Murder Comes First Read online

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said. He also looked at Pam. He said, “Pam, Dorian—”

  Pam nodded her head vigorously. She spoke in a tearful voice, further muffled by Jerry’s coat sleeve.

  “—s’all right,” she said. “Only—only they probably think she’s a spy too.” Then, suddenly, she freed herself. She looked at Sandford.

  “You mean,” she said, “he’s a spy? As well as a murderer?” Nobody answered immediately. “Goodness,” Pamela North said. “And until just a few hours ago, I thought he worked for the government.” She looked at Sandford further. “I guess,” she said, “because his eyes are so wide apart.” She turned to Bill. “I still don’t understand most of it,” she said. “About the telephone and the deep freeze, yes. But—what was it all about?”

  “Deep freeze?” Bill Weigand said. “I—” Then he interrupted himself. “Barton Sandford,” he said, “I arrest you on a charge of—”

  “Hey,” Saul said, “wait a minute!”

  “—homicide,” Bill Weigand finished, and then smiled pleasantly at Saul.

  “Mean you hadn’t got around to it?” he asked Saul pleasantly. “Well, wouldn’t have mattered much anyway, would it? Because, as the inspector says, murder comes first.”

  “You mean,” Pam North said, “our inspector said that? Arty?” Bill Weigand nodded. “Goodness,” Pam said. “Goodness me.”

  12

  Wednesday, 5:30 P.M. to 6:45 P.M.

  Martini sat on Miss Thelma Whitsett’s lap, for reasons explicable only to Martini. It was her custom to sit much on Pam North’s lap; often, although less often, on Jerry’s. The laps of other humans commonly did not, to Martini, exist; other humans were, at best, to be tolerated if they kept their proper place. But now she sat on Miss Thelma Whitsett’s lap, although Miss Whitsett did not greatly want her there. Miss Thelma Whitsett, who did not at all care for cats, sat rigid. She was aware, having been told, that the presence on her of this blue-eyed cat was a compliment; she wished it were a compliment bestowed elsewhere. Without appearing to, she had, a few minutes before, gently pushed at Martini. Martini had turned her head and presented very sharp and white teeth for inspection. Martini had not said anything, or otherwise done anything, but Miss Thelma had decided not to press the matter.

  “The idea,” Pam North said, “of thinking I’m a spy. The very idea!”

  “Nobody does now, dear,” Miss Lucinda Whitsett said. She was in the same black silk dress, or one identical. She was not wearing the pink hat, or any hat. She was wearing a bandage, less spectacular and, on the whole, rather more becoming. “The moving finger writes and having writ—”

  She paused of her own accord and looked at her sister Thelma. Thelma’s lips parted slightly, but she did not speak.

  “—moves on,” Miss Lucinda said. “This too shall, I mean has, passed.”

  Miss Pennina Whitsett finished her small glass of sherry, shook her head at Jerry North, and accepted a canapé. She noted that all was well that ended well.

  Miss Thelma made a slight movement, inadvertently touching Martini. Martini turned, looked at her darkly and said “O-w-w!” in a guttural voice. Miss Thelma, moving cautiously, sipped from her own glass of sherry. Martini turned away and put her chin thoughtfully on a paw curled to receive it. She partially closed her eyes and looked at Pam North, who had a small adhesive bandage on her upper lip and a scratch, outlined in iodine, on her forehead.

  “I do wish,” Miss Lucinda said, “that we knew all about it. Goodness. Leaving in the morning for Florida and not ever knowing! Goodness me.”

  They knew, Pam pointed out, that Barton Sandford had killed his wife, apparently also with cyanide, and put her body in a deep freezer for preservation. They knew, or were at least certain, that he had killed Grace Logan.

  “But not why,” Jerry pointed out, going to mix martinis for himself and Pam. “Or do we?”

  “Because she found out about Mrs. Sandford,” Pam said. “At least, I guess so. And that he was some sort of spy or something like that; that the FBI was after him, not part of him. I mean, not he of it. We know he hit Aunt Lucy, or I guess we do.”

  “Goodness,” Aunt Lucinda said. “Whatever happened to my hat?”

