Winner's Loss

by Mel Bradshaw

  “How do you happen to have a key to Nora Britton’s studio?” I asked him before he’d sat down.

  “You searched my car, eh? When I bought those latest paintings of hers, she suggested I pick them up whether she was there or not, but in the end she brought them over herself on the eighth, and I didn’t need the key. I didn’t have a chance to return it before her death.”

  “Those paintings are too large for her to have brought on the streetcar. Did someone drive her?”

  “I presume so, but I didn’t see and didn’t ask.”

  “Did she have a lover, someone outside her marriage?”

  “I saw no sign of one. But, as I say, she was discreet.”

  “Last night I asked if you loved Nora. You didn’t answer.”

  Deane got up and walked around his dining room table to straighten one of the landscapes hanging over the buffet. “In a fatherly way, yes, I did love her.”

  “Did you ever kiss her, Sir Joseph?”

  “On the cheek. What of it?”

  “Anything more passionate?”

  “Never.” Deane reddened. “You have a dirty mind, Shenstone. I have one wife, and you … pollute her house with your insinuations. I see no good that’s come of my asking you here. You can show yourself out.”

  Sir Joseph started to leave the dining room. I was seated nearer the doorway, however. I got up and stood in his path.

  “Let me tell you, sir, the good you can’t see. As an important person in Nora Britton’s last months, you’d have had a call from me whether you asked me here or not. What you did by calling me was save valuable time. You suspected foul play in Nora’s death. Today, thanks to you, I was able to interview Nora’s family. Thanks to you, I got the evidence that proves you were right. Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock I can put in play all the resources of the city’s detective office to find Nora’s killer. Take credit for that. Still, by the standards of a normal murder investigation we’re several days behind. Eight a.m. is still sixteen hours away. I’m not about to waste that time. If you ever felt affection of any kind for Nora, you won’t want me showing myself out until I’ve learned everything I can in this house. Please tell your sister I need to speak to her again.”

  Deane glared at me across the half yard that separated our faces. In less than a second, though, a cool smile took over his features. He was again the executive with a talent for and a joy in clean, quick decisions.

  “Tell her yourself,” he said. “Up the front staircase, second door on the right.”

  In answer to my knock, Mary-Maud Deane came out into the upstairs hall and closed her door. I took it she didn’t want me to see her unmade bed. She wasn’t happy to see me again, especially as she had just managed at last to drift off to sleep. Her dressing gown, less flashy than her brother’s, featured white peonies on a purplish background.

  “When was the last time you gave or sent Nora Britton any of your chocolate brownies, Miss Deane?”

  “I’m going to ask Sir Joseph whether I should be answering any more questions.”

  “Your brother knows I need to speak to you again.”

  “Does he? What is the need?”

  “When you and I talked about cookies, you didn’t mention Nora’s eating your brownies.”

  “Detective!” Mary-Maud gasped, her hand on her heart. “Cookies and brownies are as different as chalk and cheese. Cookies bake individually, brownies in one piece like a cake. And consider the ingredients. Any chocolate cookies of my acquaintance use baking soda. My brownies contain only butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, chocolate, and chopped nuts. And a little vanilla extract.”

  I got her to repeat the list of ingredients while I wrote it down.

  “And when did you last give Nora Britton any of your brownies?”

  “I’d have to consult my journal.”

  When she went to do so, I followed her through her door into a bright and tidy sitting room, with net curtains on the windows and hand-embroidered flowers on the chair cushions. In a house this size, it made sense that a considerate brother would provide her with a suite rather than just a room. Her bedroom would be beyond a second closed door.

  She unlocked the centre drawer of an antique writing desk and took out a leather-bound journal, roughly five by seven inches in size. More than half the lined pages were filled in with a handwritten date at the top, followed by detailed entries for breakfast, lunch, dinner. Mary-Maud showed me the daily menus, starting with the most recent. We had to go back to September before we found a mention of brownies.

  Detective work doesn’t require a dirty mind, just a skeptical one. I took pains to assure myself, by looking for cuts or tears along the gutter, that no pages had been excised from Mary-Maud’s book.

  Chapter 13

  Despite what I’d said about making the most of the next sixteen hours, I wasn’t at all sure when I walked out Joe Deane’s front door where I was heading next. I concluded the best place to puzzle this out was my own desk at City Hall. I just had to stop first at a blind pig to top up my whisky flask. The new liquor stores were hunky-dory six days a week, but today wasn’t one of the six. I managed to purchase a couple of mickeys. Just as well, because when I arrived at the detective office Rudy Crate was on duty and not slow to remind me of how he’d smoothed things over for me with Fred Stillwater on Saturday night.

