Recipe for Homicide, page 18
“Last night the same thing happens—only this time it’s Chris Froley that’s dumped into an empty barrel and rolled to the other end of the platform. And the same purple tag gets slapped on the egg barrel. Are we warm, Chef?”
“I think,” said Lenormand soberly, “that you are very, very hot.”
“Great stars!” Dr. Coffee looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the hospital before I go down to the morgue to meet the Coroner. Looks like Remington won’t be coming.”
“Still meeting with the manitous, of course.” Lenormand began rolling a cigarette. “Meeting and eating vulcanized cheese sandwiches and drinking coffee out of cardboard boxes. And talking, talking. So I go back to my kettles. A pleasant afternoon, gentlemen.”
Gilmore rode as far as Pasteur Hospital with Dr. Coffee and Max Ritter. He thought he had better tell them about Froley’s apparent visit to his house and the flight through the back garden. He told his mother’s version first, with the confirming details from Remington’s story, and the evidence of the flattened canyon poppies. He also inquired about Frances Froley.
“She seems to be taking it calmly enough,” Dr. Coffee said. “She’s probably a little stunned.”
“Stunned, my eye I” was Ritter’s comment. “She’s blooming. She’s goggle-eyed with excitement. You’d think she was used to having a husband murdered every other week. She loves the limelight. The F.B.I. have got her stashed away in an expensive hotel downtown. She’ll be sorry when they finish questioning her. For more reasons than one. She won’t like it so much when I start working her over, without benefit of room service and photographers. After all, homicide is still the business of the Northbank police.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, Ritter,” Gilmore asked, “where Frances Froley spent the night last night?”
“Sure,” the detective said, “but I can tell you in advance that I don’t believe what you’re going to tell me. I’m always leary of these gallant alibis in a murder case. There’s never any corroborations by bedside witnesses.”
“I can’t give Frankie Froley an alibi beyond eleven-thirty when I last saw her,” Gilmore said. “She phoned me two hours later, but I can’t tell you where she was calling from. I have a hunch she was with someone. She seemed to be consulting somebody when she made a date to meet me—which she never kept. If you could find out—”
“Okay, Gilmore, don’t be jealous,” Ritter said. “We’ll find out.”
On his way home Gilmore stopped at a florist shop and ordered two dozen roses sent to Mrs. Christopher Froley—without a card enclosed.
As an afterthought he selected a dozen gardenias and gave instructions that they be fashioned into a wreath to be sent to Barbara Wall. For these flowers he wrote a card. It read simply: “In memoriam. Gil.”
He slipped the card into an envelope, frowned at it, then took it out and tore it up.
He wrote another card reading, “In memory of our lost night last night.” He tore up that one, too.
Finally he countermanded his instructions for a wreath and told the florist to divide the dozen gardenias into two corsages.
His third card read, “For the two Barbaras; may one of you feel better soon.”
XXII
It was late afternoon before Dr. Coffee returned to his pathology laboratory, carrying two large paper bags containing quart Mason jars. Max Ritter, who followed him, carried a small white-enameled pail and a large paper-wrapped bundle.
Dr. Motilal Mookerji was sitting at the sink, cutting tissue with a pair of scissors, when the door swung closed behind the two men. He slid from the tall stool.
“Five times greetings, Doctor Sahib,” said the Hindu resident. “Did prosection reveal felonious clues to identity of homicidal wrongdoer?”
“At least we kept the Coroner from throwing away the wrong pieces,” the pathologist said. “Any messages, Doris?”
“Your wife called,” replied the dark-haired technician, placing a rack of test tubes into the centrifuge. “She wanted to remind you that you were having guests for dinner so you’d be home on time. I told her I thought you wouldn’t be very late.”
“I’ll have to come in tomorrow anyhow,” Dr. Coffee said, “so I guess I’ll make it home for dinner.”
