The Westing Game

bed.
A throbbing whisper, “Pur-ple, pur-ple” (or was it “Tur-tle, Tur-tle”—whatever it was, it was scary), had beckoned her to the master bedroom on the second floor, and . . .
Maybe it was a dream. No, it couldn’t be; she ached all over from the tumble down the stairs.
The moon was down, the window dark. Turtle lay in the narrow bed in her narrow room, waiting (dark, still dark), waiting. At last slow morning crept up the cliff and raised the Westing house, the house of whispers, the house of death. Two dollars times twelve minutes equals twenty-four dollars.
Thud! The morning newspaper was flung against the front door. Turtle tiptoed through the sleeping apartment to retrieve it and climbed back into bed, the dead man staring at her from the front page. The face was younger; the short beard, darker; but it was he, all right.
SAM WESTING FOUND DEAD
Found? No one else knew about the bedded-down corpse except Doug, and he had not believed her. Then who found the body? The whisperer?
Samuel W. Westing, the mysterious industrialist who disappeared thirteen years ago, was found dead in his Westingtown mansion last night. He was sixty-five years old.
The only child of immigrant parents, orphaned at the age of twelve, self-educated, hard-working Samuel Westing saved his laborer’s wages and bought a small paper mill. From these meager beginnings he built the giant Westing Paper Products Corporation and founded the city of Westingtown to house his thousands of workers and their families. His estate is estimated to be worth over two hundred million dollars.
Turtle read that again: two hundred million dollars. Wow!
When asked the secret of his success, the industrialist always replied: “Clean living, hard work, and fair play.” Westing set his own example; he neither drank nor smoked and never gambled. Yet he was a dedicated gamesman and a master at chess.
Turtle had been in the game room. That’s where she picked up the billiard cue she had carried up the stairs as a weapon.
A great patriot, Samuel Westing was famous for his fun-filled Fourth of July celebrations. Whether disguised as Ben Franklin or a lowly drummer boy, he always acted a role in the elaborately staged pageants which he wrote and directed. Perhaps best remembered was his surprise portrayal of Betsy Ross.
Games and feasting followed the pageant, and at sunset Mr. Westing put on his Uncle Sam costume and set off fireworks from his front lawn. The spectacular pyrotechnic display could be viewed thirty miles away.
Fireworks! So that’s what was in those boxes stamped Danger—explosives stacked in the ground-floor storeroom. What a “pyrotechnic display” that would make if they all went off at the same time.
The paper king’s later years were marred by tragedy. His only daughter, Violet, drowned on the eve of her wedding, and two years later his troubled wife deserted their home. Although Mr. Westing obtained a divorce, he never remarried.
Five years later he was sued by an inventor over rights to the disposable paper diaper. On his way to court 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.
It was rumored, but never confirmed, that he controlled the vast Westing Paper Products Corporation from a private island in the South Seas. He is still listed as chairman of the board.
“We are as surprised as you are, and deeply saddened,” a spokesman for Julian R. Eastman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the corporation, stated when informed that Westing’s body was found in his lakeside home. Dr. Sikes’ response was: “A tragic end to a tragic life. Sam Westing was a truly great and important man.”
The funeral will be private. The executor of the Westing estate said the deceased requested that, in place of flowers, donations be sent to Blind Bowlers of America.
Turtle turned the page of the newspaper, but that was all. That was all?
There was no mention of how the body was found.
There was no mention of the envelope propped on the bedside table on which a shaky hand had scrawled: If I am found dead in bed. She had been edging her way against the four-poster, reading the words in the beam of the flashlight, when she felt the hand, the waxy dead hand that lay on the red, white, and blue quilt. Through her scream she had seen the white-bearded face. She remembered running, tripping over the billiard cue, falling down the stairs, denting Sandy’s flask, and dropping everything else.
There was no mention of two suspicious peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the premises, or a flashlight, or a silver cross on a chain.
There was no mention of prowlers; no mention of anyone having seen a witch; no mention of footprints on the lawn: track shoes and sneakers size six.
Oh well, she had nothing to fear (other than losing her mother’s cross). Old Mr. Westing probably died of a heart attack—or pneumonia—it was drafty in there. Turtle hid the folded newspaper in her desk drawer, counted her black-and-blue marks in the mirror (seven), dressed, and set out to find the four people who knew she had been in the Westing house last night: Doug Hoo, Theo Theodorakis, Otis Amber, and Sandy. They owed her twenty-four dollars.
AT NOON THE sixty-two-year-old delivery boy began his rounds. He had sixteen letters to deliver from E. J. Plum, Attorney-at-Law. Otis Amber knew what the letters said, because one was addressed to him:
As a named beneficiary in the estate of Samuel W. Westing, your attendance is required in the south library of the Westing house tomorrow at 4 p.m. for the reading of the will.
“Means old man Westing left you some money,” he explained. “Just sign this receipt here. What do you mean, what does ‘position’ mean? It means position, like a job. Most receipts have that to make sure the right person gets the right letter.”
Grace