The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give your own account of it, please.”

  Sergeant Rankin slipped on his reading glasses, appearing in that owlishness no less a cop, and consulted his notebook. “Late on the morning of August 17th of this year, Chief of Detectives Daniel Gage directed me to go to the apartment of a Miss Callista Blake at No. 21 Covent Street, this city, in response to a telephone call that Miss Blake had made to the local precinct station. The station had passed on the substance of her call to our headquarters, and Chief Gage relayed it to me. Miss Blake had told the desk sergeant she wished to give information to someone in authority concerning the death of a Mrs. James Doherty in Shanesville the previous night. She had said further that she was ill, and gave this as the reason why she did not wish to come to the police station herself. Chief Gage had communicated with the State Police, and he passed on to me what he learned from them about the death of this Mrs. Doherty, who had been found, apparently drowned, in a pond at Shanesville.”

  “All the persons involved—Miss Blake, Mrs. Doherty, and others you may have heard about later—were at that time unknown to you?”

  “Yes, sir. Routine assignment to follow up information received.”

  “Go on, please.”

  “I reached Covent Street around noontime. I was in plain clothes of course. Miss Blake admitted me, and before looking at my identification remarked: ‘Fast work! I’ve only been waiting an hour.’ I don’t know if this was sarcasm. There had been no unnecessary delay.”

  Wanting to soften the intensity of Cecil’s glare, she whispered: “It was a noise to crack the silence. He stood in the door like a zombi, the dear man, so’s to make me speak first.” She won from the Old Man only a start, and a drowned look. He wasn’t quite with her.

  “Go on, Sergeant.”

  “I asked for her name, gave her mine, entered the apartment at her invitation after showing my credentials. I inquired how she came to know of Mrs. Doherty’s death, and she said, first, that her stepfather had telephoned her about it, but then immediately, and without questioning from me, she said: ‘Oh, I knew it, I knew it last night.’”

  “Did you inquire what she meant by that?”

  “Not right away. I first asked about her stepfather’s call. I wanted to get the identification and relations of these people clear in my mind. She gave me the name Dr. Herbert Chalmers, said he had called her about eleven o’clock and told her Mrs. Doherty’s body had been found in the pond. I engaged her in some general talk: who Dr. Chalmers was, and what was her connection with Shanesville, with Mrs. Doherty, how long she had lived there at Covent Street, things like that. She said she had called the precinct station right after her stepfather hung up—which checked, as to time. That first remark of hers—”

  “I think we’ll come back to that later. You say that in her call to the precinct station Miss Blake had said she was too ill to go there. Did she appear to be ill when you saw her?”

  Rankin frowned. “I wouldn’t say so. Dark under the eyes. I noticed a tremor in her hands. Nothing that couldn’t be explained by—oh, nervousness perhaps.”

  “In that general talk, were her answers clear and satisfactory?”

  “I learned nothing later to contradict them.”

  “I see. Well, did she then tell you what information it was she wished to give—what she had in mind when she called the precinct?”

  “Yes, sir. When I inquired, she said Mrs. Doherty had come to the apartment the evening before. I asked what time; Miss Blake said Mrs. Doherty had come at about quarter to eight and left at eight-thirty.”

  “Did she give the occasion, the reason for Mrs. Doherty’s visit?”

  “Miss Blake said she had telephoned to Ann Doherty, asking her to come. I inquired the reason for this, what it was she wanted to see Mrs. Doherty about, and she refused to tell me.”

  “Did Miss Blake explain her refusal?”

  “No, sir. Just said: ‘I won’t tell you that.’ I didn’t press it. I wanted to get on to other facts, facts she was willing to tell me.”

  “And she did give you other information?”

  “She did, sir, freely enough.”

  “Just summarize it, please.”

