Death, My Darling Daughters

by Jonathan Stagge

  “You mean—?”

  He put the pipe back in his mouth. “They all went over to lunch with Dr. Stahl this morning and made a tour of her laboratory. Dr. Hilton let that slip out when he was talking to me.”

  I sat up.

  “There’s a good line for you to follow, Westlake. Look into that lady. See if she’s sloppy with her poisons, leaves them laying around.” Inspector Cobb drained his glass and rose abruptly the way he always does when he feels an interview has been long enough. “Well, I’ll be getting along. You know what to do and you know how to do it. Let’s hope you’re wrong, but if anything breaks, get in touch with me. I’m out of this—officially. But I guess, Dr. Hilton or no Dr. Hilton, D.A. or no D.A., I can put in a little time on the Boston end.”

  “The Boston end?”

  “Yeah.” Inspector Cobb moved solidly toward the door. “I’m kind of interested in Dr. Hilton’s attack of ptomaine. Nanny thought it was a murder attempt. Maybe I’ll find somebody else who thought so too.”

  VII

  I awoke next morning to a realization that my role as official undercover man for the Hilton house had begun. Cobb had suggested that Dr. Stahl with her possible supply of cyanide was the most promising opponent for my first skirmish. Since it was Sunday, I had a clear day ahead of me. Over breakfast I was thinking out the most satisfactory approach, short of matrimony, to my daughter’s beloved rat lady when Dawn herself put in a delayed appearance. Although she had never looked more eupeptic, my daughter was adopting a pitiful pose that morning. She had spent a simply terrible night, she said. She had hardly slept a wink. A cautious glance at me under her lashes warned me that this new-found insomnia was a device to further some dark end.

  The dark end was made plain after she had devoured a man-sized plate of hot cakes. Casually she announced: “You know, Daddy, I think I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried about poor Nanny and Inspector Cobb coming here last night.”

  “You do?” I hedged.

  My daughter nodded. “And I rather think that I won’t be able to sleep tonight or tomorrow night or the next night or the next night or the next night, unless I know what it was Mr. Cobb wanted.” She fixed me with a stare which was intended to be forlorn. “And if I don’t ever sleep, I’ll get thinner and thinner and thinner and die, won’t I?”

  This feeble attempt to arouse my sympathies both as father and doctor carried no weight, but a question as direct as that demanded some sort of direct answer. I pulled one out of the air.

  “Mr. Cobb came to see me because his wife’s expecting another baby,” I said.

  I had underestimated my daughter’s knowledge of the bees and flowers. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Mrs. Cobb had a baby two months ago. Even she couldn’t be having another one yet.” She blurted then: “It was because of Nanny, wasn’t it? Something was wrong about the way she died.”

  My daughter had reached the age where most children are ghoulish about death. I had hoped to keep her unconcerned in what had happened at the Hilton house, but I saw it was hopeless. “Okay,” I said. “You’re right. Cobb did come about Nanny. But it was just a technicality, a thing he had to discuss with me because I’m the coroner.”

  I expected this to let loose a torrent of questions, but, as usual, I had my daughter’s psychology all wrong. She merely sighed and said: “I thought so. Oh, Daddy, isn’t it awful? Lizzle promised to show me her rats, and now they’ll all be upset and everything and I won’t be able to see them—the rats, I mean.”

  I could have kissed her, not only for her healthy interest in rats but for giving me the lead I had failed to think of myself.

  “On the contrary,” I said, “you both can and will see Dr. Stahl’s rats this morning. After breakfast we’re going to call on her—you and I.”

  Dawn was staggered by this good news. “We—we are?” With a wildness born of hope, she added: “Then you are going to marry her?”

  “Not yet,” I said soberly. “There will have to be a period of courtship first. We’re going about your violin lessons. You want to be taught by her, and she wants to teach you. Think how it will foster our romance. Your violin will bring us together.”

  “Yes,” said Dawn. “I suppose it will.” Her lower lip bulged the way it always did when she was worried. “Daddy, what if it doesn’t? What if she doesn’t want to marry you?”

  “If she doesn’t,” I said, “we’ll just have to get along somehow without the rats.”