“Your wife said you’d better not be more than an hour late,” Doris Hudson continued, “because if she had to serve more than three rounds of martinis, the guests wouldn’t know what they were eating, and besides you would complain that the lamb was too done.”
Dr. Coffee chuckled. Then he took the pail from the detective and handed it to Doris. “Formalin,” he said. “And save the whole brain. I think I’ll find out all I need by gross sections. I’ll let you know if we’ll want anything further. And the usual on these.” He placed the jars on the technician’s workbench.
“What do you want done with Froley’s duds?” Ritter asked.
“Bring them into my office,” the pathologist said. “Come along, Dr. Mookerji.”
Dr. Coffee took the paper parcel from Ritter, placed it on his desk, and undid it gingerly.
“Max,” he continued, “if that penny-pinching Northbank City Council would ever cough up enough money for a police lab, maybe you folks would have one of those miniature vacuum cleaners that Dr. Locard devised for dust analysis. As it is, I’m going to have to put Dr. Mookerji to work with a fine-tooth comb, a set of camel’s-hair brushes, and a few dozen cellophane envelopes to collect microscopic evidence from Froley’s trouser-cuffs, seams, and other likely spots. I don’t know what we’ll find besides dehydrated egg powder, but we’ll have a look.”
“Am suggesting superior method to comb-and-brush technique,” Dr. Mookerji said. “Am partial to floating short-term loan of suction-drain apparatus from dental clinic during nonclinical hours. Same should facilitate extraction of dust particles from clothing of deceased.”
“Good. Let’s try it,” said Dr. Coffee.
“And now, Doc, how about giving me the low-down on what made Froley stop ticking besides the carrot.”
“You were looking over my shoulder, Max, while I wrote the death certificate.”
“Sure. But do I know what an occidental fracture is? Or a … a sub-adenoid whosis?”
Dr. Coffee laughed. “You’ve been around here so much, Max,” he said, “that sometimes I forget you don’t know the language. The linear occipital fracture was a crack across the back of Froley’s skull. The subarachnoid hemorrhage—bleeding between the brain proper and the membrane that covers it—was probably caused by the fracture.”
“Which means that Froley got socked in the back of the head?”
“With something harder, if no bigger, than a man’s hand. I’ll know more about the extent of the brain injury after I’ve made sections, but I don’t think the cracked skull killed him. The bleeding, though, indicates how a big man like Froley, with both hands free, could have been strangled with a carrot. And while we’ll of course check our findings here in the lab, I’m pretty sure we’ll find that he did choke to death. The purple face, the tiny hemorrhages in the scalp and eyelids, the congestion of the—”
“So where do we go from here?” the detective asked. “What do I do while the Swami here is vacuum-cleaning Froley’s pants?”
Dr. Coffee ht a cigarette while he pondered the question. At least it was a question that could be answered, which was something he could not say for a dozen other questions that had been buzzing the lobes of his brain for the past few days. For instance, should he proceed on the assumption that he was investigating a Communist plot? If so, why would a Communist agent, all of whom are supposed to be well schooled in the technique of sabotage, subversion and dissimulation, choose arsenic, a poison which could be easily and accurately detected for years after death, as the medium to kill a few thousand American soldiers, 6,500 at most—not even a division? And if it was indeed a plot—the death of Peggy Bayliss might possibly have been an accident, but the demise of Christopher Froley certainly was not—were the Communists killing each other off? Perhaps the answer to the first question would answer the second. Perhaps the stupidity of the agent entrusted with the initial coup was such that he had to be eliminated from the apparatus. Any man stupid enough to choose a poison as easily traceable as arsenic, and then put only a barrel of it into service for the anti-capitalistic, anti-pluto-demo-imperialist cause, could very easily be proven unworthy, and therefore marked for destruction. Froley, for instance, was perhaps no longer useful to dialectic materialism. Quite possible, if what Coffee had heard about Communist discipline were true.
