The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck

by Alexander Laing

  I have left this in its original, highly technical form, as it may thus have added interest for some readers. Its implications are clearly explained for the laymen in an early section of the narrative.—Ed.

  Here again is evidence that the happenings referred to did not actually take place in Maine, where capital punishment has been abolished.—Ed.

  Twenty

  With a whole house on my hands, if a small one, I called Daisy to suggest that we spend the evening studying the inquest. She arrived before eight o’clock. We pulled down the shades, locked the doors, and spread our documents on a table.

  “Are you still clinging to the idea that it’s Alling?” I asked.

  “I’m forgetting everything I’ve thought, Dave, or trying to. Something fresh ought to come out of this cryptogram, if you’ll be good enough to explain it to me.”

  “Here goes,” I agreed, taking the post-mortem sheet. “Incision number one means nothing special. You’ve got to cut a body over some artery to embalm it, and that’s the handiest place. Incision number two is right here.” I showed the spot on the back of her neck with my finger, and she jumped at the touch. “Steady. Now, the head must have been bent well forward to separate those two vertebrae sufficiently for the knife to enter between them. Also, there would have to be a straight thrust and then a sidewise movement to sever the spinal cord. Like this, see?”

  She nodded with a shiver, and I continued, “Paragraph number three—the six minute scars. The left antecubital fossa is here, just below the bend of the elbow, on the inside surface of the left arm. Transfusion needles would leave something of a scar. A hypodermic wouldn’t, unless he used dope with a dirty needle, but a doctor ought to know better than that. Anyway, the number of scars is significant. I’ll tell you why after we get on a bit. Now this abdominal scar—”

  “For appendicitis, probably, or gallstones,” she interrupted. “Next.”

  “Hold your horses,” I admonished. “What it says farther along makes it seem obvious that the incision didn’t go on through the inner membrane, the peritoneum, to get at the internal organs, so it was neither of those. Let it go for the present.”

  “Now for internals. The first one means he was dying of cancer, in about as painful a spot as it could appear. No wonder he gave himself transfusions, and took dope, and looked so sick toward the end. He was an old so-and-so, but he had nerve, all right.”

  “Granted. What about point two of the internals?”

  “That substantiates another obvious suspicion. He had cancer of the skull, too, and it pressed on the brain, and slowly drove him crazy. Point number three, internal hemorrhage, gives the reason why they claim it was the cut that killed him, rather than the poison.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, when the heart’s still beating, there’s a high pressure of blood in the arteries. Blood from a vein just trickles out, but from an artery it spurts. Therefore, if the heart had stopped beating before the big artery in the spinal column was cut, the blood would have seeped into the surrounding tissues and clotted quickly. But the face showed a convulsive death, which means that the heart made a few last violent beats, after the artery was cut, forcing blood into the skull and spinal cord. You see, it was a clean incision, which wouldn’t have given the blood much chance to flow out through the wound, especially if the blade remained in it. Now, this fourth paragraph, about what was under the belly scar, I can’t understand at all, so let’s go on for the present to the analyses.”

  “I can figure them out,” she interposed. “Somebody was wise to the fact that he’d been taking veronal regularly to relieve the pain of the cancer. That must have been the drug you smelled on his breath. The murderer gave him a big dose, with the idea that an autopsy would show traces all through the body, from chronic use, and make it seem he took an overdose by mistake, or else to commit suicide. Then the murderer got panicky, and used the knife to make sure of things, after Wyck had passed out. He realized too late that the suicide theory was ruined, and then bethought himself of embalming the body and putting it in the vault. I think the last point is our first clue, don’t you?”

  “You mean we’ve got to start by considering who might have know that the vault was already locked up, ready for sealing in the morning, and wasn’t likely to be inspected again?”

  “Of course. Now, who could have know all that?”

  “Well, Charlie, and Coroner Kent, and D. Saunders, God help him, all knew for certain. Any of the students might have known. The vault is always sealed up on the day when final inspection of dissections is made, as a symbol of now or never.”

