A Pinch of Poison

by Frances Lockridge

  And so he, a police lieutenant who ought, from experience, to know that in police matters the most obvious is the most likely, was in a far corner of the Bronx pursuing the ghosts of notions—talking to strange, but probably harmless, old women in smelly old houses, wondering about the paternity of little boys. It was Mrs. North who had started him on this, Weigand realized; Mrs. North with her insistence that little Michael fitted in somewhere. And Mrs. North was nobody’s guide in matters of detection. Or, on second thought, wasn’t she? The trouble was, you couldn’t tell.

  “So, as long as I’m up here—” Weigand said to himself, but half aloud. He started the motor, swung the car and sought another address. The Graham house was large, too, when he found it. But it sat on a clipped lawn, with trees shading it, and Venetian blinds guarded open windows from the sun. The bell rang at the Grahams’ and a small dark maid answered it, and would see whether Mrs. Graham was in to Lieutenant Weigand.

  Mrs. Graham was a small woman with fluffy, blond hair and intense blue eyes. There was a kind of hurried eagerness in her movements as she crossed the cool living-room to Weigand and said, “Oh, Lieutenant … about poor Miss Winston?”

  Weigand was, he said, sorry to bother her. It was a matter of routine.

  “In these cases,” he said, “we try to discover all we can about the victims’ actions immediately preceding the crime. I understand Miss Winston visited you yesterday afternoon?” Mrs. Graham nodded, grave now.

  It was, Weigand told her, hard to say what he wanted. Probably there was nothing, but he would like to hear anything she could tell him—anything about how Miss Winston seemed, what she said—anything at all that she, Mrs. Graham, thought pertinent in the light of what had happened. Mrs. Graham nodded and then, after a moment, shook her head.

  “She was very normal,” she said. “Just as I’d seen her several times before. She was cheerful and, after we had talked a little about Michael, we had iced tea and—just talked. My father joined us for a few minutes and we—oh, merely talked about New York and how hot it could get. My father lives in Hartford, you see, and just happened to be here. It was all—inconsequential.”

  “You had got to know Miss Winston rather well, I take it,” Weigand said. Mrs. Graham said, “Yes,” warmly.

  “She had come to see me several times because of our application for a child from the Foundation,” she said. “She came first after we applied and then to tell us about Michael and then once or twice later—to ask about references and things like that. They like to find out all they can about families, you know. To protect the children.”

  “So you had grown quite friendly,” Weigand said. “Got to like each other?”

  “I had got to like her very much,” Mrs. Graham said. “I don’t know how she felt—but yesterday she stayed longer than she needed to, just to talk, so I suppose—I was terribly shocked last night when I heard about it.”

  “Oh,” Weigand said. “You heard last night? How was that?”

  It was, Mrs. Graham said, simple. Her husband had read about it in the papers and when he came home told her, because he had recognized the name of the girl killed as that of the agent who was seeing them about Michael.

  “We were both terribly worried,” she said. “And sorry, too, of course. But worried about Michael—about getting him. Do you suppose that Miss Winston’s death will, somehow, hold things up?” She looked at Weigand, her blue eyes darkly intense. “We both so want Michael,” she said. “And already we’ve waited a long time.”

  About that, Weigand said, he had no idea. Speaking as an outsider he didn’t see why the death of the agent handling a placement should more than temporarily delay the placement. He advised her to call Miss Crane and find out.

  “Oh, I will,” Mrs. Graham said. “That’s what John said. John is my husband.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “By the way,” he said, “about what time was it that he told you of the murder? It must have been rather late, I suppose; there couldn’t have been anything about it in the earliest editions of the tabloids.” He tried to remember. The standard-size papers came out about 11:30; they might have had something, probably did. He waited for an answer. There was a moment of hesitation.

  “Oh,” she said, “John was very late last night—something at the office. It was almost one when he got in. Then we sat up talking until after two. About Miss Winston and Michael.”

