, “Stay there and handle anything that comes in,” he instructed. “I’ll keep calling. I’ll probably be in during the afternoon. You’re invited to the Norths’ for dinner, by the way.”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “That’ll be swell.”

  “If,” Weigand told him, “you get to go. The chances are you’ll be working, sergeant.”

  He hung up while Mullins was getting a protest phrased and left the telephone. He retrieved his car and worked west, suffering traffic lights patiently. He drove under the express highway for some blocks and then climbed a ramp to it. He rolled north along the highway, then along the Henry Hudson Parkway, and might have been anybody driving out of town. But in the Riverdale section he turned off, looped and crossed the Parkway on an overhead. He worked through quiet streets beyond the row of new apartment buildings fronting the Parkway, dipped over the hill and went downgrade toward the river. The old houses there were older; it was a backwater in New York.

  Mrs. Eva Halstead’s house was, Weigand decided, probably the oldest of them all. It was a big, square house of damp-looking brick, set far back in a garden of weeds. An uneven brick path ran to a porch which was massive but tottering. Boards bent under Weigand’s feet as he crossed to the door. He pressed on a bell and nothing happened. He knocked and then knocked more loudly. A dog barked shrilly somewhere inside and Weigand waited. The heavy door opened a crack and a smell of dust and cabbage emerged. A voice, harsh and forbidding, followed.

  “Well, young man?” the voice said. “I don’t want anything.”

  “Mrs. Halstead?” Weigand said. “I’m not selling anything.”

  “Then go away,” the voice told him, and the door’s crack narrowed. For the first time in years, Weigand put a foot in a door. His voice became authoritative.

  “This is the police, Mrs. Halstead,” he said. “Police Lieutenant Weigand. I want to talk to you about Miss Lois Winston.”

  “Killed,” Mrs. Halstead said. “And none too good for her. Stealing children.” But the pressure against Weigand’s toe relaxed. The door opened reluctantly and revealed Mrs. Halstead. It also revealed a rather dirty and very fat white dog and a thin, very clean gray cat. The cat emerged and rubbed against Weigand’s legs.

  “Come here, Toby,” Mrs. Halstead said, sternly in a harsh, cracking voice. The cat turned and went in, leaving Weigand impressed. He thought of the Norths’ cat, Pete, and his inscrutable ignoring of all commands, and was more than ever impressed. He looked at Mrs. Halstead.

  She was in all respects formidable. She was heavy and tall and an old, wrinkled face met the world implacably. Her lips were a slit above a jutting chin, and a heavy nose hooked over them. She was dressed stiffly in black silk and a boned net collar guarded a wrinkled throat. Weigand tried to remember when last he had seen a boned net collar and Mrs. Halstead frowned.

  “Well, young man?” she said. “Are you through staring at an old woman?”

  “I have been instructed to talk to you,” Weigand said, evenly and inaccurately. “I think we might both be more comfortable inside.”

  Mrs. Halstead withdrew stingily and permitted entrance. The hallway, which split the house down the center, was musty and damp, and the odor of cabbage was stronger. When Mrs. Halstead looked firmly at Weigand and he still did not go away, she led him to a door on the right and entered, leaving him to follow. Overpowering heat met him at the threshold. The room, with shades drawn over closed windows, was stifling. Mrs. Halstead sat in a dirty morris-chair and faced Weigand.

  “She ought to have been killed,” Mrs. Halstead said. “I ought to have done it myself.”

  “Did you?” Weigand asked. It seemed possible that if she had she would say so, and stare him down.

  “No,” she said. “You’re a fool, young man.” She seemed, however, slightly more tolerant.

  The cat crossed the room and jumped on her lap. She let it stay. A heavy, veined hand stroked its back.

  “But you were at the Ritz-Plaza roof,” Weigand asserted. “With your son.”

  “My son was killed twenty years ago,” she said. “In the war; the other war. Barton Halstead is my nephew.”

  “But you were at the roof with Barton Halstead,” Weigand insisted.

  “Certainly,” she said. “Since he was kind enough to ask me.” There was hard emphasis on the word “kind.” “Barton occasionally remembers a duty to poor relations,” she said. She studied Weigand’s face and something like a smile broke against her chin and lapped its way to her lips. “Because I knew he’d hate it,” she said. “He thought I wouldn’t go. So I went. It was very trying for Barton.”

  She seemed to relish Barton’s discomfiture, in retrospect. The smile ebbed.

  “Very well,” Weigand said. “You threatened Lois Winston, Mrs. Halstead. You were present on the roof when she was killed.”

  “She was poisoned,” Mrs. Halstead said. “I suppose somebody put something in her glass?”

  “You guess well, Mrs. Halstead,” Weigand said, without expression.

