"Why, Miss Isabel? Why did you do it? Because you couldn't let go? You thought you were going to get a quarter of a million, roughly. And you couldn't let it go. Not for enough to keep you in comfort for the rest of your life. Not for anything less. You never took your losses, did you? And your gains are no good, either. Because nothing is ever enough. There must be more and more, until you lose everything. Strange you couldn't see how inevitably you'd lose it all."
Isabel said!, "I never meant anything. I never meant anything at all. I. . . Somebody else must have moved the chest . . ."
"No," said Duff.
"But I . . ."
"You had the key to the old porch door. You had a thousand keys."
"But I . . ."
"You kept things," said Duff.
"I only called Alice because I. . ."
"No," said Duff.
"I was worried about Innes."
"To be sure, you had to know that he hadn't got the poisoned pill yet."
"She felt my pulse," said Fred.
"Yes," said Duff. "You see?"
"But I . . ."
Alice, on the edge of the bed with Fred's arm around her, saw the queer eyes lick out, this way and that, for an opening. Saw her find it.
Gertrude was as white as death in her chair, and her sightless eyes were closed. She moaned. The sound called Duff. The light went with him, brightening that comer and letting shadow fall on the rest.
Isabel picked up the aspirin bottle.
Fred jumped, but Alice's dead weight followed him and entangled him.
The ghastliest sight she ever saw, thought Alice, was Isabel, in the half-dark, shaking the aspirin bottle into her open mouth with her only hand.
Fred said, "Well, she got it. It was poison, ail right."
Duff looked down.
"What is justice?" he said, "I don't know, do you? Perhaps they'd call her mad."
"I guess this is justice," Fred said grimly, "or a facsimile of same."
Art Killeen came charging in. "Alice. Alice, I thought ... I thought. . ."
"Did you think it was me?" she said without much emotion. "How funny! I thought it was you." He looked at her and shook his head, puzzled, without comprehension. ''No percentage," said Alice.
"Look out," cried Fred. "Put her head down."
When Alice, lying on the bed, heard a woman scream, she felt scarcely able to take an interest. She turned her head, idly. Women were always screaming, and this was only Susan Innes, shocked, in the door.
"I saw the lights ... I had come . . . Oh, Mr. Duff, what happened?"
But Gertrude answered. The straw-colored woman, brittle and shining and weak, like straw. Her voice was clear, and the bell tones were sad. She held herself stiffly, and the syllables tinkled mourning. "Poor Maud," she said. "Poor, poor Isabel. Oh, Susan, there has been a dreadful tragedy. Isabel moved the chest in the hall. And poor Maud was deceived in the dark. Maud fell out the old porch door. She's dead. And Isabel"—Gertrude's face was frozen—"Isabel, in her remorse . . ." the voice was cool . . . "over the accident. . ." said Gertrude.
"Oh, my dear!"
"Yes, I shall be alone," said Gertrude. "Well, I shall never be a burden." She stood up and moved lq her uncanny way. She went out the door and down the hall. She paused at the open outer door, the one that led to nothing.
But she went on. The feet found the stairs easily in the dark.
"So that's her version," muttered Fred.
"Forever," said Duff sadly.
Killeen was stroking Alice's hair. "Be quiet. Just rest."
"Where's everybody?"
"You're in your own room. They're . . . attending to things. Darling . . ."
"I wish you'd get over that," said Alice crossly. "Where's Mr. Duff? Where's Fred?" It was as if she'd said, "Where are my friends?"
Innes was calling, somewhere.
"Hadn't you better trot?" said Alice. "Don't you hear him calling you?"
He said, "Good-by, darling."
"But she is blind," Fred said, later, "physically bhnd, I mean?"
It was nearly morning. The doctor was in the house. He had looked at the dead and comforted the living. He was with Gertrude now. Duff and Fred had come to Ahce's room. They were all three sitting in a row on the bed.
"Yes, I'm sure of it," Duff said. "She knew you m the dark, Fred. When Isabel didn't. How do the blind recognize people? They do, you know. With all their other senses. Somehow, and we who can see are never sure quite how, they can tell one of us from another. The dark was no barrier to her. She knew you. And she knew Alice was there too."
"She passed the pillbox test," said Alice.
"Yes. She did."
"But Maud was a fraud," Fred grinned. "Hey, that's a rhyme. Must I speak of the dead nothing but good?"
"Not these dead," said Alice grimly. "Go on. Maud was a fraud. But how did that prove it was Isabel?"
Duff drew his algebra problem out of his pocket. "A stands for attempt, b for blind, c for crippled, d for deaf. And things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. Therefore, when three of you identified the same sound as the sound you'd each heard separately, it was the same sound, all along."
"And that told you Isabel did everything?"
"Say it confirmed me in my suspicion," said Duff. "Isabel fitted. Yes, it told me I was right. It checked. If Maud could hear, and if Gertrude was blind, then Isabel was the active murderess. Because if Gertrude was really blind she could have been fooled by the witch hazel and a bedroom slipper. And that's how the stain came off Isabel's arm. And if Maud could hear, why, she rested her alibi for Isabel on what she heard, of course. She really thought Isabel had gone through her room at about eleven. Why? Not necessarily because she had noticed the clock. Maud was never time-conscious."
"Just mealtimes," said Fred.
187
"But I had said to Alice that Susan put the time of her call at eleven. Maud heard me, do you see? And Maud heard the phone. Or, if she didn't, still she heard us say that Isabel had come upstairs immediately after the phone call, the phone call was at eleven . . . She rested her evidence on hearsay."
"When do you think the telephone really rang?"
"Qose to twelve," said Duff. "When Fred was in the bathroom. Isabel had been downstairs the whole time. In the cellar at work, perhaps soon after eleven thirty. She answered the phone. She got Gertrude to wash her arm. She came upstairs, triumphant. She went through Maud's room to avoid Fred. Maud would never notice the time, thought she. Anyhow, what did the time matter? Isabel didn't know that Alice knew or noticed heat still coming up at eleven fifteen. Isabel wasn't so very clever. After all, she never got her victim, though she tried four times. She never got her prize. She murdered the wrong person. And she had to die her way out of it."
"But I still . . . What does this mean?" Alice picked up the piece of paper.
"It told me that Isabel had made the first two attempts. Without doubt. It convinced me that she had also made the third. Therefore, it prepared me to beUeve that, whatever might be done tonight, Isabel would do it. And I was frightened for you, Alice. Because she, alone, of the three would rather kill you and Innes both than give up the fortune she had begun to think of as hers. Gertrude had enough with the allowance. She would have her particular brand of prestige, the thing she'd buy. Maud, too, had what she wanted. You can buy only so much candy, so many peanuts. The love of things, you see, is the root. Isabel loved things, just to pK>ssess them, and there are never enough things, as I told her." Duff fell silent.
"But how did it tell you?" insisted Alice.
"Look. Attempt nmnber one. The falling lamp. Not Maud. That we knew. Maud was in the parlor whether she was deaf or not. Fortunately, we had that double check on Maud for attempt number one. Now, suppose Gertrude dropped the lamp and made the httle sound. Then, when we come to number two, we see that it must also have been Gertrude, and it wasn't. Why must Gertrude have done
both, if she did the first? Because Maud and Isabel both had something wrong with their voices. No range. No control. No flexibility. Neither could have imitated that sound. Either of them could have made it, understand, but not copied it from hearing Gertrude make it. So, if Gertrude dropped the lamp she also did everything else. But she couldn't have gone down the road and moved the detour sign. That leaves Isabel. Number one. Isabel. Dear?"