Recipe for Homicide, page 8
“I think the lieutenant has a point…
“We’ll have to get special dispensation from Mr. Evans,” Gilmore apologized. “In all the time I’ve been here, I’ve never been allowed on the platform. But I think you’ll get a pretty comprehensive idea of the operation from the floor.”
“Let’s give a look,” Ritter said.
A score of chefs were scurrying about the blending kettles in orderly confusion, weighing ingredients, consulting thermometers, gauges, and stop watches. Open sacks of white flour, salt, sugar, and spices yawned at the base of the platform, stabbed by great metal scoops. A chefs helper went from one barrel to another, swinging a shovel, and peering at the snowy crystals of monosodium glutamate, the bright yellow turmeric, the pale mauve of ground cloves, the drab green of bay leaves. A pleasant aroma hovered over the operation.
Dr. Coffee was fascinated by the palate-tickling sights, the appetizing smells—all the gustatory overtones to the infernal din. He could almost taste the savory things cooking all around him by the hundred gallons. Dr. Coffee considered himself a better-than-average amateur cook, even though two out of three of his cheese soufflés had never survived the oven with appropriate rigidity for more than two minutes and ten seconds. This was the ideal assignment for a pathologist who ranked Le Grand Vatel with Le Grand Pasteur—to ply his trade among the fragrant surroundings of his avocation.
Yet Dr. Coffee did not forget his mission. He watched the steaming cauldrons of beef broth being trundled across the floor on stainless-steel three-wheeled carts. When the broth was poured into the mechanical clarifier, he decided the machine was nothing more than a large-scale centrifuge, such as he used in his lab to separate the blood cells from the serum by centrifugal force; only with the consommé, it was the fine particles of solid matter that was being hurled to the outer rim of the machine to be removed mechanically, particles too fine for a sieve. He watched the consommé being drained into mobile vats which foamed like washtubs on Monday morning, although much more aromatically. He watched two men with huge wooden paddles, working over the suds to reduce them to normal consistency before canning. It was the actual canning that he was watching with his professional eye.
He saw the soup being transferred to the tanks above the can line. He saw the empty cans moving mechanically under the spouts, each to receive its measured charge. He saw the filled cans moving mechanically between the two rows of neat, efficient girls who dipped spoons into each can to examine the consistency. If there were too many noodles, the girl removed a spoonful; if not enough, she added some. The cans moved inexorably on their track of steel rollers to the great press that stamped on the caps, sealing them hermetically.
Dr. Coffee watched the sealed cans drop into the waiting retort baskets—huge hemispheres of cast-iron lattice—which were hauled away, seven hundred cans at a time, to be locked into the pressure retorts. Here super-heated steam would maintain for an hour a temperature of 235 degrees Fahrenheit—twenty-three degrees above the boiling point—which would destroy all known ferments. When he had seen one batch of seven hundred cans hoisted from the cloud of steam hissing from the retorts and plunged into cold water to stop further cooking, Dr. Coffee spoke for the first time in twenty minutes.
“I noticed,” he shouted into Gilmore’s ear, “that the machine which seals the cans stamps a series of figures and letters into the top of each can. A code?”
Gilmore nodded. “The date,” he yelled, “the contents, and the particular batch.”
Dr. Coffee cupped his hands. “The rations, too?”
Again Gilmore nodded.
“Good,” said Dr. Coffee. “Then maybe I can find out why there was no arsenic in the cans that came over to my lab this morning. Maybe we can find out if the death of Peggy Bayliss was an accident or if she was murdered—and by whom. Can you send me a sample of every batch of rations turned out here? One of each.” The pathologist held up one finger. “One can. Yes? Or no?”
“Can do,” said Gilmore. He grinned at his own bad pun.
X
Peggy Bayliss was buried next morning. The funeral was simple, but the mourners were impressive, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The floral display was also impressive—particularly to Northbank florists. The Northbank County Hospital and the charity wards of six other Northbank hospitals would benefit later.
When Bob Gilmore could not locate Peggy’s ex-husband, whom he had not seen since a few minutes after Peggy’s death, he had made the funeral arrangements himself. After all, Mr. Evans had given him that commission, On behalf of Barzac Canneries.
