Murder Comes First by Frances and Richard Lockridge Read Free Book Online

Sally.”
    â€œRight,” Bill said. “Go ahead.”
    â€œLogan had quite a lot of money,” Barton Sandford said. “Left it to his wife, of course. I suppose you want that?”
    â€œYes,” Bill said. “Go ahead.”
    â€œWho gets the money?” Sandford said. “I don’t know, precisely. I imagine young Paul gets most of it. Maybe Sally gets some. Sally wouldn’t kill her for it; I don’t think Paul would.” He looked earnestly at Weigand. “I can’t think of a single damn reason anybody would kill Grace,” he said. “Not a single damned one.”
    Nobody ever could, Bill thought. The victim never had any enemies; nobody would kill for money; it was always the same. And there was always somebody dead, for all that.
    â€œMrs. Logan had a companion,” Bill said. “A Mrs. Hickey?”
    â€œRose Hickey,” Sandford told him. “Where is she, by the way? It’ll be tough on her.”
    She was dependent on Mrs. Logan? Pretty much so, Sandford thought. She was some years younger than Grace Logan; perhaps as many as ten. She was a widow, with one daughter, Lynn Hickey. “Who works in a store or something,” Sandford said. “Fourth assistant buyer. Something like that.”
    So far as Sandford knew, Mrs. Hickey had no resources of her own. She and Grace Logan had been friends for many years; after Paul Logan died, Grace had invited her friend to live with her. Lynn was at school, then; apparently there had been enough money for that. When she finished school, she had lived with her mother and Mrs. Logan for a few months; then got an apartment of her own. Sandford didn’t know where. He didn’t, he pointed out, know most of this directly. It was hearsay through his wife. He had known Mrs. Hickey only moderately, from visiting Grace Logan; Lynn he had met once or twice.
    â€œThen you wouldn’t know anything about a quarrel—maybe merely a disagreement—between your aunt and Mrs. Hickey?” Weigand asked.
    Sandford looked astonished.
    â€œMy God,” he said, “you don’t mean—”
    He didn’t mean anything, yet, Bill told him. They hadn’t seen Mrs. Hickey. They would.
    â€œI don’t believe it,” Sandford said. “Not from what I saw of her. She’d be the last person.” But then he paused. “Of course,” he said, “I didn’t know her well. And I don’t know about things like this.” He paused again, smiled faintly. “Perhaps I know more about cells than about people. I’m a laboratory man, you know. Biochemist.”
    Weigand said it was difficult enough for anyone to know who was the last person for murder, or who the first. Nobody really knew about “things like this.” Any opinion might be useful.
    â€œShe seemed gentle, the little I saw of her,” Barton Sandford said. “I don’t mean weak. Probably she had a mind of her own; she’d have needed it to live with Grace. I’d have thought she’d be a hard person to quarrel with.”
    â€œAnd Mrs. Logan?”
    Sandford hesitated. Then he spoke slowly. He said that Grace had been charming, delightful, willing to do anything for anybody. And yet—
    â€œAnd yet,” he said, “in a way she may have been selfish, without knowing it. I mean—sometimes the things she wanted to do for people were the things she wanted more than the things they did. You see what I mean?”
    Bill did. He nodded.
    â€œTake Paul,” Sandford said, leaning a little forward in his chair, speaking carefully. “She’d do anything for the kid. Except turn him loose—let him go his own way, make his own mistakes.” He paused. “Except let him grow up,” he said. Then, again, he pointed out that he was only guessing; made again the qualification that he knew more of biological processes in laboratories than of mental