The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  “I see. Go on, please.”

  “The body was placed in the mortuary wagon from Shanesville, and at my suggestion was taken to the Winchester morgue. I accompanied it there; it was at no time out of my sight. I began the post-mortem at about 1:30 P.M., assisted by Dr. Miles Dennison and with the authorization of Mr. District Attorney Lamson. I think I should say at this point that shortly before I began the post-mortem, I was notified by Winchester Chief of Police Morgan Collins that there was a possibility Mrs. Doherty had drunk poison, thought to be aconitine. I therefore had this in mind before beginning the examination, and I consulted by telephone with the toxicologist Dr. Walter Ginsberg, and prepared the organs, blood samples and so on, that he told me he would need for his study. The body weight was one hundred and ten pounds, slightly undernourished. There was an appendectomy scar, old; no other scars, no evidence of chronic illness or disorder, no marks of violence; the subject had never given birth. The nasal cavities and bronchi contained some stiff foam and a few dark brown and black specks identified by microscopic examination as fragments of dead leaves. No algae were found. Some water was in the lungs, but very little. The heart, not markedly distended, contained fluid blood, but that is not diagnostic: clotted blood may appear in a drowning case. The viscera were quite noticeably congested.”

  “That is diagnostic?—congestion of the viscera?”

  “No, sir—may appear in many other conditions.”

  “Including some kinds of poisoning?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hunter.”

  “For example poisoning by aconitine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you employ the Gettler test?”

  “Yes—inconclusive. The blood in the left side of the heart had a slightly lower concentration of sodium chloride than the blood on the right. If that difference had been pronounced, you could call it fair evidence of inhalation of fresh water, but it was too slight. I don’t attach any significance to it.”

  “Could the lack of a positive finding be significant?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s a good test, but plenty of things may confuse it. For instance, a drowning may occur from pharyngeal shock—a spasmodic throat contraction that causes asphyxia before much water is inhaled. Logically still a drowning death, but no water to speak of, so there goes your Gettler test.”

  “You looked of course for evidence of aconitine poisoning?”

  “Only in a limited sense, sir. Aconitine doesn’t leave gross traces for post-mortem, it’s a job for the toxicologist, a chemical job. Since I knew Dr. Ginsberg would be working on it, I simply bore it in mind, prepared what he needed, and kept my eyes open. I can say under oath that I found nothing inconsistent with aconite poisoning having occurred shortly before the drowning. But the actual immediate cause of death was, in my opinion, asphyxia due to immersion, in other words drowning.”

  “Doctor, will you give the jury a description of the effects of aconitine in a lethal or near-lethal dose?”

  “Frankly, sir, I’ll be drawing on textbook knowledge, because this is the only case I ever encountered. Homicide by aconite is decidedly rare. So is suicide.” Callista looked up, not to the doctor who dutifully faced the jury and would not look at her, but searching the rows of spectators. “Aconitine will cause numbness, tingling in the mouth, also in the fingers, possibly cramps in arms and legs. There’s marked salivation, nausea, burning sensation in stomach and throat.” Edith moved in her seat, and smiled, and tried to call in silence: I’m here. But Callista’s eyes, searching, immense, drowned, passed over her. “A slow, irregular, weak pulse is characteristic, with rapid shallow breathing, muscular weakness, a general collapse. Nausea and vomiting are usual; sometimes there are convulsions. The poison depresses the medullary centers of the brain, but the cerebrum is hardly affected, which means the mind stays pretty clear until the coma that may supervene at the end.” Callista’s eyes found what they were seeking. It would not be her mother, Edith knew: Victoria Chalmers sat over at Edith’s left. “Those symptoms I’ve described begin soon after aconite is taken. I believe death, when it occurs, usually comes in about four hours—but it can happen in a matter of minutes.”

  Edith wished not to turn her head; she felt instead an unwillingness, distaste, reluctance to learn what would be written in the face of Jim Doherty. But she could not help it. Knowing where he was seated, she was forced to turn until a sidelong look gave her the image of him, completing at that instant the sign of the cross, his eyes lowered, his lips moving. But the man beside him was watchful, interested, attentive, probably missing none of the testimony.

