Friends till the End (23 page)

“It’ll be your word against mine.”

“Yes, it will, won’t it? My word—and Linus’s—against yours.”

“Your word and Linus’s!” He laughed. “You’re crazy! Who in the world is going to listen to a five-year-old—and a half-wit like you?”

“Well, I never! Half-wit! I
never
! Why, if Sam could hear you say that—!”

He leaned forward menacingly.

“You have a damned good reason for wanting to incriminate me. I’d tell the police you want Sam to take over my position. Nobody—
nobody
—would believe you, Ruth.”

Ruth shook her head at him pityingly.

“You still don’t understand, do you, Walter? They don’t
have
to believe me. All they have to do is begin—
just begin
—to suspect you. Don’t you see? The only reason you’ve been safe this long is that
no one has considered
you as a possibility.
Once I tell my story—and what I heard Linus say—they’ll investigate you all over again. They’ll haul you in and ask you all kinds of questions—embarrassing questions. You know what I mean, Walter. And they’ll find the proof. Of course they will. You know that. That’s why you tried so hard to protect yourself, isn’t it? Once they suspect you, it’ll just be a matter of time.”

She stood, picked up her frayed handbag and moved toward the door.

“But if you would rather I went and told them
now
—”

Walter Sloane spoke heavily.

“Wait!”

He reached down and opened a drawer. Taking out his checkbook, he said, “How much?”

“Fifty thousand dollars,” she said promptly. “To start with. I’ve been planning to buy some new lawn furniture, and it’s
so
expensive, don’t you think? And there are some renovations we’ve been wanting to do for such a very long time on the house …”

She took the check and said:

“Very wise of you, Walter. Very wise.”

“Get out.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I’m not done with you yet.” She sat down again. “I want your promise that you won’t go back to work.”

“No!”

“Promise me, Walter. You won’t go back to work, will you? You’ll give up your position and let Sam take over, now won’t you?”

“All right. All
right!
Now
get out
!”

She sat looking at him calmly, the check clutched in her hand.

Sloane’s nerves gave way.

“What is it?” he roared. “What is it, damn you?
What more do you want?
”

She rose to her feet and leaned over the desk. There was something very beautiful in her face as she spoke.

“Justice,” she said.

Walter Sloane stared unbelievingly as the door opened and the policemen filed in.…

Ruth handed the check to Detective Voelker and whirled on Walter Sloane as he got up from his chair. She slapped him smartly across the face and shrilled:

“And
that’s
for calling me a half-wit!”

“Eat your dinner,” said Maya.

Snooky pushed his plate away. “I’m not hungry.”

“Eat your dinner. Have some cabbage, at least. It’s good for you.”

“I don’t want cabbage,” Snooky said irritably. “I hate cabbage. I’ve always hated cabbage. You know that. Why are you torturing me? Why can’t I go talk to Bernard?”

He looked longingly at the closed study door.

“Bernard’s busy right now. Anyway, he explained everything to you yesterday. Weren’t you listening?”

“Yes, My, but I want the
details.
”

“Cabbage before details,” she said firmly, and with a sigh Snooky picked up his fork.

Inside the study, Detective Voelker was having trouble drawing out Bernard, whose instinctive hatred of his own kind had returned in force once he considered the case closed. He sat at his massive desk and stared palely at the policeman. Misty mumbled, teasing a rubber bone at his feet.

“But what,” Voelker was saying patiently, “made you guess that Walter Sloane was the murderer?”

Bernard didn’t know. It was a number of things. Things that didn’t fit in. Things that didn’t make sense.

“For a while there I admit I thought your brother-in-law might have done it,” said Voelker. “His girlfriend is going to be a very wealthy woman now.”

Bernard greeted this with incredulity.

“Snooky?
Snooky?
I assure you, Detective, my brother-in-law could not put together a successful plan to murder a rodent. If Snooky wanted to murder someone he’d just come at them with a battle-ax.”

