Diagnosis

by Rufus King

Rain started falling as Starr drove to the mortuary and viewed the body itself. Its classical beauty was out of key, as if life’s guards were down. A touch of petulance, of greed pinched the full, clear-cut lips, and sea-blue eyes were fogged dull with ash. Magnificent physique remained, that and a crop of naturally curly chestnut hair. Yes, Starr imagined, a girl could be struck blind by a getup like that. There was an insensate fury in the way the body had been riddled. Starr studied the pattern of wounds. He identified the black speck in the police photograph as one where a bullet had first passed through the right hand before it had entered the chest; rigor mortis still obtained, and the line of fire of that shot was obvious. He looked at the coroner’s notes and studied the angles which the courses of the other bullets had taken. He thanked the attendant and left the mortuary.

  Rain fell harder and the sky was a murky gray as he got into his black sedan and drove slowly through the business section of the town to Onega Drive. He turned south along the river, thinking that in its waters the three murder guns would be lying. He supposed a diver would be sent down to look near the houseboat and the Poole dock. The hard bottom would not conceal them, unless they had been cast beyond retrieve into the whirlpool at the base of the falls to the north.

  That small black dot, which was directly in the line of fire—

  A wave of heat surged through him, then left him cold. His thoughts, the picture which they saw, appalled him. He concentrated sharply on each facet of a death by gunfire, marshaled the minutiae of his own experiences and of the cases about which he had read. He increased the car’s speed. The town’s great estates flashed by until he reached the massive entrance gates to the Pooles’. He saw, as he had expected, District Attorney Heffernan’s coupe and a police car parked down by the river alongside the dock, where the deckhouse and superstructure of Buckeye II was visible through the rain and trees. He saw Eleanore Shepmann’s Mercedes in the large parking space before the handsome pillared portico of the house. Off to the left of the house, across a great space of lawn, he saw the large barn which Edna Poole (and Selldon Poole’s checkbook) had converted into the charming theater where Milton Forstair’s genius had incubated in a blissful state of carte blanche.

  He took a right-hand fork in the driveway and went down to the dock. He boarded Buckeye II and joined Heffernan on the afterdeck. Heffernan was pleased.

  He pointed to a lumped cloth on the deck and said, “We’ve had luck. That’s the Colt and the Mauser. Jock’s after the Smith and Wesson now.”

  Starr watched the bullet head and seal torso of a man break water and gulp air before submerging again.

  He said to Heffernan, “I want to talk to you. There’s something you ought to know.”

  He gave a detailed résumé of Eleanore Shepmann’s visit. He gave Heffernan the silver cigarette lighter. He described his visit to the mortuary and the appalling deductions he had drawn.

  Heffernan looked bleak.

  “I see. Another one of those.”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “Look here, Colin—those guns. I mean you can’t just walk out nowadays and pick guns up.”

  “I’ve thought of that. There wasn’t any need to. You saw the spy play which Forstair put on. There must have been five or six guns at least among its props.”

  “Of course.” Heffernan repeated it slowly, “Of course…”

  The bullet-headed seal came up with the Smith & Wesson, and Heffernan added it to the other two. Then he talked some more with Starr. Fingerprints, he said, were out. Buckeye II was littered with them, with everybody’s. What could they do? Starr spoke of traps, of one in especial that had been set to catch a thief. There was a way.

  He suggested that arrangements for arresting the Shepmann brothers on their arrival at the Columbus airport be done by telephone from the Poole house and done in a manner so that Eleanore, who was there, would know about it. He suggested that Heffernan, from a private telephone, make five local calls. He wrote on the back of an envelope the data which should be used during the local calls. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to one.

  He said, “Shall we go up to the house? It’s just before lunch. They ought to be together now.”

  * * * *

  Medcalf, the manservant who opened the door, looked stringy. He took their hats and coats, glanced with vague reproach at Heffernan and then said to Starr: “It’s been a shock, Doctor. The staff’s upset. Alice has been having them ever since she found him, off and on. Mrs. Alcott’s been giving her ammonia and burning feathers.”

