The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

the vitamin capsules and Margie didn’t put two and two together. But Philippine knew that she must recover the box with the extra capsules and, failing that, that she must get rid of Margie who would be able to connect them with herself. She decided to use Margie to recover the box by refusing to believe that it was the same one. Margie tried to get it from you and failed, as we know. Then the fact of poisoning became known. Margie must have put her two and two together and Philippine then had to carry out her plan of getting rid of Margie who might, at any moment, turn informer.”
    “But why didn’t Margie turn informer at once?”
    “I’m not certain. Philippine is too far gone to give us a confession so this is mostly conjecture, but I would say that she had some hold over the child. She may even have made Margie believe that if she went to the police with her story, they would believe Philippine’s word against hers. Philippine probably threatened to say that she had found Margie in the lab with the box and capsules and pin the murder on to her as she did do, later, in her story to you. Margie’s passionate hatred of Catherine was well known. Philippine’s was not.”
    “Oh God! If we’d only known. Oh, Peter, I was so much to blame.”
    “No more than any of the rest of us,” Peter said bitterly, but he let go of Fredericka’s hand and gripped both arms of the chair fiercely. “It’s the way she killed the child that is so terrible. I suppose if we’d seen the Nazis at work in a concentration camp as she did, it wouldn’t seem so demoniac—”
    He stopped speaking and, after a moment, Fredericka said quietly, “Oh, Peter, please tell me what she did do. I—I can’t stand it either.”
    “She must have told Margie that she had at last discovered a face cream that would cure her acne. Margie believed her implicitly because she thought Philippine a sort of wizard with her herbs and potions. What Philippine had discovered was that some one of her damned old herbs could poison through the skin—I confess I’m guessing now, but Thane’s chemist will soon know all—”
    “Oh, Peter—no!”
    “Oh, Fredericka—y es,” Peter answered grimly. “You see the beauty of this hideous plan. She used the poison that would kill the child as a bribe to keep her quiet while it was killing her. The difficulty was that the poison was slow. I believe she told Margie that she would give her this miracle cure in return for the child’s silence. Margie kept her part of the bargain—”
    “I can’t believe it of Philippine, Peter. I just can’t.” Fredericka was silent and thoughtful for a moment, then she asked, “Was there any reason why she couldn’t give the child a quick sure death like Catherine’s?”
    “Oh, yes. She couldn’t without being caught and she didn’t intend to be caught. When her plan to make Catherine’s death look like too much dope failed, she knew that the yellow jessamine poison would lead us straight to her laboratory. And she knew that the possible suspects, from our point of view, were very few. But she had sense enough to know that we were helpless without evidence and that we hadn’t a shred of it. If she had taken an obvious quick method of killing Margie, we’d have been on to her at once. Oh, yes, we had our eye on that damn bottle of yellow jessamine all right, but this face-cream business was a brand new wrinkle. She was, in fact, too clever for us. My God—how we guarded that kid’s food and drink. I expect Philippine had some good laughs over that.”
    “But Peter, you haven’t explained why she wanted to kill me. I can’t see it. Until two hours ago I hadn’t a clue—”
    “Yes you did—a beautiful clue. But you didn’t realize it. The jar of poisoned face cream. That was the one piece of incriminating evidence and she knew it. But she couldn’t find that any more than she could find the box with the capsules after Catherine’s death.”
    “So when I said Margie had used the shed or greenhouse or what-have-you for a secret hiding place and there were some cosmetics and junk there, she knew where the face cream must be.”
    “She did indeed, and she had to think fast. I believe she came that night to the bookshop determined to find the stuff but without any formulated plan.”
    “Yes. I remember now that, before that, when she came for Margie’s insurance card and pyjamas in the storeroom, she did seem to be looking for something. In fact,