  “All right. What about the other teachers?”

  “They’re more like to have known than the students.”

  “Well, that doesn’t help much. It just narrows it down to the whole school. Now, what about keys to the padlock?”

  “Charlie testified that extra keys were in the possession of Kent, and the anatomy prof, and Wyck himself—” I paused uncomfortably.

  “And?”

  “And—Alling.”

  “Alling. I thought so.”

  “But remember that Wyck had his key on his person, and the murderer returned it with the bundle of clothes. In the meanwhile, he could have used it to put Wyck’s carcass in the vault—probably did.”

  “If he knew what it was a key to,” she commented drily. “Well, let’s see that other sheet.”

  I picked up a copy of the sheriff’s deposition concerning the bundle returned by mail. We studied it together.

  * * *

  The said bundle was received in a sack made up by mail sorters on a train en route from Boston to Portland at about noon on April 10th, and transferred unopened at Portland to the 4:14 P.M. train from Altonville. The sack was opened at 5:00 A.M., April 11th, at the Altonville post office, and delivered to the Wyck residence at about 10:30 A.M. by Hosea Creel, carrier.

  The said bundle was supposedly mailed after closing hours on the evening of the 9th of April, 1932, at the main Boston post office. The postmarks are too smudged to make certain of this, but T. J. Flick, clerk at the said post office, noticed a bundle having twice the right postage, like this one, the next morning. The bundle bore no return address.

  The suit and coat in the said bundle smelled strongly of cleaning fluid. The shirt, underwear, socks, and handkerchiefs had been washed and ironed, but there were no laundry marks on any of them. The shoes had been shined.

  The said bundle contained a complete outfit, including a gray tweed suit, blue overcoat, Paris garters, collar buttons, and long necktie, and included the following other articles, viz:

  Hamilton watch, serial No. 23,026, with hands stopped at 11:48, and print of Dr. Wyck’s right thumb inside back inner case.

  Key ring, with passkey to all doors in medical school except offices, key to own office therein, key t own front door, key to padlock of the school vault, two keys for Yale locks, both unidentified. Neither fits any door in school or hospital or Wyck’s house.

  Wallet containing two five-dollar bills, three one-dollar bills, two silver quarters, one silver dime. Also, membership cards to the Joe Zero Club, Romero’s, and the Athlete’s Rest, all of which being Boston speakeasies know to police there. Also, a snapshot photograph of Marjorie Wyck in a bathing suit, and a slip of paper with the following numbers on it:

  Jl 16/300 Dc 23/500

  Sp 3/400 Jn 29/500

  Nv 1/400 Fb 24/500

  Silver pocket knife, with dull blades.

  Fountain pen, made by Moore.

  Leather cigarette case containing two Old Golds.

  No fingerprints on anything, except the one in the watchcase.

  * * *

  “All right,” said Daisy, “who was in Boston on the evening of the ninth? The fact that the one person who was in Boston is named Alling is hardly to be ignored.”

  “He went down to see Vladimir because of an appointment made two weeks before Wyck was killed.”


  “The monkey gland wizard? Well, he could have taken a bundle along. Vladimir? I thought he was a high-grade quack.”

  “Not quite. He does spend most of his time keeping a crew of rich old sybarites in working order.”

  “And what, pray tell, is a sybarite?”

  “A guy who burns his candle in the middle, as well as both ends.”

  “O.K. Let’s get back to work. You haven’t said what Alling was doing with Vladimir.”

  “Just having a conference on the general subject of transplanting glands. Say, I wonder—that atrophied mess under Wyck’s abdominal scar could have been an unsuccessful graft—of some kind.”

  “You might do a little research into the chances. Now, what about the stopped watch? Does that indicate the time of the murder? It’s within the period set but the coroner’s jury.”

  “Yes, but it may be merely the time it ran down, half a day later. We’d have to find out whether the spring was all relaxed, or whether the works were broken.”