  Starr translated this accurately as that Alice was the maid who had discovered the body and had been having intermittent hysterics for which the cook had been applying old-time simples. He shook a couple of pills from a phial in a pocket case and gave them to Medcalf.

  “Give her these. If she isn’t better let me know.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. I will.”

  The living room was saturated with Edna Poole’s mood of last winter, which had veered suddenly from Empire to American Chippendale because of a stunning secretary bookcase (block-front interior, leaded glass, 1760) which she had been permitted to “discover” in a Madison Avenue shop in New York at the tempting price of twelve hundred dollars.

  They were at cocktails: Edna and Selldon Poole, Jeffry Poole and Eleanore Shepmann. A pre-lunch necessity this time, Edna said, rather than a gesture, due to the morning’s tragedy and the general state of nerves. The atmosphere was not comfortable. Starr sensed the hidden piling up of lightnings, stored for later discharge.

  He thought that Selldon Poole had a shrunken look, as if his years (he was fifty-seven) had suddenly moved in and made him shrivel. Selldon was a small man anyhow and seemed, in consequence, to carry every inch with a careful and great dignity. Jeffry was a good four inches taller than his father and much more solid. His eyes were desperately worried. He couldn’t keep them away from Eleanore, who was a wreck.

  Edna Poole alone was controlled and, Starr thought, curiously detached. Her voice, when she greeted him and Heffernan, had seemed tuned, quite low and sultry like a humid summer twilight. They refused cocktails, and Heffernan apologized for bothering but asked whether he might use the telephone. He wanted to call the airport and the police department in Columbus. Edna said, through the sudden chill silence, that there was a phone in the coatroom off the entrance hall.

  Heffernan hesitated in the doorway. He said, “By the way, did any of you hear the shots last night?”

  Selldon Poole said thoughtfully, “We couldn’t have, Mr. Heffernan. The boat’s too far away.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is. You were here around midnight, Mr. Poole?”

  “No, as a matter of fact I was not. I got home around two. Jeffry picked me up at the office and drove me home. I was preparing a brief on the Drochmann case.” Heffernan stared thoughtfully at Jeffry, then said, “Were you here at midnight, Mr. Poole?”

  “No, I was planning a fishing trip with Jim Tanner until after eleven, then I just drove around until it was time to pick up Father.”

  Heffernan smiled faintly.

  “I’m afraid you’re my last hope, Mrs. Poole.”

  She smiled back and said, “Yes, I was here, Mr. Heffernan. But I heard no shots.”

  “Thank you.”

  Heffernan left the room, and Eleanore went to Starr swiftly and said, “They’ll be arrested when they land?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was nothing you could do?”

  Starr answered her hesitantly. “I suggested the moulage test. Of course it’s a negative one at best.”

  “Moulage?”

  “For powder grains. When you shoot a revolver, especially if the breech is at all defective, the backflash imbeds traces of powder into the skin around the base of the thumb. The moulage is some sort of a plastelline substance they press on the skin. It collects the powder
traces so that they can be tested and identified.”

  Selldon Poole said, “But surely they’ll have washed their hands?”

  “Washing has no effect on the powder traces, Mr. Poole. They’re too deeply embedded. Only some solvent, like bromophenol, can remove them.”

  Eleanore said swiftly, “Bromophenol, Doctor?”

  “Yes. It’s a powder itself, a pale yellowish stuff. You rub it on the skin and let it stay for a couple of hours, and the gunpowder traces are gone.” His voice softened, became oddly gentle. “It’s all right your knowing about it, Eleanore. I’m not going behind Mr. Heffernan’s back. He’s arranging that your brothers be given the moulage test by the Columbus police as soon as they land.”

  * * * *

  By three o’clock the storm was at its height. Rain fell in torrents, and the sky was the color of lead. The Shepmann brothers were aboard Buckeye II, being questioned by the police. They had been escorted from Columbus by motorcycle outriders with, to their intense satisfaction, screaming sirens. Eleanore and Jeffry and Selldon Poole were aboard with them.

