Murder in a Hurry (23 page)

“And Mrs. Halder was still there?”

“Oh yes,” Pine said. “Of course.”

“I had been there all along,” Mary Halder said. Her voice was light, assured. “Of course, I can't prove it, can I?”

“I don't know,” Weigand said. “Can't you?”

“No,” she said. She smiled at Weigand, but her smile was not warming.

“You want to make it clear,” she said, “that I could have gone down to the shop, getting there after Sherman did, struck Miss O'Brien, somehow got back to his apartment and been there when he arrived? Is that it?”

“Couldn't you?” Weigand asked.

She said she didn't know. She would think—

“Did you go by subway, Mr. Pine?” Weigand asked.

Pine had. And—he had waited several minutes for an uptown local at the Sheridan Square station. He lived four blocks—four cross-town blocks—from the subway station nearest his apartment, and he had walked them. He agreed that the whole trip might have taken considerable time. Yes, perhaps as much as half an hour.

“And I could have taken a cab,” Mary Halder said. “Only—I didn't.” She looked at Weigand intently. “Why should I?” she asked.

Lieutenant William Weigand shrugged to that one. Why, he said, should anyone? Presumably, with the intention of silencing Miss O'Brien, who might be thought to know too much.

“Somebody followed her to the shop. Somebody hit her,” Weigand pointed out, his tone level. “Presumably would have killed her if—if not interrupted by Mr. Halder. Presumably because somebody thought she knew too much.” He looked at Liza then.

“Do you, Miss O'Brien?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Whatever Mr. Sneddiger may have known, he didn't tell you?”

“No,” she said. “Oh no.”

Weigand looked at her for a long moment. Then, he said he hoped that was true.

11

Thursday, 12:25
A.M.
to 2:35
A.M.

“I'd like to believe you, Miss O'Brien,” Lieutenant Weigand said. He looked at her very steadily. “For your own sake,” he said.

The light fell in a certain way, made Weigand's thin face planes and shadows to Liza, masked its expression. He seemed to be trying to force something into her mind, but she felt only confused, and now very tired, wholly spent. She tried again, so assured did Weigand seem, to seek back into her memory to discover whether he might not be right; whether the little bright-eyed man had said something before or after they discovered the hideous thing cramped in the animal pen, which, if Weigand knew of it, might end this slow—groping; this nightmare-like search through fog. Almost any assurance would be better than this, Liza O'Brien thought, her mind exhaustedly turning over the past, turning over words which had no meaning. Almost—but no, that was not true.

“Because,” Weigand said, “you are in danger until you tell. If you have something to tell. Someone thinks you have, you know. Someone here.” He looked slowly from one to another of those in the room—at Jasper and Jennifer Halder, at the substantial, matter-of-fact Whiteside, and his white-haired wife; at Mary Halder and Pine and at Mary's tall, dark-faced son. “One of you,” Weigand said. “Because one of you killed Halder, killed Sneddiger because he knew too much, tried to kill Miss O'Brien and—perhaps—Mr. Pine. One of you here.”

He paused. He looked back around the circle, slowly, carefully.

“Something happened in this room Monday evening,” he said then. “I think it was in this room. It may have been at dinner. As a result of what happened, Mr. Halder decided to change his will. One of you knew, or at any rate suspected, that he would do that. One of you followed him to the shop. One of you took strychnine and a hypodermic. How those things happened to be available I don't pretend to know. I'd guess that one of you killed an animal that way once, and—didn't use up the supply.”

He looked from face to face, and Liza, her mind dull, looked as Lieutenant Weigand did from one to another. To her, none of the faces revealed anything. She looked back at Weigand.

“One of you went to the shop,” he said. “You may have given Mr. Halder a chance to change his mind. Perhaps you did not. You injected the poison and watched him die. To make us believe that his eccentricity had finally culminated in suicide, you put the body in the pen, pressed his fingers on the syringe, put syringe and what was left of the poison in the cupboard in which he kept medicines for the animals.