  “What is the minimum lethal dose, Dr. Devens?”

  “About a milligram. Some individuals might take up to five or six, and recover. More than six milligrams would likely finish anyone, unless there was immediate medical attention—you understand, those figures refer to a pure concentration of the drug.”

  Callista’s lips were moving also. As Edith looked to her again, she saw them shape unmistakable words: “Go away!” There would be no sound, Edith thought, even for Cecil Warner, who had taken hold of her hand and was showing the beginning of alarm. “Go away!”

  “Is the drug readily soluble in alcohol?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hunter.”

  Callista, be quiet! He can’t hear you. He can’t hear anyone.

  “Assuming a person had taken four to five milligrams of the poison, Dr. Devens, he could still be saved by immediate medical attention?”

  The girl said something to Cecil Warner, quick and possibly sharp; Edith caught the faint note of her voice under the dry dominating noise of Dr. Devens, the words indistinguishable, blotted out by his: “Certainly, sir, the patient could probably be saved. Stomach pump. Tannic acid I imagine, to render the poison inert. You’d give heart stimulants, say digitalis. A healthy patient would have a pretty good chance.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Devens. Cross examination, Mr. Warner?”

  “No cross examination.” But Warner was up, for once urgently quick-spoken. “Your Honor, in view of my client’s exhaustion, may we have adjournment at this time?”

  In the abrupt hush that followed Warner’s question, Callista’s voice, not loud, not really a cry, was surely heard by everyone, even by Jim Doherty. “Go away, my love!”

  The Judge winced, speaking hastily: “The Court stands adjourned until ten A.M. tomorrow.”

  Edith also observed the press tables, and the jolly excited scramble for the telephones.

  IV

  The pavements throbbed with a golden, sometimes iridescent flame, which could not deceive Cecil Warner, for he was not drunk. The time hadn’t come and never would when two bourbons on top of an average dinner could make a fool of him. The dancing fire was nothing in the world but the reflection of headlights on sidewalks wet with the return of winter rain.

  On his left a separate darkness kept pace with him, blotting out the fire-ballet as he moved. I cast a shadow. It is the nature of a man to cast a shadow. This is done even by a few of the dead.

  No. ‘Their works do follow after them’; but that’s not shadow, except by ill-advised figure of speech. That is what I shall term—(BAR AND GRILL twenty paces ahead)—shall term the immortality of consequences, of continuing events. Shadow’s different. Shadow is the occlusion of light rays by an impermeable mass, me for instance. Avoid all ill-advised figures of speech. Go away, my love!

  He observed it was Hanlon’s Bar and Grill, corner of Main and Willard, damned if it wasn’t—interesting, since he’d thought he was three blocks further west. He advanced through the logical absurdity of a revolving door. Quiet here tonight. He read the others at the bar in a practiced glance: four nondescript males and a large platinum wench, all unknown. He fumbled past his damp overcoat, drawing forth and consulting his thin and ancient pocket watch of yellow gold. His inner visio
n recorded, as always, the florid inscription he would see if his thumbnail opened the hinged back of the case: Ezra Allen Warner, 1880. A gift from his grandfather to his father, on the boy Ezra’s graduation from college at twenty-one. For the last thirty-odd years Cecil had not been able to look on this delicate artifact without some dark stirring of the thought: I have no children. The fantastically graceful hands declared the present hour to be ten-thirty; they had been truth-tellers for eighty years. “Evening, Tom. Bourbon and water.”

  “Sure enough, Mr. Warner. Raining again, isn’t it?”

  “A sprinkle. A certain piddling effort. Possibly the tears of the gods are running thin in this latter age.”

