Free The Norths Meet Murder by Frances Lockridge Page B

do.”
    â€œI’m sorry about this,” Weigand said. “You understand it isn’t what I’d choose to do?”
    She nodded. She quite understood; she was sorry if she was making it more difficult. She was keeping him at arm’s-length, Weigand realized. Perhaps she was, in a way, keeping herself, also, at arm’s-length.
    â€œIt’s about two hours from town by car,” she said. “Sometimes a little less. I was there from about Saturday noon until this morning. I drove in.”
    â€œYes,” said Weigand. “Thank you.”
    He waited a moment while Mullins finished a page of notes and flipped to a new page.
    â€œNow,” he said, “there are a few more things. Do you know, or did your husband, anybody named Edwards? A man or, perhaps, a woman?”
    Mrs. Brent’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly in inquiry, but the question appeared to be no more than faintly puzzling. Her eyes deepened as she thought. There was, she said, a laundryman named Edwards, or perhaps Edmonds. And there was an old school friend of hers who had married a man named Edwards. They lived in Chicago. She couldn’t answer for her husband, of course—he might know many others. She had met a Dr. Edwards a month or so ago at a party and he had played the piano delightfully for an hour or more, but she had never met him again. Yes, her husband had been at the party.
    â€œDo you know a Mr. Clinton Edwards?” Weigand asked.
    Mrs. Brent nodded, and said, “Just.
    â€œStan had some business relations with him, I believe,” she said. “A year or so ago, and we both got to know him slightly—never well. We went to his parties once or twice, and he came here, I think, once. But all of this was some time ago; I haven’t seen, or thought of, him for months.”
    And her husband? Had he seen Clinton Edwards recently? Mrs. Brent couldn’t, of course, say definitely. But not so far as she knew. Weigand said, “Right,” and that he would pass on. Did she know whether her husband had enemies? Had he ever mentioned them?
    â€œI don’t think people nowadays have ‘enemies,’ in that sense,” she said. “Do you? I suppose some people didn’t like him. There were people we used to see, and don’t see now”—she corrected herself, and her voice went dead on the correction—“hadn’t seen recently,” she said. “Some of them didn’t like him, any more; or didn’t like me. Some of them we didn’t like. But I don’t think people like us really have enemies.”
    Weigand more or less agreed with the theory, but the facts seemed against it. He nodded.
    â€œNo quarrels?” he said. Mrs. Brent thought.
    â€œHe and Ben Fuller swore at each other, once,” she said. “They were both a little tight, and nobody knew what was wrong. I don’t think it was very much, really. I don’t know of anything else.”
    â€œRight,” Weigand said. “It doesn’t sound like anything.” But he jotted down the name of Benjamin Fuller, just on the chance. He collected, also, the names of relatives. He inquired about insurance, and again Mrs. Brent’s eyebrows raised themselves slightly. It was routine, he pointed out. “We like to get the picture,” he said. She thought her husband had carried rather a good deal of insurance, but she was not sure. Weigand could doubtless find out. He agreed. And if Mr. Brent had had a desk in the apartment, might he look through it? And among the papers in the safe, if there was a safe? Mrs. Brent, whose eyes were growing shallow again, and who seemed to be looking beyond him, agreed with a nod. The maid would show him the desk and the wall safe. But she did not know the combination of the safe.
    The desk showed two things. In one pigeonhole a note of two lines, reading:
    â€œBoth my wife and I have had enough of this. I’d