Murder Is Suggested by Frances and Richard Lockridge Page B

die. That he—he wasn’t any longer valuable. To himself. That for somebody to kill him would be—what’s the long word?”
    â€œEuthanasia. No, I doubt it, Pam. And—it would have been a dirty trick. Jamey didn’t play dirty tricks.”
    â€œOh,” Pam said, “he’d leave a record of some sort, exonerating whoever did it. Because—that would be the point, wouldn’t it? Of the final experiment? To prove that, under certain circumstances—very special circumstances—a person who had been hypnotized could be told to kill?”
    Jerry doubted several things—one, that any explanation Jamey might leave behind would, legally, exonerate the person who killed him. Two—that anyone, most of all Jameson Elwell, would think the point important enough for so drastic a proof. Three—that it would have worked anyway.
    â€œâ€˜Hold then my sword and turn away thy face,
    Â Â â€˜While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?’
    and Strato did, as I remember it.”
    â€œBut before that somebody—I forget who—had said, ‘Not on your life.’ Said—wait a minute—‘That’s not an office for a friend, my lord.’” Jerry spoke with some triumph.
    â€œIt could be,” Pam said, “that Strato was the better friend, my lord. My God—I’m beginning to talk like Shakespeare.”
    Blank verse, Jerry told her, is infectious. It happens even to writers of prose—unwary writers of prose.
    â€œAll right, Pam said. “What I said can still be true. And—the more somebody loved Jamey, the more likely he would be to—to do what Jamey wanted. Save him from—from long pain. Pain without hope.”
    â€œI doubt—” Jerry said, and stopped. “All right,” he said. “I still don’t believe it. I’ll admit—” He stopped again. “Damn,” Jerry said, in a tone aggrieved. “He would have left a statement,” he said.
    â€œOf course. In his files. Or— Jerry. Perhaps he made it orally—on the tape recorder and—and somebody wiped it off! Or whatever you do to a tape.”
    â€œYou can,” Jerry said, “think of the damnedest things.” He said if not without admiration. He ground out his cigarette and at once lighted a fresh one, having, it occurred to him, thought of a damnedest thing himself.
    â€œSuppose this,” he said. “Suppose somebody—anybody you like; this man Hunter for example—killed Elwell, just in the ordinary course of events. And—”
    â€œ Jerry! ” Pam said. “The ordinary course—”
    â€œSsh,” Jerry said. “You’ve had your supposes. This man doesn’t want to be caught. But—suppose he is. With overpowering evidence against him. He says it certainly looks bad but he doesn’t remember anything about it. And then—‘If I did it, it was because he’d hypnotized me and made me do it, and I can prove that he did hypnotize me often and once made me break a clock.’ I don’t know whether it would get him off entirely, but if he could make it stick it would be—well, an extenuating circumstance, at the least.”
    He looked at Pam, who nodded, who said, “That’s a very good suppose, dear,” but seemed to be thinking of something else—something that smudged the clarity of her mobile face. He waited.
    â€œFaith Oldham loved him,” Pam said, slowly. “We both felt that—as a girl might love a father. A very good father—a wise father. I think she might have done almost anything he asked, feeling he knew best. And—I wonder if he ever hypnotized her, Jerry? And if—”
    Her clear voice faltered a little.
    â€œI hope it isn’t that way,” Pam North said. “Will you get me a phenobarbital, Jerry?”
    Bill Weigand got to his office at a little before nine