Death of the Magpie

by William McMurray

CHAPTER FIVE

  The next two days passed without further incident. The conference carried on with its own inexorable momentum. The demise of one researcher, however lamented, could not halt, or even deter more than briefly, the juggernaut of science. Speaker followed speaker, some worse, a few better than Karl at presenting their private burrowings in the warren of scientific inquiry. Janet learned emore than she had wanted to know about the differentiation of slime moulds and other disagreeable organisms .She disciplined her self to attend all the sessions and took extensive notes to focus her attention on the content of the meeting. But despite her best intentions she frequently found her concentration fading. In the darkened room, the rows of silent heads in front of her must contain stored impressions of the first day, memories of Karl or of Janet herself. Now they had turned like spectators at a carnival to a different side-show. How much was still retained of Karl’s personality, of his achievements, or of her own? Doubtless all they would recall would be the comedy of the mixed-up slides and the tragedy of his death that had so inconveniently moved the morning session to disrupt their free afternoon of boating or swimming. Janet was usually too much occupied at home for philosophical musings. Karl's death had brought into focus the realization of her own mortality, and the ephemeral quality of her work and accomplishments.

  Karl's death had also brought about a tightening of the little group from Essex University. They tended now to congregate more, at meals, at coffee-breaks, in the lounge after the sessions ended. Without any formal assent they gathered in silent funeral parties, each groping to find a common view-point to eulogize their former compatriot in science. In the absence of a ritual service to finalize Karl’s departure it seemed only decent to attempt some expression of loss as rehearsal for the impending arrival of his widow. The latter event raised their spirits; there was an air of expectancy for the forthcoming appearance of Mrs. Elster, and considerable speculation, if not outright betting about the attributes of the mysterious widow. Though few could muster sincere feelings of regret about Karl, all were prepared to offer support for Margot Elster. They could scarcely be blamed if their eagerness to extend condolences to the bereaved lady was strongly prompted by a natural curiosity to size her up. Janet found herself to be among the first to be in that position. It was late on the Wednesday afternoon as she returned to her room from a lengthy hike with Doug when a taxi pulled up at the front of the lodge. Although his back was turned to her Janet immediately recognized the stocky figure of Bob Hayes as he wrestled with the collection of baggage. Shortly afterwards a woman emerged from the taxi. Despite the wide and wild guesses about her appearance Janet was not prepared. Margot Elster was not only stunningly attractive; she was quite obviously in the penultimate stages of pregnancy.

  In order to save them trouble Janet took the new arrivals directly to the office of the manager, who seemed relieved to have a relative of his deceased guest to decide details of the arrangements. Janet left while the three of them made contacts with the district hospital authorities. There was one curious aspect of the meeting that struck her forcibly later as she reflected on the conversation in the manager's office: the desire of the manager to rid himself of Karl's personal belongings was matched by Margot Elster's eagerness to possess them; in fact she showed more immediate concern about the disposition of Karl's effects than for the fate of the corpse itself.

  It was considerably later in the evening before that matter was tidied up. Bob Hayes and the widow returned from the local hospital as the group was struggling into the lounge from the evening session in search of liquid and other forms of refreshment. Professor Antwhistle took the newcomers in tow, and steered them toward a table already occupied by Janet and Celia. There was an embarrassed interval of silence while he arranged a round of drinks, broken by his welcoming speech to Margot.

  "I know I speak for all of us in the Department in offering our sympathy and help, my dear. We are after all, if somewhat extended and diverse, still a family group. I hope you may feel one of us for a time at least," and he raised his glass to her while Janet and Celia nodded their assent. Margot thanked him for these sentiments, and after a brief round of conversation, turned to Bob and made a sign.

  "I'm sorry but I believe Margot has had enough for today,” he said rising from his chair." If you'll excuse us I really think she must get some rest."

  "Quite understandable. But please let us know if we can do anything at all to help." The Professor's voice trailed away as they departed from the lounge.

  Later as she made her way back to her room, Janet noticed a familiar figure seated on a bench over looking the river. She got almost up to him before breaking into his reverie. Bob Hayes sprang to his feet with a characteristic burst of energy, and impulsively gave her a hug. They sat down filling in the respective gaps in their lives since their last encounter. It was Bob who eventually steered the conversation around to the subject of Karl.

  "What exactly did happen to him? The doctor at the hospital was pretty vague. The closest we could gather was that he took a dizzy spell and somehow lost his footing."

  "I've wondered about it considerably myself." Janet frowned and recounted her part in the discovery of Karl's body. "He was definitely dead when I got to him."

  "If he hadn't been then, there wouldn't have been much to revive. According to the pathologist's report he suffered a broken neck, as well as much brain haemorrhaging. My goodness, it must have been a terrible thing for you-- finding him that way."

