Clues for Dr. Coffee, page 17
“Two or three years ago. Do you want the exact date?”
“I want to know particularly whether Paul Wallace was a patient here while Patsy was still here.”
“I’m not sure. I’ll check with Sister Frances in Records.” Dr. Quirk poured fresh Sazeracs.
“No hurry. I suppose you know that Patsy is quite a singer.”
“Do I! When she sang in the recreation hall, radio and television people used to come down from Baton Rouge to tape her concerts.”
“How far away is Baton Rouge?”
“Oh, twenty, twenty-five miles.”
“Did Patsy’s voice develop spontaneously, or did she have a coach?”
“Well, I guess you could say she had a coach of sorts.”
“Papa Albert?”
Dr. Quirk’s teeth clicked against the rim of his cocktail glass. His eyebrows rose a full inch. “You come well briefed, Dan.”
“Where does Papa Albert live? Baton Rouge?”
Dr. Quirk laughed briefly. “For twenty-five years,” he said, “Carville has been home to Albert Boulanger. He was a promising young pianist when the thing hit him. This was before we discovered the sulfones, so he was pretty badly crippled before we could help him. Hands are shot. He can play a few chords, though, and he’s still a musician to his finger tips.”
“Finger tips with papillae and interpapillary pegs obliterated?”
Dr. Quirk looked at the pathologist strangely. He muddled the ice in the bar glass, and squeezed out another half Sazarac for each of them. He took a long sip of his drink before he resumed in a slow, solemn voice.
“Patsy Erryl was a forlorn little girl when she came here,” he said, “and Albert Boulanger sort of adopted her. He taught her the scales. He taught her to sing little French songs. When she began to bloom, he fought off the wolves. He would invite her to his cottage out back to listen to his opera recordings for evening after evening.
“She was an early case. She could have been discharged in three years, except that she wanted to finish her schooling here. I think, too, that she appreciated what Papa Albert was doing to bring out the music in her. He was like a father to her. And since she scarcely knew her own father, she was terribly fond of the old man.”
Dr. Coffee drained his glass again. “I suppose your records will show that Albert Boulanger was here at Carville Wednesday night.”
“I’m afraid not.” Dr. Quirk frowned. “He had a fortyeight hour pass to go to New Orleans Wednesday. He wanted to see his lawyer about a new will. The old man hasn’t long to live.”
“I thought people didn’t die of Hansen’s disease,” Dr. Coffee said.
“Boulanger has terminal cancer. He found out just last week that he’s going to die in a month or so.”
“Is he in any shape that I could speak to him?”
“Why not?” Dr. Quirk picked up the phone and dialed the gate. “Willy, has Mr. Boulanger come back from New Orleans? … Yesterday? Thanks.” He replaced the instrument very gently. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “Papa Al has one of those cottages beyond the golf course. We won’t move him to the infirmary until he gets really bad.”
Albert Boulanger must have been a handsome man in his youth. Tall, white haired, only slightly stooped, he bore few external signs of his malady. Only the experienced eye would note the thinning eyebrows and the slight thickening of the skin along the rictus folds and at the wings of the nostrils. As he shook hands, Dr. Coffee saw that Papa Albert had obviously suffered some bone absorption; his fingers were shortened and the skin was smooth and shiny.
“I stopped by to bring you greetings from Patsy Erryl in Northbank,” Dr. Coffee said, “and to compliment you on the fine job you did on Patsy’s musical education.”
Papa Albert darted a quick, startled glance at Dr. Quirk. He apparently found reassurance in the M.O.C.’s smile. He coughed. “I take no credit,” he said. “The girl has a natural talent and she’s worked hard to make the best of it.…”
“I hope she wins the opera finals,” the pathologist said. “Did you get to see her when you were in Northbank Wednesday?”
Papa Albert looked Dr. Coffee squarely in the eyes as he replied without hesitation, “I’ve never been in Northbank in my life. I was in New Orleans Wednesday.”
“I see. Did you know that Paul Wallace was killed in Northbank Wednesday night?”
“Paul Wallace is not of the slightest interest to me. He was a louse, a swindler, and a thoroughly despicable character.”
“Do you have a bank account in Baton Rouge, Mr. Boulanger?”
“No.”
