“I don’t trust nobody,” she said wearily. “Okay, what’s the difference? I’ve stood plenty before.”
“You can go in a moment, Miss Sands. I wonder if you’d repeat your story of events this last Monday night, before you go.”
“Sure. I left the inquest with the Wallers. We ate before we came home. We talked awhile in their rooms. Then I went to bed, early. I was still sleeping when I began to hear a ringing somewhere. It was the phone. I answered it, then went up to wake Mr. Kistler. I went back to bed, but I didn’t get to sleep again before I heard Mr. Kistler yelling for Mr. Waller. I was along helping work on her for a while. Then I had to leave for the store.”
“Don’t think I don’t appreciate your helping me,” I said warmly. “I won’t forget it if I can ever do anything for you.”
“The best you can do for me is not know me. Can I go now?”
“Thank you, Miss Sands. That’s all I wanted.”
Mr. Kistler was on his feet, pacing back and forth.
“If you find out she killed Mrs. Garr I hope you get her a reward for it.”
“Would you be as generous as that concerning the attack on Mrs. Dacres, too?”
Mr. Kistler stopped short. “No, I wouldn’t. Hell, I’d forgotten. I suppose we’ve got to get your murderer, baby, even if we’re sorry for her.”
“You’re leaping too far ahead,” I said. “We’ve had other things turn up this afternoon more incriminating than this. Miss Sands’ story doesn’t prove she’s a murderer. It proves she’s weak. A stronger person would have escaped from Mrs. Garr long ago.”
“Remember about the can of Kleenfine she was using? Or have you decided to ignore that?”
“No, I’m not forgetting. But her whole story, if it’s true, isn’t the story of a person who would make a planned attack on me or anyone else. She hasn’t acted on life; she’s let life act on her. Look at what she said. She was enticed into Mrs. Garr’s establishment in the first place. There must have been ways in which a girl forced into such a house could have escaped, run away, reached the police, and slapped Mrs. Garr’s ears with her dirty business. But she doesn’t. She just stays there until chance lets her out. And even then she doesn’t try retribution.”
“Your story’s all right for this year,” argued the lieutenant, “but her story isn’t this year’s. It’s 1917 or 1918, maybe. Public opinion toward a girl leading that life isn’t very lenient even yet. Back then, it was likely assumed that she wouldn’t be leading it if her character was all it should be. Mrs. Garr’s business wasn’t so unusual in those days.”
“What Lieutenant Strom so carefully avoids saying,” Mr. Kistler put in blandly, “is that Mrs. Garr was undoubtedly protected. Miss Sands could have wept at the official doors until the gaslights were drowned, but all she’d have gotten for her pains would have been the lifted eyebrow, the averted nose, and a reputation that wouldn’t get her a job in the whole town.”
“Far be it from me to hint the police of this city were ever corrupt.” Lieutenant Strom said it lightly.
“Just the same”—I stuck to my line—“think of this attack on me. That was a planned attack. Someone swept those stairs and provided himself with a saw—they must be fairly difficult to get, too. Someone timed the job for the first night we were without a guard. Someone provided himself with a hammer and a can of Kleenfine. Oh, it was all thought out beforehand.”
“Different from the murder of Mrs. Garr, wasn’t it?” Lieutenant Strom brought out the analogy. “That has all the earmarks of being unpremeditated.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t necessarily alter the psychology of the murderer. That first crime may have just happened. It was a sort of self-defense, maybe, if you can call it self-defense when a burglar defends his right to burgle. Miss Sands might have committed that kind of crime. But I don’t think she’d have had the brains—I don’t think she’d have had the character—to think up the attack on me.”
They all laughed; men can be so infuriating. I was being perfectly logical, too.
“Well, even worms turn; remember that.” The platitude was from Lieutenant Strom. “You can rule Miss Sands out if you want to, but she’s still a good strong suspect to me. Remember, we said Mrs. Garr’s murder was as likely to have its roots in her past as in any small sums of money she might have hidden around. All right, now we’ve found someone linked to that past. And one with a good strong motive, too. Miss Sands wasn’t trying to hide her hatred. And besides that, she had a present reason, too. How’d you feel, if you made thirteen twenty-five a week, and were blackmailed out of two dollars of it?”
I thought it over. “I’d have watched until I knew where some of the little piles of money were. Then I’d have grabbed my chance to get my own back, and left for sunnier climes.”
“She admits she’s an honest girl.”
“I don’t mind being a stooge for a laugh.”
“Laugh nothing. Don’t you realize that’s exactly what Miss Sands may have done? She was caught hunting Mrs. Garr’s money and killed her.”
19
THERE WAS STILL ONE more interview that Wednesday: Buffingham’s. The lieutenant had Van call the Elite Drugstore where Mr. Buffingham worked, and order him to return to the house during his supper hour. He came to the house shortly after six; the lieutenant called him in impatiently. Strom was all keyed up by that time, anxious to get at the Liberry case records, anxious to go over them completely, now there was the possibility between Mr. Waller and Miss Sands of a connection with that old case.
Mr. Buffingham slouched in,
