8

WEDNESDAY, 3:45 P.M. TO 6:20 P.M.

Florence Adams had been shot once and the bullet had gone in just above the bridge of her nose. She had fallen face down and her black hair draggled in blood. The slug, which was still in her head, evidently was from a small-caliber revolver or pistol; the assistant medical examiner guessed a .25. “A woman’s gun,” one of the precinct detectives told Bill Weigand, turning it over to him. “You wanted her,” the precinct man said. “You’ve got her.”

He hadn’t, Bill said mildly, wanted her this way. He had wanted her talking.

“Well,” the precinct man said, reasonably, “somebody else didn’t. Huh?”

Bill agreed that it looked that way.

“The woman who got the Gipson dame,” the precinct man said, as if stating a fact.

Bill agreed again, still mildly, but made a correction. “Whoever got the Gipson dame,” he said. The precinct man said he thought it was a woman who got the Gipson dame. He said he thought everybody figured it that way.

“Right,” Weigand said. “It figures that way. What about time? On this one?”

It had been recent—within two or three hours. Bill Weigand looked at his watch and said it was three-fifty. The precinct man looked at his watch and said yeah, it was.

“Not much before one, then,” Bill said to the assistant medical examiner, who was standing, looking down at the body. “Not much after—not much after what, Doctor?”

The doctor turned around and looked at him.

“Well,” he said, “I’d say she’s been dead an hour, at the shortest.”

“Between twelve-thirty and ten minutes of three, then?” Bill said.

The doctor said he guessed so. He said it was probably between one and two-thirty. He went toward the door. He told them to send it along any time. He paused, looked back, and said he hated to see them get it so young.

“Right,” Bill said. “So do I. Or any time.”

“Sure,” the doctor said. “Abstractly.” He went out. The man who was taking fingerprints dropped one dead hand on the floor and stepped over the body so he could reach the other hand. He began to make impressions from it on slips of paper. Weigand watched him a moment; watched the other fingerprint man, who was dusting door-knobs, the ironwork of the bed near which the girl had fallen, the sides and back of the wooden chair, the woodwork around the doors. Bill said he was probably finding plenty. The fingerprint man looked at him and twisted his mouth and nodded. He said it didn’t look as if anybody had ever wiped anything in the room. He said the freshest were the girl’s, if that mattered.

“On the outside knob?” Bill wanted to know.

The man shook his head. He said somebody had recently used a cloth to turn it, and blurred the prints. He said he hadn’t got anything clear off it, even the girl’s. Weigand was not pleased, but he was not surprised.

He talked to the elderly clerk on duty at the desk and the man answered him hurriedly, with something like fear in his eyes. The hotel in West Forty-second Street was familiar with the police, and familiarity had bred trepidation. Now the clerk was eager to tell what he knew. But he knew little. He was sure that Florence Adams had gone out of the hotel a little after eleven. He had not seen her come back.

“But I guess she got back, all right,” the man said.

“Right,” Weigand said. “She got back.”

The clerk said she must have got by without his seeing her. He said it could be.

“It ain’t that we don’t try to keep track of ’em, Captain,” he said. “You see how it is.”

Weigand saw how it was. The lobby was small, but even so the clerk’s counter was placed so that a man behind it might easily not see who came in and went out.

“And nobody asked for her?” Bill said. He said it without optimism, anticipating the shake of the clerk’s head. Nobody had come to the desk and asked the room number of Miss Florence Adams. Nobody would have, planning to kill her. The girl must have given her murderer the number of her room. Or the murderer must have come in with her.

“Strangers?” Weigand asked. The man shook his head again.

“You know how it is, Captain,” he said. “Most of ’em is strangers. Except the ones who live here.”

Bill Weigand said he knew how it was.

“And you didn’t hear the shot?” he said. He was going over ground the precinct men had gone over.

“Not to know it was a shot,” the man said. “I musta heard it, Captain, but I musta thought it was a backfire.”

“Or somewhere else and none of your business,” Weigand said. The man shook his head, and the dirty white hair fluttered around its central baldness.

“Honest to God, Captain,” he said. “I didn’t hear nothing I thought was a shot.”

Whether he had or not, he was going to stick to a safer version. If he was getting away with something, he figured to get away with it. They were, for the time being, going to have to be content with the time interval they had. Twelve-thirty to two-fifty maximum; one and two-thirty minimum. It would do; so far as Bill Weigand could see, it was going to have to do. So the next thing was: Where was everybody? It was something that you always got down to. Who had opportunity?

