Omit Flowers

by Stuart Palmer

  Eckersall frowned, sniffed, and then turned suddenly upon his hapless victim. The car of Juggernaut was really getting under way, I thought. Todd sat down softly beside me, his eyes on the coroner.

  “Mr Waldron, you say that you saw the red glare on the wall and rushed to the window where you noticed that the garage was ablaze?”

  Ely nodded cheerily. “That’s right.”

  “Amazing!” said the coroner. “Miraculous!”

  Ely smiled deprecatorily. “Why, most anybody could have…”

  “There I must beg to differ,” said Coroner Eckersall gently. “I doubt if anyone else in the world could have seen that burning garage. Because—” he wagged his finger—“because your bedroom windows give on the other side of the house, facing toward the sea!”

  There was a long silence, during which we had the unpleasant experience of watching a strong man writhe in agony. Ely Waldron blew his nose, unbuttoned and buttoned his vest, and stared at the ceiling as if he expected an angelic prompter to give him his lines.

  “I suggest to you,” went on Coroner Eckersall, “that you, Mr Waldron, discovered that fire because you alone in this house knew that it was burning. You knew because—”

  “Wait a minute!” broke in a harsh feminine voice. Coroner Eckersall drew himself up and announced that he would have quiet in the crowd or clear the room.

  “Wait a minute, mister,” repeated Fay Waldron, rising from her chair. “You’re going to listen to me before we go any farther, so you had better let me get up there and testify!”

  Everyone stared at her. “Go on back and sit down,” she told her husband, and he obeyed. I expected that of course Coroner Eckersall would make a big issue of it, but the little man relaxed and a faint smile crossed his face. “Of course. Mrs Waldron, take the stand.” His hands washed themselves, Uriah Heep fashion, in the air.

  “Now, Mrs Waldron,” began the coroner, “just what—”

  “I’m going to tell you what you tried to get out of my husband, if you’ll let me get a word in edgeways,” she snapped. “You want to know how he could see the fire from our bedroom window?”

  The coroner did, everybody did. “Well,” said Fay Waldron in a hard and scornful voice, “I’ll tell you. Ely didn’t ever say that he was in our bedroom when he saw the red glare of the fire. You all jumped to that conclusion, and being a good, sober, well-brought-up man, he wasn’t going to say right in front of everybody that he got up in the middle of the night to go across the hall to the bathroom!”

  Everybody drew a deep breath.

  “The bathroom windows face the garage,” Fay went on. “If you don’t believe me you can go up and look, and while you are there you can open the bathroom cabinet and see the bicarbonate of soda that my husband got up to take!”

  She eyed us all triumphantly. “And no wonder he’s had indigestion, what with all this heathen food full of peppers and Lord knows what!”

  “That’s that!” I told Todd. “Another balloon punctured.”

  “Isn’t it!” said he. But he stared at Fay Waldron with a faintly admiring look in his eyes as she left the witness chair.

  Coroner Eckersall, obviously nettled, got back to his original outline. Testimony was given by the fire chief, which could have been condensed into his final sentence—“It was one hell of a fire!”

  Then the deputy sheriff again, testifying as to the operations in the cooling ruins of the garage on Christmas afternoon, the sifting of ashes and the search for signs of a human body. He told of the discovery of certain calcined fragments of bone and of samples taken from the ashes for analysis. Also of the silver bullet.

  It was old stuff to me, as was Coroner Eckersall’s explanation of the fact that not only did the ashes show proof of mammalian blood, but of a reaction specifically human. Likewise a part of a human ulna, or arm bone. Anyway, the jury lapped it up, and it was evident that they had already made up their minds.

  I looked back over my shoulder at Mr Fortesque Cohen, who was busily engaged in marking upon an envelope. The guardian of the golden gates was about ready to fling them open, it seemed. I visualized neat rows of figures, figures in rows of four or five….

  There was, Coroner Eckersall admitted, a lack of definite proof as to the link between Joel Cameron and these few blackened remains. The jury would, however, take into consideration that Joel Cameron had been in the garage, that said garage had burned, that no person had been reported missing in all Santa Felice County except said Joel Cameron.