  "Yes. But there was something odd about it also. It didn’t strike me right away, and even now I have trouble remembering all the details. It was misty you know, and being at water level looking up you get a queer perspective anyway. It didn't look like someone just fainting and toppling off the edge of the cliff. It really seemed that he was sort of-propelled."

  "Did he jump, or was he pushed?" murmured Bob.

  "Exactly. I didn't see anyone else about" Then she related the impression she had about a canoe overtaking her. "I can't believe that somebody climbed that cliff and pushed Karl off. But who ever it was must have been close by. You know, it seemed as though he had been startled, surprised in the act of taking my orange."

  Bob turned and raised both eyebrows at her disbelievingly. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but how else can you account for my finding it in the river not far from Karl’s body?"

  He shrugged his shoulders, but retained his sceptical look. "How did this orange enter the story anyway?"

  "I'm not much of a breakfast eater. And as a rule I drop by the cafeteria on the way out for my morning dip, pick up an orange and eat it after my swim. When I got to the cliff I sat down to take off my shoes. There's a rocky outcropping there, and I knew from earlier it is a pretty safe place to dive in. So I dangled my feet over the edge, left my shoes, towel, orange right there."

  "At the edge of the overhang?"

  "Yes. Just next to where I had been sitting."

  "And you think that's the spot where Karl took his unsuccessful dive?"

  "Undoubtedly. From the position of the body, and also the final resting place of my orange. I'd give anything to know what was in Karl's mind as he picked it up."

  "Or in the mind of whoever it was that 'propelled him' off the cliff as you put it."

  "Well, it's probably a foolish fancy of mine, but there were enough people about who would have been happy to oblige."

  "Tell me about it " laughed Bob sardonically. "If they all lined up from our lab they would have had to take a number and wait their turn. I don't think anyone was too sorry to see him leave there; nor were there many tears when word came about his accident here."

  "Including Margot?"

  Bob paused for a minute before responding. The door from the lounge opened disgorging a few conferees and sending a shaft of light across the lawn onto Bob's face. His expression of evident hatred combined with the hoarse chuckle that accompanied it left no doubt in Janet's mind about his own feelings in
the matter.

  "Probably especially Margot." "Most especially" he repeated emphatically. I never could understand what hold he had over her-- why she stayed with him as long as she did. He treated her abominably. I'm sure I didn't know the whole story, but what I did find out was bad enough. I presume he continued his philandering ways over here?"

  "Well," replied Janet carefully, "I suppose that no one had any cause to realize that he had a wife, and other responsibilities."

  He turned toward her sharply. "It was-- is Karl's baby," he said.

  "I didn’t doubt it. But if so it must have been conceived just before he left Margot."

  "His parting gift, as it were. And Margot, much as she may have detested Karl has accepted the role of mother to his child. I guess I've taken the job of surrogate father-husband if it comes to that," said Bob with a sigh.

  "Well I'm glad for both of you." Janet recalled her days of working in the lab with him. Full of energy, bursting with ideas, plus a great capacity for sheer hard work. If Margot had set about to find a dependable 'surrogate' who was the opposite of Karl in virtually every way, she couldn't have made a better choice.

  "Tell me one thing," she went on. "Why was Margot in such a rush to visit the scene of the crime, as it were?"

  "I'm not exactly sure," he answered. "She may have felt responsible to take charge. After all Karl's parents weren't well enough to travel. So she wanted to-- you know -- arrange about the remains."

  "And Karl's belongings? That surprised me. I don't know if it did you. Why was she so hot off the mark to get his things from the room?", and Janet, half-jokingly related her conversation with the lodge manager, and his eagerness to tidy up the effects left behind by Karl.

  "Probably just an obsession for neatness on his part. As far as Margot was concerned," he confided, "she had written to him recently. There were things in that letter that she said she wished she had never put in writing, and having done so she was in horror of anyone else coming on it."

  "And did she find it in his room?"

  "Apparently she did. I didn't question her more about it since it was obvious she wanted to avoid the subject. But she seemed relieved after she had been through his things."

  "And what will she do next?"

  "I'm not sure. We've made the arrangements for cremation and shipping. I guess Margot will want to visit in Essex for a while, to sort things out there. After that, I don't know. It's possible we'll stay over here till after the baby comes. Stay with my parents most likely. I’ve been writing around you know and there are one or two openings. I'm planning to contact a few people here-- maybe arrange some visits for job interviews after the meeting. I know Margot doesn't plan to go back. There was apparently a decent life insurance policy on Karl, although it was Margot who had to keep up the premium payments. Anyway, she had planned to get out of the lab for a bit. Her work was a bit tricky."

  "In what way?" asked Janet.

  "Didn't you know? She had been working on some new potent serine protease inhibitors."

