The Case of the Weird Sisters

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Isabel held her page down with her left hand and looked at them with her quick, close-lipped smile. "Just in time for dinner. Alice, dear, Mr. Killeen is dining upstairs tonight. He is leaving, you know, on the ten o'clock train. Innes will have company, so you must join us and our guest. Won't you?"

  Gertrude said, "Of course, Alice, dear. And will you show Mr. Duff where he may wash, my dear?"

  "Say, I'm hungry!" boomed Maud. "Where you folks been?"

  Alice couldn't say a word. Duff bowed. "I've been taken exploring," he said smoothly, "I'm sorry if we've been long. You must forgive the enthusiasm of a man who has a hobby."

  The three of them, stiU in a body, moved past the arch, while Josephine went by toward the kitchen, almost running. Duff motioned them upstairs.

  In the upper hall he called them close. His face was more disturbed than Alice had ever seen it. "That was the

  sound, of course," he said. "You're sure? It was the very same? No difference?"

  "Oh, no," they said, "that was the same."

  He let his head drop, as if it would fall off its stem, limp until his chia touched his chest. He stood, bowed and silent, thinking. Alice dared not move. She looked at Fred and caught a httle comfort from his eye.

  Duff raised his head finally and drew an old envelope and a pencil from his pocket. He began to make quick marks on it. Alice could see them. It looked like algebra. There was a, b, c, d, and checks and symbols. Diiff reviewed his problem. His face relaxed.

  "Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other," he said. "So . . ."

  "So what?" Alice and Fred spoke together, and he caught her hand so naturally that they stood, hands clasped, like a pair of children, and never knew it.

  "Logic," said Duff, "is a wonderful thing, after all. Yes, I know."

  "Who?"

  "Only one of them," Duff said.

  "Which one?"

  "There's an 'if.' Two 'ifs.' If this and if that, why, then I know. Not only that our wicked one is only one, but which one. The two sets of facts check, 'if' and 'if.' But the logic's so clear. The 'i£s' are nearly answered. They have to fit. After all, probability's a law, too."

  Killeen came out of Innes's door. "Hello."

  Duff paid no attention. He put his hands on Alice's shoulders and looked searchingly iato her face. "That funny Uttle sound," he said. "Why do we hear it now! What's happened? What thought went through that brain and set it off? Something's happened, if only a thought. If only an idea. Look here, my dear, we forgot something. There's another chance. Suppose she doesn't bother to unmurder Innes? Suppose, instead, she murders you7''

  "M-me?" said Alice.

  "What is this?" said Killeen.

  "Murders you first," said Duff. "Do you see? Then, let Innes get his pill. Let that plot proceed. You can't inherit while he's still alive. And you can't inherit once you're

  dead." He turned. "Mr. Killeen, if Alice dies and then, soon after, Innes dies, not having changed the will you've just drawn, what happens?"

  "He'd be intestate, as far as the bulk of his fortune goes," said Killeen, looking white and shocked. "He directed that it be put in trust for Alice, and then for his children."

  "But if there were no children?"

  "To his kin," said Killeen.

  "Not Alice's heirs?''

  "No, no. Since she's not, herself, his natural heir. Not yet. Not until they are married. No, it would go to his mother and sisters."

  "Why didn't he set up a trust for them, here and now, to continue whether he lived or died?"

  "I wanted him to," said Killeen. "But he was so bent on making it plain and clear that they'd better leave him ahve."

  "He overreached himself," said Duff. "You see? He should have made his life or death a matter of indifference to them."

  "Listen," said Fred to Alice. "You've got to get out of here."

  Killeen said, "Alice, take the train with me tonight."

  "Yeah, go ahead," said Fred.

  "We have to get down to dinner," she said. "We're late. We mustn't let them know what we think. Must we? Mr. Duff, you'll be here. Nothing will happen while you're here. Hadn't we better go down to dinner?"

  Duffs face didn't lighten. "It may not be my departure, but Killeen's, she'll wait for. It may occur to her that, with 'KDleen handy, Innes could draw still another will.''

  "After I'm dead, you mean," said Alice, with strange calm.

