Wife or Death

by Ellery Queen

  Since Angel had been missing twelve days when her body was found, and considering the other circumstances, it seemed likely that she had died during the night of her disappearance. And that's real progress, Denton thought sourly.. He had assumed it from the start.

  The chief was a slow reader, and Denton waited. When Spile was finished, they exchanged reports. The other report was on George Guest.

  The medical terminology was much fancier than in the first. Denton skipped to the last item: Cause of Death. Typed after this heading was: "Multiple contusion of the pericardium and myocardium resulting from depressed fracture of thoracic cage and sternum. See Remarks."

  Glancing upward one section to Remarks, Denton read: 'Time of death pinpointed with reasonable accuracy by the stage of digestion of a meal established as having been consumed at 6 P.M, preceding time of death. Death occurred between 1:30 A.M, and 2 A.M. However, this in no way establishes the time of the accident, as subject was not killed instantly and may have lain unconscious in the wreck for a number of hours."

  A second paragraph under Remarks seemed to be the one referred to under Cause of Death. It read: "Several of the multiple injuries could have caused eventual death, but the heart damage shown under Cause of Death is believed to be the Immediate cause. See Skull and Torso. These injuries all seem to have occurred simultaneously."

  Denton went back to page one, which provided spaces for separate reports on each part of the anatomy. After Skull appeared the typed words: "Fine linear fracture extending from parietal bone through petrous portion of sphenoid bone extending into foramen magnum. Some external ecchymosis and contusion."

  Further down, under Torso, there was a mess of medical terminology that made even less sense to Denton. His best guess was that it detailed assorted internal injuries.

  He tossed the report concerning George Guest on the chiefs desk. When Spile looked up from the report on Angel, Danton said, "Do you understand all this double-talk, Augie?"

  "Enough to get the general picture. Your wife was killed by a shotgun blast, George died of a crushed chest. Don't se« how he could have been dead when he went over that bank. Looks like the accident killed him, all right."

  Denton frowned. "He could have been unconscious when he went off the road. You notice the item under Skull?" Picking up the report on George Guest, Spile glanced at the indicated section and shrugged. "So his head got banged up. Be almighty queer if it hadn't been. He had bruises and cuts all over him."

  Denton rose. "Well, I'm going over to the hospital, Augie. I'd like Dr. Olsen to explain these reports in language I can understand."

  Augie Spile said with a weak chuckle, "Sure, Jim. And let me know if he says anything I can understand." Then, as Denton neared the door, the police chief cleared his throat. "Oh, Jim."

  "Yes?" Denton said, looking back.

  "You own a twelve-gauge shotgun?"

  Denton deliberately turned around. "Yes. Doesn't everybody in town?"

  "I reckon so. Yours been fired recently?"

  Denton drew a key-case from his pocket, removed one of the keys and lobbed it onto the desk. "That's to my front door, Augie. The gun is in my closet in the north bedroom. And you have my permission to search the house for bloodstains while you're at it. Hang onto the key if you want. I have Angel's."

  "No call to get sore, Jim," August Spile protested. "I got to investigate all possible angles. You know that."

  "I'm relieved to hear it," Denton said sourly. "Then I assume that sooner or later you'll get around to questioning Matt Fallon and Norman Wyatt?"

  The chief looked distressed. "Now, Jim. I'll get to 'em."

  Sure you will, Denton thought. When you find you cant build a case against me.

  But then Denton decided that he was being unfair. Augie Spile had no reason to lay off Matthew Fallon, and while he might be reluctant to go after Norman Wyatt, he would eventually do so in spite of his reluctance. This was a big deal for old Augie—too big, and Augie knew it. He was feeling his way.

  "I'm sorry, Augie," Denton said. "Guess I'm pretty edgy these days. See you." Chief Spile actually looked grateful.

  Across from the morgue room Denton found the door lettered Pathology Department, Dr. Horace Olsen. He opened it and went in.

