THE coroner flashed a startled look at me, eyebrows climbing to meet a receding hairline. I giggled nervously, thinking that nothing could look as funny as a surprised, slightly bald cherub.
“You spoke to him nine hours ago?” He shook his head. “That’s impossible, Margaret! Utterly impossible. You must have your time figured wrong. Think again.”
“There”s no need to think again,” I retorted, a little nettled. “I know perfectly well what I said and I didn’t dream up that conversation.”
“But, Margaret, Dr. McGowan couldn’t have been alive nine hours ago. I’d stake my professional reputation on that. I’m positive of it!”
“Only a fool is ever positive of anything,” I said tartly, then added hastily, “And you’re no fool. But you are wrong this time and that’s something I’m positive about I’m not mistaken and I haven’t figured time wrong.”
“You’d better explain, Margaret,” he said quietly.
Shem, Morrow, and Herrot crowded closer to me, fixing me with eyes as intent and questioning as the coroner’s.
“I’ll explain,” I said. “I called Ned last night to ask if it was true he was going to marry the Merceron girl, Olivette. He’d been rumored engaged several times—wishful thinking on some girl’s part—but I knew he had been dating Vette for a long time. So I decided to check on it as a favor to the society department—goodness knows they need several favors.
“When I called around midnight he didn’t answer, so I left a message. He rang me back about 1:30 and said he was engaged but Olivette must be the one to give the details. It hadn’t been announced yet. I’d just put the memo for soc on Anne’s desk when the copy boy came through with the final edition. It rolls off the press about 2:00 A.M.”
Rollins studied me, his expression grave. “You’re sure of this? You’re certain it was Dr. McGowan you spoke to?”
“Of course I am,” I said impatiently. “I know Ned McGowan’s voice when I hear it. I talked to him for at least five minutes. I’m sure of the time because I know too well when that paper comes off the press. Besides, when I got in my car to go home my dash clock said 2:15. I remember that because I griped to myself all the way home over not getting a day off to switch from the morning to the evening paper. Figure it out for yourself, but no matter how you figure you can’t make it total more than seven, not nine, hours since death. The hotel people found him around 8:30.”
“This is very strange and very confusing.” He pinched his lower lip again. Anyone but Dr. Rollins would have found a stronger way of expressing its strangeness.
Another memory struck me. “If he’d been dead any fifteen hours he’d have had to die around 5:30 yesterday evening and I know that can’t be so. He and my brother went somewhere to dinner together last night, someone’s home. They would hardly have dined before 7:00 or later.”
“You’re sure of that too?” Rollins asked.
“I couldn’t swear to it, no. I didn’t actually see them eating.” I was getting a little irked. “I can find out by calling Brett, but I hate to wake him. He took a charter out late last night and didn’t get home until heaven knows when.”
“Please call him,” Rollins requested. “He can go back to sleep, but I must get this time element cleared up.”
“I should think my having talked to Ned would do that,” I said irritably, but I picked up the phone and called my home.
As I waited for the connection to be completed I watched Doc’s worried face and began to feel sorry for him. I knew he hated to admit having made such a drastic mistake, but I didn’t intend to hold any long conversation with Brett to prove he had done so. I was momentarily expecting a call from McCarthy wanting to know what the hell gave.
Bertha, the milk-chocolate shaded head of our house, answered the phone and refused at first to wake Brett. Finally she brought him to the phone.
“Brett, did you meet Ned McGowan and go to dinner with him last night?” I asked.
“What kind of an idiotic stunt are you pulling, waking me up for a question like that?” Brett was sleepy and annoyed. “What’s it to you?”
“Never mind what,” I snapped. “Just answer me yes or no.”
“Sure I did, the four of us went to—hey!” The voice was wide awake now. “What’s up?”
“You mean you, Olivette, Toni, and Ned when you say the four of you, don’t you?”
“Yes, but what’s this all about?”
“Never mind. What time did you leave Ned?”
“Around 10:00. My charter was due to leave at 11:00 and I figured an hour to change clothes and get to the airport. But why all this interest in Ned? What’s he done?”
“Nothing,” I said and thought: Unless you can call dying doing something. “I can’t explain now, I’ll call you back in a little while though.”
“Now listen—” I cut off his argument by hanging up.
“Well.” I turned to Rollins. “Ned was alive at 10:00 last night, and unless it was his ghost I spoke to, he was still healthy at 1:30 this morning. What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s damned confusing,” he said promptly.
I gaped at him. When our precise and well-spoken coroner says damned he’s confused past belief.
“I simply can’t accept the idea of being wrong by the margin of time you set forth, Margaret. It’s incredible.”
“It’s not an idea, and incredible or not, it’s a fact,” I pointed out, and just then a real brain wave hit me.
“Hey Doc!” Then I stopped to think. If I put forth this theory and was wrong I’d never live it down and Dennis would be giving me the bird for years and making me eat it—feathers and all.
“Yes, Margaret?” Rollins was watching me anxiously.
I gave it another second of thought, but the desire to start some action was too strong for caution. I took a deep breath and plunged.
