Murder within Murder (25 page)

“About the letter,” Helen Burt said. “I realize now I can. It was what that dreadful man said—such a dreadful thing to say. But then I realized it was really true.”

“What was true?” Pam said. “What did you realize, Mrs. Burt?” Pam's own voice was low; hardly more than a whisper.

“That poor dear Amelia didn't—didn't tell the truth,” Helen Burt said. “That she was—that she lied about people. To hurt them. That that was what she had done to us. I knew it—I knew it had to be that way. Of course. But it was his saying it that—that—”

“That made you really feel it was true,” Pam said, when Helen Burt seemed lost. “Made you really convinced?”

“That was it,” Mrs. Burt said. “And then I knew I had to tell you so that you could tell your husband. Because it isn't right that anything should be kept from him. Is it, dear?”

“Jerry isn't—” Pam began, and then she stopped. If Mrs. Burt had something to tell which was as important as Mrs. Burt seemed to feel it was, it didn't matter whether she was confused about Jerry. Apparently she thought Jerry was the detective, not Bill. But it would work out the same.

“Is it about the letter?” Pam said. “The letter you wrote Miss Gipson?”

Helen Burt looked at her and seemed surprised.

“Oh, of course, my dear,” she said. “I thought you understood that.”

Apparently Helen Burt thought she had explained what she had not explained. But that didn't matter either.

“You want to tell me about the letter,” Pam said. “About why you really wrote it?”

“So you can tell your husband,” Helen Burt said.

“Why me?” Pam said. “Why just me? Why not—oh, just tell my husband?”

Helen Burt shook her head.

“I couldn't,” she said. “I couldn't make him see. A man wouldn't understand.”

At the present rate, Pam thought, she was not going to understand either. Mrs. Burt was, she thought, very close to hysteria. Or was she supposed to think that Mrs. Burt was very close to hysteria? Was all of this—this nervous fluttering about the center of something, this emotional overcharge—something being done for her benefit, for some reason not immediately guessable? Pam tried to cut through the strange excitement which surrounded the older woman.

“Of course,” Pam said. “Of course I'll be glad to have you tell me whatever you want to, Mrs. Burt. What—”

Mrs. Burt shook her head.

“Not here,” she said. “Come to the apartment with me. Willard's gone by his office and there will be just the two of us. Oh, please, Mrs. North!”

“Well,” Pam said, hesitating a little. “I'll tell Jerry. Because he'd worry if I just disappeared, you know.”

Mrs. Burt shook her head. Her fingers gripped Pam's arm.

“No, dear,” she said. “You mustn't. He … he'll insist on coming too. He'll make me tell it his way. Not my way.” She looked at Pam intently. “It has to be my way,” she said. “Just this once, my dear. You have to help me.”

She seemed to try to read Pam's face. When she did not read what she wanted to find there, her fingers loosened on Pam's arm.

“I thought you would,” she said, and her voice had lost confidence. It seemed to Pam that Mrs. Burt was like a child who had been denied something it had counted on, and could not understand why. It also occurred to Pam that Mrs. Burt was unpredictable; that she fluttered on the surface of her own changing feelings, and that whatever she had to tell might well have to be told now.

“Of course I will,” Pam said. “I'll go with you. Of course.”

Gently, Pam North turned the older woman toward the door. Then, as she began to walk after her, she looked back quickly at Jerry, planning to call his name softly. But he was looking at her and she made gestures instead of speaking. She gestured toward Mrs. Burt, and toward herself, and pointed out through the door, and made with her lips, soundlessly, the words “she wants to talk.” She made the words very carefully and she was sure Jerry would be able to read her lips, because he so often could.

She turned and went after Mrs. Burt when she had finished this pantomime, and it was not until she was on the sidewalk that the thought came to her that Jerry had been very unresponsive. She was in a cab with Mrs. Burt before it occurred to her that the reason Jerry had been unresponsive might well be that he had not seen her at all, but had been looking out at nothing over the heads of people who bored him. Because Jerry did that too, and you could never tell whether he saw you or not.

“Of course he did,” Pam reassured herself. “Of course he did.” And anyway, she thought, there was nothing to do about it now.