  The pathologist for the county was a grayish man with a I stoop, in his early sixties. Dr. Olsen was not a native of Ridgemore, but he was in the country club set and Denton had played golf with him and met him at various civic and I social functions. He greeted Denton rather nervously, Denton thought, and indicated a chair. "Chief Spile just showed me your post-mortem reports on my wife and George Guest, Doctor. There's something I'd like to ask you about the Guest report."

  "I have a copy right here, Denton." The pathologist drew a manila folder to him. "I'm not sure—" he began.

  Denton smiled. "Check with Augie Spile. Anyway, I have a twin-barreled right and interest—I'm the Ridgemore press, and I'm the widower of one of the parties."

  "Well." Olsen smiled back. "What do you want to know?"

  "Under Skull you describe some sort of head injury, which I take it a layman would call a skull fracture."

  Glancing at the Guest report, the doctor nodded.

  "Dr. Olsen, I think George's death was rigged to look like an accident—in other words, that it wasn't an accident at all. My theory is that he was knocked on the head at a prior time and place, and that later the car containing his unconscious but living body was pushed over that embankment Could it have happened that way?"

  "Oh, yes. The degree of epidural hematoma over the temporal lobe and the extent of the brain damage indicated a blow to the head severe enough to cause unconsciousness and, eventually, death. But it was not the immediate cause of death."

  "But is there any way to prove my theory medically?"

  "I would say no, Denton."

  "Could you go into your reasons for that opinion in language I can understand?" He tried not to let his disappointment show.

  "Let me put it this way," Dr. Olsen said patiently. "If a prior blow had killed him instantly, it would be a simple enough matter to prove your hypothesis pathologically, because the car injuries in that case would have occurred after death—and injuries sustained after death are easily determinable as such. Conversely, had the car injuries killed him instantly, we might be able to show, by certain pathological differences in the character of the damaged bone and tissue, that a non-lethal blow to the head was struck some time before the car-induced death occurred."

  When Denton looked doubtful, the pathologist continued hastily, "What I mean is, neither of the above occurred. So all we can say is that Guest was still alive after the car fell, alive but unconscious. And he lay in the wreckage, unconscious, for some time before he died. Possibly for hours."

  "Then it could have happened either way—is that right, Dr. Olsen? That is, my theory of a prior blow is just as plausible medically as the death-by-car-accident theory?"

  "That's right. Smashing his head against the door frame at his car tumbled down the bank could account for what we found. But so could a smash with a jack handle half an hour before. We just have no way of telling which actually happened."

  "Thanks." Denton rose. "Will you do me a favor, Doctor?"

  "Depends," the pathologist said with a smile.

  "Phone Chief Spile and tell him what you've just told me."

  16

  Denton returned to the Clarion office.

  "Thought you weren't coming back," Amos Case grunted. "Don't you trust me, Mr. Publisher?"

  "Oh, shut up, Amos. I'll be in and out."

  At 11:30 he found himself rising from his desk. He sank back, debating with himself. He always left for lunch at 11:30 A.M., allotting himself a half hour so that Amos could eat at noon. But a half hour gave him only time to run into Jordan's Pik-U-Up; to go home, fix something for himself, eat it and get back by noon so as not to hold old Amos up was a temporal impossibility. What it got down to was: Eat at Jordan's
, or don't eat. He had not been inside a Ridgemors restaurant since the discovery of Angel's blasted body. But he was hungry . . .

  What in God's name am I doing? Denton thought angrily. Arguing with myself over a thing like that!

  He grabbed his hat and stamped out.

  Once in Jordan's, he was not so assertive. The lunch rush was still thirty minutes away; only two booths were occupied and a mere four or five people sat on the counter stools. The very fact that they were so few made him feel conspicuous The; all stared at him. One or two said, "Hi, Jim," others nodded and began to whisper.

  He found himself making for a rear booth and sitting down with his back to the restaurant. After the waitress took his sandwich-and-milk order he sat there sweating.

  He heard two women approach and take the adjoining booth. Jordan's booths were high-backed; they had not spotted him, and they were shrill-voiced.

  "So, like I said, Janie Morrison was coming out of the Bettye Hat Shoppe this morning when she saw him leave the court house basement, and you know what's in the court house basement."

