EQMM, May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "We don't know,” Dr. Pryor insisted. “You'd better ask the FBI that question."

  The sheriff turned to Agent Barnovich, who held up his hands. “I only know he was an important German, flown out of there last Saturday night. Maybe he was a defector, like Rudolph Hess."

  "But no name?"

  "No name, only Mr. Fuchs."

  "Have you notified Washington of his death?"

  "Of course. They're awaiting further news."

  "What sort of news?” I asked.

  "I haven't told them he may have been poisoned. I wanted to be sure of it first."

  He handed me the FBI log and I ran my finger down the list of everyone who'd visited the patient after I'd left. Dr. Pryor had been in to see him at a few minutes before six. “I wanted him gone from here as soon as possible,” the administrator told us. “His presence was disrupting the hospital routine, and since the entire matter was top secret we couldn't even profit from the publicity."

  "Were you searched when you came to visit him?” I wondered, remembering the cursory inspection I'd received from the government agents.

  "I was,” Pryor acknowledged.

  "So was I,” Judd Francis told us. “I came by around eight o'clock and our patient seemed to be resting comfortably. His throat was dry and I had Nurse O'Toole bring him some ice water."

  Sheriff Lens raised his eyebrows but Barnovich quickly said, “I tasted it, just like we tasted every scrap of food and drink that he had. And after I tasted it he took a couple of swallows himself. Nothing but water."

  "No one else visited him?"

  "The nurse came back to check his blood pressure around midnight but I was with her. He was half asleep then, and only wanted to know when he'd be out of here. I told him soon."

  "Did you kill him?” Sheriff Lens asked the FBI man.

  "Me? Of course not! What motive would I have?"

  "He was an enemy. A German."

  "But he was over here now. He'd left Germany."

  "Perhaps that's why he was killed,” Dr. Pryor speculated. “To keep him from revealing Nazi secrets to our side."

  I smiled at the suggestion. “Do you think there's a Nazi agent at Pilgrim Memorial Hospital?"

  "Well, somebody killed him."

  I turned back to Barnovich. “Let's go over this again, step by step. I assume Fuchs was carefully searched when he arrived here."

  "Right down to the skin,” the FBI man said. “They put their own hospital garments on him here. And he had no possessions at all with him. His own clothes had been taken away in England, before he was flown here, to avoid any trace of his identity."

  "And no one at Pilgrim Memorial had access to cyanide?"

  "No one,” Dr. Pryor insisted. “Of course, cyanide is a gas. The solid state is usually potassium cyanide. It can kill almost instantly if swallowed on a empty stomach, where the stomach acids quickly turn it back into a gas."

  "Three seconds,” I murmured, remembering what Fuchs had told me. “And no one was in the room when he died?"

  Barnovich shook his head. “I was on a chair right outside his door. No one entered the room after my midnight visit. I went back outside and partly closed the door to his room."

  "There are no other exit doors, of course, and no one was in the bathroom,” Judd Francis said. “Before I realized he was dead I took his water glass to the sink to refill it. The bathroom was empty."

  "We need to pin down the time of his death,” I decided. “That might help."

  Pryor nodded. “We'll have the preliminary autopsy report by morning."

  * * * *

  Annabel was up with Samantha when I returned home and I told her what had happened. “Who do you think he was, Sam? Someone important enough he had to be murdered?"

  "I have to see the autopsy report this morning and talk to some more of the staff."

  "How could anyone have gotten into the room to poison him, and why would they want to?"

  "That's what I need to find out."

  "Why you, Sam? The FBI is on the case."

  "The FBI is one of the suspects."

  I tried to get a couple of hours’ sleep, but I was up before eight and on my way back to Pilgrim Memorial. Judd Francis was waiting at my office with the autopsy results. “These are just preliminary, Sam, but it was cyanide as we suspected. He'd been dead about three to four hours when the coroner examined the body around five, which means he died somewhere between one and two, near as we can tell."

