Murder within Murder Read Online Free Page B

body which said certain things, but not enough. The body spoke of regular meals, of comfortable life, of the number of years lived, of the manner of death. It told—it would tell—what the last meal eaten by a living person had been, and how long it had been eaten before death. It told of past illnesses which had been endured and survived; of an appendicitis operation many years before; of virginity maintained until it withered.
    Those things the body in the morgue told of. But they were not the things which were most significant; which now were most vital. The body could not tell who had hated Amelia Gipson, or if anyone had loved her; it could not tell what she thought of things, and what others thought of her—of her tastes, her needs, her responsibilities. It could not tell where, in her life, had sprouted the seed of her death. These things—all the things Bill Weigand had to find out—lay now in the little things Amelia Gipson had left behind. They lay in this room, and its order; in the letters and notebooks and check-stubs in the secretary in the corner; in what men and women had seen and remembered about Miss Gipson that evening; in the contents of her medicine cabinet and her safe deposit box, if she had one. The things they had to know lay in what she had done in the past and what she had planned to do in the future. Research into death was at the same time research into life.
    â€œShe used scent,” Pam said, suddenly. “Does that surprise you? Either of you?”
    â€œNo,” Jerry said. “I don’t think she used perfume, Pam. I didn’t notice it at the office.”
    â€œYou must have had a cold,” Pam said. “You didn’t mention it.”
    â€œI didn’t have it,” Jerry said.
    Pam said all right. She said in that case it was because he smoked too much. Clearly, Miss Gipson had used perfume. It was still in the room.
    â€œRight,” Bill Weigand said. “I noticed it. But she didn’t wear any tonight. I noticed that, too.”
    â€œSomething with ‘Fleur’ in it,” Pam said. “Fleur de Something or Other. Fleur de what?”
    Neither of the men knew. But Jerry admitted there was perfume in the room.
    â€œFor evenings, probably,” Pam said. “Although it doesn’t seem in character, somehow. The way she looked. And being a Latin teacher in a girls’ school. I’d have thought castile soap and perhaps a little talcum, if anything.”
    Bill Weigand had crossed to the desk. He was looking through it, piling the contents of pigeonholes in neat order. He had left Miss Gipson’s purse lying on the coffee table. It was all right for her to look into it, Bill told Pam absently, when she asked.
    It was a very neat purse. Pam thought that it was much neater than any purse she had ever looked into—certainly much neater than her own. And it seemed almost empty. There was a change purse in it, containing a little more than twenty dollars. There was a social security card. No driver’s license. A fountain pen. Four neat squares of cleansing tissue. No compact. No lipstick. No lists of any kind, scrawled on the backs of envelopes. No scraps of material, no hairpins or loose stamps or unanswered correspondence. It was hardly recognizable as a woman’s handbag.
    â€œAnd no perfume,” Pam said aloud. “In it or on it. Which is odd.”
    Bill Weigand was reading a letter and Jerry stood by him, reading over his shoulder. Pam got up, leaving the handbag, and went into the bathroom. It was a neat bathroom. She opened the built-in medicine cabinet. There was a box of bicarbonate and a plastic drinking cup, a box of cleansing tissue, two toothbrushes and a can of tooth powder, a can of white talcum with no perceptible scent and a cardboard box from a druggist with a doctor’s name on it and the handwritten instructions: “One powder three times a day two hours after meals.”