Hanged for a Sheep (4 page)

Dinner had not, accountably enough, ranked as a successful occasion. Sand, to be sure, moved silently and in order between the tiny serving pantry, supplied by an electric dumb waiter from the kitchen on the ground floor, and the table. Aunt Flora had, to be sure, eaten with apparent satisfaction and Pam had found time, between observations, to nibble contentedly. But it could not be argued that anybody else had really enjoyed the meal.

There had been exclamations, and expressions of shocked and incredulous amazement, and demands for further information. These Aunt Flora had squelched. She did not, she said, see any reason for discussing unpleasant things at meal-time. Even she noticed a slight inconsistency in this attitude, but met it by explaining that she had thought they would want to know before they ate. This logic escaped Pam and seemed to escape the rest; it was evident, indeed, that few of the others had left much interest in food. But all of them, under Aunt Flora's watchful eye, took token bites. They took their bites with a kind of bravado, feeling, it was evident, like kings' tasters.

Dinner ended and Aunt Flora, acting the role of hostess with uncharacteristic zeal and what Pam suspected to be sardonic amusement, suggested coffee in the library. The suggestion was not received. Benjamin Craig discovered he had some things to go over and went off, looking a little pale, to go over them. Pam caught the movement of Clem's head which summoned Judy to join her and watched the two girls, Judy so evidently uneasy and Clem so contradictorily secure, go out together. This left Aunt Flora and Pam and Cousin Alden, who drank coffee grimly and stared at Aunt Flora.

“Now, mother,” the major began sternly. But Aunt Flora shook her head and said “no” with decision.

“Not right after dinner,” she said. “When you're as old as I am, son, you'll learn to think of digestion.”

And then, when the major had shown signs of beginning again, Aunt Flora had got up, announced that she was going to her room to rest and gone. The major looked at Pam and, after a moment, nodded.

“Now, Pamela,” the major said. “What's all this? Eh?”

Pam felt that she should come to attention, but resisted the impulse. She wondered what to tell him. The major's eyes commanded.

“Well,” Pam said, “your mother thinks somebody tried to poison her. With arsenic.”

“Obviously,” said the major. “I heard her.”

“I don't,” Pam said, “know all about it, of course. Only what she told me. She wants me—.”

That, Pam decided, was one of the things she might better not have said. But Major Buddie only nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I've heard about you. Intelligence work. Nonsense, of course. Eh?”

It was of course nonsense, Pam agreed. She had merely happened, because she knew a detective, to have been a little involved in the investigation of one or two small matters. Small murders, to be exact. Nothing that a soldier would really regard as killing. And in them she had been hardly more than an onlooker.

“But,” she added, “you know your mother. When she gets an idea—”

“Yes,” the major said with conviction. “Well—go on. What did she tell you?”

The question was sharp, demanding. But then, Pam thought, the major's questions would normally be sharp and demanding, admitting of no shilly-shallying by the answerer. And what, in fact, had Aunt Flora told her—told her that afternoon, skirting the topic and rebounding from it; now direct and concise, now tricked by her own impetuosity into rather remarkable divagations? There had been in it, somehow—and at the time almost relevantly—the life story of a horse Aunt Flora had owned as a girl, and there had been a good deal, at one time or another, about the first Major Buddie. It appeared that, had he lived, he would not have permitted anybody to poison Aunt Flora.

Pam edited her account as she gave it to the first Major Buddie's son. He probably remembered that, a little over two weeks ago, Aunt Flora had been suddenly and unaccountably taken ill an hour or so after breakfast, and that for several hours she had grown progressively more ill and that, at her instruction, Sand had finally called a doctor? The major remembered.

“Something she ate,” he said. “As I told her at the time.”

“Yes,” Pam said. “It was something she ate. Arsenic.”

The major snorted, but Pam shook her head.

“Really,” she said. “She had—it—analyzed. She got the report yesterday. That was why she called me up and insisted that I come to stay for a few days, with Jerry gone and everything. But she didn't tell me then. Only this afternoon.”

“Well,” the major said, “show you the report, did she? From the chemist or whatever it was? Showing arsenic?”