“But you did have—until you sent some seventeen hundred dollars to Paul Wallace, care of General Delivery, in Northbank?”
“Why would I send money to a rotter like Wallace, Doctor?”
“Because you love Patsy Erryl as if she were your own daughter. Because you’d do anything to stop someone from wrecking her career just as it’s about to start.”
“I don’t understand you.” Papa Albert wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. He coughed again.
“Mr. Boulanger, you and I and Dr. Quirk know that there are dozens of maladies more dreadful and a thousand times more infectious than Hansen’s disease. But we also know that the superstitious horror of the disease is kept alive by ignorance and a mistaken interpretation of Biblical leprosy which equates the disease with sin. Despite the progress of recent years, there is still a stigma attached to the diagnosis.
“Suppose, Mr. Boulanger, a blackmailer came to you or wrote to you making threats that suggested a newspaper headline such as ‘Girl Leper Barred from Met After Winning Audition.’ Wouldn’t you dig into your savings to prevent such a headline? And if the blackmailer persisted, if his greed increased—why, I can envision—”
“Dr. Coffee, if you want me to say that I’m glad that louse Wallace is dead, I’ll do so gladly and as loudly as I can. But now.…” Papa Albert had begun to tremble. Perspiration was streaming down his pale cheeks. “Now, if you will excuse me.… Dr. Quirk has perhaps told you of my condition … that I’m supposed to get lots of rest.… May I bid you good evening, Doctor?”
He tottered a little as he walked away.
The drainage ditches were aglitter with the eerie light of fireflies as the two doctors left Papa Albert’s cottage.
“I can’t believe it, Dan,” said Dr. Quirk, after they had walked a while in silence, “and I definitely don’t like it.”
“Nobody likes murder, Quent.”
“I mean this passion for secrecy, even to the point of murder,” said Dr. Quirk. ‘It’s bad enough to have the concept of a closed society imposed on our patients from the outside. But to have it perpetuated by the patients themselves…. Damn it, Dan, how can we hope to wipe out the stupid stigma and the ignorant fear and superstition surrounding leprosy when patients leave Carville still believing they belong to a secret people?”
“You’re right, of course, Quent,” said Dr. Coffee. “But it takes a very special courage to face centuries of prejudice, and some of us just don’t have that kind of valor. Human nature is not always admirable.”
Dr. Quirk snorted. “I wish I could rewrite the book of Leviticus,” he said.
Max Ritter was at the Northbank airport to meet Dr. Coffee’s plane.
“News, Doc,” he said, as the pathologist stepped off the ramp. “Rhodes just confessed.”
Dr. Coffee stopped short. “Who did what?”
“Rhodes, the lush, the lover-boy, the star reporter, and the talent scout. He gives me a statement he killed Wallace.”
Dr. Coffee managed a humorless laugh. “Tell me more,” he said as they passed through the gate and headed for the parking lot.
“While you’re away I take a gander at the phone company’s long-distance records. I find two calls in one week from Patsy Erryl’s number to the same place in Louisiana. Who makes the calls? Not me, says Auntie Min. Must be a mistake, says Patsy. Not two mistakes, says Ritter. Then Rhodes comes clean. He makes the calls.
“Patsy is terrified of this cluck Wallace, but she rims to see him every time he raises his little finger. Why? Well, Rhodes phones a newspaper pal in Louisiana to smell around a little, and he finds Wallace is blackmailing Patsy. Seems when she was studying music down there she got mixed up with a crummy bunch and got caught in a narcotics raid. She got off with a suspended sentence but the conviction is a matter of record. Wallace knows about it and starts putting the screws on her, so Rhodes kills him. So I lock him up.”
“That poor, lovesick, courageous, gallant liar!” said Dr. Coffee as he climbed into Ritter’s car. “Let’s go right down to the jail and let him out.”
“But, Doc, Rhodes confesses.”
“Max, Rhodes is making a noble sacrifice, hoping, I’m sure, that he can beat the rap when he comes to trial. He has given you a confession which he may repudiate later if it will not endanger Patsy. He has confessed so that you will not run down those longdistance phone calls and discover they were from Patsy to the Public Health Service Hospital in Carville, Louisiana.”
“The phone company didn’t say anything about Carville. The number was a Mission number out of Baton Rouge exchange through Saint Gabriel.”
