Rest You Merry

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “He’s what?”

  “Dead. Deceased. Defunct. I walked into his office a few minutes ago and found him. You’d better get over here. No, I won’t touch anything.”

  Having done his best to sound the alarm, Shandy decided he’d better look for any sign of life in the building. At last a babble of voices led him to the mail room, where four or five secretaries and assistants were gathered around the sorting table sharing a spread of Christmas pastries. They were only mildly abashed at being caught.

  “Come in, Professor. Care for some coffee?”

  “Er—yes, thank you. Black. I’ve—er—” he stalled, wondering what line to take. Direct questioning might be less productive than shock tactics.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, something terrible has happened. Dr. Cadwall—”

  Kindly Miss Tibbett spoiled the effect he was trying to make by thrusting a paper cup full of boiling hot coffee at him. “Here, drink this right up. It’s good for shock.”

  “Miss Tibbett, I am not in shock.” Nevertheless, he took a sip of the scalding liquid. “Dr. Cadwell—”

  “What’s wrong? Is it his heart? Did he fall on the ice? Don’t tell me he—” they were all talking at once. Shandy had to raise his voice to make himself heard.

  “Dr. Cadwall has died. He is in his office. Just—sitting there.” Shandy drank more coffee. “I’ve notified Security and Grimble is on his way over. Perhaps I shouldn’t have left him alone, but the building seemed strangely empty, and I was wondering if any of you—”

  “Bumped him off?” the mail boy suggested.

  “That’s not funny, Charles,” snapped Miss Tibbett. “Professor Shandy means did we see him looking ill or—or anything?”

  From a further confusion of tongues, Shandy gleaned that the comptroller’s secretary was out with a cold, that nobody had seen Dr. Cadwall enter the building, and that in truth those present had spent most of the morning doing precisely what they were doing now. He finished his coffee and went back to the main corridor, with the lot of them tiptoeing after him like the chorus in an operetta. Nobody was putting on much show of grief. Cadwall had not been a liked man. Still, he was one of their own. As they neared his office, the chatter died and the faces turned somber.

  “Who’s going to tell his wife?” whispered one of the clerks.

  “I’m sure I don’t want to,” sighed the professor. “Twice in three days would be a bit much.”

  “Oh, that’s right! You’re the one who found Mrs. Ames. What a strange coincidence. I wonder who’s going to be next. These things always go in threes, my mother used to say.”

  “Thank you for those words of cheer and comfort, Miss Baxter.”

  “Professor, I didn’t mean—”

  Miss Baxter’s protestation was cut off by the arrival of the security chief. He was not happy. “For Christ’s sake, Professor, what have you done now?”

  “I haven’t done anything,” Shandy snarled back, “except to open the comptroller’s office door and close it again.”

  “You didn’t touch nothing?”

  “Only the doorknob.”

  “Why the hell not? I’d have thought you’d take his pulse or something. Maybe he’s just havin’ a fit.”

  “He is not having a fit. Dr. Cadwall is dead. Go and look for yourself.”

  Grimble showed a not surprising inclination to stall. “What did he die of?”

  “How should I know? I’m no doctor.”

  “Doctor. That’s what we got to do, call the doctor.”

  “I’ve already called him,” said Shandy.

  Grimble sighed and decided he ought to look in on the corpse to make sure there really was one.

  “I guess we better not get any more fingerprints on this doorknob. Anybody got a clean handkerchief?”

  “There’s a box of Kleenex on Charlene’s desk,” somebody suggested.

  Grimble took a couple of tissues and made a great performance of wrapping them around the handle. “Don’t none of you come in here. Is that how you left him, Professor?”

  “Exactly.”

  The man was making an ass of himself, of course, but to call him one in front of office personnel would be an act of gratuitous cruelty. Two corpses in three days, as Shandy himself had remarked only a few minutes before, were a bit much for anybody. Perhaps this was harder on the security chief since he had to at least put on a show of coping, while Shandy need only dither on the sidelines.

  Except, of course, that President Svenson had dumped the responsibility flat on his shoulders. That Cadwall’s sudden death could be unrelated to Jemima Ames’s was just not possible.

