Death Under the Moonflower, page 23
It would be a matter of time before it became known that Beck had been under arrest when he died. And then …
“Look that over,” Bounty said, handing Lack the paper and driving on. “See if there’s anything in it about you.”
“Here it is!” the young man exclaimed almost at once. “In a box on the front page. ‘Lack Kin a Donor?’” he read aloud. ‘“Monday’s hoax in the Norcott Streptococcus viridans case appears at the time of going to press to be no hoax at all. Yesterday, it will be recalled, the Sun refuted the widely circulated rumor that the “donor in a thousand” for whom search is being made was a convict in the death cell at Huntsville State Prison Farm. Saturday it was the Emperor of Japan.’” He paused and murmured: “So that’s the way it’s been.”
“That’s the way,” Bounty said, turning left at the courthouse corner. “A circus.”
“‘Therefore,’” Lack read on, “‘scant attention was paid at first to the report from an unconfirmed source that the man upon whom the life of James Norcott now depends is a relative of Dr. John Belton Lack, the Norcott physician. A search through the files of a Boston newspaper, however, revealed the fact that less than three months ago John Malcolm Lack, age twenty-seven, a nephew of John Belton Lack, recovered from the dread infection. Young Lack is said to have blood of the rare type B. Dr. Lack could not be reached for a statement early this morning but it is understood that his nephew’s arrival is expected hourly.’”
Malcolm Lack put down the paper. “That’s once,” he said with a nervous laugh, “I didn’t want to see my name in print. This where you live?”
“Me and my cat.” Bounty looked a little more wide awake as he parked in his driveway, got out and glanced up and down the street. “You’d better let me go in first and take her back to the den,” he said as they crossed the small flagstone terrace. “She gets terribly frightened when visitors come.”
“What’s her name?”
“Carmen. She’s part Persian.”
Carmen was in the hall, excited, Bounty thought, by his home-coming at this hour. To his amazement she eluded his hands when he attempted to pick her up. She stared at Malcolm Lack through the screen door, began mewing loudly and went toward him, waving her tail.
“Shucks!” Lack said, opening the door. “She’s not afraid of me. Are you, funny face?”
“Well I’ll be darned!” Bounty exclaimed fervently as he took his visitor’s straw hat. “This never happened before. She likes to kid herself for being a fraid-cat and have me chase her. She wants you to chase her now.”
“Here we go then!” Lack got down like a sprinter on his mark, Carmen bounded toward the rear of the house and Bounty met them in the living room, when they had completed the circuit. Carmen rolled over on her back, played at fighting off Lack’s hands, then allowed herself to be lifted into his arms. “Are you sure,” the young man asked, “that you meant to name her Carmen?”
“I thought she ought to have a pretty name—as a sort of compensation,” Bounty said, watching Carmen raise her eyes confidingly to the gray-blue ones. “This never happened before,” he repeated.
Lack leaned back in a chair. He stroked the brindled fur with a large calloused hand, looked at Bounty and smiled. “You haven’t been quite satisfied about me, have you, Sheriff? While you were in that telegraph office you wired to New Orleans to find out if I was telling a straight story, didn’t you?”
Bounty admitted that he had. “If I’d brought you home with me first,” he said, “I’d probably have saved the county some money. I’m willing to take Carmen’s word for it that you’re all right. Make yourself at home while I do some phoning. And don’t chase her any more,” he added as Carmen leaped to the floor. “If you let her, she’ll run you to—”
“To death,” Lack finished huskily. “And you’d never convince anybody how I died. In case you don’t know it, Mr. Peter Bounty, it took a little nerve for me to come with you when I remembered the last donor you’d had in custody was murdered. Any idea what made me trust you?”
“I decided I’d suddenly grown a very honest face.”
“No,” Lack said, lighting a cigarette and holding out a hand for Carmen to return to his lap, “it was those cat hairs you have all over you.”
Carmen was sprawled at Lack’s feet, however, when her master came back several minutes later. Lack was bending over her, an expression of concern on his face. He looked up and asked: “What’s she making those funny sounds for?”
