The Dishonest Murderer by Frances Lockridge

girl; she felt, not tears, but a burning dryness in her own eyes. She looked over Celia’s bent head to Curtis Grainger; said to him, with her eyes, “Be good to her.” Grainger nodded, but at the same time shrugged slightly. What was there to say to Celia? his movement asked. What was there to say to anyone?
    Freddie Haven released Celia to Curt Grainger and looked around the room, and felt that the room, the people in it, had been waiting for her. She smiled, as well as she could smile, at her father, still somehow military in a gray suit; she carried the same smile to the others—to Fay Burnley, correct in black, vitality drained out of her face, leaving there nakedly the years she had lived, for anyone to see; to Howard Phipps, still immaculate but obviously very tired, who had been sitting with his knees spread a little, his elbows on them, his head supported in his hands, until she had entered, who had looked up, then, and who now, as if on some signal, stood up in front of his chair. He stood there a moment, and then came the few steps to Freddie Haven and held out his hand, and shook his head slowly to indicate that there were no words. Since he wanted it, apparently wanted to be kind and gentle, Freddie took his hand, felt it clasp her own. Then he released her hand and shook his head again, and turned away. He started back to his chair, seemed to change his mind and went to another. The chair he chose was near that of Breese Burnley, whose entirely perfect face was, still, entirely perfect. Freddie carried her pale smile to Breese, offered it and received in return an expression of gravity and a slight, sympathetic shaking of the head.
    Then, and only then, Freddie Haven looked at the table which had been drawn forward from its place near the big windows which looked down on the street. There were three men there, around the table—one sitting at it, with a notebook open, the other two standing. The man sitting at the table was Sergeant Blake, and his eyes met hers. His lips said “Good morning,” without a sound. It seemed to her, oddly, that his face, the way he moved his lips in soundless greeting, were both familiar and, even more strangely, reassuring.
    One of the other men was Lieutenant Weigand. The other was a larger man, heavier. He looked, more than either of the others, like a policeman, although he, too, was in civilian clothes.
    Lieutenant Weigand’s face was tired, as her father’s was, as hers was; it was as if he had shared their strain, their anxiety. When Freddie looked at him, he nodded briefly, and said, “Good morning, Mrs. Haven.” Then, almost at once, he said, his voice raised a little, “Now that you’re all here—”
    He paused while attention focussed on him.
    â€œI’m a lieutenant of detectives,” he said. “My name is Weigand. I’ve been assigned, with others, of course, to try to discover the circumstances of Senator Kirkhill’s death. The exact circumstances.” He paused, and looked around. “I know this is difficult for some of you,” he said. “For Miss Kirkhill and Mrs. Haven, probably for all of you. I’m sorry about that, but it can’t be avoided. I mean, I can’t avoid asking you to help me, to tell me what you know.” He paused again. “You see,” he said, “the circumstances of the senator’s death are very difficult to understand. To make any sort of sense of. I don’t know whether you all know what the circumstances were. It was like this—”
    He told them, in bare, flat words, of the finding of Bruce Kirkhill’s body, of the way the body was dressed, of its identification.
    â€œIt appears,” he said, “that the senator was engaged in some—masquerade. That he dressed himself, outwardly, for a certain part, presumably that of a man out of work, sleeping in cheap rooming houses, cadging drinks. He was found in, or near, a