A Pinch of Poison

by Frances Lockridge

  “Right, Paul,” Weigand said. “Keep at it.”

  “I think,” he said, after a moment, “that we’d better have a man on the Graham house; one of our own men. Have we got any who know the facts of life—about back doors and the like?”

  “Well,” Mullins said, “there’s Stein, if he’s still on duty. He’s sorta bright, in some ways.”

  Stein was still on duty. He was sent up to Riverdale in a radio car. Weigand looked at his watch. It was close to midnight. It was foolish, he decided, to wait up the rest of the night on the chance that Ashley and Madge Ormond might return and become available for questioning. He thought they would return, and that he could pick them up tomorrow. It wasn’t on the cards, he told himself, that they were really planning to hide out. Tomorrow would be another day. He could use another day, he thought, rubbing his eyes, stinging from weariness, with his finger-tips.

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said, when Weigand told him they would knock off until tomorrow.

  15

  THURSDAY

  9:20 A.M. TO 11:30 A.M.

  “Right,” Weigand said, “that’s the way I thought it worked.” He put the telephone receiver back on the hook in the booth. He looked rather pleased with himself, Mullins thought. Mullins was pleased too, although he didn’t know precisely why. The Loot was working things out, Mullins guessed.

  At Bellevue, Dr. Jerome Francis put his own receiver back. He looked puzzled. He shook his head, admitting he didn’t see what Weigand was getting at.

  “However,” Dr. Francis said, dismissing it. He could read about it in the papers. Meanwhile he had some interesting brain sections to do. Dr. Francis drew on rubber gloves and prepared to do them.

  “What’ve you got, Loot?” Mullins asked, curiously, as they got in the car. Weigand seemed in good humor.

  “A hunch,” Weigand told him, uninformatively. “Nothing you couldn’t have on what we’ve got, Mullins, if you’d use your head.” Weigand looked at Mullins’ head. “I guess,” Weigand said, with some doubt.

  “Listen, Loot,” Mullins said. Weigand grinned at him. They went across town to the Placement Foundation. They rode up to Miss Crane’s office. Miss Crane was cheerful and a little hurried. “The committee’s meeting,” she told Weigand.

  He wouldn’t, Weigand said, keep her. He merely wanted to look over whatever data they might have on Michael.

  “The placement record,” Miss Crane told him. “It’s supposed to be confidential, you know.” She smiled. “But I’ve already told you most of it,” she said. “So you may as well see it all.” She turned to her secretary.

  “Have them send in Michael’s record,” she said. “Michael Osborne. The lieutenant can read it here, if he likes, while I see the committee.”

  That would do admirably, Weigand told her. The record arrived—it consisted of loose sheets, bound in cardboard folders. Weigand skimmed it, reading the condensed record of Michael’s first appearance; a summary of the conversation with “Richard Osborne” who now more than ever, Weigand decided, had life only in someone’s imagination; records of the child’s physical examination, which showed him a small boy evidently pleasing to doctors; a summary of his psychological test, with the psychologist’s findings. Michael was doing well mentally, too. He had passed all the tests at the three-year level, most of those at the four and one or two at the five. He was superior; estimated I.Q. 120 plus.

  He ought to get along all right when things settle down, Weigand thought. He turned back to the physical record and reread it. Very husky for three, apparently, and with no defects—or, perhaps, one. “Protanopia,” the record noted, and passed on.

  “So,” Weigand said, half aloud. “I was pretty sure it would be.”

  He leaned back in his chair. It was a funny case, he thought; in some respects strangely intricate. He remembered the little things which had put him on the trail—always assuming he was on the trail—and smiled. They were such absurd little things. The engrossment of a child; the impatience of a man. And a hunch or two.

  “But I’m still a long way from proving anything,” Weigand told himself.

  In the outer office, Mullins was striking up an acquaintance with Miss Crane’s secretary, who was looking at him, Weigand feared, with rather amused eyes. Weigand collected Mullins and went on. He stopped in the Forties and pushed a bell marked “Ormond.” The door clicked and Weigand went up. Madge Ormond looked around the edge of a door and said, “Oh, hello, Lieutenant.”

