Stanley was sitting in the waiting room when he showed his last patient out.
“Please come through to the dispensing room, Stanley,” he said as he locked the waiting room door.
“You are not going to show me anything disgusting are you, George? I can get a mite squeamish you know.”
George pointed to one of the two chairs by his dispensing bench. Stanley sat down and looked at the array of bottles, flasks and chemistry paraphernalia.
From a cupboard George took out a strange looking piece of glass apparatus, consisting of three glass globes that seemed to be stacked on top of each other, but which were interconnected by a glass tube that ran down inside from the top to the bottom globe. A rubber tube with a stopcock halfway along it was connected to a spout protruding from the middle globe.
“This is a Kipp generator for producing gases,” George explained, as he poured a powder into a special cylinder inside the middle globe. “This chemical is iron sulfide.”
“This dispensary of yours is probably as well equipped as the assayer’s laboratory,” Stanley remarked, pointing at the spring balance George used for weighing drugs and remedy ingredients.
“It is indeed,” George replied nonchalantly. “I do all my own assays, Stanley, just as my father used to do. He taught me more chemistry than I was ever shown in medical school.”
He assembled a few bottle of liquid in readiness.
“So is this another of your experiments you want me to see, George?”
“It is not an experiment, it is a test I’m going to do, Stanley. I just feel that I need a witness to confirm whatever result I get. But before I begin, I want you to smell something.”
He reached under the bench and took out the bowl of vomit. “What does this smell like to you, Stanley?” he asked as he whipped away the flannel.
The newspaperman leaned forward with closed eyes and sniffed gingerly.
“Garlic, I think. Yes, definitely, garlic.”
“That’s what I thought, too. This is Esme Levine’s vomit bowl.”
“So what does that tell you, George? That she has been eating garlic?”
“She is barely eating, Stanley. And she says that she hasn’t had any food with garlic in it. Now let’s do that test.”He picked up one of the bottles and poured liquid into the topmost globe.
“Have you heard of a man called Doctor Samuel Hahnemann?”
Stanley had a prodigious memory for obscure information. “Yes, he was the doctor who founded that discipline of medicine called homeopathy, wasn’t he. As far as I know it is all about giving very dilute amounts of things to stimulate healing in the patient.”
“Very good, Stanley. That is exactly right. I am not sure that I agree with the principles, myself. It doesn’t seem to make sense that the more dilute something is, the more effective it gets, but that is what homeopathic doctors believe. But that isn’t why I mention him. It is because the man was a great chemist and he introduced one of the most effective tests for a specific metal. Let’s see if it works.”
He kept pouring fluid into the top globe until he was satisfied there was enough.
“This liquid is sulfuric acid,” he explained. “Now watch what happens when I release the stopcock here. When I do that the air inside the middle chamber is expelled and the liquid in the top will flow right down to the bottom container.”
Stanley watched with fascination as the liquid did just that and rose up in the base and then up into the middle globe, where it started to fizz when it met the iron sulfide powder. Then suddenly he sat back. “Good heavens, George, what is that? It smells like bad eggs.”
“Exactly right, Stanley. In the flask the sulfuric acid and the iron sulphide react to produce iron sulfate and a gas called hydrogen sulfide. That is the bad egg smell.”
He closed the stopcock on the rubber tube and Stanley saw that the level of liquid in the middle chamber started to fall and that liquid was forced back up into the top globe.
“As more of the gas is produced it pushes the acid back into the top reservoir,” George explained. “We don’t need too much of it.”
He then filled a flat-bottomed conical flask with some of the vomitus from the bowl.
“This is the fiddly bit, Stanley. Especially with my finger all bandaged up. I now add some dilute hydrochloric acid to the stomach contents here. Then we pass some of the hydrogen sulfide gas through it.”
He put the end of the rubber tube into the flask. “If what I suspect is true, Stanley, you will see a yellow precipitate start to form. That is, you’ll see some yellow sludge.”
