Diagnosis

by Rufus King

  Starr idly watched one deputy fasten ropes. He saw the other deputy and Jeff Luffberry up on the path, waiting to haul the body up. Jeff’s face was rigid and there seemed no sense in his eves.

  “I suggest that one of your deputy coroners make an examination,” Starr said.

  “Really? Why?”

  Starr held his voice low.

  “I think Mrs. Durban was killed and that her body was then dropped from the path onto the snow. It’s simply an opinion which I would prefer to have one of your men decide for himself.”

  Dixlow viewed this thoughtfully from the political vantage points and decided to be pleased. Starr followed the workings of his mind: a woman of no importance (Dixlow would be thinking) but one whose family had been socially and financially prominent in the life of Laurel Falls; color, too, in this business of her husband hammering out those iron things, the Bohemian touch. Sure to be a good press, and certainly the setup seemed simple enough. Dixlow’s brooding eyes traveled slowly upward toward the path. They came to rest on young Luffberry and stayed there.

  “He was on the scene when you got here, wasn’t he, Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  Dixlow said, “Hmmmmmm.”

  The deputies took Elsa Durban’s body into Laurel Falls in Dixlow’s car. He himself (now that he was in for it) intended to go in with Starr after he’d looked things over. Things and Jeff Luffberry. He wanted Jeff to show him just what he’d done when he found the stove cold that morning and when he’d found it cold the night before.

  The cabin was icy. There were three rooms. The front and only door opened into a general living room. Two doors in this room led into a kitchen and a bedroom. There were four windows: two in the living room and one each in the kitchen and bedroom. All were shut.

  The furniture and arrangement were crudely individual except for the cook-stove. The woodwork had been hewn and fashioned by Joel Durban’s muscular hands, the utensils pounded out by him at the adjacent forge.

  Dixlow’s body brooded like a grim and forceful shadow beside the frigid cook-stove, while his utterly charming and cultured voice went on with its questions.

  “How long have you known the Durbans, Mr. Luffberry?”

  “Since soon after they came here, Sheriff.”

  “You work on the Fenner farm, don’t you, over on the main road?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had you known the Durbans before they settled here?”

  “No. I gave him a hand when he put up the forge.”

  “I see. And the friendship ripened?”

  “I helped now and then. When he was away. She wasn’t very strong.”

  “Not much of a life for her here, I imagine, When you consider her background.”

  “She never said.”

  “But you could see?”

  “Anybody could see, Sheriff.”

  Starr recognized the trend, a quiet stalking on velvet pads toward the commonplace crime of passion: young Luffberry’s untamed virility, Elsa’s charm, her interest in him, her occasional dependence on him during Joel’s absences. And the thing that disturbed him most was that psychologically the motive, in Jeff’s case, might be sound; the motive, but not the method with which he believed that Mrs. Durban had been put to death.

  He said, “I’ve known Mrs. Durban rather well for a good many years, Sheriff. I think I can assure you that her devotion for her husband was exceptional.”

  “Exceptional?”

  “In its strength, Sheriff. She loved him so completely that no one else, that nothing else seemed to exist.”

  Dixlow smiled.

  “I’m glad you told me that, Doctor.” He stared with an impersonal insolence at Jeff, neatly arranging in his mind the familiar recipe, and then said, “We know that Mrs. Durban was alive at nine o’clock yesterday morning when her mother, Mrs. Beckfort, saw the signal smoke. According to your story, Mr. Luffberry, you came here at seven last night and found the stove cold. You thought that Mrs. Durban had gone into town. You returned this morning when you failed to sec the signal smoke and, becoming worried, you searched the woods, the paths, and found Mrs. Durban’s body. Why were you worried, Mr. Luffberry? What caused you to change your opinion that she had simply gone into town and was presumably staying with her mother?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “On the contrary, I’ve the most open sort of a mind. You’ve told us that everything here was in order, nothing upset, the bed neatly made, the dishes, the cooking things clean; was it just a presentiment, Mr. Luffberry?”