  "Thanks, Judd.” I glanced through the report and handed it back. “So the last people to enter his room were Agent Barnovich and Nurse O'Toole around midnight. I'll have to talk with them."

  "Marcia doesn't come back on duty until noon, and the FBI is calling back its guard detail now that Fuchs is dead."

  "I'd better try to catch Barnovich, then."

  He was indeed preparing to leave. “No reason to stay,” he told me.

  "Isn't solving this murder reason enough?"

  He sighed. “Look, Dr. Hawthorne, guarding this man was an FBI assignment. Solving his murder is something for the local police, unless you can show me that a federal law was violated."

  He had me there. “Tell me about your midnight visit to the patient's bedside."

  "Nurse O'Toole wanted to check his blood pressure and pulse before she went off duty. I guess that's the standard procedure here. I went in with her and stood by the bedside. She asked if he needed anything and he said no."

  "He didn't request a sleeping pill or anything like that?"

  "No, and she gave him nothing. We were only in there about two minutes and we left nothing behind. I said good night to her and went back to my chair."

  "When were you due to be relieved?"

  "Not till six a.m. I had the night shift."

  "Will you be leaving today?"

  He nodded. “Most of my men have already departed. I want to get some sleep first before I drive up to Boston."

  "I'll see you before you go,” I told him.

  It was Sunday and I had no patients to see. By noon I arranged to be on Marcia O'Toole's floor when she came on duty. “I just heard what happened to Mr. Fuchs,” she said when she saw me.

  "That FBI man, Barnovich, says you two went in there at midnight and he was still alive."

  She nodded, her brown hair bobbing. “I checked his signs and asked if he needed more water but he said he was fine. I expected he'd be gone by today, but not like this."

  "Did Barnovich touch him or move him in any way?"

  "Not while I was there. Why would an FBI agent want to kill him?"

  "He probably wouldn't,” I agreed, “but somehow he was poisoned, and I need to find out how."

  I decided I had to read up on cyanide in the hospital's medical library, and I spent much of the afternoon there. Finally I knew what I had to do. I phoned Dr. Pryor and Sheriff Lens and asked them to gather the others in Pryor's office at five.

  Judd Francis and Nurse O'Toole were there when I arrived, and Sheriff Lens soon entered with Agent Barnovich. “I have to get back to Boston,” the agent told us, but I quieted him down.

  "This will only take a few minutes, and I think you'll want it to complete your report."

  "Go on,” Dr. Pryor told me.

  "Well, this was an especially baffling locked-room problem for me, because the room wasn't locked at all. The door to a hospital room is always unlocked, often open. The only question was how our mysterious patient obtained the poison that killed him. No cyanide or cyanide compounds are kept at the hospital, all food and drink was tasted before it entered the room, and by Agent Barnovich's testimony the patient was absolutely alone for an hour or two before he was poisoned. My first suspicion, of course, was that he might have lied. But even though Miss O'Toole had gone off duty there were other nurses on the floor. If he had left his chair and entered the room after midnight, someone might have noticed and reported it after the body was discovered."

  "Thanks for believing me,” Bar
novich said with a trace of sar-casm.

  "Dr. Pryor and Judd Francis both visited the patient, as did Nurse O'Toole. Could they have poisoned him during their examinations, perhaps with the tip of a thermometer inserted into his mouth to take his temperature? No, because cyanide, you'll remember, kills instantly. And none of them visited him after midnight, when Barnovich and O'Toole both swear the patient was alive and talking. Where does that leave us? Is there anyone who was in that room between the hours of one and two when Fuchs died instantly from cyanide poisoning? Most especially, was anyone in there who had access to the poison? I asked myself that, and I saw the only possible answer. The victim himself!"

  "He had no cyanide,” Barnovich insisted.

  "But he did at one point. I spoke to him yesterday about how he got here. He wouldn't reveal his name, but he'd fallen out of favor with Hitler, who gave him two choices—a trial for treason or a cyanide capsule and a hero's funeral. He chose cyanide and had the capsule in his hand when a friend whisked him away to a waiting aircraft. He had the tiny capsule in his hand!"

