'This is a nasty murder,' said Duff. 'This murder that hasn't happened yet. Does it strike you that all these attempts have been singularly slipshod? A lamp falls over. It might hit the right victim. It might not. It didn't hit anyone, but it was a very careless business.'
'Yeah,' said Fred, half-kidding, 'the murderess certainly shoulda been more careful.'
'The detour sign moved,' went on Duff. 'What a haphazard device that was! How easy it would have been for a strange car, a car full of innocent, unknown people, to have gone over into that pit and been killed. How uncertain a method it was of getting the right parties.'
'Which was us,' Fred grimaced. 'But I see what you mean.'
'It's almost as if the murderer's right hand doesn't know what his left is doing,' mused Duff. 'Like the veal in the meat loaf. Less crime than carelessness. Criminal carelessness. One could say one hadn't thought. A kind of unconscious murder.'
'The dampers turned wasn't so darned unconscious.' 'Who can say?' said Duff. 'A woman doesn't understand a furnace. Or so she tells herself. She will make it nice and warm for Innes. She will put plenty of coal on. She doesn't understand dampers and drafts. She closes it up, with the very best intentions.'
'You mean that? You think it was a mistake?' 'It was no mistake,' Duff said, 'but a person skilled at deceiving herself could have done the murder and looked the other way.'
'What's the bearing?' asked Fred.
'I'm being profound and psychological,' said Duff sternly. 'Be quiet. Now, we must say to ourselves, why? What motive? You tellme it must be on account of money. Murder for money. It's not unheard of.'
'Seems to me I've heard of it,' said Fred. 'Yeah.'
'Who wants money that bad and why?''
'Do you have to ask why?' said Alice in a timid voice.
'Money buys,' said Duff, 'but it buys a lot of different things. Take Gertrude. What does she want to buy?'
'Her clothes are terrible,' said Alice.
'Be quiet,' said Fred, 'or else be profound, like us. She'd buy the status quo, eh, Mr. Duff?'
'Her prestige,' said Duff. 'Yes, I think so, don't you?'
'She's got to be the Whidock in the Whitlock house on the hill.' Fred nodded
'But she's got her own money,' objected Alice. 'She's the one who's got some left.'
'The regime was on the verge of a change, however,' said Duff quietly. 'Innes was balking. He was going to take over. The bank would know. Gerrtrude would no longer be mistress of her own fortune, in the bank's eyes. Therefore I suppose the town would know. Charity of their brother. The Whitlock girls,'
'Oh,' said Alice.
'Did Gertrude like the idea?'
'She didn't like it,' said Alice. 'I remember.'
'Vanity in her poison,' said Duff, in his gentlest voice. 'But not hatred. Not revenge.'
'No?'
'No, because Gertrude rather likes being blind Don't gasp. She was an unattractive, a haughty, and a proud young girl, unlikely to marry. Unfitted to marry. Unapproachable. Maybe she knew that. Her excuse, you see, for being a spinster, lies in her blindness. A tragedy all her own, which she loves and cherishes, believe me.'
'I can't believe . . .'
'However it may have been at the beginning, that's Gertrude now. But she must maintain her picture of herself. Her tragedy must be high class and take place in
dignified economic circumstaiices. She wouldn't enjoy the picture of herself as blind and poor'
'No.'
'Gertrude deceives herself easily, wouldn't you say so?'
'She swallowed an awful lot of terribly sticky flattery from you,' said Alice.
'She lapped it up.'
'Yeah, she would,' said Fred.
'Yet, Gertrude's idea of keeping up to snuff, so Josephine tells me, is by giving orders. That's the one element in her character . . . Tell me, is it possible? Can you imagine, with any reality, Gertrude Whitlock, in person and not by deputy, knocking over a lamp and then forgetting it, rather? Gertrude wishing her brother dead so that she might keep her own fortune and have another and stay where she is, a tragic and a lovely legend in the town for the rest of her days?'
'Wishing, sure,' said Fred.
'Wishing enough to do something about it? To take action?'
'Yes,' said Alice, 'yes, I suppose so. But . . . she's blind.'
'Never mind that for now.'
Fred said, 'If she did it, she'd do it like you said, halfconsciously.'
