Death of a Wharf Rat

by Francine Mathews

“Maybe David and El can help. While they’re here.”

  “Neither of them can drive a hammer,” Spence said dismissively.

  “I can,” Andre offered.

  The old man’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Of course. You’re the son I never had.”

  That was the familiar Spence: embracing and easy. But he could not be trusted to remain; he would slip away like a ghost as exhaustion crept up on his mind. Andre felt a spiritual pain, aware of the personality they were losing. Had already lost.

  Elliot appeared with the iced tea.

  “Where’s David?” he asked Andre under his breath as he took a chair beside him.

  “On the back lawn.”

  “Hyperventilating?”

  “Exactly.”

  Andre sipped the tea. It had been steeped with loose Darjeeling and fresh mint Elliot bought from a market in the East Village. It tasted like liquid mahogany.

  “You’re good to find a room for me, El,” Kate was saying. “I realize it was short notice.”

  “I’m so glad you came,” Laney said, “even if Daddy’s furious at me.”

  “Is he?” her mother replied. “Whatever for?”

  “Because you aren’t welcome here, Kate,” David said.

  He was observing them from the safe distance of the center hall, which meant he had avoided the obvious path to the living room from the deck. As though he needed to sneak up on them, Andre thought—as though a normal approach would leave him too exposed.

  “That’s no reason to take it out on Laney,” Kate said mildly.

  He ignored this. “I would like you to leave as soon as possible.”

  “Nonsense,” Spence said testily. “She’s only just arrived.”

  “Dad.” David’s voice was very quiet. “She’s not my wife anymore. She left me. She left Laney. She has no right—”

  “To exist?” he retorted. “Good God, you’re like your mother, David. You can’t let go of a wound, can you? Just keep pulling off the scab, over and over, so it never heals. Kate is my guest. She can stay as long as she likes.”

  He placed his hand over his daughter-in-law’s and squeezed it briefly. “You were the only one who liked Nora anyway,” he said. “I’m glad you’ll be here for the funeral.”

  There was a tense silence. Andre saw David’s face suffuse with color, then fade to dead white. Anger, violently suppressed. It could not be healthy for a man to suppress so much.

  They all listened as he mounted the worn stairs, one foot deliberately in front of the other.

  “Then that’s settled,” Kate said. “Shall I just share Laney’s room? And how about some lunch?”

  Chapter Eight

  “Cyanide poisoning is hardly accidental,” Bob Pocock said.

  “With respect, sir, I’d like to assess the evidence before I determine that.”

  Merry was standing in front of the chief’s desk, as usual. He never invited anyone to sit down, although he had two black leather conference chairs in the room. She had helped her father choose them, two years ago. She was surprised they hadn’t been thrown out along with John Folger’s secretary.

  Pocock raised his eyebrows. “Go ahead. But you’ll figure out eventually that it was suicide or murder. That leaves few possibilities. Either the father killed her, or the housekeeper did. Know yet what kind of cyanide it was? Hydrogen? Potassium? Sodium?”

  “No, sir. I’m going to pick up the lab report on my way to the family house.”

  “She either inhaled it or ingested it,” Pocock said impatiently. “Given that the residue was found in her coffee cup, obviously she ingested it. Hydrogen cyanide is a gas. You clearly didn’t know that, Detective, which surprises me; I’d expect you to have researched the poison before you walked into this office. But never mind. I’ve narrowed the possibilities for you. It was sodium cyanide or potassium cyanide.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Merry’s expression was wooden. “I would point out, however, that hydrogen cyanide can also be found in liquid form. Sodium and potassium cyanide are powders, and obviously could have been dissolved in the coffee. All three are inorganic. However, a fourth form of the poison exists—organic cyanide. It’s naturally produced by some bacteria, algae, fungi, and plants. The victim’s contact with it could therefore have been accidental.”

  “Not if it was in her coffee,” Pocock countered. “You can’t get around the cup. Either she put it there, or someone else did. And as there were only two other people in the house at the time, Detective, this should be an open-and-shut case. Am I wrong?”

