Hanged for a Sheep (27 page)

“For which, incidentally, he had a permit,” Weigand said. “On the chance it might be useful in the bank.”

Anthony appeared and Craig led him to the breakfast room, saying they wouldn't be interrupted there. And then an odd thing happened, because Anthony had been thinking, too, about fingerprints and had realized that, for all he knew, there might be so many other prints beside Craig's that the evidence would be valueless. And so, before going to meet Craig, Anthony wiped off all the prints, being careful to handle the bottle by the projecting cork, so that his own prints would not get on the glass. He was being very devious, as became him.

Craig pretended, at first, that he didn't know what Anthony meant by the bottle, or by the suggestions he made or the hints—to start with—that money would take care of things. So Anthony, who had planned it very much that way, took the bottle out and handed it to Craig. And Craig took it and looked at it and handed it back, still pretending innocence—and still sitting comfortably in his chair. Anthony was standing up, and smiling and very sure of himself. He took the bottle by the cork and then he said:

“It's no use, Craig. You got the bottle in the mail—sure. But you can't prove it. You gave the poison to your mother—sure you didn't know it was poison. But you can't prove it. All that anybody can prove is what I can prove—that you gave your mother poison out of this bottle. Because, Craig, it's got your fingerprints on it—you just put them there. I cleaned the bottle up just before I handed it to you. Now yours are the only prints—”

He was leaning close to Craig, holding the bottle, gloating over his own cleverness, probably getting ready to fix a price on the bottle which linked Craig with attempted murder. But he had said all he was ever going to say.

“Because,” Weigand said, “he had underestimated Craig. Craig hadn't much money—and he hadn't much respect for life. He was in danger of being charged with attempted murder, on evidence which seemed pretty convincing. And—”

“And I think,” Pam said, her voice coming from thoughts a long way off, “that Ben must have hated Anthony anyway and—oh, been glad to kill him. Glad for a
reason
to kill him. Because Anthony was what he was and had married Aunt Flora and because that was—oh, humiliating. It made them all ridiculous. Like a practical joke, in a way. And Ben can't bear to be ridiculous. It does something to him.”

Weigand nodded and said that, probably, there was something in that; that Ben didn't mind killing Anthony. And, whether that was true or not, Ben was in a spot; framed into a spot. Then—

“Well,” Weigand said, “probably he decided he'd as soon be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. If it came to that. So he shot Anthony—maybe enjoying it—as Anthony stood there, gloating. Craig didn't even get up. He shot from where he was, sitting down in the chair.”

And then, Craig admitted in his confession, he had forgotten two things. First, that the absence of other prints would be in his favor, rather than against him. He remembered that later, when he made his “confession” to Weigand, and tried to make the most of the point.

“He must have been surprised when he gathered that we had already thought of it,” Weigand said. “One other mistake he made was in underestimating the police.”

But that was not the mistake Craig had realized, and set down in his final confession. He had forgotten when he fired that Anthony still held the bottle.

“Obviously, I should have seen that I got the bottle before I shot him,” Craig had written in his confession. “It was a mistake.”

It was a mistake because, when Anthony fell, he dropped the bottle and because, since it was a round bottle, it rolled. And even that might not have been fatal for Craig if, in the silence which followed the shot, he had not heard somebody at the front door, entering the house.

“That was Clem,” Weigand reminded them. “She got in in time to smell the cordite smoke, which she didn't recognize.”

Alone with the body and with the gun in his hand, Craig couldn't risk being discovered. He put out the light, dodged into the drawing room and hid. He waited for a few minutes after Clem had gone upstairs, wanting to be sure the shot hadn't wakened anyone—it was a thick-walled old house, he had closed the door of the breakfast room behind him, everybody was sleeping on the upper floors. He had guessed the shot wouldn't be heard, but he couldn't be sure; he had to be in a position to appear, as innocently as possible, if the shot had been heard. Probably as if he had just been coming in, since he was fully dressed.

When he decided the coast was clear, he went back. His first thought was to conceal the body, chiefly to gain time. The opportunities for concealment weren't good, but Craig used what there were, propping the body on a chair behind the table, where it was not, at any rate, instantly visible to anybody who might happen to enter the room. He did this without turning on the light; his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, which was not complete because windows in the breakfast room let in a little of the light of the city, and he could see to move the body. The less light the better, for his purposes.

But he was just finishing with the body when he heard movement in the pantry which adjoined the breakfast room. And that frightened him—he still couldn't explain himself if he was found; he didn't know who was behind the door. He decided to go up to his room, make himself innocent in pajamas and robe, and then come down and find the bottle. He could do it innocently then—if anybody found him, he had come down for an early morning snack. And apparently, as it was, the person in the pantry had no suspicion of what had happened. Presumably, Craig decided, whoever was there had come down while he was in the drawing room, gone from the hall into the pantry and was probably pouring himself a drink. Craig decided not to investigate.

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Pam said. Weigand agreed.

So Craig did as he planned. He changed to pajamas and robe and came back down openly, went into the pantry—he didn't care then whether it was occupied—found it empty, got himself some crackers and cheese for protective coloring and went back into the breakfast room. Since the body was not in plain sight and—

“But the carpet,” Pam said. “It would have—have showed where Anthony fell.”

It did, Weigand agreed. It showed the next morning. But it was a dark red carpet and the light was not strong. Even by daylight, Pam herself had not immediately noticed it. And if somebody came and saw the marks, Craig could always help them discover it. So Craig, feeling reasonably safe, turned on the lights, expecting to have little trouble in finding the bottle.