  Fred said, "You're not going to be dead. You're going to scram out of here."

  "Why take a chance?" Killeen pleaded. "Alice, what's the percentage . . .?"

  "Ssh," she said. "Well have till ten o'clock, maybe. We ... we have to think."

  Duff said, "Yes. Let's meet after dinner, in Innes's

  room. I'll go there now. Susan?"

  "Still here," said Killeen. ''Innes wants her to stay for dinner."

  "You mean the trap?" said Fred. "You're going to tell her what to do? Are we going to go ahead with that?"

  "May as well." Duffs face was grave and sad. "No harm. But this evil . . . How can we anticipate the works of a brain that works as this one does? Chancey, you know. How can we foresee what wild grabs at the passing skirts of mere chance she'll make, and we'll have to guard against? Alice, my dear . . ."

  "But you know who it is!" she said.

  "Suppose Vm wrong?" said MacDougal Duff.

  He went into Innes's room,

  Fred said to Alice, steadily, "Nothing's going to happen to you."

  She snuled. "Oh, I don't think so either," she said, as if it were she who did the reassuring.

  Killeen put his arm around her. "I won't leave unless you do," he said. "Listen, darling, you've got to play it safe. Safe for you."

  He looked very stem and noble.

  Alice slipped out of his arm, and her voice shook. "I know. Don't worry. My goodness, so nobody wants to die!"

  The bathroom door closed on her light and shaky laughter, and they stood outside, Killeen on guard, like a soldier, Fred gnawing his thumb in worried thought

  Dinner was pretty grim. Alice fiddled with her food. She couldn't help thinking of poison. She tried to taste only that which came from a common dish or what all three sisters were eating, and she tasted very littie. Her throat was too full to swallow, anyway. She must be frightened, she thought. But the fright was so deep, she knew it scarcely showed. She was able to do her part in the trap setting, as they had planned it, when the moment came.

  Duff and Gertrude bore the conversational burden between them, but Duff wasn't sugary with her any more. He was sterner now. He let his views of history be little sermons. Alice wondered which one he was trying to touch and convert. He spoke some of the sifting history did. He said that only long-term virtues stuck to people, after history got through with them. He said patience, and endurance, and selfishness, and all the least flashy and dullest attributes stuck out like rocks after the looser soil had been washed away in the tides of time. He said the good opinion of one's contemporaries was unreliable. He said a truly fine person must disregard it in favor of his own approval or the vague thing called integrity, which was, nevertheless, one of the most solid things in the world. He said that was a fact.

  Again he spoke, and said the day of greed was passing. He said it was outworn. It had done its worst. It would have to be over. Because it had wound the world up to a climax and brought forth the ultimate consequences for all to see. He said greed was in the process of committing suicide.

  He said, again, apropos of nothing in particular, that to dodge one's responsibilities was to dodge life itself and die unsatisfied. He said that people's idea of heaven was a state of perfect ease. But, he said, we aren't built to endure that.

  The Whidock girls were polite to him. Except Maud, of course, although even she forbore to interrupt him often with her hoarse irrelevancies. Gertrude listened as one superior being to another. Isabel listened, with her half-abstracted air. They agreed. Oh, yes, they agreed. His preaching struck off their
surfaces. It got no deeper.

  Alice tried to think ahead. Could she think through this night? Or was her intuition warning her, as it had twice before? Were her antennae cut off? She couldn't tell. She didn't have any subconscious promptings. She had too much fear in full consciousness.

  One picture wouldn't seem real, the one about Alice and Art Killeen getting on the train together, riding away, leaving this mess behind them for somebody else to straighten out. Her mind wouldn't paint it or give it color. But that wasn't subconscious. That was just deliberately unconscious.

  Josephine came down at last with the message from Susan, the one Susan had been told to send, the one that was part of their trap. Their silly litde trap.

  Said Josephine, "Miz Lines says she wants to know where are Mr. Innes's pills, Miss Brennan. It's time for him to have one."

  "No, it isn't," said AJice, glancing coolly at her watch. She was sustained by the plan. This she knew how to do. "I gave him one when I came in. He can't have one now."

  "But . . ." Josephine hesitated.

