The Case of the Weird Sisters

by Charlotte Armstrong

  "Indeed?" Duff followed her willingly. "Your mother was both generous and imafraid, then?"

  But Isabel was like a bird. You thought you had salt on her tall and she swooped away. "It does harm," she said. "Alice, dear, I think perhaps you are working too hard. The strain . . ."

  Gertrude spoke from the arch. "Alice, dear," she echoed, "Innes is asking for you. He says it is time for his medicine. He seems very restless. Poor Innes."

  "Oh, gosh," said Alice. The pillbox was in her pocket. "Ill be right up. In just a minute."

  "I wonder," said Isabel, "whether we ought to have Dr. Gunderson? Or perhaps a nurse? What do you think, Gertrude?"

  "It doesn't seem necessary," said Gertrude coldly.

  Maud barged in behind her. "Alice, Innes wants to know what the heck you did with his pills."

  "I have them," said Alice. "Fll be right there." She began to type again.

  The three sisters stood ia the room, oddly indecisive. Their presence irritated Alice.

  "He can't have a pill, anyhow," she said over her shoul-

  der. 'The doctor changed the interval. It's too soon. Til tell him."

  Gertrude sighed. "Mr. Duff?" she said.

  "Yes, Miss Gertrude."

  "Shall we see you at dinner?"

  "Yes, indeed. Thank you."

  "That will be very pleasant," she said graciously, and withdrew, making for tiie parlor.

  Alice ripped out the sheet of paper, separated the copy, and handed the original to Maud.

  Maud grinned. She held it carelessly and trundled off toward the kitchen.

  Isabel said, "I think . . ." She hesitated. "Will you excuse me? I have some things to attend to." She swooped away.

  Alice and Duff were alone. She handed him the carbon copy of her work.

  "He's fixed it," she said, still grim. "You see if he hasn't."

  20

  At five o'clock that afternoon, Fred pulled the big car up by the side of a dirt road, in a pleasant spot, where woods grew up a little slope at their right, and the road fell away before them down a hill and bent along the course of a brook. The silence was perfumed with pine and the smell of warm dust. There was no traffic. There was peace.

  Alice leaned back on the cushions beside Duff and sighed, "I wish we'd brought a picnic."

  Fred squirmed around to face them over the top of the front seat. "We've been gone nearly an hour. Is it all right to stay away so long?"

  "He ought to be safe," said Duff cheerfully. "Killeen's there and Susan's there. The will's signed and the will's gone. And Alice is here with the pillbox."

  "The pillbox," said Alice, wonderingly.

  "We won't start with that," said Duff, "but we'll get to it." He passed cigarettes and stretched out his long legs. "Well, no soap on the telephone call. The telegraph office sent my wire up to Susan by somebody who happened to

  be going that way. He doesn't know, they don't know, what time it got to her. Late, says they. Susan, the source of our impression that the call was maJde around eleven, is frank to say that she is by no means sure. It was raining, she thinks. The rain fell from eleven on. The tele' phone company doesn't take kindly to looking up their records, which rather leads me to believe that their records aren't so very complete. They say they'll try. But they can't tell me, right now, when that call was made. And you kids, right there La the house, never heard it at all."

  "We can't help it," said Alice. "We just didn't"

  "Why didn't you, I wonder?"

  Fred said, "Ilie only thing I can say is that the phone sounds pretty dim when you're in Innes's room with the door closed. And aroimd eleven o'clock ... uh ... we were both in the closet, it so happens."

  "That's right, we were," said Alice, very solemnly, because she wanted ta smile.

  "Another thing," Fred went on. "If the water is running in the bathroom right next to the backstairs there, I guess I couldn't hear any bell. Well, it was running about eleven ten."

  Alice said, "That was me."

  "And then again, I was in there myself about twelve o'clock," said Fred, matter-of-fact.

  "Thanks," said Duff. "It's a pleasure to listen to intelligent people. But do you know, I don't think we're going to find out exactly when that phone rang."

  "Why does it matter so much?"

  "Perhaps it doesn't," said Duff placidly. "After all, if we can't prove it rang at eleven o'clock or nearly, neither can we prove that it didn't. I mean, vice versa, of course."

  Alice and Fred looked bewildered.

  "So we'll build up what we know, doing without the one little fact it seems we can't have. Settle down, you kids, and breathe the nice fresh air. I'ingoing to talk for quite a while."