Bounty explained to the best of his ability, the while he paced the floor and told himself he had to stay calm. “I’m afraid I haven’t been careful enough about her diet this summer,” he said. “I’m going to take her down to a pet hospital in Brownsville as soon as I get time. I dread to think of making the trip with her, though. She’ll be so frightened. The world didn’t treat her right when she was out in it and she feels safe only inside these walls.”
“Like Uncle Johnny,” Malcolm Lack said. “Why don’t you have him look at her?”
“Why, he wouldn’t—”
“Of course he would. Ask him and see how tickled he is.” Lack was observing Bounty closely. “I don’t think you know Uncle Johnny very well,” he said. “I don’t think you’re telling me the truth about him. I don’t think you want me to go to his house for some reason or other.”
“Not just yet,” Bounty said, standing at one of the windows that faced the street and yanking the curtains out of shape. “I called and talked to Miss Ainsworth, his nurse. She said he was awake and Doctor Cotillion and the oculist were with him. It’s going to be a shock seeing you and I want to get Doctor Cotillion’s advice before I let you walk in on him.”
“It won’t shock Uncle Johnny to see me.”
“It might,” Bounty answered evasively. “I called the Hesperides Sun, too, and asked how they came to know about you. It seems an unknown man rang about seven-thirty this morning and gave’em the dope, including the hour your bus arrived. They must have got around to calling your uncle’s house for confirmation just after I left. The fellow who met the bus was one of their reporters, all right.”
Lack lighted another cigarette. “You think it was David Angelo who called the paper?”
“I feel sure it was.” Bounty ducked his head, glanced down the street in the direction of the court house and ascertained that the approaching car was Bert Larrick’s. He wasn’t aware just how closely Malcolm Lack was observing him now. “What would be Angelo’s idea in telling the town I was coming?” Lack asked.
“Angelo had to tell the town,” Bounty said as he moved toward the front door, “in order to tell one individual—an individual whose identity he doesn’t know.”
“Throwing me to the wolves, eh?”
“To the wolf.”
20
“Question!”
The commissioners of Hesperides County, in regular meeting assembled, looked at the head of the table, where their chairman, Rolf Jester, sat and swore under his breath and plucked at his stubby red mustache. Jester was known as a warmhearted soul. He was known also for having his own way, even if he had to ride roughshod over a few rules of order to get it. But he had met his match in Sam Spicard and the scowl he gave that individual was an ugly one.
Spicard, as gaunt as Jester was lusty, had an ax to grind here, everyone knew. His partner in the trucking business had a son, Tom Lynch, who had campaigned for E. Matthew Rone in the county’s first sheriffs race, under promise of a deputy’s job. Tom still had no job.
“Question!” Spicard called again, looking straight at Jester and smiling a little.
Jester let out his breath so forcibly that he sent papers sailing down the table. He rose and almost shouted: “The motion has been made and seconded that Sheriff Peter Bounty be suspended from office pending an investigation of the death of the Norcott blood donors. God damn it to hell! Everybody in favor signify by saying ‘Aye.’”
21
“Well, son?” Bounty asked tensely, leaning over the door of his deputy’s roadster.
Larrick sat hunched over the wheel, staring blankly into the shimmer of the heat that rose from the paving. He shook his head slowly, back and forth, and said: “You were wrong, Peter.”
Bounty’s eyes went shut for an instant and his shoulders sagged. “You’re sure, son?”
“Sure.” Larrick’s voice was hard, almost without intonation. “I did as you said. I went by the morgue and got specimens of blood from Fred Winters and from Hieronymus. Doctor Ainsworth met me at the hospital and we tested them. Both men had blood of group B.”
“Did you tell Doctor Ainsworth what blood it was you were testing?”
“No, I just told him I wanted him to show me how it was done. There wasn’t any trouble about using the laboratory at the hospital. Everyone seemed to know that he was going to be the next head.”
“Was Angelo there?”