  "Not when he arrived here,” Barnovich insisted. “And he sure didn't swallow it or he'd have been dead."

  "I spent the afternoon at the library, reading books about cyanide poisoning. There were accounts of spies and high-ranking military officials who preferred suicide to capture and torture. One method was to carry a small cyanide capsule inside a hollow false tooth. Even if fettered, the prisoner could work the capsule free with his tongue and bite or swallow it."

  Barnovich's mouth dropped open. “Do you think that's what happened?"

  "There's no other explanation. He had the cyanide and he brought it with him. The man named Fuchs killed himself."

  "If Doc says it, I'm satisfied,” Sheriff Lens decided. “Far as I'm concerned, the case is closed."

  Dr. Pryor nodded. “I agree."

  I went back to my office and phoned April at home to tell her it was over. “That's good,” she said. “With this damp weather we're bound to start getting some flu cases."

  "I'll be in tomorrow morning for the entire day."

  But there was one thing I had to do first. I went back into the hospital and sought out Marcia O'Toole. I found her without difficulty, caring for an elderly patient. She smiled when she saw me. “I'm so glad you were able to wind that business up. This place hadn't been the same since he arrived."

  "Is there someplace we can talk, Marcia?"

  "Why—I guess we could use the nurses’ lounge for a few minutes. What is it?"

  I waited till we were alone before I answered. Then I looked her in the eye and asked, “Why did you poison Fuchs?"

  For a moment she didn't answer. Perhaps she was weighing her options. Then she said, quite softly, “Because my brother was killed in North Africa.” There were tears in her eyes. “How did you know?"

  "There was no cyanide here at the hospital. It had to come from outside, and my explanation of the false tooth seemed the most likely. Fuchs couldn't have known what sort of welcome awaited him here, so he kept the cyanide capsule and secreted it in a hollow tooth he wore for just that purpose. If we'd charged him with being a war criminal he'd have had a way out."

  "But he wasn't charged with anything! The rumor was he'd be meeting the President, to be treated as some sort of hero."

  "Hardly! I'm sure he would have been held as a prisoner of war."

  "And then released at the end of the war! I wanted someone to pay for my brother. I wanted him to pay. The man I killed was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of the Afrika Korps."

  "I know. I think others in the hospital must have known too. The code name they gave him was Fuchs, the German word for Fox. Rommel was well known in North Africa as the Desert Fox.” Remembering my conversation with him, I added, “I think he found a bit of humor in the code name."

  "How did you know it was me?” she asked again.

  "I came in to see him the other day and you were washing him and brushing his teeth. That was when you found the hidden capsule. You must have guessed what it was and you kept it. He was still a bit drowsy then and probably didn't even realize you'd taken it. Once I suspected you of having the cyanide, I only had to determine how you could have managed to kill him with it. Then I remembered that Judd Francis asked you to bring him a glass of ice water last evening."

  "Agent Barnovich tasted it as he always did. And Fuchs drank some right away."

  "They tasted the water but not the ice cubes. You'd frozen that tiny capsule inside a cube of ice. When the ice melted during the night, the capsule was left floating there. Fuchs drank the rest of the water during the night and probably never noticed the capsule in the dark. By the time he realized it he was seconds from death."

  "What will you do now?” she asked. Her breath was coming fast.

  "I don't know,” I admitted. “If it was Rommel, in a sense he was a casualty of the African campaign. It was as if your brother had shot him dead. Deaths in battle are not considered murder—though sometimes I think they should be."

  Within a month Marcia O'Toole left the hospital and moved out of Northmont. I never saw her again. The death of Mr. Fuchs at Pilgrim Memorial Hospital attracted no attention at all. Accounts of Rommel's death were published after the war, and all had him swallowing the cyanide capsule while in the car with his friend. If he made it all the way to Northmont with his capsule, no one ever admitted it.