  "Like DFP?"

  "Similar action, but many times more effective. As you can imagine these were frightfully toxic compounds. She was getting pretty anxious about continuing to handle them, particularly in her

  present state of pregnancy. She had to keep an atropine antidote on hand at all times."

  I suppose that's what brought her together with Karl; serine proteases," mused Janet.

  "It was about the only thing they had in common as far as I could tell," he snorted sardonically. "You know, those two papers he published from Cunningham's lab-- that was about 75% Margot's work. Somehow Karl conned her into doing those studies while she was supposed to be working as Cunningham's research assistant. Then he explained to her, so she told me, that Karl couldn't include her as a co-author. It would offend Sir Reginald to have his assistant as author on someone else's work! You’ll note a brief acknowledgment to Margot at the end of the first paper 'for technical advice'. That translates as 'she set up the method and did half of the experiments after hours.' Even after he came over here Karl kept badgering her for details of the work in Cunningham's laboratory. Wanted her to send him data, even some samples of the new compounds they were just developing. "

  "And did she?"

  "No doubt she did. Some of the results at least. I think Karl must have had some leverage with her. She desperately wanted to keep her independence-- hang onto her job. She seemed terrified that Karl would write to the director-- let it out that Margot had been moonlighting while supposedly working for him."

  Janet sighed and shook her head.

  "I see now why you said 'especially Margot' among the list of those who would not be too unhappy to hear of Karl's demise!" The list, she thought, of aggrieved females including herself, Linda, perhaps Celia, plus how many others not known to her. Had Karl’s death been murder rather than a simple accident the list of suspects with a sufficient motive would be stretching out to the horizon. Except for Margot of course, who had a watertight alibi in the strict sense of the term. And unless one could conjure up a process of psychokinesis to engineer a push by remote control, none of the 'suspects' was in a position to shove Karl off the precipice except Janet! She tried again to relive that instant of realization when he seemed suspended against the curtain of mist. Was there someone else nearby? Her only recollection that persisted was of the canoe passing by, the still, silent witness.

  Janet had difficulty sleeping that night. The evening had been stiflingly warm, the air heavy. After saying goodnight to Bob she returned to her room and sat by the window for a while. A fitful moon sparkled intermittently on the river as a freshening wind threw a procession of clouds across the sky. She thought back to her earlier conversation with Bob. Karl had conned Margot into producing his experimental work (and his offspring as well no doubt). As he had attempted to do with Linda, with Celia, with herself perhaps. Janet at least had evened the score as far as her own research work was concerned. And somebody else, had planned in premeditated fashion to sabotage Karl’s talk, somebody who had foreknowledge of the order of his slides, and knew enough to calculate just how seriously the bogus slide would upset his delivery. Could such a person also have enough foreknowledge of Karl’s movements to anticipate his arrival on the cliff-top, to arrange to follow him there, and ‘assist’ him over the edge?

  As she sat in the dark, feet up on the ledge under the open window, Janet closed her eyes and let her mind swim back along the course she had followed in the river. She must have still been a couple of hundred metres from her departure point when she had first sighted the figure she assumed to be Karl’s at the top of the cliff. It must have taken her at least five minutes even at top speed to get back to the site of his fall. During the interval the passing canoe could have reached the base of the cliff, with ample time for the paddler to climb to the top and depart before she got within sight. She tried to relive the last few minutes of her swim, but no further impressions returned at her bidding. There was just the feeling of breathlessness from the final burst of speed she had exerted, the recollection of panic as she scrambled out over the slippery rocks, her hands grappling to pull herself ashore. Then she recalled suddenly the palms of her hands with small red flecks adhering. At the time, her attention rivetted by the scene, she had paid little heed, but now the recollection came of what she had first mistakenly thought was blood --of flakes of red paint on her palms. The paint was of course identical with that used on all the rental boats and canoes at Wotinabee Lodge. It could have been scraped there when Professor Antwhistle pulled in the first day of the conference. Or it might have come from the bottom of the canoe that Janet had sensed rather than seen the morning of Karl's death.

  Perhaps it was not so fanciful after all to suppose that Karl had been 'assisted' over the brink. The 'assistant' could easily have scrambled back down the cliff and, after ascertaining that Karl was indeed dead, pushed off again silently into the mist by cano
e before Janet's arrival at the scene. As she pondered and drowsed over these puzzles it seemed that her legs, still wet from swimming, were now shivering with the cold. A sudden gust of wind clattered the blind and brought her back to wakefulness and the realization that rain was blowing into the room and over her feet.

  "I suppose that's another crazy fancy of mine that's all wet!" she muttered grimly while fastening the window shut. But none the less she knew that next morning, if it still seemed in any way sane in the light of day, she would have to follow up with her suspicions, fanciful or otherwise.