  “I would never suggest that, sir.”

  Pocock locked eyes. If he caught the mocking undertone to Merry’s words, he chose not to betray it. “Good. I don’t want to hear about this case again until the Fourth of July is over. But Tuesday morning, Detective, I expect charges. And a case to back them up.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “Your best better be good enough.”

  There was no possible reply to this. Merry counted slowly in her head until, at thirty-three seconds, the chief said, “You can go.”

  Nantucket Cottage Hospital sat on a wedge of land between Prospect Street and Vesper Lane, where the historic houses that lined the irregular streets sloping down from Mill Hill met the commercial edge of town. Summer Hughes could have scanned the lab report from Bourne straight into Merry’s inbox, but Merry had asked if she could spare fifteen minutes to talk—and the doctor had agreed.

  The waiting room was filled with the usual casualties of a Nantucket holiday weekend: cobblestone rash from bike-riders who’d fallen at high speed on the bumpy streets; lacerations from moped accidents; a few kids who looked drunk but had somehow escaped the police cordon and arrest. One of these, dressed only in a stars-and-stripes bikini, had her head between her knees and was heaving gently. Merry looked away.

  Summer met her at the reception desk and led her back to a small, windowless examination room. The doctor took a rolling stool near her computer; Merry sat in the chair reserved for patients.

  “A copy of this report should be in Clarence Strangerfield’s email,” Summer said, “but the lab called me, too, as my contact info was on both the cadaver and the mug paperwork.”

  Merry scanned the sheet Summer handed her.

  “This says she was poisoned by a nitrile, not cyanide.”

  “Nitriles are compounds of the cyan group and a carbon group. Also known as organic cyanides,” the doctor explained.

  “Ah.”

  “I was surprised it was a nitrile—I assumed Nora Murphy was poisoned by hydrocyanic acid. That’s a common ingredient in pesticides and some rat fumigation products.”

  “Which, in a house as old as Step Above, could just conceivably be lying around,” Merry mused.

  “Right. I thought she might have seen the fumigant in the garage or attic, decided to commit suicide, and put it in her coffee. But from this report, I’m clearly wrong. Still, it’s weird, Merry—organic cyanides exist, but they’re less toxic and the body can metabolize them. I don’t understand how she ingested enough to kill her.”

  “I did some research.” Merry set the report down on Summer’s examination table. “Organic cyanide is found in bacteria and algae and some tropical plants, like bamboo and manioc—none of which jumped into Nora’s coffee cup in a high enough concentration to poison her. But it’s also found in the pits of stone fruit.”

  “Cherries and almonds,” Summer said. “In all the Agatha Christie books, the victim smells bitter almonds right before he collapses over his cocktail glass.”

  “Not to mention bitter apricots,” Merry said. “A health nut recently told me that the dried seeds cure cancer. You’re an oncologist, Summer. Is that a totally bogus claim?”

  “Pretty much. But when you’re desperately ill, you’ll try anything. The nitrile in bitt
er apricot seeds is called amygdalin, or sometimes laetrile. It’s banned in the US partly because of the cyanide danger. But people used to go to Mexico to get it—” Summer’s brown eyes suddenly widened. “Oh, shit. Was Nora Murphy a health nut?”

  “I don’t know,” Merry replied. “But there were dried apricot seeds in the cupboard. Dried apricot seeds mixed up in a bag of coffee beans I’m betting she used. And Nora’s mother died over a year ago of cancer.”

  “Send some of those seeds to Bourne,” Summer said, “for comparison with the residue in Nora’s coffee.”

  Merry smiled wryly. “If only Bourne could tell me whether it was accident, suicide—or murder.”

  Roseline DaJouste never worked weekends, and she had the Monday holiday off as well. But David Murphy managed to track her down that Saturday afternoon while she was examining the produce, freshly picked from the fields wilting under blazing July heat, at Bartlett’s Farm. The market would be closed July Fourth, so Roseline was planning ahead. Her grandchildren were coming over from Hyannis.