“Exactly. All Carville numbers go through Baton Rouge and Saint Gabriel, and the exchange is Mission.” And Dr. Coffee told Ritter about Carville, Hansen’s disease, and Papa Albert Boulanger.
“I’m positive, Max, that Papa Albert is the whitehaired man with the package under his arm that the clerk at the Westside saw get into the elevator shortly before Wallace was killed Wednesday,” he said. “I’m also sure that he was paying blackmail to protect Patsy Erryl. What Wallace was trying to get out of Patsy that so terrified her, I can only guess. To judge from Rhodes’s behavior, he was probably trying to force her to go to bed with him. She must have telephoned Papa Albert for advice.
“When Papa Albert found out last week that he hadn’t long to live, he decided that before he died he would have to get Wallace out of Patsy’s life forever. Northbank is only two hours from New Orleans by jet. He could have come up by an early evening plane, killed Wallace, and been back at his New Orleans hotel by midnight. He’ll have alibis, all right. Who wouldn’t perjure himself for a man with only weeks to live?”
“But, Doc, if he’s going to die anyhow, why doesn’t he just give himself up, say he did it for Patsy, and die a hero?”
“Because that would undo everything he’s been willing to commit murder for. That would connect Patsy with Carville. And let’s face it, Max, the stigma of Carville is still pretty strong poison in too many places.”
“Not for Rhodes it ain’t. Or don’t you think he knows?”
“He knows. But he’s an intelligent young man and he’s in love with Patsy.”
“I still don’t see what Rhodes is doing at the Westside the night of the murder if he don’t kill Wallace.”
“He’ll deny this, of course, but I see only one explanation. Papa Albert didn’t have Wallace’s address. Wallace has been getting his mail at General Delivery. My guess is that Boulanger called Patsy, probably from the airport, to get the address. And Patsy, realizing after she had hung up what the old man was about to do, sent Bob Rhodes out to the Westside to try to stop him. He got there too late.”
“Do you think we can break Boulanger’s alibis, Doc?”
“I’m sure you could build a circumstantial case. You could dig up an airline stewardess or two who could identify him as flying to and from New Orleans the night of the murder; he’s a striking-looking old gent. You could subpoena bank records in Louisiana to show that he withdrew amounts from his savings account approximating Wallace’s balance in Cleveland. The desk clerk at the Westside could probably identify him. But you’ll have to work fast, Max. Otherwise you’ll have to bring your man into court on a stretcher.”
“You really think he’s going to die, Doc?”
“Within the month, I’d say. The métastasés are pretty general. The lungs are involved; he has a characteristic cough. The lymph nodes in his neck are as big as pigeons’ eggs. With luck he may last long enough to hear Patsy sing in the finals—La Tosca, I hope. Unless, of course, you start extradition proceedings.”
The detective swung his car into the “Official Vehicles Only” parking space behind the county jail.
“I dunno, Doc,” he said as he switched off the ignition. “Maybe we ought to let God handle this one.”
“Wrong-Way Tosca” appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine under the tiue “The Killer Who Had No Fingerprints.”
See “The Swami of Northbank,” p. 83.
The Wolf and the Wayward Wac
Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee, chief pathologist at Pasteur Hospital, frowned as he removed one slide from under the nose of his binocular microscope and substituted another. He couldn’t decide whether the section of a growth removed from the wrist of a noted pianist was a sarcoma or a nonmalignant tumor. The histological patterns were similar, but the fate of the pianist’s right hand depended upon his diagnosis. He would have fresh sections cut and sent to the Registry of Pathology in Washington. After all, the Registry had thousands of sarcoma cases on file, while he saw only two or three a year in Northbank.
He readjusted the focus and called: “Doris!” No answer.
“Doris!” he repeated. “Get me the paraffin blocks on that suspected sarcoma.”
Dr. Motilal Mookerji, Pasteur’s resident in pathology and Calcutta’s gift to Northbank, waddled to Dr. Coffee’s side.
“Am greatly regretful, Doctor Sahib,” he said, “but Doris Hudson currently absent from line-up. Can perhaps bat as clutch swatter?”