Men came through the lobby carrying a basket. The clerk looked at it; he had seen it before.

“Yeah,” he said. “Curtains.”

Then he looked at his own hands. He moved his fingers, carefully, with intention; testing their sentience. And then, oddly, almost gloatingly, he smiled.

Bill Weigand did not go back to the room. He went down to the police car in which he had told Pam North she could sit. There had been no need for either of them to assure the other that she was not going up to the room in which Florence Adams lay with her black hair in blood. Bill told Pam, briefly, what he had found.

“They won’t come to us,” he said. “They think they’re being so damned bright—so damned bright.”

Pam nodded, not saying anything. Her eyes were sober; she seemed to be looking at someone or something far away. She was silent as the police car turned downtown. She nodded when Bill said he would drop her anywhere she liked, and then she said, “The apartment, I guess, Bill.”

“Probably,” Bill said, and Pam knew he was thinking aloud, “she let somebody borrow her key—somebody who told her a good story and paid her a hundred dollars.”

Pam’s eyes came back, and they were enquiring.

“In her purse,” he said. “A hundred dollars in tens and a little bit more. I should think that’s where she got the hundred. But she read in the News that Miss Gipson had been murdered and got scared about her part in it. She went to the hotel, figuring we wouldn’t find her. As we didn’t—in time. Then she tried a shakedown.”

“Or,” Pam said, “wanted an explanation.”

“Or both,” Bill Weigand said. “She must have got some sort of explanation, anyhow. Somebody strung her along until he could get her and kill her.”

“He?” Pam said, “I thought it was a woman, because you know why.”

“She,” Bill said. “He or she. It was a little gun, anyway.”

“And?” Pam said.

“There was no perfume in the room,” Bill said. “Oh—the body smelled of something. Not the right thing. The room—well, the room smelled of cordite. And blood.”

Pam was silent until the car stopped outside the apartment house in which the Norths lived. Then, instead of getting out immediately, she sat a moment.

“Mrs. Burt had just come in,” she said. “Hadn’t she? Helen Burt? The maid thought she was out.”

Or, Bill pointed out, could have been giving them the usual stall. Pam shook her head at that; she said it didn’t sound like the usual stall.

“I think she had just come in,” she said. “So—”

“So she could have been at the hotel,” Bill finished for her. “Yes. I thought the maid didn’t know, too. She could have been at the hotel. She could have been anywhere. And her husband had just come in, too. And so had, I suppose, several thousand other people in New York.”

“I know,” Pam said. “It just isn’t impossible.”

Obviously, Bill Weigand agreed, it wasn’t impossible. Obviously Mrs. Burt’s movements were interesting. So were the movements, he pointed out, of several other people—of John Gipson, Nora Frost, of Philip Spencer; of, for all they knew, a dozen other people whose names they didn’t know.

Pam got out and Bill Weigand got out with her and got back in.

“Of course,” Pam said, through the window, “it could have been one of the writers. Alexander Hill or Mrs. Abernathy or Mr. Robinson or even the Munroes. Although I don’t think the Munroes, because they’re married.”

Bill Weigand looked at her, and his eyes widened.

“For God’s sake why?” he said.

“She saw them,” Pam told him. “Since she came here. She had contact with them. It might be anybody she had had contact with.”

“Including,” Bill said, “the doorman at the Annex? The clerk? The waitress at whatever tea shop she went to? The library attendants? The—”

“Oh yes,” Pam said. “Of course, I said ‘might.’”

Bill Weigand was thankful for that, and said so. He still looked puzzled.

“Why not the Munroes?” he said.

“They collaborate,” Pam told him. “People don’t, on murder. Not when they’re married. Jerry and I wouldn’t.”

It seemed a little inconclusive, Bill told her. But for what it was worth, he thought it probably wasn’t the Munroes.

“Or any of the others,” he said. “People who write about murder don’t murder.”

If anything was inconclusive, Pam told him as the car started, that last was.

Mullins was waiting for Weigand at the office. Mullins looked, Bill Weigand decided as soon as he saw him, as if he had something.

“Well,” Bill said, “did Backley tell you who did it, Sergeant?”

Mullins was not dashed, which meant that he was more than usually confident.

“Maybe he did, Loot,” Mullins said. “It could just be he did.”

