by Frances
“My,” Pam North said.
“Not quietly,” Weigand said. “He’d not been in the limelight before, not much in the newspapers. After he sold out, and for no reason anybody could understand, he held a big press conference. Talked for almost the only time in his life; talked to a bunch of financial reporters and editors. And told them, in effect, that the whole thing was a racket—all he had done, all they were doing. Except, as he pointed out, he had made money out of it; made it, he told them, out of even bigger fools than they were. ‘If possible,’ he told them. I knew a man who was there. Halder said that the only reason he had been able to do it was because everybody—apparently he made no exceptions—was like himself, out for what he could get. The difference was, he told them, that he had got it. Then he said, ‘Frankly, gentlemen, people make me sick’ and told them where the bar was.”
“Well,” Pam said. “All that. And he died in a pet shop. What happened to the money?”
As far as Weigand knew, nothing had happened to the money. The money was still around. The house they were in was part of the money. On that, they were still working and for some time would be. But so far as they had discovered, J. K. Halder had leased an obscure shop, filled it with animals, gone to live in it merely because he was, as he had said, “sick of people.”
“Now,” Weigand said, “you are going to marry Mr. Brian Halder, Miss O’Brien.”
She nodded.
“Did his father object?”
“No,” she said. “I—I don’t think he knew. Brian said—”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t know all this,” she said. “All this you say about him, about Mr. Halder. But Brian said he was difficult that—that you had to put things to him in the right way. That he didn’t—” She flushed again and swallowed. “Well,” she said, “that he thought there were too many people around already, and didn’t think there ought to be any more marriages and—”
“That,” Pam North said, “is the silliest thing I ever heard of. Seriously?”
“I don’t know,” Liza said. “No—not literally, I guess. Brian maybe said that more to show how—how odd his father was. But that’s what he said. He may have been half joking. Exaggerating.”
“But you say Halder didn’t know about your and his son’s plans?” Weigand asked.
She shook her head. “Unless Brian told him in the last day or two,” she said. “I don’t think he did.”
Weigand stood for a moment, then, looking down at her. She could not tell what he was thinking; could not, although she wanted to, feel him, understand him, as a person.
“Right,” he said. “I think that’s all for the moment.” He shook his head. “Don’t try to mix things up after this, Miss O’Brien.” Again he paused, looking down at her. “One other thing,” he said. “Where were you last night?”
She looked at him, her eyes wide.
“Last night?” she repeated.
“Until about eleven-thirty,” Pam North said, “she was at out apartment, trying to get Martini to come out from behind a sofa.”
Weigand nodded. “And after that?” he asked.
“I went home,” Liza said. “Straight home. And went to bed. Was it—was it last night?”
“It may have been,” Bill Weigand said. “All right, Miss O’Brien. That’s all for now.”
“Must I go home?”
He hesitated. Then he smiled, and then, fleetingly, he became a person to Liza; someone she could almost understand.
“Go find him,” Weigand said. “Talk it over. Get it straightened out—if you can. You’ll have to some time. But don’t try to cook up anything else between you.”
“Oh no,” she said, and went out through the door he opened for her, went to find Brian, but went frightened and uneasy, fearing as much as she hoped.
Brian came to meet her up the long room and put both hands on her shoulders and looked, gravely, into her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I made a mess of it. You were swell, Liza. Very swell.”
Then he put an arm around her shoulders, and walked with her down the room toward the windows, where the two men and the two women were sitting, now were looking at Brian and at her, and waiting. There seemed to her a kind of uneasiness, almost of suspicion, in the way they all looked at her. But both of the men stood up as she and Brian approached, and the heavier man—lieutenant colonel what?—smiled in a friendly enough fashion. Then Brian introduced them and she tried to concentrate on their names, associate them finally with the way their faces were.
Whiteside, that was the lieutenant colonel, although Brian called him colonel. The older woman was his wife, Barbara. “My sister,” Brian said. “My half-sister.”
“How do you do, Miss O’Brien?” Mrs. Whiteside said, enunciating so distinctly that it seemed she really asked the question, expected an answer.