  Now that he was mercifully numbed by shock, the professor found he could study the body quite objectively. There was no sign of a wound or a weapon. The color of the skin was bad, but Ben had always had an unhealthy complexion. There was a pen lying on the desk, and a pile of checks were scattered around, as though he’d been in the act of signing them when the final spasm occurred.

  “Just—sitting there working.” Miss Tibbett, whose thoughts must have been running parallel to Shandy’s, craned her neck through the door. “I’ll bet he never knew what hit him. Was it his heart, I wonder?”

  “It was an embolism,” pronounced another. “My aunt had one. Popped off in the midst of peeling potatoes.”

  “Ugh, stop it! You’re giving me the creeps,” cried the youngest of the group. “Professor Shandy, what do you think?”

  “I think we ought to abandon futile speculation and wait for the doctor,” he said. “In the meantime, perhaps it would be wise for you people to—er—resume your customary functions. Don’t you agree, Grimble?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. You folks get back to work. Don’t nobody leave the building till we find out what the doctor says.”

  “But what about lunch?” protested the boy from the mail room. “It’s almost noontime.”

  “If I know you, buster, you been eatin’ ever since you got here. Don’t worry, you ain’t goin’ to starve. When did he say he was comin’, Professor?”

  “His wife said she’d give him the message as soon as he gets in, for what that’s worth. He’s alleged to be on his way home from the hospital.”

  “Means he’s goin’ to eat his lunch and take a nap, most likely,” Grimble moaned. “We won’t see him for another hour. I don’t s’pose there’s a spare cup o’ coffee around anywheres?”

  “I’ll bring you some,” said Miss Tibbett. “Cream and three sugars, isn’t it?”

  She headed back toward the mail room. The others straggled after her, some looking relieved, some disappointed.

  “At any rate, the police should be here soon,” Shandy said hopefully.

  “You called them, too?”

  “Of course.”

  “What the hell for? Look, Professor, I don’t bust into your lab an’ tell you how to grow your turnips, do I? I already caught hell for bringin’ Ottermole up to the Crescent when we found Mrs. Ames. Dr. Svenson says he don’t want no police called in for anything short of murder.”

  “What makes you think this isn’t one?”

  “Oh, Jesus! Why should anybody want to kill the comptroller? He’s the guy who signs the checks.”

  “Very funny. Then why did you go through that performance about not touching anything?”

  “Oh hell, that was just part o’ the act. Got to show I’m on my toes, ain’t I?”

  They sat scowling silently for a moment. Then Shandy remarked, “It’s interesting that you mentioned Mrs. Ames.”

  “You tryin’ to make out there’s some connection here?”

  “We have to look at the facts.”

  “What facts? Mrs. Ames falls off a stool an’ busts her head. Dr. Cadwall takes a fit or somethin’.”

  Miss Tibbett appeared with coffee and cake. Shandy gave up the struggle. Grimble would admit to nothing he didn’t have to. They’d just sit here glaring at one another until somebody came to take over the responsibility. He might
as well call Helen and cancel their luncheon. Sighing, he got up and moved toward the door.

  “Hey, Professor, you ain’t leavin’?”

  “I’m going down the hall to use Miss Tibbett’s phone. I was supposed to meet someone for lunch.”

  “Come to think of it, with all that telephonin’ you been doin’, you got hold of Mrs. Cadwall yet?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Shandy was forced to admit.

  “Should o’ thought you’d call her first off the bat. Better do it now, hadn’t you?”

  “Grimble, why can’t you tell her? I got stuck the last time.”

  “What the hell, we takin’ turns? I wouldn’t know what to say. Anyway, you found him.”

  “God, yes! After this, people will run when they see me coming.”

  Like it or not, he couldn’t decently postpone the task any longer. To his intense relief, Hannah Cadwall didn’t answer her phone. She was probably out hectoring somebody, in her new role as Jemima’s successor. How would she react when she found out she was a widow? Ben had not seemed a lovable man, but one never knew.

