Duff pulled his hand away. "Filthy,'' he said. "Can you tell me how a hand and arm could reach in there and not come back smudged?"
"It comes back smudged," Fred said. "Greasy dirt. I got it on me."
"Where?"
"Where? On my arm."
"Your forearm?"
"Yeah."
"Did anyone, last night, have any smudges on any forearms?"
"No," said Fred. "Lord, I'd have been onto that. They were all in their nightclothes, and I took a look. But I don't know that it matters. They had plenty of time to wash."
"I believe Miss Isabel Whitlock has only one arm?"
"That's so."
"Which?"
"Her left one's the good one."
"Do you want to put your left hand on there, or shall I?"
"What's a little dirt on the hired help?" Fred said, grinning. He hauled up his sleeve, reached in, and touched the damper of the kitchen pipe. When he pulled his arm back there was a greasy smudge on it about six inches above the wrist, on the upper bone.
"Did you try to get dirty? Don't try."
"You can't help it," Fred said, "not if you go in all the way to the damper. Do it yourself. You simply can't help it."
"I see," said Duff thoughtfully. "What's your name?"
"Fred Bitoski. Call me Fred."
"Fred," said Duff, "how does a woman with one working arm and hand wash her only forearm?"
Fred stood still, turning his left hand on the wrist. "I don't know."
"Soaks it, does she? Let's water run over it? Rubs it on a soapy rag that's fastened somehow?"
Fred crooked his arm and twisted it. "She'd have to damn near stand on her head. That kind of dirt takes scrubbing, too. But it doesn't mean so much, Mr. Duff. She wears long sleeves. Even her nightgown. all the time."
"Sleeves. Damned awkward to make a survey of the sleeves in this house."
"I've got a lot of respect for detective work," Fred said earnestly, having quite forgotten he was hired help by this time. "But honestly, I don't see what you can do. You can't prove anything. You can't make them tell you anything, or let you look around, even. What can you do?"
"As for proof, proof can wait," Duff murmured, "But I'd like to know. Wouldn't you?"
"Sure, but how can you know, and what good would it do? All I can see is, keep the boss alive and get him out of here. Heck, all three of them coxild be in on it, one one time and one another."
"Do you think they are working together? I take it we agree to suspect the Whitlock sisters."
"Yeah, and it's one of them, or two or three." Fred shrugged. "They don't even have to be working together. Just working on the same idea, separately. It's so darned vague."
"You interest me," said Duff. "Why should it occur to you that they're working at the same idea separately?"
"I dunno."
Duff stood with his tall head lost among the pipes. He seemed to be musing. In a little while he began to muse aloud.
"Yes, it's a disadvantage when the murder hasn't succeeded. One can't be as bossy as one would like. Nevertheless, it's the same problem. Just the same. Somewhere there must be a motive or a wish. There have been methods, even though they haven't worked. Times and opportunities and all that. Here, also, we have three women very peculiarly limited, each in her separate way. I would like very much to know which of them has tried murder, and how many of them—outside of making it a little easier to keep your boss alive, once we know. These three sisters, half-sisters of his, I understand. They aren't in triplicate? They're not all alike?"
"No," said Fred, "but there's not much choice."
"Still, they're different."
"Like different brands of poison," Fred said.
"What's the motive?"
"His money."
"And yet they're different," Duff said. "Do they all fit that motive?"
"In different ways."
"Is that so, indeed?" EhifTs voice was warm and curious. "Do you know them well?"
"I don't know them very well at all," said Fred, "but it don't take long to learn not to love 'em."
"I shall have to learn," said Duff. "I think I'll stop over in the kitchen."
"Alice and I ... I mean, Miss Brennan and I figured out a few things. We . . ."
"We'll talk about them," Duff promised. "But let me linger by the kitchen door now, before they wake.''
13
MacDougal Duff set himself to charm Josephine. He begged her hmnbly for a cup of coffee and would permit no fuss. He would drink it here, he said. Before long it became apparent that Mr. Duff was very much interested in the problems of a general houseworker from a new and fascinating point of view. Chat got around to the types of mistresses one drew. It seemed that Duff, in a broad, almost scientific kind of way, had made a study. People were fascinating, anyway. Aiid a houseworker's job was so bound up in himian relations. So much life to be lived on the job. Her boss made more difference to her, her boss's foibles, her boss's character. Josephine, drinking all this in, expanded when she found Duff ready to hang on her words. Of course, her experience was great, he implied. She, Josephine, must know a great deal about women. A very great deal.
Well, Josephine had been on this job for fourteen years, except for one year when she'd gone off to Mrs. Dr. Follett. But she'd come back after one year of rebellion. That was all the jobs she'd had. Still, insisted Duff, with three mistresses at once, as it were, that made four women in all, each a type. Josephine must have observed them well.
Josephine bloomed under this mind-broadening discussion. Her latent self-pity lent emotional force to her observations. She didn't quite complain, but she began to talk.
Mrs. Eh". Follett, now, she was the kind who was all the time reading up about some fancy things to cook in the Ladies' Home Journal, and she'd come out in the kitchen and mess around herself, and they never turned out good, never, just a lot of waste, mostly butter and sugar. Honest, it was a crime. And decorating the table. Mr. Duff wouldn't believe the crazy things she'd do. Have to stand
up a banana in the hole of a piece of pineapple and stick a red cherry on top so it'd look like a candle! Dumb things like that. As if it was going to taste like anything but a banana and a piece of pineapple. Besides, they had to knock the banana down to eat it, didn't they?
Duff sympathized. He understood the scorn of the professional for the enthusiastic amateur.
Of course, here it wasn't any easy job, she told him. Duff surmised shrewdly that there was prestige attached to being the Whitlock drudge, that somewhere in the village Josephine was thought of as one who moved among mysterious luxuries. Because, as became plain, Josephine was a drudge.
"They don't bother me wanting to do no cooking," said Josephine. "None of 'em ever wanted to go so far as to boil an egg, as far as I know."
How different people were from each other, murmured Duff, keeping the high impersonal plane.
That was right. Now, you take Miss Gertrude. She was the kind who hadda have everything just so. Oh, yes, even if she was blind, she could feel dust with her fingers. Kinda spooky, she was. Well, she wanted everything just so, you know, just so; but she never thought about the time you had to do it or how you was going to get it done, either. She didn't care, just so it was done. And done right.
Strict, suggested Duff. There were women like diat Fussy?
Well, no, she wasn't so awful strict. She'd tell you, that's all, and you'd have to try, but it was just that she . . . Well, now, for instance, she'd always think about how it was going to look if somebody came. You know, everything hadda always be ready for company. She didn't have so much company, for the land's sakes. But that's how she was. Always sitting so stiff and straight, just waiting like, for somebody to happen to come in and find her sitting nice and straight.
"A proud woman," said Duff. "Ah, yes."
A proud woman was right. Mr. Duff had got it exactly. She was the one that knew she was a Whitlock, she was. And a Whitlock hadda keep up to snuff. Hard on a girl, let JosephiQe tell you. Because the way she kept up to snuff was giving orders. It was funny how Miss Gertrude