“You see, my dear,” Helen Burt said, “I knew it couldn't be true, but I had always trusted Amelia. She was so different when she was a girl—when we were both girls. It's hard to realize that people have changed. It wasn't until that man called her all those things—those dreadful things—that I really realized that she had—oh, made it all up.”

She paused and looked at Mrs. North.

“How could she, my dear?” she said. “Why would she want to?”

“But Mrs. Burt,” Pam said, “I don't know what she did.”

Mrs. Burt smiled. Now that she had Pam in the cab with her, now that her plan—whatever it was—was developing as she wished, she seemed much calmer.

“I know, dear,” she said. “I'm terribly excited. It's … it's the relief, I suppose. I hadn't realized how much … how close I came really to believing what she said.”

Even though calmer, she was still incoherent, Pam thought, and wished people would say what they meant. As, Pam thought, I always do.

“What did she say?” Pam asked, saying what she meant.

But Mrs. Burt shook her head, and then moved it slightly to indicate the taxicab driver. Then she shook it again.

“All right,” Pam said.

“It was a beautiful service,” Mrs. Burt said. “In spite of everything. Didn't you think so, my dear? So … suitable. And Dr. Malcolm is always so fine.”

“The clergyman?” Pam said. “Is he?”

“Always,” Mrs. Burt said. “Oh, always.”

“Well,” Pam said, “that's nice.”

The subject seemed to be exhausted. But, fortunately, the trip was short. The cab swung into the curb and a doorman opened the door. He was an aged doorman; heavy with respectability. And in the apartment house, cavernous respectability surrounded them; creaking respectability bore them aloft to the Burt apartment. Mrs. Burt unlocked the door to the apartment and fluttered less as she led Pam North toward the living-room.

“Isn't this nice?” she said vaguely. “Shall we have a cup of tea?”

Pam shook her head.

“I mustn't,” she said. “I must hurry back, you know. Because nobody knows where I am. Or maybe they don't.”

Mrs. Burt nodded and said, “Oh, of course.”

“I'm afraid it was terribly selfish of me,” she said. “But as soon as I heard that awful man, everything was clear and I knew what I had to do. I had to tell somebody about the letter and then I saw you and I said, ‘Mrs. North will understand,' and I'm afraid I really didn't think about your plans. Wasn't that dreadful of me, my dear?”

Pam shook her head and said it was all right. But then she waited, and her attitude was calculated to bring Mrs. Burt to whatever point she was drifting toward.

“Anyway,” Mrs. Burt said, “the maid is off this afternoon and I let the cook go too, so I don't suppose we could have tea.”

“About the letter you wrote Miss Gipson,” Pam said. “About whatever lies she told you. That you thought were merely mistakes.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Burt said, “I always knew what she said couldn't be true. Simply couldn't. But … I was still afraid. You know how it is, my dear?”

“Yes,” Pam said, “what did she accuse you of, Mrs. Merton?”

Mrs. Burt looked at her strangely.

“Merton?” she repeated. She seemed very puzzled.

“I'm sorry,” Pam said. “I mispoke myself, Mrs. Burt.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Burt said. “Yes. Didn't you ask about a Mrs. Merton once before, Mrs. North?”

“Did I?” Pam said. “I don't remember. It doesn't matter, does it?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Burt said. “I never knew anybody named Merton, Mrs. North.”

“All right,” Pam said. “What did she accuse you of, Mrs. Burt?”

“Accuse me of?” Mrs. Burt said. “Oh, you're thinking of what I said the letter was about. But I'm afraid that wasn't true. She didn't accuse me of anything. It was about … about Willard. Mr. Burt, you know.”

“Mr. Burt?” Pam said, more or less involuntarily. Mrs. Burt looked at her in surprise and said, oh, of course, Mr. Burt.

“A dreadful thing,” she said. “That he was planning to kill me. To get my money. A dreadful … cruel … oh, a terrible thing.”

“That Mr. Burt was?” Pam said. “Planning to kill you?” It sounded fatuous, her repetition. But Pam North felt fatuous. She felt completely and disturbingly confused.

“With poison,” Mrs. Burt said. “It was a mad, awful thing for her to say. She said he had done it before.”