  Half an hour later Dawn and I, an innocent father and an innocent daughter on the way to inquire about violin instruction, strolled down the lane which passed for Kenmore’s main street toward Dr. Stahl’s newly acquired summer home. Kenmore was sparkling that morning. Below us the Konapic Brook dazzled like a diamond belt in the sunlight. Bobolinks fluttered around the meadows, bubbling their inarticulate appreciation of life in general. Great banks of orange day lilies, escaped from someone’s garden, nodded at the roadside. Even the Hilton House when we passed it wore a fresh, almost frivolous aspect.

  The old farmhouse Dr. Stahl had rented had been vacant for many seasons, and, judging from its exterior, she had done nothing to repair its seedy dilapidations. Even the barn, which, apparently, had been converted into the laboratory where she conducted her famous experiments, was as sadly broken down as it had been in the days of old Bill Strong, its former owner.

  With Dawn at my side, carrying her violin, I walked past the towering clumps of golden glow to the front door of the farmhouse. My knock was answered by Dr. Stahl herself. Except for the clattering earrings, the author of Practical Toxicology had abandoned the wilted finery in which she had appeared at the Lanchester picnic and was wearing navy blue slacks and a navy blue blouse. This typically American outfit succeeded only in emphasizing her foreignness. She had one of those Continental figures which remain voluptuous whatever is done to them, and her very feminine curves did not look their best in pants designed for the exiguous hips of the subscribers to women’s magazines. Her sleeves were rolled up, and she held a tea towel in her hand. Her keen eyes, above the even keener nose, considered us without surprise.

  “So. The doctor and his leetle Mozart murderer.” She flourished the towel. “I vash my deeshes. If you vant to speak with me, you vatch me vash my deeshes. Come.”

  She conducted us through a living room chaotic with medical books and piles of music into an almost equally disordered kitchen. A burning cigarette sagged at one end of a sink filled with dirty dishes. Dr. Stahl stuck the cigarette between her lips and, shrugging away my offer of help, picked up a glass and started to dry it vigorously.

  “Also,”she said. “The child breengs her violin. That means a lesson, no?”

  I began: “Since you were kind enough—”

  “Kind enough!” Lisl Stahl snorted. “You theenk I teach your daughter because of kindness? I am not kind. I hate cheeldren. To me they are all—monkeys, animals. I teach your daughter for this. I teach her because to hear her play makes me seeck and because three dollar is three dollar.”

  She dropped the dish towel and grabbed Dawn’s hand. “Come, child. Queeck, we get it over so I can get to my verk.”

  Dawn, staring at her worshipfully, ventured: “Oh, please, before we begin, couldn’t I just take a peek at the rats?”

  “No.” A sausage of ash dropped from Dr. Stahl’s cigarette onto the front of her slack suit. “Later, eef you are good with your lesson, perhaps you see the rats. Now—come.”

  She dragged Dawn into the living room. I followed. With a haphazard sweep of her hand, Dr. Stahl brushed various objects aside to make a clearing sufficiently large for my daughter to stand in.

  “Now, breeng out the instrument. Queeck.”

  My daughter was as near to being cowed as I had ever seen her. She fumbled the violin out of the case, tuned it and stood there, bow in hand, watching Dr. Stahl from round eyes.

  “Also. First lesson.” Dr. Stahl glared ferociously at Dawn. “Leesten, leetle girl. Everythi
ng you ever learn from that eediot Mrs. Graebner—gravedigger—forget. Every seengle thing—forget.”

  “But—” began Dawn.

  “Forget.”

  My daughter nodded meekly.

  “Okay. Now.” Dr. Stahl made a stab at Dawn’s right hand and twisted her wrist around the bow into a new and very uncomfortable-looking position. “Always the wrist so. Never, never change. Now A natural—the open A string. Queeck.”

  My daughter obliged with a long, rather wabbly note. Dr. Stahl’s nose, twitching with concentration, followed the passage of the bow over the string. When Dawn had finished, she broke into a torrent of technical jargon which my daughter presumably understood. Dr. Stahl then snatched the fiddle and played a long, beautiful note herself. She thrust the violin back at Dawn, once again twisting my daughter’s wrist around.

  “Now.”

  Dawn played another A. This time, although the noise sounded much the same to me, Dr. Stahl’s face broke into a bright smile.

  “Is better. Also, go on and on and on and on. Always the A string. Slow, steady, pure.” She turned to me. “For an hour now she play the A natural and never stop. If we leesten it make us into bughouse, so I take you to my laboratory, yes?”