He opened the stopcock and the foul smelling gas started to bubble through the vomit liquid. Almost immediately a yellow precipitate started to form.”
“Stanley started to smile. “Congratulations, George. You were right. So what –?”
But George was not smiling. He was scowling.
“Damn it! That was what I didn’t want to find,” he said as he turned the stopcock off. “That yellow sludge is arsenic sulfide. It proves my worst fear. Our friend Carlton Levine has been poisoning his wife with arsenic.”
Chapter 11
THE MISSING CAT
Stanley stared at George in disbelief. “You are kidding me?”
“It is hardly a joking matter, Stanley.” He held up his hand with the bandaged finger. “I’ve been blinkered for so long, I am afraid. See my finger. I let Lucrezia, one of my Gila Monsters bite me. I was convinced a Gila bite can’t kill you and that it would not be any more poisonous than any other creature’s bite. Well, I was right, it hasn’t done any more than give me a painful and slightly puffed up hand, but I have to admit it did have some poison in it. The point is that it is not enough to be fatal.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with Carlton and him poisoning his wife?”
“It has been staring me in the face for days, Stanley. I should have recognized the symptoms, but because she has a medical condition, I chose not to think the worst, that my friend was slowly poisoning her with arsenic in her beef tea.”
“There’s no doubt?”
“I am afraid not.”
“Then we need to inform Marshal Steadman?”
George shook his head. “Jerry Steadman is in bed with a broken leg. I splinted it last week. No, let’s go and tell Sheriff Kelton. I think this will be a matter for the Cochise County Sheriff to investigate. He and the town marshal work together anyway, so he can arrest Carlton. Then I need to get back to see Esme.”
* * *
Sheriff C.B. Kelton was an upright, no-nonsense lawman of the old school. He had taken on the job after Camillus Fly, the town’s photographer and another of George’s friends had served for two years.
George and Stanley had both gone straight to his office in the Cochise County Courthouse on Toughnut Street. It was a grand fire red brick two-storied structure that had been built in 1882 in the form of a cross and which housed the Cochise County Courtroom, the sheriff’s office, the recorder’s office and the jailhouse.
Sheriff Kelton twirled an end of his long white mustache as he listened in disbelief to the town doctor and the newspaper editor’s tale.
“Hell if that isn’t the most ornery thing I’ve heard in a long time. And this Hahnemann test is surefire, Doc?”
“It is accurate, but there is a more sophisticated one called the Marsh test. I’ve never used that, whereas I knew how to do this one. But there is plenty more of the vomit if you want to get it analyzed by someone else.”
“Not yet, but I may do. The first thing I need to do is go see Mrs. Levine. While I do that I’ll get my deputy, Bill Meade to go and arrest Levine and bring him to the house.”
And so the sheriff, George and Stanley rode back to the Levine house in the sheriff’s buggy.
Esme was understandably surprised and somewhat overawed, when the three men came into her bedroom.
“I have brought the sheriff, Esme. I have bad news for you. I did the test I said I was going
to do on your vomit bowl and I found it contained arsenic.”
“Arsenic?” she repeated, aghast. “But…but that’s not possible. It…it is poisonous, isn’t it?”
“It is, Esme. That is why I brought Mister Bagg, who witnessed me doing the test and the Sheriff.”
Sheriff Kelton stepped forward. If he felt awkward he did not show it. He laid his hat on a chair and got straight to the matter. “Missus Levine, it is my belief that your husband has been poisoning your beef tea.”
Esme gasped and covered her face. Then she fainted.
* * *
Carlton Levine stood at the end of Esme’s bed, his face ashen white and his lips trembling. His wrists were cuffed and Deputy Bill Meade stood a pace behind him. George had revived Esme with a dose of smelling salts and she stared at her husband with a mixture of shock and horror.
“It…it all makes sense now,” she almost whispered. “How…how could you, Carlton?”
“Esme, I swear, I didn’t.”
