Mercy Killing

by M. Glenn Graves

  While Rogers was refreshing my memory about Emily Green, I unwrapped the package and discovered a copy of her novel, Full Moon Murders.

  “Why did she send me a copy of this?”

  “I told you when I informed you about Emily and her grandfather that she was planning to send you a copy. Honestly, for a detective, you can’t remember anything.”

  “I’ve been preoccupied.”

  “Sure you have. Well, I think you should sit down and read the book. It might help you.”

  “It’s fiction. How could a work of fiction possibly help me?”

  “It might get your mind out of the funk, as you call it, that seems to be more of a malady than a preoccupation,” Rogers said.

  I brewed some coffee and scrunched up on the couch with Full Moon Murders while Sam slept on his new bed by the entrance door to the apartment. I had found the large quilt-type bed for him at a shopping center last week and was working with him to try it out in lieu of the couch. I didn’t have it in my heart to absolutely refuse his usual position opposite me on the sofa, but I wanted him to give it a try. He was diligent in his efforts. His snoring had a tranquil rhythm as I began Green’s work.

  Five hours later, I had finished the 389 page novel along with seven cups of coffee and at least that many trips to the bathroom. It was a good story. Emily Green was a decent writer. My funk was lifted.

  “I need to talk with you about this novel,” I said to Rogers. “Should I just read it to you and let you add it to your database so that we can then discuss it in detail?”

  “That won’t be necessary. Emily sent me a draft via email.”

  “Emily.”

  “First name basis.”

  “Does she think you are me?”

  “I doubt that she thinks I am you.”

  “And why is that?”

  “She probably thinks I am your secretary.”

  “And the reason she thinks this?”

  “I may have hinted.”

  “Hinted.”

  “Yes. I told her that I was your secretary.”

  “Rather suggestive hint. What if she wants to meet you personally and thank you?”

  “Why would she want to thank me?” Rogers said.

  “I have no idea. But can you not see the potential problem here?”

  “Only if you allow her to meet me.”

  “Funny. You’re doin’ standup now.”

  “You make a great straight man.”

  “Let’s get back to the novel. You have it in your system?”

  “I do.”

  “So we can talk about it.”

  “Anything you may want to discuss.”

  I flipped open the book to page 354 and scanned the words for a few seconds in order to locate the section that had ended my funk and had caused me to become interested in Emily Green’s story.

  “The character in her story, Anthony Dreggs, uses an interesting phrase on this page to explain the child’s death,” I began.

  “Moon glow presence,” Rogers said to me.

  “How did you know that was the phrase I had in mind?”

  “It’s the only odd phrase on that page.”

  “I didn’t say odd, I said interesting,” I countered.

  “Odd or interesting, same difference,” Rogers said. “Is that not the phrase you had in mind?”

  “It is. What do you make of it?”

  “It’s from a scientific treatise written in 1901 by a German physicist name Joachim Wrede who was exploring the relationship between the phases of the moon upon the disposition of human beings. Wrede concluded in his short piece that according to his tests, the full moon exhibited a glow that captivated, his word, some human beings who seemed to be prone to its affect. His treatise was rejected by the college of physicists with whom he worked and studied. They believed that his work was romantic nonsense.”

  “You had already searched this phrase,” I said in absolute surprise.

  “Why are you surprised at my research? Isn’t this what I do for you nearly every day?”

  “Yes, but you do it when I ask you to do it.”

  “If that’s what you believe, then you may continue to delude yourself,” Rogers said matter-of-factly.

  “You are telling me that you actually anticipate some of my questions and directions?”

  “Often.”

  “And how is it you know a direction in which I intend to go even before I know a direction in which I intend to go?”

  “Not sure I can answer that sufficiently for you, but I will take a shot at it. I have been working with you for several years now and I anticipate your directions based upon past data I have collected and the cases we have in the database, a.k.a., my brain. So, most of the time it is reasonable for me to assume a search based upon what you have done in the past. Besides, I am capable of hedging my bets by going off in multiple directions simultaneously without even the slightest time delay. Translated – I’m fast.”

  “Hedging your bets, huh?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay, then let’s talk about Green’s usage of Wrede’s dubious scientific treatise in her novel,” I said.

  “Green didn’t give Wrede credit for his treatise, so, technically, she didn’t use it. She used his phrase, moon glow presence in her story.”

  “Plagiarism?”

  “You might make a case for it, but few people know of Wrede’s work because the scientific community rejected his theory and conclusions.”

  “What type of human beings were prone to the moon’s affect?” I asked.

  “Oh, that. Yes, I thought you would ask me that question. Wrede concluded that women who were depressed after the birth of a baby were susceptible.”

  “As in post-partum depression?” I said.

  “That would be the modern explanation of Wrede’s idea, I would suggest. Wrede did not use that expression, but his treatise explained it in such a way that it would be the idea he was after.”

  “You think Green was simply being creative with her storyline?”

  “Why don’t we ask her and see if she would divulge her creative secrets?”