On the other hand, if he got a different answer to his first question, and started to reason on that basis in an opposite direction, the avenues of deduction were innumerable, but somehow less shadowy. He had, in fact, caught a glimpse down one of these avenues at lunchtime. He could not recognize the figure that stood at the end, but he thought the silhouette looked familiar. In any case—
“Are you officially assigned to this case, Max?” Dr. Coffee asked.
“Sure, since today. Froley is definitely homicide. So that’s me, officially.”
“Good,” the pathologist said. “Because I think you may have to go to New York Monday or Tuesday.”
“Okay, you got a crystal ball, you can read the future, so you know what I’m going to do next week. But what do I do tomorrow?”
“Sleep,” said Dr. Coffee. “Get up just in time to dunk mandel schnitten in your coffee. Tease your dog and take your kid sister for a walk, or vice versa. Take your mother for a ride with your siren going. Read the funny papers. Tomorrow is Sunday. Sunday is your day off. Remember?”
“I know,” Ritter said. “So I’ll probably be up here watching you make with the test tubes and the microscope, while the Swami goes through Froley’s pockets with a suction nozzle—unless I find something good and juicy to get my teeth into.”
“I’ve got one suggestion, Max,” the pathologist said, “but I’ve hesitated to make it because I haven’t thought the thing through yet. And besides, all the shops will be closed tomorrow. Do you need a writ or a warrant or something to get a pair of trousers out of a dry-cleaning establishment, if the trousers don’t belong to you?”
“I won’t need no writ,” said Ritter. “I got very persuasive ways. What do you want, Doc?”
“First you’ll have to find out who does the dry-cleaning for—Let’s see … Papa Lenormand, of course; Quirk, Remington, Evans, Gilmore, Captain Kavlik, and—Well, that’s enough to start with.”
“What hat did you pull those names out of, Doc?”
“That’s your list, Max.”
“My list? Of what?”
“Those are the people including Quirk, who Quirk says were in and out of Evans’s office the day Evans went home sick—the day the letter Evans says he wrote to the F.B.I. about Froley is supposed to have disappeared. Then I added Evans’s name just in case he … well, had a lapse of memory.”
“What about Bayliss?”
“If you can find Bayliss, we won’t have to worry about his pants. I don’t suppose you’ve any further news on him.”
“No luck,” Ritter said. “And when I find the cleaners, then what? Do you want their price list?”
“I want to know if any of these gents sent suits out to be cleaned today. And if so, get the clothes and bring them here for examination by our distinguished micro-chemist, Dr. Mookerji.”
“Occidental custom of adorning nether portion of trouserleg with upturned dust trap is indeed great aid to criminal investigation,” said Dr. Mookerji.
Doris Hudson stuck her head inside the door to say: “You aren’t starting anything complicated, are you, Doctor? Because don’t forget I promised your wife you’d be only an hour late for dinner.”
“I’ll make it,” Dr. Coffee said.
XXIII
Gilmore dined on a tired Braunschweiger sandwich and a bottle of beer which he shared with an F.B.I. agent named Stapp. In view of the Tribune story, he would inevitably have the F.B.I. on his neck sooner or later anyway, so he had decided to take the initiative rather than wait to be summoned. He had called local headquarters and suggested a meeting at an obscure delicatessen in an unfamiliar part of town.
“Because,” as he explained to Stapp, “whatever usefulness I may have to you guys would end the minute I was seen talking to any of you.”
“You think you can be useful to us?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t go for amateurs much,” Stapp said. “What’s the angle?”
Gilmore told the story of Bayliss, Zina and the missing copy of Émile. He told it in detail, leaving out nothing.
When he had finished, the F.B.I. man looked at him stolidly as if waiting for more. Finally Stapp said:
“How do you know this Barbara Wall doesn’t still have the book?”
“I don’t know for certain, of course. It’s up to me to find out.”
“Why is it up to you?”
