Death Under the Moonflower, page 6
So abrupt was the change of subject that Bounty thought the doctor was shying away from further discussion of Roger Norcott’s well-known parsimony. “I don’t know that I ever considered it,” he said. “If anything, I’d say physicians are more highly valued here than elsewhere. You help us hold the fort against death.”
“There’s no hostility toward us, then?”
“Hostility? No, it’s true we disguise our undertakers and their calling. Pick out the most beautiful house in town—with the exception of Doctor Lack’s—and you have the morgue.”
Cotillion switched his eyes to Bounty’s face and in them was the emotionless look of a surgeon seeking a place to probe. “Then I wish you’d explain a remark made outside my door last night. ‘This is a healthy place for some folks, but not for doctors.’”
Bounty stared at him sleepily. “Tell me more about the circumstances, Doctor Cotillion.”
“That’s all there was to it. My plane got in at nine-thirty. Mr. Hand met me and brought me here to the hotel. I registered and went to my room to wash before he came to take me down to meet Mr. Norcott. The bellhop hadn’t much more than left me when I heard those words, spoken very distinctly, in the hall. As I remember, I was a bit startled. But it wasn’t until today that I gave serious thought to them. And to the possibility that they were meant for me. I’ve hesitated to say anything about the matter. It sounds so melodramatic. But then, everywhere I’ve turned today I’ve run into something that sounds melodramatic.”
Bounty’s chair swung slowly forward. “Where is your room, Doctor?”
“On the fifth floor. Five-twenty, I believe, is the number.”
“Hieronymus!” Larrick exclaimed. “But that doesn’t make sense. Did it sound like his voice, Doctor? He was on that floor about that time.”
“He was?” Cotillion looked at him for a moment, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t recognize the voice. I’m treading on delicate ground here, I suppose, but at the time I took it for a Negro’s voice. Today I’ve noticed the same softness of speech in everyone who seems to be a native here. It’s my first experience with the Southern accent.”
This was too much for Larrick. “We don’t have Southern accents, Doctor,” he said defensively. “And we don’t sound like—”
“Call it the old Texas drawl and remember the Alamo,” Bounty interposed. “Was there anything in yesterday’s papers about Doctor Cotillion, Bert?”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“What people here knew the hour of your arrival, Doctor?”
“My only communication was with Doctor Lack. He kindly made reservations here for me. I know he notified Mr. Norcott of my coming, because Mr. Hand met me. I believe Doctor Angelo was also notified.”
“Doctor Lack didn’t send anyone to the airport to meet you then?”
“I talked to Doctor Lack over the phone last night. He said he had sent a man to meet me but the fellow hadn’t been able to wait for the late plane.”
“Mind telling me who saw you after you registered?”
“Only Mr. Hand and Mr. Norcott. Hand came for me about ten-fifteen. We went to Mr. Norcott’s room and I stayed half an hour or so. I was in bed by eleven.”
“Did Mr. Norcott have a caller while you were there?”
“A caller? Why, no.”
The ambulance siren whined in at them then and, as always at the sound, Bounty went tense. Deputy and undersheriff never guessed what squeamishness their superior had to fight down, not at contact with the fact of death, but with its ugliness.
“Bert, go meet these men with the stretcher, will you?”
When the door had closed Bounty said quietly: “Why don’t you tell me, Doctor, exactly what Hieronymus told you?”
Cotillion gazed steadily at the floor. “It was what he didn’t say, rather than what he said, Sheriff. Most of his talk consisted of pleas to save his life and protect him. He said he was sure he was being poisoned, he didn’t know how. I asked him whom he suspected and he promised to tell me if I would get him away from you and your men.”
“Why from my men and me?”
“You asked me that once and I answered that he didn’t say in so many words. My inference was that he was afraid of you.”
“I thought so.” Bounty rose. “That’s the reason you’ve been interested in my deputy.”
“Not altogether, Sheriff. I’m always interested in seeing what the next generation of physicians is going to be like.”
“In that case you may not veto my suggestion. You’ve stepped into the midst of alarms and excursions, Doctor, and frankly I don’t know what it’s all about. But if I reserved a double room here, or two connecting rooms, would you consent to move, without saying anything to anyone, and let my deputy enjoy your companionship during your stay? We won’t call him a guard.”