“Aren’t there certain poisons which produce rigor mortis a short while after being taken?”
The coroner’s eyes widened. So did everyone else’s.
“Of course there are! Notably calcium cyanide and curare, the latter a product of one of the strychnos plants, Strychnos toxifera. Both of these poisons cause motor nerve paralysis which creates a false rigor and has all the symptoms of genuine rigor. But why do you ask Margaret? Surely you aren’t suggesting Dr. McGowan died of poisoning?”
“Who, me?” Elaborately innocent. “I’m not suggesting anything. I was just curious, that’s all. Of course if by any chance he did die of either of those poisons it will show in the autopsy, won’t it?”
“It will now,” he promised grimly. “Ordinarily we wouldn’t look for such a thing and the post mortem would be cursory, but since you have suggested Ned took poison—”
“I did nothing of the kind!” I denied hotly.
“It sounded so to me,” he said, and Shem, Morrow, and Herrot nodded an agreement.
“Well, you’re all wrong. I don’t think Ned took poison deliberately. The last thing he said to me was that he had the world geared to his speed and was sitting on top of it. No man feeling that way is going to kill himself.”
“Then you’re suggesting he was poisoned by mistake or accident?”
“I told you before I wasn’t suggesting anything. All I know is that he was alive seven hours before his body was found, and if death by natural causes won’t create such rigor, then something else must have done it.”
“Death by natural causes couldn’t do it. Not even if he was diabetic,” Rollins said.
Shem started to say something, but Grady, who had been put on the door to keep out the morbidly curious, stuck his head in the room and called out: “Hey, Doc. The morgue basket is here. You all finished?”
“All finished, Jim,” he answered. “Let them in.”
The two white-coated attendants marched through into the bathroom carrying their long wicker basket. Doc went after them. They came out in a few minutes and left. Rollins picked up his bag and turned to Shem.
“Don’t let anyone touch or move anything here until the post mortem report comes through,” he said. “This may be an unnecessary precaution but I feel it should be taken. And you reporters,” he turned to us. “Don’t give out any stories of poisoning until we are sure. Shem, you had better keep Grady on the door. Let no one in unless he has business here.”
“Okay, Doc.” Shem gave Grady his orders and closed the door on the coroner’s chubby figure. Then to Herrot, Morrow, and me: “You kids be careful what you touch in here, understand?”
“But, Joel” I wailed, clutching the phone which already had my prints all over it. “Can’t I call Dennis? I’ve five minutes to deadline!”
“We-l-ll.” He hesitated, then saw my hand gripping the phone and grinned. “You’ve printed your mitts all over it anyhow; go ahead and make your call.”
“Thanks, pal.” I grinned back at him and made a face at Morrow who was hightailing for the door. Johnny’s deadline was the same as mine and he had to go to the lobby for a phone. He’d catch it.
I picked up the phone, then remembered something and looked around for LeFevre. He was gone.
“Hey, Joe. Who found the body?”
“The manager. Seems he had to be the one to unlock any door in case of anything suspicious. The maid got worried when she couldn’t rouse the doctor or get in the room, and she called him. He carne up with the pass key and found Doc.”
I put my call in and in a second Dennis’s voice bawled in my ear.
“City desk! McCarthy spea—”
“I know who is speaking,” I cut him short. “This is Margaret. I’m set with that McGowan story.”
“It’s about time you were!” he beefed. “Migawd! Over an hour to get an obit and you call yourself a reporter!”
“But this is no ordinary obit,” I said. “This is a honey.”
“Well, give it to Carter. I’m busy.”
“Oh no you don’t!” I stopped him. “I want you to take it.”
“Why f’God’s sake?”
“Because it’s different.”
He sighed resignedly, muttering about the trials of a city editor, and told me to go ahead and make it snappy.
I gave him strictly routine copy.
“The body of Dr. Edward McGowan, aged thirty-seven, was discovered in the bathroom of his quarters in the Bienvenu hotel shortly after 8:30 today. The body was found by the manager of the hotel, Jules LeFevre, who entered the room with a pass key after the maid had reported she was unable to rouse the doctor, who usually left the hotel before 7:30.”
I got that far when Dennis interrupted. “Now listen, dammit! Carter can take this crap as well—”
“No he can’t.” I went on hurriedly: “Dr. McGowan, a native of Temple, Texas, was prominent in medical circles in the city and had resided here since he entered State hospital as an interne ten years ago. He recently attracted worldwide attention when he successfully performed a delicate cardiac operation.”
“Godammit!” Dennis’s venom sang along the wire. “What in the hell are you trying to do? Make a monkey out of me?”
“Nature saved me that job,” I retorted. “Now shut up and listen.”
“Dr. Arthur Rollins, Parrish Coroner, pronounced death as probably due to heart disease and kidney complications. The body was removed to the morgue for autopsy. Period. Paragraph.”
The wire was ominously silent. I went on: “Dr. McGowan is survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jason McGowan of Temple and a twin brother, Fred McGowan of this city. Details of the burial will be announced later.”
The wire continued silent. “You still there, Dennis?” I asked.
“I’m here.” He sounded grim.
“Did you get it all?”