But the bottle was gone!
Craig looked everywhere, in growing desperation, but it was gone.

“And then I realized,” Craig wrote in his confession, “that I had made another mistake. I should have taken the chance, turned on the lights and looked for the bottle at once. But I don't blame myself for that; I made the best decision I could at the time, and that is all any man can do. The chances were that the bottle wouldn't be found until I found it. In the same circumstances, I would do the same thing again.”

That was all very well, Weigand pointed out, but all the same it was a mistake. Because, venturing out of the pantry to which he had gone for a drink, in which he had stayed while he listened to voices on the other side of the door, in which he had cowered when he heard the shot, little Harry Perkins had stepped into the breakfast room, in fascinated fear of what he would find. (This was reconstruction, but it must be very near the truth.) He had found Anthony's body. And he had stepped on the little bottle, perhaps almost fallen and caught himself, certainly picked the bottle up. By the cork, since he heard of fingerprints.

And then, Harry, terrified by the enormity and danger of what he knew, had hidden while he thought it over, decided to tell Pamela North and to give her the bottle—which he wrapped up to protect the prints—and had made the fatal mistake of standing in the hall outside her room while he told her. And then Craig, coming up the steps behind him, and coming only by chance, had overheard—had heard the first whispers and had stopped on the stairs with his head below the hallway, and had heard enough to know who had been in the pantry and to guess that Harry was a danger.

“And that did for Perkins,” Weigand said. “Craig had been looking for the person in the pantry, anyway, and had realized he might have to murder again. He had picked up Nemo's leash, idly at first, and then thought of it as a weapon, in case circumstances required a quiet killing. Well, after he had followed Harry Perkins upstairs, circumstances did require a quiet killing.”

Weigand stopped and looked at his empty glass. He pulled out the olive and nibbled at it and nobody said anything.

“And that's all of it,” he said, after a moment. “Was that the way you thought it was, Pam?”

“Yes,” Pamela North said. “Just about. After I thought that Anthony was the logical person to send Ben arsenic, but not enough. Because all it did was look bad—I mean, it wasn't real. It was just—embarrassing. And then I thought of blackmail. And then it was easy. Only I didn't see how we'd ever prove it. And if Craig hadn't confessed, I still don't see.”

Weigand nodded and said it would have been hard.

“But we had the outline,” he said. “When you have the outline, you know what you need to fill in. And you can get it; you can always find what you want. It's always somewhere.”

“That's because New York is such a big city,” Pamela North said.

They were still staring at her in a kind of wonder, when the waiter brought the next round of drinks. Bill and Dorian Weigand and Jerry sipped hurriedly, as if they were grasping at reality.

Then Jerry ran a hand through his hair and spoke.

“What gets you,” he said, “is that it sounds so damn logical. That's what's frightening about it. Sometimes I—”

But he took a deep drink instead of trying to go on. You could never tell where words might lead.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries

1

Thursday, October 8, 7:30
P.M.
to 8:45
P.M.

Mrs. North was consoling. It wasn't, she pointed out, as if he really had to make a speech. Not a real speech. There was no sense in his carrying on so, and not eating any dinner.

“Actually,” she explained with the air of one who has often explained, “actually all you do is tag Mr. Sproul. Then he's it and you just sit down and look interested and try not to wriggle. And don't pull at your hair.”

Mr. North felt in his jacket pocket. The notes—notes which now represented, he dimly felt, all that he knew or would ever know about anything—were still there. This was reassuring, but it also reinforced his horrid conviction that this was real. In—Mr. North looked at his watch—in fifty-seven minutes he would have to stand up before five hundred people and open his mouth while five hundred mouths remained closed. He shuddered and took his hand away from the notes.

“Michaels should have done it,” he said, angrily. “Why me, for God's sake?”

“Five minutes,” Mrs. North said. “Or ten at the outside. You could do it standing on your head.”

That, Mr. North assured her, would give just the touch. That would make it lovely.

“Mr. Gerald North,” he said, “of the firm of Townsend Brothers, introduced Mr. Victor Leeds Sproul, noted author of
That Was Paris
, while standing on his head.”

“There, dear,” Mrs. North said. “What's five minutes?” She paused. “He didn't go to Paris while standing on his head,” she added, reflectively. “That came afterward. Is he really good, Jerry?”

“He's wonderful,” Jerry told her. “He's immense. Five big printings. Total sales ninety-three thousand as of yesterday. He's colossal. Townsend Brothers loves him. Fifty-three minutes.”

Mrs. North told him to try not to think of it. Or to think that, in an hour, it would all be over. Except, of course, Mr. Sproul, who would be beginning.

“Think how good you'll feel then,” she said. “Duty done, audience contented, Mr. Sproul in full flight.”

“And,” Mr. North said harshly, “the platform covered with old vegetables. Thrown at me. Or me still standing there with my mouth open, trying to think of something to say. Or forgetting Spread's name—Victor Leeds Sproul. Victor Leeds Sproul. Leeds Sproul Victor. Oh, God!”

“Five minutes,” Mrs. North said, looking worriedly at her husband. “Only five minutes, Jerry. Not as long as we've been talking about it.” She sighed. “Not nearly as long,” she added. “And it isn't as if you hadn't done it before. You're a very good speaker, really. Once you get started.”

Gerald North put out a cigarette, reached for another, fingered his notes instead. He held his hand out and watched it tremble. He besought Pamela North to look and she looked and said, “Poor dear.”