“Yes. I see. What exactly then were these things that didn’t make sense to you, Mr. Woodruff?”

Bernard glanced through his notes nervously. He drew out one page that had the word

ANMLYS

written in large green letters at the top.

“Anomalies,” he explained. “I was struck by how many there were. First of all, Sloane didn’t die. It seemed strange to me at the time. His wife was poisoned, and she
died; Freda Simms was strangled, and she died; Sloane was poisoned—but he didn’t die. Well, why not?”

“It might have been a mistake in the dose.”

“Yes. But the doctor said the dose was large enough to kill.”

“Yes—that’s true.”

“Then there were some other strange things, things that didn’t fit in. For instance, the second party—the one that Heather Crandall gave. That didn’t make sense to me at all. Why would Walter Sloane go? He was supposed to be a suspicious, paranoid individual. This was the same crowd that had allegedly poisoned his wife. Yet he accepted the invitation. It didn’t make sense. And even if he did attend, why would he let Heather Crandall touch his glass, take it away to fill it up, and so on? Wouldn’t he be more careful than that? No one ever told me that Sloane was a stupid man, but that was a stupid thing to do. It felt all wrong to me, somehow.”

“Yes. I see.”

“Of course, he had to go to that party. He needed someplace—a public place with all his friends present—to stage his own poisoning.” Bernard looked thoughtfully out the window. “It was clever—very clever—
very
risky. The man took an awful chance. He knew he’d be the main suspect when his wife was killed. So what does he do? He arranges to poison himself, very realistically. He faked his symptoms in front of the Crandalls. When they left the room to get help, he picked up the nearest glass, dumped in a carefully premeasured dose of insecticide, went to the punch bowl, ladled in some punch and drank it down. Then he went back and knocked over the lamp as if he were in convulsions. He had it all planned. That way, he’d get to the hospital in plenty of time to receive the antidote, but a blood test would show that there was a toxic amount of poison in his system.”

“And the glass he used had been used during the party by Mrs. Abrams, so her fingerprints were all over it,” said Voelker. “We looked in the wrong direction that time—at her instead of at him.”

“Which is what he figured would happen, so he felt safe. The self-poisoning worked very well. It shifted suspicion
off of him and onto an unknown murderer. He then proceeded to build up the existence of this nameless murderer, this enemy, implying that his friends were all potential killers while at the same time protesting their innocence. Once his basic premise had been accepted—that his wife’s murder was either an accident or part of a series that included him—he felt fairly safe.”

“Yes.”

“I believed it, too,” said Bernard. “For a long time my suspicions were focused on Heather Crandall. Why did she give that party, for instance? She had that family connection to the Sloanes. There might have been a financial motive there. But one day Snooky and I were talking and he said to me, ‘It just doesn’t add up,’ and I thought, that’s right, it
doesn’t
—it’s not a series—there’s an anomaly right in the middle of it.” Bernard glanced down at his notes, which read:

2 + 1 ≠ 3

“Two murders and one murder
attempt.
I realized they didn’t belong together—they didn’t add up. After all, what actually happened? Laura Sloane and Freda Simms died. Freda Simms’s death wasn’t planned in advance, that much was clear—she had been killed because she knew something.
So the only murder that was planned in advance was Laura Shane’s,
and who had the primary motive for wanting her dead? Her husband, of course.”

He sat silently for a while, then said, “Laura Sloane must have been a fascinating person. Wealthy, lively, attractive. But she needed to control everyone around her. Look at Freda Simms—she never forgot her, never forgave her for marrying, never really let go.”

“And Sloane hated being controlled.”

“Oh, yes. But he couldn’t divorce her—she wasn’t the forgiving type. She’d leave him without a penny. She had a habit—one I’m sure he detested—of taking drinks out of his hand and finishing them herself. That’s how he must have gotten the idea. All he had to do was slip some poison into his glass, pretend to be drunker than he really was, and wait. If it hadn’t worked, he could have dumped it somewhere and no one would have suspected.”