  “Call her and see if she will meet with me,” I said.

  “Wrede had more to say, in case you are interested,” Rogers said.

  “About post-partum depression?”

  “No. He had more to say about the type of woman who was affected by the moon glow presence in his treatise.”

  “And what was that?”

  “He said that it adversely affected a disheartened woman, a.k.a. depressed, who was dominated by a male, as in the case of a wife dominated by her husband.”

  “You are playing with me now, right?”

  “Would you like for me to print out a copy of Wrede’s treatise?”

  “You bet your sweet life I would. And one more thing I am curious about,” I said.

  “What’s that Sherlock?”

  “Did Joachim Wrede say that this condition of lunar affect only happen to women?”

  “I think that was one of the reasons why his fellow scientists rejected his treatise. Today we might refer to his findings as sexist,” Rogers said.

  52

  Raleigh was hotter than Norfolk, which surprised me since I have lived in Norfolk for more than two decades and have complained about the humidity from day one. There were no breezes blowing on this day in Raleigh as Emily Green and I were sitting under an umbrella just outside the entrance to Camille’s Sidewalk Café. It was crowded despite the late lunch hour time. It seemed to be as popular as Maybelline’s Sandwich Shop in Riley Corners.

  “You read my novel?” Emily said.

  “Twice.”

  “Wow. Impressive. Did you like it?”

  “You’re a good storyteller. Strange story.”

  “It is.”

  “I know that you used some of your grandfather’s notes to create the story, but I was wondering just how much of his notations were fertilizer for your creativity,” I sa
id.

  “The characters and the story are pretty much my own inventions. Some of the ideas I used were from his notes,” she said.

  “How about the notion by Anthony Dreggs that the mother killed her son because of the effects of moon glow presence?”

  “It’s an interesting line,” she said.

  “It comes from Joachim Wrede, a German physicist who wrote a rejected treatise in 1901 regarding the adverse effect of the lunar full moon cycle upon certain women.”

  “You have done your homework.”

  “I’m a detective. I like to pursue details.”

  “Even in novels?”

  “If the novel has anything to do with a case of mine, yes.”

  Emily Green was carrying a purse the size of Texas. My keen detective vision noticed the handbag when she sat down. She leaned the oversized wardrobe addition against her chair but held onto the carrying straps in her right hand. It was my considered opinion that she did so in the likelihood the bag might topple her chair with her in it and she wanted to protect the contents from spilling over onto the sidewalk around us.

  Emily reached into the opened the purse and retrieved a notebook that appeared to be the size and shape of a stenographers pad. It also appeared to have some age to it. She opened it bottom to top the way a stenographer’s pad would open and handed it to me.

  “Belonged to my grandfather, Simon Green. It contains everything he noted from his interviews in the 1930’s. About halfway down on the page there,” she touched the section of the page, “you will find that phrase, moon glow presence.”

  “I see that he also has a reference to Wrede’s work next to the phrase.”

  “I found the treatise in the N.C. State University library.”

  “So, your grandfather was familiar with Wrede’s work.”

  “Turn the page,” she said.

  I turned the page and discovered he had written the moon glow presence phrase again, underlined it, and then below it had written names, places, and dates in which infant children had died. There were seven entries.

  “Does this mean…?” I began but did not finish.

  “…that my grandfather believed each of these women killed their children?” she finished my question.

  I nodded.

  “Yes, that is what it means. If you will continue to read his notes you will discover that he found in every case of the seven deaths listed, the mothers were all experiencing what we now as post-partum depression.”

  “And the other connections that Wrede included in his theory?”

  “Grandfather noted them all. Each death occurred during a full moon, each mother was depressed, and each one of them was in a relationship dominated by a man.”

  “How on earth could your grandfather have ascertained the latter point?”

  “He talked with people in the community. It is surprising what folks will tell you when you are a young man, I suppose, who is simply writing a piece for a newspaper in the 1930’s. My grandfather had a way about him in which folks naturally opened up and shared village secrets. They would not come right out and use words like abuse or such, but they would talk around the issue. If you will look there, you will see he wrote down everything that was told him. He underlined the words he thought were euphemisms for what was really going on with these women.”

  I checked page after page and noticed the words used in his notes as he interviewed various people concerning the relationship that the couple had. No matter what was said or how cautious a word was, it was often followed by but he loved her as if to qualify or explain away some abuse or torture or dominance. The pattern was discernible.

  “How did your grandfather come across Wrede’s treatise? That seems to be a real stretch here, you know, from newspaper journalist to the some possible science behind murders,” I said.

  “I can’t say for sure about that, but I can tell you that a possible link was a friendship my grandfather had with a professor at the University of North Carolina. This professor was a teacher of physics there, among other disciplines, and they became close friends. My grandfather once told me that he had two loves in his life, not counting his grandchildren. Before he met my grandmother Grace, he was engaged to this physics professor at UNC.”

  “What happened?”

  “She killed herself.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot to get over.”

  “Don’t think he got over it. But I do think it motivated him.”