  And the coroner tried a new approach. I was called to the stand, questioned as to the ladder marks which I had “discovered” beneath the garage window. I had an inclination to follow Fay Waldron’s lead and take matters into my own hands while on the stand—incidentally asking that lady a few pertinent questions. But Coroner Eckersall gave me no time for that. As I rose from the witness chair, about to return to my seat, he suddenly whirled upon me and demanded to know whether or not I possessed a revolver.

  I confessed to owning a little .22. “Always carry it in a pocket of my car,” I explained.

  “Where is it now?” the coroner demanded. I was expecting that.

  “In the pocket of the car, I suppose,” said I. “If there is a pocket left.”

  The coroner nodded, and then told the jury that they might draw what inference they pleased from the fact that no sign of a gun had been found in the wreckage of the burned car in the garage. And I stepped down from the stand with the feeling that the jury looked on me as Public Enemy Number One.

  Coroner Eckersall took time for a little speech. “I suggest to you, gentlemen of the jury—yes, and, madame—that Joel Cameron was shot to death. I suggest that while he was locked in the room which he had chosen out of courtesy to his guests of the holiday season, while he was hidden away in the seclusion he loved, thinking himself safe behind bolts and locks and bars—yes, perhaps while he slept!—a ladder was lifted silently to the sill outside his window. I suggest that some person, desperately anxious for the inheritance which Joel Cameron’s death would bring, climbed up that ladder in the dark of night with a gun in his hand. I suggest there was a tinkle of glass…”

  “Good touch, that,” said Todd softly.

  “And then a shot, perhaps the comparatively slight sound of a small-calibre pistol,” went on the coroner. “And then, while the sleeping man passed into the sleep which knows no waking, his murderer set fire to the cars in the garage beneath, knowing that in a few minutes the flames would spread to the gasoline and oil stored on the second floor, forming a blaze which would destroy all proof of his dastardly crime….”

  The coroner paused. “This is neither the time nor the place to inquire into the reason why the murderer used a silver bullet. It will perhaps occur to some of you that his purpose might have been a very clever one—aiming to leave behind in the room a bullet of a material not ordinarily used for bullets. A bit of fused silver might well be taken for a coin, a melted belt buckle, or some similar ornament.”

  “Damned ingenious,” Todd whispered. “You’d think the man figured it out all by himself.”

  “It may have been the killer’s intention to leave no trace of murder, but only to suggest suicide,” said Coroner Eckersall. “I leave it to the jury to draw its own inferences from the obvious fact that a ladder long enough to reach up to a window twenty-five feet from the ground must have been a very heavy and unwieldy thing. Likewise from the fact that an obvious motive exists for each of the surviving members of the family to have murdered Joel Cameron—a motive involving a considerable inheritance. Moreover, it may or may not be possible that an inference is to be drawn from the fact that last night a young woman supposedly took her own life in this house, after being warned over the telephone that she was about to be questioned about her part in this affair. Granted that the remains on the table before me are those of Joel Cameron…”

  “That’s it!” cut in one of the jurors—the local grocer. “Can I ask a question?” He rose
uneasily, waited for permission. “It just struck me—if these human remains here are Mr Cameron’s, then most anybody could have done it. We can’t hope to find a verdict naming anybody. But supposing that they ain’t? I mean, supposing like in the stories about insurance frauds, somebody substituted another body?”

  “There was, I understand, no life insurance,” Coroner Eckersall pointed out. He looked toward Mr Cohen, who shook his head.

  The members of the jury began to murmur among themselves, and the somewhat informal proceeding threatened for a moment to break up into a conversation piece.

  Coroner Eckersall looked at his watch. “Four o’clock, gentlemen,” he said. “If you think that you can arrive at a verdict on the basis of what we have looked into so far, well and good. Otherwise we shall have to adjourn this inquest until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  The jury conferred. I saw that the round-faced grocer was shaking his head.

