Death of the Magpie

by William McMurray

CHAPTER TEN

  "Come in my dear, do come in." The voice of John Antwhistle resonated through the open doorway and out to the street. Janet walked via the small entrance-way into the hall. The house, or more properly the cottage, was an ancient one-storey brick structure, elaborately gabled and decorated with wooden fret-work in the style locally referred to as carpenter’s gothic. The hall ran the full length of the building, and at its farthest end the figure of the Professor could be made out dimly approaching with two large tankards of ale.

  "Let’s sit in here." He motioned toward the front room, originally designated the parlour, but presently occupied by the owner’s not inconsiderable library, an eclectic mix of works on the arts and sciences. Janet sank into one of the over-stuffed arm-chairs and gratefully accepted the proffered ice-cold tankard. The day had been hot and hectic, the Professor’s cottage, cool and tranquil. It was a welcome interlude, a chance as the Professor had remarked to "bring two great minds to bear upon the dilemma of life".

  The particular dilemma upon which they were focussing this late afternoon was the mysterious history of the late Dr. Elster. They had held previous discussions of course, chiefly during their long car ride together back to Essex after the Wotinabee Conference, a ride that had been protracted considerably by Professor Antwhistle's predilection for short-cuts, diversionary trips, and innumerable stops for snacks or interesting vistas, not to mention the untrustworthy state of his automobile which punctuated the voyage further with several unscheduled visits to service stations. On the drive they had debated extensively about the next course of action to be taken. In the end the best approach seemed to be to alarm as few people as possible, to conceal their suspicions from Margot or others of the Elster clan, and to avoid alerting the authorities. And in the event it appeared that this may have been the best way to proceed; certainly they were not without resources of their own.

  "There are several avenues of the investigation where our old ally, serendipity, seems to have played a prominent part," pronounced the Professor. "In the 'real world' as in the laboratory one often makes the most significant discoveries by explorations in the direction opposite to that where the clues would be expected."

  "So if you had not had a passion for bird-watching we would have had no prospect of finding the weapon that inflicted the fatal blow."

  "And if you had not come along as you did to warn me, I might have required an obituary notice like our friend, the magpie."

  "Not to mention possibly dangerous, if not lethal, consequences for one of the maids at Wotinabee Lodge," added Janet. "Incidentally, the contents of the syringe and the bogus insulin vial had roughly equivalent concentrations of proteastatin."

  "Amazing what the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry system can detect these days," sighed the Professor. "It proves incontrovertibly that the unfortunate Elster, acting while his reasoning was temporarily unhinged, removed the proteastatin solution he had been carrying in an insulin bottle, and later injected himself with it. I presume the pathologist would not have distinguished one injection site from another in a known diabetic, hence his suspicions of unnatural causes wouldn't have been aroused in the first place. In the second, the lethal syringe was not found at the scene because our ill-fated friend, the magpie, was attracted by the glitter, removed it from the site of the poisoning, and tried to carry it off to its nest. There was enough of the toxic potion seeping about the needle to kill the bird, and cause the syringe to fall where we found it. QED."

  The professor adopted an expression of self-satisfaction with his analysis and took a healthy swig from his tankard. Janet however, frowned and shook her head.

  "You must pardon the efforts of a very amateurish mathematician in criticizing your solution, but you will recall that there may be more than one root to an equation."

  "I trust," the Professor responded, "that your alternative solution -- for I assume you are about to propound an alternative -- does not contain the square root of minus one. I should remind you in turn that such a solution will produce an imaginary root!"

  “I think not," said Janet. "But I do believe that there is another variable of which you may not be aware until now, a variable that introduces one additional partial victim of the toxic agent plus a near victim."

  “A near victim?" echoed the Professor.

  "The room-maid at Wotinabee Lodge. Through under-staffing at the lodge she was saved from the effects suffered by the partial victim."

  "And who was this ‘partial victim' you refer to?" asked the Professor.

  “Myself.”

  John Antwhistle drew in his breath and stared at Janet as though she had overstretched his credulity. There ensued a period of silence when only the ticking of a pendulum clock could be heard to emanate from the hall.

  "What in the world brought you to such a conclusion?" he asked.

  "A quick refresher course in pharmacology/toxicology. Study of the symptoms from anti-cholinesterase poisoning. In particular, the sub-clinical manifestations of persons repeatedly subjected to minimal doses of agents such as DFP."

  "You mean that you experienced such manifestations?"