  “I want to talk to you,” Weigand said. “Not here, however. I want to talk to you and your husband at the same time. Would you rather have us bring him here, or will you come along to his mother’s apartment with me?”

  “Oh—about last night?” Madge seemed a little amused. Weigand showed no amusement.

  “About last night,” he agreed. “And other things. Will you come along?”

  “Of course,” Madge said. “Everything’s all right, now.”

  “Is it?” Weigand said. “I hope you’re right, Miss Ormond. If we wait out here while you dress, will you stay away from the back door—and the fire-escape?”

  “Of course,” Madge said. “I won’t be a minute.”

  She wasn’t, to Weigand’s surprise, much more than ten minutes. She came out in a blue dress which looked crisp and cool, and with a small blue hat pitching on the waves of her blond hair. “Real blond,” Weigand thought, looking at her eyes. “Well, well.”

  She was willing to talk as Mullins drove them to the Ashley apartment, but Weigand was not. He would, he told her, rather go over it once, with Ashley present. Mullins parked the car, with a strong look at the doorman, in the reserved space before the apartment house in East Sixty-third. The two detectives and Madge Ormond rode up together.

  Randall Ashley, his hands extended, started toward Madge when she preceded the two men through the living-room door. Then he saw Weigand and Mullins and stopped and said flatly, “Oh.”

  “Go ahead,” Weigand said. “Kiss your wife, Mr. Ashley.”

  Ashley flushed darkly. Weigand watched as Madge’s hand went out to his arm, pressing gently in caution. Ashley made an effort, and smiled.

  “All right, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’ll hand it to you. Madge said you knew. How did you find out?”

  That, Weigand told him, didn’t matter. He wasn’t, right now, interested in marriage, anyway. His voice was not friendly.

  “Suppose,” Weigand said, “you tell me about last night. And if you were planning to say it was all an accident, skip it.”

  Madge and Randall looked at each other. They smiled at each other and Madge nodded.

  “He’s got us,” she said. “He always seems to get us.” Ashley shrugged.

  “All right, Lieutenant,” he said. “We were pretty sure you were having us watched—at least I was sure you were having me watched. And Madge and I just wanted to get off by ourselves. That isn’t strange, is it?”

  “Isn’t it?” said Weigand. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Ashley flushed again, and again Madge’s touch silenced him.

  “Let me tell him,” she said. “After all, he has to find things out.” She turned to the lieutenant. “Only this time there isn’t anything to find out,” she said. “Not really. It’s just as Buddy says—we wanted to be alone. We wanted to talk about some things without the chance that somebody—well, that anybody might be listening in. Is that unreasonable?”

  “I still don’t know,” Weigand said. “What things?”

  “What the hell business—” Ashley said, and again Madge stopped him. It was interesting, Weigand thought, to see how the sulky boy drained out of Ashley at her touch, leaving a much simpler, rather more attractive man.

  “I’ll tell him,” Madge said. “It wasn’t anything. I suggested we get away and talk things over. I wanted to persuade him to quit trying to make a secret of our marriage. I wanted him to go to his mother and tell her about it, and accept any decision she makes. I tried to persuade him that
—that getting the money in a lump isn’t really important.”

  She stopped and looked at Weigand. Weigand met her eyes.

  “I thought,” he said quietly, “that he was already convinced on that point—that it didn’t matter whether he got the money all at once, or merely the income. I thought that, Mrs. Ashley, because that’s what you told me.”

  She flushed, this time.

  “It was really true,” she said. “It was true when I told you that. It isn’t really important to him, any more than it is to me—not important enough to do anything about—anything—”

  “Like murder,” Weigand finished for her. “I hope you’re right, Mrs. Ashley.” There was no particular expression in his voice.

  “I am right,” she said. She spoke eagerly, searching Weigand’s face. “You see what I mean. Of course, he’d rather have the money all at once, but it isn’t anything—anything vital. Not to either of us. And now he agrees that we should tell his mother, and not try to influence her, don’t you, Buddy?”

  Buddy hesitated a moment.