  That fitted, Weigand decided. Assuming John Graham had been something of an owl on Tuesday night, or devoted to his work.

  “By the way,” he said. “We have to clutter the record with all sorts of facts, most of them of no importance. What is Mr. Graham’s business connection?”

  Mrs. Graham looked surprised. Weigand couldn’t blame her.

  “Why,” she said, “he’s office manager for a perfumery manufacturer. Henri et Paulette. It’s an American firm, really, but the name—well, it just seemed to sound better, I guess.”

  Weigand made a note of it, without any great conviction that it was a note he would ever have cause to refer to.

  “Going back to yesterday afternoon,” he said. “I would appreciate it if you would make a special effort to remember Miss Winston—how she behaved and what she said. I mean, the smallest thing might have importance. Something she said—about people she was going to meet, or things she was going to do—the little things that people let drop—something like that might help us.”

  He waited. Mrs. Graham was dutiful in her concentration. After a few moments she shook her head.

  “I can’t think of anything at all,” she said. “We talked about Michael, as I told you. We talked about the heat. She said she would be glad when evening came and it got cooler, and something about going to a restaurant where it would be cool. She said something—oh yes, she said, ‘It will be nice not to be a working girl for a while.’ I’d heard that she had a lot of money, really, and didn’t need to work, and just did it for the children. And so once or twice we’d laughed about her being a ‘working girl.’”

  Weigand said he saw.

  “I suppose,” he said, “she didn’t mention where she was going. I mean any specific place?”

  There was, he thought, a momentary hesitation, as if Mrs. Graham were thinking before she answered. Then she said, “No.” He waited an instant longer.

  “No,” Mrs. Graham said, “I’m quite sure she didn’t. She just said some place where it would be cool. That might be any place, of course, with everything air-conditioned.”

  Weigand agreed. He was a little puzzled, momentarily, and for the first time wondered fleetingly whether Mrs. Graham had told all she knew. But there seemed to be no reason why she should boggle at telling him if Lois Winston had mentioned the Ritz-Plaza roof. He let the incident click into a suitably inconspicuous place in his memory and started to speak again. But there was a slight sound at the door and a man stepped in from the hall and stopped, smiling in the deprecatory way of one who interrupts.

  He was a spare, tall man with a thin, pleasant face and he was, Weigand guessed, in his late fifties although he carried years well. Old for Mr. Graham, Weigand thought, and then Mrs. Graham looked up.

  “Oh, hello, Dad,” she said. “How’s Father Graham? Lieutenant, this is my father, George Benoit. Dad, this is Lieutenant Weigand from Police Headquarters. He has been asking about Miss Winston—you remember I told you?”

  “Yes,” George Benoit said to her. His voice, like his face, was pleasant. “How do you do, Lieutenant? Your father-in-law is very wide awake today, Margie. He wants to know what the policeman wants.”

  “What?” said Mrs. Graham. Her voice was surprised. “Now, how on earth did he know there was a—a policeman here?”

  “I don’t know,” her father told her. “He was sitting by the window and looking out and he said, all at once, ‘Margaret is seeing a policeman. I want to know why.’ So I came to find out.”

  “How on earth?” Margaret Graham inquired, looking at Weigand helpl
essly. He smiled.

  “There’s a police shield on the car,” he explained. “I suppose your father-in-law saw it, and saw me come in.”

  “Well,” Benoit said, “he wants to see you, Lieutenant. He said, ‘Send that policeman up here.’”

  “Oh, dear!” Margaret Graham said. “Now what?”

  She looked at her father, ruefully, and he smiled.

  “You know Cyrus, Margaret,” he said. “If policemen are in his house he wants to see them. He’s not going to let anything go on he’s not in on. He wouldn’t be Cyrus Graham if he did.”

  Margaret Graham sighed and looked inquiringly at the lieutenant.

  “Would you?” she asked. “He’ll wear us out afterward if you don’t. You see he is—well, he has a strong will, and it has got all the stronger since he’s been so sick.”