The tall man was Brian’s half-brother. Jasper, Brian said. “But everybody calls him ‘Junior.’ Or J. K. As they do—” he paused. “As they did Dad,” he said.
“Skip the ‘Junior,’ for God’s sake,” Brian’s half-brother said. It was odd, Liza thought, that he could so remind her of Brian and yet be, in all but height, physically so different. It’s more, she thought, than his being so much older, although he must be twice as old as Brian; more than twice.
And the blond woman, slight, not a great deal taller than Liza herself, she was Jennifer Halder, Jasper Halder’s, “Junior’s,” wife. Seen close, she was well-groomed, her features regular; seen close she was much younger than her husband, or than either of the Whitesides. She smiled at Liza; looked from her to Brian and back to her again, smiled and nodded. “But such a dreadful time,” she said. “So awful about Father Halder.”
“Father Halder,” Mrs. Whiteside said. “Really, Jennifer! You never called him that, you know. Why start now?”
“Dear Barbs,” Jennifer Halder said, sweetly. “Poor dear Father Halder.”
“Anyway,” Mrs. Whiteside said, “I didn’t truckle. Didn’t get down on my hands and—”
“Now,” Colonel Whiteside said. “Now my dears. We’re all on edge.”
“Truckle,” Jennifer said, still sweetly. “When did I ever hear ‘truckle’?”
“Please, Jennifer,” the colonel said, his voice low, persuasive. “Barbara. We’re all very much upset, Miss O’Brien.”
“Much more, Raymond,” Jennifer said. “Broken hearted. All broken hearted.”
“Really!” Barbara Whiteside said. “Really, Raymond!” Impatiently, she gestured with strong, square hands, carefully cared for, newly manicured.
It was embarrassing; they rasped at one another, indifferent to anything but the need to rasp. Liza wished, anxiously, there were some way to escape from the group, from the sharp words, the cutting meanings, they were throwing at one another, over her head, around her, as if she were not there. She looked up at Brian.
For a moment he looked down at her, for that moment it seemed that something—assurance, confidence—was to be re-established. But then there was a sound from the other end of the long room and Brian’s head turned toward the sound.
Weigand and the Norths had come out of the library, but it was not at them Brian Halder looked. A slim, dark woman was coming up the steps from the foyer, with a tall, very fair, very scrubbed-looking, man behind her. And Brian seemed to forget Liza; to forget her even before he withdrew his arm from her shoulders as if it were misplaced there, and started down the room toward the newcomers.
“Mary!” Brian Halder said. “Mary! Where on earth?”
The dark woman came toward Brian in a little rush.
“My dear!” she said. “Brian! We just heard. Oh—Brian!”
Then he put his arms around her and she put her face against his coat and he held her there, close, and patted her shoulders. He said something to her, but now he spoke softly, for her ears only—And Liza stood, her eyes wide, looking up the room at them, feeling all security crumble around her.
Then the woman, this Mary, stepped back out of Brian’s arms and looked up at him, and spoke in an odd, carrying voice.
“But why?” she said. “You’re so—excited, my dear. It wouldn’t have brought him back to life. Why was it so—?” He was looking down at her and there was, apparently, something in his eyes which answered her question. Because now she stepped still farther back and said, “Brian! You can’t! Why you—”
Then Weigand, who had been watching the two, stepped forward and interrupted.
“Now,” he said, and allowed his voice to carry, as the woman’s had done, “now I think we’re all here, at last. Your son’s been anxious to find you, Mrs. Halder. So have we.”
“But—” she said. “Who are you?”
Weigand told her; his identity seemed to astonish her.
“Yes, Mrs. Halder,” Weigand said. “We’re investigating your husband’s death. Because he was murdered, Mrs. Halder.”
But then, Liza thought, and something which had been like an iron band around her chest relaxed, was suddenly gone—but then, she’s Brian’s mother! Not somebody else!
It was easier to realize this as, with Weigand and the Norths, with Brian Halder’s arm around his mother’s shoulders (but it didn’t matter, now; it was all right, now) they came down toward the others by the tall windows. Mrs. Mary Halder was young to be Brian’s mother; she was slender and quick as a girl. But she wasn’t a girl; she must, Liza thought, be about forty. As old as that!
