Hanged for a Sheep (12 page)

“I want Houston, Texas,” Pam told the operator. “Mr. Gerald North. At the hotel.”

Pam waited. There were small buzzes and distant voices, one of which said “St. Louis.” Then there was a snapping noise, which apparently was Houston. Then Pam's own operator said, “What hotel for Mr. Gerald North?”

“Oh,” Pam said, “the—the—” And then she couldn't remember it. Because surely she had known it. “The best one, I guess,” she said. There was a little, baffled pause. Then the operator spoke, apparently to Houston. “She says the best one,” the operator said. “She doesn't know the name.”

There was another long pause, and then a distant operator.

“Mr. North was registered at the Gladstone,” she said. “He has checked out.”

“But he can't have,” Mrs. North said. “He's reading a book.”

“Our report is that Mr. Gerald North has checked out,” the operator said, formally. “Excuse it, please.”

“All right,” Pam said. “Only” she added as she cradled the telephone, “I don't understand it. It isn't like Jerry.” Then, as if it were answering her, the telephone bell rang and, knowing that it was for her, she took the instrument out of its cradle.

“Is Mrs. Gerald—” a voice began, but Pam interrupted.

“Jerry!” she said. “I knew you hadn't. Was it?”

“No,” Jerry said, in a voice that was small and distant. “It wasn't a ‘Gone With the Wind,' baby. But what hadn't I?”

“Checked out,” Pam said. “They just said you had.”

Even over the telephone, and from a long way off, Jerry North's voice had a familiar sound in it.

“Who said I had checked out?” he said. “Of what, Pam?” Pam could almost see him. He was running a hand through his hair. “That's why it's getting thinner,” she said. “Because you rub it so much.”

“On the contrary,” Jerry said, “massage is supposed to be very good for it. Who said I'd checked out of what, Pam?”

“The hotel in Houston,” she said. “But there you are.”

“Houston?” Jerry repeated. “I'm in Kansas City.”

“But look,” Pam said. “I called Houston. How did you get to Kansas City?”

“I flew,” Jerry told her. “I just got in. I'm at the airport now.”

“You know,” Pam said, “I think the telephone company is wonderful, don't you?”

“What?” Jerry said,

“The telephone company,” Pam repeated. “To follow you all the way to Kansas City. By air.”

“Darling!” Jerry said. “The telephone company isn't following me.” He paused. “Listen,” he began, slowly and carefully. “I called you up to tell you I was on my way home. It was so early when I left Houston that I didn't want to waken you. Now I'm in Kansas City. At the airport. Talking to you. How's everything?”

“Listen,” Pam said. “
I'm
calling you. Everything's fine. Except for the murder and Aunt Flora's arsenic.”

“One of us is crazy,” Jerry said. Then, apparently, he heard her. His voice got much louder and nearer. “
Murder!
” he repeated. “Aunt Flora
murdered
somebody? With arsenic?” Then he spoke very hurriedly. “Go straight home, Pam,” he said. “Don't get in it. It's bad enough when I'm home.”

“Bill Weigand's here,” Pam told him. “And both cats. I can't go home. You come here, Jerry. And help. It wasn't with arsenic, but with a gun. And Aunt Flora
took
it, not
gave
it.”

“Listen, Pam,” Jerry said. He was being patient, now. “You said arsenic. And nobody can
take
a gun—I mean, not that way. Not fatally.”

“I don't,” Pam said, “see how you get things so mixed up. Somebody tried to poison Aunt Flora with arsenic. And then somebody shot Stephen Anthony. Her last husband. And now she's Mrs. Buddie again.”

“Listen, Pam,” Jerry said. “A plane just came in. Right by the booth. I didn't hear anything you said. Who did she poison?”

“Whom,” Pam said, using the one she had been saving. “She was poisoned, darling. Maybe you'd better come right home, because you sound sort of—jumpy. And don't worry. Mullins is here, too.”

“That's—that's fine,” Jerry said. “I think I'd better. I'll be there some time tonight. Only it's just started to snow here.”

“
Jerry!
” Pam said. “Weather information. It's—wait a minute.” She put down the phone and went to look out the window. “It's starting to snow here, too,” she said. “Maybe you'd better come by train.”

