A Pinch of Poison

by Frances Lockridge

  The blond head turned on the arm.

  “Leave me alone,” she said. “Can’t you leave me alone?”

  Weigand turned away. Then he stopped.

  “I’m not trying to get anything on anybody, Miss Ormond,” he said. “Nothing that isn’t already there. If Buddy’s in the clear I can’t hurt him. You know that.”

  “All right,” she said, her voice muffled and dull. “I have to believe you. But I’m afraid. I’m so afraid!”

  There wasn’t anything to say. Weigand turned and walked toward the door. Behind him he heard Madge Ormond sobbing. It’s a hell of a racket, Weigand told himself, gloomily. He was tired of seeing people. He would go down to Headquarters and look at some papers. Papers didn’t stir you up. It was easy to be a cop when you could do it on paper.

  10

  WEDNESDAY

  3:20 P.M. TO 5:30 P.M.

  He was rather relieved than otherwise when, getting a physician on the telephone at the Ashley apartment, he was informed flatly that Mrs. Ashley was still in no condition to be interviewed. He drove downtown through the heat. It would storm later, he thought. Looking down a side street as he drove south he could see heavy storm-heads banking up in the west. At Headquarters there was word to see Inspector O’Malley. O’Malley wanted action, he said.

  “Where’s this Ashley guy?” he wanted to know. Weigand told him. The Ashley guy had gone out early in the afternoon to see an undertaker. Now he was back at the apartment again, presumably holding his mother’s hand. David McIntosh had gone back to the offices from which he administered his affairs—the McIntosh estate. Then he had gone to the Harvard Club. Not being a Harvard man, the detective associated with David McIntosh had loitered in Forty-fourth street.

  “Ashley,” O’Malley said, positively. “Ashley’s the guy. What are we waiting for?”

  They were waiting for evidence, Weigand told him, with all proper politeness. Meanwhile—

  “Meanwhile,” O’Malley said, “you waste time talking to a lot of people who don’t figure.” He banged his desk. “If I wasn’t nailed down here I’d do it myself,” he said. “You young guys—!”

  Weigand waited until Inspector O’Malley blew over. He was not particularly alarmed by the chance that O’Malley might leave his desk. O’Malley liked a place to put his feet.

  O’Malley blew over. Weigand went back to his desk and found reports awaiting him. Two of the three men who had recently purchased atropine sulphate to use in making eyewash were, it developed, busily making eyewash. The third had not been located. At the address he gave, nobody had ever heard of him. Weigand brooded over this.

  “There’s our guy, Loot,” Mullins said. “All we have to do is round him up.”

  “Is it?” Weigand said. “That’s nice, Mullins. What does he look like?”

  “Well,” Mullins said, “we had a little trouble there. He’s a short, fat guy about five feet, ten inches and weighing around a hundred and sixty pounds, and he’s either got black hair or he’s bald. A couple or three guys saw him, which makes it tough.”

  “Well,” Weigand said, “let me know when you round him up, won’t you, Mullins?”

  “Listen, Loot,” Mullins said, aggrieved. Weigand smiled at him.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “No doubt he is our man. It will be a help to have these couple or three guys look him over—when we catch him. The D. A.’ll like that. But I think we’re going to catch him from the other end.”

  Mullins pondered it and said, “Yeah.”

  “It’s screwy again, ain’t it, Loot?” he said. “You think it was this guy, Ashley?”

  Weigand shrugged.

  “Well,” Mullins said, reasonably, “who else we got? This guy McIntosh?”

  “Why not?” said Weigand. “On the other hand, why? He wanted to marry the girl, and the only quarrel he seems to have had was because she wouldn’t marry him fast enough and wanted to keep on working. So he kills her? Why?”

  Mullins said he wouldn’t know. Still, this McIntosh guy was there.

  Precisely, Weigand agreed. And if he had any reason, he was a good bet. There was, already, something screwy about the reservation angle. Mullins nodded, approvingly. He thought the Loot had something there, all right. On the other hand, there was Mrs. Halstead to be considered. She, alone among the people they had run into, admitted animus toward Lois Winston. And she was at the roof.