Then Brian was introducing them. “Liza, this is my mother. Mary, Liza.” Mary Halder was looking at her, looking at her slowly, carefully—at her body, her dress, most of all at her face. The gaze was not hostile; it was not even, or did not quite seem to be, appraising. And yet, Liza thought, it must be that only it’s so—so impersonal. But then Mary Halder smiled and held out her hand.
“She’s sweet, Brian,” she said. “And so pretty, isn’t she?”
Yet even the praise was somehow impersonal.
“She—” Brian began, and Liza found she was waiting, waiting anxiously, to hear what Brian would say. But he was not allowed to finish.
“Mary,” Jennifer Halder said. “My dear. It’s all so dreadful! They say he was—was killed!” Then she said, and this was to the scrubbed blond man, “Isn’t it awful, Piney?”
“Tragic,” the man called Piney said, as if he had been rehearsing the word in his mind. He shook his head, seemingly to give emphasis to the word. Then he repeated it, in a slightly deeper tone. “Tragic.” Then he turned to Liza and said, again as if he had formed the words earlier in his mind, “Nobody will remember to introduce us, Miss O’Brien. I’m Sherman Pine.” He held out a well-shaped, well-cared for, hand. Liza looked quickly to Brian as she took Pine’s hand, but Brian was not looking at her, not looking at Pine. He was looking around at the others—at his brother, his brother’s Jennifer; at the Whitesides, lieutenant colonel and lady.
“Now that you’re all here,” Lieutenant Weigand said, “I wish you’d sit down. I want to talk to you for a moment—to all of you. About what has happened.”
He waited, expectantly; the others found chairs, the Norths outside the circle; Mr. North, she thought, hesitantly, after some passage of the eyes between him and Weigand, between both of them and Mrs. North. Liza herself stood for some seconds uncertainly, feeling more than ever strange among these people—these people of Brian’s—and yet, because they were Brian’s, and he was one of them, feeling included among them. Then Brian’s hand was on her arm, he was guiding her to a chair, he was sitting beside her on the arm of the chair. Weigand looked from one to another of the group.
“I think I have you straight,” he said. “Let me see. Mr. Halder—J. K. Halder, Junior?” He nodded to Halder, who mirrored Weigand’s nod. “And Mrs. Halder, Junior? Mrs. Whiteside—you’re Mr. Halder’s daughter, this Mr. Halder is your brother?”
“Certainly,” Mrs. Whiteside said.
“Right,” Weigand said, and he was unperturbed although, Liza thought, he was supposed to have been perturbed, put somehow in his place.
“Colonel Whiteside? That’s right?”
“Well,” Whiteside said, “lieutenant colonel, actually.”
Weigand nodded. He went on. But he did not speak Mary Halder’s name, or Brian’s or, finally, Liza’s own. He merely nodded at them. But his eyes stopped on Sherman Pine.
“Mr. Pine’s a friend of mine,” Mary Halder said. “We’ve been—we were going on to dinner. But we heard the news.” She paused momentarily. “On the radio,” she said.
Bill Weigand nodded.
“Some time last night,” Weigand said, then, “Mr. Halder died in his shop, of strychnine poisoning. The poison had been administered hypodermically. Although it means a very painful death, and not as quick as is generally supposed, strychnine is often used by suicides. We may have been supposed to think that Mr. Halder was a suicide—that he had decided to end his life in a bizarre fashion. His reputation for eccentricity—the very fact that, as a rich man, he chose to live in this out-of-the-way shop, change all his normal habits—that reputation was supposed to make the suicide theory attractive to the police. And—the theory cannot be dismissed. The hypodermic used may have been his; so may the poison. He could have injected the poison, put the hypodermic back in the cupboard where we found it, in a box with the poison, walked to the pen in which he died and—well, merely waited to die. It would have been fifteen minutes to half an hour before the symptoms began. It could have been that way.”
He looked around at them, slowly.
