Murder within Murder (11 page)

It was not clear from Miss Gipson's notes what had aroused the suspicions of the police, so Pam supposed that it had not been clear in the newspaper stories. But from the start, the police had been questioning Mr. Purdy about the death of his wife. They had never seemed impressed by the theory of accident, although admittedly the box which contained the poison had been generally similar to that which contained the soda and admittedly they had been kept close together—too close together, one would have thought—on a kitchen shelf. It was, to be sure, difficult to see how Mrs. Purdy would have made even more difficult mistakes, with similarly fatal results, without invoking serious police enquiry.

Miss Gipson had noted the oddity, here, and commented on it for her author. “Apparently police had additional info not disclosed,” she had written, no doubt for future amplification. It was, incidentally, one of the last things she had written about the case. There was the additional fact that Purdy had disappeared; that he had been traced to the airport and aboard a plane, and that the plane had crashed and burned a few hundred miles short of Los Angeles. His body, badly burned, had been identified by unburned possessions—a ring, a wristwatch, keys. There the case had ended. It did not, Pamela thought, offer much to a writer, but you could never tell about writers. Jerry said as much, sometimes aggrievedly. If there had not been money involved—if Mrs. Purdy had not been a very rich woman, and Mr. Purdy an only moderately well-to-do man, and if he had not stood to inherit largely—the newspapers would hardly, Mrs. North thought, have given the matter much attention.

Miss Gipson had revealed the final disposal of Mr. Purdy, had started a new sentence in her firm script and then had broken off to write: “I have been poisoned by—” in script which remained firm until the down stroke of the “y.” That stroke had continued, wavering, down the notebook page; it had ended, one could guess, when Miss Gipson's hand would no longer obey her mind. Nothing in the Purdy case was half so interesting, so dramatic, as this unfinished record of it.

Pam put the notebook down and looked at Bill Weigand, who was looking at her and waiting.

“It was a strange coincidence,” she said.

Bill nodded. He said there seemed to be a good many coincidences. Spencer's presence, if it was a coincidence. Mrs. Burt's first name, since Pam would have it that way. Pam nodded.

“Only,” she said, “when you come down to it, there always are. Like meeting people on the street and having them telephone you when you're thinking about them. Like speak of the devil and that sort of thing.”

Bill said he still distrusted them. He said that he was ready to go see Mrs. Burt now.

“Chiefly,” he said, “because Miss Gipson's niece and her brother have gone to LaGuardia to meet the girl's husband. There's—well, there's no use breaking that up since we don't have to.”

“And,” Pam said, “you want to wait until Mullins talks to the lawyer, Mr. Backley. Although I don't say you wouldn't just as soon be considerate, if everything else was even. Did they identify?”

John Gipson had identified his aunt's body, Bill told her. He had said that they both, he and his sister, wanted to help; he had explained that Major Kennet Frost was due in that afternoon and that his sister was keyed up, her feelings hopelessly confused, and in no condition to be coherent.

“After all,” he had said, “her aunt murdered; her husband coming back after more than two years in the Pacific. It's a lot for twenty-four hours.”

Gipson was willing, he made it clear, to talk to the police at any time. He also, it was equally clear, wanted to go with his sister to the airport.

“And,” Bill said, “actually we were in no hurry.”

“Backley,” Pamela repeated. “Shall we go? And what about Mrs. Burt?”

Bill told her what they had found out about Mrs. Burt on their way to the Burt apartment. She was a woman in her late forties; she had been a widow until about two years before, when she had married Willard Burt. Apparently she had had money before she married; apparently Burt also was well-to-do. They had come east from California some months after their marriage. They had lived in an apartment on Park Avenue for a few weeks less than a year. He stopped with that. Pam said they didn't know a great deal.

“We'll know more,” Bill told her. “No answer yet from California.” He smiled at her. “Frankly, Pam,” he said, “it doesn't take precedence.”

“I know it's a hunch,” she said. “And don't call it intuition, Bill. She could be the right age, however.”

The world, Bill pointed out, was full of people the right age.

“Only one of whom wrote a letter,” Pam told him. “Don't quibble, Bill.”

