Recipe for Homicide, page 10
Instead of asking him to sit down, the general manager kept Gilmore standing in front of his desk like an errant schoolboy. For an instant, Gilmore wished that he had brought along a bright red apple.
“I suppose you know why I called you,” Mr. Evans said.
“No,” lied Gilmore, “unless you’ve managed to solve the riddle of Peggy’s death and want to cut me in.”
“Have you seen the afternoon papers, Gilmore?”
“Yes.”
“In view of the adverse publicity received by Barzac in connection with the death of Peggy Bayliss, can you think of any reason why you shouldn’t resign?”
“I can think of several,” Gilmore replied. “First, I’d be giving up my severance pay. Second, I—”
He stopped suddenly. He turned his head slowly to look at Barbara Wall. She was not looking in his direction. He thought, Here’s your chance, Baby. Here’s your chance to square yourself for the dirty trick you played on me in New York. Here’s your chance to come clean, to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. All you have to do is say, “The responsibility for the break in the afternoon papers is mine. Taking photos of Peggy at the tasting session was my idea. I brought the photographers to the session, and the photos brought the reporters to the funeral this morning. Gil had nothing to do with it.”
But Barbara said nothing at all.
“And second?” prompted Mr. Evans.
“Second,” Gilmore resumed, “nothing I said to the reporters today had the slightest relation to the story that appeared in the newspapers. I covered up the best I could.”
“Evidently,” was Mr. Quirk’s ready comment. “That’s why Barzac stock dropped more than nine points in one hour on the New York Stock Exchange today. I must remind you, Gilmore, that in the absence of Mr. Evans yesterday, I gave you all fair warning that any mention in the press connecting the death of Miss Bayliss with her consumption of our tinned rations would call for summary dismissal. You did talk to the press, Gilmore. Therefore the responsibility is clear.”
Again Gilmore looked at Barbara. She returned his stare without flinching. He said: “I spoke to the reporters at the request of Mr. Evans. I did not summon the reporters to the funeral. Nothing I said to them could possibly be considered the basis for the story that the Journal used this afternoon.”
“We understand that, Gilmore,” Evans interposed. “But if the Army comes into the picture now, it will be your responsibility. It was your original idea to bring Dr. Coffee and the police into this unfortunate affair.”
“If the Army moves in on you tomorrow,” Gilmore said, “you can be properly thankful that you’ve got a clean record to show. You test your product so thoroughly that you’ve sacrificed a valuable member of your staff. You’ve had an eminent pathologist analyzing every batch of rations, to determine if sabotage is involved. Furthermore, you’ve had the police at work while you’ve recalled all previous shipments for re-testing. All this, I’m sure, will make a favorable impression on the F.B.I.”
“F.B.I.?” echoed Quirk. “Have you called in the F.B.I., Gilmore?”
“No, but Mr. Evans has.”
“Ah, that,” said Mr. Evans. “That’s another matter entirely. Or it was. Possibly, as you said the other night, Gilmore, there may be a tie-up. However—”
“Furthermore,” Gilmore continued, “you can be pretty sure that the Northbank police flashed the F.B.I. the moment it was evident that we were making poisoned rations for the Army.”
“Nonsense, Gilmore.” Evans’s nostrils were quivering; his inhaler would not be long in making an appearance. “There’s no evidence that Miss Bayliss was poisoned by our product. Dr. Coffee himself assured me this morning he had found not a single trace of arsenic in any of the cans he had tested.”
“That was early this morning,” Gilmore said. “Since then he’s found arsenic in at least two batches. In view of this fact, I’m not going to resign. You’ll have to fire me, Mr. Evans.”
“Good gosh, Mr. Evans!” Bart Remington spoke for the first time since the interview had begun. “If you fire Gilmore now, the newspapers will be sure you’re hiding something. And if Coffee has really found arsenic … You’d better reconsider, Mr. Evans.”
The general manager’s lips parted and his eyes narrowed. A sneeze seemed imminent, but no sneeze came. Not even the inhaler appeared. He closed, his inouth and picked up the telephone.