  “All right, Dave. That’ll have to wait, and so will the two keys as yet unaccounted for. What about the thirteen dollars and sixteen cents? If Ted Gideon did it for the missing five hundred, wouldn’t he have taken it all? I think it’s still the best explanation that Ted was given the five hundred as a farewell present. Now how about these other items?”

  “I don’t see anything significant in them. The speakeasy cards tell us that he was an old rounder. The speakeasy proprietors told Dr. Alling that they hadn’t seen him for a year, which isn’t so strange, considering the condition of his innards. Maybe they told the truth.”

  “Maybe they did,” she agreed. “Now what do you make of this slip of paper, with the numbers on it?”

  “That’s the same slip of paper that was in the book Wyck was so anxious to get right back. When we brought it to him, the morning before he was killed, he looked first thing to see if the paper was still in the book. He probably put it in his wallet as soon as we were out of sight.”

  “Why?” she asked, when I paused impressively.

  “Because he was deliberately hiding the fact that he was in ill health; and that paper was a record of blood transfusions from Mike to him. Notice that there are six entries, one for each of those six minute scars.”

  “So far so good,” she said, approvingly.

  “All right. Look here: Jl, Sp, Nv, Dc, Jn, Fb. July, September, November, December, January, February, obviously—all in the proper order. And look at the dates. Those figures before the slanting bars are the day of the month. See, the interval between each pair of dates is shorter than the last one. He needed blood more and more often. He started out with a modest 300 cc., first time, and increased it to a full 500 cc. before he was through—the most they ever take from one donor.”

  “Clever lad,” she said. “I’m getting to be proud to know you.”

  “Now, look,” I added, producing my transcript of Mike’s official record card as a donor. “October 8th, Mike gave blood to a guy who died right away. That was halfway between the September and November donations. Wyck gave him only three weeks to recuperate, that time. The next official one was February 16th, two weeks and a half after the previous donation to Wyck. Following that, Wyck waited the minimum time, hardly a week, before taking another pint, on the 24th. Then, on March 7th, eleven days later, there was another official transfusion, split between Peter Tompkins and Joe Baker—and Mike hadn’t really recovered from that one when he lost his arm.”

  “I see. That cut off Wyck’s secret blood supply just about the time he’d be needing another one—and he began to look more and more anemic. Looks like an airtight solution, but where does I get us?”

  “Well, for one thing it tells why he resorted to veronal to keep going. He must have realized that he was pretty nearly done for, and that it wasn’t any use to go on with the transfusions from another donor. The first woman he had been experimenting on was already in the hospital—the wretched Sarah—and he probably knew that Alling would come down on him like a ton of bricks as soon as the results of the experiments began to appear in quantity—” I paused again.

  “So what?”

  “So why wasn’t it a clear case of suicide?”

  “Fine!” she said derisively, “but even the coroner’s jury points out here that he couldn’t have stabbed himself in the back of his own neck.”

  “No,” I admitted, “but Muriel may not have realized the full meaning of his words on the bridge, when he said it was all over, that night. She probably thought he just meant that the experiments were ended. She or Ted may have thought Wyck was just asleep, when he had taken an overdose of veronal, and one or the other of them seized the opportunity to stick a knife in his neck, when he was nice and quiet.”

  “And where did all this happen?” she inquired sarcastically.

  “Out on the hillside.”

  “So, instead of leaving him there, where he might not be found for months, they brought him back through the middle of town and lugged him into the school building. Bravo!”

  “Yes, they did,” I insisted, clinging to my nice theory, “because he wouldn’t be found for months in the vault either, and there’d be a much better chance that somebody else would be suspected.”

  Daisy shook her head. “I’m willing to wager he was murdered in the preparation room,” he said. “Muriel was back in the dormitory before midnight. I don’t think she had anything to do with it. Ted probably drove both of them back to town, left Wyck at the school building, and then sneaked back later to do the job. That is, if he really did it. I’d be more inclined to think it was your friend Prendergast, or sweet demure little Marjorie Wyck.”

