Murder Comes First Read online

  “She could have been away and come back,” Pam said. “It could have been that way.”

  He shook his head again. He said he wished it could. He said, “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He led them down the long room for a few steps, to a table with a chair by it—and a portable typewriter, open, on it. There was a sheet of unheaded paper in the typewriter; on it had been typed:

  Denver, Thursday, 10–19

  Dear Bart:

  I think I’ve got it about worked out. Anyway, I’ll come back and you and I can

  “You see,” Barton Sandford said, “something interrupted her. This afternoon—this evening? Perhaps it was your aunt, Mrs. North. But—you can see what she planned. You see how she dated it?”

  “Day after tomorrow,” Pam said. “So that—”

  “So that she could take a plane and fly to Denver and mail it,” Sandford said. “Then, I suppose, fly back here. I suppose she’d drive over to—oh, say Danbury, where she wasn’t known, park the car some place, go into New York and fly to whatever city she—she thought was a good place, and mail a letter. I suppose sometimes go to one city and mail the letter and to another and pick up some hotel stationery for—for the next time.”

  “Why didn’t she merely take the typewriter along with her?” Dorian asked. “I mean, she apparently hasn’t any stationery from a Denver hotel, and has to use plain paper. If she took the typewriter along—”

  But Sandford was shaking his head. He said he’d show her. He reached under the table and brought out the cover of the portable. He fitted it on. “Now,” he said to Dorian, “take hold of it, Miss Hunt.” Dorian did; she lifted. The cover came off. “Try to lock it,” Sandford said. Dorian tried. She lifted again. The cover came off.

  It had, Sandford said, been broken for months, so that it could not be carried by its handle. Presumably it could be strapped together, tied together, in some fashion but—he shrugged. They had never tried that; they had got out of the habit of considering the typewriter as in any real sense a portable one. Probably tying it together somehow would never have occurred to Sally, nor, had he been in her place, to him.

  “But—” Dorian began, her voice puzzled.

  Pam interrupted; she interrupted quickly.

  “If Aunt Lucy came here and found—well, your wife, Mr. Sandford. Then—where is my aunt, Mr. Sandford?”

  “Not here,” Sandford said. “I’m—”

  “You didn’t look everywhere,” Pam told him. “You—you just called for your wife and looked in rooms quickly. I—Aunt Lucy!” Pam’s clear voice rose high. “Aunt Lucy?”

  “It’s no good, Mrs. North,” Sandford said. “I’m—I’m damned afraid—” He shook his head slowly; he seemed puzzled, uneasy, as if he were trying to press down some fear rising in his own mind. “But Sally wouldn’t—”

  “You’re afraid, Mr. Sandford,” Pam North said. “You know you are! We’ve got to—”

  The lights of a car flooded into the room, moved across it as the car turned. Sandford started; then stood motionless for a moment; then moved toward the door. He said “Now what?” and pulled the door open. The lights of the car went out. A voice said, “Bart? You here?”

  “What the—” Barton Sandford said. “Oh. Paul?”

  “What’s going on here?” Paul Logan asked from the darkness. Then he was at the door, his arm around the shoulders of Lynn Hickey. “What’s up? We saw the lights and—” He broke off, looking at Pamela North and Dorian. “Oh,” he said. “You got here.”

  “We’re looking for my aunt,” Pam said. “And—and Mrs. Sandford. What’re you—?”

  “Picking up some things from our place,” Paul Logan said, quickly. “Starting back and saw the lights. Figured—well, we’d better look into it. Didn’t know it was you, Bart. Figured it might be—”

  It was his turn to break off, although he was not interrupted. He looked across the room, his gaze fixed.

  He said, “Lynn, it’s here!” He looked around at the others. “Here now,” he said. “It wasn’t.”

  The three of them looked at him. Sandford spoke first; spoke slowly. He said he didn’t get it.

  “Wasn’t when?” he said. “What’re you talking about, Paul?”

  “The typewriter,” Lynn said. “Tell him, Paul.”

  “We were here—oh, an hour or so ago,” Paul said. “I knew where the key was, you know. We—” He hesitated. “We came to look for the typewriter,” he said. “Or—or some trace that Sally was living here. Wasn’t where she said she was. Because—” He looked at Pam North. “You know why,” he said.

