It was all clear. It even accounted for so many of the grapes being spilled around the room. It was one of the things that had worried her — why Cora should have plucked so many of the grapes off the stem, if she had just been sitting there eating them in the ordinary way. But it was perfectly clear now. Everything was settled.
She explained it all to Dr. Goodrich, who seemed relieved, and then set out for home.
Off and on throughout the following week she thought of Lucille Morrow. She was sorry that she had not been able to do more for her, but also a little resentful because if it hadn’t been for Lucille, Cora might still be living.
On Friday morning, the day after Cora’s funeral, Janet returned to the office. She was head buyer for the French Salon at Hampton’s, a department store, and she had a good deal of work to do before she went to New York for the spring clothes preview. But she didn’t get as much work done as she’d hoped to, for about eleven o’clock a policeman came to see her.
Her secretary brought her his card, and Janet turned it over in her hand, frowning. Detective Inspector Sands. Never heard of him. Probably something about parking or driving through a red light. Still, an inspector. Perhaps my car’s been stolen.
“Send him in.” She leaned back in the big chair, filling it comfortably. She looked quite” calm. It wasn’t the first time she’d been visited by a policeman. Cora’s misdemeanors had made her acquainted with a number of them.
But surely, she thought, even Cora couldn’t be raising hell in hell. One corner of her mouth turned up in a regretful little smile.
“Miss Green? I’m Inspector Sands.”
“Oh, yes. Sit down, will you?”
“I’ve come about your sister’s death.”
“Well.” Janet raised her thick black eyebrows. “I thought that was settled at the inquest.”
“The physical end of it, yes... There is no doubt at all that your sister’s death was accidental. It’s Mrs. Morrow’s connection with your sister that I’d like to know more about.”
He sat down, holding his hat in his hands. Janet looked at him maternally/He seemed very frail for a policeman. Probably they had to take just anybody on the force nowadays, with so many able-bodied men drafted. Probably he doesn’t get proper meals and rest, and certainly somebody should do something about his clothes.
Sands recognized her expression. He had, seen it before, and it always caused him trouble.
Tomorrow I enroll with Charles Atlas, he thought.
“Dr. Goodrich and I talked it over,” Janet said. “It wasn’t the poor woman’s fault that she killed Cora. Dr. Goodrich said she was actually very fond of Cora, and in telling her the grapes were poisoned she was trying to save Cora’s life.”
“That’s why I’m here. On Saturday Miss Green died. On Friday you’d been to visit her. Did she say anything about Mrs. Morrow to you then?”
“Oh, she said a few things, I guess. Cora was such a chatterbox sometimes I didn’t pay much attention. She did say that she liked her new roommate and felt sorry for her.”
“Tell me, how many years was your sister at Penwood?”
“Off and on, for nearly ten years. She really liked it there. She was quite sane, you know, and very interested in the psychology of the patients.”
“And not at all nervous about being with them?”
“Not at all.”
“Isn’t it odd, then, that she should have actually believed Mrs. Morrow when Mrs. Morrow told her the grapes were poisoned? She was accustomed to the fancies and vagaries of the other patients. Why did she take Mrs. Morrow seriously?”
“I never thought of that,” Janet said with a frown. “Of course you’re right. Cora would have said, ‘Oh, nonsense,’ or something like that. Unless... well, unless the grapes were really poisoned?”
“They weren’t.”
“I’m very confused. I thought everything was settled, and now — well, now, I don’t know what happened.”
“What happened is clear enough. Your sister died of shock. And why? Because I think she believed Mrs. Morrow, she was convinced that Mrs. Morrow was not insane, that someone was really trying to kill her.”
“You sound,” Janet said, “you sound as if you believe that too.”
“Oh, yes. I do, indeed.”
Janet looked skeptical. “Some of the patients at Penwood can be very convincing, you know.”
“Yes. But your sister isn’t the first of Mrs. Morrow’s associates to die. She’s the third.”
“The — third?”
“Miss Green’s death is the third. I believe it was accidental. The other two were deliberate murders. They remain unsolved.”
He waited while Janet registered first shock at the murders, and then indignation that they were still unsolved. In his mind’s eye he could see the three who had died: Mildred Morrow, young and plump and pretty; ” Eddy Greeley, a diseased and useless derelict; Cora Green, a. harmless little old woman.
Each so dissimilar from the others, all having only one thing in common — Lucille Morrow.
“Well, I don’t know what I can do to help,” Janet said. “I’m sorry I can’t remember more of what Cora said about Mrs. Morrow.”
Sands rose. “That’s all right. It was a slim chance, anyway.”
“Well, I really am sorry,” Janet said, and rose, too, and offered him her hand. “Good-bye. If there’s anything more I can do...”
“No, thanks. Good-bye.”
They shook hands and he went out, into the subdued whispering atmosphere of the French Salon. As he passed through the store the air became warmer, the people noisier, the counters garish with Christmas. Perfume, gloves, specialty aisles, slightly soiled and marked-down underwear, clerks in felt Dutch bonnets, “The Newest Rage,” “Anything on this table 29¢,” “Give her — Hose!”
Throngs of housewives and college girls, harassed males and bewildered children, prams and elbows and tired feet and suffocating air.
He paused beside a tie counter to get his breath. That’s what you see with your eyes open, he thought. The tired feet and shoulder-sag, the faces lined by pain or by poverty, the endless hurry not to get to some place, but to get out of some place.
But you Could stand back and almost close your eyes and see only the happy bustling throng, joyous with Christmas spirit, happy, happy people in a happy, happy world.
Happy. Silly word. Rhymes with sappy and pappy.
The clerk came up. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No, thanks,” Sands said. “Everything’s been done for me.”
He fought his way to the door, aware that he was being childish and neurotic, that his own failure condemned him to see at the moment only the failure of others.
He passed through the revolving door on to Yonge Street and drew the cold air into his lungs. He felt better almost immediately, and thought, tomorrow I enroll with Charles Atlas and William Saroyan.
The street crowd was more purposeful in its bustling than the store crowd. The stenographers, bank clerks, truss-builders, typesetters, lawyers arid elevator operators were all in search of food. The elevator operators picked up a hamburger and a cup of coffee at a White Spot. The stenographers ate chicken à la king jammed knee to knee in a Honey Dew, and the lawyers, with less drive and perhaps a more careful use of the privilege of pushing, headed for the Savarin on Bay Street.
On the corner a newsboy about seventy was urging everyone to read all about it in the Globe and Mail. About two o’clock he would be equally vociferous about the Star and Tely and around midnight he would appear again, this time with the Globe and Mail for the following day.