Gilmore knew that Peggy was vaguely theistic, although not particularly religious. He had never known to what church she belonged, if any, and Bayliss was unavailable for counsel. Having once gone with Peggy to a lecture at the Northbank Unitarian Church, Gilmore decided that a Unitarian minister could not offend anyone and would certainly have been acceptable to Peggy, had she been arranging her own funeral.
The fashionable Midtown Mortuary Chapel was crowded. Most of the Barzac big wigs were there—including Eugene Evans, who had returned from his mission to Chicago in time to order a spray of tuberoses. A blanket of gardenias covered the casket in the name of the company.
A surprising number of little wigs were there, too. Pierre Lenormand and his staff of cooks had sent a chef’s cap of white roses, but just in case the magnitude of the tribute was not understood, every chef not on duty turned up at the funeral parlors. The buxom matrons from Peggy’s own kitchens were also there, of course, and a delegation of girls from the third-floor beef operation and the fourth-floor can line. The third-floor vegetable girls sent a wreath and Frances Froley, who smiled nervously at Gilmore when she came in. Chris Froley was not there; the union had sent a spray, however.
Barbara Wall was there, too. She arrived early. She was sweetly solicitous about Gilmore. She was also as nervous as a terrier on the Fourth of July. Although she kept her hands in the pockets of her jacket, Gilmore could hear the telegraphic click-click of her restless fingernails. He was about to suggest that polish-remover would be quicker, when she volunteered an explanation.
“Gil, I’m in a state,” she said. “I almost telephoned you to come over last night.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well, you’ve been acting so funny since I came to Northbank that I wasn’t sure—But I was scared to death. Somebody broke into my apartment last night while I was out.”
“Oh?” Gilmore looked around, anxiously seeking George Bayliss. There was no sign of Peggy’s ex-husband. “Did they take much?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. But they left the place a mess. It gave me the creeps.”
“Did they take any books?” Gilmore felt his scalp prickle.
“They took everything apart, but they didn’t take a thing that I’ve noticed. Anyhow, why would they take…?” She stopped, darted a startled glance at Gilmore. “Gil, did I ever give you back your copy of Émile?”
“No. Is it gone?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think to look. Oh, Gill Remember how I used to rib you about Zina and the book? How I said she must be a Red agent since she was a Spanish Loyalist refugee, and how you were just getting yourself married to a subversive network, instead of a Moroccan dancer?”
“I remember.”
“Do you suppose it could be true, Gil? I can’t wait to get home to see if Émile is still there.”
“Anything could be true,” Gilmore said. He looked behind him again. Dr. Coffee had just come in with Max Ritter. They were taking seats at the back without talking to anyone. Still no Bayliss. “Barbara, do you remember meeting George Bayliss in New York?”
“Peggy’s husband? Yes, I remember him.”
“Have you seen him around Northbank the last few days?”
“No. Isn’t he here?”
“I don’t see him.” Gilmore shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since twenty minutes after Peggy died. I don’t know where to reach him, and I haven’t heard from him.”
“Then there’s nobody to sit in the mourners’ pew,” Barbara said.
“There’s me,” Gilmore replied.
The white-haired chef des cuisines loomed behind Barbara.
“And don’t forget Papa Lenormand,” said the chef. “That grande garce was like a daughter. I mourn her in my heart.”
“I want to sit with you, Gil,” Barbara said.
Lenormand placed a fatherly hand on Barbara’s shoulder. “You will sit between us,” he said.
Gilmore looked uneasily about him, searching the dim, flowerscented hush for George Bayliss. Chris Froley had come in to slip into a seat beside his wife, but Bayliss was still absent. More disquieting than his absence was the sudden presence of three newspaper reporters, standing near the entrance, talking to Mr. Evans. Gilmore recognized them as representatives of all three Northbank dailies. The Tribune and the News weren’t so bad; he could handle the morning papers; they were more or less friendly to the cannery, and there would be time to talk reason to their publishers. The man from the Journal was something else again; an afternoon paper had to have an eightcolumn headline for street sales, and the Journal was not particularly friendly to Barzac; the Journal was not friendly to anybody; the Journal was an anachronistic survival of muckraking newspaperdom at its yellowest. Gilmore started walking down the aisle.
