Corpus Corpus

by Harry Paul Jeffers

  "Hence the invitation to Chief Goldstein, Maggie, and me to this party," Bogdanovic said. "You hoped that one of us might let you in on what was really going on in the investigation."

  "It was obviously an error in judgment that ranks up there with Nixon's refusal to burn the White House tapes."

  "You made several errors in judgment, Marian," Bogdanovic said, severely. "The first was your decision to kill Janus. If you had a grievance, you ought to have gone to court. The second mistake was using poisoned cigars."

  "I had to, Sergeant. I'm terrified of firearms."

  Goldstein asked, "Why did you want to kill him?"

  "I don't see that it matters. You're not obliged to present a motive to a jury."

  "That's true, Marian," Dane said, "but jurors have read so many mystery novels and seen so many courtroom dramas, fictional and real, that they always expect to hear one."

  "I assure you they would not hear a tale of a woman being driven to murder by love, hate, greed, revenge, or an unbalanced mind. I am afraid they would find my motive unfathomable."

  "I am confident," Bogdanovic said, "that a woman who writes the country's most popular books is able to explain anything."

  Henry sipped a glass of scotch. "Long before I'd met you, Sergeant, I knew of your reputation for solving complicated cases. You do not disappoint. If anyone might understand my motive, it's you."

  "Thank you. I take that as high praise." "Oh it is, Sergeant." "About your motive . . ."

  "It evolved, beginning with the trial in which Theo pulled trick after trick out of his hat to thwart Maggie and frustrate justice. At some point in the proceedings I received a phone call from Oscar. He astonished me by asking if I would be interested in doing a book on the case. I told him I would love to, but that I was a fiction writer. But Oscar pointed out that what the definitive book about the case needed was a novelist's touch. With our verbal handshake, Oscar's firm put out a press release announcing that I would write the book on the case."

  "That's all true, Sergeant," Pendelton exclaimed.

  "But there was soon a hitch," Henry said.

  Looking pained, Pendleton sighed. "I'll say there was."

  "Shortly after Theo returned to New York," Henry went on, "he invited me to his ranch. He demanded that I cancel my book. He said he did not want it competing with the one he was planning. He said that if I did not agree to abandon my project, he would tie up poor Oscar and me in litigation. He acted like a schoolyard bully. I recognized that it would be futile to argue with him. I told him I would meet with Oscar and cancel our deal as soon as I returned from a trip to London. But as I thought about all of this while I was away, I began to view the situation as if it were the plot of a novel. This amused me so much that I found myself thinking of a method by which the murder of a man might be mistaken as a death by natural causes. I knew about Theo's heart condition, of course, so the obvious way to kill him would be to somehow precipitate a heart attack. Then the question was how. The inkling of an answer came to me one evening as I was having dinner at the Sherlock Holmes Pub when a gentleman at the next table asked me if I would object if he smoked a cigar. Naturally, I did not. But as I watched him enjoying his postprandial smoke, I came up with the exciting prospect of poisoning one of Theo's cigars. Later that evening, I reasoned that the only way I might achieve that goal was to poison an entire box of cigars. The next day I went to Dunhill's. I knew it was Theo's tobacconist in London because I'd bought cigars for him there on previous trips. I asked the sales clerk for a box of Theo's favorite cigars." "Cohiba esplendidos," Bogdanovic said.

  "Yes. My next challenge was twofold: how to poison them and with what substance."

  "You found the answer to the latter problem in your garden."

  "Quite right, Sergeant. Then I got a book on cigars that explained how they were made. I visited a quaint shop in Union City where a lovely old expatriate Cuban demonstrated how handmade cigars are produced. Fascinating! A true art! That was how I learned that in a premium cigar the end that goes in the mouth has to be cut open. This was a crucial discovery, because I had formed a plan to inject a poison into the tips of Theo's cigars. I saw immediately that Theo might notice a puncture. I confirmed this by inserting a needle into several of the cigars that I bought from the man in Union City. The holes I made were quite plain to see. To test my hypothesis, I visited several of the cigar rooms that seem to have sprouted everywhere. In observing the rituals of men smoking cigars, I found to a man that they did, indeed, examine their cigars before trimming them. I also noticed that some of the men removed the bands and others did not. I learned from one man that the on-or-off issue is quite a controversy. As it happened, he preferred the band off. In demonstrating how easily one can be removed, he expressed his opinion that smokers who did not remove them were nothing but show-offs who needed everyone to know that they smoked only the best cigars, meaning the most expensive brands. He ventured that the prime example of this phenomenon was invariably found in those who smoked Cuban cigars, because of the distinctive black and gold bands. I left him knowing exactly how to poison Theo's cigars without fear of his becoming suspicious. And I knew where to get poison that would not be detected."

  "That was another error. The substances you chose narrowed the field of suspects considerably. Very few people are familiar with the toxic qualities of yellow oleander and the yew tree. Those are exotic touches one expects to find in mystery novels. The wreath on your front door contains yew branches and leaves."