“That might not have been the first time he tried it. There were other parties.”

“Yes. True.”

“We’ve found the man who was with Freda Simms the night she died,” said Voelker. “We’ve got a record of the call she placed from the phone booth outside the bar to Sloane’s house. The two kids must have been asleep by then—it was after midnight—and Sloane picked up the phone. She was stupid enough, or drunk enough, to threaten him. Her companion says he brought her home about an hour later, barely able to walk, much less defend herself. Sloane must have been waiting outside.”

Bernard said slowly:

“A ruthless man.”

“Yes. By the way, it was a clever trap, Mr. Woodruff. Was it your idea to get Mrs. Abrams to try to blackmail him?”

“Oh, no. I asked Snooky about it. It was clear she had the best motive, but I wondered whether she could handle it. Snooky thought she could.”

“So now all the money goes to the boy and girl. Wonder what they’ll do with it? Hundreds of millions, from what I hear.”

“It’s not much of a way to inherit,” said Bernard.

The next day, in Isabel’s house, Snooky asked very much the same question.

“All that money. What’re you going to do with it?”

“I don’t want to discuss the money. I don’t want to even think about it.”

“But, Isabel—”

“I mean it. Not a word!”

He subsided.

Isabel was wandering around the living room, angrily picking up pillows and throwing them back down on the sofa.

“The money! The money!” she said bitterly. “I never wanted to get it
this way
 …!”

“I understand.”

“You do not.”

“I do. Come sit down and calm yourself, my girl.”

She flopped down next to him. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about anything. I just want to be alone.”

“Fine. Shall I leave?”

“No … no. Sit here for a while.”

Snooky sat there. Isabel leaned her head against his shoulder. He could feel the tension slowly ebbing out of her body. Finally she said in a quieter voice, “I’m going to sell this house. Richard and I can’t live here anymore, of course. I’ll sell it. Then, well, Richard will be going to college next year. I’ll buy a house near him, so I’ll have someplace to come home to.”

“And then?”

“Then I think I’ll travel. I’ve always wanted to, you know. Freda and Laura used to talk about traveling—how much they loved it …” Her voice trailed off.

“That’s nice. Go to Malaysia. I hear it’s beautiful this time of year.”

“I’ve always wanted to see New Zealand.”

“Supposed to be very nice.”

“Or Australia.”

“Supposed to be great. Can you hear my heart breaking?”

She twisted to look up at him. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Snooky. We’ll still see each other.”

“Where? Somewhere in the Far East?”

“Oh, you know. Here and there.”

“Here and there,” he said heavily. “Yes.”

Isabel looked troubled.

“You’re such a good person,” she said remorsefully. “I never—I never wanted to
hurt
you.”

“The words of death,” he duly reported to Maya later. “Words of death. ‘I never wanted to
hurt
you,’ emphasis on the ‘
hurt.
’ Pffftt!! End of a perfectly decent relationship.”

“I’ve never been so happy to hear anything in my entire life.”

“She’s going to travel, she says. Travel! When she could be with
me.
Do you understand that?”

“You could travel with her.”

“She didn’t ask me to.”

“Well, then that’s that, I would say. It’s over, Snookers. Get used to it.”

“She says she’ll see me here and there. Here and there! Do you know what that means, My?”

“Yes,” said Maya. “It means ‘good-bye.’ ”

As Snooky left the Sloanes’ house, Isabel said bitterly, “Best wishes to your sister and Bernard, okay? Especially Bernard. Without him I wouldn’t be a rich woman today, would I?”

At the door Snooky paused and looked back. Isabel was alone in the big room, moving back and forth restlessly, running her hands over everything. She seemed unable to stop moving. Looking at her, he was suddenly reminded of Freda—of her nervous gestures, her luxurious house, her desire to travel. To get away from it all. To run away …