“I got it, and if that’s all you’re fired. No, by God! I’ll transfer you to society!”
I grinned in unholy glee. “But it isn’t all, darling. It’s all you can print until the autopsy report comes in, but, unless I miss my guess, there’s a lot more to come.”
“What are you up to?”
I forgot I’d meant to stay nonchalant. “Dennis! This is going to be a story! Rollins said Ned had been dead fifteen to twenty hours and at least, the very least, fifteen. But I know he couldn’t have been dead more than seven hours when they found him.”
In a slightly bewildered tone Dennis asked me how I knew that.
“I told you I talked to him last night, dope! That was 1:30, and if he was able to talk he sure wasn’t dead, was he?”
“I suppose not—and don’t call me a dope,” he answered. “Well, so what? I still want to know what you’re trying to make of it.”
“Who, me?” Again I played innocent. “I’m not trying to make anything of it. But only in algebra will two and two equal anything but four and I never got past simple arithmetic. So if he was alive seven hours before they found his body, it follows he couldn’t be dead for fifteen hours or more. Therefore, if he couldn’t get as stiff as he was from natural causes he must have got that way from unnatural ones. Catch on?”
“You’re screwy!” He was profoundly disgusted.
I burned. “Oh! Am I now! Well, I’ll bet you a pint Ned McGowan died from some kind of poisoning. How do you like them apples?”
“I don’t like ’em, but you’re on. For odds though. Your quart against my pint. Maybe this will teach you not to go off hall-cocked and blow your top. Just because the guy talked to you the night before he cashed in does not prove he was poisoned.”
I got good and mad. “As a city editor you’re a good Sunday one!” I told him. “If you’ll just let me finish—”
“I haven’t time to listen to any more of your wild dreams. You stay there and when the report comes in proving he wasn’t poisoned you come on back and I’ll dust off a nice desk in soc for you and give you a drink from that quart you’ll owe me.”
“Now see here—” The bang in my ear shut me up, but I shook my head and grinned widely. I knew McCarthy. If he hadn’t thought I was on the trail of something good he’d have ordered me back to the city room.
I looked around and beckoned to Shem who was standing forlornly by the balcony windows.
“Joe, just how well did you know McGowan?” I asked the question more to make conversation than out of any desire to know.
“Pretty well, kid,” he answered. “I met him when he first went to State hospital. He was riding ambulance and I was on night duty there. I rode on his first call. It was a girl who’d bumped herself off; she was dead when we unloaded her. He was pretty upset about it. Later we used to talk about how much good a doctor could do in this world. We used to plan about how one day he’d have a clinic for poor patients and the rich ones would pay for it. He had a lot of dreams, that kid.”
“They got lost, didn’t they? All he talked of when I knew him was how much he could charge for an operation without getting a squawk from the patient.”
“You’re wrong, Margaret. He was still talking about that clinic when he operated on Molly six months ago. He almost had the dough to build it. Aw helll He was a swell guy! When I tried to pay him for Molly’s operation he told me he never took dough from a pal. Said I’d done plenty for him. Me? I’d never done nothing for Doc. Nothing.”
Joe’s grammar swamped in emotion and to my embarrassed surprise tears began rolling down the ruddy cheeks of the supposedly hard-boiled policeman.
The sound of the phone bell cut off anything I was going to say. He reached for it—but so did I. I got it first.
It was a woman and she wanted to speak to Dr. McGowan. There was a surprised note in her voice as if she wondered what the hell a woman was doing answering his phone that hour of the day.
“He’s not able to come to the telephone,” I said, cagily. “Who’s calling, please?”
“Who’s speaking, please?” she came back at me.
“I’m a reporter,” I told her. “I’m here on a story.”
“A story?” She was politely disbelieving. “What kind of a story?”
“I don’t know that’s your business!” I retorted snippily. “Who is this?”
“This is his office nurse.” She sounded slightly smug.
“Oh! Oh, hello, Miss Cheng!” I knew the doctor’s little almond-eyed nurse, a pint-sized and capable Oriental who’d been with him since he began his private practice. Damned attractive too, if you went for the lotus bud type. “This is Margaret Slone,” I told her. And stalled right there.
“Oh, how do you do, Miss Slone?” The voice went polite and professional.” I’m sorry to disturb your interview but there are several patients here and the doctor is quite late.”
“I suppose he is,” I said drily.
“Then may I speak to him?”
“I’m afraid not. Hasn’t anyone called you or told you anything?”
“What do you mean? No one has called me to tell me anything. Is something wrong?”
I took so long groping for an answer she spoke before I had any ready.
“Miss Slone! Either let me speak to the doctor or tell him he has four patients waiting.”
“You can’t speak to him. I can’t tell him anything—and he won’t see any patients today or any day. He’s dead.” I cringed over my own bluntness.
“Dead!” Her voice hit a new high in squeals.
“Yes, he’s dead, and you better send those patients home or to another doctor.”
“But how can he be dead? He was fine yesterday!”
“That was yesterday.” I unconsciously repeated Dennis’s words to me. “He died early this morning. The coroner took the body for an autopsy.”