  Shandy made a couple more calls, to the commissary and other places where she might possibly show up, leaving messages for her to get in touch with her husband’s office. Then he called Mary Enderble, who sensibly didn’t waste his time asking questions he couldn’t answer but said she’d look for Hannah around the Crescent and down at the supermarket.

  Lastly, with extreme reluctance, he dialed the library and asked for Miss Marsh.

  “Helen, you’d better go along to lunch without me. I’m in another mess.”

  “Poor Peter! What is it this time?”

  Grimble appeared at his elbow all of a sudden, mouthing, “Is that her? What’s she sayin’?”

  Shandy fought down an urge to belt him over the head with the telephone.

  “I regret having to break our appointment, Miss Marsh,” he said severely, “but unforeseen circumstances have—er—circumstanced. I’ll look for you in the faculty dining room if I manage to get out of here any time soon. If not, I’ll get back to you when I can.”

  He hung up and turned around to scowl at Grimble. “No, I haven’t been able to reach Mrs. Cadwall. Mrs. Enderble’s out looking for her. Why don’t you send one of your men to help?”

  “Who, for instance? They’re all on their lunch break but Ned an’ he can’t leave the office. She’ll show up sooner or later.”

  They wandered back into the dead man’s office, hideously fascinated by that waxwork figure in the high-backed leather swivel chair.

  “Don’t look much different dead than alive,” the security chief grunted. “Old Smiley, that’s what the kids called him. Don’t expect he’ll be much missed.”

  “I think he will, you know,” Shandy contradicted. “He was an able and hard-working administrator. I only wish—”

  “Wish what?”

  “If you want the truth, I wish I knew whether he was also honest.”

  “Why shouldn’t he be?”

  “Why should he be dead?”

  “Will you quit harpin’ on that? He died, that’s all. He just died!”

  “Grimble, for God’s sake, I’m not deaf. What’s the matter with you?”

  Well might Shandy ask. The man’s face was purple, his hands trembled, his eyes were staring wider than the corpse’s. Still he insisted, “Nothin’s the matter with me! It’s just—oh, What the hell? Havin’ my routine upset, hangin’ around here with a dead body while the work piles up—Svenson on my ear about one damn thing after another—now you tryin’ to make out—oh, the hell with it! I’m goin’ down the hall to see if they got any more coffee. If the doctor shows up, tell him I’ll be right back.”

  Shandy didn’t care. Being alone with Cadwall was less disagreeable than having Grimble there with him. Besides, it gave him a chance to look around. He knew he ought not to touch anything, but surely there was no harm in using his eyes.

  He was sure Cadwall had been poisoned. As an agriculturist, the professor knew altogether too much about pesticides and their effects. Though he and Tim had for years been waging a ferocious battle against such toxins, there was still no dearth of lethal substances around Balaclava. But what poison would kill in just that way, and how was it got into the victim?

  There was nothing on the desk to give a clue, only a clean blotter, the pile of checks, a few pens on a tray, and two baskets marked “in” and “out,” both of them empty. There was no disarrangement of the victim’s garments. Ben had always dressed like Calvin Coolidge, with starched collars and tightly knotted neckties and a buttoned-up vest under a buttoned-up suit coat. Even in summer, his only concession to the thermometer was to shed his vest. Presumably somebody could have sneaked up behind him and thrust a hypodermic needle through those several layers of clothing, but Shandy could see no indication that anybody had.

  A person entering this office on evil intent during Illumination Week would be taking a special risk, simply because the normally busy Administration Building was so quiet. Should any of the staff happen by chance to be at his or her rightful post, the chance of being both observed and remembered was extremely high. It would make far greater sense to administer a slow-acting substance like arsenic and be far away when the stuff began to work.

  Arsenic, being tasteless, was easy to give but Shandy didn’t think it had been used in this case. He couldn’t force himself to sniff at those slack lips but thought he could detect the disagreeable odor of gastric upset. Vomiting would be consistent with arsenic poisoning, but wouldn’t it keep on until the victim died in agony, since nobody had been around to get help? Shouldn’t Ben have been found on the floor in the men’s room, not sitting here at his desk? It looked more as if the comptroller had got hold of something that made him sick, then put him permanently to sleep.