  “Yeh?” Mullins said. “How come?”

  Weigand told him. Mullins brightened. Then his face fell.

  “She don’t sound like the kind of dame who would be dancing much, Loot,” he said. “So why pass the table?”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Things seem to cancel out.”

  “How about Mrs. Graham?” Mullins said. “Does she fit in anywhere?”

  Weigand shook his head. There was nothing to indicate it. She denied, by implication, having been at the roof; she professed to have liked Miss Winston, and the smooth progress of the placement proceedings supported her contention, so far as it applied. If she had any special interest, it was to keep Miss Winston alive until the placement was completed. Mullins nodded. The same, Weigand said, seemed to apply to Mrs. Graham’s husband, except that they didn’t know where he was that night.

  “He was out,” Weigand said. “A business conference—maybe.”

  Weigand sighed. Graham would have to be interviewed. He looked at Mullins speculatively, and an expression of cheer crossed his face.

  “Listen, Loot,” Mullins said, quickly.

  “Yes,” Weigand said. “That’s what we’ll do. You pop along and see what Mr. John Graham was doing last night. We might want to know some time.”

  “Listen, Loot,” Mullins said. “He ain’t even in it. And it’s hot as—”

  Gravely, as a lecturer on police practice, Weigand told Mullins about routine and thoroughness. One should, he pointed out, leave no stone unturned, and no grass growing under foot. One should take the stitch in time that saved nine and watch the pennies so that the pounds would take care of themselves. One should—

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “I’ll go see Graham. You got me, Loot.”

  It was, Weigand thought after Mullins had gone, probably foolish to waste Mullins’ time. But it might be useful to have everybody placed, even those on the outskirts. He got an assistant of the city toxicologist and listened. Knowing what to look for and being prodded, they had hurried. It was now official that Lois Winston had died of a heavy dose of atropine sulphate. Things were thus kept in order as they went along, Weigand told himself. He picked up two typewritten sheets, dictated by Detective Stein, who had found an encyclopædia.

  “Subjoined,” wrote Detective Stein, “is a partial list of subject headings from Volume 11 of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Pages 199 to 810. This is approximately the center one-half of the volume.”

  Detective Stein was thorough, Weigand decided. And he liked nice words. “Subjoined,” Weigand read over, pleased. He went on with the list.

  It began with “Hawkweed” which was a “troublesome weed” native to the British Isles and North America. It included Haworth, which was in Yorkshire and “hawser” which was a thick rope. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, was fully dealt with. Weigand read on:

  Hay. (Grass dried in the sun. Two and one half pages.)

  Haydn, Franz Joseph.

  Hay Fever.

  Head-dress.

  Health.

  Heat. (Thirty-one pages.)

  Hebrew. (Nineteen pages.)

  Heir.

  (Weigand paused at this one and made a note. It might be worthwhile, eventually, to discover what the Encyclopædia had to say about heirs.)

  Heligoland Bight. (Two pages.)

  Helium. (Colorless and odorless gas for balloons. Two pages.)

  Henry—

  (The Henrys ran on indefinitely, by number.)

  Hepatoscopy. (Method of divining the future.)

  (Weigand appreciated Detective Stein’s explanatory notes
. Otherwise, he feared, curiosity would have driven him to looking up “hepatoscopy.”)

  Hepplewhite.

  Heraldry.

  Heredity. (Resemblance between an organism and its ancestors.)

  Herring.

  Hibernation. (The more or less comatose condition in which certain animals pass the winter in cold latitudes.)

  Hieroglyphs.

  Hindenburg.

  Hindustani.

  Histology. (Science of study of the tissues.)

  Hittites.

  Hockey.

  Holland.

  Hollywood.

  Homicide. (The “general and neutral term for the killing of one human being by another.”)

  “Well,” said Weigand. “Why neutral?”

  There was nobody in the office to answer him and he read on.

  Hormones. (Discussion of adrenalin under this heading.)

  Houses.

  Underneath, apparently after he had read over the transcription, Detective Stein had written in longhand:

  “These looked most promising. Might be something in hormones, do you think?”