  It had been, Pam told her gently, badly damaged. It had been, shapelessly pink, in a corner of the closet in which Aunt Lucinda had been. Probably, it still was. She did not think even Aunt Lucinda had remembered it.

  “I fainted,” Miss Lucinda pointed out. “How could I? Really, Pamela, it was—” She stopped. “But it’s not your fault, dear,” she said. “You must have had so many things on your mind. That awful man. I can always get another hat.”

  Not, Jerry thought, twisting lemon peel over martinis, another hat like that one. It did not stand to reason. He made no remark, however.

  “Speaking of hats,” Pam said, “did you just pull Doctor Crippin out of one? I mean, there wasn’t anything else?”

  “Of course not, dear,” Miss Lucinda said. “I just said to myself, now what is this like? And then, of course, I thought of Mr. Cripland—I mean Crippin. So I was sure the body must be there and I went to look.” She smiled at Pamela gently. “It was perfectly simple, dear,” she said. “Once you thought of it.”

  Pamela North ran the fingers of her right hand gently through her hair. Although it was a gesture rare with her, it had a curious kind of familiarity. She looked across the room toward Jerry, who was coming with cocktails.

  “Oh,” Pam North said.

  “Perfectly simple, Pam,” Jerry said, his voice grave. “Surely you see that?”

  “I—” Pam said, and swallowed. “Is Bill really coming? It’s all so—so unsatisfactory.”

  Bill Weigand was coming if he could make it, Jerry said, telling Pam gently what she already knew, handing her a glass. He hoped with Dorian; in any case, he had two more cocktail glasses chilling.

  “Of course, Pamela,” Aunt Thelma said, looking rather pointedly at the new glass, “it isn’t any of my business but—”

  The movement occasioned by speech was transmitted to Miss Thelma’s lap. Martini almost audibly sighed. Then she turned her head, laid back her pointed ears, and bit the nearer of Miss Thelma’s hands. She did not bite to hurt, or even to puncture. She bit to show she could. She then left Miss Thelma’s lap, and the room.

  “Well,” Miss Thelma said. “Of all things!”

  “I always feel,” Miss Pennina Whitsett said, apparently to the canapé in her hand, “that one should not be critical.”

  “Well,” Miss Thelma said, “of all things, Pennina.”

  “I—” Pam said, quickly. But then the doorbell rang, in a special rhythm. Jerry let Bill Weigand in. Dorian was with him. Gin and Sherry, the former chasing the latter, came to help receive. Sherry stood on hind legs, put her forepaws against Dorian’s knee, and—from the sound—wept bitterly.

  “Hello, Sherry,” Dorian said. “Hello, Gin.” She looked around. “Hello, Martini, wherever you are,” she said, politely. Then she said, “Pam, I’m sorry about the gun. It was very embarrassing. Bill was quite disappointed in me.”

  Bill Weigand grinned at her; he grinned tiredly. Jerry made more drinks while the aunts greeted and were greeted in return. Bill, sitting, drank half of his cocktail rapidly and said, “Um-m-m!” He took another sip. The others looked at him.

  “Mr. Sandford is not cooperative,” Bill told them, and finished his drink. “Keeps saying we’re crazy; why don’t we get on to Paul Logan; keeps on running a bluff. So—we’ll have to prove it.” He looked at Miss Lucinda Whitsett. They would, he told her, have to ask her to come back for the trial.

  “Oh goodness,” Miss Lucinda said. “Oh goodness me.” But her voice was extremely cheerful. “Whatever for? Surely not just because he’s Doctor Crippin?”

  “Crippin?” Bill repeated. His face cleared. “Oh yes,” he said. “Well, no, Miss Whitsett. To testify you looked in the closet thoroughly. You did, didn’t you? Before anybody else came?”


  “Oh yes,” Miss Lucinda said. “I did look. The—I suppose that’s what you mean?—the—it wasn’t there.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “I know it wasn’t. Not until Sandford put it there. About the telephone, Pam—you’ll have to testify too. It will help. We—we may need everything. For the murders, that is. The other’ll be easier. Saul keeps pointing that out; telling everybody they ought to have him first. They won’t; nor second either, I hope.”