“No sign of him.”
“Well, this leaves us up the creek without a paddle, son,” Bounty said, getting into the car and attacking a match. “I’ve staked everything this morning on Doctor Cotillion being the murderer.”
“I don’t see that you had any case against him. He cashed five hundred dollars worth of travelers’ checks soon after he registered at the Sutherland Saturday night. Hieronymus had about that amount of money on him. So what?”
“Aside from that, son, he’s been the only one I could make out a satisfactory case against. He’s seemed to me to be an odd number from the beginning. Doctor Lack didn’t ask him to come, yet he interrupted his honeymoon and flew clear across the country.” “He was grateful to Doctor Lack for having sent his nephew to give the first Mrs. Cotillion a transfusion.”
“I’m a cynic, I suppose. That didn’t seem reason enough. And I had it all worked out so beautifully this morning. When Hieronymus came to the hotel Saturday night to see Winters, the passengers from the Chicago plane were registering. Cotillion saw Hieronymus, in the lobby, in the elevator or in the fifth-floor corridor. Since Chris Hand would be with him, he signaled to Hieronymus that he wanted to talk to him. Or else Hieronymus spotted Cotillion and followed him to his room. At any rate I felt sure they met and talked after Hand left Cotillion.”
“Why would Hieronymus have wanted to see Doctor Cotillion?”
“To get his identity established before he interviewed Roger Norcott. Norcott wouldn’t shell out any money unless Hieronymus could prove he was a blood donor.”
“But that’s all supposition,” Larrick argued. “And in spite of what you said at the office Hieronymus could have gone to see Fred Winters. I asked Mallory. She didn’t know whether Fred had had a visitor or not. But she said he could have had and she wouldn’t have known it.”
“That leaves the money unexplained, of course. As I saw it, Cotillion was ready to commit murder only as a last resort. He told Hieronymus he’d pay him to skip out. But he’d come down without time for much preparation, being in a hurry to get here before Hieronymus and Winters were found and their blood tested. He probably spent only the night in Chicago. The plane he came on leaves there at 9 A.M., so he wouldn’t have had time to go to the bank. He cashed what checks he had with him, gave Hieronymus the money and promised to pay the rest as soon as he could get it transferred on Monday. In the meantime Hieromymus was to go to Brownsville and lie low.”
“But the man outside Doctor Cotillion’s door who said this wasn’t a healthy place for doctors?”
“I called that a red herring, son. Then, as I saw it, Hieronymus went to Brownsville but came back—for any of the reasons I outlined at the office. Maybe he planned to set Norcott and Cotillion to bidding against each other. He got a paper in the lobby to see if another donor had appeared. Anyway, when Gus picked him up he was between the devil and the deep. But I took him back to the hotel and he saw a chance to talk to Cotillion in private. He pretended to fall ill and refused to have a local physician. That left only Cotillion.”
“But Hieronymus was scared.”
“Maybe only of the law, son. I figured he put it up to Cotillion: he was in a scrape and the doctor had to get him out. Cotillion wouldn’t use any halfway measures then. In his pocket he had aconite that he’d brought from Chicago. And we played right into his hands with that whisky. He’d just learned Winters was in the hotel—and, incidentally, tried to make Hand believe the Winters he’d met couldn’t be the Fred Winters who was a blood donor—and there on the desk in Palladay’s office was a pint of liquor going to Winters. Cotillion asked Hieronymus if he didn’t want a drink. While pouring it into a paper cup he slipped in the aconite. Or else he poisoned the bottle first. Strong as he is, he could easily hold Hieronymus down and keep him still while the poison got in its work. When he made an excuse to go to the cigar counter he could have got rid of the container. When I remembered how ready he’d been with a suggestion about the cup I decided he’d seen to it that Hieronymus’ prints were on it.”
“Why were you so interested in that cup?”