  "Well, of course I know! The police department."

  "So it looks like Chief Spile is still questioning him. Questioning him! I don't know why on earth they don't arrest him."

  That's me they're talking about, Denton told himself. It gave him the funniest feeling.

  "I can't imagine, Ruth. You know my niece lives next door to Bob Harley, the cop. Harley's wife told my niece who told me that Ralph Crosby wants to arrest him, but Gus Spile doesn't think they ought to yet. Not enough evidence or something. I don't know how much evidence they want! Wife disappears, husband prints in his own paper that she's off visiting her parents, then her murdered body is found and he admits he made the story up about the visit—seems to me that's plenty of evidence!"

  Denton could not quite place the voices. Against his will he kept listening.

  The first voice said, "The story I heard is that he claims he thought she'd run off with some man, so he put that notice in the Clarion to stop gossip. That she was running off with a man I can well believe—the way that woman chased the men, she was practically asking her husband to shoot her. The tragic thing, I think, is George Guest. You know it wouldn't surprise me if he deliberately ran off the road— killed himself?"

  This was one not even Denton had thought of. Leave it to the girls! He leaned back against the booth wall to hear better.

  The other woman said, "Ruth, we were talking about that at the church supper only last night. You know how absolutely insane George Guest was over Corinne? Well, Martha Pruett's husband Joe was very close to George, and Martha said Joe says that if George'd learned about Corinne's love affair with Jim Denton, it could very well have driven him to suicide."

  And that's another one I should have anticipated and didn't, Denton thought in cold rage. At that moment, if he had had Mother Overton, fat Ellen Wright and skinny Nurse Olive Haber within reach, he would cheerfully have torn the tongues out of all three.

  Rising, he turned and glared down Into the next booth. They were unknown to him after all—two middle-aged housewives out for an orgy of calories and character-assassination.

  He said, "Excuse me," and the two heads jerked up, the round and heavily made-up faces with the pinched mouths registering consternation. "Does either of you ladies happen to know a good lawyer?"

  "Lawyer?" the one called Ruth said, licking at her lips.

  "Yes," Denton said pleasantly. "If you haven't, you'd better find one fast. One familiar with the law of slander." And, calling to his waitress, "I'll take my order here, please," he walked over to the counter and sat down.

  They were still sitting in the booth with flushed faces, eating furiously in silence, when Denton left.

  So, on top of everything else, he was supposed to have driven George to suicide over Corinne! It must be all over town.

  Well, Denton thought as he went back to his office, I've spoiled the day for at least two of them.

  He locked up a little after 3 P.M, and made for the court house building again. He found Chief Spile alone in his office.

  "Oh, Jim." The police chief tossed Denton's house-key over. "Thanks for the key. You'll find I didn't take anything but your shotgun."

  He snapped the key back in his key-case. "Find any blood-Stains, Augie?"

  "We took a fair look around," Spile admitted. "Jim, this is my job. You ought to know that. It don't mean I think you're guilty of anything. After all, I was the one talked Ralph Crosby into letting you walk around free till we know where we're going in this investigation. There's been quite some pressure on both of us to hold you, you know."

  "I know," Denton said. "At lunch I had the pleasure of overhearing a couple of sinewy-tongued biddies wondering out loud why I wasn't behind bars. Maybe you ought to lock me up at that, Augie. The will of the people, and all that."

  "Oompch the will of the people," the police chief said coarsely. Then he fussed with some papers on his desk. "Jim," he said. "There is a way you could stop most of this talk."

  "What way is that?"

  "Would you be willing to take a lie-detector test?"

  "Whose cute little idea was that?" Denton asked sarcastically. "Crosby's?"

  "Hell, no. You know lie-detector evidence ain't admissible in court. Crosby's against it on principle—"

  "Principle." Denton laughed. "He's against it because it would tell him I'm innocent, admissible or not."

  "Could be. But that's not my reason, Jim—and incidentally, it was my idea. Take the test and, at least as far as the folks in town are concerned, you're clear. That is," Augie Spile fussed with the papers again, "unless you'd rather not."