“Get me Dr. Coffee at Pasteur Hospital,” he commanded the instrument. “Quickly.”
Mr. Evans banged down the telephone and glared at it, as if defying it to ring. No one spoke. The frost seemed to form on his gray mustache. A trickle of perspiration escaped from his bald head and inched timidly down one temple. Then the telephone rang—defiantly.
“Hello, Doctor. This is Evans at … Oh yes. You did? … Is that so? Nine? … Well, yes, I suppose we could. I’ll have to inquire. I’ll let you know as soon as we can set a time.”
Mr. Evans sighed as he hung up. He stared reproachfully at the instrument for five seconds before he announced: “Dr. Coffee has discovered arsenic in nine batches of our Army rations. This does seem to be something of a plot after all. Under the circumstances, Gilmore, I’m withdrawing my demand for your resignation—temporarily. Consider yourself on probation for the time being.”
Mr. Evans paused, as though he expected Gilmore to fall on his knees, kiss the hem of his pongee jacket, or at least mumble a few words of gratitude. As Gilmore said nothing, Mr. Evans went on:
“Dr. Coffee suggests that we resume production of the rations. He’d like it done on the night shift if possible, so he can follow the operation through every step. He seems to have a theory of some kind. What about it, Remington?”
“It’s too late for the second shift today,” Remington said. “I’m pretty sure we can set it up by tomorrow night, though. I’ll check with Lenormand.”
“Good. Keep me informed.” Mr. Evans leaned back in his swivel chair. He gave a peremptory nod, like a schoolmaster dismissing his class. “Thank you. That’s all.”
On the way out, Barbara caught Gilmore’s arm. There was an unfamiliar glow in the long, amber eyes that looked up at him searchingly. She said: “Gil, you’re a surprising guy.”
“Sure,” Gilmore replied quickly. “Change of pace. Anything to keep ’em guessing.”
Barbara shook her head, but she still clung to Gilmore’s arm. Her voice was scarcely more than a murmur as she said: “You know, don’t you, Gil, that what you did just now—or what you didn’t do—has wiped out the last few years completely? We do have things to talk about, important things. What about tonight?”
Gilmore looked closely into Barbara’s upturned face, trying to analyze the expression in her eyes. Was it anxiety—concern for herself, as usual? Or concern for him? Or was it just plain, unadulterated tenderness? He didn’t know. He would probably never know; he was just congenitally incapable of knowing—or too indifferent to—whatever went on in a woman’s mind. He did know, however, what he wanted, and that he had decided to quit fighting against it. He had just proved that to himself beyond recall. So he would take what he wanted—once he had cleared up one minor point.
“About that copy of Émile,” he said, “did you—?”
“I haven’t been home since we talked about it,” Barbara interrupted quickly. “I’ll know in an hour. Okay?”
“At the funeral this morning you said you couldn’t wait to get home to see if Émile was still there.”
“I know. I didn’t know it was a matter of minutes with you, Gil. Shall I call you in an hour? Or can you wait until dinnertime? We do have a date tonight, Gil. Okay?”
“Okay,” Gilmore said. “Since I’m on parole, let’s celebrate. Tonight.”
Barbara’s smile was pleasant and spontaneous, without the usual self-conscious crinkles at the corners of her lips. Her dimples showed. “Good.” She imitated Mr. Evans’s voice. “Dinner, then. With me.”
XIII
Dr. Coffee was finishing up his diagnosis of the day’s surgicals. His keen eyes squinting into the binocular microscope, his long, bony fingers twisting the focusing knob, he dictated to Doris Hudson.
“Lymph node,” he said. “Normal architecture … Marked inflammation but no thickening of the capsule … Some foci of necrosis, surrounded by giant cells … No indication of malignancy.” Dr. Coffee shifted lenses, from low to high power and back again. He frowned. “Doris, ask for a sample of the patient’s blood for bacteriology. I suspect tularemia. Next.”
“That’s all,” said Doris Hudson, closing her notebook.