  "In literature, Sergeant, that flaw is known as hubris. It is also a fault in gardeners. My compliments on your powers of observation and your knowledge of plants."

  "I'm afraid that when it comes to knowing about agriculture, I looked up yellow oleander and yew in a book on poisons."

  'Just to be sure I have all this straight," said Goldstein, "your motive for killing Janus was to prevent him from suing to stop you from writing a book?"

  Pendelton answered, "By suing, Janus would have tied Marian and me up in the details of litigation. The result would have been to delay the publication of her book long enough for his to hit the bookstores first. It was the preemptive strike of an author who was also a lawyer."

  "Be that as it may, Oscar," Bogdanovic said, "I don't buy it as a motive for murder. It certainly is not what I'd expect to read in the final chapter of a Marian Pickering Henry novel."

  "Approximately two million dollars were at stake."

  "I can see how millions of dollars in royalties could be a powerful motive for an ordinary author," Bogdanovic replied. "Certainly it makes sense for a publisher. Or even for a Greek shipping tycoon, or his wife," he continued, turning and bowing slightly in the direction of Nick and Ariadne Stamos. "I can see someone killing out of revenge. A judge who felt his reputation had been besmirched, for example. But I find it difficult to accept the proposition that Marian Pickering Henry murdered to ensure herself a little more income. It is my impression that she has more than she could ever spend."

  "You've turned the tables on me, Sergeant," Henry said. "Now I'm the one on the receiving end of high praise, both as author and murderer. Of course I was not motivated by money. And not by a thirst for vengeance, though I might have been at first, because I was also offended by Theo's manner. He wasn't a pleasant man. When he demanded that I give up writing a book on the trial, he was brutal. As I said, a schoolyard bully. But kill him for being a nasty man?"

  Dane leaned forward urgently. "Then why?"

  Henry's eyes sparkled and the corners of her lips twitched with an incipient smile as she looked to Bogdanovic. "Would you care to venture a guess, Sergeant? Or do you, like Mr. Sherlock Holmes, never resort to guesswork because it is destructive to the logical faculty?"

  "When I guess, I'm usually wrong."

  "It's the same thing."

  "I will offer you a hypothesis. I propose that you did it to find out if you could get away with it."

  "Unfortunately, the case was assigned t
o a detective whose imagination was sharper than mine."

  "That's very kind of you, Marian. If it's any consolation, you almost succeeded."

  "You know what the man said, Sergeant."

  "If the man was Nero Wolfe, I don't."

  "No, you won't find this quotation in Theo's Nero Wolfe encyclopedia. The man said, 'Close, but no cigar.' "

  "THE CHIEF WILL be a little late in joining us at Neary's," Bogdanovic announced as Dane got into the car. "He's tied up at the DA's office in another big meeting. The brass is trying to put as good a face as possible on the Mancuso debacle. In short, it's cover-one's-ass time."

  "The case has been solved?"

  "No thanks to the DA's office. Goldstein unleashed Leibholz and Reiter and ordered them not to come back until they found out what the hell happened in that hotel room."

  "Evidently they did."

  "It turns out that the three assistant DAs who were minding Mancuso decided to break the monotony by having a little fun at poor Paulie's expense. One of them came up with the loony idea of making Paulie believe he was not long for this world. They got Janus's book and one of them wrote the inscription about Paulie doing the right thing. The trouble was, Paulie did not find it at all amusing. So it was sic transit Paulie, right out the window. And now it is sic transit that zany trio out the door with the outline of Cornelius Vanderhoff’s toe imprinted indelibly on the tails of their Calvin Klein suits. And right behind them will go the deputy district attorney who was in charge of keeping Paulie alive and well until he testified. You know what that means."

  "Of course. Four careers in law are over."

  "The hell with them. What it means is that Vanderhoff is in need of a new deputy. Someone of such standing, and with such an exemplary reputation, that her arrival at One Hogan Place will set the local press atwitter with excitement and hosannas of praise for Vanderhoff. I refer, of course, to yourself."

  "The closest I intend to get to a courtroom is supervising moot courts in a law school. I am headed for the quiet groves of academia."

  "There are too many law school graduates already. Furthermore, Vanderhoff can't go on in that job forever. Who better to take over for him after he retires or dies than you?"

  "The office of district attorney is not inherited, Sergeant. Whoever succeeds Cornelius Vanderhoff will have to be chosen by the people in an election."

  "You've already got my vote. Plus Goldstein's. And Leibholz and Reiter think you are the cat's pajamas. That's four. Yours is five. You're on your way to a landslide!"

  "This is very flattering, but I'm afraid my answer has to be one of Nero Wolfe's favorite phrases: I will not be hounded."

  A former broadcast journalist, H. Paul Jeffers has published nearly forty books. His most recent nonfiction includes The Good Cigar and a history and guide on the subject of spiritous drinks, High Spirits. In addition to the Sgt. John Bogdanovic series of novels, he is author of the Arlene Flynn mysteries, also from St. Martin's Press. He smokes, drinks, and writes in Manhattan.