  Janet nodded and pointed toward her eyes.

  "Miosis, or constriction of the pupils. Even now I have some residual difficulty in adjusting rapidly to a darkened room. Apparently this is the earliest, most sensitive indication of low exposure to such parasympathometic agents. Had I realized immediately I supposes I could have countered the effect with the antidote, atropine. But now it’s simply a minor irritation and will reverse with time."

  "However," the Professor enjoined, "if I recall correctly the effects of these agents are somewhat cumulative. You are in a delicate condition of sensitivity to future exposure."

  "Precisely the reason why I reacted as seriously as I did to minor exposure, and possibly the reason why it killed Karl Elster!"

  "Sherlock Holmes used to refer to complex cases as requiring more than one pipeful of tobacco to ruminate over. I think this may well be a two-tankard problem, that is if your 'delicate condition' permits it."

  The Professor scuttled off down the hall for refills. In the meantime Janet perused the book titles on the shelf, and examined John Antwhistle's bird carvings which nestled among spaces between the books. Most were fashioned from bits of driftwood, shells, stones and wire appendages; all were quirky caricatures of the creatures, and some, she suspected, bore similarities to members of the University community. She was examining the eyes of one of the latter when the Professor returned with more ale and an immense bowl of peanuts.

  "Eyes are the windows of the soul" he intoned. "Or as we have been told repeatedly, if one is to be a teacher, by our pupils we shall be taught!"

  "Touché," Janet responded. "The pupils in this case were very instructive, and it was pretty dense of me not to catch on sooner. It should have been obvious that in death Karl's eyes were abnormal, virtually no pupils at all! And even when he was alive his 'normal, everyday' appearance, with those small, beady pupils no doubt reflected a chronic hypersensitivity brought on by his rather cavalier way of handling such agents in the lab."

  "And consequently you feel that he may have been at risk, as a result of long-standing sensitization from what you call 'subclinical' toxicity?"

  "I believe so, though it’s fairly speculative."

  "And yourself?."

  "This is the verifiable part, Because you see I had analyses done on the offending article and it was loaded with the stuff!"

  "The offending article was your source of contact with the poison I presume."

  Janet nodded grimly.

  "It was in fact the orange recovered from my wastebasket."

  "And where did the maid come into it?"

  "Fortunately, both for the analysis and for the cleanup crew, I came to a reconstruction of the events and managed to retrieve the lethal orange and seal it up well before somebody else could contact it."

  "Now," said the P
rofessor making a serious attack on the contents of his tankard, "perhaps you will oblige me by sharing your reconstruction."

  "Well," began, Janet, "once we found the syringe, as you point out, the agent of destruction for the bird that carried it off, I realized that it was the agent of death for Karl also. "

  “But not in the manner I had surmised?"

  "It didn't really add up: first, for him to use a syringe to self-administer the poison had he been suicidal; second, for him to inject himself at such a distance from his room; third, I just didn't accept the supposition that Karl was suicidal in his intent."

  She paused in her narrative to lubricate her throat. The Professor pursed his lips in meditation.

  "So the true delivery weapon was the orange, and the target was you."

  "I hate to flatter myself so, but all the indications seem to point that way. Karl may have been unhinged, perhaps by the fact that he had been embarrassed, exposed before the very group he desired most to impress."

  "Embarrassment is, so they say, the most painful of personal injuries, because it punctures that most sensitive part of the anatomy, one's amour propre," said the Professor nodding in agreement. "I suppose we all played a part in that embarrassment," he noted somewhat ruefully. "He obviously didn't appreciate the humour in Douglas's rather tasteless joke at his expense. And my diatribe after his self-serving abrogation of the cytomitin story."

  "True enough," admitted Janet, although I guess my sin was the greatest in his eyes: that is that he must have felt that I prevailed over him, not only in the conference room, but out on the tennis court!"

  "You so-called sportsmen certainly do take your games seriously."

  "Well, there is a saying among aficionados of the sport to the effect that tennis is not a matter of life or death, it's more important than that!"

  "And to one who was accustomed to being a winner, losing in these situations added to his feeling of humiliation."

  "That's the best guess I had for a motive," replied Janet. "Though I suppose none of us realizes the animosity or envy one may stir up in another, particularly when that other thinks of himself as a competitor."

  "I could probably accept your arguments now better than before the meeting," mused the Professor. "Karl had a history, so I have since discovered, of pinching other people's data when the occasion arose. He was doubtless a bit deranged by the events that went against him, and showed a viciously vindictive side to his personality."