  Having made this statement, he said nothing. The was good. They were far, far away from the Whitloc! house, and peace settied cozily around them. Alice relaxed. She was glad that Innes had insisted tliat Art Killeen

  stay at the house. It's better, she thought, with just us. Duff was the most peaceful man in the world, and one needn't strain oneself with Fred, of course. She smiled lazily at Fred, who took off his cap and put his feet up.

  "If you're sure Innes is O.K.," he murmured.

  "Oh, Inues has fixed that," said Alice sleepily.

  "I'll be goldamed if I'd have bought them off," said Fred. "He let them get away with it. He appeased them, that's what he did."

  "He didn't want to die."

  "Nuts," said Fred. "So nobody wants to die." He muttered something under his breath.

  "No isolationist, he," said Duff suddenly. He jerked his thumb at Fred, and Alice giggled. Fred ruffled up his hair with his fine hand and grinned sheepishly.

  "This is a nasty murder," said Duff. "This murder that hasn't happened yet. Does it strike you that all these attempts have been singularly slipshod? A lamp falls over. It might hit the right victim. It might not. It didn't hit anyone, but it was a very careless business."

  "Yeah," said Fred, half-kidding, "the murderess certainly shoulda been more careful."

  "The detour sign moved," went on Duff. "What a haphazard device that was! How easy it would have been for a strange car, a car full of innocent, unknown people, to have gone over into that pit and been killed. How uncertain a method it was of getting the right parties."

  "Which was us," Fred grimaced. "But I see what you mean."

  "It's almost as if the murderer's right hand doesn't know what his left is doing," mused Duff. "Like the veal in the meat loaf. Less crime than carelessness. Criminal carelessness. One could say one hadn't thought. A kind of unconscious murder."

  "The dampers turned wasn't so darned unconscious." "Who can say?" said Duff. "A woman doesn't understand a furnace. Or so she tells herself. She will make it nice and warm for Innes. She will put plenty of coal on. She doesn't understand dampers and drafts. She closes it up, with the very best intentions."

  "You mean that? You think it was a mistake?" "It was no mistake," Duff said, "but a person skilled at deceiving herself could have done the murder and looked the other way."

  "What's the bearing?" asked Fred.

  "I'm being profound and psychological," said Duff sternly. "Be quiet. Now, we must say to ourselves, why? What motive? You tellme it must be on account of money. Murder for money. It's not unheard of."

  "Seems to me I've heard of it," said Fred. "Yeah."

  "Who wants money that bad and why?''

  "Do you have to ask why?" said Alice in a timid voice.

  "Money buys," said Duff, "but it buys a lot of different things. Take Gertrude. What does she want to buy?"

  "Her clothes are terrible," said Alice.

  "Be quiet," said Fred, "or else be profound, like us. She'd buy the status quo, eh, Mr. Duff?"

  "Her prestige," said Duff. "Yes, I think so, don't you?"

  "She's got to be the Whidock in the Whitlock house on the hill." Fred nodded

  "But she's got her own money," objected Alice. "She's the one who's got some left."

  "The
regime was on the verge of a change, however," said Duff quietly. "Innes was balking. He was going to take over. The bank would know. Gerrtrude would no longer be mistress of her own fortune, in the bank's eyes. Therefore I suppose the town would know. Charity of their brother. The Whitlock girls,"

  "Oh," said Alice.

  "Did Gertrude like the idea?"

  "She didn't like it," said Alice. "I remember."

  "Vanity in her poison," said Duff, in his gentlest voice. "But not hatred. Not revenge."

  "No?"

  "No, because Gertrude rather likes being blind Don't gasp. She was an unattractive, a haughty, and a proud young girl, unlikely to marry. Unfitted to marry. Unapproachable. Maybe she knew that. Her excuse, you see, for being a spinster, lies in her blindness. A tragedy all her own, which she loves and cherishes, believe me."

  "I can't believe . . ."

  "However it may have been at the beginning, that's Gertrude now. But she must maintain her picture of herself. Her tragedy must be high class and take place in

  dignified economic circumstaiices. She wouldn't enjoy the picture of herself as blind and poor"

  "No."

  "Gertrude deceives herself easily, wouldn't you say so?"