  “Deputy Inspector Crate.” I passed him my flask. “Deputy Banana Oil. Still, you carried it off.”

  “I’d rather pour from a vessel that hasn’t had your mouth all over its aperture. From, for example, one of the bottles that are responsible for the bulges in your jacket pockets.”

  I tipped a couple of precious ounces from one of my mickeys into the big Englishman’s coffee cup.

  “Tell me,” I said, “why is it that you’re always the one the inspector leaves here in the evening and on weekends? Is it just that your posh way of speaking sounds so good on the phone? If so, I’m glad I’m an uncultivated colonial.”

  Rudy was spared answering by the appearance at the door of a man in a pink suit. With a flourish, he removed a pale felt hat with a high crown and a rolled brim, then slowly peeled off a pair of kid gloves. His hands were stiff and heavily veined, his forehead high, and his yellowish hair thin — albeit freshly barbered in the latest style.

  “Are these the offices of the Toronto Star?” he asked. “I sure hope so. I understand I’m to confess to the murder of Nora Koch, and I want to get top dollar for exclusive rights.”

  Rudy was quick to push an extra chair up to my desk. “Have a seat here, sir. Mr. Shenstone will be glad to take your statement.”

  “Would that be Scoop Shenstone, the crime reporter?” The elderly fashion plate seated himself and crossed his legs comfortably. “My first-born says you’ve been looking for me.”

  “If you’re Jordan Stillwater,” I said, not doubting that he was. “But I’m a detective sergeant and this is police headquarters, not a newspaper office. Do you still want to confess to murder?”

  “Oh yes. It was done by poison. I should tell you that as an ex-pharmacist I know my poisons. A little ergot introduced into her red wine, leading to vasoconstriction, gangrene, hallucinations, convulsions, and ultimately death.”

  “That’s not how Nora Britton died, Mr. Stillwater, and you know it. Your son says you like your little joke. Now that you’ve had it, are you prepared to talk sense?”

  “Ah, where’s the fun of that?” Rudy chuckled. “I liked it better when we were running a newspaper. I could be sports editor and get paid to go to the races. Or the golf course.” He took a practice swing with an imaginary club, then — catching my eye — seated himself quietly on a neighbouring desk.

  “Nasty stuff, red wine,” said Jordan Stillwater. “Brandy is what I liked to stock during Prohibition, a drink with class, and with enough of a medical reputation that doctors would prescribe it.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “you sold it without a doctor’s prescription.”

>   “What of it? I paid the fines and still made a profit.”

  Straight talk at last.

  “Alcohol apart, what poisons did your pharmacy stock?”

  “Arsenic, hyoscine, strychnine, potassium cyanide. And ergot. It’s used to treat migraines and stop bleeding.”

  “Any poisons derived from fish?”

  “Fish?” Stillwater smiled broadly, showing a suspiciously perfect set of teeth. “That’s a new one on me. I’ve never heard of fish poison.”

  “Did you want to rid Christ Church of Nora Britton?”

  “Not after I met her. I got to thinking if I married again she might be my third wife. She was a darling little thing.”

  “At church you were heard to call her something different.”

  “My opinion changed. Things change all the time. I was born in Canada West — find that on a map now if you can.”

  “How could you have married her? She had a husband.”

  “A Hun. That might have been got over.”

  “How?”

  “By running away with her. I may do it yet. Truthfully, I doubt she’s dead. Has anyone in your department seen her body?” Jordan turned to Rudy. “You, sir — have you seen it?”

  I could see a quip quivering on Rudy’s lips, but he contented himself with a subdued smile and a shake of his head.

  “Early next week,” I said, “I expect to obtain a photostat of the certificate of cremation. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me where you were last Monday?”

  “Kansas.”

  This answer didn’t surprise me any more than if he’d said he’d been camping on the dark side of the moon. “Really? The state of Kansas?”

  “Yep.”

  “What were you doing there, Mr. Stillwater?”

  “Whatever you may think, not looking for the way to Oz. I was receiving medical treatment at the clinic of Dr. Brinkley.”

  I looked at Rudy to see if the name meant anything to him. Apparently it did.

  “John R. Brinkley, the goat gland doctor?”

  “The same. When I heard he had a procedure to restore vigour to older men, I made an appointment. I have the clinic’s receipt if you’d like to see it.”