Mullins had seen the attorney who handled the Gipson estate and who was most familiar with its ramifications. He had found nothing new there; he had retraced the ground Stein had covered efficiently. But, because Backley knew both John Gipson and Nora Frost, who had been Nora Gipson, Mullins had been able to go farther. He had, for one thing, given Backley the gist of the letter Nora had written her aunt the day before Amelia Gipson died.

Backley had looked grave. He was a smallish man with a resonant voice and a face built for proper gravity. He made deprecatory sounds with his tongue and lips. He shook his head. He said that it was an extremely unwise letter to have written.

“Particularly,” Mullins said, “to a dame that’s going to get killed.”

The circumstances, Backley had agreed, made the letter particularly unfortunate. “But we must bear in mind that Mrs. Frost had no intimation that her aunt was to—die,” he told Mullins.

Mullins remained silent.

“I sat that one out,” he told Weigand, reporting. “He looked at me kinda funny and wanted to know did I think she did. I said we had no reason for thinking anything at this stage of the investigation. Right?”

“Right,” Bill Weigand agreed. He smiled faintly to himself.

Backley had, judicially, recognized that he had no right to insist on a more definite answer. He had said that he, obviously, would regard any such suggestion as preposterous. To that Mullins had said merely, “Sure,” dismissing it. He had asked whether Nora Frost—Major and Mrs. Frost—needed money.

On that point, Mr. Backley had been confident and assured. He had hoped that Mullins—he had hoped that he himself—would never need money more than the Frosts did at that moment. Kennet Frost, to begin with, had a very substantial income. Very substantial. Nora Frost, in the second place, had found her share of the income from the estate more than ample. She had had—the Frosts had had—no reason whatever for not wishing Amelia Gipson a long life; no reason whatever for wishing to accelerate the distribution of the trust established by Alfred Gipson. Whatever the letter referred to—and Mr. Backley was frank, he was almost eager to say he didn’t know—it did not refer to money. At any rate, it did not refer to the estate.

“I never thought it did,” Weigand said. “It doesn’t sound like a letter about money. It sounds like a letter about the emotions.”

“O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “There was no harm in asking him.”

Clearly, Weigand agreed, they had to ask him.

“Then,” Mullins said, “we went on to John—the nephew, John is.”

“I can keep them straight,” Weigand promised him.

“The nephew,” Mullins repeated, keeping it straight anyway. “The chemist. Seems he was working on something top secret for the government at a laboratory up in Connecticut. I think it was something about atoms and—”

“Everybody now thinks all research is about atoms,” Weigand told him. “However—maybe it is.”

Backley had said that much, said that John Gipson was well enough paid and engrossed in his work and had been willing to let it stop there. Mullins had also been ready to let it stop; it had been chance, more than anything, which had led to another question.

“Just sorta to fill in,” Mullins said. “I asked him if Gipson was doing anything else. I didn’t see why he should be.”

Mr. Backley had looked even more judicial and had put the tips of his fingers together and regarded them, evidently seeking guidance. He apparently had found it.

The fact was, he had told Mullins, that John Gipson was also, in his spare time, conducting experiments of his own. Not on atoms. On plastics, Mr. Backley understood. He did not understand much else, except that John Gipson felt he had hit on something. With the war over, he expected to be released from government service. He wanted to go on with whatever he had on plastics. Mullins had got it, then.

“He wanted capital,” Mullins had said, flatly. “This was the time to get into whatever the racket was, with things picking up. He didn’t want to wait until—how long would he have had to wait?”

Backley had made further deprecating sounds with tongue and lips over that; he had looked grave and disapproving. But he had said that the money would be divided, as he had already told Mullins, when Nora was twenty-five. And Nora was now twenty-three.

“Two years might make the hell of a lot of difference if young Gipson was onto something,” Mullins said.

Backley had said he feared Sergeant Mullins was inclined to jump to conclusions. He said he did not know, actually, that Gipson was onto anything.

“But he thinks he is,” Mullins said. “Don’t he?”

Backley thought that over, and nodded.

“And he wants capital?”

Backley nodded again.

“And he don’t want to let outsiders in by sharing whatever he’s got,” Mullins had guessed.

Backley did not nod this time. he looked very disapproving. He said that he had no information on that point. But he did not enter a denial.

Mullins had guessed then that Gipson had gone to his aunt, asking for his share—or a large part of his share—in advance. And had been refused. Was that it?