  “I know,” Pam said. “Then?” She looked at Barton Sandford. He spoke quickly.

  “Then—she’s been here since,” he said. “Had the typewriter hidden so you didn’t find it, Paul. Got it out. Started one of the letters then—then she must have been interrupted.”

  “My aunt,” Pam said. “You—she wasn’t here, Mr. Logan? A—a little woman with a—a strange pink hat.” She paused. “A funny hat,” she said. “Meant—meant to be gay.” The clear voice trembled a little.

  “There wasn’t anybody here,” Paul said. “And—the typewriter wasn’t here.”

  “It must have been,” Sandford said. “You just didn’t find it. Maybe—maybe she put it down in the cellar. Did you look there?”

  Paul Logan looked puzzled. Then he said, “Oh, damn. I forgot.”

  “The point is,” Dorian said, “she must have been here within—within an hour? Between the time you left, Mr. Logan, and the time Mr. Sandford came. About ten minutes before we did?” The last was a question, to Sandford.

  “Just about,” he said. “I put the car—a hired car, since she’s got ours—in the shed and then came on in. About ten minutes.”

  “The other car,” Dorian said. “Your own car. Was it in the shed, or wherever you usually put it?”

  “No,” Sandford said. “It wasn’t there. She must have taken it when she left. When she left this time.” He hesitated. He spoke slowly. “If your aunt surprised her, Mrs. North,” he said, “Sally might have taken—made her go along. Or—” He stopped abruptly.

  “Or killed her?” Pam said. “Is that what you mean, Mr. Sandford. Or killed her? Because—because you’re saying, now, your wife killed Mrs. Logan, aren’t you?”

  “No,” Sandford said. “I don’t give a damn what it looks like. No!”

  “Because if you’re saying that—” Pam said, and stopped, listening.

  Somewhere there was a faint, miserable sound; a sound like a whimper. It seemed to come from a long way off, yet it was in the house. They turned, locating the source; trying to locate the source.

  “The bedroom!” Paul Logan said, and was the first to move. Pam North was behind him and then the others.

  The bedroom was empty, but the sound was there—the little whimpering sound. It was easy to trace, now. Paul turned quickly, reached for the closet door. In an instant a tiny, ageing woman was in his arms; a woman in a dusty black silk dress and a short, light coat; a woman bare-headed and with blood on her gray-blond hair.

  “Cold, so cold,” Aunt Lucinda Whitsett said, her eyes closed, the words uncertain on her lips, slurring a little. “Won’t understand about Cripun. Won’t—”

  Paul had carried her into the center of the room; was carrying her into the living room and to the fire. They were almost there when Aunt Lucinda opened her eyes. She looked up at Paul Logan.

  “You tried to kill me,” she said. “Hit me and wanted to kill me. Why, Paul?”

  Paul Logan stared down at the little woman in his arms—arms apparently so much stronger than anyone would have thought.

  “I—” he said.

  But she had closed her eyes again; seemed again to have drifted away from them. She raised one hand to her head.

  “Hurts so,” she said and then, “I had a hat. A pret—” The voice-faded out.

  Traffic had been thinner when Weigand, with Jerry North beside him and Mull
ins in the seat behind, had gone along West Street. They could not use the siren, for several months silenced in tribute to national panic, but the red police lights helped. For the Buick there was no speed limit on the West Side Highway, nor on the parkways beyond; once in Westchester, the siren could sound again, but there it was not often called for. So they had gone considerably faster than Pam and Dorian had gone before them. They passed Brewster at seven fifteen, the siren wailing at a red traffic light, causing a Cadillac on collision course to pause so abruptly that its front end drooped, ridiculously bowing.

  “You’ll have to take it slower now, Loot,” Mullins said, from the back seat. “I was here in the daytime. I can find it, but we’ll have to take it easy.”

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said. “You’d better, friend.”

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “I told you it was a screwy one.”

  “How long?” Jerry demanded.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Mullins said. “Maybe twenty. It’s quite a ways out.”

  “They’ll be all right, Jerry,” Bill said, but the speed crept up again.

  “What makes you think so?” Jerry asked. “What the hell makes you think so?”