  “She began by saying that since some time in July she had been under the influence of what she called a suicidal depression, that she had some poison in the apartment, and that she was afraid Mrs. Doherty might have drunk some of it by accident. Miss Blake said she had become ill during Mrs. Doherty’s visit, had gone into her bedroom and shut the door—‘to get away from her,’ as Miss Blake put it—and that while she was there, in the bedroom, Mrs. Doherty must have poured a drink from the brandy bottle which contained the poison. Miss Blake said she had been still in the bedroom with the door shut—locked, in fact—when Mrs. Do herty left the apartment. Then, according to her account, Miss Blake came out, found the bottle had been moved, and became alarmed for Mrs. Doherty’s safety.” The slight drawl and falling cadence of Sergeant Rankin’s voice was effective, Callista noted; good theater; something to admire as a work of art. “She got her car out of the garage and drove to Shanesville, to the Doherty house, found the Dohertys’ car in the driveway, found Mrs. Doherty’s handbag fallen in the path, house dark and door locked. Miss Blake said she then followed the path toward her mother’s house, assuming that Ann Doherty must have gone that way, and presently discovered her, dead, in that pond. At that point, Miss Blake said, she panicked, and was also ill again, and—drove home. You understand, sir, I am merely summarizing, as you requested. Actually in that preliminary talk with her, a summary was all I got—with, as I later learned, some omissions. As soon as I had a general idea of the situation, I called Chief Gage, using Miss Blake’s telephone. Chief Gage himself arrived at Covent Street at about ten of one, with a fingerprint man—Sergeant Zane I think it was—a photographer, and yourself, Mr. Hunter.”

  “Did you inquire, before others arrived, about this poison Miss Blake said she had?”

  “Yes, sir. She said it was aconitine, and said she had prepared it a week before, by steeping monkshood roots in alcohol—brandy. I asked where she got the roots. From her mother’s garden in Shanesville, she said. I asked whether she still had the stuff on hand. She said: ‘Of course.’ Mr. Hunter, maybe I ought to say at this point that up to then Miss Blake appeared to have no idea at all that she might be accused of anything. I don’t pretend to understand it, but that was my distinct impression. Well, she took me out to the kitchenette, and showed me a half-full bottle labeled brandy, which she said contained the poison, and also an ordinary kitchen canister with some chopped-up mess that she told me was monkshood roots. She herself remarked that the brandy bottle probably had Mrs. Doherty’s fingerprints. I took these items back to the living-room later, and from then on they weren’t out of my sight until Chief Gage arrived and had them sent safe-hand to the Department’s toxicologist Dr. Walter Ginsberg, after a fingerprint check. Miss Blake was very composed, I’d say sort of indifferent, about all this. When she had shown me the brandy bottle and the canister in the kitchenette, I asked her: ‘Miss Blake, what did you have against this Mrs. Doherty?—you might as well tell me.’ She didn’t answer, just looked at me as if the question was—well, foolish or surprising. I said: ‘Why did you do it?’” Sergeant Rankin turned over a leaf of his notebook. “She replied: ‘That’s how it is? I’ve told you the truth, but it’s going to be like that?’ I told her yes, of course it would be like that, and I asked her who she thought would believe the kind of story she’d given me. Miss Blake then said: ‘Who knows what anyone believes?’ And she asked: ‘Are you going to arrest me?’ I said that would be a decision of my superiors. Then I—told her to go back to the living-room and remain in my sight while I used her telephone. She did so.”

  Callista felt the Old Man lean close. He was muttering at his mouth-corn
er: “Is that when he—?”

  She nodded. “He’s deleted five rather long minutes. Why not let it go? My word against his, nothing much happened anyway, and it hasn’t any bearing.” Warner growled indecisively. “Partly my fault too—should’ve remembered my skirt might be transparent against that sun.” Warner’s hand tightened and fell slack. She noticed Rankin’s oyster-gray glance flick her lightly and pass on, for the first time since he had taken the stand.

  “Before Chief Gage and others arrived, did Miss Blake do or say anything else you remember as significant?”

  “Well—one thing—I don’t know how significant. There was a fancy aquarium thing in her living-room, with fish, tropical fish I guess. When I’d finished my call to Chief Gage—well—should I take up the Court’s time with this?—I don’t know if it’s relevant at all.”

  Surprisingly to Callista, it was Judge Mann who said: “I think, having started, you may as well tell it, Sergeant. We can stop you if it’s too far afield.”