Dr. Coffee raised startled eyes from the twin lenses. He was startled not so much by his Hindu resident’s locutions (which were increasingly quaint since he had become a baseball fan), but by Doris Hudson’s absence. Doris was, weight for weight, not only the best lab technologist who ever sucked a pipette, but also the cutest and the most reliable. She had never even been late since the first day she had come to work at Pasteur.
“Doris must be ill,” the pathologist said. “Did she telephone?”
“Telephoned indeed,” said Dr. Mookerji, wagging his pink turban twice to the left, “but not to announce illness. Was unavoidably detained at police station.”
“Police station?” Dr. Coffee relaxed. “I guess somebody parked a fire hydrant next to her car again.” He reached for the phone. “Get me Lieutenant Ritter at police headquarters,” he said.
He had just replaced the instrument when Doris Hudson swept into the lab like a fugitive hurricane rushing from the Gulf of Mexico, courtesy of Schiaparelli. She shed her raincoat, flung her handbag to the workbench, and started to tear off the damp wisp of felt and feathers which she obviously considered a hat. Suddenly, remembering a recent visit to the hairdresser, she became calm and careful.
“You have to do something, Doctor,” she almost shouted as she reached for her white smock. “And quick. You have to help Ruth.”
“Ruth?” Dr. Coffee echoed vaguely. “What about Naomi?”
“Ruth Andrews.” Doris was scornful. “Don’t you remember Ruth Andrews who worked in bacteriology until last month?”
“Yes, of course. What’s wrong with Ruth?”
“She’s losing her mind,” Doris said. Then, noting a curious expression on Dr. Coffee’s face, she added: “And don’t tell me you’re a pathologist, not a psychiatrist. Ruth quit her job to marry an Army officer—remember, Doctor? Well, the wedding was set for next week, but the man she’s going to marry has just been arrested for murder. As you can well imagine, she’s frantic. You’ve got to do something, Doctor.”
“Now wait a minute, Doris.” The pathologist ran his long fingers through his unruly mop of jute-colored hair. “Do I know the fiance? And who is he supposed to have Killed?”
Doris made an impatient gesture with both hands. “Ruth introduced you to Captain Buford the day she resigned,” she said. “Joe Buford. He’s accused of shooting an ex-Wac named May Marling that he used to—Well, they were quite close before he met Ruth. And don’t say Joe Buford needs a lawyer, not a pathologist, because the lawyer Ruth got for him thinks he did it. The lawyer wants him to plead guilty to manslaughter so he won’t get the chair. But why should he plead guilty to anything if he’s innocent? Doctor, please call Max Ritter. It’s his case. He certainly owes you plenty, so maybe he’ll listen to you. Will you call him?”
“On one condition,” Dr. Coffee said. “Cut me some fresh sections from that suspected sarcoma.”
The telephone rang.
“Pathology,” Doris answered. “Oh, hello, lieutenant. I didn’t know you were psychic.… He did?” She gave Dr. Coffee a surprised glance. “Then he’s psychic. Just a moment.” She thrust the receiver at Dr. Coffee.
“Hello, Max,” the pathologist said. “I understand you’re trying to railroad an innocent young man—He is, is he? … A wolf? … I’m glad you were going to call me, Max. I thought you were holding out on me, after all we’ve been through together…. This morning? Hang on.” He turned to his technologist. “Doris, did you look at the surgical board when you came in?”
“Four laparotomies,” Doris said. “Two tonsillectomies and a D. and C. No biopsies scheduled.”
“Okay, Max,” Dr. Coffee told the telephone. “I’ll go out with you to the deceased’s apartment. Pick me up in half an hour.”
The police car stopped at the doctors’ entrance to Pasteur Hospital and Dr. Coffee climbed in beside the gaunt, dark detective of the homicide squad.
“Tell me why you think it’s an open and shut case, Max,” Dr. Coffee said as the car started off again. “Begin at the beginning.”
“I ain’t so sure it’s open and shut any more,” Lieutenant Ritter said, “but it looked simple enough at first. The Case of the Wolf and the Wayward Wac, you might say. This Captain Buford has been practising Beautyrest calisthenics with this redhead May Marling for some months when he dumps her to marry some other dame. This redhead don’t like getting dumped. Apparently she threatens to bust up the captain’s nuptials, so he shoots her.”