  “I can’t tell,” Pam said, hopelessly. She was on her knees beside Miss Lucinda, who was in a low chair by the fire. “Damn nurse’s aiding. All I remember is how to make a sling. You see, Dor.”

  Dorian put fingers on the tiny wrist. She said, “Her pulse seems steady enough.” She felt again for a moment. “Strong enough,” she said.

  Miss Lucinda moaned. Faintly, she said she was cold. Then, in a stronger voice, she said, “I feel all wet.”

  She was fairly wet, at least about the head. They had tried to wash the blood from her hair; had held cold cloths to her forehead. The wound did not look deep, but how could a layman tell?

  “Miss Whitsett,” Paul Logan said, and bent close to her. “What did you mean, I hit you? What did you mean?”

  “Leave her alone,” Pam said.

  “Now, Pamela, don’t be so fussy,” Miss Lucinda said, in an unexpectedly firm voice. “I know what I know. You’re like Thelma.”

  “Thank heaven you’re all right,” Pam said. “But you must be quiet, Aunt Lucy.”

  “Like Thelma,” Aunt Lucinda repeated, with even more firmness. “Always telling me to be quiet. What I mean is, young man, you hit me. On the head. Carried me back into that closet. I suppose you thought I was dead. But I wasn’t.” She paused. “Unless it was you,” she said, and looked at Lynn Hickey, standing behind Paul.

  “It wasn’t either of us, Miss Whitsett,” Lynn Hickey said. The crispness was out of her voice, now. Logan, standing again, put an arm around her shoulders, and she seemed glad of the arm. “Really it wasn’t,” she said.

  “Sneaking around,” Miss Lucinda said. “You can’t deny it. And when I went after you, because the telephone wasn’t working and I didn’t know how to get away, you waited and—and hit me. Where’s my hat?”

  “We’ll find your hat,” Pam said. “Don’t—don’t get excited, Aunt Lucy.”

  “Why ever not?” Miss Lucinda asked. “Goodness me. Don’t get excited. They tried to kill me.” Then she turned her head enough to look at Barton Sandford. “I was very unjust to you, Mr. Sandford,” she said. She was severe with herself. “Very unjust,” she said. “I thought you were Doctor Crippin.”

  “Doctor—” he said, and Pam North said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Cripland. And all the time it was Crippin.”

  “I don’t—” Sandford said, his voice sounding puzzled; his expression reflecting puzzlement.

  “Killed his wife,” Pam North said. “Buried her—oh, in a cellar some place. Said she’d gone away. Went away himself with a girl. Got caught. Everybody knows about Doctor Crippin.” She looked at Miss Lucinda, “Cripland!” she said. “How were we ever—?”

  “I was wrong,” Miss Lucinda said. “Paul hit me. Or the girl.”

  “Listen,” Paul said, “did you see either of us? Just before you were hit?”

  “There wasn’t anybody else,” Miss Lucinda said. “I suppose you say you weren’t here?”

  “We were here,” Lynn Hickey said. “We were looking for—for some trace of Mrs. Sandford. Something that would show she had been living here. Why would we hit you? Try to kill you?” Paul looked around at the others. “Tell her, Bart,” he said. “You know why we were here.”

  But Barton Sandford did not speak quickly. When he did, he said, “It’s a funny thing about the typewriter. You say it wasn’t here when you looked?”

  “You heard us,” Paul Logan told him.

  “We all heard you, Mr. Logan,” Pam North said. “I suppose what Mr. Sandford means is that you could have brought the typewriter here. To throw suspicion on Mrs. Sandford. Isn’t that what you mean?” The last was to Sandford.

  “Hell,” Sandford said. “I don’t say they did. I guess they could have. If they had—” He stopped.

  “Yes,” Pam said. “If they had the typewriter. But why would they have it? Your wife had it, didn’t she? She wrote letters on it up to—oh, up to a few days ago.”

  “We didn’t have it,” Paul Logan said. “Mrs. North’s right, of course. We—”

  “Logan,” Barton Sandford said, and his voice was suddenly harsh, “what’s happened to Sally?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul Logan said. “I thought she had—well, just gone away. As you said. But now—”

  “I know what she planned,” Sandford said. “What she told me she planned, there at the station in Brewster. But—I don’t know what she did. She could have come back here instead. And—you stayed on for a couple of days, didn’t you, Logan! At your own place? You could have—” he hesitated. “Seen that Sally did disappear.”