  “Yes. I knew she was dead.”

  Dixlow stopped smiling.

  “On Doctor Starr’s advice I am arranging for an autopsy. Have you anything to say, Mr. Luffberry?”

  “What are you getting at, Sheriff?”

  “Just the facts we’ll have to know eventually. Funny thing, the different ways in which a woman will react. Take the mental type like Mrs. Durban, sufficiently sophisticated, intellectual and well-bred. Did she repulse you immediately or did you both discuss the matter for a while? I mean did you have to sit here and listen to her explain this unique love, this binding sense of loyalty she felt for her husband, while your, well, more primal urges were driving you into a state of temporary insanity? I suppose that is what you will plead, Mr. Luffberry?”

  Starr could have told him it would happen. Jeff’s fist struck once, on the point of the chin, and Dixlow lay unconscious on the floor, while in the utter stillness of the icy house the sound of monotonous crying came from the living room. Starr followed Jeff in. He saw the girl sitting on a stool, her face ugly with tears.

  “Hello, Martha,” Jeff said. He turned to Starr. “She’s the teacher in that school up the line. We’re going to get married.” He walked over. “Let’s get going, Martha.”

  “I heard him, Jeff.” She stopped crying long enough to stare bleakly through the bedroom doorway at Dixlow’s long legs and shoes. One shoe was beginning to twitch.

  “He’s crazy, Martha. Why did you come here?”

  “I followed you. I followed you last night.”

  Nothing was so trenchant as the shocks of youth, Starr thought, and she was young, a simple, pretty little thing if she’d ever stop crying, facing with no experience whatever the brutal, wrenching bewilderment of wondering whether this boy she loved, whose life she had promised to share, had betrayed a woman and killed her and in doing so had betrayed herself too.

  Jeff put a hand on her shoulder. She started to shake. “I won’t tell,” she said, “but don’t touch me.” His fingers tightened and she screamed. She said, “No, no, Jeff,” and sidled toward the door, looking back over a shoulder with wet, panicky eyes.

  Starr said sharply, “Let her go.”

  “She’s crazy too.”

  “No, she’ll be all right.”

  They heard her stumbling through leafless brush. Then Dixlow was swaying in the bedroom doorway. He had a revolver in his hand, aiming it at young Luffberry.

  “I doubt whether you’ll need the gun, Sheriff,” Starr said.

  “Won’t I?” Dixlow steadied himself with the other hand against the doorjamb. “Turn your face to the wall, Luffberry.”

  “The hell with you.”

  Dixlow fired. In the shoulder, Starr thought, was where Jeff got it, just as Jeff used his uncanny ability to vanish and leaped through the front door. Dixlow emptied his gun senselessly in a vicious rage at thick trunks of trees. He gave Starr an inimical glance.

  “You were quite a help, Doctor,” he said.

  * * * *

  Snow started falling at four. Starr assured Mrs. Pendergast that her blood pressure was under control. He agreed to a slight change in her diet: lobster by all means, if she wished, to replace fillet of sole. He said good-by. He rang for his secretary. Miss Wadsworth, thoroughly starched and wh
ite, came into the office. “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Any more appointments?”

  “Mrs. Pendergast was the last.”

  “Sit down, Miss Wadsworth.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “What have you found out?”

  “The sheriff has around twenty men searching the hills. He’s taken that girl Martha into custody as a material witness. He believes she saw Jeff Luffberry throw the body over the cliff. The autopsy confirms your impression that Mrs. Durban died of carbonic-oxide poisoning.”

  “Any signs of violence, of assault?”

  “No, nothing like that. Doctor Tulson did the p.m. He said that the case would have gone through as a plain accidental death from exposure if it hadn’t been for you. Incidentally the sheriff has given a complete statement covering each step of the crime. The Sentinel has an extra on it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Jeff Luffberry declared his uncontrollable passion for Mrs. Durban last night—Dixlow’s own words, Doctor—and she repulsed him. She appealed to his better nature. He left.”

