Hanged for a Sheep (23 page)

“Obviously,” he said, “if it was an attempt to murder her, it was a mistake on the part of the poisoner. It seems a rather silly mistake, even for a layman. But laymen have peculiar ideas about drugs, often enough.”

“About arsenic?” Weigand said, doubtfully. “With all the accounts of arsenical poisoning available? It seems—improbable.”

Dr. Buddie looked at him. His eyes told nothing, and his tone told no more.

“Does it, Lieutenant?” he enquired. His tone dropped flat.

The two looked at each other for a moment. It was Dr. Buddie who resumed.

“As a physician,” he said, “I would obviously know the dosage. If I were trying to kill somebody by poison, I would kill him. Possibly if I wanted to make it appear that a layman had done it, I would even use arsenic, counting on you to assume that a physician would use a better poison. I could have procured arsenic easily and put it into the bottle with Folwell's stuff and sent it to mother and she would, presumably, have taken it. Or put it in her medicine cabinet, where somebody else might have prepared a dose and given it to her. I see your point, Lieutenant.”

“It isn't necessarily my point,” Weigand told him. “Certainly it is a possibility. I take it that you didn't do any of these things?”

“No,” Dr. Buddie said. “I certainly did not. A statement which is obviously without value, as you do not need to point out. Why should I have done any of those things?”

Weigand said he wouldn't know. Or wouldn't know if the doctor didn't.

“Money,” Dr. Buddie said. “Naturally—it was so obvious that it did not occur to me for the moment. You think I tried to poison mother to get my share of her money. In that case, why didn't I make a job of it?”

“I don't know,” Weigand said. “Why didn't you?”

“If I'd tried it, I would have,” Dr. Buddie told him. Suddenly he stood up and stared down at Weigand.

“Damn it, man!” he said. “Surely you're not such a fool!”

Weigand told him to sit down, and Weigand's voice was easy and his words unhurried.

“Detectives have to ask questions and get answers,” he said. “It's the way they have—the only way they have, doctor. I haven't said I think you poisoned your mother. I grant the weight of your arguments against it. So far as I know now you would have been a fool to use arsenic at all and know too much to use too little. Therefore, it would appear that you did not try to kill your mother with arsenic for her money.”

His tone was quiet and reasonable; he seemed to be explaining the obvious.

“If new developments show that you may have given your mother poison without an intention of killing her,” he went on, “we will consider the point when it comes up. If it appears that you tried to kill her, but not for her money, I'll ask you about that. When I want to know things, I'll ask people questions, doctor. You and your brother the major, and your nieces and your nephews and your aunts. And so polish up the handle on the big front door.”

Dr. Buddie had sat down. He stared at Weigand.

“Don't tell me that you quote
Alice in Wonderland
, too,” he said. He said it anxiously.

“Never,” Weigand told him. “Well, almost never.” He stood up and Mullins, who had tilted his chair against the wall, let it fall to the floor and stood up too.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Weigand said. “Probably we'll be seeing you.”

“Don't forget,” Dr. Buddie advised him. “I wouldn't use arsenic—slow and uncertain. To say nothing of being needlessly painful for the patient. Keep you from running off at a tangent.”

“It takes all the running I can do to stay in the same place,” Weigand told him, gravely. He went out, with Mullins behind him, while Dr. Buddie recognized the paraphrase and made sounds of discontent. The receptionist looked at them with hostility and did not speak.

“Bye, toots,” Mullins said. She still did not speak. Weigand, leading the way to the car, decided that this was fortunate.

Driving the few blocks to the Buddie house, Weigand pulled into the curb in front of a cigar store. He left Mullins in the car, with the motor running, and went to a telephone booth. He deposited a nickel, dialed the operator, gave his number and got his nickel back. The sergeant on duty told him a message had just come through from Washington, and read it. Weigand said, “Yeh, I thought so. Thanks” and hung up. He went back to the car and drove on, over the rutted snow, to the Buddie house. Just as he stopped in front of it, snow began falling again.