“But you were seen. I think you were seen. I think Mrs. Halder and Mr. Pine guessed”—he hesitated over the word, his tone enclosed it in quotation marks—” ‘guessed' correctly. It was probably just that simple. Probably Mr. Sneddiger looked in the window, saw one of you there. Perhaps he thought it was—oh, say, Mr. Halder.” Weigand indicated Brian's tall half-brother. “Perhaps He had heard his friend talk about the family, even describe members of it. At any rate, he came here to be sure he was right. He was right.”

Weigand paused again; his voice had grown heavy on the last sentence. He repeated it.

He was making them see it, take it in, Liza thought. And she saw the little man in the depths of the closet, crumpled as if he had been tossed there, discarded there; saw again his horrible face, the marks of fingers on his throat, and the eyes—oh, she thought, will I ever forget the eyes? Please—

“But Sneddiger had been for a time with Miss O'Brien,” Weigand went on. “One of you believes he told her something; believes it whatever Miss O'Brien says. And—you may be right. There is no point in my denying that; in Miss O'Brien's not admitting what it—might mean.”

Now he was looking at her; waiting for her. She moved her head slowly, wearily. Why doesn't he leave me alone? she wondered. Why doesn't—

“One of you tried to kill her,” Weigand said. “Would have succeeded if, I suppose, Mr. Brian Halder hadn't returned when he did.” He looked at Brian. “I suppose that,” he said. “I don't know. Mr. Halder may be lying. On one or two points I'm certain he is.”

All the heads turned towad Brian. It was strange, frightening, to see the detachment, the speculation, in those alien eyes. Liza pressed his hand, but his fingers did not answer hers.

“But more than one of you is lying,” Weigand said. “Perhaps for what seem good reasons. And at least one for—for the obvious reason. Because you did the things I've just told you.”

He paused again.

“I'm not expecting anyone to confess,” he said. “Obviously, that would be absurd. But we will find out, you know.” He shook his head slowly, as if deprecating the stupidity of the one he was talking to. “We'll dig back; we're digging back. We'll find who once bought strychnine to—kill rats, was it? Or to—put to sleep—some pet? We'll find out all about you, you know. All about all of you. Or didn't you know?”

He half smiled, then.

“One of you thinks, ‘He's bluffing. He's talking big. Trying to scare me,'” Weigand said. “That is very stupid. But the whole thing has been stupid, of course. It is stupid to kill. Stupid to kill in this—spectacular way. One of you has been stupid that way.” He might have been talking to children. “One of you will be stupid again,” he said. “Will do something. Or forget to do something. Take too big a risk, or fail to take a necessary risk.”

As if involuntarily, against his will, Weigand looked at Liza; looked away again, almost guiltily.

“I—” Weigand said then, and was interrupted. He was interrupted by Aegisthus, who came into the room gayly, apparently from his lodgings below stairs; who was clearly delighted to see so many people, anticipatory of their varying odors. He began the rounds, but Mary Halder called him and he went to her, put forepaws on her knees, looked up at her with enquiry in his eyes and with his tongue slightly hanging out. He was told he was supposed to be in bed; he wagged his rear end. “Bed,” Mary Halder repeated. He stopped wagging but continued to beam, contending that the word had not been spoken, or had been spoken in jest. “Bed!” Mary Halder said, firmly.

The little black dog continued to look at her, hopefully indicating disbelief.

“Bed, Aegisthus,” Mary Halder said. “Go to
bed.
”

He got down, then. He looked back at her over a shoulder, from the corners of his eyes. She would relent, of course; of course she did not mean it. He moved reluctantly toward the area behind the circular staircase; toward the stairs leading down to darkness, away from the enticing odors, the pleasant sounds, of the humans.

“Really, Mary,” Barbara Whiteside said. “That dog! Of all times!”

Aegisthus looked at Barbara Whiteside briefly. He looked away. He looked back at Mary Halder, but she made a negative motion with her head. Aegisthus became smaller; he was a dog abused, crushed by human ingratitude. He went behind the spiral staircase; he thumped down other stairs, not rapidly.

The appearance, the unhappy withdrawal, of Aegisthus relaxed the tension which Weigand had slowly built. Liza could feel the change as now, with the dog gone, the others looked again at the detective. Apparently, Weigand could feel the change too. He did not resume the sentence which had been interrupted. Instead, he said, “Right,” with a kind of finality.