  “Oh, so he left?”

  “Yes. But not for long. His better nature shortly decamped and left his baser nature holding the bag. Being well versed in chemistry—I don’t imagine the poor kid knows a thing about—Jeff knew that poisoning results from the fumes of burning charcoal. Dixlow went to town about charcoal. He was beautifully pat about a charcoal fire being smoldering rather than brisk and giving off considerable quantities of carbonic monoxide. He pregnantly underlined the fact that there was plenty of charcoal piled up in Durban’s forge.”

  “I see. Jeff came back after Elsa Durban had gone to sleep, shut the windows, filled the stove with charcoal, closed the dampers and so forth?”

  “That’s right. Later, after the carbonic oxide had done the trick, he came back again and threw Mrs. Durban’s body over the cliff so that it would seem she had slipped and frozen to death.”

  “In the meanwhile,” Starr said bitterly, “that youngster is loose in the hills with a slug in his shoulder from Dixlow’s gun. Dixlow’s a good man but he lacks control. His mind forms in patterns and stays set. How about Elsa’s mother, Miss Wadsworth?”

  “I phoned a quarter of an hour ago. Joel Durban is with her. He says Mrs. Beckforth is bearing up very well.”

  “When did he get back from Columbus?”

  “About an hour ago. He found Dixlow and his men at the cabin and went out of his head for a while, according to Dixlow, from shock and grief. He came in to sec that Mrs. Beckfort was all right. Shortly he’s going to join the posse and is going to kill young Luffberry.”

  “Where did he stay while he was in Columbus?”

  “I thought you’d want to know that, Doctor. He was a guest of. Mrs. Worthington Culver. She’s a wealthy society woman, a widow. She was handling his exhibition for him. Launching him, you know.” Miss Wadsworth’s intelligent eyes grew stark. “Doctor, isn’t there anything you can do? That crowd is so stirred up and Dixlow’s so convinced of his guilt that they’re ready to shoot Jeff Luffberry on sight.”

  “Put a call through to Columbus, please. Try and get Mrs. Culver on the wire.” Mrs. Worthington Culver’s voice (ten minutes later) had all the assurance of middle age, social importance and great wealth.

  “Doctor Starr? Something about Mr. Joel Durban, Renfrew said?” Her tone shifted into anxiety. “Was there an accident, Doctor, on his drive to Laurel Falls?”

  “No, Mrs. Culver, not to him.”

  “To someone who was with him? I’ve warned Joel repeatedly about hitchhikers.”

  “When did he leave your house?”

  “Shortly before noon.”

  “Do you mind my asking where he was yesterday morning at nine o’clock?”

  “Joel? He was right here. We breakfasted early, just at nine as a matter of fact. The committee handling his exhibition met at eleven. May I ask you the meaning of these questions, Doctor?”

  “Was Mr. Durban at that meeting?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Did he leave right after it for Laurel Falls?”

  Mrs. Culver’s voice took on an edge.

  “I’ve already told you that he left for Laurel Falls around noon today, not yesterday. He was with me constantly all of yesterday. I must insist on an explanation of this?”

  “Mr. Durban’s wife has been killed, Mrs. Culver.”

  Mrs. Culver said after a pause, “Are you certain we are speaking about the same Mr. Durban, Doctor? Joel Durban, the one who does those magnificent primitives in wrought iron?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And you did say his—wife?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a longer pause still.

  “I suppose you are in touch with Mr. Durban, Doctor?”

  “I expect to see him very soon.”

  “Then will you offer him my condolences, please?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Also”—Mrs. Culver’s laugh was definitive and brief—“my regrets.”

  The line clicked, and Starr smiled faintly at Miss Wadsworth.

  “The usual perfect alibi,” he said.

  “Had you seriously considered Mr. Durban, Doctor? I mean, he and Elsa, everyone felt it one of those blinding things, a real, a deep, true love match, if that isn’t slopping over into mawkishness.”