“Because of the shape, Bert. If it had been flat-bottomed, the theory that Hieronymus poured himself a drink after Cotillion went out would have been acceptable enough. But you have to hold one of those cone-shaped cups in your hand while you pour the drink. Then you can’t very well hold onto it while you cork a bottle and wrap it up again. You drink and throw the cup away, then do your wrapping. It seemed to me, from what I’d heard about aconite, that it’d be cutting the time rather short to say Hieronymus drank, threw the cup into the receptacle, wrapped up the bottle, then went and lay down and died—without making himself heard in the next room.”
“That argument would never hold up in a court of law, Peter. The action of poisons depends on too many factors.”
“I know. But when I saw that cup I got suspicious. I wasn’t suspicious of Cotillion last night, or I’d never have let you stay with him. As eminent a man as he seemed beyond suspicion if anyone was. But I got to thinking how he acted after Hieronymus’ death. Of course his explanation was plausible. But another would be that he delayed telling the cause of death as long as possible because he knew that once I learned it was aconite I’d tumble to the whisky and prevent Winters from drinking it. As it was, he delayed just long enough. And, the way I looked at it this morning, his interest in getting this donor from the Aleutians was in itself damning. Doctor Lack didn’t try, because he was depending on the Chicago donors being found. But Cotillion employed an agency, because he knew those donors would never live to give transfusions.”
“But what ever made you figure out such a motive?”
“It was slow in coming, son. But it kept coming. Cotillion was married. His wife died from streptococcus after being given two transfusions. A couple of months later he marries again. From a college professor, none too well off from all I’ve gathered, he steps up into a clinic in Chicago. He looks over Doctor Lack’s house with a view to establishing a winter home here. He talks of putting you through school. It all pointed to a second marriage with money.” Larrick threw himself against the back of the seat and scowled at a passing car. “You didn’t think Doctor Cotillion meant to help me through the university?”
Bounty sighed. “It was an even bet with me whether he did or whether he was soft-soaping us. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t see him as a deep-dyed villain, but as a man who’d made up his mind what he wanted and was determined to get it. He’d reconciled himself to murder but his conscience needed a salve. I pictured him,” Bounty quoted, “as a middle-aged man who’d gained professional recognition by his research but little financial return. Ahead of him he saw years of the same routine, teaching and grinding out textbooks. I pictured a drab wife, the one he’d married while in medical school. Then along comes an orchidaceous heiress who gives him a come-on look. Because I imagine the man would be physically attractive to a lot of women. Maybe the money is incidental. Maybe it’s love with a capital L—”
“Then you admit there is such a thing?”
“Oh, sure, son. But it can wear off sometimes. And I thought that’s what he was warning you against. There’s this wife, standing in his way. She gets streptococcus—”
“You read too many stories, Peter.”
“Yeah, but his dilemma would have made such a corking good plot for a story. Up to that point, a story of the tribulations of married life. Afterwards, a murder story. The doctor saw a way to kill the wife he’d looked at over breakfast eggs for twenty-odd years. A way to kill her safely and without any spattering of brains—”
“Peter!”
“I wasn’t thinking of real life, son,” Bounty explained hastily. “He was her physician but his care of her had to be above question in the hospital. Then the problem of donors arose. As one of the foremost specialists in the country, he personally tested the blood of volunteers. His grouping would be accepted without question. If anybody came who already knew he had blood B, Cotillion would have dismissed him on the pretense that he’d lost immunity to streptococcus. But I doubt that anyone did, before Malcolm Lack arrived.” Bounty paused. “I don’t suppose there’s any doubt that Winters and Hieronymus did have immunity at that time, is there, son?”
“I don’t know about Hieronymus, but Fred had just recovered from streptococcus. So he must have had.”
“Well, I give up then. More likely, according to my theory, Cotillion selected the first two volunteers who hadn’t had or given transfusions and who consequently didn’t know what group their blood belonged to. He pronounced it B and used them as donors. To the nurses who assisted him, to his associates, everything would be open and aboveboard. But it wasn’t the kind of blood his wife needed and she died.”
“But he wouldn’t have let Winters and Hieronymus get to him for five thousand apiece, would he?”