“But,” he said, “I may as well tell you I don’t think it was that way. I think someone stronger than he held him, just long enough to inject the poison, kept him—again by superior strength—from summoning help, watched him die, put him in the pen before the body began to stiffen. I think somebody did this last night—say between eleven and two o’clock. And—I don’t think that person needed to be very strong, because Mr. Halder was a fairly old man, and not a particularly strong man.” He looked around at them, giving them a chance to comment.
“Dreadful,” Jennifer Halder said, and the others slowly, speculatively, looked at her, then looked back at Weigand.
“Now—” Weigand began, and then stopped and looked at the spiral staircase. Everybody looked at the staircase, down which a black Scottie was scrambling, scratching, making noise enough for a great Dane. The Scottie reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped abruptly, looked around in surprise. The number of people in the room seemed momentarily to baffle the Scottie, and he considered sitting down. But he abandoned this intention even before he started to put it into effect. He walked to Jennifer Halder, who was nearest, and smelled her briefly; he ignored Jasper Halder, greeted Colonel Whiteside, but only in passing and made a slight detour around Mrs. Whiteside.
“Aegisthus!” Mary Halder said. “Here I am, Aegisthus.”
The little black Scottie, who had hesitated to sniff Brian’s shoes, to look up with interest—and with apparent surprise—into Brian’s face, turned toward the voice and barked briefly. Then, a sudden scurry of Scottie, he rushed toward Brian’s mother, did not pause for the enquiry of smell, put forepaws on her knees and barked in welcome and relief.
“Good boy,” Mary said. “Good boy.”
“Really, Mary,” Barbara Whiteside said. “That dog!”
“He’s not doing any harm,” Mary Halder said. “Anyway—anyway, J. K. gave him to me. He was mine and—and his. Don’t you remember?” As she said this, for the first time, Liza thought, she seemed moved by something other than surprise, than shock. “Aegisthus,” Mary Halder said, and bent toward the little dog. “He’s dead, Aegisthus. The man’s dead.”
“Really, Mary!” Barbara Whiteside said again. “Really!”
Whiteside, like the others, had been watching the slight, pretty woman and the little black dog. Now he turned to his wife; now, as she repeated, but almost to herself, her deprecatory “really!” he sho
ok his head at her. She did not appear to pay any attention.
“I’m sorry,” Mary Halder said to Weigand, looking up from the little dog. “My husband gave him to me. He was—was something we both loved. But—I suppose I’m silly.”
The black Scottie with the tragic name tried to lick Mary Halder’s face, but now she pushed him, gently. He got down, stood for a moment looking up at her, seeming to study her, and then continued investigation. He was especially interested in Mrs. North, who required, who got, a thorough smelling.
“Cats, boy,” Pam North said. The black Scottie looked up at her, doubtfully. He barked. “I’m very sorry,” Pam told him, speaking with all seriousness. “But that’s the way it is. Remember—” She broke off and looked at Mary Halder. “Did he come from the shop?” she asked. Brian’s mother nodded. “Then of course you remember,” Pam told the black Scottie. “Cats? That’s what I smell of.”
The Scottie’s gaze into Pam’s face was as grave, as serious, as hers. He barked briefly.
“I knew you would,” Pam said. “I—” she broke off. “Aegisthus?” she said, asking confirmation of Mary Halder; who nodded.
“My husband named him that,” she said. “It’s—oh it’s out of literature, isn’t it? A Greek play, or something? So many of them are—the animals, I mean, at the shop.”
“Oh,” Liza said, before she thought, speaking freely for the first time in, it seemed, many hours. “The little black cat. She was named Electra he—he told me.”
“Poor dear Father,” Barbara Halder said, with detachment, as if her father had been dead for years, rather than hours. “So—fanciful. So—odd.”
“Well,” Pam North said, “our cat’s named Martini. Our chief cat. And Gin and Sherry, the ingredients.” She paused. “Of course,” she said, “I always feel it ought to have been the other way around. I mean, Gin and Sherry first, then Martini. But it wasn’t practical.”
She continued to look at the little Scottie. It was almost, Liza thought, as if Mrs. North had, for the moment, decided to keep their thoughts on the little Scottie.