  Weigand read the list over, slowly. Here and there he crossed out. If Lois Winston had been reading about Hittites or Hollywood the previous afternoon it was hard to see that it meant anything. Perhaps she had merely read herself to sleep in the encyclopædia; Weigand knew a man, he reminded himself, who read the encyclopædia whenever opportunity offered, purely as a relaxation. It was difficult to think of any circumstances under which Holland or hockey or Hindenburg might apply. He crossed them off, shortening the list. Hay and Haydn went. Finally he ended and looked at the words remaining:

  “Health—heat—heir—helium—hepatoscopy—heredity—hibernation—hieroglyphs—histology—homicide—hormones.”

  He looked it over again and scratched off “hibernation.” Then he wondered where he was, and couldn’t decide. Chasing wild geese again, probably. He sighed. The chances were, he thought, wiping his forehead, that Miss Winston had merely been reading up on heat. That would have been appropriate, if tautological. He stuck Stein’s report in his pocket and looked at his watch. It was, he was surprised to note, after five. The Norths had said “any time” and he could hope they meant it. About now, he decided, Mr. North would be crushing ice for cocktails, using that short wooden mallet at which they had all looked, once, with so much widening surprise. The thought of cocktails was pleasant. And perhaps Dorian would be early. Then he had another thought, and called Dorian’s apartment.

  It was fine to hear her voice; to hear, or imagine, a new note in it when she heard his. She was, she said, going to the Norths’—just dressing. And it would be nice if Bill would drive by for her—very nice. Cradling the telephone, Weigand felt much better. What he needed was a drink and some conversation, and then he could come back with his mind rested and put two and two together. A picture of Dorian rose unexpectedly in his mind and he smiled at it. Well, he thought, call it “a drink and some conversation,” anyway.

  He left word that Mullins, when he returned, was to come on to the Norths’. He went out into Centre Street. The clouds were halfway up the sky now; it was strange, and somehow forbidding, that the storm was taking so long to gather. There was an odd, disturbing light on the streets and buildings as he drove uptown for Dorian Hunt.

  11

  WEDNESDAY

  7:30 P.M. TO 9:20 P.M.

  The storm broke while they were finishing dinner at the Norths’, and it was a great relief to everyone. The strange, coppery light had held for almost an hour and then it had grown dark, an hour and more before it was time to grow dark. For a long while then, they could hear thunder rumbling off across the Hudson and Mr. North, staring out of the window, had seemed nervous and irritable.

  “For God’s sake, get on with it,” he instructed nature. But it was still a quarter of an hour before nature obliged. Then nature got on with it in a rather surprising fashion, hurling noise at the city, rolling thunder along the streets, splitting the false darkness with lightning. Then a wind raced through the apartment and rain rattled angrily against quickly closed windows.

  “Well,” Mrs. North told her husband, “you asked for it.”

  It was intermittently too noisy, then, for conversation. They were sitting around the room with coffee cups balanced before it was worth the trouble to talk of more than subjects which came conveniently in snatches. And then none of them said anything for a time, but presently they were all looking at Weigand expectantly. He looked back at them, one by one.

  “Does it ever occur to any of you good people that I am a public servant, sworn to secrecy?” he inquired.

  Pam laughed openly at him, and the others smiled.

  “That’s a good one, Loot,” Mullins said. “That’s sure a good one.”

  Weigand looked at him darkly and then he shrugged.

  “You can’t keep us out of them, Bill,” Mrs. North told him. “You ought to know that by this time. And we’re all very confidential.”

  “And,” said Weigand, “very confident. Too confident by half. But what do you want to know?”

  “Why,” Mrs. North said, “who did it, of course.”

  Weigand shook his head. So, he said, did he.

  “It’s in all the papers,” Mrs. North pointed out. “About David McIntosh and the girl’s brother and his girl and everything. Even about Michael and the Foundation. Everything. So there’s no harm in telling us the rest.

  “And,” she added, “it will be clearer to you after you talk. It always is.”

  There was, Weigand admitted, that. He looked at Mullins speculatively.