Weigand, sitting in the library with Mullins, waited for Benjamin Craig, who sent word that he was just finishing breakfast. He was, Weigand decided, making the best of his enforced holiday from the bank. There was time while they waited for two visitors. Nemo honored them first, with long ears flopping as he advanced and an expression of beatific enjoyment as he sniffed Weigand's trousers. He found them delicious and had no reticence in his approval; there was, clearly, a fascinating odor which it was sheer, exciting happiness to investigate. Weigand was slightly embarrassed; remembered Pam's cats and was reassured. Nemo, it could be assumed—it was comforting to assume—smelled nothing more outrageous than cats. Nemo went to Mullins and was less rewarded. He turned, without comment, and trotted out.

“You don't smell good,” Weigand told Mullins. “I smell very good.”

Mullins was arranging his thoughts for an answer when Major Buddie came in. He came in bristling and he did not seem as pleased with Weigand as had Nemo. His ears did not flap, but his eyebrows bristled. He said: “Young man!”

“Yes,” Weigand said, assuming that the major meant him, and mildly gratified. He didn't, he assumed, have many more years of being called “young man,” even as a reproach.

“Damned nonsense!” the major told him. “Some man of yours says I can't leave. Eh? Got my duties, Lieutenant! Can't have this sort of nonsense, you know. War on. Eh?”

“Right,” Weigand said. “I can't keep you, Major. You're perfectly free to go, if you want to. I'll have to have a man go with you, of course. Wherever you go. Just a matter of routine, but I have to be able to get in touch with you if it becomes necessary.”

“Eh?” the major said. He looked a little deflated. “Mean to say you'd have a man following me all over the post? Look damned silly.”

“Yes,” Weigand said, “I suppose it would. But the alternative is for you to stay here—I hope not for much longer.”

“I could have him kept out, you know,” the major said, thoughtfully. “He'd be a civilian, of course. Eh? Couldn't wander all over the place, you know—couldn't have that.”

Weigand looked up at the major, who stood and bristled quietly.

“Yes, there's that,” Weigand said. “You could try, anyway. You could report that the police were following you, in connection with a murder case, and that you found this annoying. That might hold us up—until we got an order. But I'd think you'd find that rather embarrassing, too. Right?”

The major bristled down at Weigand, who continued to smile.

“Think you've got me, eh?” the major demanded. He stared at Weigand and then a smile broke fitfully on his face. “Maybe you have at that, Lieutenant. Won't be long, you say?”

Weigand said he hoped not. He couldn't promise, but he hoped not.

“On to something, eh?” the major said. He sounded interested. “Think you're getting somewhere?”

Weigand shook his head, still smiling. He said that, obviously, the major did not really expect him to answer that. The major thought it over a moment, and nodded.

“Well,” he said. “Get on with it, eh? There's a war on.”

Weigand nodded and the major, after another stare—but this time not a belligerent stare—turned in military formation and made for the door. In it he met his half-brother, Ben Craig, and made a sound which sounded like “Huh!” The major went on. Ben Craig came in and said “good morning” pleasantly, and sat where he was told to sit. Weigand stood up and half sat on the edge of a table and looked down at him.

“You told me, Mr. Craig, that you were a yeoman in the Navy,” he said. “Didn't you?”

Ben Craig was comfortable. He began to make designs with his fingers, and to look at Weigand as if the detective were being considered for a loan. Then he nodded and said “yes.”

“But you didn't tell me that you enlisted as a seaman,” Weigand said, flatly. “You were transferred to yeoman at the end of three months. Right?”

Craig seemed faintly puzzled, but he remained polite.

“That is quite true, Lieutenant,” he said. “I enlisted as a seaman in the U.S.N.R.F. ‘Seaman for yeoman' they called it, or some such thing. After a few months—three is probably right—I was transferred. But why does it interest you?”

“I take it,” Weigand told him, “that you're saying you don't know why it interests me?”

Craig made another design with his fingers, contemplated it, and shook his head.

“I'm not good at guessing, Lieutenant,” he said. “It's a little hard to see what all this ancient history—” He broke off and folded his hands. It was as if he had snapped his fingers. “Of course,” he said. “How obvious, when you think of it. Perkins was hanged. To hang him, somebody had to make a noose. Somebody made a noose expertly, or at least as if he had had training in tying knots. Now let's see—a bowline would be simplest, wouldn't it, Lieutenant? Somebody tied a bowline in the leash and hanged Perkins. And I was in the Navy.”