  “Yes,” he said, finally. “I suppose so. I still think the old man pulled a dirty trick on me. But I agree with Madge that it isn’t very important.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “I’m glad you’ve got together.” It sounded rather cryptic, which was all right with Weigand. “Now,” he said, “where did you go?”

  “Out to Ben Riley’s,” Madge said. “The Arrowhead Inn, you know.”

  She said it calmly. Weigand stared at her, examining her face. He turned to Ashley. He couldn’t see anything in Ashley’s face either.

  “Out in Riverdale,” he said. “Yes, I know Riley’s. And that doesn’t mean anything to either of you?”

  They both looked at him. They seemed surprised.

  “Mean anything?” Madge repeated. “Ben Riley’s?”

  “Or Riverdale,” Weigand said.

  Ashley said, “Oh! That’s where Lois had been Tuesday afternoon,” he said to Madge. “Don’t you remember? Out seeing some people in Riverdale about a child?” He turned to Weigand. “Is that what you mean, Lieutenant? I can’t see that it would mean anything.”

  “No?” said Weigand. “Does Mrs. Halstead mean anything?”

  “Halstead?” Madge repeated. Her face was, so far as Weigand could determine, completely blank. So was Ashley’s. He waited for more than a minute, and then spoke.

  “Assuming you don’t know,” he said, “although it was in the newspapers—Mrs. Eva Halstead was killed last night. She was the woman who had, up to a few weeks ago, been taking care of Michael. Michael is the boy about whom your sister was seeing those people in Riverdale, Ashley. And Mrs. Halstead lived in Riverdale—lived about half a mile or so from Ben Riley’s Arrowhead Inn. I’m trying to make it all very clear for you—for both of you.”

  They stared at him.

  “But I don’t see—” Madge began. Ashley cut in.

  “There’s no way you can mix us up in it, Lieutenant,” he said. His voice was hot and hurried. “I’ll grant you you might make out some sort of a motive—a damned bad motive—for my—doing something—to Lois. But this Mrs. Halstead! We never even heard of her!”

  “No?” said Weigand. “I hope you didn’t. I’d hate to find you lying to me, Ashley.”

  Ashley stared at him, then made a gesture of resignation. His voice was quieter when he answered.

  “Well, Lieutenant,” he said, “I can’t make you believe us, if you’ve decided not to. If you think you can prove anything, go ahead and try it.”

  Weigand nodded. If Ashley wanted to take that attitude, he said, it would be perfectly understandable—also perfectly all right with him. But if Ashley thought there was no way of tying Mrs. Halstead into it—

  “Well,” Weigand said, “suppose I outline a case. You don’t have to say anything, unless you want to. Suppose I say that you got very much entangled with the young woman who—preceded Miss Ormond. The one your father knew about when he made the will. Suppose that was around four years ago and that the entanglement had a result—Michael.”

  “No,” Ashley said. He spoke without heat. “You’re barking up a wrong tree, Lieutenant.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “We’re just supposing. Suppose the girl died, or disappeared, and left you with the baby. Suppose you found various people to take care of him, ending up with Mrs. Halstead. Then suppose Miss Ormond came along, and you decided to get rid of an entanglement and, posing as Richard Osborne—he was about your height and weight, and dark glasses and a growth of beard would be all the disguise you’d need—you unloaded him on the Placement Foundation. What do you think of that theory, Ashley?”

  “I think it’s lousy,” Ashley said. He still spoke without heat.

  “Do you?” said Weigand, evenly. “Right. Now suppose your sister, through her connection with the Foundation, somehow stumbled on the fact that Michael was really your son. Suppose you knew that if she told your mother that, you would never get the principal of your money. Suppose when she was home Tuesday night she gave away what she had discovered and that she was going to tell her mother. And suppose you needed the money bad—suppose you were pretty deep in debt, for example.”

  Weigand watched Ashley narrowly. The last shot, anyway, told, he decided. Ashley’s voice was less even.