  Since my furtive object in coming had been to maneuver myself into that barn, I agreed with alacrity. Dr. Stahl poured out final admonitions to Dawn, and we left her squeaking out her interminable A natural.

  Stalking through the unweeded garden, Dr. Stahl led me to the old barn and preceded me through a rickety door which I noticed was unlocked. For anyone whose impression of a famous scientist’s laboratory was based on the movies, Dr. Stahl’s workshop would have come as a great disappointment. The interior of the building was even more gimcrack than I had expected. A large sink had been installed along one wall, and next to it stood a massive drug cabinet and a chestlike device which I recognized as an extermination chamber. Apart from these importations from Boston, Bill Strong’s barn was much as it had always been.

  Except for the rats. In the body of the building where a few wisps of hay used to lie there were literally dozens of cages stacked on wooden benches. Each cage contained a single white rat. Some ran around vigorously; some scratched; some were sunk in a sleepy torpor. Each cage was meticulously catalogued with a label giving the exact scientific data on the animal it contained.

  Dr. Stahl scuttled down the rows of benches, peering into this cage and then that.

  “Rats,” she murmured caressingly. “Cheeldren I hate. Rats I love. Never, never unless for absolute need I make them die. Rats cost good money. Two dollar.”

  Unlike my daughter I was less interested in the rats than in the cabinet, which, I felt sure, contained Lisl Stahl’s lethal compounds. I moved to it while Dr. Stahl scurried to join me. The first thing I noticed about the cabinet was that it was unlocked. Like many other great scientists, whose experiments require order and accuracy down to the thousandth of a gram, Dr. Stahl seemed completely indifferent either to tidiness or the normal precautions of everyday life.

  The cabinet, which had three shelves, was stuffed with a clutter of bottles and phials. Dr. Stahl pointed to the upper shelf.

  “There I keep the compounds of Dr. Heelton. They I have to verk on, for it ees from them I make my leeving.” Her pointing finger dropped to the second shelf, where the disorder was at its height. “But here—here they are, Dr. Vestlake, the theengs of my own, the compounds for vich I verk and for vich someday I become famous in thees country as I was in Wien. Famous and reech again.” Her face was aglow. “That is vat I vant—to be reech, reech, feelthy, steenking reech.”

  Trying to make my interest sound purely scientific, I asked: “I suppose most of your compounds are based on hydrocyanic acid?”

  “Natürlich.” The earrings clattered. “Any eediot he know there is steel nothing so deadly as hydrocyanic acid. But my compounds all the time get better, stronger.” She grabbed a test tube and brandished it. “So strong it keel the elephant and no smell. The smell like the almonds—pouff, it is gone.” She put the test tube back. “Strong. Dangerous.”

  Two points had already been established by the rat lady. She did have deadly poisons with a hydrocyanic base, and she was sloppy with them. A child could have stolen enough poison from this open cabinet to provision a whole family of Borgias.

  I murmured: “Isn’t it rather dangerous with the cabinet unlocked? I suppose you keep an exact record of how much poison you have?”

  “Me? Vy should I care? Eef someone is eediot enough to come here and eat hydrocyanic lunch—pouff.” Dr. Stahl shrugged away all idiots. “One more fool dead.”

  I moved from the cabinet then and made a show of interest in the extermination chest. Dr. Stahl concentrated on one thing at a time, and it was clear that Nanny’s death was already a rather dull episode of the past to her. Consequently I felt pretty confident that I had not aroused her suspicions when I directed her into confirming the fact that everyone from the Hilton house had been over for a tour of inspection at lunchtime the day before.

  “I have to ask them for—how says one?—for policy.” Dr. Stahl lit another cigarette and blew contemptuous smoke rings. “I do not invite them for pleasure, no sir. That Mrs. Lanchester—that giddy, eediot old butterfly who just because she have the dreary Vice-President for father theenks she must be so clever, so arteestic. ‘Dear Albert—Mr. Albert Einstein, you know.’” Her mockery was as savage as Rosalind’s, if less phonetically accurate. “And Dr. Heelton. It ees bad enough to verk with heem. You theenk I come to Kenmore and leeck his boots because I love heem. Pooh!”