  “Bill,” Pam said, “could we begin earlier? Nearer the beginning. Where is he now?”

  That, Bill Weigand told her, was the ending, not the beginning. He was in the Putnam County jail in Carmel. He had been, since the night before, under interrogation by the State Police, the Putnam County District Attorney, the New York City police—represented by Weigand and Mullins—Thompkins from the New York County District Attorney’s office, and three men from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was being very stubborn. But—there would be points, of course. There always were, confession or no confession. Little things that didn’t fit.

  “For instance,” Bill said, “he says now that, to his knowledge, Mrs. Logan had not been in his apartment since Sally’s disappearance. But, when I talked to him first, he said she had. So—we’ve got hold of the woman who came to clean the apartment, since we knew what to look for, and she says she let Mrs. Logan in once and that she waited there half an hour or so before Sandford got home.”

  “I don’t—” Pam said, puzzled.

  “Mrs. Logan saw the typewriter,” Bill told her. “We can’t prove it; he won’t admit it. We can prove she might have; we can show that, if she did, he had a reasonable motive to kill her. Assuming, of course, that this is the one they decide to try first. They may stick to the other. I’d think they probably would.”

  “Please,” Pam said. “Can’t you begin earlier?”

  He could with another drink, Bill indicated. He was given another drink.

  He couldn’t tell them, he said, after sipping, lighting a cigarette, precisely when it did begin—months before, certainly; perhaps a year or so before. It had begun when Barton Sandford, not for principles but for money, began to act as a go-between in some sort of espionage mechanism. How that happened, Bill Weigand didn’t know; where exactly Sandford had stood in the organization, Bill also didn’t know. He assumed, somewhere between rather pathetic amateurs at the bottom and not at all pathetic professionals at the top. He assumed that atomic secrets did not enter into it; what did, he told them he couldn’t say. But Sandford was, authentically, a biochemist, for whatever that might indicate.

  “You really don’t know, Bill?” Dorian asked from the chair in which she was curled, with Sherry curled on her. Bill smiled quickly, perhaps slightly shook his head. They could take it he didn’t know; that the government boys were very secretive. “And if you did, it wouldn’t make any difference,” Dorian told him, and to this Bill said, “Right, darling.” Then he went on.

  How Sally Sandford had become suspicious of her husband’s activities, nobody knew, or was likely to. Perhaps something had happened at Gimo’s, which seemed to be a meeting place. (It was because it was a meeting place that the agent Bill knew had been there Monday night.) Perhaps something had happened at the country cottage; Sandford had also met contacts there, at least later, when he was under surveillance. At any rate, she did get suspicious. Apparently, she had told her husband of her suspicions. What happened then between them could only be guessed, since she was dead and he was not cooperating. It was a safe bet that she had threatened to turn him in.

  “A righteous person,” Pam said. “Sacrificing one for many. Paul Logan said that.”

  Bill Weigand supposed so. At any rate, she had turned him in.

  “But—” Pam said.

  Bill shrugged. He admitted the alternatives. Either Sandford, knowing she had reported him, had killed her vengefully or, possibly, to prevent her telling more. Or, which seemed to him more probable, she had—playing, as she thought, for safety—pretended to be argued out of her intention, while secretly instrumenting it, expecting the FBI to take action which would protect her. She may so have convinced her husband she had not reported him, but not that she did not plan to. He thought he had killed in time.

  “I suspect that,” Bill said, “because they say he gave no indication he suspected he was under observation until after Mrs. Logan was killed, which was when he found out he was being followed. Probably, until then, he thought he was in the clear as long as the murder wasn’t discovered. It must have been—quite a shock, since it meant he’d killed twice to no purpose.”

  “Locked the barn door after the horse,” Aunt Lucinda said, clarifyingly.

  That was, Bill agreed—and finished his cocktail—what it came to. He had killed once to keep a secret which was no longer a secret, and the second time because he had slipped up on the first murder. His plan had been not unreasonable; it might have worked. It had been to keep his wife apparently alive long after she was dead—and to keep her body frozen so that the actual time of death would be impossible to determine accurately. Undoubtedly he had planned, at his convenience, to remove the body from the freezer, dress it, put cyanide and a glass of water beside it. The body would have taken many hours to—well, to thaw. Meanwhile, he would establish an alibi which could not be broken. Then, he would arrange to find his wife’s body, or have it found—probably the latter. And death would appear to have occurred within a matter of a few hours—the hours for which he was covered.

