“I wouldn’t be surprised if you did it.” She kept viciously to her own track.
“Oh, don’t be cross with me,” I wheedled. “I’m just interested. Did you know the police are holding Mr. Kistler?”
“I’m glad t’ hear it. I don’t like him, neither.”
“But it wasn’t Mr. Kistler who murdered Mrs. Garr, if she was murdered. I’m quite sure of that. It wasn’t me. And I don’t like being suspected. So I’m trying to find out who did it. If you’re going to live here—How many children did I hear you have?”
“Seven. Seven dear little chillern. I always say being a mother is the nobles’ work of Gawd, and I don’t care who knows it.”
“Just think, Mrs. Halloran, if you brought those dear little children here, and there was an unsolved mystery in the house. A murderer walking around!”
“Oh my, and I living right here! Oh my, he won’t, either. I’ll tell ’em all to move out, right now.”
“Oh, but you can’t do that. The police, you know . . .” I waved a hand at the fat lump, who had been an interested listener to the conversation, but who hadn’t moved to enter it. It was like having a Dictaphone in the hall. But I didn’t care. The police already knew the information I wanted to worm out of Mrs. Halloran, and I didn’t mind their knowing that I knew it, too.
“What I say is that you and I should get our heads together,” I proposed to Mrs. Halloran, “and see what we can think up.”
She followed like a lamb into my sitting room, the fat lump blinking after us and moving where he could hear, too. Mrs. Halloran sat stiffly upright on the studio couch, her fingers tangling in the inevitable pearl beads around her neck.
“The reason Mr. Kistler was held was because he had a Memorial Day excursion ticket to Chicago,” I began.
“Oh my, you mean he killed my aunt Hattie for that?”
“He says he got it from someone else. Now, if we can prove he did or did not get it from Mrs. Garr, we’ll be one step along. Where did you buy your tickets? Railroad tickets, you know, have the time and place they were bought, stamped on the back.”
“I dunno. I didn’t buy ’em. Aunt Hattie bought ’em.”
“You don’t know where?”
“No, ma’am. I mean, no, I didn’t. I said so once.”
“Do you know what day she bought them?”
“No, I dunno.”
“What day did she give you yours?”
“It was a while before. Because I know I took it home and showed it to the children. It was on Thursday, that’s when it was. I come over here that afternoon.”
“Why, that’s a wonderful help, Mrs. Halloran! If we can find out the ticket Mr. Kistler has was bought after Thursday. Mrs. Garr must have bought both her tickets at the same time.”
“I dunno. I never seen hers.”
“Oh,” I said, thinking. I was thinking that to get anywhere with Lieutenant Strom, I’d need to have something definite to go on. I wondered what chance there was of finding the person who had sold Mrs. Garr her tickets. If I was going into that, I was going to have a busy day. But I still wanted more from Mrs. Halloran.
“I think it’s wonderful you’re going to have the house.”
“My, yes, I’m going to do a lot of things to this house. You won’t know it when I get done. All over, I’m going to do it. Spanish, I think. I think pink stucco on the outside. Like that fourplex across the street. My, I always admired that house.”
“Won’t that be lovely. Are you going to have money, too?”
“Five hun’erd a year! It’s a lot o’ money, ain’t it? Five hun’erd dollars. A trust fund, she left it in, for me and the children. Halloran says you got to put a lot o’ money in a trust fund to make five hun’erd a year. He says maybe we can get it all out. My, that would be a lot o’ money.”
She was almost crowing.
“Yes, it must be a lot. It must be ten or twelve thousand dollars, at least.” My new knowledge of Mrs. Garr’s past kept me from being surprised at the amount. “It must be all the money she had.”
“No, it—” A halted look came on her mouth.
“Then she left something to someone else, too?” This was what I was getting at—who benefited by the death?
“She left it to—” Mrs. Halloran leaned forward as if she were telling an obscene story. “She left it to a home for animals.” She swallowed, with difficulty. “She left it to the dog and them there cats. Them pets o’ hers. There was a whole piece in the will, a long piece. About how they was the best friends she ever had, the only true friends, and she wanted they should have a happy home so long as they lived even if she was gone because there ain’t no friends like your dog and your cat.”
The last words I could barely make out. Her face was shaken, too. Even she couldn’t escape the unholy irony of a thing like that.
12
BEYOND THAT, MRS. HALLORAN had little to tell me of the will. The house and five hundred a year from an already established trust to Mrs. Halloran; all the residue for the establishment of a home for animals, the honored patrons of which were to be Mrs. Garr’s own four pets.
I wondered what had become of those animals.
And how much that residue was.
One thing was proved. Except for the Hallorans, no individual stood to benefit by the will!
But I had something else to do before I went into that. As politely as possible, I shooed Mrs. Halloran into the parlor to tell her triumphs to Mrs. Tewman. Five minutes after, I was outside the house.
The curiosity seekers were gone now. Two or three men lounged around