  "He cheerfully eliminated a long list of people from his life, if they were burdensome or no longer useful to him. I was just the last on the list. Except that in my case he decided upon a final solution."

  "So he followed you out to the cliff on that last morning."

  "I had a sensation of being watched on the way, though I thought little of it at the time. I believe that Karl must have found out about my early morning swims, my habit of taking an orange for breakfast afterward. I suppose that in his plan it would have been I who toppled from the cliff, rendering a verdict of accidental death. Except for two unforeseen factors that not only foiled his scheme, but reversed it upon the perpetrator."

  "A case of lethal back-fire."

  "Just so. In the first place, Karl must have either over-estimated the dose required, or under-estimated the fluid content and internal pressure of an orange."

  "Or both perhaps?"

  "Perhaps. It sounds simple to inject a fluid into an orange. But an orange such as mine was, jostled, palpated in transit, is not only full of juice, it may be full to overflowing. I tried the experiment in the lab using a syringe loaded with ink. If you're careful and slow about it you can certainly inject a fair volume; but there is a definite back-pressure, depending on needle size, rate of injection, possible blockage of the needle tip with peel or pulp. If you hurry it you could get lots of leakage around the injection site and even in the seal between needle and syringe. I wound up with ink, not just at the site of injection, but on occasion, sprayed on my lab-coat and face-mask."

  "And of course Karl was wearing neither such protective device. So is that the first factor you referred to?"

  "Yes. The second had to do with timing. While I was still some distance away, Doug must have passed me and emerged unexpectedly from the mist on the river. Probably Karl was just part way along and could have been startled by the sudden appearance of the canoe. So he panicked a little, shoved the barrel down hard on the syringe possibly causing the needle to separate a bit. The injected solution would have sprayed back on his face, eyes, open mouth; in his hypersensitive state from previous exposures in the lab the effect would have been accentuated and could have been pretty fast. He must have extracted the syringe, possibly getting more contamination on his skin, dropped the orange with needle still embedded over the edge, and followed soon afterward himself."

  "The syringe then must have fallen out of sight," mused the Professor.

  "Out of my sight, but not of the magpie who spotted it later."

  "If this orange was so lethal to the touch, I don't understand why you weren't affected the same day you picked it up, brought it back to your room. And what happened to the needle?"

  "I guess it must have jarred loose in the fall, dropped off among the rocks on the way down, or fell to the bottom of the Wotinabee River," argued Janet. "As for the delayed effect I'm not sure I understand," she said with a puzzled frown.

  "You found it in the water?"

  "Yes. So I suppose that the surface material may have been washed away."

  "Then you wouldn't have had great exposure at first, unless you squeezed the beast."

  "I presume that could be it."

  "Later the stuff on the inside might be expected to diffuse out to the peel. It is apparently quite lipophilic so would tend to concentrate in the oil of the rind," reasoned the Professor.

  "Then later the oily concentrate outside would come off in handling it. If I had thought at the time, it was acting like an insect trap-- there were several dead flies near it."

  "Well, let's drink to the fact that you did not share their fate!"

  "I'll drink to that," responded Janet hoisting her tankard, "and here's to the slovenly help at Wotinabee Lodge."

  "A telling argument for a reasonable degree of untidiness and disorder," concluded the Professor.

  "The one victim that does concern me more than any other is Margot. I suppose that she and Bob will return, though I am not sure what they have to return to," said Janet with a worried sigh.

  "Ah, the beauteous widow, mother-to-be, and her gallant protector!" the Professor exclaimed. "I took it upon myself to speak to them both about the analyses of the insulin bottle and syringe. Naturally, I knew nothing then of your later investigations and realizations. As far as they are concerned Karl destroyed himself-- not so very far from the truth anyway, if we ignore the question of intent. I don' t suppose we need to raise that question with them?"

  "No, of course not. There would be nothing to be gained, except perhaps some unfortunate feelings of guilt by Margot for having provided Karl with the stuff."

  "I quite agree," nodded the Professor. "Now as to the future of these two- uh three- young people. We also discussed that matter at some length As it happens we now have an opening for someone to carry on with the cytomitin problem."

  "You mean Bob Hayes?"

  "If you so wish."

  "I can’t think of a better collaboration," Janet enthused. “Would he agree?”