  Ben wouldn’t necessarily be alarmed at a sudden attack of nausea. He always welcomed a new symptom. If it took the form of cramps and diarrhea, he’d credit the laxative he’d no doubt dosed himself with the night before. If he vomited, he’d assume he was coming down with one of the viral bugs that were always around. Anticipating a stay in bed, he’d make a valiant stab at finishing up his work before he went home.

  What sort of poison might give you a bellyache, then make you helpless and comatose before you realized how sick you were? Since plants were his business, Shandy’s thoughts naturally turned to vegetable poisons. Why not? Why should a killer stick his neck out to buy or steal a lethal compound when plenty of local windowsills offered death for the picking, even in midwinter?

  Poinsettias and mistletoe, for instance, were far less innocent than most people supposed, but Shandy wasn’t sure how they’d act. For guaranteed results, a murderer would be wiser to stick with the alkaloids. Trusty old Conium maculatum would leave Ben’s mind clear enough to keep signing checks while his lungs were gradually paralyzed, but where could one find poison hemlock in December?

  Solanine produced narcosis and paralysis. All you needed for that was a green potato, or the eyes of one that had begun to sprout. Then there were the simple heart depressants such as Cannabis sativa. A concentrated dose of pot could take a person so high he’d never come back. People weren’t supposed to grow the stuff around campus, but there were always a few who thought it cute to do so.

  All at once, Shandy could stand the sight of the dead man no longer. He went out and stood by the window in the corridor, hoping to catch sight of Dr. Melchett’s car. However, nothing was to be seen but trodden snow and leaden sky and trees with bare branches moving in the raw December wind: maples silvery and slim-looking even when their trunks could hardly be spanned with outstretched arms, oaks rugged and stubborn as Thorkjeld Svenson with brown leaves still clinging to their boughs, a few graceful streaks of white bark where the birch-leaf miner hadn’t yet managed to complete its dirty work; all silhouetted against the welcome emerald of pine and the deeper green of yews grown tall and knock-kneed in the many years since they were pla
nted. There was a lot of yew around Balaclava. It made a goodly show at small expense and could be counted on to come safely through hard New England winters, though new students always had to be cautioned against eating the translucent red berries and animals kept from grazing on the foliage.

  In fact, a decoction of taxine distilled from the omnipresent yew needles could also function as a heart depressant, working unfelt in the system until it brought just such a death as Ben’s, if he remembered correctly. Shandy was pondering the various possibilities, wishing he could get hold of Professor Muencher’s book on plant poisons or some other reliable text, when a four-year-old maroon Oldsmobile pulled up in front of the building and a shortish man in a dapper camel’s hair car coat got out, pulling a pigskin satchel off the seat. Shandy hurried to open the door for him.

  “Dr. Melchett, I’m relieved to see you. You got the message about Dr. Cadwall?”

  “Only that I was supposed to get over here as fast as possible. I haven’t even eaten lunch yet. Where is he? Why haven’t you taken him to the hospital? Or the infirmary? What’s the matter with him?”

  “Er—he’s dead. I called in on a—er—matter of business and found him sitting in his chair, exactly as he is now.”

  “Well, well.”

  Melchett set down his satchel on the comptroller’s desk and hung his coat very carefully over the back of a wooden chair. “You never know, do you? I’d have said Ben was good for another fifty. Told him so at his last check-up. He didn’t believe me, of course. Ben always liked to think he was on his last leg. Apparently he was right and I was wrong. Just goes to show we doctors aren’t infallible, much as we’d like to think we are.”

  He bent over and rolled back one of the dead man’s eyelids. “Where’s Hannah?”

  “We’ve been trying to get hold of her.”

  “Ah. Gone shopping, no doubt. It’s amazing the amount of time women can spend in stores. I’d like to ask her what Ben’s been dosing himself with.”

  “I’ve been wondering about the vegetable alkaloids,” Shandy ventured.

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re so easy to get hold of, I suppose, and because I’ve seen farm animals poisoned by feeding on them. They may remain in the body for some time with no symptoms, you know, then cramp and coma—”