“But,” Pam said, “you'd have not—I mean—well, obviously he hadn't.” She thought a moment. “You mean other women?” she said. “Other wives? Had he been married before?”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Burt said. “Of course, dear. So had I. His wife died. He told me all about it. But Amelia said he had poisoned his other wife. She said perhaps more than one, but one she was sure of. She said he was supposed to be dead; that he was supposed to have been killed in—”

It clicked, then—suddenly and frighteningly.

“Mr. Purdy!” Pam said. “She said he was a man named Purdy!”

But Mrs. Burt did not answer. She was looking across the room, and her eyes were widening and something seemed to be happening to her face.

“Why don't you answer her, my dear?” Willard Burt said, from the doorway in which he was standing. “Was that what your dear Amelia told you?”

But it was not his presence, or his innocuous words which caused the strange thing to happen to Mrs. Burt's face. Pam realized this as she, too, looked at Mr. Burt. It was the fact that he was carrying a gun. He was carrying it quite openly.

“Why don't you answer her, my dear?” Mr. Burt said again, and he came on into the room. The little gun—a very small gun, really, Pam thought—was partly lifted at his side. It was ready.

Pam looked at Mrs. Burt, and what she saw was horrible. Because, in a second, Mrs. Burt had learned that Amelia Gipson had not lied. And Helen Burt made a little sound in her throat; a tiny, whimpering sound.

Pamela North looked away from Helen Burt—looked away hurriedly. It was better to look at Mr. Burt, whose face had not changed so. It was better to look at Mr. Burt, even when he was carrying a gun. And Pam spoke, saying without consideration something she now suddenly remembered.

“That was how you knew,” she said. “About the roaches. About there not being any.”

The quiet little gray man who had been calling himself Willard Burt nodded gravely.

“It was a slip,” he said. “I realized only later that I wasn't supposed to know—that no outsider was supposed to know. I remembered the police had kept that a secret. They didn't even tell me, but of course they didn't need to. I worked it out. No roaches. Hence, why roach poison? It was then I decided to run for it, of course.”

His voice was very slow and careful; even slower than it had been before. Hearing it now, with her new knowledge, Pam remembered whose voice it was like. It was, in its deliberation only, like a voice all the world had listened to—and heard grow stronger and more sure during the years, but not less deliberate.

“You used to stammer,” Pam said. “You cured yourself of it. By talking very slowly.”

Burt nodded. He said she was very shrewd.

“Unfortunately for you,” he said then, “you were not shrewd enough. You didn't really appreciate my slip this morning—not in time. But probably you would have. Eventually. Only as things have turned out, it doesn't matter, does it?”

Helen Burt spoke then. She spoke with an effort, dully.

“You were going to kill me,” she said. “To get my money. It was …
it was why you married me.
”

She was telling a dreadful truth to herself.

Burt merely looked at her. He seemed to be smiling.

“That was what Amelia said,” Mrs. Burt said. “She said you were Purdy … she said everything fitted. She said …” Helen Burt stopped and sat, looking at nothing.

“Go on, my dear,” Willard Burt said, in his slow voice. “What did she say? I wondered. When she talked to me she was not—explicit.”

“She went to you?” Pam said. “As well as to … to Mrs. Burt?”

Burt nodded.

“Of course I laughed at her,” he said. “I tried to make it seem absurd to her. But she still said she was going to the police. And naturally, I couldn't let her do that.”

“Naturally,” Pam said.

“Because,” Burt said, “although I was never actually booked, you know, I was quite sure they would have my fingerprints. Quite sure. Don't you think they would have, Mrs. North?”

He waved the little gun at her.

“Yes, Mr. Burt,” she said, and she looked at the little gun. “Yes, I think they have your prints. I don't think you'll get away with anything.”

Burt smiled at that, and came across the room and sat down facing them.

“Don't you, Mrs. North?” he said, and his voice held polite enquiry. “Why?”

Pam thought there had never been a single word spoken—a single innocent word—which had so dreadful a finality as Mr. Burt's politely enquiring “why?”

Jerry North and Weigand looked at each other and at the doorman.

“With an older woman,” the doorman repeated. He considered. “She seemed very much cut up, the older woman did. Friend of the deceased. Very sad.”