  “We need you at a family conference,” David Murphy said when she answered her cell phone. “There are decisions that must be made regarding my father’s future, and they can’t be made without you.”

  He was tiresome, Mr. David—she had never liked him so well as Mr. Elliot. He was a cold man and she doubted that her loyalty counted for much. But he paid her salary out of his father’s accounts, and the Murphy household was Roseline’s sole source of income. She bagged up her wax beans and lettuce and a few of the very first tomatoes, paid for them hurriedly, and drove back out Hummock Pond Road to town.

  She was just getting out of her car when Meredith Folger arrived.

  “That bag of coffee beans?” Elliot said blankly. “I threw it out. Andre bought some fresh beans yesterday afternoon.”

  “Can you retrieve it from the trash for me, Mr. Murphy?” Merry asked.

  “If you really want me to.”

  He had answered the front door, which was helpful, she thought. She hadn’t brought a search warrant; Step Above was technically still a crime scene and everything in the house was possible evidence. But as a lawyer, David Murphy might try to thwart even simple requests. His first instinct would be to shield his father. Elliot was less cautious.

  She and Roseline DaJouste followed him into the kitchen, where he rummaged through a trash bucket under the sink. She didn’t bother to give him plastic gloves like the ones she was wearing; his prints were already all over the evidence.

  “Here.” He handed her the half-empty bag of Chester’s Blend. “Nice I didn’t toss this in the garbage can in the garage. It’d stink to high heaven in this heat.”

  Merry glanced inside the crumpled sack. Still a mix of light seeds and brown beans.

  Roseline was moving between them, settling her bags of produce in the refrigerator. “I’m just leaving those here, Mr. Elliot, until I go home. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Of course not. I’m sorry you had to come over today.”

  Merry sealed the mix of coffee and apricot seeds in an evidence bag. “Mr. Murphy, I’m going to lock this in my car. Then I’m coming back inside. I’d like to speak to your brother and his daughter, if I may.”

  “Just them?” asked Elliot. “Not all of us? Laney’s mother arrived a half-hour ago.”

  “For now, just them. Next, I’d like to interview Roseline.”

  The housekeeper darted a glance at Elliot. “I am expecting houseguests off the five o’clock ferry. How long will this take?”

  “Only a few minutes, I promise you,” Merry said.

  David and Laney joined Merry in Spencer Murphy’s den. David had seated himself behind his father’s desk; Laney sat alone on the sofa. Merry shut the door on the rest of the household and set out her laptop on the coffee table. She was without Seitz as note-taker all day; he was busy on the checkpoints leading into Nobadeer.

  “I assume you have something to tell us about my sister’s death,” David said. “Although why you couldn’t inform the entire family—”

  “Your sister was poisoned,” Merry said briskly. “An organic cyanide compound was found in the residue of her coffee mug. Presumably she drank it.”

  “So she killed herself?”

  “Like Alan Turing,” Laney murmured.

  “I’m sorry?”

  She looked at Merry. “Alan Turing. An English codebreaker during World War Two. He was gay and that was against the law, then, so he put cyanide in an apple and ate it. It was a movie with Benedict Cumberbatch.”

  “Laney,” her father said impatiently.

  “I remember.” Merry looked back at her keyboard. “I don’t know whether your sister committed suicide, Mr. Murphy. I only know, for the moment, that there was cyanide in her coffee. She may have ingested it by mistake, on purpose—or someone may have wanted to kill her.”

  David laughed skeptically. “There was nobody here to kill her.”

  Merry glanced up, her fingers stilled. “Your father was here. So was Roseline DaJouste. I have to take seriously the possibility that one of them put the poison in her coffee.”

  “That’s absurd,” he said flatly.

  “Possibly. But I assume as a lawyer you’ve been trained to weigh evidence. You must see that it can’t be ruled out.”

  “Where would either of them get poison? Never mind why either would want to kill Nora,” he countered.

  “Organic cyanide is found in dried apricot seeds. It’s a chemical called laetrile.”

  Laney drew a quick breath. “I wasn’t here when Nora died,” she said. “I didn’t even know I had an aunt.”

