A Pinch of Poison (7 page)

She went and Mr. North went after her. Mullins, after a glance, went after them. Bill Weigand and Dorian stood and looked at each other.

“Hello, Dorian,” Bill said, softly. She smiled.

“Hello, Bill,” she said.

“She was about my age, Bill, or just a little older,” Dorian said. “Wasn't she?”

“Yes,” Weigand said. “About that.”

“She must have wanted to do so many things,” Dorian said slowly. “She must have thought there was time for a lot of things.”

Weigand merely nodded. There seemed to be nothing much to say. Lois Winston was probably two or three years older than Dorian, he thought, and he wondered whether, a few hours ago, she had stood and moved as Dorian did.

“Well,” Dorian said, “it sounds funny from me, Bill, but—good hunting.”

There wasn't anything to say to that, either. It was merely something which stretched back between them to a day when she had had a good deal to say about men who were, professionally, hunters. But there was nothing which needed to be said about it.

“Well,” she said, and paused, “I must be in the way.” She looked at him. “Take care of yourself,” she said, only half lightly.

Then, moving with that singular, balanced grace of hers, she was gone from the room. Police Lieutenant Weigand replaced Bill Weigand. The lieutenant went to the door and said, crisply:

“Mullins!”

Mullins reappeared.

“He's dead,” Mullins said. “Airplane crash.”

“What?” said Weigand. “Who's dead?”

Mullins looked hurt.

“This guy Ashley,” he said. “This guy Ashley's father. The guy you were asking about.”

“Oh,” said Weigand. “So Kenneth Ashley's dead, is he?” He wondered vaguely why he had wanted to know. Then he roused himself. “Right,” he said. “Now we're going places.”

Mullins said, “O.K., Loot.”

6

T
UESDAY

11:25
P.M.
,
TO
W
EDNESDAY
, 1:40
A.M
.

The Buick stopped outside the apartment house in East Sixty-third Street and a man sauntered over, looking vaguely as if he were going to give advice on parking and offer to wash her off. Weigand nodded to him.

“Upstairs,” the man said, jerking his head toward the building. “He came right along, with the dame.”

“Right,” Weigand said. The detective drifted off, to loiter in low visibility. It was convenient that Randall Ashley had come home and brought the girl—something Ormond, Weigand recalled—with him. Weigand slid from behind the wheel and Mullins joined him on the sidewalk. They went in and up, ignoring an attendant who was disposed to announce them. A slight, blond maid in uniform answered their ring, and Weigand told her they had come to see Mr. Ashley. The girl, he thought, looked pale, and as if she had been crying.

Neither Ashley nor Madge Ormond appeared to have been crying. Both had glasses. They sat together on a sofa in the long living-room and had, Weigand felt, been talking intently when they were interrupted. Ashley twisted to face them, frowned and stood up.

“Well, Lieutenant?” he said, coldly and with a little too much dignity. Weigand nodded to him; to the girl, who was also blond, but neither pale nor weeping. She was the sort of girl for whom almost any man could imagine himself going. Weigand observed with dispassionate interest. She looked back at him, levelly.

“Sit down, Mr. Ashley,” Weigand directed, as he and Mullins crossed the room toward them. Mullins looked around the room, taking in the size of the apartment. “Wow!” said Mullins softly. “Quite a joint!”

“I want to know—” Ashley began again.

“Sit down,” Weigand instructed.

“Look, detective,” the girl said. “You can't bully him.”

“Can't I?” said Weigand. “Who told you that, sister? Sure I can bully him.”

“Sure,” said Mullins, approvingly. “Didn't you know that, sister?”

The girl looked at him.

“Flatfoot,” she said, disparagingly. Mullins began to get red. Weigand looked at him and Mullins swallowed and said, “O.K., sister.”

“Let's see that note,” Weigand said.

Ashley appeared to be very astonished.

“Uh-huh,” Weigand said. “The note you left for your sister. And took away again after she collapsed. Let's see it!”

“You don't have to show him anything, Buddy,” the girl said. “You don't have to tell him anything.”

Ashley turned on her.