Dr. Coffee snapped out the light behind the microscope, stood up, stretched his long legs with audible but incomprehensible comment. He stepped over the barrier of Barzac tin cans that separated his private office from the laboratories.
“Except for one thing,” Doris added. “That man Gilmore from the soup company phoned. He said he’d be over at fivethirty. Do you want to wait for him?”
“Guess I’d better,” the pathologist said. “Max Ritter asked me to hold him until he got here, and Max is on his way now. He—” Dr. Coffee interrupted himself to pick up three cans which he had kicked off the top of the pyramid in his progress across the laboratory. He made sure that the labels had not been disturbed, and put the cans back in place.
“How’s the quantitative coming along, Dr. Mookerji?” he asked, as he came between the Hindu resident and the complicated system of beakers, burners and glass tubing.
Dr. Mookerji did not reply at once. He was bending over a precision scale. With a pair of tweezers he placed into the balance tiny weights no larger than snowflakes. He made a notation and looked up, his round, brown face beaming.
“Am just computing weight of arsenic mirrors resulting from first tests of liver tissue in triplicate,” he said. “Please verify figures, Doctor Sahib.”
The pathologist peered over his resident’s chubby shoulder. His underlip protruded as he studied the notations. He looked at the scale. “Well, that seems to settle it,” he said. “Did you—? Hello, Gilmore. Glad you could come. I thought you might be able to make it. I saw the afternoon papers. Are you a gentleman of leisure now?”
“That was the sentence, but it’s ’been suspended,” Gilmore said. “I thought I might find Ritter here. I’d like to get my car back, if it’s been demilitarized. I’ve got a date tonight.”
“Max will be along in a minute,” Dr. Coffee said. He nodded toward his office. “Let’s go inside and wait for him.”
The pathologist tossed a pack of cigarettes across the desk as he sat down. “The pattern seems to be shaping up. I need some more information from you.”
“What’s the pattern?” Gilmore asked.
“We’ve had luck with our quantitative analysis,” Dr. Coffee said, lighting his cigarette and passing the match to Gilmore. “Our zinc and standard solutions proved arsenic-free from the start, so we’ve already got some preliminary results from the autopsy. Dr. Mookerji has already demonstrated seventy-three milligrams of arsenic in the liver tissues. That’s more than a grain—and three grains is considered a fatal dose when absorbed. Tissue from the stomach and other organs will certainly give us more than this figure. Therefore I can say definitely that Miss Bayliss died of arsenic poisoning. I can say further that she undoubtedly absorbed the arsenic from the Army rations she consumed at the plant on the morning of her death. As you probably know, we have found arsenic in nine batches of your product.”
“So Mr. Evans says.”
“Nine batches,” Dr. Coffee repeated. “Why nine? Why not ten? Or six? Or why not all? By the time Dr. Mookerji and I have finished our tests, we may have the answer to that question. And we may even be able to answer other questions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as who? And how? And why?”
“The why shouldn’t be too difficult,” Gilmore said. “The rations were bound for the United States Army. I think it’s pretty obvious that Peggy just happened to get in the way of a plot for mass murder. I don’t think nine batches of rations—that’s between six and seven thousand cans—were poisoned just to kill Peggy Bayliss. You don’t hunt squirrels with a thousand-pound demolition bomb.”
“Y-yes,” the pathologist admitted hesitantly. “But it’s not quite that simple. I’ve got to find the answers to a lot more questions before I’ll accept that explanation.”
“What questions, Doctor?”
“Let me ask the questions for a while, Gilmore,” Dr. Coffee said. “I’ll have to do much more asking before I can start giving out answers. For instance, would arsenic be readily available at the Barzac cannery? In quantity, I mean?”
“Sure,” Gilmore said. “Barzac buys arsenic by the ton.”
“Great stars!” Dr. Coffee said. “Arsenic by the ton? What for?”
