“What brings you here, Mr. Boyd?”
“You,” I said. “You’re my client, and I figure after what happened this morning, you need some protection.” “I think you’re right,” she said tautly. “Thank you for coming.”
Pete brushed past us on his way somewhere to the back of the house, his face an expressionless mask.
“Well,” Martha Hazelton injected a false note of brightness into her voice. “Shall we go into the living room?” “Maybe we could play happy families?” I suggested. Inside the living room, Hazelton was sitting in an armchair lighting a cigar. He gave me a blank, hostile look, then concentrated on the cigar again.
“You’ve met Father already I think?” Martha said in a dry voice. “Do you know Mr. Houston?”
Houston was at a card table playing gin rummy with Sylvia. He looked up and almost smiled—but his corpse’s eyes behind their half-frames showed no emotion at all. “Glad to see you, Boyd,” he said.
“And I think you know Miss West,” Martha concluded the unnecessary introductions, “our—er—housekeeper?” “We’ve met before,” I said. “I’ve always thought Miss 102
West was a highly efficient girl—no one needs to tell her to pull her stockings up, I’m sure!”
Sylvia shot me a glance of pure hatred, then looked down at her cards quickly.
“You can see we’re just one happy family here, Mr. Boyd,” Martha said caustically. “Can I make you a drink?”
“Gin and tonic,” I said, “thanks.”
She walked over to the small bar in one comer of the room, and told me to sit down while she made the drinks. I sat in one of the uncomfortable Early Colonial chairs facing the card table, with Hazelton on the other side of me.
Martha brought the drinks over and sat down in the chair next to mine.
“Do you know what progress the police are making with the case?” she asked.
“Lieutenant Greer says they’ve nearly got it all wrapped up,” I said. “But he didn’t give me any details.”
Houston stopped shuffling a deck of cards and looked across at me. “That’s very interesting news, Boyd,” he said. “You have no idea who they suspect?”
“Greer didn’t confide in me,” I said. “So your guess is as good as mine. . . . What is your guess?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, it all seems completely unreal to me even now. Whoever the murderer is, there’s no doubt we’re dealing with an immensely clever personality—a brilliant brain.” His eyes never left Martha’s face as he talked on in a slow, deliberate voice. “The way the murders were carried out showed a natural genius for strategy and planning, one almost can't help admiring it.”
“Admiring it!” Hazelton said in a choked voice. “Are you mad, Houston? You’re talking about a cold-blooded killer who murdered my boy and my youngest girl!”
“Do you have a special guess about the murderer’s identity, Mr. Hazelton?” 1 asked him.
“No,” he said angrily. “But I’m damned sure you had something to do with it!”
“Martha hired me,” I said. “Does that mean you think she’s the murderer?”
“No!” he almost screamed. “You’re twisting my words^ making out I’m meaning something I don’t mean!” “You’re quite sure, Father?” Martha said tightly. “I mean, there’s only me left now, isn’t there? If I were found guilty and electrocuted, there would be none of us left. So you wouldn’t have to worry about Mother’s trust fund, would you? No survivors among the children, and the money goes to you, as the sole surviving member of the family, as I remember?”
Hazelton stared at her dully. “What are you trying to say?” he whispered.
“If the trust fund’s just a little short,” she said icily, “say—half a million or so? Wouldn’t it be convenient if there was no one left to inherit but you?”
He sat forward with his shoulders hunched, his hands clutching the arms of the chair.
“You think I’d do that?” he said in a shaking voice. “I’d kill my children—for money!”
“You love yourself more than anyone else on earth,” she said flatly. “You always have—the fine image of yourself you carry around in your mind—Galbraith Hazelton, Wall Street big shot—financial tycoon. The man in the homburg hat with the military mustache and fine upright bearing! You’d do anything to stop that picture being splashed across the front pages with ‘Swindler’ written underneath!”
Hazelton looked numbly at the cigar between his shaking fingers for a moment, then threw it into the fireplace.
“I am worth, conservatively, something more than a million dollars at this moment,” he said bleakly. “I’m no Wall Street tycoon, I’m not even considered to be a big shot there. A middling-small shot if you like. But I don’t run a stock-broking business because I need the money 1”
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“That’s a pretty speech, Father,” Martha said coldly. “Why don’t you practice it for Lieutenant Greer?”
“As far as your mother’s trust fund is concerned,” he went on in the same bleak tone, “I have nothing to do with it. I never have—I speculate with my own money— gamble with it even. But your mother’s money was different. I always felt 1 didn’t have the right to risk iL It was a temptation at first I admit, but I got rid of the temptation by having someone else administer it. My instructions were the capital was to be invested in blue-chip stocks and there was to be no speculation of any kind. Once a year I look over the books, that’s all.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that?” Martha said contemptuously.
“I’m not sure right now whether I expect you to believe anything,” he said quietly. “But you can easily check if you wish—ask the man who’s administered the fund from six months after your mother’s death right up until the present.”
“Don’t tell me his name is Smith and by some coincidence he’s away in Europe at present?” Martha jeered.
“His name is Houston, and he’s right here in this room,” Hazelton said flatly. “Actually it was his senior partner, Abrams, who handled the estate for the first four years, up until his death. But Houston has managed it ever since.”
“Houston?” Martha repeated slowly. Her dark eyes grew enormous. “But I thought—”
“Tell her, man!” Hazelton said fiercely. “Is it true, or not?”
Houston studied the fingernails of his right hand for a moment.
“Oh, yes,” he said politely. “It’s perfectly true.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before!” Martha shouted at him suddenly.
“You never asked,” he said mildly.
“You should have told me!” she screamed. “You let
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me think all the time it was Father who was—” She stopped suddenly.
“Go on, Martha,” Houston said conversationally. ^ “Who was what?”
“Nothing!” she said sullenly.
“Embezzling money from the trust?” He finished the sentence for her. “I don’t have the capital your father has, naturally, but my income over the last five years has been in the six-figure bracket. I also don’t need money, but if you would like the fund’s books audited I shall be only too pleased to make the arrangements.” Martha began to cry suddenly, burying her face in her hands and making a small, wailing noise like a young i child.
Houston looked across at Galbraith, his face white and strained.
“How much more do you have to see?” he asked tensely. “Will you believe it now? You’ve deliberately blinded yourself to it for far too long already! I’ve told you—Miss West, a professional nurse, has told you— when are you going to take her to a psychiatrist and find out the truth!”
“Truth?” Martha asked in a cracked voice. She lifted her head slowly and looked at him with a tear-stained face. “What truth?”
His face was ugly. “That you’re insane, Martha,” he said softly. “A paranoiac, a homicidal paranoiac who should be locked in a padded cell before you kill again!” “Houston!” Galbraith said hoarsely. “You can’t—” “Insane!” Martha hissed. “So that’s what you’re trying to do to me?” She came out of the chair slowly and stood in a half-crouched position, staring at him fixedly, i “What a fool I’ve been,” she said bitterly. “I thought it was my own father—and all the time it was you! I didn’t realize just how clever you are, Greg. It’s you who’s stolen money from the fund and can’t afford to have anyone survive to claim their inheritance!” “Martha,” he said calmly. “It’s no use—”