they are married.”
“Perhaps she will at that,” Ames said.
I said, “Miss Fallon and Walter are being married soon?”
“The announcement will be made after the funeral.”
When I had first talked to George Ames, he had called Deirdre Fallon a “lady friend.” Ames was a man I would have expected to be formal, and a fiancee is not a lady friend.
“A sudden decision?” I asked.
“No,” Mrs. Radford said, “it was actually to be announced yesterday. That was what Deirdre discussed with Jonathan at lunch on Monday. Walter and Deirdre think we should wait longer, but I see no useful reason. We must balance death with life.”
It was a nice speech that proved nothing. Had the late Jonathan maybe really opposed the marriage? It was a thought, but I wasn’t going to find out here.
“Did Jonathan have a personal, private problem?” I asked.
“Good gracious no,” Gertrude Radford said.
“Damn it, Fortune,” George Ames said, “this Weiss came to collect money, Jonathan refused, and Weiss killed him. Those are the plain facts. You can’t evade them.”
“Why go to Jonathan?” I said. “Why not go to Walter?”
“Because Walter couldn’t pay,” Ames said testily. “Jonathan had control of his brother’s estate until Walter was thirty.”
Mrs. Radford said, “My husband did not believe that a woman could, or should, handle money. Except for a small income of my own, Jonathan controlled our money.”
“What are you trying to find out, Fortune?” Ames said. “No one in the family was near the apartment at the time, except Gertrude, and she couldn’t get in. She has no key. Jonathan was already dead then.”
“Maybe,” I said, “or maybe someone was with him keeping him quiet. Maybe he wasn’t dead at two o’clock after all.”
They didn’t look startled, or guilty, they just stared at me with nothing to say to that.
I said, “Do any of you know a man named Paul Baron?”
“No.”-“Of course not.” They said together. Their ignorance sounded genuine. I dropped it.
“Where could I find Walter now?”
“He went out with Deirdre. She’s staying in one of the cottages until the wedding,” Mrs. Radford said. “We don’t mean to be unhelpful, or callous, Mr. Fortune, but we can’t help you. At the moment I am only concerned with binding our wounds.”
“We all like to bind wounds,” I said. “Thanks for seeing me.”
None of the others drinking their ritual coffee had even glanced at me, and they didn’t now as I walked out. I was an alien animal, some foreign species. They were behind their walls, and outside there were only strange breeds of no interest to them.
The butler ushered me out. The hour was almost up, so I stood in the biting night cold and waited for the taxi to return. I was thinking about Paul Baron and a world a lot different from the world of the Radfords, when I heard the light steps in the snow.
A thin shadow watched me from the trees at the corner of the house. The shadow hissed at me, said:
“Are you the detective?”
“Yes.”
“Hurry,” she said.
A female shadow that turned and walked away around the house. I followed.
7
The path led toward two cottages behind the house. Only one showed light. The tall woman led me toward the lighted one.
She wore boots, a loose one-piece wool dress, and nothing else against the ten-degree cold but an enormous red-and-white-striped scarf. She strode out like one of those old fanatics leading a crusade.
Inside, the main room of the cottage was bright and well-furnished. She led me through into a smaller room without even a glance at the expensive furniture. In the small room there were a narrow bed, straight chairs, two worn bureaus, an old desk piled with papers, and a shabby dining table. A monk’s cell.
“Sit down,” she said.
I sat. She sat at the desk. I saw her clearly, and she was a girl: a tall, lanky girl of about twenty-five, with a long solemn face.
“I’m Morgana. You’re investigating Uncle Jonathan’s death?”
“I suppose I am.”
“You think someone here really killed him?”
“I don’t think anything yet. Do you?”
“I think that a total stranger is a bit too convenient. My uncle was a strong and clever man. It strikes me that he was not a man to be killed so easily by someone who had come to squeeze money. He should have been alert in that situation.”
That thought had crossed my mind. “Do you have an idea?”
She crossed her legs. It was an efficient, mannish gesture. She swung her booted leg as if she were about to give instructions to her soldiers. “No, not really. Any Radford or Ames is capable of murder, but I don’t know of any motives. Logically there is my brother, Walter, but it couldn’t have been Walter.”
“Why not, and why logically?”
“He is basically too gentle to hurt anyone, although he hated Jonathan. Jonathan tried to make him a businessman, and Mother tried to make him a cold aristocrat. Because they both failed, they think he is weak, but it isn’t that.” Her leg swung faster to some inner conflict. “When we were both small, we took an oath to right the wrongs our family had done. To do only good. Mother and Jonathan destroyed that in Walter, but they could not make him what they wanted, so he became what he is.”
“What is he?”
“Bitter, corrupt and self-indulgent.” She looked at me. “But the gentle boy is still there; I know that. He couldn’t kill.”
“He has an alibi anyway. If he was really here on Monday.”
“He was. I talked to him.” Her leg swung. “But she wasn’t.”
“She?”
“The cool Deirdre. She gets it all now, you see?”
“Did Jonathan dislike her? Did he oppose her?”
“No, not at all. Jonathan admired her just as Mother does. They admired her strength. Good for Walter, they considered.”
“Then why would she kill Jonathan?”
“There may be things I don’t know. They don’t tell me much.”
“It’s not logical for her to kill a man who liked her.”
“Unless something had changed,” Morgana Radford said. Her leg swung in spasms and her hands twitched. “There’s something dark and animal in her. She looks at Walter like a spider.”
“But she has an alibi. Everyone has an alibi.”
She sighed. “I suppose so. I suppose it was this Weiss. In a way it is a kind of justice. Simple, stupid violence.”
I watched her. “You didn’t like your uncle, did you?”
Abruptly, she stood. She began to pace the Spartan room. “My uncle was an evil man. One of the evil Radfords! Do you know how the Radfords became powerful, rich? On blood! They called it coffee, but it was blood they sold. The blood of Indians, peasants, slaves! They robbed, killed and maimed the darker people of the world so that they could live in ease at home. It still goes on, day after day. Power, greed and self-interest, and Jonathan