  “Best we could agree on now,” he said cheerily, “would be to find that somebody met his death, maybe by being shot, and it might have been Mr Cameron.”

  Coroner Eckersall shrugged wearily. “This inquest is—” he began to say. But he stopped as we saw Sheriff Tom Bates come rushing down the aisle. In his wake was a small man lurking behind pince-nez and a gray beard.

  “Hold on, Sam!” cried the sheriff. “Hold everything!”

  Eckersall looked perturbed. “You want to take the stand?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Not me, him!” cried the sheriff.

  And Dr Leonard Garvey took the witness stand. His first act was to take from his pocket a small package, unwrap it, and place the contents within the ebony box which had been decorating the table in front of Coroner Eckersall. He then laid a brief case on his lap, drew out various charts, X-rays, and other papers, and smiled brightly.

  The sheriff was whispering to Eckersall.

  Somehow I knew what was coming. I realized that I had known it for some time, in spite of all the counter-currents, the eddies and backwash and undertow.

  Dr Garvey was going to blow the lid off this case. Why was he so painfully slow about it?

  One glance along the line of faces near me—the Elys and Camerons grouped here, waiting…. They were gray masks, all of them, masks that did not change in the slightest degree as Dr Garvey was painstakingly qualified as an expert witness, as his many associations and honorary degrees with Eastern hospitals and medical colleges were listed. He still, it seemed, did some research work for Rush Medical.

  “Dr Garvey,” continued the coroner with a tortuous slowness, “you were consulted by members of the family when it was discovered that you had acted as dentist to Joel Cameron?”

  Dr Garvey adjusted his pince-nez, nodded.

  “At their request you brought your office records and spent some time in making examination of the remains of a human jawbone with teeth which were shown you by Sheriff Bates?”

  “That is right.”

  Coroner Eckersall nodded approvingly. “As a medical and dental expert, as an oral surgeon, you are confident of the value of identification through the teeth ?”

  Dr Garvey held up his hand. “No question of it, no question. Surest thing there is. No two mouths in the world alike. Next to fingerprints it’s the tops. And in this case I—”

  Eckersall held up his hand. “Answer the questions, Doctor. Are you prepared to tell the jury the result of your findings? In other words, are you prepared to answer yes or no to the question.”

  The room grew still as death. Even Eustace, who had furtively taken to chewing gum, stopped the tireless movement of his narrow jaws. Todd was leaning forward in his chair, his slim, strong fingers moving slowly on his knee, like blind worms in the sun.

  “To the question of the identity of—I mean—”

  Eckersall himself was tongue-tied with self-importance. But Dr Garvey, a puckish smile above his whiskers, nodded brightly at us all.

  “Certainly,” he said. “There are two teeth in that half-burned jawbone, and less than six months ago I filled both of them. Only then they were in the mouth of Joel Cameron!”

  As I saw Todd’s amazed, triumphant smile I felt like a balloon in which someone has just stuck a lighted cigarette.

  But there was more to come. Above the rising hubbub of exclamations and murmurs rose the voice of Dr Garvey, the calm and happy voice of a man of science speaking on his favorite subject.

  “As for this,” he said, picking up the silver bullet from the table and tossing it lightly in his fingers, “it may be significant that this bit of what the sheriff tells me is chemically pure silver happens to be in the shape of a flattened spool. Allowing for the effect of the tremendous heat generated by that garage fire, the shape is still obvious to any medical man—or should be.”

  Dr Eckersall bridled, but matters were temporarily out of his hands.

  “Some years ago,” went on Dr Garvey swiftly, “it was accepted medical practice to reinforce skull weakness with a silver plate—a chemically pure silver plate—when necessary. The center of the spool fits the hole in the skull, the two flanges overlap the bone, and then the skin is drawn over the whole and stitches taken.”

  “But Cameron didn’t have any such plate in his skull, did he?” cut in the coroner.