  "She swallowed an awful lot of terribly sticky flattery from you," said Alice.

  "She lapped it up."

  "Yeah, she would," said Fred.

  "Yet, Gertrude's idea of keeping up to snuff, so Josephine tells me, is by giving orders. That's the one element in her character . . . Tell me, is it possible? Can you imagine, with any reality, Gertrude Whitlock, in person and not by deputy, knocking over a lamp and then forgetting it, rather? Gertrude wishing her brother dead so that she might keep her own fortune and have another and stay where she is, a tragic and a lovely legend in the town for the rest of her days?"

  "Wishing, sure," said Fred.

  "Wishing enough to do something about it? To take action?"

  "Yes," said Alice, "yes, I suppose so. But . . . she's blind."

  "Never mind that for now."

  Fred said, "If she did it, she'd do it like you said, halfconsciously."

  "I thought so myself," said Duff. "Let's look at Maud."

  "You look," said Fred. "Maud's my pet aversion." Every once in a while Fred let out a three-syllable word. His college education, thought Alice.

  "What would Maud want to buy with money?" Duff demanded.

  "Candy," said Alice.

  "Peanuts," said Fred.

  "That's it. Her little comforts," said Duff. "Maud's sensual and lazy."

  "Maud's a pig, and she'd as soon kill anybody as squash a fly," said Fred, "for all she'd worry about it."

  "Unmoral," said Duff, "yes. But for all that, Maud has a certain directness about her." -

  "She'd call a spade a God-damned shovel," said Fred. "Excuse me, Alice."

  Alice said, "I know. She's terrible."

  "There's another element in our Maud," Duff said, "and that's curiosity. For aJl her sloppiness and her happy-go-luckiness, as Innes says, and her sloth, she's curious. Also, she's intelligent." "Who? Maud!"

  "Comparatively speaking," said Duff. "Yes, I think so. Because she doesn't deceive herself. Maud knows she's a slob. She doesn't give a damn, but she knows it."

  "If she's intelligent, give me somebody who's dumb enough to take a bath," said Fred in disgust.

  "Nevertheless," Duff said, "I don't think Maud fits the psychological pattern, the unconscious murderer."

  "Sure she does," Fred insisted. "That's just her sloppiness. It's the same thing, same effect, I mean. Either i she's half-fooling herself, or she's just sloppy." 1'

  "You may be right," said Duff thoughtfully. "I can be wrong. I can be baffled," he warned them.

  "I think she knows more than she lets on," admitted Alice. "Her eyes are "so bright, in that fat pasty face. . . ."

  "But the trouble it takes," murmured Duff. "Life's too short, you know." x

  "Damned merry, for Maud, though," said Fred and '' stopped. "Well, what about Izzy?"

  "Isabel," said Duff. "Well, now, what is Isabel? Grasping, eh? She'd buy things. What's more, she'd keep them. She's not only grasping, but I'd say she never lets go."

  "That's what Innes said," Alice told him. "Innes says she never takes her losses."

  "Yes," said Duff, "that fits in. She's got the Woman's Home Companion complete since 1939." "What's her room like?" "Her room is a hoard." "Oh," said Alice, "the sleeves?" Duff said, "Sleeves come later, but I'll tell you for now that nobody has any stained sleeve or any sleeve that looks as if it had been recently washed, nor has Josephine washed any."

  "What does that mean?"

  "A bare arm," said Duff. "Speaking of arms, I think we may take it that Isabel is still wearing her original artificial arm, since a new one would surely seem a waste of money to her. At least, she'd hoard the old one, and I found no

  extra limb lying about among her possessions. Qose your mouth, Alice." Alice's jaws closed in a snap, while Duff went serenely on. "Isabel, then, is grasping. Isabel has energy, too. Don't you think so?"

  "Oh, yes, nervous energy," said Alice. "She's awfully nervous. I hate the way she puts her hand on me."

  "Can you imagine Isabel setting these traps for her brother's life?"

  "Yes," said AHce, "I'm afraid I can. I loathe them all, but if I have a pet aversion, it's Isabel."

  "Maud," said Fred.

  "Isabel," said Alice.

  "Yet why not all three," said Duff. "It could be, of course. Suppose one drops the lamp. Suppose another flies down the hiU in the dark and tugs at the sawhorse. Suppose the third, seeing her sisters fail, as in a fairy tale, slips into the cellar and makes her rounds of the pipes. There isn't a thing to show that one and only one was guilty. And the motive holds for them all, just as you said, Fred, though I scarcely believed you then."

