“When you start investigating Frank Frail,” he said, “you’ll learn that he had a first wife and that she died under the most suspicious circumstances. Actually, it seems to have been pure bad luck. Appendix ruptured, too far from any doctor, that sort of thing. You can’t blame Aunt Ag and Uncle Hep for feeling as you do, though, reluctant to believe in the improbable and elaborate accident, particularly when it happens to be too convenient as well. They’ve always believed he killed his first wife and that he did it with enough cleverness to get away with it. They have been afraid for Sara. That’s a far cry from wanting to murder the man.”
“Up to now,” Gibby said, “you’ve all been most carefully not mentioning this first wife.”
“I know,” Everett conceded. “That was Kent’s doing. He kept hammering on that. It was best to say nothing at all, but it was most important to say nothing about the death of Frail’s first wife. The man had been completely cleared on that and we had to make only the slightest slip and he’d have us for slander or something. You’re lawyers. You’ll understand that better than I can.”
The young man seemed genuinely distressed, but he also seemed inordinately pleased with himself and with his theorizing. So much so that it astonished him, when the cortege finally did start for the cemetery, that the Bardons had with them in that first car, in the seat which had been intended for Sara Frail, a homicide-squad detective, instead. Hadn’t Everett explained everything? Police surveillance after that seemed to him excessive.
6.
Gibby and I remained behind with Sara Frail and we escorted her back to the house. She insisted that she was quite all right. She wanted only to be alone. She wanted to lie down and be quiet for a while. We didn’t keep her from it very long. Gibby asked her about her husband’s whisky and when she said there were supplies of it in their room, he told her we would have to get the bottles out of there.
“Now, Mr. Gibson? I would like to be alone.”
“I understand, Mrs. Frail. You must also understand. Your husband’s whisky was poisoned. It may have been just that flask or it may have been the whole bottle. We’ll have to know which and we must play it safe. I’m thinking of you, Mrs. Frail.”
“Don’t bother. I loved my husband. It doesn’t matter much now whether I live or die. Either way, my life is over. I don’t care.”
“We care,” Gibby said. “We have to care.”
She shrugged and led us upstairs to their room. It was a big, front room, right next door to that upstairs sitting room where we had first met her.
“If you think I might try to kill myself,” she said, “have no fear. We Bardons are a tenacious lot Nothing ever makes us so unhappy that we’re ready to let go of life. If it’s an accident you’re afraid of, I don’t drink, Mr. Gibson. I’ve been wishing I hadn’t made it so clear to my dear relatives that I never drink. I didn’t know how easy I was making it They had every assurance that if there was whisky around, I wouldn’t touch it and Frank most certainly would. But I suppose that doesn’t matter. Some way would have been found.”
She showed us the whisky and we gathered up the bottles. Two still had their seals unbroken. A third had been opened and was about half full. There was no smell of cyanide, but we took them, anyhow, for analysis. Sara showed us to the door of her room and she shut it after us. We took the bottles downstairs and Gibby stowed them in the trunk of his car.
We were out front and he was busy with his trunk lock. It was a quiet time of day and there weren’t many people in the street. I could hardly help noticing the two blondes who were strolling along on the other side of the street They were Dorinda Gibbs and her mama. I remarked on them.
Gibby locked his trunk and thoughtfully regarded the undulating bottoms of the two sauntering babes.
“Maybe,” he said thoughtfully, “that’s something for the vice squad and maybe it’s just peaceful picketing because it was another mouse the old goat had at the funeral with him. Anyhow, our work’s back in the house.”
We went in and looked for Everett’s room. That Was the first order of business, picking up any loose cyanide that might still be around. We left Mrs. Frail alone and we didn’t bother about that sitting room next door to hers. We knew neither of those was Everett’s room. At the back of that same floor, we also quickly ruled out the late William’s apartments and we went on upstairs. On the third floor, there were rooms at the back, overlooking the garden, and they were too feminine to be anyone’s but Aunt Agatha’s. They were ornamented with photographs. We saw a picture of Hepburn and one of the old man. All the others were of young Everett, and they were innumerable. She had him at every age and in every pursuit. I remarked that she showed a great partiality — so many of the nephew, not one of the niece.
“Could be partiality,” Gibby murmured. “Could be nobody ever sent her any of Sara.”
We pulled out of there and checked the front rooms on that floor. They identified themselves readily. One was Uncle Hep’s, the other Everett’s. Everett’s was as advertised. There was the workbench of which he had told us, the buttons he was making for his uncle, and there was the cyanide bottle — about half full. We’d just located that when the doorbell rang through the silent house. Gibby went to the window and looked down. It was Dorinda and Mama. It had come on to rain and it was evident that they wanted in. I trotted down to let them in. Gibby remained in Everett’s room. All the blondes in Uncle Hep’s extensive stable could have been on that doorstep and he wouldn’t have had the time for them, not until he’d satisfied himself that there was no further cyanide loose around that workbench.
I opened the door and I got a smile and a thank you from Dorinda. I got only a scowl from Mama. Dorinda said they didn’t want to be any trouble. They would just wait for Hep. I wasn’t to bother about them. Dorinda knew her way around the house. She pushed a door open and ushered Mama into a ground-floor deal that looked like a drawing room or something impressive like that.
I started back up to rejoin Gibby. As I passed, I noticed that the door to Sara Frail’s room was open a crack. She called to me softly. She was a bit distressed that I’d let the women in. She wondered if I’d mind asking them to go up to the second-floor sitting room where they could be a bit out of the way.
“I’m afraid there will be reporters and people at any moment now,” she said. “If Uncle Hep and his women make a circus of grandfather’s funeral, I can’t say I like that, but now it’s Frank as well and I’d much rather not. You understand?”
It did seem to me that the Gibbs babes looked more the late Frank Frail’s speed than did his own wife but I refrained from saying as much. I started down to do her errand. I was spared the trouble. The Gibbses were already on their way upstairs. They explained that they didn’t want to get mixed up with a lot of people and they’d decided to come upstairs to wait. They wanted to see only Hep. Would I tell him when he came in?
I opened the sitting-room door for them and I shut it after them. Quickly they reopened it. They were taking no chances on missing Hep when he would be coming by. I went back to Gibby and together we did the complete search of Everett’s room. The one cyanide bottle proved to be all the boy had. We’d just about satisfied ourselves of that when the Bardons arrived home from the cemetery. What with family, servants and police escort, it made quite a crowd.
Everett, tailed closely by a cop, came upstairs. He reached for the cyanide bottle.
“It will have to be checked for fingerprints,” Gibby said, not letting him have it. “When did you last see it?”