Recipe for Homicide, page 7
“Dr. Andrews is ready in B-6,” Doris Hudson announced. “He thinks you may want to look at the patient before you do the biopsy.”
“Tell him I’ll be right in,” the pathologist said.
For the next half hour Dr. Coffee relegated the Peggy Bayliss case to the back of his mind. His laboratory, however, carried on with a vengeance. Dr. Mookerji bustled about in a flurry of filter papers, bottles, beakers and Bunsen burners. Doris Hudson calmly opened cans, polished copper foil and lighted the blue gas-flames. By the time Dr. Coffee was loosing Arctic blasts of liquid carbon dioxide against his freezing microtome, a dozen beakers were bubbling with mysterious and ominous insistence on the other side of the lab. The pathologist shaved sections from the frozen tissue he had brought from the operating room, thawed them in a pan of water, stained them, slid them onto tiny glass rectangles and under the nose of his microscope. It took him only half a minute to recognize the swollen, misshapen cells of cancer. He returned to the operating room with the bad news.
“Am of opinion,” said Dr. Mookerji, peering into one of the bubbling beakers, “that experimental testings are on verge of completion.”
“Don’t touch anything,” Doris Hudson cautioned. “The doctor likes to check his own conclusions. He’ll be right back.”
“Am sincerely hopeful that Reinsch tests will counteract sadness of biopsy,” the Hindu said. “Doctor Sahib is frequently somewhat melancholy when microscope reveals carcinoma.”
“Here he is,” Doris said. “We’re ready, Doctor.”
Dr. Coffee first examined the blank tests—the beakers which contained only the acid and distilled water. With a glass rod he removed the strips of copper foil. They were clean and bright. He next removed the strips from the beakers in which the stomach and liver tissue had been placed. The copper was coated with a steel-gray deposit.
“Most informative,” Dr. Mookerji commented. “Inasmuch as coating of copper is not of silvery brightness, mercury can be forthwith eliminated as fatal causative agent.”
“We still have to distinguish between antimony, bismuth, and arsenic,” Dr. Coffee said. “Will you heat one of those strips in a test tube, Doctor, so we can make a microscopic search for arsenous oxide crystals?”
“Instantly,” said the Hindu resident. “Am familiar with octagonal outlines of same.”
“Doris, I want to talk to Mr. Eugene Evans at the Barzac Soup Company,” Dr. Coffee said. “And put in a call for Lieutenant Max Ritter at the police station.”
“I haven’t been able to raise Mr. Evans,” Doris Hudson reported a moment later, “but here’s Lieutenant Ritter.”
“Hello, Max,” the pathologist said. “Haven’t seen you in weeks. How’s business at the detective bureau? … Well, I may be able to throw a little something your way. It’s somewhat tenuous and highly confidential at this point, but—Can you come up to the shop? … Okay, Max. Right away.”
“They can’t seem to locate Mr. Evans,” Doris said. “Will you talk to a Mr. Gilmore?”
“I sure will. Put him on.… Mr. Gilmore, this is Dan Coffee.… Well, yes, I have news of a sort, but I’d rather not talk over the phone. I’ll be over to see you in half an hour—with Lieutenant of Detectives Max Ritter of the Northbank police.”
VIII
At nine o’clock the big wheels of the Barzac Soup Company were idling quietly in the air-conditioned office of Mr. Calvin Quirk, the No. 2 wheel. In the absence of Mr. Evans, the No. 1 wheel, the asthenic, lipless, tallow-complexioned assistant general manager had called a council of war. Bart Remington had already arrived when Pierre Lenormand entered, followed by Gilmore and Barbara Wall. Remington immediately took Gilmore aside and whispered:
“Where’d you get the beautiful shiner? Run into something in the dark?”
Gilmore nodded.
‘A door, I suppose.”
“No. A boor.”
Remington chuckled. “Chris Froley?”
“I don’t know. It was dark. What makes you think it was Froley?”
“Talk gets around,” the production manager said. “Your private life is your own business, of course, but I do think you’d be wise to watch your step with the Froley dame. Her husband is almost as tough as he talks. So—Well, you understand, don’t you?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep the spotless reputation of Barzac free from the breath of scandal.”