Sheriff Kelton nodded at George. “Doc Goodfellow here says there is plenty of arsenic in that vomit bowl. How do you account for that, Levine?”
Carlton Levine was flustered. “I…I have not –”
“Did you hate me so much, Carlton?” Esme asked.
“I don’t hate you at all, Esme.”
She stared at him for a moment then turned her head and sobbed. “I loved you and would have done anything for you, yet you did this.”
“Esme, please. There must be some logical explanation for this.”
“Yes, Carlton, there must,” she replied, turning and looking straight at him. “If you haven’t been poisoning me, then who has?”
Sheriff Kelton jabbed a finger towards Carlton. “Well, Levine, did you do this or not? Have you been poisoning your wife?”
The schoolteacher stared helplessly at his wife for a moment, then looked pleadingly at George and Stanley, his friends.
“And you…you killed Tabitha, my cat!” she cried.
Carlton Levine stared at her with eyes open wide in the alarm of discovery. He gave a loud sigh and his shoulders slumped.
“I…I admit it,” he said, bowing his head and bursting into tears. “I did it. I tried to kill my wife.”
Sheriff Kelton suppressed a curse. “You poor excuse for a man. Take him to the jailhouse, Bill. As quick as you can.”
George waited while everyone else had gone. “Esme, I am so sorry. I never thought that Carlton would be capable of anything like that.”
She had dissolved into tears. “Oh Doctor Goodfellow, if you only knew what he was capable of! If you only knew.”
“Esme, now that I know what has been wrong with you, I can tell you that you will get better. It is just going to take time. I have some other patients to see, but I will call back later.”
* * *
The whole of Tombstone was shocked at the news that spread as fast as wildfire. In every shop, office, saloon and home, it was the sole topic of conversation for the next two days.
The hearing was held by Judge James Robinson, a martinet of the law with a black spade beard and ice cold eyes that peered from behind thick spectacles. The courtroom was packed to capacity.
Everyone in town had sympathy for Esme Levine, who was not present, being deemed too ill still to attend.
Carlton Levine had refused legal representation and sat with his head bowed as the charges were read out.
“To the charges against you, how do you plead?” Judge Robinson asked. “Guilty or not guilty?”
“Guilty!”Carlton replied calmly. “I am guilty.”
“Then there is nothing for it. The court accepts your admission and I will retire for half an hour to consider everything and then I shall pass sentence.”
He rapped his gavel and everyone stood while he left the court.
As the crowd filed out with many an angry muttering, having been deprived of the spectacle of a proper trial, George caught Stanley’s arm.
“Are you going to run an article on this?” he asked.
“Of course. The people have a right to know everything. And to tell you the truth, George, I am disgusted. I feel betrayed by him. Goodness only knows what his poor wife feels.”
“I feel bad that I just didn’t see it and that she suffered so much because of it.”
“George, any man that could do something like that deserves whatever is coming to him. I’m going to write that article as soon as we know what the judge decides. Personally, I think hanging might be too good for him.”
George winced, for he was not prepared for Stanley’s vindictive outburst. He still found it hard to convince himself that the Carlton Levine he had been friends with the past few years could have been slowly poisoning his wife.
Half an hour later the court reconvened and Judge Robinson summed up and passed sentence.
“You will be taken to the Yuma Territorial Prison, where I sentence you to thirty years hard labor. Sheriff Kelton will arrange to have you taken there by prison wagon tomorrow.”
Carlton Levine sat through it and merely nodded his head. He looked at no one when he was led away.
George joined the throng as everyone filed out again. This time the hostility and anger was almost palpable. Many people were muttering that Carlton Levine ought to be hanged.
* * *
George spent the afternoon in his surgery, listening to the opinions of his patients as he diagnosed and treated them.
Fiona Parker was among them.
“Ah, your eyes seem better now, Mrs. Parker.”
“They are, Doctor, thank you. I just…I just wanted to ask how Mrs. Levine is?”“Why don’t you call and see her yourself?”