“No,” Jerry said. “Not unless I'm grounded. I think I'd better be there. Listen, Pam—be careful what you eat. Hear?”

“Of course,” Pam said. “I haven't had any bread for days. Goodbye, darling.”

There was a slight intermediate sound from the other end of the wire. Then, “Goodbye, Pam.”

It is wonderful Jerry's coming home, Pam thought. He really understands things better than anyone. She sat, patting the telephone, for a moment and then made up her mind. It was a fine time for a bath.

Pam had finished her bath and was doing her hair, wearing a long robe, when somebody knocked at the door. She said, “Yes?” And Mullins opened it. Mullins looked embarrassed and said, “Oh. Sorry, Mrs. North.”

“Why?” she said. “I'm covered. Come in, Mr. Mullins.”

“That's all right,” Mullins said. “I won't come in. The Loot says do you want to go to lunch with him. And me?”

Pam said she thought it would be lovely, and in ten minutes. Mullins went away from the door, still looking a little embarrassed. He's sweet, Pam thought, and finished her hair. Men were funny about things; it was her not having her hair done, and being in the act of doing it, which had embarrassed Mullins. It was very funny about men.

8

W
EDNESDAY

12:45
P.M. TO
6:15
P.M.

They had lunch at a Longchamps not far away, Bill Weigand and Pam sitting on a bench along the wall and Mullins facing them. Pam said that, as long as they were detectives, they could tell her how the telephone company followed Jerry from Houston to Kansas City and got him in a telephone booth at the airport. Mullins looked at her and said, “Huh?” Bill Weigand got the rest of the story.

“Oh,” he said, “obviously coincidence. He just happened to call you at about the same time. It was odd, of course.”

“Do you suppose,” Mrs. North said, “telepathy? Sometimes I think so. Because often Jerry says something I'm thinking, just when I've begun to think of it and when it's a long way off. I mean, when nothing leads to it.”

Bill said he didn't know, but that there were usually easier explanations. Sometimes trains of thought, starting from a given station—a spoken remark, say—followed parallel tracks and reached the next station—perhaps another spoken remark—simultaneously.

“Do you,” Pam enquired, “call that easier?”

Or, Weigand said, there was always coincidence. Simon pure. Pam nodded.

“The other night,” she said, “we were playing bridge and the first four cards I picked up in a hand were aces. All there together, in a row.” She smiled, reminiscently. “Very nice, too,” she added. “I bid slam, of course.”

“Right away?” Mullins asked, doubtfully. He had played bridge once with Pam North and it had ranked as an experience.

“Obviously,” Pam said. “There's no use fooling around when the gods give four aces in a row. And if Jerry'd had anything, we'd have made it. Anything but tens. That would be coincidence.”

Bill said he supposed she meant the aces. It would, he said.

“But,” Pam pointed out, “you don't believe in coincidences in murders. You've said so.”

“It isn't,” Weigand told her, “that I don't believe in coincidences. I do—every case is full of them. Coincidences in time, for example. You find some person, not really involved in the case but exposed by the investigation, doing some strange, unrelated thing. It is coincidence that he happened to be doing it, perhaps, just when somebody else was doing some related thing, like killing. And then you may get coincidental results. Sometimes rather tragic results. But you can never investigate on the assumption that these things are merely coincidental. You always have to assume relationships until you have proof to the contrary.”

“Like,” Pam said, finishing her cocktail and embarking happily on lobster thermidor, “Aunt Flora's arsenic and poor Stephen being murdered. You're going on the assumption they are related, aren't you?”

He was, Bill Weigand told her. Obviously.

“How?” Pam enquired.

He shook his head. There she had him. He looked tired, suddenly. He said he wished he knew.

“It's a screwy one, Loot,” Mullins told him. “A sure enough screwy one.” He thought. “Ever since we met the Norths,” he said, thoughtfully, “they've been getting worse.” Mullins stared at his chops. The other two watched him, smiling faintly, as his face reflected nostalgia for the good, pre-Northian days of murder that was simple and direct.