  (c)2008 by Edward D. Hoch

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  Novelette: MOTIVE by Hideo Yokoyama

  After a dozen years as a newspaper reporter, Yokoyama Hideo began writing manga stories, children's books, novels based on actual incidents, and mysteries. The following tale won the Mystery Writers of Japan award for best short story in 2000. Since then, several of Yokoyama's wildly popular novels, including Half a Confession, Climbers High, and Sea Without Exit have been turned into film and TV productions.

  (c)2000 by Hideo Yokoyama; translation (c)2008 by Beth Cary

  Translated from the Japanese by Beth Cary.

  * * * *

  1.

  It was after 10 a.m. when the wind came up.

  There was none of the year-end bustle in the lobby of the prefectural hospital. There were no patients waiting for prescriptions, no visitors to cheer the sick, no nurses rushing by in a whirlwind. It was always like this here. In this hospital that overlooked the seacoast, where the windows were fitted with bars, even air and time were sequestered.

  This is the last time I'll be here this year, Kaise Masayuki thought as he filled in his personal information and the date on the visitors’ list: J Prefecture Police Headquarters, Police Affairs Department, Planning and Investigation Officer. Superintendent. Age 44.

  And he had a mountain of work to complete before the end of the year in order to prepare for next spring's administrative reforms.

  Kaise's footsteps echoed as he walked across the lobby and climbed the stairs. He showed his visitor's card at the reception area in front of the locked ward. A muscled young male nurse unlocked the door and pushed open the barred security gate. Kaise continued down the hallway, thinking only of walking. Against the wall was one patient. Then another. Two people sat on the floor. Others stood around, squatted, or were doubled over. All of them wore vacant expressions.

  His father was in the recreation room, where he sat cross-legged, unkempt, facing the wall. His eyes, half closed beneath the sleep caked in the corners, were fixed on one point of the tatami. His medicine was working. The medication had increased over the years, robbing his father, one by one, of words, facial expressions, and characteristic habits. Kaise hadn't seen him for a month, but it might have been simply the drab color of his sweater that made his back seem so shrunken. He looked like a pile of dirt that could crumble away at any minute.

  Kaise's emotions nearly overwhelmed him.

  "Old man, I've come to see you,” he said gruffly as he sat down beside his father.

  He pulled out a
bag of rice crackers, cut it open, and held it in front of his father's expressionless face.

  "You like these, don't you?"

  "..."

  "You eating your meals all right?"

  "..."

  Kaise sighed. He hadn't heard his father's voice for several years.

  His father had been held up as a model beat police officer. He had started as a messenger boy in the department during the chaotic postwar period. His diligence was rewarded, and he was promoted to policeman. Most of his forty years on the force had been spent in local or residential police boxes. Hard-working. Simple. Courteous. Wherever he went he was liked by the citizens he served. But after he reached mandatory retirement age, and his wife died, he began to fall apart.

  Kaise gazed at his father's wrinkled profile.

  My old man fell in the line of duty.

  He thought that he had noticed the first signs of his father's illness before his mother died. As mandatory retirement drew near, his father became taciturn and often brooded all day long. Being a police officer was not merely an occupation for his father, it was his life. When he took off his uniform, his life had ceased.

  "My goodness.” A nurse with a youthful face and a too-cheerful voice stared at Kaise.

  "I'm Kaise. My father is always..."

  "So it is you! I thought you looked alike."

  The nametag at her chest read, “Yagi Akane.” This was the young woman who had sent him a postcard saying she was the new nurse assigned to his father. “Please come visit occasionally.” She could have written just that. But she must have thought it sounded too pushy, and had included “I know you must be busy” three times in her gentle note.

  "Please stay awhile!” She sounded overjoyed. She slid down onto the tatami on both knees and took his father's hands, as white as wax, and shook them up and down. “Isn't it wonderful that your son has come?"

  Suddenly, his father uttered, “Yah.” Startled, Kaise looked at his father's face.

  "Yes, that's right, you're happy, aren't you?"

  He's happy? Kaise was perplexed by Akane's interpretation. He saw no change in his father's face. Was he really happy?