It was clear he was not quibbling, Bill said, because there they were. The letter needed explanation; they had come to get the explanation.

“Can I ask my questions?” Pam wanted to know.

Bill shook his head as he held out a hand to assist her from the police car. Pam made polite acknowledgment of the hand by waving in its direction, which was all that either of them expected. She made polite acknowledgment of the shaking head by saying, “All right, Bill, then you do,” and they went into the apartment house.

It was very elegant, in a curiously antique fashion. It had been built in expansive days. They entered a colonnaded expanse, too large to be called a lobby. There were concrete arches in various directions; there were concrete seats, faintly Grecian, with red cushions on them. A very ancient doorman got up from one of the seats and advanced as if he were moving to funeral music. They asked for directions to the Willard Burt apartment.

He did not answer, but he did point. He pointed as if he were tired of pointing. They sighted with his finger and saw, in the subdued distance, among the colonnades, another old man in a green uniform—but without golden epaulets—sitting, evidently asleep, on another red cushion on another concrete bench. They went, Pam's high heels clicking between the scattered rugs. The man was not asleep, or not quite asleep. He was guarding a tiny elevator. He got up when they were very close and looked at them.

“The Burts,” Bill Weigand said, his voice unconsciously muted.

The man did not answer, but he waved them toward the elevator. They got in and he got in, and the three of them filled it.

“Listen,” Pam said, “this is a dreadful bottleneck. For such a big place and everything.”

The elevator man did not seem to hear her.

“There are other elevators,” Bill told her, his voice still hushed.

The elevator stopped at the fifth floor. The elevator man waited and they got out.

“There are ten elevators,” the man said in measured tones, shut the grill door, and went down.

“I feel,” Pam said, “as if we should have sent flowers, don't you, Bill?”

There was only one door to consider. Bill pushed a button, and chimes came faintly from within. After a pause a middle-aged maid came to the door and looked at them politely.

“Mrs. Burt?” Bill said. He did not wait for the question he could see forming. “Lieutenant Weigand, of the police,” he said. “You might tell her it is fairly important.”

“The police?” the maid said. She sounded very surprised.

“Yes,” Bill said. “If you don't mind.”

“I don't know if she's in,” the maid said. “She was out.” She looked at them doubtfully. “If you'll come in, I'll see,” she said. She still seemed very doubtful and surprised.

The foyer was larger than many rooms, but it was gay and bright with chintz, and there were flowers on a table. There was a seat for two, and they sat on it. The maid came back after only a minute or two.

“Mrs. Burt has just come in,” she said. “If you will come this way?”

They went that way. They went into an enormous living-room, with a fireplace—with white chairs and green chairs and yellow chairs; with many glowing lamps and with a middle-aged woman standing near the center.

“Mr. Weigand,” the maid said. “He says he's from the police. And—” She looked at Mrs. North, who was unexplained.

“Mrs. North,” Bill said, not explaining. “Mrs. Burt?”

“Do come in,” Mrs. Burt said. “Do come in and sit down, Mr. Weigand. And Mrs.—” She let the last trail off. She spoke in a light, quick voice, as if she were excited. She was a gray-haired woman, slight and rather pretty; a few years ago she must have been very pretty. There was softness and fragility about her, and a kind of eagerness. She motioned them to one of two facing sofas and, when they were in front of it, sat down opposite them. They sat down.

“I am investigating the death of Miss Amelia Gipson,” Bill said. “You've probably read about it?”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Burt said, and there was a kind of eagerness in her voice, as if she were pleased to be able to make the right answer. “Dear Amelia. I'm so sorry. So terribly sorry. We were girls together, you know.”

“Yes,” Weigand said, “I gathered that from your letter, Mrs. Burt.”

She looked puzzled. But before she looked puzzled, expression seemed to flicker out in her eyes and return again.

“My letter?” she said. “What letter?”

Bill Weigand was patient. He said the one she had written to Miss Gipson. On Monday, he presumed.

“Oh,” Mrs. Burt said. “Oh yes, of course. That letter.”

