Kalorama Shakedown (A Harry Reese Mystery)

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  “Is there a crash coming?”

  “There’s always a crash coming.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Where are you heading?”

  “France. Have you been there?”

  “We spent a few days there this summer. Didn’t see much, though. You’re planning an extended stay?”

  “Yes, perhaps for the duration,” he smiled.

  “Parlez-vous français?”

  “Pas très bien. But we expect to be among other expatriates.”

  “We?”

  “An indiscretion, please ignore it.”

  “When does the new owner move in?”

  “Soon. You know him—my brother, Samuel.”

  “Do you think he’ll run the business in the same way?”

  “You mean, will he subvert my network to further his more disreputable business interests?”

  “Yes, I guess that is what I mean.”

  “I don’t think so. I imagine he’s at an age where he’ll welcome a quieter life. But he’s his own man.”

  “It seems to me if one had an inclination toward extortion, a network like yours could prove very profitable.”

  “Certainly. If one were inclined that way.”

  “That brings up the second reason for my visit. You know Amanda Merrill, the senator’s wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I happen to have come into possession of certain correspondence.”

  “Yes, I know all about that.”

  “The correspondence, or my coming into possession of it?”

  “Both. But you don’t believe I had any connection with her collection?”

  “No, it seemed a little crude. But I thought you might be able to tell me something about it. For instance, how did she acquire the letters?”

  “Bought them. Mostly from servants, sometimes from the victims’ friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “This is a town where one must be very careful in choosing one’s friends. But I suppose that’s true everywhere. It’s a sad truth that most of us are focused on our own corrupt interests.”

  “Speaking of my own, do you think you could set up a meeting with Easterly and the others?”

  “Mrs. Spinks is planning a celebration of sorts during this afternoon’s salon. If you can attend, I think you will find all the interested parties assembled there.”

  “Will you be there as well?”

  “You may see me.”

  I left him and took a car back to the morgue. Lacy was there and a little later Tibbitts arrived. Just after noon, Dr. Glazebrook let us into his laboratory. He was watching a mouse in a cage. The mouse was not looking his best.

  “I isolated a substance from the victim’s stomach contents. The mouse has been injected with it. Gentlemen, I would say this man died of heart failure brought on by poisoning,” Glazebrook announced.

  “And definitely aconite?” I asked.

  “The definitive test for that is rather crude. But I suppose….”

  He then took a small part of something he’d concocted and put it on his tongue. He spit it out and flushed his mouth.

  “Yes, aconite.”

  I’m no pathologist, but it seems to me any test that involves possibly poisoning yourself leaves something to be desired.

  “I imagine this puts Richard Cole out of the running,” I said to Lacy.

  “Yes, perhaps,” he said. “But what about the head wound?”

  “I was just going to bring that up,” Glazebrook said. “That was done after death.”

  “He fell after his heart failed?” Tibbitts asked.

  “No, nothing so simple. The wound was made some time after death. Probably a number of hours later.”

  “How can you tell that?” Lacy asked.

  “There was no bruising. At least, no legitimate bruising. You see, the blood gathered at the site wasn’t human. I believe it came from a cow.”

  “A cow?” Lacy said.

  “Or possibly a horse,” Glazebrook said. “Look at these slides.” He led us to a table where there were two microscopes side by side. “The slide on the right contains human corpuscles, the one on the left is a sample from the head wound.”

  They did look different.

  “But how did you know to look?” I asked.

  “It didn’t seem right. The blood should have congealed more. You must remember, I see a lot of bodies.”

  “How was the blood put there?” Lacy asked.

  “It was injected. I shaved the scalp and found a needle mark.”

  “Very ingenious,” Lacy pronounced. It was obvious the Holmesian complexity of it appealed to him.

  “How so?” Tibbitts asked him.

  “Clearly, the culprit wanted to obscure the cause of death.”

  “He didn’t do a very good job of it,” Tibbitts pointed out.

  “Nonetheless, the intention was clear. And who but Dr. Gillette had the opportunity and the means?”

  “To fake the wound, or poison the general?” I asked.

  “I suspect the same person did both. Don’t you agree, Sergeant Tibbitts?”

  “It isn’t my case. I don’t have to suspect anything. But the odds say the person who poisoned the general was the same person who killed my jeweler.”

  “Of course, the doctor has some powerful friends,” I said. “The same people you feared before, Sergeant Lacy.”

  “Oh, I don’t fear them, Mr. Reese. But I respect their power to do me harm. As I would a flame, or a mad dog. No, I won’t proceed until I have a warrant for his arrest. I’ll keep it all nice and proper.”

  Then he left us to find a judge willing to perform the task.

  “How long before death would the poison have to have been administered?” I asked Glazebrook.

  “That would depend on how large the dose was, but from the quantity I’ve seen, I would guess two to four hours.”

  “And there’s no way he just took too much, by accident?” Tibbitts asked.

  “Normally it’s given to a patient so diluted it would require taking an extraordinary amount. No, I think it must have been deliberate.”