Backley stopped talking then. He said that he felt they were now in the realm of matters confidential between lawyer and client.

“Which is as good as an answer, ain’t it?” Mullins wanted to know. There was triumph in the question.

Bill Weigand nodded slowly. It was as good as an answer. A denial would have violated no confidence. Only if Mullins had hit on the truth, or part of the truth, would there be reason for Mr. Backley’s recourse to legal ethics.

So—John Gipson had a motive. He might believe—he might be right in believing—that his aunt was standing between him and real money—real money in the realest sense; the kind of money for which many men would do strange things, and had.

And John’s sister, Nora, had written a strange letter.

It was time to talk to these young people. He knew enough now. It was high time. He looked at his watch. If O’Connor had caught them at the airport when they met the major, who had been due in at one o’clock, he had had plenty of time to report in. And he would have arranged an interview, which was what he was there for—or partly what he was there for. Weigand took a sheaf of papers out of his “In” basket and looked through them. O’Connor had reported, all right. He had reported that neither John Gipson nor his sister had appeared at the airport, and that no Major Frost—no major of any name—had got off the plane. The nearest O’Connor had come was a colonel, who was a regular, worked in Washington, and was named Jones. It was not very near.

A tall young man with blue eyes and wings on the left breast of his tunic looked at Bill Weigand and said, “Yes?” His tone reserved decision.

“Major Frost?” Bill said.

The young man agreed he was Major Frost. Bill Weigand identified himself.

“Oh,” Major Frost said, “about Nora’s aunt.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “Mrs. Frost was coming to see us. Or I thought she was. There was a misunderstanding, apparently. So I came to see her.”

“Come ahead,” Major Kennet Frost said. “We were just having a drink. You can have one with us.”

He turned and went back into the apartment, assuming Weigand would follow him. It was an apartment with a sunken living-room and there were two steps down from the tiny foyer. There was an ornamental iron railing partway around the little platform onto which you entered. Bill Weigand followed the young major of the Air Force down into the living-room.

“This is that detective, Nora,” Kennet Frost said. “Weigand. Lieutenant Weigand.”

Nora Frost was slender and very lovely, with soft brown hair which seemed to flow around her face. She had large brown eyes and she widened them slightly at Bill Weigand. She said, “Oh.” She said, “Oh, dear.”

“We expected to find you at the airport,” Bill said. “Meeting the major. The boys must have misunderstood.”

“Oh,” she said. “You went there? Please sit down, Lieutenant.”

Major Frost sat down on the sofa by his wife. Weigand sat in a deep chair, more or less facing them.

“Scotch?” the major said. “I’ve got some Scotch. Understand it’s been hard for you people to get.”

His tone tacitly, inoffensively, opened a gulf between Weigand and himself—Weigand suspected it opened a gulf between the Army Air Force and all other persons everywhere. Particularly all civilians. It was a gulf which would shrink, Weigand thought. He hazarded a guess.

“You’re being released, Major?” he said, pleasantly. Major Frost frowned momentarily. He was hardly older than his wife, Weigand thought. Twenty-five at most would do it. He had been very confident, very assured, very expert, but that was in another world. It was tough on kids, Bill thought. But the insistence of the Police Department that he remain civilian had been tough on him, so it evened up, in a way. He looked at the ribbons on the major’s tunic. One of them was the ribbon of the Distinguished Flying Cross. The major had been very good, in that other world.

“Terminal leave,” Major Frost said. He smiled, suddenly. “I’ll have trouble with Scotch too, I suppose. By the way, it was merely that I got on an earlier airplane.”

“And telephoned me from the airport,” Nora Frost said, quickly. “So John and I didn’t go out. I met Ken for lunch and of course I should have called your office, Lieutenant, but—”

“We were busy,” Frost said. “I’d been out there twenty-four months. And anyway, I don’t know what she can tell you, Lieutenant.”

“Neither do I,” Weigand said. He picked up the Scotch and soda his nod had accepted. “We have to—explore all possibilities, you know.”

“I hadn’t seen Amelia for days,” Nora said. She spoke quickly, almost hurriedly. She took up her glass and finished the pale drink that remained in it. She held it up and Kennet Frost took it and went to a table which held a silver tray and bottles. He made her a fresh drink and brought it back.

“I can’t believe anybody would have wanted to kill her,” Nora said. “Why should they?”