“I’ll be glad to, Sheriff,” Cotillion said as Larrick swung open the door. “Though I’m afraid it will mean shattering his illusions.” Larrick had let in two white-garbed youths who carried a stretcher jauntily, as if they were half intoxicated by the odor of night-blooming cœreus which entered with them.
“Hello, Mr. Bounty!” one sang out. “Full moon tonight.”
“Snake cactus in bloom,” the other added.
“And not a thought in town fit to go into print,” Bounty contributed, happy at a kind word.
Larrick wasn’t having any of their frivolity. When he had opened the inner door he brought his own and the Oxford-gray hat and inquired: “Shall we go, Doctor Cotillion?”
The physician was removing the tinfoil from a plug of ordinary chewing tobacco. “Here’s what I went to the cigar counter for,” he said. “I felt in the need of it. Hope you don’t mind, young man.”
Larrick looked at Bounty. Bounty had a brand new match in his mouth.
“Say!” came the cry from within the office. “Where did you tell us to take this bird?”
Larrick stepped to the door. “To the John Belton Lack Hospital.”
“Hospital, hell! You mean the morgue.”
6
“You can’t keep me away from my son.”
At the turning of the stairs on the third floor of the John Belton Lack Hospital stood Jacob Hand, his head lowered like that of a bull at bay. Dr. Angelo, the little group of nurses and orderlies in their stern white uniforms—these were his adversaries in no personal sense. He was ready to charge blindly at all that this spotless, regulated world had for him of the occult. About his neck he still wore the ball of asafetida which had been there when he came to the hospital. He was a squat hulk of flesh and bone and muscle which the light lounge suits that Christopher bought for him couldn’t be made to fit. Not such an old man, although there was gray in his rank black hair; not an unprepossessing man, thanks to the eyes that enlivened his dark, earthy face.
Now that she knew who he was, Susan Ray, the nurse from the chart desk who had seen him corning up the stairs and who had given the alarm, was beginning to get over her scare. For a few minutes there it had seemed that the dark and hellish monster who climbs staircases in hospital melodramas at last had visited the John Belton Lack.
“Moley” Angelo (“Moley” because of the moles that rumor said were all over him) was scared, though. He kept the nurse and the orderly from the first floor a little ahead of him as he said: “No one is trying to keep you from your son, Mr. Hand. Your son’s not up here.” He turned to the orderly: “Take him to the elevator and down to his room.”
He had given that command twice and each time Bingham, the orderly, had looked Hand over and shrugged helplessly, as he did now.
“Well?” Angelo demanded. “Aren’t you going to do it?”
“Not until I grow a little,” Bingham answered.
Angelo mopped perspiration from his white round face. “Brownlee,” he said to the nurse, “call the Sutherland Hotel and see if you can reach Christopher Hand.”
“I just called, Doctor. Christopher Hand is not in his room. I left a message for him. And I called a friend of his. She said she’d be right over.”
“First day since I been here Chris ain’t come to see me.” Hand was moving slowly toward the stairs that led to the fourth floor. “’Tain’t like the boy to forget. I know what’s the trouble. It’s Roger Norcott’s doin’. That scrawny old jay bird. He never had it in him to beget a family his own. So he comes tryin’ to steal Chris away from me. Well, he can’t do that, for all the money he’s made sweatin’ the folks as work for him.”
“Now, Hand, I wouldn’t talk about my private affairs when so many people can hear.” Dr. Angelo stood at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the newel post, the other on the wall, and eyed the distance between them. Orderly and nurse had deserted him, one sliding along the wall, the other retreating to the fourth tread of the stairs.
“I got a right to talk. It’s time folks was hearin’ what Norcott’s done to me. Shut me up in this here sick-house, so I’d catch a disease an’ die an’ he could have Chris to hisself.”
Susan Ray had noticed a Western Union messenger boy hanging on the outskirts of the excitement. He had started several times toward Dr. Angelo but always had lost his nerve and fallen back. He came up to the desk by which she was standing and said in a shrill whisper: “Gee! Is that a loony?”
“No, son. He’s just an old man with a weak heart. They don’t want him to climb those stairs. You have a telegram for Doctor Angelo?”
“For the hospital. He came in just ahead of me. I tried to catch up with him but he was goin’ so fast I couldn’t.”
