Murder in a Hurry (7 page)

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 shook 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.

“Smell Jerry,” she advised him.

He did; it was an agreeable coincidence.

“Hello,” Jerry said. “Yes, boy, the same cats.”

Now they were all watching the little dog. Aegisthus left Jerry North, smelled Sherman Pine, without comment; regarded Weigand, apparently with favor, came to Liza herself, and was again entranced.

“Same cats,” Liza told him. He looked up at her and barked.

“Really, Mary,” Barbara Whiteside said, once more. “Don't you think we've had enough of—this?” She pointed at the dog, who turned suddenly and faced her, and seemed to understand the disapproval in her voice, because he barked again, this time on a different note. Then, Liza thought, he almost growled, but Mary Halder spoke his name quickly, and he relaxed and went to her. “I'll take him downstairs,” Mary Halder said, and looked briefly to Weigand for his approval. He nodded. She picked the little dog up in her arms, then, and went toward the spiral staircase. But she went behind it and to another flight leading down. She was gone several minutes, and during those minutes, Weigand merely waited; during those minutes no one spoke. Then Mary Halder came back up the stairs, without the dog, and went back to her chair.

Liza looked at her and then, for some reason, at Pam and Jerry North. She was just in time to see some unspoken communication between them—a communication of eyes, of the slow movement of Mr. North's head. Again she felt, as she had felt in regard to Brian's family, that she was alien, left out. The feeling was only momentary; it was ridiculous to have such a feeling; the Norths were as she and Brian would be.
Oh please, as we will be
, she thought, and felt lost again at the need for thinking it, for praying it, like a child. Until now, until today, it had been as inevitable, as beyond the need of praying for, as her next breath.

Now, with the little, curiously named, dog put away “downstairs,” with Mary Halder back, the group turned again to Lieutenant Weigand who stood, more or less facing the windows, with the windows forming a background for the men and women who faced him. He waited a moment, seemed about to speak, and then turned away again, seeing the attention of the others go to something behind him. Sergeant Mullins was coming down the room. When he saw Weigand's attention, he made a motion with his head, and Weigand went up the room to join him. They talked for a moment, and then walked back toward the door, where two other men in civilian clothes were waiting. The four of them walked together, then, and it was several minutes before Weigand turned back toward the group at the end of the room, regarded it for a moment, and then walked back. Their eyes, which had followed him as he left, were on him now as he approached.

“Miss O'Brien,” Weigand said, and he spoke crisply, “this man who was with you when you found Mr. Halder's body. Will you describe him again, please?”

Now all of them looked at her.

“A little man,” she said. “A very little, old man with a wrinkled face, with blue eyes, with—” She went on, doing as well as she could, trying to make words do what a pencil could so much better have done. She finished.

“Does any of you know such a man?” Weigand asked now, and he spoke more curtly than he had done before, as if now there were need for haste.

For a moment no one answered and Liza, looking at the faces of the Halders, could not tell at once whether the description had meaning for any of them. But then, as if he had waited merely to give the others a chance, after looking briefly at the woman who now, again, seemed almost too young to be his mother, Brian spoke.