That was one of the things he was trying to find out, Bill said. Meanwhile, Mrs. Frost would have to believe that somebody had killed her. Somebody had substituted sodium fluoride for one of the powders she apparently was in the habit of taking.

“Dr. Powers’ Medicine,” Nora Frost said. “She’d taken it for years. She used to take boxes of it up to Maine when we went there in the summer. You remember, Ken?”

“Yeah,” Kennet Frost said. “Anyway, I remember your telling me about it. You said she was always dosing herself.”

He was a polite young man, and had been to the right places. So there was not quite contempt in his tone. But people who dosed themselves were a long way from his circle.

Weigand said he supposed that many people knew of Amelia Gipson’s habit, and Nora Frost said everybody who knew her, she should think. She sipped her drink. She stretched lovely legs out in front of her and looked at them.

“Don’t think I’m not sorry about it,” she said, still looking at her legs. “I am sorry. Amelia was—she was somebody I’d known all my life. She was—family.”

“You were fond of her?” Weigand wanted to know.

She looked at him.

“Not particularly,” she said. “Except—because she was family. She more or less brought me up.” She smiled faintly. “As I’ve no doubt you know,” she said. “I never thought much about her until recently, I suppose. As—as a person. She was just Aunt Amelia, who brought me up, and who spent summers with me up in Maine while Ken was gone.”

She stopped, because Kennet Frost was looking at her. It was a look Weigand had no trouble interpreting. Major Frost thought his pretty wife was talking too much.

“All right, Major,” Bill said. He spoke lightly, easily. “Mrs. Frost’s attitude is quite understandable.” He paused and his smile faded. “Miss Gipson was poisoned,” he said. “Somebody wanted to kill her and did. This wasn’t a result of—a lack of particular fondness, as Mrs. Frost puts it. She was killed because somebody thought it was necessary, for his own purposes, that she be out of the way.”

“You asked if she was fond of her aunt,” Frost reminded him. His tone was suspicious. He would fight for Nora, and he had proved to be a good fighter. In that other world. It was interesting that he thought she might need fighting for.

He was merely, Weigand said, trying to find out how well Mrs. Frost had known her aunt. It was useful, he said, to find out as much about people who had been murdered as could be found out. The way to do that was to talk to people who had known them well.

“Character enters into murder,” Weigand said. “The character of the victim, as well as the character of the killer.”

“It’s all right, Ken,” Nora Frost said. “The lieutenant knows I didn’t kill Amelia.”

Weigand shook his head at that, but a smile tempered the implication. He said that, abstractly, he didn’t know that anyone had not killed Amelia Gipson. He would not know that, he pointed out, until he knew who had killed her.

“Well,” Frost said, “Nora didn’t. I didn’t.”

“By the way,” Weigand said, “speaking of you, Major. Just how much earlier was this earlier plane you caught?”

“Four hours,” Frost said. He looked hard at Weigand. “I wasn’t here yesterday afternoon, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said. “I was in Kansas City, arguing about a priority with some civilian.” He paused and seemed, somehow, to be looking at himself. “Hell,” he said, and there was surprise in his tone, “I’m next thing to a civilian myself.” It seemed to astonish him.

“And you telephoned your wife from LaGuardia?” Weigand said. “When was that?”

“About ten,” Frost said. “I told her not to come out. I came here and we went out to lunch. We got back about three and have been here since. Why?”

Weigand told him why. He told him succinctly.

“I never heard of the girl,” Frost said. “It seems like a tough break. But I never heard of her.”

“Mrs. Frost?” Weigand said.

She shook her head, her softly curled brown hair floating about it. She had never heard of Florence Adams. Her face reflected a kind of concern. She said it was too bad about the girl. She sounded as if she thought it too bad about the girl.

“Where did you lunch?” Weigand said. He saw hardness in Frost’s face.

“Major,” he said, “I’m doing a job that has to be done. I’m a policeman, looking for a murderer. I never saw you and Mrs. Frost before in my life, or heard of you. I don’t know whether you are the most truthful people in the world, or whether you’re liars. All I know—know, Major—is that you are wearing an Army uniform with wings and ribbons and a Major’s leaves.”

The major looked annoyed. Then he smiled suddenly.

“Want to see my I.D. card, Lieutenant?” he said.

“Yes,” Weigand said. He looked at it. When he returned it, his own badge was cupped in his hand. He let them both look at it.

“All right,” Frost said, “We’re both who we say we are, apparently. We had lunch at Twenty-one.”