  “This isn’t happening, Mullins,” he said. “Not officially. Right?”

  Mullins merely looked hurt.

  “Right,” Weigand said. “And, by the way, what about John Graham, for a starter?”

  “O.K.,” Mullins said. “I talked to him. Up where he works.”

  He was, Mullins said, office manager for some place where they made perfume. He got out a notebook. “Henry et Paulette,” he said.

  Mrs. North looked puzzled. Then her face cleared.

  “Oh,” she said. “I see. It sounded—like a cannibal, somehow.”

  Mullins was puzzled and waited, but she did not clarify.

  “Well,” he said, “he’s got a pretty good job there, apparently. Sort of in charge of things.” He had a private office and a secretary and Mullins had just caught him before he went home.

  “He was worried,” Mullins said. “Seems like there’s a nurse out there and she had called up and said the missus wasn’t feeling good—she’d been hysterical or something. So he was about to close up and go home.”

  “Hysterical?” Weigand said. “She seemed all right—” He let the words trail off. “That’s interesting,” he continued, after a pause. “All right, Mullins. How about last night?”

  “Well, Loot,” Mullins said. “This is a good one. He was at the Ritz-Plaza roof. With the girl in his office—the secretary. What do you think of that?”

  A large silence developed. The Norths and Dorian looked at Mullins; then they looked at Weigand and waited.

  “I think,” Weigand said, at length, “that it was a good idea to send you up there, sergeant. And then?”

  John Graham had, Mullins indicated, been frank about it. He was at the roof for dinner, with his secretary. They had been working late and both had to eat. He had planned at first to go to a restaurant nearby; had, in fact, sent Miss Hand, who was the secretary, along to the restaurant to wait. He had had to make a detour on the way, conferring with the advertising manager. “And,” Mullins commented, “he probably thought there was no use in people seeing him and the girl going out together.”

  Graham had joined Miss Hand at the restaurant in, as it turned out, about half an hour. The conference had taken longer than he had expected. And he was tired and hot and discovered that the air-conditioning in the restaurant they had picked had broken down—or, at any rate,
wasn’t cooling the restaurant.

  “‘And so,’” Mullins read from his notes, ‘“I thought it would be good for both Miss Hand and myself to go to some really decent place, considering the weather and the work we had to do later and everything. So I suggested the roof.’

  “That,” Mullins said, “is what he says. Do we have to believe him, Loot? Or was he just showing the girl friend a good time?”

  Weigand said he wouldn’t know. What did the girl say?

  “Just what he says,” Mullins admitted. “So what?”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “Did you check it?”

  Mullins had partly checked it, at any rate. Graham had conferred with the advertising manager. Miss Hand had gone first to a restaurant nearby, on her own story. There hadn’t been time to verify at the restaurant. There had been time, however, to telephone and ask about the cooling system.

  “It didn’t break down,” Mullins said. “On the other hand, the man said, when I sorta got tough, that maybe it hadn’t been working as well as usual.”

  Weigand drummed with his fingers on the coffee table. It would all, he decided, be worth looking into. With an inquiring glance, which brought a nod from Mr. North, Weigand picked up the telephone. He got Detective Stein and sent him forth to look into things. He replaced the telephone and sat for a moment looking at it. He started as if to pick it up again and then apparently thought better of it.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s the newest bit. Now—”

  Rapidly, he sketched the case as it stood, amplifying little but suppressing nothing which seemed of importance. He told of Mrs. Halstead and her hints of knowledge not divulged; of Mrs. Graham and her odd father-in-law; of Madge Ormond—but not of the baptismal name which “Madge Ormond” overlay. He showed them the list he had made from Detective Stein’s longer list from the encyclopædia, and of the apparent disappearance of Michael’s father.

  “That wasn’t much of a surprise,” he added. “I never fell particularly for the mysterious man. It looked like a dodge to get rid of the child, all along. Although I don’t know what Miss Crane could have done, even if she had suspected.”

  Dorian read over the list and passed it to Mr. North, who looked at it and gave it to Pam. Mrs. North made sounds of discovery.