Hanged for a Sheep (19 page)

“Jerry!” Pam said. “It's what Perkins gave me! I'd forgotten. And it's a”—she felt it—“a bottle!”

She was up with it, now, and had begun to strip off the haphazard wrapping, already loosened by the play of the cats. Then Jerry was beside her, holding out his hand.

“Don't touch it!” Jerry said, quickly. “Or only the paper.”

He took it from her, holding it gingerly. Carefully he pulled the paper down from the small bottle, exposing the neck with the cork half pushed in. He stripped the wrapping further until, still not touching the bottle, he could read part of the label. There was, just where the bottle started to swell from the neck, a blue crescent pasted on the bottle and on the crescent, in white, the words: “Professional Sample.” Below that was another label. This one was white, with black letters, and the first word was “Folwell's.” Jerry peeled the wrapping down until he could read the next line: “Fruit Salts.” The bottle was of green glass and Jerry tilted it. There was some sort of powder inside, filling about half the bottle.

“Arsenic!” Pam said, excitedly. “It's half full of arsenic! That's where Aunt Flora got it!”

Jerry nodded. He admitted that it seemed probable; there was a bottle missing—a bottle which had appeared mysteriously and disappeared overnight. It was a fair guess that, arsenic or not, this was the bottle. And it was a fair guess that there was arsenic in it. Jerry held the bottle gingerly and said to Pam, “Come on.”

They found Bill Weigand in the library, with Mullins and Aunt Flora. Aunt Flora wore a remarkable garment of purple with decorations and her wig was pushed back perilously from her forehead. The makeup was undisturbed, confirming Pam's suspicion that she kept it on day and night. But the blue eyes did not snap. They were clouded. For the first time she could remember, Pam was seeing Aunt Flora in tears.

“Of course I was fond of him, dearie,” Aunt Flora was saying. Her voice was little changed by emotion, and she still spoke with authority. “I was used to him. We remembered—the same things.” Aunt Flora had hesitated for a moment and gone on. Then she saw Pam and Jerry.

“Gerald!” she said. “What happened to you, dearie?”

“What?” Jerry said. “Why, Aunt Flora?”

“Bump.” Aunt Flora said. “Bump, dearie. I didn't even know you were here.”

“Oh, that,” Jerry said. “Pam hit me. It doesn't matter. I've got to talk to Bill for a minute, Aunt Flora.”

“Why don't you?” Aunt Flora said. She turned to Bill Weigand. “You through with me, dearie?” she enquired. “If you are, I'm going back to bed.” She looked around at the others. “Tired,” she said, firmly. “Old women get tired, eh? Nobody remembers I'm an old woman.” That, it was evident, pleased her. “Don't coddle myself, that's why,” she said. “But all this—” she broke off. “Poor old codger,” she said. She was not talking to them now. “Such a long time ago,” she said. “Such a long time.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Buddie.” He stood up, and Mullins stood up. At a nod from Weigand, Mullins moved beside Aunt Flora, his hand hovering near her elbow. She looked at him and smiled faintly. It was an odd smile—an odd, touching smile.

“That's right, dearie,” she said. “I'm an old woman.”

Mullins's hand came under her elbow, supporting her. Weigand and the Norths watched them to the door.

“The poor old thing,” Pam said, softly. “The poor—They were young together, Bill. She and Harry. And remembered the same things.”

“Yes,” Weigand said. “However—” He seemed a little on the defensive, and turned back from the door, his manner dismissing the moment. “What have you found, Jerry?”

“The cats,” Pam answered for Jerry. “They found it—what I'd forgotten. What Harry gave me, and I forgot all about it. And must have dropped when I was by the bed, changing. And it fell down the side—inside. Before he said anything, he gave it to me.”

Jerry held “it” forward, touching only the paper. Weigand took it from him and stared at it and after a moment said he'd be damned.

“So this was it,” he said. “And you didn't remember it, Pam!”

“Listen,” Pam said. “With all that's been going on. And being chased. And Jerry. You'd have forgotten, too. And, after all, you've got it now. Is it the bottle?”