  "Do you mean they have a conspiracy?" said Alice, troubled.

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. I can't imagine that."

  "Neither can I," said Fred. "They're so kinda separated."

  "Disconnected," agreed Alice.

  "I can't imagine a conspiracy, either," admitted Duff, "because I truly believe that neither Gertrude nor Isabel would admit to her sisters that she was a murderess. Not even to themselves," he said, ''will they admit anything. So how admit a thing like that to anyone else?"

  "Maud would, though," said Fred.

  "Maud might."

  "Well," said Alice, ''maybe Maud could have done it all, with Mr. Johnson helping."

  Fred's eyes flickered. Duff said, "Please don't bring up Mr. Johnson."

  "He moves awful quiet," said Fred disobediently. "Maybe he sneaked up the back stairs and pushed the lamp."

  "He didn't," groaned Duff. "He didn't move the detour

  ♦>

  sign edther. He's got an alibi for attempts number one and two."

  "What?"

  ''Oh, yes. Oh, yes. The most perfect alibi. He's only got one pair of pants in all the world and they . . ."

  "Were torn!" cried Fred. "Say . . . ! He was hanging around the car, caught his pocket. . .'

  "Don't," begged Duff, "mention it'

  "All right, but why wouldn't he have turned the dampers?" said Alice, bringing them back to their muttons.

  "Josephine says not."

  "Why not?"

  "The back door makes a racket, even if he doesn't. And don't talk to me about the front door. I'll tell you right now that if he did it, I'm licked. Because I do not imderstand Mr. Johnson."

  Fred grinned. "Look," he said, "the trouble with him is, there's nothing to understand. He's practically a blank page. He just says the first thing that comes into his head. He's a simple-minded guy. Not crazy, I don't mean that. But he just barges along from one minute to the next. He doesn't worry, he doesn't even think. He's simple. That's all."

  Duff said, "I am too civilized. I have often suspected it."

  "Most people are," said Fred g
enerously. ''Say, you've got to see that Indian two or three times before you can believe in him."

  "Thank you," said Duff humbly. Alice opened her mouth again.

  This Fred! she thought.

  21

  Shadows were longer across the road. Duff lit another cigarette. "Now, let us deal with the faking business. Are any of them faking? Can we tell? Do we know?"

  "Isabel hasn't got a real right hand," said Fred. "We know that"

  "Yes, we know that''

  "About Gertrude," said Alice. "She must be blind.'' "I see nothing to deny it," said Duff. "She didn't trip on color. Remember, I miscalled the color of the ash tray? There's nothing in her room to indicate sight. If she can see, she is far more wUy and devious and subtle and deliberately maHcious than we think."

  "Well, I think she probably is wilier than I think she is. I mean . . ." Alice began to flounder.

  "Irish bull, Brennan," said Fred. "Get to Maud. Old happy-go-lucky."

  "It's possible," said Duff, "that Maud is not deaf, or at least not as deaf as she makes out."

  "But for heaven's sake," said Alice, "if she can hear, why go to all that trouble of making people write things down and learning finger talk and all the nuisance! Why would anybody do that? If Maud's so lazy, I should think ..."

  "Wait," said Duff. "Imagine Maud, years ago. Bring up the past. I'm used to it. You try. Remember, one sister is blind. As such, she gets special service, doesn't she? And she is exempt from duty. The other sister has only one arm. Special service again. Exemption from duties. Leaving the third sister, who is whole, in the position of the only one in the lot who might be expected to run errands, attend to small chores, deal with tradespeople, take responsibilities, be the general overseer. There are many small executive duties connected with the running of a house. Interruptions and nuisances. Do you imagine Maud taking kindly to them? On the contrary, I think Maud's laziness perfecdy consistent with a gradual fake loss of hearing. Her sisters say, "You go, Maud"—''Maud had better"—"Maud, will you"; but pretty soon, Maud stops hearing these requests, stops being useful. Maud loafs.

  "Maud develops a psychological deafness. By not attending, by a deep inner loafing, she really doesn't hear. Or, at the very least, she seems not to hear. But I really don't know how you are going to prove that she doesn't"