“Didn’t I mention that? It was the son-in-law. The doctor. He was also the family physician. I wonder why Dr. Townsend isn’t?”
“I don’t believe it’s considered good practice nowadays for a doctor to attend the members of his own family. Nevertheless, if there is any poisoning going on, he is certainly in the best position to do it. I’m keeping him in mind.”
“Good. In the meanwhile, please tell me about the others.”
“There is a sister. About sixty. A spinster. There is a grandson, the only child of another daughter, who is dead. Name of Jack Riley. A worthless fellow, I gather, but not without charm. There is, finally, a grandniece who is called Fanny. Last name Burnett. A lovely girl, always cheerful and vivacious. She’s the only one, according to the doctor and Mrs. Weed, who ever shows any real affection for the old man.”
“Mrs. Weed?”
“The housekeeper. Besides her, there are a cook, a maid, and a yard man. Mrs. Weed has been with old Rufus for many years. She has developed a kind of possessive feeling about him, and is apparently fiercely protective of what she considers his interests. Dr. Loos has made an ally of her in this business. She watches over the old man like a mother hawk and personally checks everything he eats and drinks.”
“And still he continues in suspiciously failing health?”
“He does.”
“That rather puts the good Mrs. Weed on a spot, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“The doctor wouldn’t be the first to make a mistake in an ally.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Lieutenant, I am thoroughly captivated by your little drama. The cast of characters offers fascinating possibilities. Tell me, what are the provisions of the old man’s will? I suppose, since a considerable fortune is involved, that avarice is a possible motive.”
“It is, and it applies to all of them. There’s nothing devious or secretive about old Rufus. All five are generously provided for, and they all know it. After his death none of them will need to worry about money, I should say, for as long as he or she lives.”
“Well, I don’t think we need to pursue that any further at the moment. Someone, apparently, is simply in a hurry to collect. What I would like to know now is what method or technique is suspected. In what way is the poison being introduced into the old man’s system? Surely, if the doctor is right in his conviction, it must be something quite clever to be sustained so effectively in spite of all vigilance.”
The Lieutenant sat staring into the small blaze, rolling his empty glass between his palms. I relieved him of the glass and filled it.
“In the beginning and for some time afterward,” he said, “Dr. Loos was convinced that the old man was taking the poison orally. That’s when he came to me for help. With his assistance, and that of Mrs. Weed, we sampled and analyzed, I’ll swear, everything the old man took into his mouth—food, drink, mouth wash, medicine, even the solution he puts his dentures in. But we found nothing unusual—not the slightest trace of any poison.”
“What kind of poison, by the way, does the doctor suspect?”
“The symptoms point to arsenic, but he contends, and I agree with him, that it should be a simple matter to identify the poison and the poisoner once we determine how it is being given.”
“I also agree with that. In this case, as you have presented it, motive is obviously secondary to method.”
“That brings me to Dr. Loos’ current conviction. Failing to find the slightest evidence of oral ingestion, he is now convinced that the poison is being absorbed.”
“So? Regular external applications absorbed by the skin?”
“Something like that.”
“Have you also thoroughly investigated and analyzed pertinent items suggested by this theory?”
“Oh, of course. Right down to the old man’s shaving lather and lotion. Even the blade of the old straightedge razor he uses. He is confined to his bed now, and his physical contacts are easily kept under strict observation.”
“Do the members of the household visit him in his bedroom?”
“Yes. He’s a great family man, as I said—he won’t listen to a word against any of them. However, Mrs. Weed usually manages to be present. A devil of a lot depends on the integrity of this woman, I know, but Dr. Loos has complete confidence in her, and I have a feeling his confidence is justified.”
Risen sighed and drank from his glass, then leaned back in his chair with the definite indication that he had finished a wearisome account.
I waited quietly to see if he would take it up again, but he did not.
“Is that all?” I said.
“That’s all.”
“I must say that you have brought me a rare puzzle, Risen.”
“Is that all you have to say?” He gave me a sardonic sidewise glance. “You know all the characters and you have all the facts. Now let’s have the solution. Tell me who is poisoning old Coker, and how.”
I had been waiting for the challenge, and I’ll not deny there was an element of malice in my reply.
“As to the solution,” I said, “I am not prepared to claim that much. I have, however, formed a working hypothesis, based strictly on your account, which I think you should at least put to the test.”
“The devil you have! What is it?”
“As one must in mathematics, in order to proceed at all, I’ve made certain assumptions. I assume that Dr. Loos is a competent physician and that his evaluation of the situation is therefore basically correct. I assume that you are a competent policeman and reporter, and have given me a completely accurate report. I do not, however, assume that Dr. Loos’ absorption theory is necessarily valid. In my opinion, you have not exhausted the possibilities of oral ingestion.”
“I’d like to know what possibility we’ve overlooked.”