  The very sound of Dr. Hilton’s name seemed to inflame her indignation. She stared at me ferociously. “Vy I leeck his boots? I tell you. I leeck his boots because I am a refugee, a poor, peetiful refugee. Vat it matter that I had a name in Wien? Oh no. I am just some of that flotsam, that riffraff that ‘dear Adolf—Mr. Adolf Hitler, you know’—sweep out of Europe. I am to be so, so grateful to dear Dr. Heelton for so kindly the crust of bread in my mouth putting.”

  Because I felt that something significant might come from this unexpected tirade against Dr. Hilton, I encouraged it.

  “You don’t care for him,” I said mildly.

  Lisl Stahl gave a savage laugh. “Care for heem? I do not bother to care for heem or not to care for heem. I just contempt. Vat ees he? Look in the medical journals and vat you see?”

  She snatched a bound volume of medical magazines from a shelf and opened it at random, pointing down the pages.

  “Every article that ees important—Heelton, Heelton, Heelton, Heelton. Okay. You read these and you theenk thees ees the biggest doctor, the most brilliant brain in the country. And vy? Vy, because of leetle, tiny people like me. Vat happen ven I come to thees country? I come without a penny, without friends. I come being that most unforgivable of theengs—Eine Jüdin.”

  Her black, wonderfully intelligent eyes were fixed on my face. “Okay. Vat I do? I starve for a while and theenk myself lucky because in thees country at least they do not lock you up and beat you. Then at last I get this letter to veesit the Great Dr. Heelton of the Great Arkwright Institute. I go. Dr. Heelton right away geeve me a job. He put me in the most wonderful laboratory in the world. He say, ‘Go ahead. You are a famous scientist. Do your own verk—anything you like.’ It seems like an impossible dream. America, I say to myself. America, the country of opportunity, of golden side streets. And vat happen? I verk. At last I have enough material to publish my findings. I go to Dr. Heelton. He leestens. Oh, he ees so sympathisch. Write an article, he says. I go. I write the article. I breeng to heem. Fine, he says. And here it comes. Fine, he says. But you are a foreigner, you are not known in this country. Much better is eet for the best periodicals to have an American name they know. Vy not publish eet as by Stahl and Heelton? Vat can I say but yes? Also, the article ees published in the best periodicals in America. And how is she published? By Heelton and Stahl. Heelton with the letters so beeg it blin
ds—and Stahl? Oh, leetle, leetle, leetle. You get the magnifying glass, yes?”

  She paused. “What I make ees beeg success. Even now there ees not boat that comes to New York that ees not with my compound fumigated. And do I get reech, do I get glory? Oh no. Dr. Heelton he sit at his beeg desk and look like an owl that ees stuffed and overnight he becomes Heelton the great toxicologist, Heelton the Great Killer of Rats.”

  She shrugged furiously. “Vere I come from that ees criminal, crooked. But in thees country, oh no. Dr. Heelton, he ees not a crook. He ees just a Beeg Executive. It ees the same everywhere. Heelton ees not the only straw man in the high place. But now I learn better.” She spun round, pointing to the cabinet. “Thees time I get even better compounds, and Heelton know nothing. Oh no, nothing. Next time the article, she will not be by Heelton and Stahl. She will be by Stahl, Stahl, Stahl, Stahl, Stahl.”

  As a man and a doctor I had become fascinated by Dr. Stahl’s dizzy flow of words. In spite of her obvious prejudice which ignored the fact that executive ability and the intangible quality of getting good work out of temperamental chemists can be an invaluable talent, she had made a valid criticism of a certain type of professor of medicine. From what little I had seen of him, I was not surprised either that she should find Dr. Hilton one of those men.

  But that morning I was being primarily a detective, and the detective in me could not help adapting this new knowledge of Hilton’s character to the situation surrounding Dr. Roberts’s penicillin esters. It was more than possible that something similar to what had happened to Dr. Stahl was happening to Vic. And, since I was thinking in terms of murder, I realized that a setup of that kind was potentially a murderous one.

  Dr. Stahl, still quivering with righteous wrath, was prodding and poking at her rat cages as if to let off some of the steam still bottled up in her. Unwillingly I was developing a liking and respect for this vivid Austrian whose life, I was beginning to suspect, had been much harder and much more courageous than she would have me believe. I did not enjoy exploiting her to obtain information about the Hiltons. But, enjoyable or not, it was a job that had to be done.