He smiled up at the lieutenant and seemed pleased.

“But really, Lieutenant,” he said. “How—how obvious. I was in the Navy and presumably learned something about knots when I was training; presumably learned how to tie a bowline. And so when a bowline shows up, I'm your man. Is detecting always so easy?”

He seemed honestly amused, and a little, politely, jeering.

“No,” Weigand told him. “Only the easy things are easy, Mr. Craig. Like, for example—why did you let me infer that you had been only a yeoman—a clerk—and never learned anything about knots? The easy answer is: You thought the bowline would give you away and that you could get away by implying that you didn't know anything about knots. You thought the bowline would give you away
because you knew a bowline had been used
. You knew that; since nobody had told you, because you had tied it. See how simple detecting is, Mr. Craig?”

Weigand's voice was placid, as of a professor expounding an academic theory. Craig made steeples with his fingers and nodded over them.

“Precisely,” he said. “And the alternative is equally simple. I did not tie the bowline and knew nothing about it. Your question meant nothing to me when you asked it, and I answered what first came into my mind. I said, yes, I had been in the Navy. I added—in order not to appear heroic—that I had been a yeoman. It didn't occur to me that you would try to make anything of it. If it had I would, assuming you would investigate, have been more detailed in my answer. Right? As you would say?”

Weigand nodded, pleasantly. He agreed that this version was equally probable. He smiled down at Craig, and seemed to appreciate him, and Craig looked at his fingers and appreciated himself.

“Now,” Weigand said, “about the bottle—this bottle.”

He took the little green bottle from his pocket and held it out, cupped in his hand. Craig glanced at it, and the glance seemed to be enough. His face sobered and he nodded slowly and his hands went out to grasp the arms of the chair. He did not shift his body, but after a moment he looked up at the lieutenant.

“So you found it,” he said. “I expected you would. And so now—now you know. Or—” Then his face lightened up, as if he had suddenly thought of a pleasant possibility.

“Is the arsenic in it, Lieutenant?” he said. His voice was anxious. He read the answer, it seemed, before it was spoken, and his face fell.

“Yes,” Weigand said. “There's arsenic in it, Craig.”

Craig's body seemed to slump and his voice, when he spoke, was tired and hopeless.

“Then I poisoned her,” he said. “I poisoned mother. I kept hoping—”

Mullins started up and came over to Craig.

“You admit it?” Mullins said. His voice was rough, but it held surprise. “So you tried to kill her?”

Mullins stood over Craig and stared down at him. Then he looked to Weigand, and his expression was one of triumph, but still tinged with puzzlement. He looked to Weigand for instructions. Weigand looked down at Craig and his expression was one of interest. He intercepted Mullins's enquiry and moved his head slightly, directing Mullins back to his chair.

“Are you confessing, Craig?” he asked. His voice was unexpectedly gentle and—wary. Mullins could hear the wariness in the lieutenant's tone.

“Yes,” Craig said. “You can call it that. I gave her the poison.”

“Why?” Weigand said. The question seemed not to pierce Craig's preoccupation. “Why?” Weigand repeated.

“What?” Craig asked. His mind seemed a long way off. Then it came back. “‘Why'?” he repeated. Then the implication seemed to make itself felt. He shook his head, almost with animation.

“You've got it wrong,” he said. “I didn't plan it—I didn't know I
was
poisoning her. But I gave her the poison. I poured it out of the bottle and mixed the dose and handed it to her. Isn't that enough?”

The question had the sound of an entreaty.

“You mean to say,” Weigand asked, “that all you did was to prepare the salts for her? Innocently? Not knowing there was any poison in them?”

“Of course,” Craig said. “Somebody else tried to poison her. But they
used
me. My God, man, isn't that enough?”

Weigand looked down at him, and he seemed to be studying him.

“Well,” he said, “no. Not in our sense. If you administered poison unintentionally, you've done nothing illegal. And nothing wrong. You don't even have to reproach yourself.”