“By God.” General Sir Malcolm Zayle turned to his son and slapped him on the back. “You’ve done it, at last! I’m proud of you, m’boy!”
“Father, please!” Endicott Zayle seemed to shrivel. His head swiveled unbelievingly between the sight in the chair and the triumphant elder Zayle.
“Don’t worry, Son, I’ll stand by you! We’ll get old Harry Stacey for the defence—very good on the Unwritten Law, old Harry.” He turned to Sir Geoffrey for agreement. “Hasn’t lost a case since Hector was a pup.”
“Lord Stacey’s dead, Malcolm,” Sir Geoffrey said.
“What? Dead? What? Why wasn’t I told?” Sir Malcolm demanded. “What happened, eh? Shot by a jealous husband, was that it?”
“Hardening of the arteries, Malcolm,” Sir Geoffrey said sadly. “Life catches up with us all.”
“Egad!” Sir Malcolm said. “I knew he was living too fast—but that! Why wasn’t I told?” he demanded again.
“You were away, Father” Endicott said, a placating note I had never had occasion to hear before in his voice. “On active service. We sent word. Possibly, the post …”
“Damned post,” Sir Malcolm said. “A man slogging his guts out on the field of honour, and not one letter in five ever reaching him with news of home. No wonder they say war is hell!”
“I’m sorry, Father,” Endicott said. Beads of sweat were gathering along his receding hairline. “I—we—had no idea messages weren’t reaching you.”
I began to get a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sir Malcolm was talking as though war were a contemporary event. For him. As though he were home on leave from some battlefield and expected to return to it at any moment. As for the others, I could see that Sir Malcolm was quite a formidable character, but need they humour him to this extent? I began to wonder whose hand actually controlled the purse strings at Zayle, Zayle & Meredith.
“Never mind.” Sir Malcolm brushed trivialities aside. “We’ll find the best man living to handle the defence. Then, I think, a spell in the service for you, m’boy. Enlist, that’s the ticket. Everybody loves a soldier. Volunteer for the front line. Get wounded, if you can. A medal or two will put a lot of things right in civilian life.”
“But, Father—” Endicott wailed. “It was suicide—it must have been.”
“Be a man, m’boy” his father encouraged. “And don’t worry—it will all be over by Christmas.”
I’d stopped worrying about Sir Malcolm—he was Endicott’s problem—and had started worrying about my own. I could understand how Tyler Meredith had come to commit suicide: if he’d glanced into the adjoining surgery to see how the experiment with his new anaesthetic was going and found Morgana Fane, to all intents and purposes, a corpse in the chair, the failure of his formula and the resultant publicity might have seemed too much to bear.
But how could I phrase a press release to that effect in such a way that Morgana Fane didn’t discover the worst about those paralysed moments she had described so graphically in the dental chair? If she were to realize that her own dentist had believed her dead, had abandoned her after using her as a guinea pig for a new anaesthetic, she would have grounds for the biggest, most sensational lawsuit to hit the Old Bailey in decades.
“Father—” Endicott Zayle bleated again. “Tyler could only have committed suicide. Look at the way he has the mask—it’s strapped on. You know very well that we’re taught never to test a gas anaesthetic by strapping on the mask. And never to sit in the chair, either. We’re supposed to stand on our feet and hold the mask lightly to our faces. Then, if we’re overcome, we’ll drop the mask as we fall. We’d never, never—”
“Anaesthetics—never held with ’em!” Sir Malcolm snarled. “Waste of time. Only reason they’re so popular today”—he turned to Sir Geoffrey—“is because the younger generation are weak and flabby. Can’t pull a tooth the way we could. Have to have the patient in a helpless position—unresisting.”
“That’s right, Malcolm,” Sir Geoffrey agreed. “I’ve noticed it meself. Personally I wouldn’t be too hard on the young ones. I think it’s due to a progressive muscular degeneration. You don’t see a right arm like yours these days. No village smithys, either.”
“Too many horseless carriages, as well. They’ll be losing the use of their legs next,” Sir Malcolm said. They seemed to be settling down to a jolly little session about what was wrong with the younger generation, but before they convened the meeting, there was something they seemed to be losing sight of.
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” I suggested.
“Who is this?” Sir Malcolm demanded. “What is he doing in my home at a time like this? Why isn’t he in uniform?”
“It’s all right, Malcolm,” Sir Geoffrey said quickly. “He’s my adjutant. His uniform hasn’t come through yet. Shortages, you know.”
“Damned government!” Sir Malcolm snorted. “Hell of a way to run a war!”
“The police—” I felt like someone in the trenches who had heard the “Charge” and was game, even though I knew someone had blundered.
“The police,” I repeated, fixing Endicott with a glare that was intended to convey better late than never.
“The police,” Endicott repeated weakly. “Do you think that’s really necessary?”
“The fellow is dead,” Sir Geoffrey said judiciously. There was no arguing with that diagnosis.
“Suddenly and without a registered physician in attendance—if not under suspicious circumstances.” I nudged Endicott severely. “There are laws about such things. The police will have to be notified.”
“Quite right, quite right,” Sir Malcolm said. “Quite proper. The police are reasonable chaps. Don’t worry, we’ll get you off.”
“Father,” Endicott all but wailed, “stop saying that! I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill him.”
“You didn’t?” Sir Malcolm drew back, offended. “You’re sure you didn’t?”
“Father, I swear to you—” For one horrified moment, I thought Endicott was actually going to sink to his knees, but he contented himself with raising his right hand solemnly. “I swear to you I didn’t do it!”
“Damn it all,” Sir Malcolm said, “why not? The damned fella’s been playing fast and loose with your wife for the past eighteen months!”
“Father!” Endicott reeled backward and I had to revise yet one more opinion. Sir Malcolm might not be sure exactly what decade he was in, but he was fully aware of what was happening in his immediate surroundings.
“Eh?” Something in Endicott’s voice seemed to get through to Sir Malcolm. While Sir Geoffrey quietly went to the phone and dialed for an outside line, Sir Malcolm regarded his son with dissatisfaction. “You didn’t?”
“I didn’t,” Endicott said firmly.
In the silence, I was conscious of the rhythmic clicking of the dial as the digits spun smoothly back to their places: nine, nine, nine.
I was also conscious of the body in the chair, long motionless beneath the deadly mask over its nose and mouth. Conscious, as well, of the back of that silent head. Of the noticeable lump at the base of the skull. It was what we laymen knew, in our nonmedical parlance, as a “goose egg.” It suggested strongly that Tyler Meredith had been coshed before he had been lain in that chair and the mask strapped tightly over his face.
“You didn’t,” Sir Malcolm said. He seemed to be staring absently at the faintly purplish lump on Tyler Meredith’s head. “Then,” he asked, quite reasonably, “if you didn’t, who did?”
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About the Author
Marian Babson, born Ruth Stenstreem, is an American mystery writer. Her first published work was Cover-Up Story (1971), and she has written over forty-five mysteries. Babson served as secretary ofthe Crime Writers’ Association and was awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library in 1996.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any mea
ns, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1989 by Marian Babson
Cover design and illustration by Amanda Shaffer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5855-1
This edition published in 2019 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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