A Pinch of Poison by Frances Lockridge Page A

with strangers.”
    Weigand nodded.
    â€œIt is all done for the child, essentially,” she told him. “But in some measure for the foster parents, too. The more we know about them, the better chance we have of—well, fitting them with a child. If the foster parents have been through college, for example, they will be happiest with a child who may, some day, go through college, and they would be disappointed with a child whose mind wasn’t fitted for formal education. And we try to fit races and temperaments and—well, you can see it is something of a job.”
    â€œAnd Miss Winston was a good worker?” Weigand said.
    â€œVery,” Miss Crane told him. “She—well, it has been a very great shock to all of us, Lieutenant.”
    Weigand nodded. Pam North broke in.
    â€œAre the Grahams the people who are going to get Michael?” she said. Miss Crane nodded.
    â€œMichael?” Weigand echoed.
    â€œThe little boy we are thinking of placing with Mr. and Mrs. Graham,” Miss Crane told him. “A child of about three. The placement seems to be very suitable, although Miss Winston’s death will delay matters. She was handling it, and much of the investigation may have to be done over. I won’t know until I have read her recent reports.”
    â€œOh,” said Weigand. He thought it over. Michael, he decided, didn’t come in. He might see the Grahams, because it sometimes helped to find out what a person who had been murdered was doing and saying in the hours before death. It would be, just possibly, worth a trip to Riverdale. Meanwhile—He stood up and started to thank Miss Crane. He was glad, at any rate, to know that Lois Winston had had an opportunity to go over the marriage license lists at the Municipal Building. It would be interesting to find out whether, in searching them, she had run across a name more familiar to her than that of the wayward ward of the Placement Foundation.
    â€œListen,” Mrs. North said, firmly. “I think you ought to hear about Michael. It’s a very strange story and—well, you never know.”
    Weigand started to shake his head, and again met command in Pam North’s eyes. She was, for some reason, rather eager about this, he decided. He looked at his watch. Another half-hour wouldn’t make much difference, one way or the other.
    â€œWhat,” he said, “about Michael?”
    Mrs. North looked at Mary Crane and nodded. Miss Crane seemed puzzled. She said she couldn’t see what bearing it could possibly have. She looked at Lieutenant Weigand and smiled questioningly and he nodded, just perceptibly.
    â€œIf it doesn’t take too long,” he said. “We want to keep Mrs. North happy.”
    It wouldn’t, Miss Crane agreed, take long. It was, like all the Foundation’s case histories, confidential. “Mrs. North is on the committee, of course,” Miss Crane explained. She looked a little bewildered about that, Weigand noticed. He merely nodded, barricading a sympathetic grin. The nod accepted the forthcoming information as confidential.
    Michael, Miss Crane explained, was a little boy of three with a rather unusual history. He had come to the organization some six weeks earlier, being brought under care by a man who said he was the child’s father. Miss Crane herself had eventually interviewed the man—an odd, unshaven man who looked ill and, eventually, said he was ill. He wore dark glasses, she said, and even so sat with his back to the window because the light hurt his eyes. He wanted to surrender Michael, his son, for adoption. He had not brought the boy.
    â€œHe said he was Richard Osborne,” Miss Crane said. Osborne said he had been a draftsman, but recently had been too ill to work. He had been taking care of Michael by himself since his wife had left him, when they were living in San Francisco. He had come to New York on an offer of a job and had