  Tom’s patient face was acknowledging him as a Character. “You could be right.” Tom would have absorbed every word on the Blake case that the evening Courier had to offer; adult, seasoned, sensitive, he wouldn’t mention it unless Warner did. He had even spoken Warner’s name in a soft tone that would not carry down the bar. He poured the bourbon, gave the mahogany a needless swipe or two for friendship’s sake in case the Old Man wanted to talk, and drifted back to his post of command.

  Two men, blurred by Warner’s preoccupation, were discussing space flight across the intervening blonde. Beyond them two others carried on an argument that rose to audibility only now and then. The Old Man heard and did not hear them; heard and did not hear the deeper counterpoint within him.

  Tomorrow, assuming tomorrow came, the attack would follow a different line. Callista’s adultery and deception, illustrative details by courtesy of the neighbors and Nathaniel Judd, plus T.J.’s dreary assertions and reassertions that the girl was being tried for nothing but murder—perhaps T.J. could even manage to believe that himself, for the duration. Callista’s atheism; yes, almost certainly some one of the State’s witnesses would most casually drop in the word “atheist.” Protest, uproar, the Old Man scolding, T.J. doing a baritone solo on religious tolerance; then the mockery (Terence himself would hate it) of striking an answer from the record when no means existed to strike it from the jurors’ minds.

  “It don’t push against atmosphere up there, account there isn’t any.”

  “All right, I know that, but how does it push, ’s what I don’t get?”

  “No she didn’t! She said, her exact words, ‘you never knew what was ordinary for Callista’—exact words.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Hell no, like I told you, I couldn’t get off from work, but the Courier’s printing every word, so all you got to do is put two and two—”

  “—pushes against itself, see? The satellite itself is the God-damn resistance, like you’re shooting a pistol, and the recoil—you ever shoot a pistol?”

  “Hate ’em. Sure way to get hurt.”

  Platinum said: “’S like this, Buck, what Sam’s try’n’a tell you, you get up ’ere in shpace, you just be’r not fart.”

  “Now, June,” said bartender Tom, “you want to watch the talk.”

  “I di’n’ say single thing.”

  “Okay, June baby, just watch it is all.”

  “What I mean is, everybody figures the girl is nuts, that old woman Welsh and everybody. So what you’re going to see, you’re going to see an insanity defense. It always happens—”

  “No sumbishn barkeep’s telling me how talk.”

  “June baby, I keep telling you—”

  “Happens every time. She’ll be put away a few years, and then let out, do it all over again, like—”

  “Only thing I’m try’n’a find out, what does it push against behind?”

  “I’m beginning to think it’s no use try’n’a explain it to you.”

  “Tom!”

  “Hell, like a poisoner always does! You want to bet? Happened a million times. I read a book—”

  “Tom!”

  “Yeah? You better not have any more, June.”

  “Don’t want any more—not why I called you. Just wanted say, ’m sorry ’f anything I said gave ’fense. None ’tended. All’s I want’s everybody be happy.”

  But the defense—

  “Sure, June, that’s okay.”

  “’S my whole life right ’ere, see? Ask anybody knows me.”

  “Okay, June!”

  The defense never rests.

  “Okay he says, he keeps saying okay, Jesus Christ, you ought to listen I’m telling you, not just keep saying okay, okay. Ever since I was little girl, honest, all’s I ever wanted was everybody be happy.”

  CHAPTER 4

  …O how can Love’s eye be true,

  That is so vex’d with watching and with tears?

  —SHAKESPEARE,

  Sonnet CXLVIII

  I

  Thought of work had halted Edith’s aimless wandering on the Christmas-spattered evening streets downtown. Now the drawing table and empty chair in her studio brought Callista poignantly close in absence. How arrogantly, like a beloved child, Callista had captured her life!

  Window-shopping with no heart for it, necessary gifts already bought, she had become fed up with Winchester, noise, people, sidewalk grit flung by the wind; with gaudy lights desperately imitating good cheer, drizzle-nosed bell-ringers and Santa Clauses, carols once pretty now done to death, fed up with crowd faces till she recoiled from them as from a rat-race of tragic masks.