  I had forgotten about Prendergast’s failure to sleep in his own rooms after the faculty meeting. The discovery of the cadaver in the school building, plus evidence that the murder had been committed on the very night of Prendergast’s absence was certainly reason enough for demanding his alibi. As for Marjorie, she was sufficiently mysterious to be suspected on general principles. She might have been the master mind, directing Muriel and Ted; but we had not definite charge against her except that she had lied when she denied being at home at the time of Ted’s call to invite her to accompany him in his flight.

  Daisy said, “What about her picture in old Gideon’s wallet?”

  “What’s funny about a father carrying a picture of his own daughter around with him?” I objected.

  “Nothing whatever. And that’s what makes it seem a bit funny for Wyck to do it.”

  “Therefore—what?”

  “She was reading a life of Byron in the town hall. You know what the charge was against Byron when they ran him out of England.”

  “I won’t believe that of Marjorie.”

  “I don’t ask you to believe she condoned anything. But look—a beautiful girl living alone with a father who’s admittedly an old rake. He’s at least half mad, and carries her picture—in a bathing suit, mind you—as probably the one and only sentimental gesture of his career. Marjorie Wyck could perfectly well have come to a point where she felt she would be a great deal safer if her father quietly ceased to exist. He could hardly have kept his sickness from her. She could have felt the added justification of easing him of a messy, slow death from cancer.”

  “Very well, then, do you think she could have known how to sever that spinal cord so neatly?”

  “Yes, I do. In high school she was the smartest zoology student we had, and she used to claim she was going to study medicine herself. She may have gone on studying under her father’s direction.”

  “Yeah, there’s somethin’ to that,” cut in a drawling voice. Daisy and I jumped up and turned to see the sheriff standing in the doorway. “There now, don’t disturb yourselves. Mrs. Connell just asked me to get the stuff that’s in her bureau drawer, second from the top. She said you’d bring it, Mister—yes, yes—Mister Saunders. But I said I wouldn’t think o’ troublin’ you, so she gave me the key to the back door, in case you wa
sn’t in.”

  Daisy and I looked at each other, wondering how long he had been standing there and how much he had heard. We were not comforted when he continued, “Yes, yes. Old saws are trustworthy. There’s wisdom comes out o’ the mouths of babes. What do ya say, babe?”

  Twenty-One

  The sheriff’s errand was legitimate. I had the wit to make sure of this by accompanying him back to the jail to see how Biddy was getting along. We left our documents just where they were, so as to deny him the satisfaction of thinking that we had been intentionally secretive. Nevertheless, I resolved to hide my private papers more securely than before. The ones over which Sheriff Palmer had found us speculating were all essentially public documents anyway. While driving to the town hall, he pretended to try to make a date with Daisy, assuring her that his wife could not object to what she never knew. The unusual circumstance of having a female prisoner made it necessary for the sheriff’s wife to set up housekeeping outside Biddy’s cell.

  “I will too have another cup of tay,” we heard her bawl.

  Mrs. Palmer came out looking quite haggard. “I declare to Betsy,” she complained, “I’ll be glade when that there grand jury takes that woman off my hands. I felt sorry for her, up to the third cup.”

  We told Biddy she must get a good night’s sleep in order to be up bright and early for a conference with her lawyer. Then I walked home with Daisy. On the way, we agreed that the best thing to do about the sheriff, hereafter, was to bother him often with irrelevant questions concerning publicly known facts about the Wyck case. Since he had caught us pouring over the record, there would be no point in trying to conceal our joint interest.

  My legal friend Craig pointed out to me that the coroner’s failure to ask Biddy for an alibi indicated that there was no intention of prosecuting her as a principal; and it was his opinion that the evidence of her complicity as an accessory would not bear much weight with the jurors because of its exclusively circumstantial nature. I felt it necessary to warn him that Biddy really had been out of her own house for half an hour, at the approximate time of the murder, and that so far as I knew she had no effective alibi.