“Did you see anyone you knew?” Weigand asked.

Frost smiled, but his wife answered.

“I’m afraid we only saw each other, Lieutenant,” she said. Her voice was soft.

“And would rather now,” Weigand agreed.

Frost nodded. There was emphasis in his nod. He was, Weigand thought, alternately mature and very young.

“We don’t have to hurry,” Nora Frost said, and her voice was soft. She was speaking, Weigand thought, to her husband rather than to him. “Not any more.”

Kennet Frost smiled at her. Weigand thought they were very much in love, and had already waited a good while. Frost brought himself back, sharply, youthfully. He was very matter-of-fact, suddenly.

“Obviously,” he said, “Nora inherits money now that her aunt is dead. You know that, I suppose?”

“Oh yes,” Weigand said. “Naturally.”

“And you think it’s a possible motive?” Frost said. he was still matter-of-fact.

Bill said that money was always a possible motive. Particularly a good deal of money; particularly if somebody needed money.

“We don’t,” Frost said. “You can check on that.”

“Right,” Bill Weigand said. “So we can.”

“Why don’t you?” Frost wanted to know. “Then if you find out we are broke and have to have Nora’s money so badly we can’t wait a couple of years, and find out that I was really in New York yesterday and not in Kansas City, come back?”

“Yes,” Weigand said, “if I find out those things, I’ll come back. Meanwhile, there’s a point I want to clear up with your wife, Major.”

“Well,” Frost said, “clear it up.”

Weigand hesitated a moment. He wished Major Frost would go out and buy a package of cigarettes. He obstructed. But Weigand doubted that Frost would go.

“Right,” he said. He turned to Nora Frost, his movement excluding her husband. “You wrote a letter to your aunt the day before she died, Mrs. Frost. It seemed to us an odd letter, under the circumstances. Do you remember it?”

The girl’s eyes seemed to flicker for a second. She picked up her glass and she was stalling for time. The glass trembled slightly in her hands and, although she raised it to her lips, Weigand did not see her swallow. He had seen that happen before; a glass can clink against teeth if the hand holding it trembles.

The girl waited too long, and then, knowing it had been too long, spoke too quickly.

“Yes,” she said. “I remember it.”

“You will understand, then, why we want an explanation,” Weigand said. His voice was no longer casual.

“That’s why you came, isn’t it?” Nora said.

“Wait a minute!” Frost said.

Weigand turned to him.

“You’re not in this, Major,” he said. “Unless you also know about the letter. Do you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frost said. “But you can’t—”

“Your wife wrote her aunt a letter which requires explanation,” Weigand said. “I expect to get that explanation. Don’t think I can’t, Major. If you interfere, I shall have to take Mrs. Frost somewhere else to get the explanation. If it’s a simple one, I’d rather not. But you can have it either way.”

The major looked at Weigand for a moment. He looked puzzled.

“Hell,” he said, “you talk like the colonel.”

Weigand did not smile. He said, “Well, Major?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Major Frost said. “If anything needs explaining, I know Nora can explain it.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “I have a copy of the letter here, Mrs. Frost. Do you want me to read it?”

The girl spoke very quickly. She spoke almost as if she were frightened.

“No!” she said. “Oh no, please!”

Then, involuntarily, she looked at her husband and looked away again. Weigand’s eyes followed hers. The young face of Major Frost was very young—and very puzzled.

“Look,” Frost said, and his voice was puzzled, too. He held out his hand, tentatively, as if for the letter. “Let me—”

“No,” Nora said. “Please, Ken. I don’t want you to.”

Bill Weigand was glad he had not insisted on having Frost go out for cigarettes. He was very glad.

“Well, Mrs. Frost?” he said. “What is the explanation?”

The girl hesitated. It was obvious she was trying to work out a story. It was pathetically obvious. It was also obvious that she had not expected this, and had no story ready. Which might mean she was innocent. Or might merely mean she underestimated the police.

“I.…” she said. “It wasn’t anything important.”

Weigand shook his head.

“It had to be important, Mrs. Frost,” he said. “You can’t remember the letter. You said something that your aunt was going to do was …” he referred to the letter … “‘wicked and barbaric, no better than murder.’ It had to be important.”

The girl shook her head. But there was no assurance in the gesture.

“I was excited,” she said. “I … I thought … she was trying to … to come between Ken and me.”