Pam shook her head. Aunt Flora had merely stated, not proved.

The major snorted again.

“Imagined it,” he said. “Nobody tried to poison her. She just ate something. Getting old, mother is, and won't learn. Bad diet.”

“I don't see,” Pam said, “how she could have imagined arsenic into—into what she threw up. Do you?”

The major looked triumphant.

“Didn't
show
you the report, did she? Probably made it up. Or perhaps she did get a little arsenic, by accident, and—”

“I should think,” Pam said, shaking her head, “that it would be hard to get arsenic by accident. Unless you were a plant.”

“What?” said the major. “Eh?”

He looked at her darkly.

“Spraying,” Pam explained. “It's accident to the plants, I suppose. I—oh, it just came into my head.”

The major regarded her head with suspicion, but apparently decided to waive the point for one more important.

“I'll tell you what it is,” he said. “All in the family, Pamela. Mother's getting a little queer.” He paused. “Queerer,” he said. “God knows—”

“Yes,” Pam said. “I know. But I've never thought she was, really. Not that way. Not to making up arsenic.”

The major's face delivered itself of an expression of concern; his voice grew lower and more solemn.

“Afraid you're wrong, Pamela,” he said. “We've been worried recently. All of us—even Ben.” His tone removed Ben to the outer fringes. “Been acting very odd, mother has. And that last husband of hers!” The major's tone removed the last husband to the ultimate limbo. “That in itself,” the major added, sadly.

“I only met him once,” Pam said. “He seemed rather—” She stopped for a word.

“Exactly.” The major took over. “Of all the nasty, slippery, unwholesome weaklings I ever saw your Stephen Anthony—sorry, my dear, I mean your aunt's Stephen Anthony—is the prize.” He stared at Pam, waiting for the words to sink in. “And I've seen some,” he added, counter-sinking them.

“I always wondered,” Pam said, “how Aunt Flora who—who'd known so many men, and seen so many things, could bring herself—. I'll admit I always wondered that. But I think she was lonely.”

“Nonsense,” the major told her. “Three sons, hasn't she? Counting Ben, that is. And a lot of grandchildren. And that what's-his-name—Harry—who hangs around all the time. Don't think much of him, come to that. But at least he's somewhere near her age. This young—weasel!”

“Relatives aren't quite the same,” Pam said. “Even children, I should think. I mean, I'm very fond of the cats, but they aren't the same as Jerry. Not really.”

The major looked a little baffled, but put himself again on the track. Years before he had tried to make a rule not to listen to Pamela North when she interrupted and said things nobody could understand. He had, even earlier and with little more success, made a similar rule as regarded his mother. They threw men off, but, after all, they were women.

“Well,” he said, “can you imagine anything queerer than marrying this Anthony worm? That's when we began to wonder—even Ben. I never denied mother was odd—not in the family, anyway. But after that! Well!”

Pam felt some sympathy.

“But after all,” she pointed out, “she's got rid of him, now. And gone back to Buddie.”

The major nodded.

“Odd,” he said, “how she always goes back to Buddie. In between. Makes it difficult for Ben, at the bank. Checks and things.” This last thought seemed to please him mildly. “A bit of a blow to him too, I'd think. Never goes back to Craig, I notice. Must make Ben think.” He paused. “Even Ben,” he added.

“Not,” he added after a moment, “that Fred Craig wasn't quite a man. Ball player, you know. I thought he was great, as a kid. Had a real spitter. Don't see those, nowadays. Held the ball like this.”

The major doubled his hand in a complicated gesture, as if he were throwing a ball. He looked very interested.

“Taught me,” the major said. “Had quite a spitter myself, once. Not like Fred's, of course.” He moved one finger a little to the side. “More like this, it was,” he said. He stared at his hand reflectively. Then he remembered that Pam was looking at him and, when he met her eyes, smiled.

“Never made anything of it, of course,” he said. “Where were we?”

“You thought your mother was getting queer and imagining things,” Pam said. “Because she married Anthony. And that she wasn't poisoned at all, really. But she was, I think.”

The major stared at her.