“Mr. Norcott had nothing to do with your coming here, Hand. Listen to me!” Angelo succeeded in making his voice more authoritative but he gave himself away by taking a step up the stairs. “You cannot go up to the fourth floor. You know very well a boy there is on the point of death. Unless you go to your room at once—”
“Don’t want me to know what’s goin’ on up there, do yuh, Doc? I think you got Chris up there, doin’ somethin’ to him.”
“I tell you your son is not in the hospital.”
“Yuh ain’t foolin’ me, Doc.” There was a rumble beneath the words. “Somethin’ unnatural’s goin’ on. If it’s what I think it is, I’m gonna put a stop to it. The Norcotts always were a poorly race. There’s a blight on’em. It ain’t gonna be Chris who saves’em from peterin’ out.” Hand put forward two fingers, hooked at the button which held Angelo’s coat tight about his fat middle. The button broke and the claw caught the belt buckle.
Down the hall one of the student nurses screamed.
“Tell me he ain’t a loony!” said the messenger boy to Susan.
Effortlessly Hand was drawing the doctor down to him, shaking him with his own shaking. “Yuh been helpin’ Roger Norcott with his jay-bird devilment. Don’t do it no more. Yuh let Chris alone with them knives o’ yourn. He’s my flesh an’ blood.”
“Father Hand!”
At the clear, controlled cry Hand released Angelo and turned, rubbing his palm on his trousers, to the girl who was coming from the elevator. He smiled timidly and muttered: “I wasn’t doin’ nuthin’, Carrie.”
Carrie Ainsworth, of course. A dark-haired, dark-eyed girl of the athletic type whom Susan Ray remembered seeing with Christopher Hand.
“Of course you weren’t,” she said, taking the old fellow’s arm. “But what in the world is Christopher going to think when he comes to your room and you aren’t there?” She turned to Angelo and smiled. “He’ll be all right now, Doctor. Let me talk to him awhile.”
Angelo’s face was beginning to work, with anger Susan Ray thought. He had his mouth open to say something when the messenger boy approached him. He signed the boy’s book with trembling hand, took a telegram from him and tore it open.
Carrie Ainsworth and Jacob Hand had started down the stairs, very slowly, the girl talking in an undertone about Christopher.
Susan Ray looked back at Dr. Angelo. He had turned down the hall in the direction of the elevator. His hands were busy and she thought he was tearing the telegram to pieces.
7
Christopher Hand stood staring down into the lobby when Peter Bounty stepped from the elevator onto the mezzanine floor of the Sutherland. The young man’s heels were together, his hands were gripping the railing, his heavy body was thrown slightly forward, so that he appeared to be gathering strength for some prodigious acrobatic stunt.
Bounty had the population of Hesperides pretty well pigeonholed by now, but this was a notorious character whom he hadn’t been able to fit into any compartment, high or low, small or large. In fact, if he made use of “notorious” in an unfavorable sense, he was fair enough to admit that he had always seen Hand through the clouded spectacles which Bert Larrick put before his eyes. And it had taken this experience to show him (and to show Bert, too, perhaps) what latent friendship was between these two traditional rivals of Las Palmas’ younger set.
Bounty approached slowly, studying him. Hand’s blue coat and white flannel trousers were those of the young man about town but, as Bert said, they didn’t look right on him. At his ease in corduroy and boots, he might have cut a handsome figure. An inferiority complex was at work here, undoubtedly, with consequent aping. Whereas Roger Norcott, Bounty remembered, wore unobtrusively a single small but probably perfect diamond in an old-fashioned setting, his protégé had a ring on each hand: big 10-carat gold rings, one set with initialed imitation onyx, the other with a tiger-eye cameo. You could tell by the way he held his fingers that he was conscious of them, proud of them, unaware that to Bert and his critical friends they set him apart.
“Hello, Chris,” Bounty said companionably. “The excitement’s finally dying down a little.”
Hand turned. “How do you do, Mr. Bounty.” He spoke, as always, as if from a congested chest. “You want to see Mr. Norcott?”
“In a moment.” Bounty stood beside him and looked into the lobby. “Anybody standing here could have seen the whole show, couldn’t he?”
“I guess so. They say Hieronymus fell right in front of the desk.”
“The center of the stage. Bert and I carried him back to Mr. Palladay’s office. How much would you say Hieronymus weighed?”
“How would I know? I never saw him.”
“Why, yes, you have,” Bounty said, resting a hip on the rail and turning to Hand.
“When?”