  “Well—when I’d finished my call, Miss Blake said: ‘I’m getting something from the kitchen, I suppose you want to come with me?’ I did so, and stood by while she got a pitcher and emptied the ice-cube trays from the refrigerator into it. I inquired about it, and she said: ‘Don’t worry, it’s just ice.’ She carried the pitcher back to the living-room. She pointed out where an electric cord from the aquarium was plugged into a wall socket and asked me to disconnect it. I did so, mostly to humor her, saw no harm in it—I don’t know anything about aquariums, nice hobby I guess. Anyhow before I knew what she intended she had poured the whole pitcher-full of ice cubes into the tank, and lifted out a gadget—a heating-coil in a glass cover—and rapped it real sharp against the leg of the table so that the glass broke and scattered over the carpet. I asked her what on earth she did that for, but she didn’t explain the action—that is, she said the fish were beautiful, said it as if that explained something, but I don’t know what she meant. Then she just stood by the aquarium watching them die. Two or three of them were dead almost right away, anyhow a matter of a few minutes. She pointed one of them out to me, a very small red fish, said it was a—a live-bearer I think she called it, and she gave me the scientific name of it too, but I don’t remember that—platy-something. She said that one was a female ready to give birth. I’d thought all fish laid eggs, but seems not. I asked her again what she wanted to go and do a thing like that for. She said: ‘They were beautiful and I loved them. Now watch them die.’”

  Again it was Judge Mann who asked: “Those were her exact words?”

  “Yes, your Honor. I asked her then if she took pleasure from killing beautiful things, and she looked at me—rather strangely, I must say—and said: ‘No, Sergeant, this is the only time I ever killed anything beautiful, or anything I loved.’ I don’t know why a person would do a thing like that.”

  Tight-voiced, dubious, like a man groping through uncertain country, Judge Mann asked: “Was she, in your opinion, overexcited—exalted—anything like that, Sergeant?”

  Hunter just watched. Callista thought: Hunter isn’t liking this.

  Sergeant Rankin’s voice echoed something of Judge Mann’s perplexity; a true echo probably, for Callista sensed that Sergeant Rankin had never until this moment entertained the notion that the Monkshood Girl might be of unsound mind. And the notion might be, to Sergeant Rankin, interesting, without regard to the tender feelings of the District Attorney’s office. For an accusation of physical coercion and threat of rape would be far less convincing from a psychopath. Cecil would be noticing the Sergeant’s tentative nibbling at the idea. Cecil might be wishing that the Judge would make more inquiry along that line—for to Cecil, she knew, an insanity defense might still be a sort of last-ditch possibility in spite of her total refusal to go along with it. While she herself rather hoped the little man in the too priestlike gown would shut up and mind his own business. What’s it to him? Perhaps it will be to him, and not to Cecil whom I love, that I’ll find the courage to say: I am guilty.

  Sergeant Rankin picked his way among words like a man stepping from hummock to hummock through a marsh. “I would say, your Honor, that there was, maybe, something like that about her—general behavior. But—a vague sort of thing—I don’t know if I should express an opinion, just a—a layman’s opinion anyhow—”

  “Well,” said the Judge crisply, “did Miss Blake become abusive, or scream, cry, talk irrationally or too loud or too fast, anything like that?”

  “No, your Honor, none of those things, not at all.”

  “Did she seem confused, inattentive to what you said or unable to understand it?”

  “No, your Honor. Very cool and self-possessed, really. I had—if I might put it this way—I had an impression that she was deliberately talking over my head—that I didn’t understand some of the things she said because I wasn’t meant to.”

  “Do you mean her answers were unresponsive, unconnected with the questions you asked?”

  “No, not quite that, your Honor. Well, I recall one thing, after she broke the aquarium heater and we exchanged those remarks about—about killing beautiful things. I said to her: ‘Look, Miss Blake, if they decide to arrest you, surely you’ve got some friend who would have looked after that aquarium for you while you’re away.’ Now it’s my recollection that I said that in a perfectly friendly, kindly way—I certainly had no wish to make things hard for her—but Miss Blake said: ‘A spring morning can’t be warmed up in the oven.’ Well, I wouldn’t know whether a head—whether a psychiatrist would call that an irrational reply or not. I just didn’t think it made much sense.”