“Because you don’t believe a word I say. Because I’m already guilty by association of half a dozen crimes, probably including the poisoning of the rations. Because until I can produce the book, or turn up Bayliss, or otherwise prove that my connection with this goddam mess is purely accidental and innocent, I’ll never get another job anywhere in the country. And not only do I resent being generally regarded as a skunk, but I take a very dim view of starving to death.”
“What makes you think you have a better chance of digging up this stuff than we have?” Stapp asked.
“I’ve got contacts,” said Gilmore, “people who will come to me, and won’t come to you. At least one of them—I’m not sure who it is—is probably still very anxious to see me. Remember that somebody tried to knock me off the day after that book disappeared again. Why? The only reason I can think of is that this somebody believes I know the secrets of the book and can testify in place of Zina—in case Zina never shows up again. So if you guys will stay away from me for three or four days, I may get another chance to meet this person. Or persons. I think they may try again.”
“Suppose this time they succeed?”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take.”
“I can’t make any promises,” Stapp said. “I can’t make any commitments that we’ll lay off you.”
“Do you have any more questions?”
“No.”
“Are you holding me now, after what I told you?”
“No,” said the F.B.I. man. “Not yet.”
“Then you go out first,” Gilmore said. “Just in case somebody knows where you work. I’ll wait here a while. I’ll keep in touch.”
Half an hour later Gilmore walked into the odorous murk of the Anchor Bar and ordered a beer. The one-eyed bartender glowered at him so he smiled.
“My girl been in yet tonight?” he asked.
“What girl?” the barman growled.
“The dame I was in here with last night.”
“I never saw you before.” The bartender drew the beer. “And if I don’t see you again, that’s okay, too.”
“The dame with the pink dress—remember?” Gilmore persisted. “The dame that came back with another guy about an hour after she left with me—has she been in tonight?”
“You’re drunk!” The barman snatched back the beer and poured it into the sink. “I don’t serve drunks.”
“The man she came back with—did he maybe leave a package for me? A package about so big—like a book? Did he say, ‘Give this to Emile when he comes in’?”
“Goddammit, get out!” roared the barman. “I ain’t going to lose my license serving goddam drunks. Get out of here before I throw you out.” A glass crashed to the floor behind the bar.
Gilmore backed away from the bar, grinning.
“Thanks for the tip, Ed,” he said. “See you in my dreamsl”
He forced himself to walk out very slowly.
He had not been home five minutes before the telephone rang.
“Thanks for the schizophrenic gardenias,” Barbara said. “But tell me, Gil. Which corsage is for whom? Which one of me do you really want to get well?”
“Keep talking, so I can make up my mind,” Gilmore replied.
“I’ve been feeling awful, Gil. Honestly, this isn’t a diplomatic illness. I’ve had a splitting headache. And don’t you dare say that it comes from my split personality. I guess I had one too many last night.”
“You sure had one too many for my taste.”
“Gil, you’re being mean. I was talking about drinks.”
“I know. But I wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry about last night. And about today, too.” It was the old Barbara speaking, cool, calm and collected. Her regrets would put an inch of frost on a mint julep at ten paces. “I heard about you and Mr. Evans. I can’t understand his acting that way. Is there anything I can do, Gil?”
“Sure,” said Gilmore. “Go away with me for a few days.”
Barbara did not reply, so Gilmore continued: “It would work out fine. We’ve both got excuses. I’ve got my vacation and you’ve got your headache. We can drive down to Kentucky. I know a man there who owns an aspirin farm.”
“You’re not serious, Gil?”
“Sure I am.”
There was a slight pause. Then, “It’s impossible, Gil. You know it’s impossible.”
“I know. It wouldn’t look well, after that story in the Tribune. Besides, you’ll have your hands full with the press, now that Gilmore has been removed from the Barzac lineup just as the big game is starting. I just thought I’d ask, that’s all.”
After a further exchange of trivialities, Gilmore hung up. He immediately dialed the Tribune and asked for the city editor.