“I'll handle it, Madge,” he said. He turned to Weigand. “I haven't anything to tell you, Lieutenant,” he said. “I don't know what note you're talking about.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “If you want to play it that way. I thought there was a chance the note didn't mean anything, in which case we wouldn't have to take you downtown. The way things are, of course—” He left the sentence unfinished, looking down at Ashley. “Don't be a sap, Ashley,” he said.

Ashley returned Weigand's gaze for a moment. Then he looked away and hesitated.

“All right,” he said. “It wasn't anything. Merely a note to tell her I wanted to talk with her tonight about something important, and to wait up for me if she came in first. When I saw that she was ill, I just picked up the note so that it wouldn't be lying around for anybody else to—” he faltered.

“Let's see it,” Weigand said, holding out his hand. There wasn't, Weigand knew, any good reason why Ashley should have kept the note, or why he should hand it over. But it was worth trying. He was gratified to see Ashley's right hand move instinctively toward a pocket. The hand hesitated.

“Right,” Weigand said. “Hand it over.”

It was a small note, twice folded. It read:

“I've got to see you before you talk to M. So wait up for me and don't think you can get out of it.—Bud.”

“You're ‘Bud'?” Weigand inquired.

Ashley nodded, sullenly.

“That's what Lois called me,” he said. “Lots of people do, as a matter of fact.”

“And who is ‘M'?” Weigand asked.

Ashley started rebellion and abandoned it.

“Mother,” he said. “It hasn't anything to do with this.”

It was easy enough, however, to get a story out of him. It was easier after Madge Ormond, hearing him start, looked at him with contempt, but with affection, and said that if he was going to spill everything he knew, she was going home. She looked at Weigand.

“If that's all right with you, Commissioner?” she said, heavily ironic.

Weigand said, without expression, that it was all right with him.

“Call me up, Buddy, after—after you've sung your song,” she said. Ashley appeared about to say something, but didn't. He merely nodded. Mullins looked inquiringly at Weigand, who shook his head. The head-shake implied that there was no reason, at the moment, to waste a man on Miss Ormond's footsteps.

Then Buddy sang a song. It was, as Weigand had supposed it would be, a song about money. It was also, as Weigand had likewise expected, rather inadequate, sounding as if several verses had been left out.

Weigand would, Buddy said, have to get the background. “My father's dead,” Ashley explained. Weigand nodded. The elder Ashley had died about two years previously, leaving a considerable fortune, the bulk of it to Randall Ashley, but under certain provisions. It was clear that Kenneth Ashley had not thought highly of his son's discretion, particularly in certain matters. The money was to be held in trust until Randall was twenty-five, and paid to him then only in the event he was not married. If he was married, he was to receive only a stipulated income, the principal to be divided among his children, if any, only when the youngest of them had reached the age of twenty-five. It was, Randall said bitterly, a lousy setup.

“I'd got—well, got mixed up with a girl Dad didn't like,” Randall explained. “That was a year or so before he died. So he fixed it so that I'd think twice.”

“And,” Weigand pointed out, “so that there would be no percentage in it for a gold-digger. In marrying you, I mean.”

Randall Ashley nodded.

“Well?” Weigand prompted.

There was, however, a provision which modified this arrangement. Mrs. Ashley, so long as she lived or in the event of her death, Lois Winston, had power to set the restrictions aside. As things stood, Mrs. Ashley could, if she chose, give approval to any marriage her son might make. In the event she approved and in the event that the marriage did not occur before he was twenty-one, Randall would receive the principal at once.

“Um,” Weigand said, thoughtfully. “Yes, I see. So?”

“Well,” Randall said simply, “I want to get married.”

“Miss Ormond?” Weigand asked. Randall nodded.

“And?” Weigand said, since Ashley seemed to be running down. “Does your mother oppose it?”

That, Randall said, was the point. There was no reason why she should oppose it. But Lois had.

“Why?” Weigand wanted to know.

“I don't know,” Randall said. He didn't, Weigand thought, say it as if he really didn't know. Weigand waited.

“Well,” Randall said, “you don't know Mother, of course. She will—that is, she always would—listen to anything Lois said. What I said was nothing, what Lois said was gospel.” He reported this bitterly. “Mother has been on Long Island most of the summer and doesn't know about Madge. She's coming back tomorrow for a day or so, and I knew that Lois would go to her at once and prejudice her against Madge. So I wanted to see Lois before she talked to Mother. I tried this evening, but she was dressing and wouldn't talk to me. So I wanted to be sure to catch her tonight.”