  “Don’t be silly, young man,” Mrs. Halstead said. “Can you see me sneaking over to a table, without anybody noticing?”

  Weigand looked at her. He had to admit he couldn’t. He kept the admission to himself, however. There might have been some other way.

  “I swore at her when she stole Michael,” Mrs. Halstead said. “Michael was all I had and I was good to him. There was no foolishness, but I was good to him. She and those damned social pryers stole him.” She glared at Weigand. “And the police,” she added, with rancor.

  “I have nothing to do with that, Mrs. Halstead,” Weigand said. “I don’t want to argue about it. You did threaten Miss Winston. She is dead. You were around when she was killed.

  “And,” he added, “Michael wasn’t yours. He had a father.”

  Mrs. Halstead sat up in the old morris-chair and stared at Weigand.

  “So you know about that, do you, young man?” she said. “What do you know about that?”

  Merely, Weigand told her, that Michael’s father had asked that the child be removed from her care, since he could no longer pay board, and that the father was ill and in a hospital in the West.

  “You know that, do you?” she said. There was a kind of cackle in her voice, and an odd emphasis on “know.”

  “That’s the record,” Weigand said. “What do you know about it?” He felt that he was being led down a side-path, but curiosity pulled him along.

  “What should I know about it, young man?” Mrs. Halstead said. “A man brought the boy here and arranged for me to board him. I did. The man sent a money order each Saturday and I got it on Monday. I spent the money on the boy.”

  “Precisely,” Weigand said. “Then he stopped sending the money and sent somebody to get the boy. You wouldn’t give the boy up and the police were called. You threatened Miss Winston.”

  “She stole him,” Mrs. Halstead said. “He wasn’t hers. He was mine, more than anybody’s.”

  “More than his father’s?” Weigand said. Mrs. Halstead stared at him.

  “Who was his father, young man?” she demanded, her voice harsh. “Do you know that?”

  “No,” Weigand said. “I only know what a man said. What difference does it make?”

  Mrs. Halstead stood up. The chair creaked as she left it and the floor as she joined it. The cat skidded to the floor.

  “You’d better find out, young man,” she said. “Before you start accusing old women. I’m an old woman, Lieutenant. Nobody helps me.”

  The last was cryptic. Mrs. Halstead was cryptic. The heat made Weigand faintly dizzy. He stood up, too.

  “If you know anything, Mrs. Halstead, I would advise you to tell me what it is,” he said. “Did you kill the g
irl?”

  She seemed to think it a reasonable reiteration.

  “No,” she said. She said it almost pleasantly.

  “Do you think you know who did?” Weigand asked.

  “I could,” she said. “And I couldn’t.”

  There was an odd expression in her eyes, Weigand decided. She was an odd old woman, living in an odd old house. There was no telling what she meant.

  She was vague about the time she had spent at the roof. She gave Barton Halstead’s home and business addresses with evident pleasure, clearly hoping he would be annoyed. Barton Halstead’s business affiliation gave Weigand occasion for thought. He was with the Larmey-Fencott Drug Corporation. Mrs. Halstead watched his face.

  “They probably have plenty of poisons,” she assured him. “Only I’m afraid Barton never met Miss Winston.” She seemed unhappy about this. “But of course he could have got some poison and given it to me,” she said. Her ancient eyes gleamed. “He’d love to give me poison,” she said, and laughed. Her laugh was an oddly shocking titter. Weigand felt, and suppressed, sympathy with her nephew, Barton Halstead. He told Mrs. Halstead that he would see her again.

  “When you know something,” she said. “Do. Although probably I won’t let you in. Now go away so I can eat my dinner.”

  Weigand thought of what was apparently a boiled dinner, at midday in the musty heat of the old house, and went gladly. He went across the creaking porch and down the worn brick path and knew, as surely as if he had seen her, that Mrs. Halstead was staring after him from behind the shade of one of the windows. He stopped at the nearest telephone and directed that a man be put on Mrs. Halstead. She would know it, of course. Any watch kept near enough to the old house to be of use would be plainly evident to the watched. He hoped it would give her something to think about.

  He sat at the wheel of his car, turned into a patch of shade, and drummed against the horn rim with his fingers. Where, he wondered, am I?

  Reasonably, he told himself, I am midway of a chase for wild geese. Inspector O’Malley probably was right; the case was fundamentally simple. It was Randall Ashley killing for money, a motive hallowed in fiction and, equally, in fact. For Ashley one had motive, opportunity and, if it were as easy to procure atropine sulphate as Dr. Francis said, means. He seemed merely a spoiled, sulky young man, but spoiled and sulky young men were not badly adapted for murder. They lacked consideration, for one thing, and a murderer must be ruthless of others for his own ends. Expecting things to come easily, they might well turn nasty when things didn’t. Almost certainly, their man was young Ashley.