The Westing Game Read online

  So on with the game. The solution is simple if you know whom you are looking for. But heirs, beware! Be aware!

  Some are not who they say they are, and some are not who they seem to be. Whoever you are, it’s time to go home.

  God bless you all and remember this:

  Buy Westing Paper Products!

  8

  THE PAIRED HEIRS

  DURING THE NIGHT Flora Baumbach’s itsy-bitsy snowflings raged into a blizzard. The tenants of Sunset Towers awoke from clue-chasing, blood-dripping dreams, bound in twisted sheets and imprisoned by fifteen-foot snow-drifts.

  No telephones. No electricity.

  Snowbound with a murderer!

  The slow procession looked like some ancient, mysterious rite as partner sought out partner on the windowless stairs, and silent pairs threaded through the corridors in the flickering light of crooked, color-striped candles (the product of Turtle’s stint at summer camp).

  “These handmade candles are both practical and romantic,” she said, peddling her wares from apartment door to apartment door to frightened tenants at seven in the morning. (Oh, it’s only Turtle.) “And the colored stripes tell time, which is very handy if your electric clock stopped. Each stripe burns exactly one-half hour, more or less. Twelve stripes, six hours.”

  “How much?”

  “Not wishing to take advantage of this emergency, I’ve reduced the price to only five dollars each.”

  Outrageous. Even more so when the electricity came on two hours after her last sale. “Sorry, no refunds,” Turtle said.

  No matter. What was five dollars to heirs of an estate worth two hundred million? Clues, they had to work on those clues. Behind closed doors. Whisper, someone may be listening.

  Not all the heirs were huddled in plotting, puzzle-solving pairs. Jake Wexler had retreated to his office after a long and loud argument with his wife. He sure could have used half of that ten thousand dollars, but he wouldn’t admit it, not to her. The forfeited money upset her more than the murder of her uncle, if he was her uncle.

  Five floors above, Jake’s partner stood before the restaurant’s front window staring at the froth on the angry lake, and beyond. No one had bothered to tell Madame Hoo about the Westing game.

  Other players were snowbound elsewhere: Denton Deere in the hospital, Sandy at home. No one gave a thought to where Otis Amber or Crow might be.

  But Sydelle Pulaski was there, thumping her crutch against the baseboards as she limped through the carpeted halls on the arm of her pretty partner. Not one, but seven tenants had invited her to morning coffee or afternoon tea (murderer or not, they had to see Pulaski’s copy of that will).

  “Three lumps, please. Angela drinks it black.” Your health? “Thank the lord I’m still able to hobble about.” Your job? “I was private secretary to the president of Schultz Sausages. Poor Mr. Schultz, I don’t know how he’ll manage without me.” Your shorthand notes? “Thank you for the refreshments. I must hurry back for my medication. Come, Angela.”

  One heir had not invited them in, but that didn’t stop Sydelle Pulaski from barging into apartment 2D. “Hi, Chris. Just thought we’d pop in to see how you’re doing. Don’t be scared. I’m not the murderer, Angela is not the murderer, and we don’t think you are the murderer. Mind if I sit down?” The secretary toppled into a chair next to the invalid before he could reply. “Here, I stole a macaroon for you. It’s so sticky you’ll be tasting it all day; I must have six strands of coconut between my upper molars.” Chris took the cookie. “Just look at that smile, it could break your heart.”

  Angela wished her partner had not said that; it seemed so insensitive, so crude. But at least Sydelle was talking to him, which was more than she was able to do. Angela, the fortunate one, standing like a dummy. “Um, I know Denton wants to work on the clues with you. He’s snowbound, too.”

  “You ver-r pred-dy.” How did “pretty” come out? He meant to say “nice.” Chris bent his curly head over the geography book in his lap. She wasn’t laughing at him. It was all right to ask her because she was going to marry his partner. “Wha ar-r g-gra annz?”

  Angela did not understand.

  Chris fanned the pages of the book to a picture of a wheat field. “G-gra-annz.”

  “Oh, grains. You want to know the names of some grains. Let’s see, there’s wheat, rye, corn, barley, oats.”

