Read Online Murder within Murder by Frances Lockridge - Free Book Online Page B

daughter of Alfred Gipson, Stein said, checking with his notes as he talked. Alfred Gipson had died, leaving a good deal of money, in 1901. He had left it to his wife in trust and, on her death two years later, it had been divided between the two children, Amelia and Alfred Gipson, Jr. Each had received around three hundred thousand dollars. Amelia had put hers, for the most part, in bonds; a good deal of it in government bonds. She had lived on the interest; until recently, when taxes went up and interest down, she had done a little better than live on the interest. But say she left about the same sum she had inherited.
    â€œTo?” Weigand said.
    Stein said he was coming to that. He said it wasn’t, he thought, the most important thing. But she had left the bulk of it to a nephew and a niece, in equal shares. To get back, he said.
    Alfred, Jr., Amelia’s brother, had been about ten years older than Amelia—he had been born in 1883, and had been twenty when his mother died. And at twenty, apparently, he had started making money. He had made it, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, but almost always consistently, until he died in 1940. He had also found time to marry and beget two children. His wife died when her daughter was born in 1922, which made the daughter twenty-three. The son was two years older. That was John. The girl was Nora. But no longer Nora Gipson. Now Nora Frost, wife of Major Kennet Frost.
    â€œAir Force major,” Stein said. “He’s been in the Pacific. But he got back Stateside yesterday, Mason thinks. They expect him in New York today some time. Everybody’s all steamed up—or everybody was yesterday. The aunt’s death—made a difference, Mason supposes, to get back.”
    Alfred Gipson, who had dropped the junior when his father died, had brought up the children with some advice from his sister, who, however, had apparently exercised a rather distant supervision, except in the summers, when she had joined the family at a place they had in Maine. She and the children, with enough servants, had spent most summers there when John and Nora were growing up, and Alfred had come up for long weekends and sometimes for a week or two at a time.
    Alfred Gipson had had almost a year’s warning of his death. He had drawn up his will when John was nineteen and Nora seventeen. He left his money—which ran to about a million and a half after taxes—to his sister in trust for the children, with the proviso that it was to be divided between them when Nora was twenty-five. Stein paused and looked up.
    â€œOr,” he said, “upon the death of Amelia Gipson, whichever should occur first.”
    Weigand nodded slowly.
    â€œSo the children cut up a million and a half,” he said. “Plus Amelia’s share.”
    â€œLess tax,” Stein said.
    â€œLess tax,” Bill Weigand agreed. “Still all right, I should think. The next question—are the children hard up?”
    Mason said not, Stein told him. Major Frost had some money—not the same kind of money, but some.
    â€œAnd John’s probably in the Army,” Weigand said. “Or the Navy?”
    Stein shook his head.
    â€œApparently not,” he said. “John’s a chemist—for his age, Mason thinks a pretty important chemist. Too important to get killed, unless he blows himself up. Mason seemed to think there was a pretty good chance he would, although the stuff he’s working on is all very secret. Has been right along. Mason thinks now it may have had something to do with the atomic bombs, but he still doesn’t know. And John’s still working at it. Up in Connecticut somewhere, apparently a good way from other people except the people he’s working with. Only he’s in town now.”
    â€œWhy?” Weigand wanted to know.
    Stein shrugged. He said he had asked Mason. He said Mason didn’t know.
    â€œMason says if anybody knows,