Weigand waited, but she did not continue. He thought she could not continue. She was clearly frightened now, and no longer hopeful of hiding it. Her slender hands were working together. He looked at Frost and saw bewilderment—and more than bewilderment—in his face. Frost, he would guess, was entirely surprised by this, because he was entirely new to this.

“How?” Weigand pressed her. “What had she found out? You wrote that—?”

“I know!” the girl said. “I know what I wrote! I told you not to read the letter!”

“Then tell me what it means, Mrs. Frost,” Weigand said. “Tell me what she had found out; what she was doing—what made you threaten her, Mrs. Frost.”

“I—” the girl started. Then she turned to her husband, and all her face asked his help.

“You don’t need to explain anything, darling,” Frost said. His voice was low and steady—and it was surprisingly gentle. “You don’t need to explain anything. Nobody can make you.”

Weigand waited.

“Nobody can make you, Nora,” Frost repeated. “I know it was all right—I—I know it was all right. Whatever it was.” He turned to Weigand. “You can’t force her to explain anything, Lieutenant,” he said.

Weigand shrugged slightly.

“Obviously,” he said. His voice was cold and entirely without emphasis. “But I can make her wish she had, Major. If there is an innocent explanation, she’d better give it.” He paused, and now he spoke directly to Mrs. Frost. “Even if it is embarrassing,” he said.

“It isn’t—” the girl began, and then the doorbell rang. Bill Weigand did not say anything, but he could hardly have been annoyed more.

Major Frost clearly was not annoyed. He went quickly across the living-room and up the two steps to the entrance balcony. He said, “Hello, John,” with what sounded like real pleasure.

“Is Nora here?” another male voice said—a lighter, quicker voice than the major’s. “Backley just called and the police—”

Frost picked it up quickly.

“Somebody from the police is here, John,” he said. “Lieutenant Weigand. He’s been asking Nora a few questions.”

John Gipson was in by that time. He stopped and looked down into the living-room. He was a slim man, slighter than his brother-in-law, quicker in movement. You could have guessed the relationship between him and the girl on the sofa. Their hair was of the same brown and their brown eyes were similarly set. And as John looked across at his sister, he smiled quickly, and there was warmth as well as enquiry in his smile. He turned to Weigand and did not smile.

“I suppose you think we were in a hurry for the money,” John Gipson said. His tone hinted that that was the obvious thing for a policeman to think; that, being obvious, it could not be true.

“I don’t know,” Weigand said. “You’re John Gipson? The nephew? I did hear you were in a hurry for the money, as a matter of fact.”

“Backley talks too much,” Gipson said. “Have you been badgering Nora?”

“I’ve been asking her questions,” Bill Weigand said, mildly. “If they badgered her I suppose it was because they were hard questions to answer. You were in a hurry for the money? You wanted it to develop a new process you’ve discovered?”

“Backley’s an old fool,” Gipson said. He spoke chiefly to his sister. “I always said he was an old fool.”

“Backley is sworn to uphold the law and assist the police,” Weigand told him. “He’s an officer of the court. Did you want money in a hurry?”

“Not that much of a hurry,” Gipson said. He did not, Weigand thought, seem alarmed. “Anyway, I wouldn’t kill Amelia. Hell, we’ve known her all our lives.”

Weigand told him that that was hardly proof.

“However,” he said, “I haven’t suggested that you killed your aunt. When did you see her last?”

“Days ago,” Gipson said. He crossed over to the table and mixed himself a drink. He looked at his sister’s glass and saw it was half full. Then he looked at Frost’s glass.

“Pour you some of your liquor, Ken?” he said. Kennet Frost nodded, and Gipson crossed to the sofa, picked up Frost’s glass, poured Scotch into it and put in soda and brought it back. “Days ago,” he said. “However, I talked to her on the telephone yesterday. Asked her if she wouldn’t change her mind and come through with my share. She wouldn’t. Seemed perfectly natural; perfectly in character. I didn’t think she would.”

“Why wouldn’t she?” Weigand said. “Didn’t she believe in your discovery? Invention? Whatever it is?”

“A new process,” Gipson said. “Having to do with plastics. Do you want to hear details?”

His voice implied that Weigand would not understand them if he did. Weigand shook his head. He said he did not want to hear them. He said if they became important in any connection, Gipson could explain them to somebody in the department who would understand.

“Of whom,” he said, “there are several, Mr. Gipson.”

