The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  “Then a doctor came, with a couple of ushers, and they took Cohen out to the lobby—and D’Angelo, Frau Hochschwender, and Miss Van Voorhees followed. A little later an ambulance came, but Cohen was dead before he got to the hospital.

  “At first the doctors thought it was a heart attack, but they did a routine autopsy—and found enough poison in his stomach to kill a man half his age and twice his strength. The dose he swallowed must’ve taken two to three hours to produce a reaction—which means he swallowed it while he was on the standing-room line. Well, nobody saw him swallow anything on the standing-room line except that container of hot black coffee.”

  “And when the doctors looked at the contents of his stomach?”

  “They found the traces of his lunch, which couldn’t have contained the poison or he would’ve died long before he got to the opera house—and they found that coffee—and that was all they found. So the coffee had to be what killed him.”

  “And since that old man D’Angelo was the one who gave him the coffee, you naturally think he’s the murderer.”

  “What else can we think, Mom? For five minutes or so—from the time he picked up the coffee at the cafeteria to the time he gave it to Cohen at the opera house—D’Angelo was alone with it. Nobody was watching him—he could easily have slipped something into it. And nobody else had such an opportunity. Cohen took the coffee from D’Angelo, turned away to shield the container from the cold wind, and drank it all down then and there. Only D’Angelo could have put the poison into it.”

  “What about the man at the cafeteria who made the coffee?”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Mom. The man at the cafeteria would have no way of knowing who the coffee was meant for. He’d have to be a complete psycho who didn’t care who he poisoned. Just the same, though, we checked him out. He poured the coffee into the container directly from a big urn—twenty other people had been drinking coffee from that same urn. Then in front of a dozen witnesses he handed the container to D’Angelo without putting a thing in it—not even sugar, because Cohen never took his coffee with sugar. So we’re right back to D’Angelo—he has to be the murderer.”

  “And where did he get it, this deadly poison? Correct me if I’m wrong, but such an item isn’t something you can pick up at your local supermarket.”

  “Sure, it’s against the law to sell poison to the general public. But you’d be surprised how easy it is to get hold of the stuff anyway. The kind that killed Cohen is a common commercial compound—it’s used to mix paints, for metallurgy, in certain medicines, in insecticides. Ordinary little pellets of rat poison are made of it sometimes, and you can buy them at your local hardware store—a couple of dozen kids swallow them by accident in this city every year. And don’t forget, D’Angelo used to be in the exterminating business—he knows all the sources, it would be easier for him to get his hands on poison than for most other people.”

  “So you’ve arrested him for the murder?” Mom said.

  I gave a sigh. “No, we haven’t.”

  “How come? What’s holding you up?”

  “It’s the motive, Mom. D’Angelo and Cohen had absolutely no connection with each other outside of the standing-room line. Cohen didn’t leave D’Angelo any money, he wasn’t having an affair with D’Angelo’s wife, he didn’t know a deep dark secret out of D’Angelo’s past. There’s only one reason why D’Angelo could have killed him—to stop him from booing at the end of Renata Tebaldi’s big aria. That’s why he committed the murder. I’m morally certain of it, and so is everyone else in the Department. And so is the D.A.’s office—but they won’t let us make the arrest.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because nobody believes for one moment that we can get a jury to believe such a motive. Juries are made up of ordinary everyday people. They don’t go to the opera. They think it’s all a lot of nonsense—fat women screaming at fat men, in a foreign language. I can sympathize with them—I think so myself. Can you imagine the D.A. standing up in front of a jury and saying, ‘The defendant was so crazy about an opera singer’s voice that he killed a man for disagreeing with him!’ The jury would laugh in the D.A.’s face.”

  I sighed harder than before. “We’ve got an airtight case. The perfect opportunity. No other possible suspects. The dying man’s accusation—‘You no-good! You deserve to die for what you did!’ But we don’t dare bring the killer to trial.”