  “I see. Go on, Mr. Hunter.”

  “Did anything else significant happen before Chief Gage arrived?”

  “I think not, sir. Nothing I remember. I didn’t think I was getting anywhere trying to talk with her, so for the last five or ten minutes we just sat there waiting for the others to come.”

  “Yeah,” Callista said under her breath, “we just sat there.” She leaned a little against Cecil’s shoulder, weary, suddenly desiring sleep above all things, yet touched and curiously disturbed by the Old Man’s harmless, rather pleas ant smell of shaving lotion, soap, tobacco. Drowsily she thought: He’s really nothing like my father.

  “What happened, in your presence, after Chief Gage and the others arrived at Miss Blake’s apartment?”

  “Well, Miss Blake was briefly questioned by Chief Gage and yourself. It covered the same things I’d talked about with her. She was asked by Chief Gage about a photograph and a couple of letters that I found in a desk in her bedroom.”

  “She was not at that time under arrest, was she?”

  “No, sir, she was not. I recall that Chief Gage quite formally asked her permission to look around the apartment, and she gave it.”

  “Please describe those items, the photograph and the letters.”

  “The photograph was a snapshot of a man in swimming trunks, taken at some beach or other, and the name ‘Jimmy’ was written on the back—just the name, nothing else. One of the letters, dated July 5, 1959, was signed ‘J’, and Miss Blake, when shown it, identified it as one written to her by Mr. James Doherty of Shanesville. The other one, bearing no date and not signed—in fact not finished—was identified by Miss Blake as one that she had started to write to Mr. Doherty, but had never mailed.”

  “Was Miss Blake questioned about those letters, there at her apartment?”

  “Not much then, sir. She identified Mr. Doherty as the husband of the Mrs. Doherty who had been found dead in Shanesville. Chief Gage asked her to explain the relation between herself and Mr. Doherty, and she said without any show of emotion—with a shrug, as a matter of fact—she said: ‘Oh, he was my sweetheart for a little while, a summertime amusement.’”

  She saw T. J. Hunter, relaxed and thoughtful, walk to the prosecution’s tab
le and spend a weary time standing there, brooding at the small papers he had taken up. Callista closed her eyes. “If it please the Court, I will offer these two letters and photograph for admission in evidence, but, if they are accepted, I will have the letters read to the jury somewhat later, to make a more orderly presentation. For the present I merely wish to establish their identification by Sergeant Rankin.”

  The deep voice by her shoulder remarked: “I will ask to see them.” Do you have to go over there, Cecil? Then Callista was aware of a small but unaccountable lapse of time, for Cecil was already by the prosecution’s table glaring morosely at little scraps of paper, his bushed eyebrows in a clench, while T. J. Hunter stood by politely, hands in his pockets. Had she fallen asleep sitting up? Was it possible for an accused witch to do that in a court of law? Oh, likely had something to attend to, and took off on my broomstick—well, sure, a mission, three times around the Shanesville house casting a spell to curdle Cousin Maud’s plum jam, and high time too—it merely slipped my mind—how’d I manage without a cat? She saw the Old Man’s shoulder sag and stiffen. It was cut and dried, he had told her: the letters would go in, mostly because he hoped to gain more than lose by them, when there was a chance for the defense to interpret them. This present show of examining them was what he called legal window-dressing. She saw him make some quick sotto voce comment, his face savagely disgusted, an aside that no one but T. J. Hunter could hear. Hunter flushed all the way up his bald forehead; the flush passed, leaving no sign of anger. Then Cecil spoke in his courtroom voice, smoothly, a tone of indifference close to contempt: “The defense will not protest the admission of these documents.”

  How could I have slept? Cecil was returning. Apparently no one noticed—a minor accomplishment of necromancy—I just toss these things off, you know. Some mumbling and talking over yonder, as she felt the return of Cecil’s warmth, and took hold of his hand, though he was really nothing like her father. Yes, Rankin, identifying the silly things. Poor Jim, spelled “relinquish” r-e-l-i-n-q-u-e-s-h. E for effort. “Cecil, what did you say to the rising young lawyer that turned him pink?”