  “For God’s sake,” Paul Logan said. “You’re crazy. Why?”

  “Perhaps,” Pam said, and spoke slowly, seeming to work it step by step, “perhaps she did come back here, and you saw her. Perhaps she told you she’d told her husband she was going to leave, and didn’t know where she’d be. But perhaps she said she had changed her mind, and was going back to Mr. Sandford. Perhaps—isn’t this what you meant, Mr. Sandford?—you and Lynn had planned to kill your mother, for the money and—and other things. You thought it would be fine to have Sally for a scapegoat; you thought it would work if it appeared she only pretended to go away, but actually had stayed here all the time. So you—saw that she did. Is that what you mean, Mr. Sandford?”

  “Hell,” the tall man said, his widely spaced eyes troubled. “I hadn’t worked it out. I can’t believe Paul would—”

  “You’re damned right,” Paul Logan said. “You’re all crazy.”

  “But then,” Pam North said, “why did you try to kill Aunt Lucy?”

  She looked down at Aunt Lucy, whose eyes now were bright.

  “Make him tell you, Pamela,” Miss Lucinda said.

  “Listen,” Dorian Weigand said, and spoke rapidly, so that they would. “We don’t know any of this. Not even that Mr. Logan did hit Miss Whitsett. He’s right about that; she didn’t see him, or Miss Hickey. We don’t know anything has happened to Mrs. Sandford. Isn’t it still more likely that—well, that she was here, has been hiding here, thought Miss Whitsett had seen her and hit her so that she would have time to get away? That now she’s hiding some other place?”

  It was a damn sight more likely, Paul Logan said. At least one of them had some sense.

  “Oh,” Pam said. “Several, really. The thing to do is to find her, isn’t it? If she’s alive, of course, but even if not. Don’t you think so too, Mr. Sandford?”

  “I told you—” Sandford began, but little Miss Lucinda interrupted him.

  “But she isn’t, dear,” Miss Lucinda said. “I looked everywhere, even down in that dreadful cellar. There wasn’t a place in the cement. I was down there when Mr. Logan and Miss Hickey were here, you know, and that was the reason I couldn’t catch up with them.” She looked at Paul Logan. “Or thought
I couldn’t,” she said. “And with the telephone off and everything—”

  She stopped.

  “What is it, dear?” she said to Pam North, who was looking at her, or through her. “You look so—so thoughtful, Pamela.”

  “The telephone’s been turned off,” Pam said, slowly and carefully. “But the electricity is still on. Isn’t that rather unusual, Mr. Sandford? I’d think if one, why not the other?”

  “My goodness,” Miss Lucinda said. “Goodness me. The little wheel was turning, wasn’t it? But there weren’t any lights on. How—how very unobservant of me.” She started to sit up; perhaps the movement brought pain to her head; perhaps it was because of that that she paled. “But how horrible,” she said. “How really horrible.” She closed her eyes. “So cold,” she said, and shivered, half a dozen feet from the leaping fire.

  “Probably,” the man next the driver said, “we’ll be late for the party. Probably it’s all loused.”

  “You worry too much, Saul,” one of the men in the back seat told him. “You can’t hurry Washington by worrying.”

  “Clearance,” Saul said. “Always clearance. Through channels. It might as well be the damned army. So everybody gets there first. Louses the whole thing up.”

  “They’re talking about murder,” the second man in the back seat said, quietly. “Makes them hurry, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Damn it,” Saul said, “he’s our man. They were as good as told that.”

  The car merely hooted at the Brewster light; the driver did not hesitate. He knew the way. He went on the way at seventy.

  “‘Murder comes first,’ this inspector of theirs kept saying,” the second man in the rear seat said. “It will, you know.”

  “And we pick up the pieces,” Saul said. “If we hadn’t had to clear with so damnned many. It was London did it. They must have been asleep in London.”

  Very probably they had been, the second man in the rear admitted. It was a not unreasonable hour to be asleep in London.

  “So we hold the bag,” Saul said.