Murder Is Suggested by Frances and Richard Lockridge Page A

you all morning. Somebody’s coming.”
    â€œUr-agh,” Martini said. Martini does not really like company, thinking more than two humans—and those carefully selected—make a crowd.
    Pam sat at her dressing table and flicked her hair, and said, “No,” firmly when Martini tried to get on her lap to help. Martini sat on the floor and stared at Pam as if she had never seen her before, and didn’t like her much now. “And don’t sulk,” Pam said and powdered her nose and then, apropos of nothing in particular, stuck out her tongue at her reflection.
    Half an hour, Faith Oldham had said, and it must now, at a quarter of eleven by a small wrist watch (which Pam was almost sure she had remembered to wind), be time for her to come. Under, presumably, a misapprehension with which both Pam and Jerry North are long familiar.
    â€œWe’re not detectives,” Pam would tell Faith Old-ham. “We’ve never been detectives. All we do is know a detective.”
    She would be, as usual, listened to politely. At least, when they had met at Jameson Elwell’s—dear Jamey. What an awful thing to happen—Faith Oldham had seemed polite. Shy, not at all certain of herself, saying little—but polite. So she would say, “Of course, Mrs. North. I realize that,” not, in fact, realizing it at all, or believing it at all.
    â€œIt’s really true,” Pam would say then. “Oh, murder cases happen to us. I can’t deny that. But it isn’t the other way around. Whatever Inspector O’Malley thinks.”
    Only, Pam thought—getting up from the dressing table and going to the living room, with Martini trotting behind her, waiting for a lap to settle—only I won’t bring the inspector into it. The trouble with me is, I’m so likely to say the one phrase too many. So as to make things clear. And people do seem to get confused so easily.
    She was just going into the living room when the buzzer sounded. Martha popped out of the kitchen door at the other end of the room, saw Mrs. North and popped back in again. Pam opened the room, looked up at Faith Oldham and said, “Good morning.”
    â€œIt’s so good of you—” the tall girl said—the tall, too-thin girl with startled blue eyes in a fragile face; the somehow gawky girl; the girl who seemed to live in an unfamiliar world. Pam North, who is no handshaker by habit, nevertheless reached out a slim hand to the girl’s larger, thinner, very long-fingered hand.
    â€œIt isn’t at all,” Pam said, and drew Faith Oldham into the room, and said, “Sit there—” and then, just in time, “ No. Wait a minute,” and lifted Martini out of the “there” chair. Martini sat on the floor and, indignantly, licked her left shoulder.
    â€œIf it’s her chair,” Faith Oldham said.
    â€œAll the chairs we’ve got are her chairs,” Pam said. “If we went by that, we’d stand all the time.”
    â€œShe’s very pretty,” Faith said.
    Pam looked at Martini.
    â€œYes,” she said. “Even with the hole in her head.”
    It is not actually a hole, although so referred to. It is more in the nature of a wart. Martini does not mind having it mentioned.
    Faith Oldham looked puzzled.
    â€œNever mind,” Pam said. “You know, Miss Oldham, Jerry and I aren’t detectives.” And the rest of it, as envisioned, including the inspector, although resolved against.
    â€œMrs. North,” Faith said, “I’ve—I’ve got to talk to somebody. And there isn’t anybody—and—I keep feeling it’s my fault and—” She seemed, suddenly, on the verge of crying. She knotted her thin hands together in her lap.
    â€œI don’t—” Pam said.
    â€œIf I’d been there when I was supposed to be,” Faith Oldham said. “Not let mother—just gone