Certainly, Bill Weigand told her, it was
a
bottle. And if its contents held arsenic,
the
bottle. And Harry Perkins had risked his life to bring it to her, and it had remained for the cats to find it.

“But,” he said, “we have got it now. And maybe—” He broke off and stood staring thoughtfully at the bottle. Mullins came back while he was still staring and looked at the bottle and said, “Jeez!”

“Perkins gave it to Pam,” Weigand told him. “Somebody tore her room apart looking for it. And one of the cats found it.”

Mullins looked at the bottle incredulously.

“You sure got to hand it to cats,” Mullins said. He looked at the bottle more carefully. “Pawed it open, though,” he said. “Got prints all over it.” He stared at Weigand. “Jeez,” he said. “Now we got cat prints.”

“I opened it,” Jerry said. “The cats didn't. And it won't have my prints, except on the paper.”

“Probably,” Weigand said, “it won't have any prints. But—have the boys gone, Mullins?”

The boys hadn't, Mullins said. Weigand was pleased.

“Have them work on it,” he said. “And if they find anything, check with what we've got.”

Mullins took the bottle gingerly and went away with it.

“What have you got?” Pam said. “Prints, I mean?”

Everybody, Weigand told her. At least, they hoped everybody. From toilet articles, from glasses, from here, there and everywhere. In some instances the identity of the prints was only hypothetical; in others they could count on it. But it was optimistic to count on prints being where they meant anything.

“Except,” he added, “that people forget. Or get hurried. Then you find prints. And juries love them. Do you know anything about knots, Jerry?”

“Knots?” Jerry repeated. “What kind of knots? Tying knots? Or speed knots?”

“Tying knots,” Weigand explained. “In this case, a hanging knot. A bowline.”

“No,” Jerry said. “I wasn't a boy scout. Or a sailor. Or—or what?”

Weigand shrugged.

“A rigger,” he said. “A cowboy for all I know. A yachtsman. Almost anybody.”

“No,” Jerry said. “Who tied a bowline?”

If he knew that, Weigand told him, he'd know a lot. The person who had hanged Harry Perkins.

“You can say ‘man,' I think,” Pam told him. “Because he must have been thrown
over
the bannisters, and that couldn't be a woman. Or bowlines either, whatever they are. Women always tie grannies. At least Jerry says I always do.”

“That I do know,” Jerry put in. “A square knot from a granny. Because I have to tie up the Christmas packages. And the things Pam sends people.”

Bill Weigand stopped them. As far as throwing Harry Perkins over the bannisters was concerned—and Pam probably was right in thinking that necessary—it needn't have been beyond the strength of a reasonably strong woman. Harry Perkins weighed hardly more than a hundred pounds. And he could have been propped up against the balustrade and slid over. He need not have been lifted and dropped. In either event, he would have fallen from the rail of the balustrade to the end of the leash about his neck, and that would have been drop enough.

Pam shuddered and sat down suddenly and looked rather white.

“It's—terrible,” she said. “It's always seemed—oh, more horrible than anything else, hanging. The second of falling and knowing and then—”

Jerry sat on the arm of the chair and drew her to him.

“Don't think about it, Pam,” he said.

“Right,” Weigand said. “And in this case he was out. He didn't know what was happening.”

He told them that Perkins had, apparently, first been knocked unconscious. Only then was the rope knotted about his neck and made fast to one of the balusters, and his body pushed over the rail. He admitted it still didn't bear thinking of.

“But,” Pam said. She leaned her head against Jerry's shoulder for a moment and said, “All right, darling—I'm all right now” in a low voice—“but could a woman have knocked him out?”

Weigand nodded, and said it was possible. Particularly if she used something as a weapon.

“But to get back to the knot,” he said. “The bowline is a common enough knot—among people who know anything about knots. But most people only know square knots, and perhaps not even those by name. Or grannies. You don't need a bowline to tie packages.”

“What is it?” Pam asked. Weigand looked nonplussed.

“I don't know how to describe a knot,” he said. “It goes—well, you take an end, loop your line, lay the end across the standing part, loop the standing part around the end, bring the end around behind the standing part and through the little loop and—does that make it any clearer?”

“No,” said Pam, decisively. “I don't think anybody could tie a bowline, from what you say. Or even imagine a bowline.”