“When you could round them up and give them a going over,” Pam said. Mullins looked startled. “Trains of thought,” she said. “Making simultaneous stops.”

“Local stops,” Bill added. “A very short trip, that.”

“Listen, Loot,” Mullins began. Then he saw their faces and grinned. “O.K., Loot,” he said. “Where were we?”

“Arsenic,” Weigand told him. “And shooting. A couple of weeks apart and different people. But the same setting, same cast. What do you think?”

“I'd think the same play,” Mullins said. “Right?”

“Right,” Weigand said. “So would I.”

“Well?” Pam said, and waited.

Well, Bill Weigand told her, they'd picked up a few things while she was away. One of them was not, however, Harry Perkins. He was still missing.

“But,” Pam said, “it couldn't have been Harry. He's a little, thin man, about my aunt's age. He wouldn't kill people.”

Neither the administration of poison nor the use of a gun required physical strength, Weigand pointed out. Or, for that matter, youth. It was quite possible that Harry Perkins had tried to kill Aunt Flora, for some reason they didn't know, and had succeeded in killing Stephen Anthony, for the same reason or for another reason they didn't know. It was also possible that somebody had killed Harry Perkins, and hidden his body. Again for reasons they didn't know.

“And,” Mullins said, “maybe he knows something and is hiding out.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “Maybe he knows something and is hiding out. If he's alive, he's certainly hiding out. But we'll find him, given time.”

“If you're given time,” Pam commented.

There was always that, Weigand agreed. On the other hand, it might be of no importance. Another coincidence, like four aces in a row.

“But you don't think so,” Pam said.

Weigand agreed he didn't. And that, he said, was all about Harry. They had sent out an alarm for him. Weigand had also talked to Inspector O'Malley, who had wanted news for the press.

Then Weigand had talked to the servants—to the cook, the maid and Sand, the butler. From the first two he had got nothing of importance; from Sand a curious thing. A puzzling thing.

It had come out more or less by accident, and because Weigand was covering all possible ground. Sand had been asleep in his room on the ground floor, had been awakened by something and not known what, and had gone back to sleep, not bothering to look at his watch. He had not seen the body until after Pam and the maid had discovered it, although he had gone through the breakfast room to the drawing room a few minutes earlier. Since the body was partially concealed behind the table, this was not remarkable.

Weigand had taken him back to the morning of the poisoning, and at first got nothing. The maid had taken Mrs. Buddie's breakfast up and insisted that there had been no opportunity for anyone to put arsenic in any of the food.

“Which,” Weigand interjected, “is valueless.” It could have been put in in half a dozen ways, without the knowledge or help of any of the servants. In the coffee pot, for example, before it was filled from the percolator. In the sugar, during the night. Stein was going over such possibilities, checking and re-checking, possibly—even probably—wasting his time. But it had to be done. You had to look into everything.

So Sand, being little concerned with breakfast service, had at first appeared to have nothing to contribute. And then, half by chance, something came out. Sand said it had been puzzling him.

Mrs. Buddie—who was then still calling herself Mrs. Anthony—had discovered late the previous evening that she was out of the medicine she took every morning on waking up. Wilson's Original Citrate Salts. She had told Sand to go out to a drug store and get her a bottle and Sand had gone. But it was a medicine not widely stocked, and the usual druggist had been out of it. Sand had gone to several other stores without success and then, thinking Mrs. Buddie would be growing impatient, had telephoned the house and reported his lack of success, offering to continue the search. But that, he said, Mrs. Buddie would not allow. He had, she told him, traipsed around enough, and should come home and go to bed. She could miss one morning.

But—she hadn't missed the morning. Because the next morning she had, on her own statement, taken her usual dose of the medicine. So—

“Wait a minute,” Pam said, “are we sure it was the same medicine? Because she takes such an awful lot of stuff, because she eats a lot and never exercises.” Pam pushed back the empty lobster shell, regarded it and rescued a morsel she had overlooked. “Perhaps it was something else.”

That was possible, Weigand agreed. But if it was something else, it must be something very similar to Wilson's Original Citrate Salts. Because she had described what she took as “the citrate salts” and, although she might not have seen the bottle, she would certainly have noticed anything which tasted decidedly different.