  Dr Garvey smiled. “He never talked of it. But when I heard of your ‘silver bullet’ I wired Washington, to the Spanish-American War Pension Bureau. I just received an answer. Joel Martin Cameron, Sergeant in Company B of the Twelfth Minnesota, was discharged from General Schley’s army as a result of a wound received at San Juan Hill—a shrapnel wound in the cranium!”

  I heard Dorothy murmur something through stiff lips. Leaning forward, I caught the end of her sentence. “… and take the garlic off the doors and windows,” she said. It was true, there went the werewolf theory.

  There went a lot of other theories, including mine. But at last, at long, long last, we had our corpus delicti!

  XIII

  The music thinned,

  And as, with sickening soul, he turned aside,

  The moon, A GOBLIN RIDING on the wind,

  Peered down and grinned.

  —LOUIS UNTERMEYER

  THUS ENDED THE INQUEST into the death of my uncle, Joel Cameron. Juggernaut had come to rest at last, only a hulk of painted wood and iron, after all. It had served its purpose, yes. But as in the case of the real Juggernaut, there had actually been a surprising lack of human victims caught between the great rolling wheels.

  The verdict, of course, was that the deceased had met his death through fire set by person or persons unknown. I heard Dorothy sigh with relief at the verdict, and was glad for her that Mildred’s name was not mentioned.

  Coroner Eckersall thanked his jury and departed. He took with him the grim relics of Uncle Joel. It seemed that Sheriff Bates needed to have them photographed again, presumably to illustrate his story for the fact-detective magazine. It struck me that any ghost writer would have his work cut out for him in making Sheriff Bates appear as the hero of his yarn. The sheriff looked worried about it, his brown honest face graved with new wrinkles. The case was closed, the two deaths had solved each other in a way, and Mildred’s body was being shipped north to Seattle, they said, without bothering over another inquest.

  Dr Leonard Garvey seemed reluctant to leave the stage where he had played such an important role. He fidgeted in the hallway, made gallant remarks to Aunt Evelyn, cast eyes in the direction of the oblivious Dorothy….

  “The funeral will be tomorrow, then?” he asked.

  Aunt Evelyn nodded. “Just the family, under the circumstances. But if you’d care to come—it will be at eleven in the morning, and I do hope the sheriff will send back the—the remains. Oh yes, and kindly omit flowers.”

  Dr Garvey promised, and roared away Laguna-wards in his spectacular Rolls. Suddenly everyone was gone, everyone but the servants, the family, and Mr Fortesque Cohen. It was evident that Mr Cohen approved of the jury�
��s findings, and that he was delighted at the prospect of getting home to his children. For a change, we basked in his smile. Calling the family together in the little sitting room under the stair, he made it clear that the golden flood was loosed. Uncle Joel’s estate, consisting mostly of Prospice, would be tied up until the will was probated, but the trust-fund income for the past year was now released, and any drafts upon the bank made by members of the family would be honored up to four—no, almost five thousand dollars.

  “I forgot for a moment that the yearly income is to be divided into seven instead of eight parts,” apologized Mr Cohen.

  I could see that Dorothy winced a little.

  Uncle Alger looked puzzled. “I don’t see why Mildred Ely’s share shouldn’t go to her heirs—her sister or somebody.”

  Mr Cohen explained that the income from the trusts was to be divided up equally between the direct heirs of Joel Martin Cameron and Hester Ely Cameron.

  “Then if only one of us was left, he’d get it all?” Uncle Alger probed on. The banker nodded.

  “Then suppose,” said Aunt Evelyn distinctly, “suppose somebody took it into his head to go on and on, murdering us off? Each death would increase his own share.”

  Mr Cohen frowned. “There is a law providing that no murderer may inherit from his victim,” he explained. “It doesn’t seem likely, unless someone is cleverer than…”

  “Someone is!” said Aunt Evelyn grimly.

  I noticed that Dorothy, who had been standing near the door, had suddenly turned and tiptoed out of the room. No one else saw her go, and I took it into my head to follow her.

  “Dorothy!” I called after her as she hurried down the hall. But she did not seem to hear me. The front door closed softly behind her. As I came out I saw her standing at the edge of the desolate garden, staring down the slope.