  Mom didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Her eyes were almost shut, the corners of her mouth were turned down. I know this expression well—her “thinking” expression. Something always comes out of it.

  Finally she looked up and gave a nod. “Thank God for juries!”

  “What do you mean, Mom?”

  “I mean, if it wasn’t for ordinary everyday people with common sense, God knows who you experts would be sending to jail!”

  “Mom, are you saying that D’Angelo didn’t—”

  “I’m saying nothing. Not yet. First I’m asking. Four questions.”

  No doubt about it, whenever Mom starts asking her questions, that means she’s on the scent, she’s getting ready to hand me a solution to another one of my cases.

  My feelings, as always, were mixed. On the one hand, nobody admires Mom more than I do—her deep knowledge of human nature acquired among her friends and neighbors in the Bronx; her uncanny sharpness in applying that knowledge to the crimes I tell her about from time to time.

  On the other hand—well, how ecstatic is a man supposed to get at the idea that his mother can do his own job better than he can? That’s why I’ve never been able to talk about Mom’s talent to anybody else in the Department—except, of course, to Inspector Milner, my immediate superior, and only because he’s a widower, and Shirley and I are trying to get something going between Mom and him.

  So I guess my voice wasn’t as enthusiastic as it should have been, when I said to Mom, “Okay, what are your four questions?”

  “First I bring in the peach pie,” Mom said.

  We waited while the dishes were cleared, and new dishes were brought. Then the heavenly aroma of Mom’s peach pie filled the room. One taste of it, and my enthusiasm began to revive. “What are your questions, Mom?”

  She lifted her finger. “Number One: you mentioned that Cohen had a cold a week ago, the night Maria Callas was singing Traviata. Did he still have the same cold three nights ago, when Tebaldi was singing Tosca?”

  By this time I ought to be used to Mom’s questions. I ought to take it on faith that they’re probably not as irrelevant as they sound. But I still can’t quite keep the bewilderment out of my voice.

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “Cohen did have a cold the night of the murder. Frau Hochschwender and Miss Van Voorhees both mentioned it—he was sneezing while he waited in line, and even a few times during the performance, though he tried hard to control himself.”

  Mom’s face gave no indication whether this was or wasn’t what she had wanted to hear. She lifted another finger. “Number Two: after the opera every night, was it the custom for those standing-room regulars to separate right away—or did they maybe stay together for a little while before they finally said good night?”

  “They usually went to the cafeteria a block away—the same place where D’Angelo bought the coffee that Cohen drank—and sat at a table for an hour or so and discussed the performance they’d just heard. Over coffee and doughnuts—or Danish pastry.”

  Mom gave a nod, and lifted another finger. “Number Three: at the hospital you naturally examined what was in Cohen’s pockets? Did you find something like an envelope—a small envelope with absolutely nothing in it?”

  This question really made me jump. “We did find an envelope, Mom! Ordinary stationery size—it was unsealed, and there was no address or stamp on it. But how in the world did you—”

  Mom’s fourth finger was in the air.
“Number Four: how many more times this season is Renata Tebaldi supposed to sing Tosca?”

  “It was Tebaldi’s first, last, and only performance of Tosca this season,” I said. “The posters in front of the opera house said so. But I don’t see what that has to do with—”

  “You don’t see,” Mom said. “Naturally. You’re like all the younger generation these days. So scientific. Facts you see. D’Angelo was the only one who was ever alone with Cohen’s coffee—so D’Angelo must have put the poison in. A fact, so you see it. But what about the people already? Who is D’Angelo—who was Cohen—what type human beings? This you wouldn’t ask yourself. Probably you wouldn’t even understand about my Uncle Julius and the World Series.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I never knew you had an Uncle Julius—”

  “I don’t have him no more. That’s the point of the story. All his life he was a fan of the New York Yankees. He rooted for them, he bet money on them, and when they played the World Series he was always there to watch them. Until a couple of years ago when he had his heart attack, and he was in the hospital at World Series time.