  “O-ohss!” Angela thought the boy was going into a fit, but he was only repeating her last word: oats.

  Sydelle was puffing her warm breath on the window and wiping a frosted area clean with her sleeve. “There, now you’ll be able to watch the birds again. Anything else we can do for you, young man?”

  Chris nodded. “Read m-me short-han n-noos.”

  The pretty lady and the funny lady moved quickly out the door. One limped, but it was a pretended limp (he could tell), not like the limper on the Westing house lawn.

  Oats. Chris closed his eyes to picture the clues: FOR PLAIN GRAIN SHED

  Grain = oats = Otis Amber. For + d (from shed) = Ford. But neither the delivery boy nor the judge limped, and he still hadn’t figured out she or plain. He’d have to wait for Denton Deere; Denton Deere was smart; he was a doctor.

  Chris raised his binoculars to the cliff. Windblown drifts buttressed the house—something moved on the second floor—a hand holding back the edge of a drape. Slowly the heavy drape fell back against the window. The Westing house was snowbound, too, and somebody was snowbound in it.

  Only one of the players thought the clues told how the ten-thousand-dollar check was to be spent. Take stock in America, the will said. Go for broke, the will said.

  “In the stock market,” Turtle said. “And whoever makes the most money wins it all, the whole two hundred million dollars.” Their clues:SEA MOUNTAIN AM O

  stood for symbols of three corporations listed on the stock exchange: SEA, MT (the abbreviation for mountain), AMO.

  “But am and o are separate clues,” Flora Baumbach said.

  “To confuse us.”

  “But what about the murderer? I thought we were supposed to find the name of the murderer?”

  “To put us off the track.” If the police suspected murder, she’d be in jail by now. Her fingerprints were over everything in the Westing house, including the corpse. “You don’t really think one of us could have killed a living, breathing human being in cold blood, do you, Mrs. Baumbach? Do you?” Turtle did, but the dressmaker was a cream puff.

  “Don’t you look at me like that, Turtle Wexler! You know very well I could never think such a thing. I must have misunderstood. Oh my, I just wish Miss Pulaski had shown us her copy of the will.”

  Turtle returned to her calculations, multiplying numbers of shares times price, adding a broker’s commission, trying to total the sums to the ten thousand dollars they had to spend.

  Flora Baumbach may have been wrong about the murder, but she was not convinced of Turtle’s plan. “What about Buy Westing Paper Products? I’m sure that was in the will.”

  “Great!” Turtle exclaimed. “We’ll do just that, we’ll add WPP to the list of stocks we’re going to buy.”

  Flora Baumbach had watched enough television commercials to know that Buy Westing Paper Products meant that as soon as she could get to market, she’d buy all the Westing products on the shelf. Still, it felt good having a child around again. She’d play along, gladly. “You know, Turtle, you may be right about putting our money in the stock market. I remember the will said May God thy gold refine. That must be from the Bible.”

  “Shakespeare,” Turtle replied. All quotations were either from the Bible or Shakespeare.

  Mr. Hoo moved aside a full ashtray with a show of distaste and rearranged the clues. “Purple fruited makes more sense.”

  Grace Wexler looked across the restaurant to the lone figure at the window. “Are you sure your wife doesn’t understand English, I mean, after living here so long?”

  “That’s my second wife. She came over f
rom Hong Kong two years ago.”

  “She does look young, but it’s so hard to tell ages of people of the Oriental persuasion,” Grace said. Why was he glaring at her like that? “Your wife is quite lovely, you know, so doll-like and inscrutable.”

  Hoo bit off half a chocolate bar. He had enough problems with the empty restaurant, a lazy son, and his nagging ulcer; now he had to put up with this bigot.

  Grace lit another cigarette and rearranged the clues to read: purple waves. “You heard that doorman say ‘purple waves’; it must mean something. And that ghastly secretary was wearing a dress with purple waves last night, not to mention her crutch.”

  “You should not speak unkindly of those less fortunate than you,” Hoo said.