  "I'll take it," Denton snapped, "any time you say!"

  "Swell, Jim." The huge face beamed. "Matter of fact, I already made inquiries. Nearest expert is in Buffalo. Trouble is, he's all tied up for some time to come. But as soon as he's free ... Say, that's fine, Jim, real fine. Well!" His great swivel-chair creaked as he leaned far back. "Oh. Doc Olsen phoned me."

  "I asked him to."

  "In view of what Doc says about your theory being medically possible—I mean of George's being murdered—-I guess it's time I checked into some alibis for last Friday night."

  "Matt Fallon's and Norm Wyatt's, for instance?"

  The police chief nodded. "What time is it? ... Reckon I’ll tackle Fallon first."

  "No time like the present, Augie."

  "S'pose not." The chief sighed, placed both oversized hands on his desk top and pushed himself upright. "May's well come along, Jim."

  "I was just going to ask you if I might." Denton felt a lift for the first time in days. "In fact, don't even bother calling a patrol car. Ill drive you over. And Augie—"

  "Yeah, Jim?"

  Thanks."

  Matthew Fallon lived on the upper floor of an old frame house that had been converted into two apartments. The cartoonist answered the downstairs door in shirt sleeves.

  "Chief." He looked surprised. Then he spotted Denton and look embarrassed. "I’ve been meaning to call you, Jim. I'm sorry about Angel.. ." Denton murmured something and Fallon said abruptly, "Come on in."

  He led the way upstairs and into a long, narrow front room. Through a doorway they could see into his workroom, a cubicle cluttered with piles of reference magazines, comic books, newspapers, filing cabinets, pens, pots of India ink, T-squares and other paraphernalia of the commercial artist The room was dominated by a drawing board to which a half-finished ink drawing was pinned.

  "Sorry to interrupt your work, Mr. Fallon—"

  "No, no, Chief, I was just going to take a coffee break, anyway. By the way, how about some?" When both men declined, the cartoonist said, "Sit down, sit down."

  They took chairs. Fallon spread his lanky frame across a sofa and took his time lighting a cigaret. Finally he asked, "What's up, gents?" in a too casual voice.

  "You heard about George Guest, I suppose?" Chief Spile said.

 
"Say, that was rough, wasn't it? I tried to phone George that night, but he wasn't home."

  "Friday night?" Denton was surprised. "You spoke to Corinne?"

  "Of course. She said she'd have George call me back soon as he got in." Fallon grimaced. "I'm still waiting."

  Corinne hadn't mentioned that. Well, it was understandable. She had probably forgotten all about it under the strain of that long night of waiting.

  "What time was your call, Mr. Fallon?" the police chief asked.

  "Just after nine. I phoned the store first, hoping Yd still catch George, but there was no answer, so I figured he closed promptly. I was trying to get up a poker game." He glanced at Denton, and embarrassment showed again. "I would have called you, Jim, but I'd heard about Angel—"

  "I wasn't home, anyway."

  "Manage to scrape up a game, Mr. Fallon?" The chief smiled.

  "Eventually." Fallon kept glancing from Augie Spile to Denton and back again. "Arnold Long got here around eight-thirty, and we both got on the phone. It was half-past ten before enough hands for a decent game showed up." He added with a rather forced laugh, "Say, why all this interest in my poker game? You starting an anti-gambling crusade in this town, Chief?"

  "With all the graft I take?" Spile said, still smiling. "By the way, who-all was here?"

  "Well, Arnold Long, myself, Joe Tederous, Andy Planter, Thad Sommers, Bart Tyson and Harry Gilbert. Seven—that's right."

  "Break up early, did you?"

  "Early in the morning. About two A.M."

  And that lets Fallon out, Denton thought. And Long, and Thad Sommers, who had also attended the Wyatts' party.

  "Well, that's fine, Mr. Fallon," the police chief said, rising. "Guess we'll be running along, Jim."

  "Yes," Denton said.

  "Running along?" The cartoonist's hairy brows met. "I don't get this, I really don't." He was on his feet now, too. "You haven't even told me why you came here. Or have you?"