  “ ‘I’ll watch the New York Yankees on television,’ he said. ‘The excitement is too much for you,’ the doctor said, ‘it’ll kill you.’ But Uncle Julius had his way, and he watched the World Series. Every day he watched, and every night the doctor said, ‘You’ll be dead before morning.’ And Uncle Julius said, ‘I wouldn’t die till I know how the World Series comes out!’ So finally the New York Yankees won the World Series—and an hour later Uncle Julius went to sleep and died.”

  Mom stopped talking, and looked around at Shirley and me. Then she shook her head and said, “You don’t follow yet? A man with a love for something that’s outside himself, that isn’t even his family—with a love for the New York Yankees or for Renata Tebaldi—in such a man this feeling is stronger than his personal worries or his personal ambitions. He wouldn’t let anything interrupt his World Series in the middle, not even dying. He wouldn’t let anything interrupt his opera in the middle—not even murdering.”

  I began to see a glimmer of Mom’s meaning. “You’re talking about D’Angelo, Mom?”

  “Who else? Renata Tebaldi was singing her one and only Tosca for the year, and for D’Angelo, Renata Tebaldi is the greatest singer alive. Never—in a million years, never—would he do anything to spoil this performance for himself, to make him walk out of it before the end. Let’s say he did want to murder Cohen. The last time in the world he’d pick for this murder would be in the middle of Tebaldi’s Tosca—her one and only Tosca! Especially since he could wait just as easy till after the opera, when the standing-room regulars would be having cake and coffee at the cafeteria—he could just as easy poison Cohen then.”

  “But Mom, isn’t that kind of far-fetched, psychologically? If the average man was worked up enough to commit a murder, he wouldn’t care about hearing the end of an opera first!”

  “Excuse me, Davie—the average man’s psychology we’re not talking about. The opera lover’s psychology we are talking about. This is why you and the Homicide Squad and the District Attorney couldn’t make heads and tails from this case. Because you don’t understand from opera lovers. In this world they don’t live—they’ve got a world of their own. Inside their heads things are going on which other people’s heads never even dreamed about. To solve this case you have to think like an opera lover.”

  “To solve this case, Mom, you have to answer the basic question: if D’Angelo didn’t poison that coffee, who could have?”

  “Who says the coffee was poisoned?”

  “But I told you about the autopsy. The poison took two to three hours to work, and the contents of Cohen’s stomach—”

  “The contents of his stomach! You should show a little more interest in the contents of Cohen’s pockets!”

  “There was nothing unusual in his pockets—”

  “Why should a man carry in his pocket an empty unsealed envelope, without any writing on it, without even a stamp on it? Only because it wasn’t empty when he put it there. Something was in it—something which he expected to need later on in the evening—something which he finally took out of the envelope—”

  “What are you talking about, Mom?”

  “I’m talking about Cohen’s cold. An ordinary man, he don’t think twice about going to the opera with a cold. What’s the difference if he sneezes a little? It’s only music. But to an opera lover, sneezing during a performance, disturbing people, competing with the singers—this is worse than a major crime. A real opera lover like Cohen, he’d do everything he could to keep his cold under control.

  “Which explains what he put in that envelope before he left his home to go to the opera house. A pill, what else? One of these new prescription cold pills that dries up your nose and keeps you from sneezing for five-six hours. And why was the envelope empty when you found it in his pocket? Because half an hour before the box office opened, he slipped out his pill and swallowed it down with his hot black coffee.”

  “Nobody saw him taking that pill, Mom.”

  “Why should anybody see him? Like you explained yourself, to drink his coffee he had to turn his body away and shield the container from the wind.”

  I was beginning to be shaken, no doubt about it. But Shirley spoke up now, in her sweet voice, the voice she always uses when she thinks she’s one up on Mom. “The facts don’t seem to bear you out, Mother. All the witnesses say that Mr. Cohen went on sneezing after the opera had begun. Well, if he really did take a cold pill, as you believe, why didn’t it have any effect on his symptoms?”

