The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

pipe from between his teeth.
    “It’s your show really, Carey,” Peter said a little half-heartedly. Thane now removed his pipe and sat forward in his chair. “I am quite aware that I’m supposed to bow out after that little sop to your conscience, Peter. And I will—eventually—but first I want to give you a small piece of information. I’ve just had the chemist’s report on that face cream. It was, as you thought, packed full of another beautiful herb poison—cowbane, sometimes mistakenly called wild parsnip. It can be absorbed through the skin and can be fatal when the skin is broken, as Margie’s was, in several places. Poor kid.” He stopped, and then added with an attempt at cheerfulness: “And now policeman defers to Sherlock Holmes. But by way of introduction I would just like to say that I seem to remember telling Fredericka that one day I’d like to write a murder-mystery. Well, I’m not so sure about that now. I think I’m going to take up painting.” He sat back again in his chair, adding: “You can have the floor now, only just don’t forget that I’m a sensitive man even if I am a chief of police. Everything that you say is apt to be held against you.”
    “O.K., O.K. Bouquets where bouquets is due. Now I’ll just carry on from where I was about to start when I was so rudely interrupted. This case was a family affair and to understand Philippine’s motive for killing Catherine Clay we have to go back to 1945. Perhaps I should say here that my sudden trip to Washington gave me this background information. And I went to Washington because Catherine Clay had received a number of letters from France, including one that came after her death and never reached Mrs. Sutton because Philippine got it from Margie, who had taken it from Chris at the bookshop. It was evident from what I learned—fortunately Chris had some old envelopes for his stamp collection with the name of a French legal firm printed on the outside—that Catherine Clay had got hold of some facts I am about to reveal and was practising a form of private blackmail on her supposed cousin.”
    “Supposed?” Connie asked.
    “Don’t interrupt. I am coming to that. Perhaps it’s best to go back to where I started—the year 1945—the year of the liberation. A young girl called Alma Fersen who had been imprisoned by the Nazis was one of those released from a concentration camp. During her three years of imprisonment she had come to know intimately a French girl who had been a member of the Maquis—a girl called Philippine D’Arnley Sutton. Alma learned all about this girl. She was the only daughter of an American man, Arthur Sutton, an artist who had settled in France after World War I and married a French woman, Renée D’Arnley. Both the real Philippine’s parents were dead, her father before the war, and her mother in a bombing raid during the German invasion. Toward the end of the war, Philippine herself died. There are no facts available about this. It may be that our Alma hastened the end. Anyway she knew that Philippine’s name would be far more useful to her than her own in the post-war world, so she changed their clothes and assumed Philippine’s identity. Alma was a fully qualified chemist which was an important fact in our investigations, because the real Philippine wasn’t. I say ‘our’ investigations. I mean the Government ones. They’d had an eye on Alma-Philippine as on all aliens. This greatly expedited my Washington inquiries. Alma Fersen was supposed to have died late in 1944. We now know that she is only now dying.”
    “Has died,” Connie amended. “Thane got the message just before you came.”
    “So be it,” Peter said, and then went on quickly: “When Alma, as Philippine, emerged from the camp, she soon discovered that Margaret Sutton was searching for her niece, and it was not long before, as Philippine Sutton, she came to America to gladden the hearts of all who knew her—”
    “The fact is that she did—gladden their hearts, I mean,” Connie said quickly.
    “Well—yes and no, to that one. She was a good business woman and she had charm. She took charge and greatly helped Margaret who had started the herb farm and had had to carry on, virtually alone, while Roger was in the war and Catherine off in New York.
    “It was also in 1945 that Catherine left her husband and came home for the first time since her marriage. She and Philippine hated each other on sight and soon after