Mr. Quirk rustled his papers and cleared his throat noisily to call the meeting to order.
“Mr. Evans has unfortunately been called out of town,” said Mr. Quirk, in a voice that was somewhere between the B-flat clarinet and the mating call of the loon. “Before he left he asked me to call you all together in connection with the unfortunate death last night of our colleague, Peggy Bayliss. You were all present at yesterday morning’s tasting session, at which Miss Bayliss rather ostentatiously sampled our new product for the Army. Mr. Evans asked me to say that all details of this session must be stricken from your memories. If any mention appears in the public prints of the fact that the death of Miss Bayliss followed her consumption of Barzac’s field rations for the Army, heads will roll. Mr. Evans says he will be fair. He will make every effort to determine the individual responsible for any possible leak of such information to the press. But if such a leak occurs, and he is unable to place the responsibility exactly, he will summarily dismiss everyone who had access to the information—and that means every person in this room.”
Bart Remington whistled softly. “My gosh!” he said, nervously verifying the ends of his maroon bow tie. “Does that mean Peggy was poisoned by that G.I. ambrosia she ate yesterday?”
“Not at all,” Quirk said quickly. “It merely means that we are to avoid giving false currency to any similar surmise—we are to prevent any such rumors gaining credence. We are—”
“Quirk, let’s be frank,” Gilmore interrupted. “We’re all adults, and we’re all sworn to secrecy as of this moment. Of course there’s a suspicion that Peggy was poisoned. And we’ll know definitely one way or the other in a very few minutes. Dr. Coffee is on his way here from Pasteur Hospital, and he’ll be able to tell us. He’s done a post-mortem on Peggy this morning.”
“But—he’s coming here—to this office?”
“Certainly. He phoned me he was on his way so I left word that I’d be in your office, Quirk.”
“But why did he phone you, Gilmore? Why not me?”
“Because I was with Mr. Evans last night when he engaged Dr. Coffee. So naturally, Quirk, when Evans buzzed off without even saying good-bye, Dr. Coffee talked to me. Didn’t Mr. Evans tell you about this?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, he did mention it, but—”
“Hasn’t he taken steps to recall the two carloads of rations that have already been shipped?”
“Well—as a matter of fact, that’s why he went to Chicago. He thought it would be more discreet and more efficient to go directly to the railway people there and try to locate the cars, rather than work through the railway agents here in Northbank. He has friends in the main office who—”
“Didn’t he give you instructions to hold up all further shipments of Army rations? Haven’t you impounded every can we now have in our warehouses?”
“Gilmore, I have no accounting to give to you.”
“No, of course not. But I’m the guy that’s going to have to talk to the reporters if they come swarming around the plant to find out if we’re poisoning the U.S. Army.”
“You’ll have to accept my word that Mr. Evans has taken all necessary precautions.”
“My gosh, Quirk,” Remington broke in, “come down off the tall stallion. If Peggy was poisoned … if somebody’s been able to salt our Army rations with cyanide or something … My gosh, Quirk, don’t you realize what it means to have a murderer and a saboteur at large in the plant?”
Any comment Quirk may have intended was postponed by the arrival of Dr. Coffee and Max Ritter. The pathologist did not introduce the lanky, dark, sad-eyed, curly-haired police detective, but left him standing near the door of Quirk’s office while Gilmore did the honors.
“Dr. Coffee, this is Mr. Quirk, our assistant general manager. Mr. Evans is unfortunately out of town.”
“Good to know you,” Dr. Coffee said, looking at the group on the other side of the desk, rather than at Quirk. “Are you sure you want all these people to hear what I’ve got to say, Quirk?”
“Mr. Evans left word that everybody who attended yesterday’s tasting sessions was to be held strictly responsible for maintaining complete discretion,” Quirk said. “You may speak freely, Doctor.”
“The only thing I can tell you definitely today,” Dr. Coffee said, “is negative. Miss Bayliss did not die of the causes indicated on her death certificate. She definitely did not die of a perforated viscus.”
“But you can’t tell us what she did die of?” Quirk asked.
“I can tell you what I think,” the pathologist said. “On the basis of a presumptive test made this morning, I am practically certain that Miss Bayliss died of arsenic poisoning.”