  “All right,” he said, “you’ve apparently been snooping around. I owe a lot—that’s why I want to get the money in a lump. But the rest of it—phooey! You’re wasting your time. There was a girl, sure. There wasn’t any child. The girl didn’t die or disappear—I could find her for you any time.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “Sure you could,” he said. “For a price—say around five hundred—you could find a girl all right. I know lots of girls who would say they’d played around with you for five hundred. Including girls who had been seen enough with you to make it plausible. So what?”

  “Well,” Ashley said, “we’ll see what you can prove if it comes to it. How’s that, Lieutenant?”

  Weigand agreed that that was all right.

  “Meanwhile,” he said, “I’ll remember you deny the whole thing. And, of course, I could be wrong. As a matter of fact, I can give you another theory.” Weigand looked at Madge Ormond. He didn’t like this one very much, he thought.

  “It’s possible,” he said, “that Miss Ormond was the girl.” They both stared at him. “It’s possible,” he went on, “that Michael is your son, Miss Ormond. Or Mrs. Ashley. You say you’ve only known Ashley for a couple of years but—well, that’s just what you say. It doesn’t have to be true.”

  “It is true,” Madge said. “I swear it’s true, Lieutenant.”

  Weigand nodded at her.

  “Why not?” he said. “If I were in your place I’d swear it was true. If it is, sure you’d swear it. And if it isn’t—sure you’d swear it. Who wouldn’t?”

  Madge was watching his face.

  “You know, Lieutenant,” she said, suddenly, “I don’t think you believe any of this. You just think there’s a—oh, a remote chance there’s something in it, and you’re trying us out. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

  “Is it, Miss Ormond?” Weigand said. His voice had no expression. “Anyway, you both deny both theories, I gather?”

  “Yes,” Ashley said, “we both deny both theories. And I don’t give a damn whether you, personally, believe them or not. So what do you do now?”

  Now, Weigand told them, he saw Ashley’s mother, if she was able to see him. They’d let the rest slide, for the time being.

  “Do you want to find out whether she can see me?” Weigand said to Ashley. Ashley hesitated. “Yes, Buddy,” Madge said. “Do what he says.” Ashley went out, slowly. He seemed to hate to leave Madge with the detectives.

  “Do you believe it, Lieutenant?” Madge said quickly, when Buddy had left. “All those things you said—about Buddy and about me? Do you really believe them?”

  He lo
oked at her. He spoke mildly.

  “I only said they could be true, Mrs. Ashley,” he told her. “And I want you to answer one more question. Was there anything the matter with your father’s eyes?”

  Madge stared at him, out of very large blue eyes of her own.

  “My father’s eyes?” she repeated. “What on earth, Lieutenant?”

  “Was there anything wrong with your father’s eyes?” Weigand repeated. “Surely that’s simple enough. Never mind why.”

  Madge seemed to think a moment.

  “I don’t know quite what you mean,” she said. “He wore glasses. He was near-sighted, I think. I used to try to look through his glasses when I was a little girl, and everything blurred. But I don’t think there was anything else.” She smiled. “I just thought all grown-up people wore glasses,” she said. “I didn’t think about what it meant.”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “I just wanted to know.”

  She seemed about to say something more, but Ashley came back into the room. He nodded to Weigand.

  “All right,” he said. “You can see her for a few minutes. Are you going to—?”

  “Tell her?” Weigand asked. He shook his head. “Not right now, anyway,” he said. “If you’ve been telling me the truth, you’re going to tell her yourself. And if you’re telling the truth, I don’t want to mess things up for you.”

  He motioned to Mullins to remain in the foyer, and climbed the stairs behind Ashley. The senior Mrs. Ashley was lying on a chaise-longue, and she had been crying. She looked younger, in some ways, than the sixty-odd she presumably was—one would have guessed her age at sixty-odd, with the mental reservation that she did not look it. She had a light voice which would, Weigand suspected, twitter over conversations when she was herself. Now it was thin and drained.

  She said, “How do you do, Lieutenant?” and Weigand said he was sorry to intrude. He waited until Ashley had gone out, and said he was very sorry about what had happened. Mrs. Ashley’s pale blue eyes filled and she nodded. She wiped her eyes with a tiny, lacy handkerchief.