  A gleam came to Mom’s eyes, and I could see she was about to pounce. The fact is that Shirley never learns.

  So to spare my wife’s feelings I broke in quickly, before Mom could open her mouth. “I’m afraid that confirms Mom’s theory, honey. The reason why the cold pill didn’t work was that it wasn’t a cold pill. It looked like one on the outside maybe, but it actually contained poison.”

  “I always knew I didn’t produce a dope!” Mom said, with a big satisfied smile. “So now the answer is simple, no? If Cohen was carrying around a poison pill in his pocket, where did he get it? Who gave it to him? Why should he think it was a cold pill? Because somebody told him it was. Somebody he thought he could trust—not only personally but professionally. Somebody he went to and said, ‘Give me some of that new stuff, that new wonder drug, that’ll keep me from sneezing during the opera—’ ”

  “His nephew!” I interrupted. “My God, Mom, I think you’re right. Cohen’s nephew is a pharmacist—he manages the drug store that Cohen owned. He has access to all kinds of poison and he could make up a pill that would look like a real cold pill. And what’s more, he’s the only relative Cohen has in the world. He inherits Cohen’s store and Cohen’s savings.”

  Mom spread her hands. “So there you are. You couldn’t ask for a more ordinary, old-fashioned motive for murder. Any jury will be able to understand it. It isn’t one bit operatic.”

  “But Mom, you must’ve suspected Cohen’s nephew from the start. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked your question about the empty envelope.”

  “Naturally I suspected him. It was the lie he told.”

  “What lie?”

  “The night before the opera D’Angelo called up Cohen and tried to make up their quarrel. Now according to the nephew, Cohen made a threat to D’Angelo over the phone. ‘When Tebaldi hits her high C in the big aria, I’m going to start booing!’ A terrible threat—but Cohen never could have made it.”

  “I don’t see why not—”

  “Because Cohen was an opera lover, that’s why. A high C—this is a tenor’s note. It’s the top of his range—when he hits one, everybody is thrilled and says how wonderful he is. But for a soprano a high C is nothing special. She can go a lot higher than that. A high E—sometimes even an E sharp—this is th
e big note for a soprano. In the Vissy darty from Tosca, any soprano who couldn’t do better than a high C would be strictly an amateur. People who are ignoramuses about opera—people like Cohen’s nephew—they never heard of anything except the high C. But an opera lover like Cohen—he positively couldn’t make such a mistake. Now excuse me, I’ll bring in the coffee.”

  Mom got to her feet, and then Shirley called out, “Wait a second, Mother. If his nephew committed the murder, why did Cohen accuse D’Angelo of doing it?”

  “When did Cohen accuse D’Angelo?”

  “His dying words. He looked into D’Angelo’s face and said, ‘You no-good! You deserve to die for what you did!’ ”

  “He looked into D’Angelo’s face—but how do you know it was D’Angelo he was seeing? He was in delirium from the weakness and the pain, and before his eyes he wasn’t seeing any D’Angelo, he wasn’t seeing this world that the rest of us are living in. He was seeing the world he’d been looking at before he got sick, the world that meant the most to him—he was seeing the world of the opera, what else? And what was happening up there on that stage just before the poison hit him? The no-good villain was making advances to the beautiful heroine, and she was struggling to defend herself, and pretty soon she was going to kill him—and Cohen, seeing that villain in front of his eyes, shouted out at him, ‘You no-good! You deserve to die for what you did!’ ”

  Mom was silent for a moment, and then she went on in a lower voice, “An opera lover will go on being an opera lover—right up to the end.”

  She went out to the kitchen for the coffee, and I went to the phone in the hall to call the Homicide Squad.

  When I got back to the table, Mom was seated and the coffee was served. She took a few sips, and then gave a little sigh. “Poor old Cohen—such a terrible way to go!”

  “Death by poisoning is pretty painful,” I said.