“It doesn't matter,” Jerry pointed out. “As long as you know what it is, and somebody tied it in the leash. You don't have to explain it.”

“Right,” Weigand said. But he still looked a little taken aback. “But it ought to be possible to explain it, you'd think. You take the end of a line and make a loop and then—”

“Please, Bill,” Pam said. “Not again. After awhile we'll get you a piece of rope or something and you can show us. But don't explain it.”

“Well—” Weigand began. But then Sergeant Mullins came back, and he looked excited. He said “Loot!” from the door and “We got a break!” as he advanced. He held the little green bottle loosely in a handkerchief.

Weigand stood up and took a step toward Mullins and said, “Prints?”

Mullins nodded, vigorously, holding out the bottle. They bent over it and Pam North was beside them, looking too. There were several clear impressions, outlined in black, on the bottle.

“And?” Weigand said.

“Craig's,” Mullins told him. Mullins's voice was happy. “Benjamin Craig's. As neat a set as—”

But Weigand, looking down at the bottle, seemed puzzled and not to share Mullins's evident happiness.

“And nobody else's?” he said. His voice was sharp, demanding. Mullins looked less happy.

“Nope,” he said. “Just Craig's.” His voice was very worried. “That's all right, ain't it, Loot?” he enquired. His voice was very worried. Weigand looked at him and slowly shook his head.

“That,” he said, “is not so good, Sergeant. I think somebody's kidding us.”

“But why—?” Pam began. Then she stopped and nodded too. Jerry got up and came over and looked at the bottle and looked perplexed. “Of course!” Pam said. “Where are the others?”

“Right,” Weigand said. “Where are the others?”

“Because,” Pam explained, more to herself than to anybody, but a little to Jerry, “because there
ought
to be others. There'd almost have to be. Unless—”

“Right,” Weigand said. “It ought to be a blur. Somebody packed the bottle and left prints, somebody unpacked it and put it on a shelf, somebody took it off a shelf—a dozen times it must have been handled.”

“By people without fingers,” Pam said. “And that's ridiculous. Or gloves?”

“Why?” Weigand said. Nobody knew.

“Obviously,” Jerry offered, “somebody wiped the bottle off.”

Weigand was still staring at the bottle and after a moment he said, “Right.”

“And
after
it was wiped off, Ben Craig picked it up,” Weigand said. “Which doesn't make sense.”

“Which doesn't make
one
sense,” Pam corrected. “It doesn't make the sense that it was Ben who poisoned Aunt Flora. But it makes sense, if somebody wanted it to look as if Ben poisoned Aunt Flora—somebody not very bright.”

“Listen,” Mullins said, in a rather desperate voice. “We got prints, ain't we? What do we want, huh?”

“Sense, Sergeant,” Weigand told him. “As Pam says. Did they test the cork?”

Mullins shook his head.

“They say it ain't no use, Loot,” he said. “Not that cork. They say a good cork, maybe, but where do you get good corks now days?” He looked at the lieutenant defensively. “That's what they say, Loot,” he added. Weigand nodded again.

“So what we get is too good to be true,” he said. “All very neat and easy and somebody is being very bright.”

He looked, Pam thought, more than expectedly upset. This was not merely an annoyance; it was in some fashion a frustration.

“This messes things up, doesn't it, Bill?” she said. “I mean—you had it worked out, and this is all wrong.”

It was something like that, Bill Weigand admitted. Jerry went back and sat down and felt the bump on his head. The three continued to look at the bottle as if it might explain itself at any moment. Jerry watched them.

“If it doesn't mean something,” he said, presently, “why did Perkins give it to Pam? Or did he merely think he had something when he didn't have?”

Pam came over and sat on the arm of Jerry's chair and waited for Weigand to answer. Weigand walked to a table and stood with his fingers drumming on it, and then turned to them.

That, he told them, was only part of it. Where did Perkins get the bottle? When? How long had he had it? Why had he hidden out and then returned? Did he know that there were prints of Ben Craig on the bottle and if he knew it, how did he know it?

“Because,” Weigand put in, “you couldn't see them unless they were brought up.”