  "I left them on the mantel," said Alice, loud with impatience. Then she leaned over to Maud and smilingly, with gestures, borrowed that one's pad and pencil.

  On the page she wrote, forming her letters clear and large, "In the blue box. But don't give him one now." Maud was beside her. Alice felt her glance, as if her fingertips could feel it. She handed the slip of paper around the table. It went through Gertrude's hands to I>uff, who took care to hand it to Isabel. Isabel gave it to the servant, with one of her abrupt twists of the body by which she seemed to compensate for her onesidedness.

  That was done.

  Now. She who could hear, but not see, would think the pills were on the mantel. And there was a white box of pills on the mantel up there, easUy found by questing fingers. She who could see, but not hear, would believe the pills were in a blue box. There was a blue box, a pillbox, conspicuous on the table beside Innes's bed. She who could both see and hear would look for a blue box on the mantel, and inside a blue china box, thereon, was a third pillbox. None of the pills in any of these boxes were dangerous. But they were different.

  Very tricky, thought Alice. But perhaps it was too lat< for tricks. Her fork clattered on the dessert plate. She tool hold of her nerves and commanded her fingers to steadier.

  When dinner came to an end at last, Mr. Duff excus( himselL He said he would go up to talk to Innes for a litdc while, and then he really must go home to bed. Alice sai< she would go upstairs, too.

  So far, nothing. So far, so good.

  Fred was lurkiag in the upper hall and followed them into Innes's room, where the defenders gathered around his bed, Innes, all smiles, happily imconscious of their new forebodings, was just saying an affectionate good night to his mother.

  She went beaming away, and they let her go.

  "Sit down. Sit down," said Innes. "You know, my mother has been scolding me. Really. She complains that Fm doing so much for the girls and nothirig at all for her. So Fve promised." He smiled tenderly. "Of course, it isn't that she needs it. Father left her very well off. It's just that she's jealous," he said

  Duffs eyes looked alive and a little sly with amusement. "It's a very human failing," he suggested.

  "Of course it is," said Innes, all wise and magnanimous. "Only natural. Mother's getting old, you know. She needs me. Well ... how did it go at dinner? You set the trap did you?"

  "Mr. Whitlock"—Duff disposed his long bones in a chair, sorrowfully—"we smell danger. I'm sorry to have to point out that, unintentionally, of course, you have put Alice in a doubtful position."

  As Duff talked, Innes began to disintegrate. His terror came back, all the worse for haviag been temporarily forgotten, and crept over him, drained his happy mood away, reduced him to a cowering, sweaty, pale, plump, middleaged man in fear of his life.

  "Yes, I see. Yes, I see." He touched his dry lips with his tongue. "Alice, dear, you must get away. If you go and they can't get at you, then Fm safe." Even in his state, he caught the ungallantry. "We're both safe," he amended. "That's so, isn't it, Mr. Duff? Alice, dear, you will have to go."

  "And then what?" said Alice.

  "What do you mean, dear? Then they won't . . . Mr. Duff, explain it to her."

  But Duff said, "What were you going to say, Alice?''

  171

  "I only want to know what happens to our plans if I go away."

  "Our plans, such as they are, proceed," said Duff. "At least we can see who is interested in which pillbox. For she will have to unmurder Innes, surely, once youVe gone."

  "I don't think much of that," said Alice.

  "It's feeble," Duff agreed quickly. "But it may help."

  "Here we are," she said, "three of you able-bodied men, and Innes, who's perfectly well able to yell, at least, and me, who am able-bodied and young and more or less bright. Do you mean to say that all of us are so scared of one handicapped old woman that we have to scatter and run?"

  "Listen, don't be dumb," said Fred. "You .. ."

  "I'm not dumb," said Alice hotly. "But what on earth's the use of fooling around with halfway measures? If you really want to play safe, Innes, why don't you make a big fuss? You can a&ord it. Get people in here, rouse the town, get the police. Or hire an ambulance and go somewhere else. Or hire a special train, for heaven's sake, and let's all run away!"

  "Yeah, but we don't want to do that," said Fred. "Then we'd never know."

  Alice ignored him. "Why don't you do that, Innes?"