“Arsenic?” Quirk raised an inch from his chair.
“My gosh, Doctor! Are you sure?”
“I’m satisfied myself. As far as the law is concerned, however, I won’t be sure until we’ve done a quantitative Marsh test to establish that Miss Bayliss absorbed at least three grains of arsenic, which is the minimum fatal dose.”
“And how long will that take?” Remington asked.
“A week perhaps. Certainly four or five days.”
“My gosh, Doctor. Why don’t you install some modern machinery down at your hospital?”
“A Marsh test has to be done with extreme care, particularly when a person’s life may depend on its outcome. We have to spend several days alone testing the materials, to make sure that the zinc, the sulphuric acid, the calcium chloride, and the rest of the chemicals we use are free of arsenic. Then we have to prepare to weigh black arsenic mirrors deposited on the walls of a glass tube—weights which are computed in milligrams. One milligram is about the sixty-fifth part of a grain and it takes nearly five hundred grains to make an ounce. So when you’re dealing in quantities as small as the thirty-thousandth part of an ounce—”
“You deal in these microscopic quantities personally, I take it,” said Mr. Quirk.
“I check every step of every operation, yes,” said Dr. Coffee.
“Somebody told me you had some kind of foreigner working over there in your lab at Pasteur Hospital,” Mr. Quirk pursued.
“My resident pathologist, Dr. Motilal Mookerji, happens to be a Hindu,” Dan Coffee’s words were icy. “He also happens to be the most able bacteriologist and forensic chemist I have ever met. I have perfect confidence in him and in his work.”
“He seems like a nice fellow,” Remington said. “I met him at a Lion’s Club luncheon. But he does talk funny English.”
“He talks more chemistry per cubic centimeter than any rhetorician I know,” Dr. Coffee countered. “However, I understand you have your own laboratory here, and if you’d like to send over your own technicians to sit in on the tests, I should be delighted—even though I doubt if they are particularly skilled in toxicology.”
“Mr. Evans has perfect confidence in you, Dr. Coffee,” said Mr. Quirk. “Please continue.”
“That’s all I have to say for the moment,” the pathologist said, but from the way he said it, Gilmore knew it wasn’t true. So when Dan Coffee gave Max Ritter the eye while Quirk was dismissing the rest of the kitchen cabinet, Gilmore lagged behind. So did Barbara Wall.
Dr. Coffee introduced Max Ritter to Quirk, who assumed his noblesse-oblige manner and passed him on to Gilmore and Barbara.
“Mr. Evans assured me,” Dr. Coffee said, “that if circumstances warranted, I was to call in the police—discreetly. Lieutenant Ritter is both discreet and of the police. He thinks it may be necessary for him to have free access to all parts of the plant at all times.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” said Mr. Quirk.
“In the meantime, I’d like someone to show me and Lieutenant Ritter through the plant, as though we were just curious visitors. I understand that’s often your job, Gilmore.”
“Mr. Gilmore and I both are in charge of that sort of thing,” Barbara Wall said.
Dr. Coffee favored Barbara with a searching glance that seemed to diagnose both body and soul.
“Before we start,” he said to Gilmore, “I wonder if you could steer me to the gentlemen’s room.”
Once safe within the white-tiled privacy of the gent’s room, Dr. Coffee said, “I suppose I’m cockeyed, but there’s something about both Quirk and that good-looking girl out there that I don’t trust—yet. That’s why I wanted to ask you two questions privately. Six cans of your Army rations were sent to my lab this morning. Who sent them?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Gilmore said, “but I guess it was Quirk, since he seems to be riding herd in Evans’s absence. Why?”
“I’m faced with a very puzzling situation,” Dr. Coffee said. “There’s no doubt whatever that Miss Bayliss was full of arsenic when she died. But I tested each of the six cans of rations you folks sent over—tested them for arsenic. And every can was negative!”
IX
Gilmore conducted Dr. Coffee and Max Ritter to the third floor. Barbara Wall was waiting for them as they stepped from the elevator. He knew she would be.
“I’ll tag along,” she announced. “I may be of some help.”