“Come on,” he said. He took Barbara’s arm. Lenormand solemnly followed.
As they slid into the front pew, Mr. Evans silently took the seat beside Lenormand.
The ceremony was mercifully brief. The minister’s casual, simple dignity was much more touching than any bombastic platitudes of hope-through-tears. As the casket rolled soundlessly up the aisle, with the minister intoning “The Lord is mv shepherd; I shall not want. …” a gust of spontaneous sorrow rippled through the chapel.
Barbara whispered, “Gil, do we go to the cemetery?”
Gilmore shook his head. “She’s going to Chicago. Family plot.”
“… I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Mr. Evans leaned across Lenormand to say: “Gilmore, there are several newspaper reporters back there. Will you speak to them?”
“Sure,” Gilmore said. “Did you head off those freight cars, Mr. Evans?”
“Everything is under control,” the general manager replied, “except those reporters. I don’t like their attitude. You—you’ll be careful what you say to them, Gilmore.”
A tremor of cold intuition ran through Gilmore. Something must have leaked. The newspaper boys would try to worm the truth out of him, and he didn’t feel fit for a verbal sparring match. He had one defense, ile could speak frankly because he did not know the truth—not for certain—not yet. He did not have to confide his suspicions. He could stick to facts.
“I’ll handle them, Mr. Evans,” he said.
He tried to give his voice the ring of self-assurance. Actually he felt about as self-assured as the understudy for a lion tamer on the trainer’s day off.
The chapel emptied quickly. The three reporters pushed through the stragglers like watch dogs eager to sniff at some intruder. They were definitely canine, these news hounds. The Tribune man was a mastiff, the News man as vain and well-groomed as a chow, the Journal reporter a yapping terrier.
Mr. Evans smilingly took his leave, waving the reporters on to Gilmore. As they closed in, Barbara stayed behind.
“Howdy, gents,” Gilmore said. “What can I do for you?”
“What’s the story?” growled the Tribune man. “Evans says you can give us an angle.”
“The angle,” said Gilmore, “is that I’ve lost a damned good friend and the Barzac Soup Company has lost a very able home economist. She’s going to be hard to replace.”
“What she die of?” yapped the Journal reporter.
“I guess you could say she was a martyr to her profession,” Gilmore said slowly. “Peggy Bayliss had to do a lot of experimental cooking and eating in her job. Her gastric system could take just so many years of it. For some time now her stomach had been acting the loyal opposition, and—”
“What did she really die of?” snarled the News man.
“Gents, you asked me and I’m telling you. She died at Pastern Hospital, with a reputable physician in attendance. Her death certificate is on file there. She didn’t die in any dark alley with a couple of slugs in her, so don’t try to smoke up a banner line for the late edition.”
“What about that Army chow Barzac is making?”
“Army chow?” Gilmore did his best to look bewildered.
“The field rations you guys are canning up there. I hear Peggy Bayliss ate some of that the day she died.”
“She did?”
“You know damned well she did. We got pictures of her tasting the stuff. Two picture agencies are peddling prints of her smacking her lips. Was the stuff poisoned?”
“I think that’s a pretty far-fetched conclusion,” Gilmore said. He had forgotten about the photographers. He whipped Barbara with a quick side glance. “It may have been the last straw, but Peggy’s illness has been going on for quite a while, off and on”
“Then what was Max Ritter doing here at the funeral?” barked the Journal man. “He’s still lieutenant of detectives, last time I inquired.”
Mistake No. 2! Ritter should have been warned away from the funeral.
“Peggy Bayliss had a very wide circle of friends,” Gilmore said. “She knew all sorts of people and all sorts of people liked her—even newspaper reporters.”
“Go ahead, crack wise,” growled the Tribune man. “I thought you knew better than to hold out on the press.”
“Gents, I’m not holding out on you,” Gilmore declared. “I’ve given you all the facts that are positively known, and I’ll keep you in touch if anything develops. Meanwhile why don’t you check with the police and the hospital? They’ll confirm everything I’ve said.”
“We’ll check,” the News said. “Don’t worry.”
“Let him worry,” snapped the Journal. “He’s got plenty to worry about.”