“I don’t think she would welcome me. You see, I – was, that is, I mean I am very close to Carlton. I don’t know what we will do without him. The school is closed, of course.”
“I understand. Well, she is still very ill, but I am hopeful that she will start to pick up now that she is no longer taking poison into her system. Stella, my housekeeper calls in to see her every afternoon to make sure she tries to have some food. She still refuses to come into hospital.”
“I hope she gets better soon. Could you pass on my best wishes when you see her next.”
“Of course I will.”
She looked as if she wanted to say more, but with a demure nod of her head, she left.
* * *
The mood in town seemed to be getting more and more heated as the saloons did a roaring trade and their clientele drank themselves into an indignant furor. That evening about eight o’clock Stanley called on George’s surgery after he finished work and they had gone for a drink in the Oriental Saloon.
“I can’t say that I like the talk that is going around,” George said.
“No, nor do I,” Stanley agreed. “I may have been over-verbal myself this morning, but I calmed down as I wrote my article. Now I simply can’t believe that the three of us were last in here playing chess.”
At the thought of their chess competition George immediately had a strange feeling of foreboding, not dissimilar to the ones he had before, when Edith had been worried about Lucrezia and when he started to suspect that Esme Levine’s illness might have been due to poison.
He lit his pipe and blew a stream of blue smoke upwards to merge into the tobacco smoke haze that hung over the saloon.
“Come over to the table we were playing chess at, Stanley. I want to knock a few ideas around in the air.”
They took their drinks to the corner table.
“First off, I’m worried about the way folks are talking. I can remember when folks got riled up back in 1883 when John Heath was lynched on Toughnut Street. That happened when folks got liquored up like this. It would just need a rabble-rouser to start it off, especially when Carlton’s being taken to Yuma tomorrow.”
“Sheriff Kelton would never let that happen.”
“No, but when you talked about chess that set me off thinking, Stanley. What if
Carlton is innocent?”
“What are you talking about, George. You did that Hahnemann test, You proved that there was arsenic in Esme Levine’s system.”
“Yes, but I assumed it was from the beef tea that Carlton was making her.”
“What else could it have been?”
“I think I know,” George said, snapping his fingers. “I should have realized when she mentioned the cat. She said that he had killed her cat.”
“I don’t understand, George.”
“No, of course you don’t. How could you? The thing is that Esme Levine had a cat called Tabitha that used to lie on her bed. A few days ago it went missing.”
“So what is all this to do with chess?”
“Carlton’s chess style, Stanley. He uses the Italian style. All flamboyance. He sacrifices pieces to distract you into missing a move. That’s what he has done here. He has sacrificed himself.”
“For who?”
“For Fiona Parker.”
“Why? Tell me what you are thinking.”
“They were having an affair, Stanley.”
“So he is saving her honor? He’s willing to go to prison to do hard labor for thirty years, just to keep her name out of it?” He sipped his drink then shook his head. “But why is that a sacrifice? Why plead guilty when he could have just brazened it out in court. With a good lawyer he could even have gotten away with it.”
“I think it was a sacrifice, because Carlton was playing chess. Or rather, Esme Levine was playing chess with him. The other night Carlton told me that she was actually a better chess player than him. And if you think back, Stanley, you will remember that when she asked him why she had been poisoning her, she then asked who else could have done. That was a clue I should have picked up on. She was telling him that unless he admitted it, she would draw Fiona Parker into it all. She knew that they were having an affair, you see.”
Stanley drained his drink. “Wow! It is all possible, George, but unless Carlton was prepared to admit that he was having an affair, how is any of this relevant? How could it make matters any different?”
George leaned forward. “The missing cat may be the answer, Stanley. It liked cinnamon and arrowroot biscuits that Fiona Parker made for Esme. I think they were made with a recipe from a book she teaches from. Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, that was it. I actually saw the cat licking one of the biscuits and going off with it. Then it disappeared a few days ago. It may have died from arsenic poisoning, not gone missing.”
West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels Page 78