  “Assuming it was undiluted, how hard would it be to mask it?”

  “In its purest form, a grain can be fatal. A druggist works with a mixture that’s already diluted, but even that would require less than a teaspoon to be fatal.”

  “But the taste?”

  “The taste isn’t distinct, but it causes a tingling feeling on the tongue.”

  We thanked him and on our way out I invited Tibbitts back to the Normandie to dine with Emmie and me.

  “How long will it take Lacy to get a warrant?” I asked.

  “It’s lunch time. He probably won’t be able to find a judge until two. But then it should just take a few minutes. Unless he makes the mistake of picking a judge who’s friendly with the doctor.”

  23

  We found Emmie waiting for us in the dining room. I can always tell when she’s feeling particularly pleased with herself. She had some surprise to reveal and was just waiting for the moment that would provide the maximum dramatic effect.

  When I told her about the coroner determining that the general had been poisoned with aconite, she seemed a little surprised. And then Sergeant Tibbitts made his own revelation. He placed a small bottle on the table. It was the type druggists give out. I picked it up, read the label and passed it to Emmie. It was a prescription of aconite. The printed label was that of a local pharmacy, with the dosage and Dr. Gillette’s name written on it in script.

  “I found it at the general’s this morning, while we were waiting for the coroner to finish up.”

  “You should have asked him to test it.”

  “I didn’t need to. I went by the drug store, and the fellow said he filled it just yesterday morning. The doctor called on him at home, said it was an emergency. He mixed the standard dosage and handed it over.”

  “Miss Sachs didn’t object to you searching for it?” I asked. />
  “No, she didn’t seem to care a hoot. But I wasn’t too surprised about that.”

  “Where did you find it?” Emmie asked.

  “In the old man’s bedroom. Tucked in the drawer, but not hidden.”

  “That’s curious,” she said. Then she placed her own bottle on the table. It was identical to the other, but the information on the label was typed and included the general’s name.

  “Where’d you find that?” I asked.

  “Remember when we were there last evening? I excused myself to use the bathroom. It was in the cabinet. It’s the same dosage as the other. I took it by a chemist’s this morning and he verified it.”

  “Someone’s being too clever,” Tibbitts said.

  “What do you mean, Sergeant?” Emmie asked.

  “Do you want to tell her about the last bit at the autopsy?” he asked me.

  “Remember that head wound, Emmie? It seems the doctor created it himself.”

  “But why?”

  “That remains to be found out. But I imagine it’s the same reason the spare bottle of aconite showed up.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Doesn’t it seem obvious whoever killed Pomerleau in New York also killed the general?”

  “Not definite, but very likely,” Tibbitts said.

  “Well, I checked their story, about that day when Pomerleau was poisoned. They were definitely here. The manager at Hancock’s remembered them.”

  “Does he know them?”

  “Yes, apparently they go there often.”

  “Then maybe he remembers the day before, or the week before,” Tibbitts said.

  “He showed me the reservation book. They came in for an early dinner,” Emmie told him. She had a pretty satisfied look. “Now that we know it wasn’t the doctor or Miss Sachs who killed these men, who is your chief suspect, Sergeant?”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure what I know. Who do you have in mind?”

  “I’d rather not say for the moment, but I have my suspicions.”

  “Elizabeth? The countess? The Wizard himself?” I asked.

  “Go ahead, play horse with me, Harry. You’ll see.”

  Emmie’s never been one to harbor much self-doubt, but that day she’d lost the sensation entirely. Pride goes before a fall, I thought. Of course, often when I have those thoughts, things have a way of getting turned around.

  “Where will you be later this afternoon, Harry?”

  “I’ve been invited to a soirée at Mrs. Spinks’. I’m sure you both will be welcome, too. And all the others are likely to be there.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Easterly, and the senator and his wife?” Emmie asked.

  “Yes, and the countess, and perhaps Elizabeth, too.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Tibbitts asked.

  “Are you hoping to renew your acquaintance, Sergeant?”

  “I might have some questions for her.”

  “Ask them quickly—my understanding is she’s planning to leave Washington.”

  “To go where?” Emmie asked.

  “She declined to say. It seems she didn’t trust that I wouldn’t divulge it to you,” I told her. “This may come as a surprise to you, Emmie, but I think recent events have left your friendship with Elizabeth in a precarious state.”

  “Yes, I sensed she was feeling some bitterness toward me when she threatened to drown me in her bath,” she replied. “Now I must be going. There are one or two things I need to establish.”

  I gave Emmie directions to Mrs. Spinks’ and she was off.

  “There’s something else I should share with you, Sergeant. Concerning how I came by those letters I gave you.”

  “By breaking into people’s houses?”

  “Yes, but it’s a little more involved than that. I found those amongst Mrs. Merrill’s lingerie. She’s the senator’s wife. There was a whole stack of correspondence. From a number of different authors and apparently to various recipients. It seems Amanda Merrill has a line in extortion.”

  “You think she’s been bleeding the doctor?”

  “I’ve no idea. I just thought I should tell you.”