The Journal made a rude lip noise inappropriate to the hush of a funeral chapel, turned on his heel and marched out, followed by the News and Tribune in file. They moved slowly, as though they expected Gilmore to start after them. He didn’t. He had nothing more to say, even though he felt, as he watched them leave the chapel, that his job was walking out of the door in triplicate.
He became suddenly aware that Barbara Wall was standing very close to him—pleasantly close, he noted with some perturbation.
“I’m sorry about those pictures, Gil,” Barbara said. “I guess the photos I ordered gave the show away, didn’t they?”
“Did they?” Gilmore wasn’t so sure. None of the three reporters in question had ever impressed him as being perceptive enough to draw logical conclusions from photographs of Peggy Bayliss tasting Army rations on the day of her death. Once they had spotted Max Ritter at the funeral, of course, one of them may have whipped up a touch of deductive suspicion. But what had brought them to the funeral in the first place? “It was probably just a coincidence,” Gilmore said. “Forget it.”
Barbara squeezed his right elbow. At the same moment someone touched his left elbow.
“Could I see you a moment, Gilmore?” asked Bart Remington, the production manager. “Alone?”
“Don’t mind me,” Barbara said. “I’ve got to get back to the plant. Will you be coming soon, Gil?”
“I’ll see you for lunch,” Gilmore said.
Remington took Gilmore’s arm and walked him to the front of the chapel, near the spot where the coffin had stood. “I’ve been wondering about those cans of rations that Dr. Coffee wanted sent to his lab,” Remington said. “Have they gone over?”
“Late yesterday,” Gilmore said.
“How many?”
“I don’t recall exactly. There was a sample of every batch we made—with the exception of those shipped out already in those two carloads Mr. Evans says have been turned back.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“I checked with the list Mr. Quirk gave me,” Gilmore said.
“Quirk?” Remington frowned. “Why Quirk?”
“He’s the boss, isn’t he, while Mr. Evans is away?”
“Yes, I suppose he is.” Remington’s frown persisted. “But I wish you’d have checked with me. After all, I’m still production manager. The original records are in my office.”
“Maybe I should,” Gilmore admitted. “Still—You don’t really think Quirk could have faked the lists he gave me, do you?”
“No-o,” said Remington, verifying his bow tie with his finger tips. Suddenly the frown disappeared, and his radiant smile broke through his doubts. “No, of course not. As you say, Quirk is boss while Evans is away. Well, I just thought I’d ask. Be seeing you.”
Gilmore gave Remington time enough to disappear. Then he, too, exchanged the gloom of the chapel for the midmorning summer glare. He walked warmly for two blocks, turned the corner, and entered the little alley in which he had parked his car. He poked his key into the door handle, then paused. Something was wrong. He could not tell what it was, but something, some familiar detail had been changed. His subconscious had recognized it, even though he examined the door in vain for some clue to his feeling.
Gilmore had never belonged to the great fraternity of Sunday morning car polishers. He was practically a stranger to auto laundries, and he had never considered patent waxes any better protection to a lacquer finish than a good coat of honest dust. He examined the finger smudges on the dusty door, but could recognize no change in pattern. Neither could he remember if any of the scratches were new. So he pulled open the door and slid under the wheel.
He jabbed the key into the ignition and extended his foot toward the starter. But he did not twist the key or touch his shoe to the pedal. Again the cold finger of premonition stroked the back of his neck.
What was wrong? Was it the fact that his rear-vision mirror was ninety degrees off horizontal? He could have done that himself, when he got out of the car. He was always bumping his head in these new low-ceiling jobs that called for certain contortionist skills.… Was it the smear of lipstick on the white plastic rim of the steering wheel? Any one of half a dozen women could have left that.… What about that two-inch snip of insulated wire on the floorboards near the brake? That could have been there for weeks without his noticing it—since the last time he had left the car in the garage for repairs.… Or the unfamiliar smell that simmered on the steamy interior of the car? That was probably just August—a blend of the effluvia of hot metal, well-sat-on-seat covers, lacquer and stale tobacco, cooked together vigorously in the oven of an all-steel turret top.… The overtones of camphor were probably just his imagination.