“We’re just taking the usual cook’s tour,” Gilmore said.
A great wave of sound swept through the doors to the thirdfloor kitchens. Against the din of moving machinery—the whirr of motors, the hum of conveyor belts—there was a counterpoint of rhythmic chords, recurrent themes, and sharp, accented notes: the tinny, treble clatter of empty cans as they cascaded down from an upper floor to the filling Unes; the rhythmic stamp of the presses that sealed the cans; the dull, rattling resonance of the filled cans rolling their glistening way to the retort baskets. The human voice was like a feather of spray lost in the sea of noise. Gilmore shouted to be heard: “This is our beef operation … all the beef soups … bouillon, beefvegetable, beef-noodle. … So we’ve been cooking the field rations on this floor!”
“Are you cooking them now?” Dr. Coffee shouted back.
Barbara Wall shook her head in the negative. “Not since last night. Mr. Evans had production stopped.”
“Dr. Coffee wants to see the whole process,” Gilmore yelled. “We’ll start over here.”
A crew of white-coated men were trimming fat from succulent cuts of beef, tossing the slabs of meat into netting slings. The slings were hoisted to overhead trolleys and swung across the room to a line of gleaming broth kettles. Another sling of beef was being lifted from its steaming kettle to be trolleyed to the trimming tables and the mechanical dicer, trailing a fragrant cloud of vapor.
“Duck!” Gilmore shouted. “Half a ton of meat packs a wallop.”
He waved the group further into the vast kitchen. Dozens of women and girls in white caps, blue blouses, and white aprons were bent over hills of diced beef on stainless-steel tables, running through the morsels with deft, patient fingers, seeking out bits of fat, gristle, or bone to be discarded.
More uniformed women—an acre of them—sat around the sorting tables in homey groups, or lined the conveyor belts. They were peeling vegetables by hand, or examining red-gold heaps of cubed carrots, bit by bit, or seeking out imperfect kernels among the pastel mounds of com or lima beans. They worked against a brilliant background, a mosaic of fresh color: dark green tufts of parsley growing out of full baskets, ivory tubs of peeled potatoes, tons of violet-tinted turnips.
A girl in blue-and-white waved a carrot at Gilmore. He waved back, half-heartedly. That was enough encouragement for Frances Froley. The Carrot Queen immediately abandoned her court and caught up with Gilmore.
“Thank you for the photos, Mr. Gilmore.” She flashed her champion’s smile. “Your secretary sent them to me. They’re wonderful, don’t you think?”
“Superb.”
“And your secretary told me about the screening of the film tonight. Will you be there?”
“I’m afraid not,” Gilmore said.
“Oh!” It was a disappointed oh, with eyes to match. “I was hoping we could go together, so you could tell me how I looked on the screen.”
“I’d like to, Mrs. Froley, but I can’t make it tonight.”
“You’re not afraid of Chris, are you? After the other night, I mean? You don’t have to be. He just likes to talk a lot. Don’t you pay any attention to him.”
Gilmore was suddenly aware that he had an interested audience.
“I’ll remember that,” he said. “See you later.”
He rejoined his group, moved quickly ahead, and pointed through an open door to thousands of pale green globules glistening in a hundred baskets. “The onion-peeling operation is isolated over there,” he said.
“I bet those gals cry their eyes out,” Max Ritter said.
“Not after the first twenty minutes,” Gilmore said.
“No kidding!” Ritter shook his head. “That possible, Doc?”
“The human body is a remarkably resilient organism, Max. Your ears are already accustomed to the steady noise in here. Your eyes would soon adjust themselves to the effluvia of peeled onions. Want to try?”
“Let’s get back to the meat,” the detective said. “I don’t see much future in vegetables. What cooks next?”
“The blending kettles.” Gilmore smiled as he pointed to a steel platform, two steps above the concrete floor, on which stood a battery of a dozen great solid-nickel urns, each holding close to a hundred gallons. “This is the culinary heart, the artistic center of the Barzac kitchens.”
“This I must see,” Dr. Coffee said.
“I’m sorry you can’t climb on the platforms,” Barbara Wall said.
“How do you mean, can’t?” Max Ritter said. “Do we got to crack this thing by absent treatment?”