“Our Agriculture Department uses tons of white arsenic to make insecticide spray,” Gilmore explained. “You see, Barzac is godfather to about eighty per cent of the tomatoes we use. We’ve found that a certain type of tomato makes the best soups. We go to great lengths to get as much uniformity as possible in taste and color. So every winter we grow millions of seedling tomato plants in the South. We fly them north as soon as the frost is out of the ground. We’ve got about a thousand acres of stock farms in this county and the next. We sell the seedlings to the farmers at three dollars a thousand plants—on condition, of course, that they agree to sell us the tomatoes at thirty-five dollars a ton the next fall. By selling nearly 100,000,000 seedlings a year at less than cost, we’re sure of getting the kind of tomatoes we want.”
“And you spray these plants with arsenic?
“Only the young plants. As soon as the flowers begin to form, all spraying is stopped, naturally, so the tomatoes won’t be contaminated.”
“And where is this arsenic stored, Gilmore? At your plant here in Northbank?”
“It probably passes through our receiving warehouse at the plant, but it would be moved immediately to the Agriculture Department stores near Boone Point.”
“Any chance of an error—of a shipment of arsenic getting detoured to your kitchens by mistake?”
“Last week I would have said it was impossible,” Gilmore said. “I still think it’s impossible. But in view of what’s happened, I’ll just say it’s highly unlikely.”
Dr. Coffee seemed to meditate. He ran his fingers through his tousled straw-colored hair. “I’ll have to see the whole process from the beginning,” he said after a pause. “When do you people think you can start production again on those rations?”
“Second shift tomorrow, probably. That means they’ll be in full swing by early evening.”
“Max and I will be over,” the pathologist said. “Here’s Max now.”
The lanky police detective was crossing the laboratory with lengthy strides. His dark felt hat was pulled down over much of his long, melancholy face, yet his concealed eyes seemed to be functioning perfectly. He greeted each occupant of the lab with a clumsy gesture of his right hand.
“Hi, Doris,” he said. “Hi, Swami. Hi, Doc. I see you got our Visionary with you.”
“Do I get my car back, Lieutenant?” Gilmore asked. “Or is it still impounded?”
“I still would like to know what kind of hop makes you dream up those beautiful booby-trap dreams you tell me about, Gilmore,” Ritter said. “We still can’t find none.”
“Lieutenant, you break my heart,” Gilmore said. “I feel guilty as all hell for not stepping on the starter. If I’d blown myself up, maybe you’d believe me. Can I get my car back anyhow? I got a date tonight.”
“You get it back,” Ritter said. “It’s downstairs now. We’re through with it.”
“Did you find anything?”
The detective slid his narrow hips over the edge of Dr. Coffee’s desk; as he sat he helped himself to one of Dr. Coffee’s cigarettes. He took his time about striking a match, and squinted quizzically through the smoke at Gilmore when he finally said: “A little.”
“Max, stop looking like a Saint Bernard that swallowed a brandy cask,” Dr. Coffee said. “You’ve dug up something. Come on. Spill it.”
“I ain’t got much,” Ritter said. “We did find a woman in Coolidge Lane who saw a car drive up behind Gilmore’s at about the time the funeral was starting. She said there were two men in it. One of ’em, a man in overalls, got out, lifted the hood, and tinkered around inside for a while. Then they both drove off. She said she thought he was a repairman. She didn’t see him come back.”
“He must have come back,” Gilmore insisted. “He must have been waiting in the neighborhood to watch. When he saw me rush off after discovering the booby trap, I guess he came back to destroy the evidence. Could the woman identify the man in overalls if she saw him again?”
“She never saw his face,” Ritter replied.
“Did she remember the license number of his car?”
“No.”
“Or the make?”
“She thinks it was a dark blue coupé. Some dark color, anyway. She thinks it might have been a Chevvy, but she ain’t sure.”
“Max, you still look like a canary that swallowed a Bengal tiger,” Dr. Coffee interrupted. “You’re holding out on us.”
“There’s just one more thing,” the detective admitted. “We developed a perfect set of prints off your chrome radiator shell, Gilmore. But perfectl Good enough to give us a Henry classification. I wired the classification to Washington. You can say what you want about this guy Hoover, but that punch-card system they got of filing fingerprints down there is the berries. I already got an answer back half an hour ago.”
