“It’s you who planned it all,” she went on in that hissing voice. “You killed Philip and then Clemmie— j and now you want to convince Father and the others ! that I’m insane—a madwoman and a murderess! Well, you won’t do it, you hear! 1 won’t let you do it!” She screamed the last words at him and took another step closer to the card table.
“And dear, charming Miss West,” she bared her teeth at Sylvia in a ghastly parody of a smile, “our housekeeper who isn’t a housekeeper but a professional nurse. She’s part of your plot, Greg? To back up your lies and make sure no one believes the truth when I tell it?” “Sit down, Martha!” Houston said sharply. “Try and control yourself!”
“Of course!” she said slowly. “There had to be someone else, too. Somebody to keep the strangers out— people like Mr. Boyd who might get curious and had to be stopped. Someone like Pete Rinkman, Greg?”
“You’re wildly wrong,” he said. “Stop building a nightmare that doesn’t exist, Martha! You’re in bad enough trouble already with the one that does exist!”
“Pete,” she repeated the name slowly. “He’s the one! You’re too smart for me, Mr. Houston!” She looked at Sylvia and sneered openly, “You and your lady-friend nurse! But Pete isn’t very smart, I can get the truth out of him. He’s the one I can handle. . . . Yes, he’s the one.” Her voice dropped to a murmur as if she was talking more to herself than anyone else.
“Pete!” She nodded vigorously. “I must talk to him now, right away, before it’s too late.” She walked quickly to the door and then out into the hallway.
“Pete!” Her voice grew fainter as she went into the back rooms of the house somewhere. “Pete! Where are you, Pete!” A door slammed and then there was silence.
“Someone should stop her,” Houston said uneasily. “Before she harms herself.”
“Sylvia,” I said. “I owe you an apology. You were telling me the truth when you said Houston suggested 107
you should come and ask me to come here tonight?” “Don’t bother to apologize,” she said coldly. “Just drop dead!”
Houston shrugged his shoulders irritably, then looked at Hazelton.
“Now you know beyond any doubt,” he said evenly. “It’s too late to save Philip and Clemmie, but at least you can try and save Martha from herself. Will you call the police, or will I?”
“I wouldn’t be too quick about calling Greer,” I said to him casually. “It wouldn’t hurt to check a couple of points first.”
“You aren’t concerned in this, Boyd!” he said shortly. “So keep your mouth shut!”
“Martha’s still my client, and that gives me an interest,” I said. “And watch your manners, Houston, or I’ll knock your teeth out!”
“I wouldn’t have believed it,” Hazelton said in a trembling voice. “But her outburst just now—the hysterics—it was awful. It—”
“You think that proves she’s blown her stack?” I said to him. “I figure it was a normal reaction.”
“Normal?” Hazelton said blankly, looking at me for the first time.
“You have to remember she thought it was you conspiring against all three of them,” I said. “That was why she hired me—she’d convinced herself somehow that you had stolen money from the trust fund and were actively planning to kill all three of them.”
“Doesn’t that sound insane?” Houston demanded. “You have to remember also,” I said to Hazelton, ignoring the attorney’s question, “when she came to me, Philip was already missing and Clemmie was up here with Miss West watching her the whole time, and Pete Rinkman acting like a guard to keep people out. It looked to Martha that her sister was being kept a prisoner here—she didn’t know you were worried about Clemmie’s mental balance.”
“Perhaps not,” Hazelton said dully.
“Get her to a psychiatrist!** Houston said loudly. “You’ll have proof soon enough about the state of Martha’s mind!’*
“You keep saying that,” I snarled at him. “You keep saying Martha’s insane—and Sylvia West keeps on saying she’s insane and Clemmie was on her way to becoming insane. Any moment now, Pete Rinkman’s going to come rushing in here and say the same thing.”
I looked at Hazelton. “But nobody else has said that. You were only frightened that one or both of your daughters might have inherited the family history of insanity. But up to this moment you never believed that either of them were actually insane, did you?”
“No,” Hazelton stiffened in his chair. “No, I didn’t.” “I haven’t known either of them for long,” I said. “But I never thought for a moment that Clemmie was insane or showing any signs of abnormality. And I don’t think for one moment that Martha is insane now. How did you come to hire Miss West?”
“Why—Houston said if I was worried about the girls, why didn’t I hire a professional nurse to keep an eye on them. He said the girls didn’t need to know. The nurse could pretend to be a housekeeper at the farmhouse.”
“Then he produced Miss West as the right candidate for the job?”
“Yes, yes, he did!” His eyes were suddenly alert again.
“And after Miss West had been on the job a little while she gave you a bad report on Clemmie, maybe? Suggested it would be better if Clemmie stayed on the farm full-time for a while so she could keep her under close observation?”
“Yes!” he said sharply.
“How about Pete Rinkman? Whose idea was it to employ a handyman who was really a bodyguard—to keep people out?”
Galbraith Hazelton stood up slowly, his mustache bristling, his back ramrod-stiff.
“Do you have any further points to make, Boyd?” he asked in a deceptively mild voice. His eyes glittered as he watched Houston the whole time.
“Gilding the lily,” I said. “When you knew I’d taken Clemmie away from here—it would be Houston who produced the private detective, Tolvar, to bring her back? Houston who said, once you’d got her back, wouldn’t it be best if you all went up to the farmhouse for a time where you’d be safe, and take Tolvar along for extra protection?”
Hazelton walked slowly toward the card table, his eyes still fixed on Houston’s chalk-white face.
“I think, Greg,” he said in a low voice, “I’m going to kill you!”
“Don’t waste your time, Mr. Hazelton,” I told him. ‘The law will take care of that!”
“Have you all gone mad?” Houston said desperately. “What motive could I have for trying to prove them insane—for killing Philip and Clemmie!”
“The answer to that is in the trust fund, I guess,” I told him. “If the money’s all there, you have nothing to worry about.”
“I’ve said the money’s all there!” he said tautly. “I already told you that—over and over! Didn’t you hear me? If you want the books checked over I’m perfectly prepared to—”
“I don’t think you need bother, Houston,” I told him. “Lieutenant Greer’s taken care of that already.”
“Anyone you nominate, can take a look at—” He turned his head slowly and stared at me. “What did you say?”
“Lieutenant Greer’s had the New York police subpoena the trust fund’s accounts,” I repeated. “They’re being checked over right now.”
For the first time there was some expression in his dead eyes. They looked sick. He picked up the deck of
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