  “Goodness me,” Aunt Lucinda said. “What an unpleasant mind Mr. Sandford has.”

  “Would it have worked?” Pam asked.

  One couldn’t be sure, Bill told her. But—probably it would. In the city—well, in the city you would have run up against the best experts. Outside the city—probably it would have worked. Probably it would have worked anywhere for a jury, which was what one came to in the end, whatever experts might suspect.

  It had not come to that because, waiting in Sandford’s apartment to talk to him about Sally, Mrs. Logan had accidentally found the typewriter—the typewriter she knew to be Sally’s, the one on which Sally apparently was writing her letters from the middle west—letters Sandford had flown back and forth to mail. The FBI would prove the trips; it, also, had made them.

  “The right typewriter,” Pam said. “In the wrong place.” She considered. “Like my mind was, most of the time,” she said. “I thought the wrong typewriter, that he was FBI—and that Sally killed her aunt.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “The last, anyway, you were supposed to think—or consider a possibility. After involving Miss Whitsett didn’t work.”

  There, it was evident, Sandford had improvised. The Misses Whitsett had seemed a gift; Miss Thelma Whitsett was suspected. It was a convenience. He had, by going to the hotel—finding them absent (he would have made some excuse had they been in their rooms), planting the poison, he had endeavored to enhance suspicion. It had not been well thought out, but it involved little risk.

  “Until he used the telephone number,” Pam pointed out.

  “Right,” Bill said. “I suppose the fact that the telephone might not be listed never occurred to him. He wanted to see you to pump you, of course—and to make a good impression, get you on his side. Knowing about you, Pam, he figured that would be a good idea.”

  “It almost was,” Pam agreed.

  After her luncheon with Sandford, Pam had been followed by the FBI man—the “medium” man—as a matter of routine. All of Sandford’s associates were being checked; the FBI was far from ready to move in.

  “I was a bird of feather, flocking,” Pam said. “But it came out all right.” She regarded the dress she was wearing. “Nice new feathers,” she observed, and stroked the dress with affection. Jerry North went to mix more drinks.

  Aside from what the government could prove against Sandford, which probably was plenty, evidence against Sandford was, and probably would remain; fairly circumstant
ial, Bill Weigand said. The presence of the typewriter in his apartment, which the maid would swear to—that was a fact. His telephone call to Pam North—that was a fact. And it was a fact, almost flatly provable, that he had removed his wife’s body from the freezer, planning to set the stage for the suicide tableau, being interrupted by the arrival of Pam and Dorian. (He would have, Bill pointed out, seen their approaching lights in time to push the body into the closet, having already removed it to the bedroom.)

  He was the only person who could have done it. Three people, one of them—Miss Lucinda—immaculately disinterested, could testify that, before Miss Lucinda was struck, the body had not been in the closet and the typewriter, apparently, not in the house. And another person was involved—the man who had been following Sandford.

  “Oh!” Pam said. “Then all the time—”

  “Right,” Bill said. “All the time. But he was under orders to wait for the rest before moving in. Anyway—”

  Anyway, the agent who was following had left his car some distance down the approach road to the cottage and walked—apparently half run—the rest of the way. He had got in front of the cottage in time to be passed by a couple he now knew were Paul Logan and Lynn Hickey. He had avoided being seen; come from a shadow in time to see Sandford with somebody just outside the door. It was too dark to get details; the shadows of Sandford and his companion were almost one. But there could be no doubt that it was Sandford, carrying Miss Lucinda in. It took Logan and the girl out of it; so validated their testimony. It also proved, of course, that Sandford had been in the cottage for upward of an hour when Pam and Dorian arrived, not the few minutes he pretended. He had had time enough to get the stage partly set.

  “But the audience came early,” Dorian said. “Before curtain time.”

  That was it, of course, Bill agreed. Presumably, Miss Lucinda was to be found dead, presumptively the victim of Sally who then, with things closing in on her, had killed herself.