  Edna Poole had remained in the house. In a mood.

  Starr stood for a moment in the living-room doorway and looked at Edna. She was over by a window, staring through the sheeting rain across lawns toward the dock, a vague figure, dark in the room’s dusk.

  “Mrs. Poole.”

  She turned slowly.

  “Oh—you, Doctor.”

  “Medcalf said I would find you in here.”

  “Yes?”

  He joined her at the window, stood near her and felt an unwilling admiration for the placidity of her features, for the calmness of her breathing.

  She said after a while, “You wanted something, Doctor?”

  “A confession, Mrs. Poole.”

  She thought this over, studied his face.

  “Of what?”

  “Confession is perhaps the wrong word. A confirmation of your motive would be more exact.”

  “Motive?”

  “For having killed Mr. Forstair.”

  Rain against glass was the only sound for several moments.

  “Shall we sit down, Doctor?”

  “Certainly.”

  She arranged herself in an armchair. Her hands were dim and quiet on her lap in the room’s deep shadow. She said, “That’s an extraordinary thing to say. It’s so absurd—well, it stifles any normal reaction. I never realized that you had a sense of humor. One in such bad taste.”

  “Was it because of the use to which Mr. Forstair put the twenty thousand dollars?”

  The pale hands clenched and then were quiet again. She said nothing.

  Starr went on: “I don’t know what hold Mr. Forstair had over you. It doesn’t matter. I should imagine it must have been something that happened in the East. But it must have been strong enough to have caused you to give him that lump sum. I suppose the money came from Mr. Poole’s marriage settlement?”

  “This is just as insulting as it is stupid, Doctor.”

  “No, not stupid. I think it quite clear and quite in keeping with what your reactions would be.”

  “Reactions?”

  “You were more than just in love with Mr. Forstair. You were infatuated with him. You couldn’t help being so, no matter whether he were blackmailing you or not. No matter whether some hold he had over you jeopardized your position here, your home.” He added gently, “You see—well, with women of your age, Mrs. Poole…”

  Her voice was instantly sharp.

  “At my age?”

  “At forty, possibly a few years more. As I say, the method or reason he used for getting the money is of no consequence. I’m certain, however, that his having used it to lull Eleanore Shepmann’s suspicions that he was a fortune hunter drove you off balance, Mrs. Poole.”

  She said with deadly restraint, “You appreciate that this is slanderous libel?”

  “No, it’s the truth. An insane jealousy, the depth to which Mr. Forstair had hurt you, your feeling of having been cruelly betrayed, all of those things made you plan and execute his murder. They made you do so in such a way that the Shepmann family would fall within your vengeance.”

  Her laugh, with its attempt at derision, was unsure.

  “Have you forgotten that the case is ended? There were three guns. There are three Shepmann brothers. Their motive for the murder is obvious. They have no alibis whatsoever for—midnight, wasn’t it, when the shots were fired?”

  “But they weren’t fired at midnight, Mrs. Poole.”

  Her immense calm persisted. She said quietly, “I understand the coroner has established that they were.”

  “No, he established the fact that Mr. Forstair died some time in the neighborhood of midnight.”

  “Well?”

  “He died at midnight from a single shot which passed directly through his heart. The other shots, at the very earliest, were fired into his dead body over two hours later. They were definitely fired after two o’clock. The Shepmann brothers do have alibis for then.”

  She said almost academically, “I think it is you who have—lost balance, Doctor. If a bullet were to break a watch, stop it at a certain hour, that I could understand.”

  “One of the bullets did better than that. It passed through the back of a hand, on its way to the body, after that hand had been set rigid by rigor mortis.”

  “Interesting.” Her voice held a sudden edge. She made an effort to control herself and said, “You will understand when I ask you to leave this house? To leave it now?”