  “You’re quite right,” Grace replied. “I thought the poor thing handled her infirmity with great courage—traveling mimosa, my future son-in-law says; he’s a doctor, you know. Anyhow, Pulaski couldn’t possibly be the murderer, not the way she gimps around. Besides, how could my Uncle Sam know she’d wear pur ple waves to his funeral?”

  Hoo waved the cigarette smoke from his face. “The murderer had to have a motive. How about this: A niece murders her rich uncle to inherit his money?”

  Good sport that she was, Grace tossed back her head and uttered an amused “Ha-ha-ha.”

  “Not that I care,” Hoo said. “That cheating moneybags got what he deserved. What’s the matter?”

  “Look!” Grace pointed to the clues.

  FRUITED PURPLE WAVES FOR SEA

  “For sea! The murderer lives in apartment 4C!”

  “I live in 4C,” Hoo barked. “If Sam Westing wanted to say 4C he would have written number 4, letter C. S-e-a means sea, like what a turtle swims in.”

  “Come now, Mr. Hoo, we are both being silly. Have you spoken to your son about his clues?”

  “Some son. If you can catch him, you can ask him.” Hoo stuffed the rest of the candy bar in his mouth. “And some business I’ve got here. Everybody orders up, nobody orders down. That coffee shop is sending me to the poorhouse. And your Angela and that Pulaski woman, they didn’t show us the will, they didn’t give us their clues, they didn’t pay for three cups of jasmine tea and six almond cookies, and you smoke too much.”

  “And you eat too much.” Grace threw her coin purse on the table and stormed out of the restaurant. Change, that’s all he’ll get from her; he’d have to beg on his knees before she’d sign Grace Windsor Wexler on the ten-thousand-dollar check, that madman. Some pair they made: Attila the Hun and Gracie the useless. Gracie Windkloppel Wexler, heir pretender, pretentious heir.

  First, the money. They signed their names to the check; half would go into Doug Hoo’s savings account; half would go to Theo’s parents. Next, the clues:HIS N ON TO THEE FOR

  “Maybe they’re numbers: one, two, three, four,” Theo guessed.

  “I still say on is no,” the bored track star said. He clasped his hands behind his head, leaned back in the coffee shop booth and stretched his long legs under the opposite bench. “And no is what we got: no real clues, no leads, no will.”

  After three cups of coffee, two pastries and a bowl of rice pudding with cream, Sydelle Pulaski had offered nothing in return.

  Theo refused to give up. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything unusual at the Westing house that night?”

  “I didn’t kill Westing, if that’s what you mean, and the only unusual thing I saw was Turtle Wexler. I think the pest is madly in love with me; how’s that for luck?”

  “Get serious, Doug. One of the heirs is a murderer; we could all get killed.”

  “Just because somebody zapped the old man doesn’t mean he’s going to kill again. Dad says . . .” Doug paused. His father’s comment about awarding a medal to the murderer might be incriminating.

  Theo tried another tack. “I was playing chess with somebody in the game room last night.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s what’s strange; I don’t know who. We’ll have to find out which one of the heirs plays chess.”

  “Since when is chess-playing evidence for murder?”

  “Well, it’s something to go on,” Theo replied. “And another thing: The will said no two sets of clues are alike. Maybe all the clues put together make one message, a message that points to the murderer. Somehow or other we’ll have to get the heirs to pool the clues.”

  “Oh, sure. The killer can’t wait to hand over the clues that will hang him.” Doug rose. Snowbound or not, he had to stay in shape for the track meet. For the rest of the day he jogged through the hallways and up and down stairs, scaring the nervous tenants half out of their wits.

  Judge J. J. Ford had no doubt that the clues she shared with the doorman were meant for her, but Sam Westing could toss off sharper insults than:SKIES AM SHINING BROTHER

  His choice of words must have been limited; therefore, these clues were part of a longer statement. A statement that named a name. The name of the murderer.

  No. Westing could not have been murdered. If his life had been threatened, if he had been in danger of any kind, he would have insisted on police protection. He owned the police; he owned the whole town. Sam Westing was not the type to let himself get killed. Not unless he was insane.