“Yes,” Pam said. “I think she was. I don't think she imagined it. It didn't feel as if she imagined it. When she was talking, I mean. Were you here that day?”

The major looked at her suspiciously.

“Here?” he repeated. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I was here. Didn't think anything of it; none of us did. She was all right the next day. Or pretty near.”

“And the rest?” Pam said. “The girls? Ben? Harry Upstairs?”

The major nodded after the girls and Ben. Then he repeated, “Upstairs?”

“I always think of him,” Pam explained, “as Harry Upstairs. I know it really isn't that—Harry Something-else. Parsons?”

“Perkins,” the major said. “Yes, he was here. And Chris and young McClelland, I think. Even Anthony came in.”

“Really?” Pam said. “Anthony too?”

The major nodded.

“There's the man, if it was anybody,” he said. “Kind of thing he would do, you know. Funny his showing up, too.”

It was funny, Pam agreed. Because he had not, before then, been around for weeks.

“A month, anyway,” the major said. “She threw him out. And that day he turned up bold as brass and wanted to see her. Did, too. Ben let him in. Ben would.”

“But,” Pam pointed out, “Aunt Flora must have agreed to see him.”

The major nodded slowly. She had agreed to see him, although she had already complained of feeling unwell. He had been in her room for almost an hour until her illness had really begun to worry her.

“Talking,” the major said. “God knows what about. She's not leaving him anything.”

It was a surprising remark. Pam remembered not to look surprised.

“Not a cent,” the major said. “Saw the will myself. Everything to the family. A quarter each to Ben and Wesley and me and young McClelland gets his father's share. And charities, of course—things like that. And bequests. Nice penny for you, Pamela.”

“That will be nice,” Pamela said, sincerely but without thinking. “I mean—well, it will be nice. After all, I'm much younger.”

“Obviously,” Major Buddie said. “Not blaming you, my dear. Don't think you'd feed her arsenic to get it, though. Doubt if anybody would.” He paused. “Even Ben,” he added, thoughtfully but with less conviction. “Don't think anybody tried to kill her,” he said, finally. “Lot of nonsense. Something she imagined.”

“Well,” Pamela said. There was no use arguing it.

“Now,” said the major, having attended to the matter of the arsenic. “That's settled. How about the cats? Siamese, you say?”

“Partly,” Pam told him. “On their mother's side. I could bring them down.”

The major said “nonsense.”

“Can't go lugging cats around,” he explained. “Makes them nervous. We'll go to them. In your room, eh?”

The cats were in Pam's room, curled up together on the bed. Pam was worried, but they accepted the major with interest and appreciation. Ruffy turned on her back to be stroked and, as the major bent to reach her, Toughy, displaying glad surprise, leaped to the major's back. He flattened himself on the major's shoulders, looping behind the soldierly neck, and began comfortably to chew an oak leaf. Cats liked the major, too, and Pam said as much.

“That's what he always does with Jerry,” she said. “Nobody else, though. But he tears clothes.”

The major said “nonsense” again, but on second thought lifted Toughy down. Toughy chewed the oak leaf to the last but failed to detach it. The major was younger, and almost whimsical, playing with cats. He played with them for several minutes, and said they were fine cats.

“Siamese doesn't show much,” he admitted, standing up at length. “However—nice to have cats around a house.” He looked at Pam and shook his head. “The girls prefer dogs,” he said. “Odd, eh?”

“Well,” Pam said, “it needn't be one thing or the other. Dogs are all right, too.”

“Handsome of you,” the major said. He moved toward the door, stopped and faced her.

“No detecting, now, young lady,” he said. “All nonsense anyway. But don't
you
go poking around.” His expression was stern, commanding. “That's for policemen,” he said. “Authority. If there were anything to detect. But, between us, just her vaporings. Not as young as she was. We've got to face it.”

“I see,” Pam said, intentionally vague. “Maybe you're right.” There was still no use arguing it. She and the cats followed the major to the door and she was very careful not to let the cats out when he left, and he was careful to help, slipping sideways through the door in a manner which might have left an unfortunate impression with anyone who saw him. But apparently no one did.