  Weigand looked at his watch. It was after one and he had had no lunch. Also he had things to do and people to see, among whom he saw little reason to include Cyrus Graham. But Cyrus, whatever else he might be, and however apparently far from any conceivable line of investigation, was clearly an observant gentleman.

  “Well—” Weigand said, slowly standing.

  “It needn’t take but a few minutes,” Mrs. Graham assured him. “And it would be very kind of you. He hates to be out of things so, and it is very bad for him to be excited. And he is always excited when he doesn’t get his own way.”

  “I gather,” Weigand said, “that your father-in-law can’t get around?”

  Leading him toward the door, Mrs. Graham nodded. She stopped for a moment in the hall and amplified. Cyrus Graham, John Graham’s father, had been ill for several years—so ill that he could not leave his wheelchair and was not permitted the slightest exertion. “It’s his heart, chiefly,” she said. “He may collapse at any moment. And several years ago he had a stroke—everybody thought he was going to die then. But he just didn’t, somehow—the doctor said it was almost a miracle. It’s almost four years, now, and he doesn’t get any better or any worse.”

  “He seems active enough mentally, anyway,” Weigand said. She agreed to that.

  “He always was,” she said. “And his mind hasn’t changed—or not much. He’s crotchety and a little querulous, as it’s perfectly natural he should be, and he was always—well, he always wanted his own way. But he sees things.”

  She led him up wide stairs to the second floor and along a long corridor. She knocked on a door near the end and a nurse opened it and smiled without giving anything away. Margaret said, “Good-afternoon, Miss Nelson. May we see your patient?”

  Miss Nelson opened the door for them, still smiling from a distance. An old, thin voice said, “Come in! Come in!” Cyrus Graham was sitting in a wheelchair by a window which opened on the street. He was emaciated, so that it seemed that the light from the window might shine through him. There was a little fringe of white hair around his head and the skin on top of his head was almost bluish white. He had long fingers on the hand he raised shakingly and he pointed one of them at Weigand.

  “You’re a policeman, sir!” he said. “Don’t tell me you aren’t!”

  “I wasn’t going to, Mr. Graham,” Weigand said. He spoke gently. “I am Lieutenant Weigand, of the Homicide Bureau. I just stopped to ask your daughter-in-law a few questions. It is nothing.”

  “Nothing?” said the old man. “Of course it’s nothing! About that Winston girl, eh?”

  “Yes,” Weigand said.

  “Margaret didn’t do it!” the old man said, and then he laughed, a little, creaking laugh. Weigand smiled in response and said he hadn’t thought so. It was merely, he explained, that Mrs. Graham was one of the last to see Miss Winston before her death, and that as a matter of routine—

  “Routine!” the old man said. Everything he said seemed propelled from his lips by a tiny inward explosion. “Don’t talk to me about routine! You sound like that damned nurse!”

  “Well,” said Weigand, rather lamely, “that was all it was. Just checking up.”

  “She was a nice little thing,” Cyrus Graham said, irrelevantly. “She was up here once. Told me about things. They think I don’t know about things, you know.”

  “I imagine,” Weigand said, still gently, “that you find out.”

  The old man laughed his creaking little laugh.

  “You’re damn right, son!” he said. “You’re damn right! They thought I didn’t know about the kid.”

  He turned from Weigand to Mrs. Graham, who had dropped into a chair. He looked at her wickedly.

  “Thought I didn’t know,” he said. “But I did!”

  “Did you, Father?” she said. She seemed placid. Or, Weigand felt rather than saw, almost placid. There was an undercurrent of something. “What did you know? We didn’t try to keep anything from you.”

  “No good if you had,” the old man told her. “No damn good if you had. I find out.”

  “Of course you do, Father Graham,” she said. “You mustn’t get excited.”

  “Who’s excited?” the old man demanded. He seemed to have forgotten Weigand, who wanted to get away.

  “All right, Father Graham,” Margaret Graham said. “Nobody’s excited. But there aren’t any secrets about Michael. You know that.”