  “To do what?”

  “Do his research on infant deaths,” Emily said.

  She handed me another notebook which appeared to be as old as the one I was holding. Most of it was full of notations regarding someone named Rosalind Meredith Collins.

  “Who is this Collins person?” I said.

  “She was the physics professor at Carolina who committed suicide.”

  “Is there a story there?”

  “The notes there tell the story. I’ll give you the gist of it simply because I can’t let you take either of these note pads with you. You understand.”

  “I do.”

  “The short version is that my grandfather wrote a piece which Rosalind Collins took exception to, contacted him, and he agreed to meet to discuss his position. As a result of that meeting, they began seeing each other and the relationship formed. Through the two years of their courtship, you might call it, he learned that she had been abused by her father as well as her first husband. She became pregnant and during the last trimester of her pregnancy, depression set in on her. My grandfather had written a piece, an editorial, in which he suggested that depression was merely the stress of the pregnancy upon the woman and that a simple change in daily activities would make it go away. Collins wanted him to know that it was not quite that simple, that there were other issues involved in many cases, perhaps even most of the cases.”

  “So, she convinced him and along the way they fell in love.”

  “Something like that.”

  “She was a single mother raising a child,” I said to her in the hopes that she might continue the story.

  “Not quite. She lost the baby during the final trimester. Still born, or so my grandfather told me.”

  “You doubt the voracity of that?”

  “Have no reason to doubt it. But what caused my grandfather to begin investigating was that she told him that when the depression began in her final trimester, she had three strong urges to kill her yet unborn child.”

  “Let me guess.”

  “You don’t have to. It was during the full moon cycle each time. She told him the details and he wrote it down in that notepad there,” she pointed to the second one she had handed me.

  “You think she may have found a way to kill her fetus?” I said.

  “My grandfather told me he never believed that, but then, he was deeply in love with her.”

  “So what happened?”

  “That’s the mystery. Two months before they were to be married, he found her dead in her home. She had poisoned herself.”

  “I bet I can tell you the lunar phase when she did it,” I said.

  Emily nodded and we finished our lunch.

  53

  Azalea Jenkins answered the doorbell. I was standing in the shady part of the porch when she opened the door. She smiled when she recognized me. This was my second stop in Riley Corners. Earlier I went by Sheriff Tanner’s office to see if we could investigate one small item together. He was still being civil to me and we were able to successfully check out something that I wanted to know. Sometimes detectives actually do find stuff they go looking for.

  “Who is it, Sugar?” Mary’s voice was evident.

  “Clancy Evans,” she called back down the hallway.

  “Oh, do show her in, Sugar.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said as I walked through the front door into the cool hallway of Mary’s mansion in late July.

  I was on my way home to Norfolk and I decided at the last minute to run by Riley Corners and have a
chat with Mary Carpenter. My aim was to finish my job, the job she had indirectly hired me to do. Riley Corners was almost on my way home, only about three hours out of the way. But when you are detective in search of whatever glimpse of truth is out there and you feel an obligation to report to the one who wanted you to do the research, three hours out of the way is not much at all.

  Mary was fast on our heels as Azalea was showing me into the parlor. I started to sit down, but when Mary entered I stopped and greeted her. We shook hands.

  “Please sit. Thank you, Azalea. Oh, would you like some refreshment?” Mary said to me.

  “Water would be fine.”

  “Bring us some sweet tea, Azalea. Do you prefer lemon in your tea?” Mary said to me.

  “Lemon would be good.”

  Azalea left the room to retrieve our refreshment, Mary sat down on the uncomfortable looking sofa, something French I thought, and I sat in the most comfortable looking chair nearby.

  “Oh, here,” Mary said as she handed me an envelope. “This is for your hard work.”

  “I never asked you for money,” I said without taking the envelope.

  “Good breeding, no doubt,” she said and smiled. “You had expenses. If nothing else it will pay for all of those Maybelline sandwiches you and Rosey consumed working for me. Here, take this,” she pushed it once again in my direction.

  I took the envelope.

  “I’m a wealthy old woman who has no need of money. Besides, the clock is moving much too fast for me, you know.”

  “You’re young yet,” I said.

  “I’m not paying you anymore than what’s in that envelope,” she said and laughed. “You don’t need to flatter me. So, to what do I owe this visit?”

  “Finishing my job,” I said.

  “I was under the impression that you had finished.”

  “Something came along that made me dig some more.”

  “Have you learned anything valuable?”

  “Valuable? Yes. Substantive? Remains to be seen.”

  “Well, let me have it,” Mary said as she leaned back on the sofa.

  Azalea entered at that moment carrying a tray with two tea glasses. The sliced lemon was balanced on the lip of the glass, a sprig of something green was floating in the top of the tea, and a colorful straw was protruding through the ice. Azalea served me first and I took the glass of tea closest to me. She served Mary, put the tray on the coffee table in front of us, and turned to leave the parlor. When she reached the doorway, she turned back to face us.