“So you shall. I suggest that Rufus Coker is swallowing minute doses of white arsenic. The doses would have to be minute, for two-tenths of one gram of white arsenic can be fatal. Such a minute dose could be carried into the mouth by a swallow of food or liquid, by any one of innumerable small and ordinary actions—provided the minute dose were already on the lips.”
“What in God’s name are you trying to say?”
“Let us clarify the matter by employing the Socratic method. Who, by your account, is the one person who shows affection for the old man? How, between the sexes, is affection traditionally demonstrated? What part of the anatomy, on the distaff side, is usually coated with a kind of perfumed and colored salve that could act both as a protective shield for the wearer and an adherent which could hold a minute dose of deadly powder until it could literally, with all the aspects of innocent affection, be rubbed off onto the corresponding part of someone else?
“If I were you, Lieutenant, I would interrupt this little demonstration the next time it occurs. In the words of the song so popular in my youth, A little kiss each morning, a little kiss each night…
We sat for a while in silence. Then Risen deliberately set his empty glass on the edge of the hearth and slowly stood up.
“Oh!” he said. “Oh, my God!”
He walked over to the door, and taking up his hat and coat he went out into the late gray afternoon.
I did not see him again until about forty-eight hours later when he returned to concede that I had been precisely right. He had two long scratches on his left cheek, but he wore them with pride as the marks of a triumphant encounter. It was the first time to his knowledge, he said, that anyone in his precarious trade had ever wiped poison from the lips of a pretty girl.
THE SATIN-QUILTED BOX
Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1964.
Folk who had known Miriam Sterling for a long time were occasionally surprised to remember that she had on
ce been a pretty girl. She may have been somewhat too thin, which had given her a deceptive look of frailty; but her flesh was nicely distributed on a frame of fine bones, and she had, besides, a kind of inner glow and intensity that made her quite appealing.
Having remembered this, these same folk were likely to realize—again with a mild feeling of surprise—that Miriam still had the basic ingredients of prettiness, and to wonder, therefore, why she was not considered a pretty woman. Her bones were still good, and her flesh was still firm, but she seemed, somehow, to have faded. Indeed, she gave a kind of spinsterish impression, but she had been married for fifteen years, and only the most perceptive understood that she was not really faded, as she seemed, but cold and hungry for want of love.
The truth was, she had married the wrong man and had been faithful for fifteen years to the wrong husband. Martin Sterling was a bully. He was not, however, a bully of the garden variety. He was abusive without ever raising his voice. He was menacing without ever making a direct threat. He was cruel without violence.
But even the most perceptive observer, noting the change in Miriam over the years, would hardly have blamed it on her husband. As a good husband, Martin took his pleasure only from his wife; but as a gentleman of some discrimination, he preferred the needle to the ax…
It was Martin himself who first remarked on the new change in Miriam. It was not actually so much a change as a reversal of the change that had been occurring for fifteen years. Somehow, for some reason, she was recovering that inner glow and intensity that had always been, for her, the difference between plainness and prettiness.
Seating himself across from her at the breakfast table, reaching with one hand for his coffee and with the other for his newspaper, Martin glanced at her indifferently, as usual, and then stopped, his hands suspended in two directions, to peer sharply.
“What’s come over you?” he said.
“Nothing at all,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
But color had risen in her cheeks, and she had difficulty for a moment in taking a slice of bread out of the toaster.
“Why, you’re almost pretty again,” he said, “which is something I haven’t been able to say truthfully for years.”
“You haven’t said it at all,” she said, “truthfully or otherwise.”
“Perhaps someone else has been saying it. Have you found a lover, my dear?”
She was about to protest hotly when she saw the sheen of malice in his eyes and the faint curve of contempt on his lips. Knowing then that he was deliberately taunting her, she merely shrugged and buttered her toast.
“You’re being absurd,” she said, hardly above a whisper.
“Well, never mind.” His voice was derisive as he completed his movements toward coffee and newspaper. “You mustn’t expect too much, my dear Miriam. It’s wise to recognize one’s limitations.”
He read his paper and drank his coffee and ate his two eggs, and then he left for his brokerage office downtown, dressed impeccably in a dark blue suit and a dark blue tie with a thin diagonal pinstripe of dark red. After he was gone, she left the breakfast things until later and went directly upstairs to her bedroom.
It was a pleasant room with a high ceiling and pale walls and eastern windows that collected the morning sun and splashed it in patterns across the floor. It was, moreover, neat and orderly—everything in its place and rarely moved; for it had been a long time since she had shared the room with another person. But in spite of the bright cheeriness, the room seemed, like Miriam, faded and cold and somehow hungry.
She went over and sat on the edge of the bed, which she had made herself just after rising. Sitting with her ankles and knees primly together and her back and head erect, she gave the impression of waiting in anticipation of some sound or movement; and she was, indeed, engaged in a small ritual that had lately given her a measure of warmth and hope and pleasure.