  The old man stared at her and then nodded his head.

  “No secrets,” he said. “That’s right. No secrets. They want to adopt this boy.” The last was to Weigand again.

  “Yes,” Weigand said, “I know.”

  “Can’t have any children, you see,” Cyrus Graham explained. “Silly business.”

  This was puzzling. Weigand showed it to the shrewd old eyes, apparently.

  “Adopting,” Graham explained. “Anybody’s brat. But it’s all right with me. As long as they don’t try to keep it from me.”

  “Of course,” Weigand said. “Lots of people adopt children, you know.”

  “Silly business, just the same,” the old man said. “Damn silly business. Women!”

  “Women want them,” Weigand translated, more or less for his own benefit. “It seems to be very natural.”

  Old Graham nodded his head.

  “Ought to have their own, though!” he said.

  “Really, Father,” Mrs. Graham said, “that’s an odd way for you to talk.”

  Graham looked at her, and his manner softened.

  “Don’t cry about it, Margaret,” he said. The tone was kinder than the words. “Not your fault. Except marrying a Graham. Somebody should have told you.”

  “There wasn’t anything to tell,” she said. “It just isn’t true. Everybody’s told you that. The doctor told you that.”

  “People are fools,” old Graham said. “Look at my father. Look at his father. Don’t tell me it isn’t so.”

  Mrs. Graham looked at Weigand appealingly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know he would get off on this.”

  “Well—” Weigand began. But the old man broke in.

  “May as well know,” he said. “No secret about it.” He pointed a long finger at Weigand. “Crazy,” he said. “That’s what it is. Crazy.” He waggled the finger. “Not me,” he said. “It skipped me. But all the rest of them. My father. His father. So I decided to stop it. What do you think of that?”

  “I don’t know,” Weigand said. “I don’t entirely understand you, Mr. Graham.”

  “Fool!” Graham said. “Perfectly simple. Insanity in the family. In all the Grahams. Except me, of course. Even John’s a little off.”

  He looked at Margaret Graham as he said this.

  “Father!” she said. The tone was shocked, protesting.

  “Not bad, yet,” the old man said. “Nobody sees it except me. You wait!”

  Weigand wished he were out of this. But, nevertheless, it was interesting.

  “Told them they couldn’t have children,” Graham said, this time to Weigand. “Not and get my money. My son’s smart, whatever I say. Knows money is better than kids. Humors me.
”

  He laughed again, wheezingly.

  “Not going to pass it on,” he said. “Or I don’t pass the money on. Got him, eh?”

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “Only it isn’t generally believed that insanity can be inherited, you know.”

  “Fools,” Graham said, positively. “Think I don’t know about that? And whose money is it?”

  “Yours, I assume, Mr. Graham,” Weigand said. “Will you feel the same about an adopted son?”

  “Of course not!” the old man said. “Why should I? No taint. They can adopt a dozen! A hundred! Nothing to me, as long as they’re not under foot.”

  “Well,” Weigand said. This time he really moved to go. Mrs. Graham stood up. Old Graham looked at them.

  “Hope you catch him,” Graham said. “She was a nice girl, for nowadays. Catch him and hang him.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “We’ll try, anyway. Goodbye, Mr. Graham.”

  The old man wasn’t looking at them any more. He was staring out at the street. He seemed to have forgotten them. Neither spoke until they were outside again. Then Mrs. Graham said she was sorry.

  “I didn’t know he would be like this,” she said. “He is unpredictable.”

  Weigand looked at her, feeling sympathy.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It must be difficult for you. That is true, I gather—what he said about children?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. Her voice sounded tired, and without spirit. “That’s true enough. If we have children we don’t get his money. And John feels we need it. That’s why we are adopting Michael. And none of it is true, of course. His father wasn’t insane, nor his grandfather. Just as he is—explosive and odd, but quite sane. We found out. Even if insanity is hereditary, there isn’t any to be inherited. But what can we do?”