  “No, things don’t happen like that. Nature abhors, biologically, a balance. One love invariably is the stronger of a two, flames actively like a fire near which the other basks, finds warmth—a fire—” Starr’s virile, pleasant face hardened into thoughtful lines. He said abruptly, “Call Mrs. Beckfort’s house, please. Get Durban on the wire.”

  Within the twenty minutes which it took for Joel Durban to leave Mrs. Beckfort’s and reach Starr’s office Starr did three things. The first consisted in a phone call to District Attorney Heffernan. It occupied a full ten minutes and hauled Mr. Heffernan’s temperature from iced skepticism up to a fever of promised activity.

  The second was brief. He phoned the Sentinel and asked for their weather forecast of the day before yesterday. It had read: Cloudy, with increasing cold.

  The third consisted in asking Miss Wadsworth to run upstairs to his dressing room and get his revolver from the small right-hand bureau drawer. Starr placed the revolver on his desk. He selected two instruments from a cabinet in the operating room. He returned to the desk.

  He said to Miss Wadsworth, “Once upon a time a blind man stood on the lip of a precipice and, as he thought, his sight was miraculously restored. The man turned his back upon the chasm and saw before him three paths, and a voice said to him: one of these paths will lead you backward along your life to safety.” Starr smiled at the frightened look on Miss Wadsworth’s wholesome, matter-of-fact face. “No, I haven’t gone mad. I’m simply wondering which path he will choose.” Joel Durban came into the office a few minutes before five.

  Early dark of winter had blotted out the day, and two lamps glowed in the shadowed room. Starr was impressed, as he habitually found himself so, by the magnificent physique and classical perfection of features with which young Durban was accustomed to stun (in varying degrees of force) the members of either sex. He also caught the radiation of Durban’s equally magnificent conceit and self-centered assurance that the world was a better and certainly a more pictorial place because he, Durban, was in it. Starr offered his condolences. He asked Durban to sit down.

  He said, “I thought you would like to know, Joel, that Elsa didn’t suffer. I can assure you of that.”

  A faint tightness about Durban’s handsome eyes smoothed from relief.

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “It occurred to me that you would also like to know just how things stand.”

  Durban’s look flicked casually toward the revolver whic
h lay beneath a partially masking sheet of note paper on the desk top.

  “I do know, Doctor.”

  “Oh, then you’ve heard from District Attorney Heffernan?”

  The tightness returned.

  “Heffernan?”

  “Yes. He phoned me shortly before you came. About that girl the sheriff’s holding, about Martha.”

  “Yes?”

  “She thinks now that she made a mistake. That’s natural when you consider she was driven into hysteria and that her nerves are still fairly shot.”

  “Then she didn’t see anything after all?”

  “Oh yes, she saw something all right, something which she claims is just on the fringe of her memory and which any moment may make quite clear. But she thinks her mistake was in the time. Whatever this was that she saw she now says that she didn’t see it last night. She saw it the night before.”

  Durban said quickly, “That’s impossible, Doctor. Elsa was alive yesterday morning. She lighted the signal fire yesterday morning.”

  “Heffernan was puzzled by that too. He feels that unless Martha is more than ever confused by hysteria there are two possibilities about that fire. He thinks young Luffberry may have set it himself to delay a search for Elsa, which doesn’t make much sense, or else that some sort of a time-bomb device was used.”

  Durban’s voice was careful.

  “Has he talked this over with the sheriff?”

  “No, he only thought of it a quarter of an hour ago when he was questioning Martha at Dixlow’s house.”

  “House? Isn’t she being held in the county jail?”

  “No, she’s with Mrs. Dixlow. They thought it better for Martha’s nerves, that a clear memory of whatever it was she saw on the night before last would return to her more quickly. Heffernan’s looking into that fire business in the morning, going to have the ashes sifted, that sort of thing.”

  Durban stood up, towered handsomely in the glow from the desk lamp.

  “I’ll take it up with the sheriff myself. I’m going out to the cabin now to join the search.”

  “Be careful, Joel.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Have you a gun?”