He looked at Weigand, and there seemed to the detective to be a kind of challenge in his look. Weigand decided not to meet it, at the moment.

“Right,” Weigand said. “That explains the note, I guess.” He smiled at Ashley. “Not so complicated when you explain it,” he said. “You shouldn't have made such a fuss about it.” He watched Ashley's face, expecting to see relaxation in it. He saw relaxation in it and what might be smug self-congratulation. If Weigand had any reservations about the story—as I have, Weigand thought—young Ashley didn't realize it. Young Ashley felt the story had gone over big. That, Weigand decided, was as it should be. He started to rise, seemed to think better of it.

“By the way,” he said, “I wish you'd look over this list of names.” He handed Randall the reservation list from the Ritz-Plaza. “See any you know on it?” he inquired. “Besides McIntosh, of course.”

It was a long list and Randall plodded slowly down it. Weigand watched him. He was a good-looking young man, Weigand thought, but he obviously drank too much. There was a kind of querulous expression in the relaxed face. “He looks like a sulky kid,” Weigand thought. “And like a selfish one.” Weigand hadn't much doubt he was both. Randall finished the list.

“I know one or two,” he said. “But there's nobody we knew well—I mean that Lois and I knew well, or Mother. There are a couple of men I've bumped into, and some I've heard about. That's all.”

“Which?” Weigand said. Randall pointed, and Weigand checked them off. Several were names known to people who read society pages; one or two appeared now and then in gossip columns. But there were not many checked, and none which seemed to mean anything. Weigand said thanks, and that he guessed that was all, for now.

“I suppose, though,” he added, “that I might have a look at your sister's room. Just as a matter of routine.”

He got up and Mullins got up. Then, in no hurry, Ashley got up and led the way upstairs. Mullins was impressed by the stairs. “Some joint,” he whispered to Weigand. “Duplex and everything. It musta set them back.”

Weigand nodded. It certainly must have set somebody back. But he gathered Mrs. Ashley could stand it, married twice to men in commodities. It made him think of something.

“By the way,” he said, “did your sister inherit money—from her father, that is? He had money, I suppose.”

“Plenty,” Randall said. “Yes. Lois got most of it, except for a trust fund for Mother. When Mother dies Lois gets—Lois would have gotten—that too. Why?”

“Well,” said Weigand, “we just like to know about such things. Who gets it now?”

“I don't,” Randall said, rather hotly. “If that's what you mean.”

Weigand said he hadn't meant anything. He just wanted to know.

“Well,” Randall said, “
I
don't know. Except that she had made a will. You can find out from that, I suppose.”

Weigand said he supposed he could.

Randall led them down a short corridor on the second floor of the duplex and opened a door. Lois Winston's bedroom was large, with French windows opening on a small terrace. It was done in soft tones of yellow and gray. Weigand noticed with an odd feeling that the bed had been turned back. He noticed a silvered thermos on the table by the bed and crossed to it, lifting the top. It was filled with water. The room, he thought, looked as if it had been lived in happily, and as if it had nothing to tell of unhappiness and death. Then he noticed, on the table beside the thermos, a heavy book—a volume, a glance told him, of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He lifted it idly. It was Volume 11, Gunn to Hydrox. Into the light-hued room it brought an inappropriate suggestion of weighty contemplation.

“I wonder,” he said aloud, “what she had been reading in that?”

Nobody answered. Weigand supposed to himself that it had nothing to do with him. But it was an anomaly, and faint curiosity still stirred.

“Did your sister have a personal maid?” he asked Randall Ashley.

“Yes,” Randall said. “At least, she and Mother shared Anna. Why?”

“I'd like to see her,” Weigand said. Ashley looked about for somebody to send. Neither Weigand nor Mullins moved. Ashley went into the hall and called, “Anna!” Then he came back. Weigand crossed to a desk and opened it, looking at papers in pigeon-holes. A drawer was crowded with papers and photographs. All this would have to be gone through, but not now.