  “All right, you told me. Now let’s go find Gillette.”

  We went by his office and were told he was in with a patient. Ten minutes later, we were shown in. He was trying to be affable, but sweating too much to make it convincing.

  “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  “You missed the finale over at the morgue,” Tibbitts said. “Lose interest?”

  “What did Dr. Glazebrook determine?”

  “Death by aconite poisoning.”

  “Was it? I wonder if the general overdosed himself. People often panic when they’re in acute pain.”

  “Do they?” Tibbitts smiled.

  “Very often, yes.”

  “Do they also hit themselves on the head after they’ve been dead a good while?”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Dr. Glazebrook found the puncture mark and identified the blood as an animal’s,” I told him.

  “I suppose I should talk to my lawyer.”

  “Why are you trying so hard to complicate things?” Tibbitts asked him.

  “That’s certainly not my intention.”

  “This morning, my wife verified your alibi for the day the jeweler in New York was murdered,” I told him.

  “Did she?”

  “Yes,” I said. “So you know Miss Sachs didn’t kill him. But you suspect she killed her father?”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Then are you trying to protect someone else?” Tibbitts asked.

  “No, certainly not.”

  “Do you remember receiving this?” He handed him Pomerleau’s letter.

  “How did you get this?”

  “What’s that matter? What matters is you lied to me last night.”

  “I simply forgot about this letter. Nothing came of it.”

  “You’re wasting our time, Doctor,” Tibbitts told him.

  “What is it you suspect me of?”

  “Just misreading things,” I said to him. “Miss Sachs told you herself she despised her father. Saturday night, she telephoned you with the news that her father was dead and her house had been burglarized. When you arrived, you realized—or at least strongly suspected—he’d been poisoned. You couldn’t think of anyone else who would have killed him, so you suspected her. Maybe she even said something about being glad he was dead.”

  “No, she never said anything like that.”

  “Nonetheless, you suspected her. She’s the type who offends easily and you couldn’t bring yourself to ask her point-blank. You hoped that since the general had a chronic heart condition, no one would bother questioning your diagnosis of heart failure.

  “Then Sergeant Lacy showed up. He linked the general’s death to the burglary. That meant there would probably be an autopsy. That night, you came up with the scheme of faking a head wound, giving the coroner something to find that would explain the heart failure and at the same time providing the link to burglars that Lacy was looking for. You knew if you just fractured the skull, there wouldn’t be any bruising, so you drew blood from a horse, probably your own. Then, Sunday morning, you went back to the general’s house. When you were alone, you gave him the head wound and injected the horse’s blood.”

  “That’s pretty good,” Tibbitts said to me. “When’d you work all that out?”

  “Oh, not long ago.”

  “Look, Doctor,” Tibbitts said. “No one is accusing your lady friend. But you’re just drawing attention to her. What’s the point now? We know what you did. And Sergeant Lacy’s swearing out a warrant right this minute.”

  Gillette looked over at me.

  “Yes, that’s what he told us.”

  “I see.” It was difficult to imagine anything could have unsettled him more than he already was, but this news did the trick.

  “I found that bottle of aconite you got from the druggist yesterday,” Tibbitts added.


  “I seem to have just made things worse.”

  “Yeah, so far,” Tibbitts agreed. “There was something else that made you suspect Miss Sachs, wasn’t there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You found a bottle of aconite, but one mixed strong enough to poison a person. Maybe just as the druggists get it. You thought maybe Miss Sachs had switched bottles on the general. You took that bottle away, then replaced it with one having the right dosage. But what you didn’t realize was that his bottle was still in the house.”

  Gillette looked surprised at this news.

  “My wife found it in the bathroom last night,” I told him.

  “So if Miss Sachs had poisoned him, all she had to do was hide that full-dose bottle. She could have tossed it anywhere. Do you really think she was cool enough to get the poison and use it on the old man, but too thick-headed to get rid of it afterwards?”

  “So you don’t suspect her?”

  “The only thing that draws suspicion to her is your trying so hard to make us look somewhere else.”

  “I did find the bottle, just as you say. It had the wrong label—I could tell at once it wasn’t what I’d prescribed. I took it away with me that night. At home I tasted it. Just a tiny amount. But I could tell it was far stronger than is normal. I took an emetic immediately.”

  “Do you have the bottle?”

  “I have the bottle, but I disposed of the contents.”

  He went to a shelf of medicines and returned with a clean, empty bottle. It had a handwritten label with nothing identifying the source. It had the general’s name and the same dosage listed as the others.

  “Any idea where it came from?”

  “None. I can’t believe any druggist would give it to someone.”

  “From a supply house?”

  “Perhaps, but they’re required to check on their buyers.”

  Tibbitts put the bottle in his pocket. “Let’s go see Miss Sachs.”

  “Why?” Gillette asked.

  “She might be able to clear things up.”

  He agreed reluctantly and the three of us went off in a cab. We found Alice upstairs in the library, packing.

  “Are you planning a move, Miss Sachs?” I asked.

  “What? Oh, no. I was just putting away some things of my father’s.”