“At the airport last night.”
“Oh.” Hand bent over again, hunching his pugilist’s shoulders. “Bert told me tonight you’d traced Mr. Norcott’s call there. And found a girl who saw Hieronymus make it. That must have been just before I went in.”
“You and your friend Beck.”
Hand stiffened and raised his square chin. Blood darkened his face even more, and behind the ear lobe turned to Bounty was a little flutter, like that of a fish’s gills. “Beck?” he repeated, as if trying to place the name.
“Doctor Lack’s man.”
“Oh, that servant. Yes, he was there awhile. Doc sent him to meet the same plane I was meeting. But when Beck reported it was late, Doc had him come home.”
“How did Beck report to Doctor Lack?”
“Phoned him.”
“And you stayed and met Doctor Cotillion?”
“Yes. Mr. Bounty, I saw Bert and Doctor Cotillion go through the lobby a while ago. Where’s that girl—that Miss Winters—Bert was with?”
“Looking at the moon till Bert comes back, I suppose. What did you do after you brought Doctor Cotillion here?”
“I saw that he got registered. Then I went in and told Mr. Norcott he’d come. I went and got him about ten-fifteen and introduced him to Mr. Norcott.”
“And after he left?”
“I went to bed.” Hand straightened and turned on Bounty. His face remained stolid but, looking at his dark surly eyes, it was easy to believe Bert’s stories of an ugly temper. “What’re you trying to do?” he demanded. “Check up on me?”
“What would be your guess, Chris?”
“Well, you can go straight to hell. You and that grinning ape of a deputy of yours.”
Bounty looked at him steadily. “We’re letting that pass this time, Chris. As spoken just between us fellers. But hereafter remember this: Bert and I are commissioned by this county to investigate a murder case and to send someone to the electric chair.”
Hand stared past him into the recesses of the mezzanine, perspiration gleaming upon his metallic face. There was no movement there, but by shifting his head a little Bounty could see that gilllike fluttering behind each car lobe. “Murder,” Hand repeated thickly. “Then this blood donor has died?”
“Died, Chris. And I understand taking Mr. Norcott that news is equivalent to taking him news of his nephew’s death.”
Hand’s eyes moved slowly to Bounty’s face, and the sheriff was puzzled by the puzzlement in them. “Unless we have another donor tomorrow,” Hand said, “Jimmy Norcott will die. Anybody who knows of another ought to tell us.”
“Granted.”
“Call for Christopher Hand!” rose a bellboy’s cry from the lobby. “I’ll get that in my room,” Hand said, turning toward the east side of the mezzanine. “Mr. Norcott’s in here, if you want to come in. It seems to me he has a right to know what’s going on. He’s the biggest taxpayer in the county—”
“Save the speeches till next election,” Bounty said, going along with him.
Hand came to a standstill a few feet from a door, with a key held ready to slip into the lock. “Mr. Bounty”—he spoke haltingly—“you’d better go slow about accusing me—or anybody else—of scaring off these blood donors. There’s a racket connected with this somehow. And I don’t need a racket to make money. But I know—and everybody in town knows—how bad in need of money Bert Larrick is this summer—”
“Careful, Hand.”
Hand’s laugh was hard, with a sneer in it. “Not so much fun when you’re on the receiving end, is it? But Bert didn’t sprout any wings when he put on that badge, Mr. Bounty. Now don’t get me wrong. What I’m saying I’m saying for his own good and you ought to thank me for doing it. I’m sure under no obligation to Bert. All his life he’s gone along owing money and spending money and getting by with it because everybody likes him. While some of the rest of us poor devils have been working and paying our way and not going to all the dances. Now it’s my turn to laugh. Bert’s in a hole and wishes he’d saved something. But I know he’d never in the world do anything dishonest to get out of that hole. That’s me saying that, understand. But I’ve heard people wondering about Bert tonight. People who aren’t so sure. The first thing you know, Mr. Bounty, the county commissioners will be wanting to know a few things that you may be too blind to see. What I think’s happened is this: Bert’s let himself be roped into something. And now that he sees what it is, he’ll want to back out. Get the truth out of him, Mr. Bounty, then send him away. For a trip over into Mexico. I’ll pay his expenses. And I’ll fix things with Mr. Norcott. Because Bert’s father was a friend of his. But make Bert tell you what he’s been up to. That call. Come on in.”