  "I I "

  "You don't want to, do you?" she purred sweetly. "I know. Suppose we all run away and say we're safe, and she gets to thinking about murder . . . suppose she picksj out one of her sisters . . . suppose she kills your mother,! Innes ... or Josephine? Goodness knows, she must bej partly crazy. You can't just ignore this sort of thing and goj away and say, Tm safe so what's the difference?' You] couldn't do that, Innes, I know."

  "No," he said, licking his lips nervously, "no, I .. ."

  "Well, then," said Alice, "if we want to stop it and set'] tie the whole thing . . ."

  Killeen said, "You're swell, Alice! You're perfecdy swell! But, don't you see, if it were anyone but you. . . . We can't let you be bait for this trap."

  "Why not? I make pretty good bait, don't I?"

  "Nuts, Brennan," said Fred sofdy.

  "No . . . no . . ." said Innes. "The risk, my dear. The risk for you!"

  Alice felt a wave of shame. She said, with sudden honesty, "I don't mean . . . Listen, I'm not so awful brave as all that. I only ... I don't want to run away." Tears stung behind her lids.

  Fred said, ''We got the idea. Now you can run along. You'd better."

  "Darling, it isn't safe . . ."

  Alice was furious. "So who wants to be all the time safe!" she cried at them all. "I won't go. No, I won't. Not unless Innes goes, and I mean that"

  KiUeen said, "Very Well. I won't go unless you do, and I mean that, too."

  Duff said, "Fire, fire, bum stick, stick won't beat dog

  99

  • • •

  Innes was all atremble. "But what shall we do? How ... what's the best... 7"

  "What can you do?" said Fred in disgust "The lady wants to be a hera"

  "I do not," snapped Alice. "I haven't the slightest intention ... I only th-thought . . ." She was shocked to find the tears escaped and rolling down her face.

  Duff said calmly, "We must do the best we can."

  They all turned. "We are in your hands, after all," said Killeen, " 'Lay on, Mac Duff, and damned be he who fijst cries . . .' "

  MacDougal Duff looked pained. 'The cross I bear," he said. "Yes, of course." His lids fell, hiding the eyes. "Let Killeen appear to leave. He can come back secretiy. Let us rearrange ourselves, to be as safe as possible. Alice, my dear, we shall hide you somewhere. Mr. Whitiock must have a substitute, with soimd ribs. Let us then lie low and wait and see." He looked veiy sad and tired. "Our best may not be good enough."
/>   "Thank you," said Alice.

  She went out of the room blindly, but Killeen was after her. "You mustn't be alone," he whispered. "Where are you going?"

  "To get my handkerchief."

  "Darling"—he put his arm lightly around her—"why don't you take the train with me?"

  "I don't want to. I don't know."

  His arm fell away, a little stiffly. "You're in love with Innes."

  "Don't be silly."

  Alice wept quietly before her mirror and then tidied her face, wondering what she was crying about. Nerves, she thought. When she came out into the hall, determined to be composed, she found Fred on guard beside her door. She looked at him hostilely.

  "I wish you'd change your mind," he said mildly. "No kidding. It's dangerous."

  "Why don't you leave," said Alice fiercely, "if you don't like it here?"

  "Uh, uh," he said. "I'm going to get into that bed and see if we can't fool them some. We're going to sneak Innes into my room. You and Killen wUl stay with him."

  "It's dangerous," she said.

  He snatched at her wrist. "I think you're crazy! What do you want to stick around and risk your life for? Listen, for the love of Mike, will you get some sense and scram out of here?"

  "No."

  "Why not!"

  "The same to you."

  "It isn't the same to me. For God's sake, stop saying that."

  "I suppose if the ceiling falls down on Innes's bed and you're in it, that's not dangerous? What do you want to risk your life for?"

  "It's my life, and I happen to have been bom stubborn. This is a rotten house, and the people are rotten, and I don't like them, and I want to see them put away where they belong, and it's no business of yours."

  "My hero," said Alice.

  "Shut up. What the hell's the matter with you? I can't leave him now."

  "All right. I can't leave him either. Fred, it's a reflex. You said so yourself."