She was waiting for release—the silent word of an inner voice that would tell her, at the climax of her anticipation, when it was precisely the right instant to do what she had come here to do.
Having heard the voice, she got up abruptly and went across to her dressing table. Kneeling, she took from a bottom drawer a small box quilted with satin and returned with it to the bed. She unlocked the box with a tiny key that she had been carrying in a pocket of her dress.
The box unlocked, she waited again, apparently for a second word from the inner voice; and then, with hands that suggested reverence, she raised the lid and removed a thick packet of letters. She began slowly to read the letters in the exact order in which she had received them.
The first letter had come on a Tuesday about six months ago. At first, on reading it, she had been offended and slightly angry, for it was a tender letter expressing the love of an anonymous writer. The signature, underscored, was simply Devoted.
For a minute she had considered turning the first letter over to Martin, but she had dreaded the certainty of his mockery, which would have been far worse than his anger, and she had quickly rejected the idea. But neither had she destroyed the letter. She had, instead, put it away in the quilted box, and in the next week, driven by a hunger that the letter’s tenderness fed, she had removed it and read it at least half a dozen times.
The next Tuesday the second letter had come, and all the others had followed on that precise weekly schedule. Once the schedule had been established, she awaited the arrival of each letter eagerly, for she had lost her initial anger and instead felt a stirring and strengthening response to the tenderness of the writer.
Martin, at breakfast, had been right in a way. Miriam had found a lover. She did not know what he looked like, for he had never described himself. She had not known his name, for he had never named himself. She did not know where he lived, for he gave no address. She only knew that he had the felicity of phrase to express a gentle and enduring love in terms that warmed her flesh and awakened her heart. He often watched her from afar, he wrote, and she had begun going out more frequently and for longer periods.
Meanwhile, as Martin had remarked at breakfast, she had recovered the inner light and warmth that came from the feeling of being loved and wanted.
But now, after six months, there would be no more letters. The last one in the packet, the one that had come the preceding Tuesday, told her so. In her reading of the letters she had come finally to this one, and she took it from its envelope and read it again, lingering over each word, repeating in her mind the phrases that incited her to the most intense response.
I shall write no more, she read. You must understand, my darling, that the time for writing is past. Now we must act. We must meet now or never. There is a small cocktail lounge in town where lovers go, and I ask you to come there at three o’clock on the afternoon of Friday next. That is three days from now, and you will have time to free yourself of any commitments you may have made. If you do not come, I shall never hold your hands and tell you of my love. I shall go away in silence and we shall always thereafter be alone, you and I, each in a separate place. Please don’t let me go. Please come. The place is called the Candlelight Lounge, and I shall be wearing, so that you may know me before we speak, a white carnation in my lapel.
And now it was Friday, ten o’clock in the morning of the day, and time was out, or nearly out, for indecision. She must decide definitely if she would go or not; but there was really no decision to make that had not been made instantly three days ago, and she knew, as she had known all along, that she would go.
Finally conceding this to herself, she began at once to feel the excitement grow and grow within her until she thought she could not possibly contain it for five minutes, let alone for five hours.
She returned the letters to the satin-quilted box, and the box to the drawer, and went downstairs again. She cleared the breakfast table and did the d
ishes and went about her light housekeeping as usual, because it was absolutely essential for her to do something, anything—and somehow time was endured, and somehow excitement was contained…
She bathed at one o’clock and began to dress at 1:30. She selected her dress and accessories with great care, but she was, even so, finished and ready to leave by two o’clock, which was too early; so she forced herself to sit down and smoke a cigarette.
She left the house at 2:15 and drove downtown to a municipal parking lot, where she left her car. From the lot it was only a short distance to the Candlelight Lounge, and she walked. She arrived there at five minutes before three.
Inside, the lounge was soft with shadows that were pricked here and there by the tiny lights of guttering candles. Additional light came from fluorescent tubing that ran around the walls just below the ceiling, and from the bright face of an electric clock behind the bar.
Miriam paused near the door until her eyes were adjusted to the shadows, and then she picked her way among tables to one on the far side. At this early hour there were only a few patrons in the lounge, and only one waitress on duty. After a proper interval the waitress came to take her order, but Miriam, looking up, shook her head and smiled.
“Not just yet,” she said. “I’m waiting for a friend.”
Her excitement was now so intense, was such a throbbing thing, so alive and aching in her breast, that it was a wonder to her that any words came freely from her throat. How could she speak at all? By what miracle did she even draw her breath?
It was now, on the bright face of the clock behind the bar exactly three o’clock.
Then she saw Martin. He was standing at the entrance, staring directly at her. In the first shock of seeing him she thought wildly of escape, of hiding where there was no place to hide, but he had caught sight of her and was walking toward her, and she realized she could not move.
The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK Page 34