  Getting off the bus—she seldom used her car downtown, hating the struggle of searching out a parking space—her skirt was twitched up by the breeze for the lech of a pair of whistling teen-agers. Edith had been dourly amused. Try looking at the face some time, kids!—and the mood kept with her as far as her third floor walkup on Hallam Street. The hour was nine-thirty, Papa Doorn just closing his delicatessen on the ground floor, giving her a gentle “Good night, Miss Nolan!”

  No mail but a swatch of ads drenched in the season’s gladness, and the janitor would never provide a wastebasket in the entry. She dumped the mess in the studio trash-box, glancing at the cameras, screens, props, at the dim end of the studio. A fantastic way to earn a living, close to the mainstream of human vanity. But at this end, with the north light, wall-shelves, drawing table, work could be done after survival was taken care of. Callista’s work for a year, and Edith’s own. The bread-and-butter end of the studio was already dusty. Edith had canceled portrait engagements for the duration of the trial, disinclined to hire a temporary helper: why knock oneself out immortalizing the fish-faced?

  She touched the table, symbolic touching of a hardness-without-coldness that was one element of Callista Blake. Stop it, Red! She’s not here. She took down a folder of Callista’s drawings—some careful, some swift, all begotten of a mind that could see, laugh, pity, understand. Also in that folder was a letter Callista had written after Edith’s last visit to the detention cell, Saturday, three days ago. Edith knew the drawings. She would find nothing new in them now, when she was out of temper and moved by a wish to start some work of her own. Glance at that abandoned wagon in long grass? Or the supermarket clerk, homely day’s end weariness caught in a dozen lines with that compassion of Callista’s (at nineteen!) which she could almost never convey in spoken words? Not now. Edith glanced at a watercolor on the wall, one she had taken from Cal’s apartment for safety with Herb Chalmers’ distracted consent and after the police had given leave. A mountain slope, a wind-ravished pine, shouting deep color against a storm sky intense with the power of two worlds, the world of life and growth and dying before Callista’s eyes, and the world of Callista’s most observing self.

  Off in her living-room the telephone rang. Edith ran for it. The voice was slurred, uncertain. “Miss Nolan—Edith—all evening trying to get you. Jim Doherty—now please don’t hang up.”

  “Of course I won’t.” She tried not to snap. “What is it?”

  “Had to ask you s
omething.” He was rather drunk. “May seem unreason’ble, guess you hate me anyhow, but—”

  “I won’t hang up. I don’t hate you. What is it, Jim?”

  “Maybe wouldn’t blame you. You feel I let her down. Feel I’m an enemy or something—sorry—not what I’m trying to say—” She waited, watching her thin white fingers play with a pencil from the telephone table, a pinpoint of perception somehow important, as if it kept her distressed and startled mind from swirling away down the telephone mouthpiece like water down the hole of a handbasin. She heard a beat of mechanical music; Jim would be in a bar, the booth shut against a squalling of radio or television. The large-boned, dark-Irish face would be pale with alcohol, filmed with sweat, black hair disordered, wide mouth talking against its own unwillingness. Dark eyes rigid, unfocused, behind them Jim’s own image of a crackpot redhead who was Callista’s friend. He was a tall man; the stingy crannies of the booth would bother his legs. An impressive young stallion: any woman felt that much, and one could (sometimes) see why Callista—“Edith, what happened there, before adjournment? I’ve got to know. I sort of lost track, then they were taking her away. What—”

  “You didn’t hear what she said?”

  “No, that’s it, I didn’t. I was praying—well, for her, though I suppose that doesn’t mean anything to you, no offense, anyway I—”

  “Didn’t your friend hear what she said?”

  “My—oh, you mean Father Bland. No, he didn’t.”

  “Is he deaf?”

  “Yes, a little.” She heard the righteous reproach; it must have done Jim good to put her in the wrong. “What did she say?”

  “She said: ‘Go away, my love!’”

  He would be still there. She heard breathing, and the background noise, a hot trumpet squeaking up the summits of banality. She said: “Jim, do you still love her at all?”