“You understand, Mrs. Burt,” Bill said, “we have to find out everything we can in a case of sudden death. We have to look into many things which are probably irrelevant. Like your letter. You understand that?”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Burt said. “Of course, Mr.—what was your name? I'm so dreadful about names.”

“Weigand,” Bill told her. “Lieutenant Weigand.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Burt said. “Oh, of course. How stupid of me.”

She seemed content with that, and looked at him with a kind of fluttering anxiety, waiting for him to go on; anxious to help him in a situation, her manner implied, he must obviously find difficult.

“About the letter,” Bill said, after waiting a moment. “My superiors, Mrs. Burt, seem to feel that it may—indirectly, of course—help us in some fashion.” He smiled pleasantly. “If you remember,” he said, “you wrote of some mistake you felt Miss Gipson had made. You called it a terrible mistake. And you asked her to trust you.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Burt said. “That?”

“Right,” Bill said. “Naturally, I think, we wondered whether the mistake Miss Gipson had made—the terrible mistake—could have anything to do with her death.”

“Oh no,” Mrs. Burt said, quickly. “Oh no, Lieutenant. This was quite a personal thing.”

“Was it?” Bill said.

Oh, it was, Mrs. Burt told him, with the same eagerness she had shown since the beginning. It was quite a personal thing.

“I'm afraid you've had so much trouble for nothing, Lieutenant,” she said. “I'm so sorry.”

She moved forward on the sofa, as if she expected the two across from her to rise, now, and go away. But Weigand merely nodded.

“I was sure it was,” he said. “That was always my view, Mrs. Burt. But my superiors—”

“Oh,” Mrs. Burt said. “That's perfectly all right. I understand perfectly.”

Bill waited politely while she spoke and then nodded again.

“My superiors,” he said, “will, I'm afraid, want to know what the personal thing was, Mrs. Burt.” He smiled at her, it seemed to Pam North, deprecatingly. It occurred to her she had never seen Bill in quite this mood before. “You understand how thorough we have to be,” he said to Mrs. Burt. “Digging into all sorts of things which don't really concern us, just to make sure they don't. In murder, Mrs. Burt.”

His voice was suddenly deeper, more forceful, on the last words. He did not pause.

“So I'm afraid I'll have to be inquisitive,” he said. “What was the personal thing you were alluding to in your letter to Miss Gipson, Mrs. Burt? What were you and she going to talk about tomorrow.”

“Really!” Mrs. Burt said. “Oh, really!”

Bill Weigand merely looked at her. His look waited.

“Oh,” Mrs. Burt said. “Must I?”

“I'm afraid so,” Bill said. “We can't force you to tell us anything, Mrs. Burt—not here. But we could consider it very—strange—if you insisted on keeping it secret.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Burt said. “But it's nothing. Really nothing. A foolish thing between poor Amelia and me.” She broke off and her eyes filled, or seemed to fill, with tears. “And now there will never be a chance to explain,” she said. “Oh—why do people?”

She looked at Bill and Pam North as if she expected an answer. Pam shook her head; Bill merely waited.

“Somebody had told Amelia dreadful things about me,” Mrs. Burt said, and now she spoke in a rush. “That I'd said terrible things about her, I mean—about Amelia. And of course I hadn't—I couldn't. It was all some terrible mistake.”

“What things?” Bill said.

“Oh, I didn't,” Mrs. Burt said. “I didn't say anything about Amelia. Why would I?”

There was no answer to that. But Bill amplified.

“What were the things that Miss Gipson had been led to think you had said about her?” he asked.

Mrs. Burt shook her head.

“Oh, it was all confused,” she said. “And I was so upset and worried—and—oh, so terribly upset. Something about my having said that she was cruel to her niece. To Nora, you know? And had tried to break things up between Nora and her husband. But I never said anything of the kind. I never
thought
anything of the kind—the idea never—It was some terrible misunderstanding.”

“Who had told her you had said that?” Bill wanted to know.

Mrs. Burt shook her head.

“She wouldn't tell me,” she said. “She said it wasn't fair to tell me, but that she'd talk to whoever it was and tell them what I said. But she didn't—at least she didn't come back and talk to me again, as she promised. And so I wrote her.”