“Are there?” Gipson said. “As to Amelia—I don’t know what she believed. All I know is she wouldn’t give me the money.”

“Which,” Weigand said, “probably annoyed you.”

John Gipson drank and said Weigand was damn right it did.

“Whereupon,” he said, “I brought her some nice fresh poison and said, ‘Drink this, will you, auntie?’ and she said, ‘Of course, dear boy. Anything for a nephew,’ and there we were.”

“Do you think it’s funny, Mr. Gipson?” Weigand said. “It wasn’t, you know. It wasn’t at all funny.”

Gipson looked at Weigand, and Weigand’s expression did not encourage light-heartedness.

“No,” Gipson said, “I didn’t think it’s funny, Lieutenant. Amelia wasn’t a dream aunt in all respects, but I’d like to see you get the guy who killed her. Very much.” He paused and examined Weigand’s face. “I didn’t kill her, if you really think I did,” he said. “I don’t know who did, except that it wasn’t Nora and it wasn’t Ken and it wasn’t me.”

“All right,” Weigand said, equably. “Where were you today from noon until two o’clock—at about the time you were supposed to be meeting the major at the airport?”

John Gipson looked at the major, surprised.

“He got in on an earlier—” he began.

“I know,” Weigand said. “I understand why you weren’t at the airport. Where were you?”

“Why?” Gipson said.

Briefly, Weigand told him why.

“That was a damned dirty trick,” Gipson said. “Rope the girl in, and then kill her because you had. Did he take back the hundred, too?”

Bill Weigand shook his head. He waited.

“I was having lunch most of the time, I guess,” Gipson said. “By myself, not wanting to horn in on these two. Then I went downtown to see a man.” He looked at Weigand. “Still hush-hush, that is,” he said. “But it was about two-thirty that I got there, so it wouldn’t help anyway. No alibi.”

He waited, as if for a comment, but Weigand made none. Instead he asked, for the record, whether any of them knew any reason why somebody—not one of them—might have wanted to poison Amelia Gipson. The girl shook her head and Major Frost merely looked at Bill Weigand.

“She was a difficult person,” John Gipson said, after a moment. He spoke slowly. “She was very—righteous. She wanted other people to behave as—in accordance with her standards. Few people did. When they didn’t, Amelia thought it was her duty to make trouble for them. I’ve heard she made trouble for several people. At the college, chiefly. But I don’t know any details.” He looked at Weigand. “What I’m trying to say is that she wasn’t an unlikely candidate for what she got,” he said. “She might have stepped on somebody too hard. That’s all I can think of.”

Bill Weigand nodded. Then he turned to the girl again.

“I still want to hear about the letter, you know,” he said.

She had been nervous, and Bill Weigand had seen her nervousness and waited. She had dreaded it and now it had come. And now she turned to her brother and her eyes sought his help.

“Letter?” Gipson said. “What—” Then he broke off. His eyes questioned Nora Frost and she nodded. There was concern in his mobile face—quick concern.

“A letter my sister wrote to Amelia?” he said. It had the form of a question, but it was hardly a question.

“You knew about it, I gather,” Bill said. “Yes—that letter. Your sister doesn’t seem to want to explain it.”

“I know about it,” Gipson said. “It had nothing to do with any of this. It was private.”

Dryly, Weigand said he had gathered it was private. But nothing, he said, was private in a murder investigation.

“However,” he said, “if it doesn’t mean anything, if it really hasn’t anything to do with this, it can stop with me.”

Brother and sister conferred, without speech. Major Frost looked at his wife and then at Gipson, and his eyes were puzzled and unhappy. Whatever it was, Bill Weigand thought, he’s not in on it; it’s something they’re keeping from him. In which case—

“However,” he said, “I can’t force it from you, as you pointed out earlier, Major. I’d advise you to change your mind, Mrs. Frost. If you do, you can telephone me. But I’d change my mind before tomorrow, if I were you.” He paused to let it register. “Talk to your brother, Mrs. Frost,” he said, then. “I’m sure he’ll advise you to get in touch with me.”

He stood up, then. He looked down at them.

“Of course you know it’s only begun,” he said. “Murder cases don’t stop.” He took a step toward the door and Major Frost arose and went ahead of him. “Not until they’re finished,” Weigand added. He turned, then, and went out the door Frost had opened. He would have liked to hear what the three said to one another when the door closed, but that was impracticable. He thought he would pick up the gist of it as time went on.