  The judge opened the envelope given her by the incompetent Plum. A certificate of sanity, dated last week: “Having thoroughly examined . . . keen mind and memory . . . excellent physical condition . . . (signed) Sidney Sikes, M.D.”

  Sikes. That sounded familiar. The judge scanned the obituary she had cut from Saturday’s newspaper.

  ... Samuel Westing and his friend, Dr. Sidney Sikes, were involved in a near-fatal automobile accident. Both men were hospitalized with severe injuries. Sikes resumed his Westingtown medical practice and the post of county coroner, but Westing disappeared from sight.

  Sikes was Westing’s friend (and, she remembered, a witness to the will), but he was also a physician in good standing. She would accept his opinion on Westing’s sanity, for the time being at least.

  Back to the clues. Look at her, the big-time judge, fussing over scraps of Westing Superstrength Paper Towels. “Forget the clues,” she said aloud, rising from her desk to putter about the room.

  Nibbling on a macaroon, she stacked the used coffee cups on a tray. If only that Pulaski person had let her study the will. That’s where the real clues were buried, among the veiled threats and pompous promises, the slogans and silliness in that hodgepodge of a will.

  In his will Sam Westing implied (he did not state, he implied) that (1) he was murdered, (2) the murderer was one of the heirs, (3) he alone knew the name of the murderer, and (4) the name of the murderer was the answer to the game.

  The game: a tricky, divisive Westing game. No matter how much fear and suspicion he instilled in the players, Sam Westing knew that greed would keep them playing the game. Until the “murderer” was captured. And punished.

  Sam Westing was not murdered, but one of his heirs was guilty—guilty of some offense against a relentless man. And that heir was in danger. From his grave Westing would stalk his enemy, and through his heirs he would wreak his revenge.

  Which one? Which heir was the target of Westing’s vindictiveness? In the name of justice she would have to find Westing’s victim before the others did. She would have to learn everything she could about each one of the heirs. Who are they, and how did their lives touch Westing’s, these sixteen strangers whose only connection with one another was Sunset Towers? Sunset Towers—she’d start from there.

  Good, the telephones are working again. The number she dialed was answered on the first ring. “Hi there, this is a recording of yours truly, Barney Northrup. I’m at your service—soon as I get back in my office, that is. Just sing out your problem to old Barney here when you hear the beep.” Beep.

  J. J. Ford hung up without singing out her problem to old Barney. He, too, could be involved in Westing’s plot.

  The newspaper, she would try the newspaper; sure
ly someone was snowbound there. After eight rings, a live voice answered. “We usually don’t supply that kind of information over the phone, but since it’s you, Judge Ford, I’ll be happy to oblige. Just spell out the names and I’ll call back if I find anything.”

  “Thank you, I’d appreciate that.” It was a beginning. Sam Westing was dead, but maybe, just once, she could beat him at his own game. His last game.

  Having found what she wanted in Turtle’s desk, Angela returned to her frilly bedroom where Sydelle Pulaski, glasses low on her nose, was perched on a ruffled stool at the vanity table, smearing blue shadow on her eyelids.

  “First we tackle our own clues,” the secretary said, frowning at the result in the threefold mirror. Unlucky from the day she was born, she now had a beautiful and well-loved partner. There was always the chance that they alone had been given the answer. She unsealed the envelope and held it out to Angela. “Take one.”

  Angela removed the first clue: good.

  Now it was Sydelle’s turn. “Glory be!” she exclaimed, thinking she had the name of the murderer. Her thumb was covering the letter d. The word was hood.

  Angela’s turn. The third clue was from.

  Sydelle’s turn. The fourth clue was spacious.

  The fifth and last clue was—Angela uttered a low moan. Her hand shook as she passed the paper to her partner. The fifth and last clue was grace.

  “Grace, that’s your mother’s name, isn’t it?” Sydelle said. “Well, don’t worry, that clue doesn’t mean your mother is the murderer. The will says: It is not what you have, it’s what you don’t have that counts.” The secretary had not yet transcribed the shorthand, but she had read it through several times before hiding the notebook in a safe place. “By the way, are you really related to Mr. Westing?”