  Starr did not move. He said patiently, “You must have known about the proposed elopement. I suppose Mr. Forstair simply told you. He would have been perfectly sure of himself, quite sure about the strength of his hold over you. I think that the first shot unnerved you, the shot that killed him. It was passion that lay dying on the floor before you, not just a man. I think you fled back here, blindly, to the shelter of your room and that it was several hours later before you were able to get yourself in hand sufficiently to return to the boat and fire the other guns, in order to complete your plan. That much you did know, that bullets were extracted and their calibers determined. Just when did you get hold of Humphrey Shepmann’s silver cigarette lighter?”

  “At the country—get out of here!” She was shrill, no longer a poised sultry twilight but gratingly harsh and shrill. “Get out! Get out!”

  Still he did not move.

  “Mrs. Poole, there was a trap once laid to catch a thief. Coins were being stolen from clothing in the lockers of a school. So they coated some coins with a powder, and the thief took them, and after a while his nerves, his fear of detection, perhaps his conscience if you wish, caused him to sweat, and the sweat reacted upon the pale yellow powder on his finger tips and turned them a bright blue.”

  He heard her draw one quick sharp breath.

  He said, “As you’ve realized the name of that powder was blue of bromophenol. Mr. Heffernan arranged with the five druggists in town that anyone telephoning or calling for bromophenol be given it and that he be notified. He was. He arranged that your husband and Jeffry and Eleanore be down at the houseboat so that you would be alone when I came here. I must retract what I said here before lunch. Bromophenol has no reaction whatever upon traces of gunpowder. But it does retain its virtues as a trap.”

  He reached swiftly for the cord of a standing lamp and pulled it. It’s light shafted whitely on flesh, at the base of the thumb of her right hand where a gun would backfire, on the skin’s vivid blue.

  There was pathos in her crumpling, as when anything that is sure and strong and vital suddenly succumbs to a swift decay, and to the frailty of her voice as she sent it with a desperate, heartfelt urgency toward that ultimate appeal: “…God…dearest God…”

  Starr placed his hand over hers, covering with a gentle strength t
he betraying blue, feeling her a woman again whose soul was sick, and brain.

  He said, “Is it all right for Mr. Heffernan to come in, Mrs. Poole? Will you tell him now?”

  She clung to his hand. She held it very tight. She said, “Oh yes.”

  THE CASE OF THE PRODIGAL BRIDEGROOM

  Midway between the Prairie Plains and the Allegheny Plateau, there in the state of Ohio, snug in its southeastern rugged land and hills, secure on the banks of the Muskingum River, the city of Laurel Falls and its seventy thousand odd souls faced with commonplace serenity the evening of June twenty-second.

  Dr. Colin Starr permitted his car to drift. He continued to feel a sense of irritation that his dinner and bridge at the Haverings’ should be interrupted by a stomach-ache.

  Miss Wadsworth, his secretary, had relayed the simple symptoms of a mild indigestion when the call had come in, with the request that Dr. Starr stop at the Arthur Chanin house and see Mr. Chanin at his, Dr. Starr’s, convenience. Mrs. Chanin, Miss Wadsworth had said, had telephoned herself: Her husband had begun to feel indisposed shortly under an hour ago, a mild nausea, slight cramps, possibly something injudicious at luncheon, so if Dr. Starr wouldn’t mind?

  Starr smiled faintly as he pictured the tone of voice which Edna Chanin would have used: cool, unhurried and, yes, ineffably gracious, just as her whole attitude toward Laurel Falls had been gracious since Arthur Chanin had brought her home from New York as a bride six years ago. A curious woman, Starr thought her, playing a role so meticulously that it had become the real thing. Precisely what that role had masked he did not know. Nor did the country-club crowd know, nor the town’s backstairs tribunals. They, he knew, she had passed with flying colors, for servants thought her “ever so nice” and (in comparison with some of the town’s matrons who might be mentioned and were) a “lady.”

  Starr wondered idly at the odd impulse which had impelled him to break up the opening rubber of bridge and start for the Chanins’ at once. Certainly there had been nothing alarming in the symptoms which Miss Wadsworth had relayed him, but there it was.