  Interesting, Merry thought, as she typed that phrase into her notes. “Ms. DaJouste has said that you, Mr. Murphy, have also not been in the house since Christmas. But of course, she leaves work around 5:30 p.m., and can’t vouch for any visits you might have made to Nantucket at night.”

  “I last left Nantucket for Boston on Cape Air December twenty-eighth,” he said. “The first time I’ve returned is today. I’m sure as a police officer you can access the airline’s records. Are you planning to have us sign printed statements, Detective? Because if so, I’m not sure Laney and I should talk to you without criminal counsel.”

  “Dad—”

  “That’s your choice.” Merry met his rigid gaze. “I’m trying to establish some simple facts so I can figure out how and why your sister died in this house. We found apricot seeds in a bag of coffee she may have used in the self-grinding coffeemaker you brought at Christmas. I’m told your father never turned it on. But it’s possible you, or your daughter—who brought the apricot seeds to this house a year and a half ago, as a natural cancer treatment—mixed up the seeds and the coffee beans. It would help me to hear a simple yes or no from each of you.”

  “I don’t drink coffee,” Laney whispered.

  “And I don’t need laetrile,” David added. “Maybe Nora liked dried apricot seeds. Laney says they’re a popular snack in India and the Middle East. ”

  “Snacking on the seeds wouldn’t kill her,” Merry said. “The human body can digest and metabolize a few each day, which is why people risk eating them. Particularly cancer sufferers. But ground up with beans in the coffeemaker and steeped in boiling water, the seeds would have released a toxic dose of cyanide. Did either you, Laney, or you, David Murphy, mix the apricot seeds and coffee beans in the same bag when you were here at Christmas? Yes or no?”

  Laney glanced fearfully at her father. “No.”

  “No,” he echoed. “I’m guessing Nora did that herself. Maybe she had a death wish.”

  “Like Alan Turing,” Merry said.

  “Exactly,” the lawyer replied.

  There was no point, Merry realized, in taking the coffeemaker as evidence. Elliot and Andre had been using it without ill effects for the past two days. Any c
yanide from the apricot seeds would have been confined to the ground contents of the filter basket and any remaining coffee in the pot—but both were probably thrown out the very day Nora Murphy died.

  “Do you remember Miss Nora making coffee with this machine, Roseline?” Merry asked as they stood together in the kitchen.

  “She always drank Mr. Spence’s coffee. He makes it on the stove, in the percolator.”

  “Okay. Are there any days when he doesn’t do that?”

  “Some mornings he goes down to that club on the docks,” she said, “and has coffee with his friends.”

  “The Wharf Rats.”

  Roseline nodded.

  “Can you remember if he had coffee with the Rats during the week Miss Nora disappeared?”

  Roseline tapped her lips with her fingers, her eyes fixed on the scuffed linoleum floor. “Yes,” she said. “We were out of canned coffee. He told me one night when I went to say goodbye, and asked me to pick some up in the morning on my way back here. He would go to the club, he said, before I arrived. He was sitting with Miss Nora out back, smoking his cigarettes, which he had not done in a long time.”

  “What time do you arrive in the mornings?”

  “Around ten o’clock.”

  “And that morning—when you brought the new can of coffee—what do you remember?”

  “Mr. Spence was out,” she said slowly. “At his club, like he said.”

  “And Miss Nora?”

  “Nowhere to be seen.”

  “And this new coffee machine?”

  Roseline lifted her eyes to Merry’s face. “Plugged in. Warm. With coffee in it. I remember now—I put the pot and basket in the dishwasher that night. I had made dinner for both of them, but Miss Nora never came back for dinner. It was the day she disappeared.”

  On her way back to the station, Merry stopped at the offices of Cape Air, which were housed in the small gray-shingled building that served as Nantucket’s Ackerman Field airport terminal.

  “Cindy,” she said to a harassed woman who was managing people bumped from overbooked holiday flights out of Hyannis, New Bedford, Boston, and White Plains, “I need to know whether a guy named David Murphy ever flew in from Logan between January first of this year and May thirty-first.”