  "I believe he might," chuckled the Professor. And perhaps a bit later if she desires Margot could also be very valuable to our group. Just now she seems more intent on providing a home for her offspring in the offing. Dr. Hayes may also fit somewhere into that equation."

  "Ah well," sighed Janet in relief, "it seems to have resolved itself fairly well in the end. Perhaps it is the best of all possible worlds as Dr. Pangloss observed."

  "Perhaps," replied the Professor finishing his ale. "But remembe
r what happened to him after making that observation!"

  It was twilight, almost dusk, by the time that Janet returned home to her room in the ancient house that she shared with her land-lady of long standing, Kay McKay. In the summers Kay tended to spend a good deal of her time at her lake-side cottage. So it was a surprise when Janet returned from the conference to find the place not gloomy and deserted, but stocked with a plentiful supply of food, and a note inviting Janet to make free with what was at hand. Now in the gathering darkness she was delighted to note a light in the back kitchen, the familiar old car parked in the driveway.

  Janet rushed through the front door calling down the hall. She had always in the past confided the happenings in her life to Kay who was something between intimate aunt and surrogate mother to Jan. She knew that no detail of the Wotinabee experience would escape Kay's shrewd interrogation. Besides, she was literally bursting to relate the story to someone less matter-of-fact than the Professor. Kay was in all things an enthusiast, a lover of mysteries, an ardent gossip and raconteur her-self, but the soul of discretion with matters of confidence.

  "Well," Janet called, bursting in to the back kitchen where Kay was standing near the window surrounded by a mountainous collection of boxes and canvas bags laden with groceries and paraphernalia from the cottage, "you'll never guess what has been happening to me at this supposedly boring scientific meeting!"

  But Kay, who had been standing with her back to Janet, signalled stiffly with her hand while peering out of the window into the back garden.

  "Wait, wait," she warned. "Oh my look ! Did you see him?"

  Janet moved as quickly as possible among the jumble of gear, and got to the window just in time to glimpse a flutter of feathers and a long tail.

  "Oh my, oh my!" gasped Kay, quite overcome with excitement.

  "What is it?" asked Janet.

  "Oh my'" repeated Kay breathlessly, "On my way in I was carrying a box and it knocked my brooch off. It wasn’t a terribly valuable one, just as well!" she laughed.

  "What happened to it?"

  "The clasp wasn't working well and it fell off on the path. I was unloading all this stuff," she gestured at the pile of impediments, "and I forgot about it momentarily. Then he swooped in. I couldn't believe my eyes! I didn’t believe there were any of them around this area. He's the first I've ever see here anyway. 0h my, what a thrill! He's welcome to the brooch."

  " Who is?" Janet asked, half anticipating the answer.

  "The magpie! You saw him too didn't you? Great long tail! "

  Janet nodded dumbly.

  "What a welcome home! Wait till I tell them at the Ornithology Club. I don't imagine there's been a sighting for years. Had you ever seen one before?"

  "Yes, as a matter of fact l-- "

  "It's a good thing I have a witness," Kay bubbled on, "otherwise none of them would credit it. They would imagine I had been in to the sauce, " she laughed. "You know," she continued relentlessly, "It probably means she has a nest nearby. Now, if we could find his nest! The brooch, all his other collectables inside, what a thrill to come across it. Maybe you would like to take an expedition with me tomorrow, down in to the valley to hunt for it."

  "Well--. "Janet started hesitantly.

  "I'm sorry," Kay paused in her dialogue. "I've been pratling on here like a madman. And speaking of the sauce, lets fix a couple of tall cool ones and sit out on the porch. Then you can tell me all about your dull old conference. I presume it was a dull old affair," she said, bustling about, handing Janet articles to load into the refrigerator.

  "Ah, here we are!" Kay exclaimed, grasping the gin bottle by the neck from one of the boxes. "Now we can get down to some serious chitchat. I'm just dying to hear all the gossip about your strange Professors and whatnot. Though it couldn't match that sighting for excitement I bet. Have you ever seen anything quite like that?"

  "Well," Janet responded as she followed somewhat unsteadily in the footsteps of her landlady with a heavily diluted version of one of Kay’s notorious martinis, "it’s funny you should ask!"

  William McMurray was born in Northern Ireland and evacuated to Canada during the Second World War. Growing up in Saskatchewan and Ontario, Dr. McMurray followed an academic scientific career which ultimately led to his appointment as Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.

  Cover design by Dr. McMurray’s son Geoffrey.