“Before I go,” he said and smiled faintly at the look of relief on the faces around him. “Oh, yes, I'm going. It's late; you can have some sleep. Tomorrow we'll start again—the slow way, the hard way—unless one of you, or several of you, decide to tell—what you know. Tomorrow, anyway, you'll have the chance. But, before I go tonight, I want to get one thing clear.”

Briefly, he told them what it was. They had all, he understood, come down to this room Monday night after finishing dinner. Here, presumably, had happened whatever had moved J. K. Halder to his sudden departure, to his eventually fatal decision about the will. Now, Weigand wanted all of them to sit as they had sat that evening, insofar as possible, do what they had done then.

There was a moment of hesitancy, then they began to move. They rearranged themselves, Pine withdrew entirely, the place he had occupied beside Mary Halder was left vacant.

Only Mrs. Whiteside seemed at first not to remember, looked around doubtfully.

“I don't think I—” she began and interrupted herself. “I stayed upstairs for a few moments,” she said. “When I came down, Father was already leaving. I—” She looked at the stairs, back at Weigand. “Really, Lieutenant,” she said.

It was not necessary for her to go upstairs, Weigand told her. If she would merely come out of the circle? She did so, imposingly. Liza also abandoned her place, moving reluctantly from Brian's side, joining the Norths in an area which seemed for spectators. Or was it for the jury? Pam North patted Liza's arm, smiled but did not speak.

“Mr. Halder?” Weigand asked, and Mary Halder put her hand on the seat Pine had left. “Here,” she said.

“Mullins,” Weigand said and then stopped. “No,” he said. “Wait. Pam, will you sit there? Where Mr. Halder sat?”

(I wish, Pam thought, I knew what Bill's up to. She had been wishing that for some time. He's not like himself so he's up to something, Pam thought, because he usually doesn't needle people unless—)

“Please, Pam,” Bill Weigand said, and she went to sit beside Mary Halder.

“You can see the foyer?” Bill asked, and Pam looked. She could see the foyer.

“Now—Mr. Pine,” Bill said, “will you go down to the foyer and stand about where you did Monday night?”

Pine looked at Mary Halder. It was evident that her eyes told him to go. He went.

They watched him walk the length of the room, saw his stature diminish slightly as he went down the steps to the foyer level.

“Now,” Weigand said. “You have all come down. Except Mrs. Whiteside. What happened?”

But they looked at one another, and seemed puzzled. It was Lieutenant Colonel Whiteside who spoke, finally.

“Nothing,” he said. “At first, anyway. We—somebody had served coffee. I offered brandy around. I think Father Halder took some. I suppose we talked, but I don't remember—”

For how long? Perhaps ten minutes, perhaps a little longer.

“Then?”

“Then,” Mary Halder said, “the doorbell rang and Burns answered it. There are stairs directly to the foyer, you know. From the kitchen area. The door opened and—well, Sherman came in. But I—I guess none of us paid any attention.” She smiled at Weigand. “This silly house,” she said. “No service entrance. The front bell's always ringing.”

“You thought it was a delivery of some sort?”

Mary shrugged. She had not, she indicated, thought about it one way or another.

But then Burns had come up the steps into the living room and started down it, and, a little way down, had indicated, without words, that Mary Halder was being asked for.

“I got up, and then I saw it was Sherman,” she said. “I went to the foyer. Shall I now?”

“Please,” Weigand said.

She got up from beside Pam North and moved, unhurriedly, the length of the room. She joined Pine there. Weigand looked interrogatively at Pam North.

“Yes,” she said. “I can see them.”

“And recognize Mr. Pine?”

“Of course,” Pam said. “But then, I know he's there, don't I? I mean if I didn't—if I thought it was going to be the boy from the cleaner's, only it would have been pretty late for that.”

“If you knew Mr. Pine fairly well,” Bill said.

Pam looked.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course, what one person can see another—”

“Right,” Bill said. He addressed the others, generally. Had the elder Halder had normal vision?

“Twenty-twenty,” Whiteside said. “Thereabouts, anyway. He was far-sighted.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Now, at this point, what happened?”