  I inspected the receipt, which was for five nights room and board — October 6 to 10, 1927 — and for medical treatment described as the surgical implantation of goat testicles into the scrotum of Mr. Jordan Frederick Stillwater of Toronto. I had heard people talk amusedly of this treatment as our era’s version of the fountain of youth. I certainly never expected to encounter anyone who’d had the operation. I passed the document to Rudy, expecting him to expose it as a prank. He didn’t, though.

  “Okay, Mr. Stillwater,” I said. “I’ll keep this until I’ve made further inquiries. Kindly don’t leave town in the meantime.”

  Stillwater said he had no other trips planned. He pulled on his gloves.

  “Tell me,” said Rudy, “does it work?”

  “There must be something to it,” Stillwater answered with another large display of his store-bought teeth. “It’s the latest thing! Anyway, I’ll be trying my luck at a tea dance tomorrow afternoon. I’ll let you know.”

  “No rush,” Rudy chuckled. “I’m not in need just yet.”

  When Stillwater had gone, Rudy picked up a crossword puzzle he’d been working on.

  “By the way, Paul, what’s Canada West when it’s at home?”

  “A pre-1867 name for Ontario. He was just telling us he’s over sixty, but we knew that already — over by nearly twenty years, I’d guess.”

  I sat quietly at my desk for the next ten minutes and did some thinking. Eric Hutchinson, rector of Christ Church Grange Park, had been right and wrong. His suspicion that Nora Britton’s death was not accidental appeared well-founded. The painter had eaten some poison derived from fish. On the other hand, his two chief suspects — Archie and Jordan Stillwater — both had alibis. Alibis that could be checked.

  For my money, the likeliest murderer was Herman Koch. He was the person that had made an autopsy on Nora impossible — and was the chief beneficiary of her will. He had reason to be jealous of his wife’s professional success. She had taken the commission that should have been his, and at a time when he was short of funds. She had, on Mrs. Hutchinson’s testimony, taken a lover as well. For all his bohemian philosophy of sexual freedom, and his own adulterous affairs notwithstanding, he was not used to being cuckolded. He might have found that sauce for the gander was not necessarily sauce for the goose.

  Koch was a gifted painter. Even a boor like me could see that. To hang him would deprive our world of many fine pictures, perhaps masterpieces. Artistic sensitivity, however, was no guarantee of innocence. Awareness of one’s exceptional talent might even confer a sense of entitlement to break rules made for the ungifted masses.

  Turning from the topic of motive to that of opportunity, I realized I’d made no progress in determining who would have been in a position to obtain the poison and introduce it into Nora Britton’s last meal. Myrtle Hutchinson was the only person I’d talked to so far that admitted to having given Nora anything to eat or drink Monday, but what Myrtle said she’d contributed to Nora’s meal — the hermit cookies — had not contained the poison. Somehow Nora had come by another dessert. Who besides Myrtle could have provided that dessert?

  I went down the hall for some water to mix with my next shot of rye. Rudy was talking on the phone when I got back.

  “Hey, skipper,” he greeted me. “Professor Linacre’s called to talk to you about — guess what — fish poison.”

  I lunged at my phone. “Shenstone here.”

  “I talked to a fish man named Keller. He named two toxins, practically indistinguishable. They are …” In the brief pause, I could hear paper rustling; then Linacre’s flat, calm voice came back on the line. “Yes, saxitoxin, which under certain conditions accumulates in shellfish, and tetrodotoxin, which accumulates in certain organs of the pufferfish.”

  I got the professor to spell the two toxins.

  “None of my criminological sources mention these poisons,” he said, “which leads me to believe they have never been identified in a murder case. Are we dealing with murder, Shenstone?”

  “Yes, sir. The deceased never ate fish voluntarily, and so wouldn’t have had it for lunch.”

  “Keller believes these are the strongest poisons known to science. If she’d ingested even a few milligrams of either of these substances at noon, she wouldn’t have survived till mid-afternoon, let alone evening. If she ingested any during the evening, she’d have been dead before she toppled to the floor. I’m giving Keller the vomit samples to analyze, but that’ll take a few days and he’s not promising definitive results. In the meantime, I’d guess you’re dealing with the puffer. Tetrodotoxin is reliably found to be present in the liver and ovaries, whereas with saxitoxin it’s hit and miss, depending mainly on whether the shellfish in question has been exposed to something called red tide.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Certain reddish algae that appear in the ocean in high concentrations from time to time. Ask a marine biologist if you need more. But my bet is the pufferfish — also called fugu — always poisonous irrespective of time and tide, and yet safely edible if properly prepared; therefore, commercially available.”

  “Where, Professor Linacre?”

  “Keller says they’re chiefly eaten in the Orient — China, Korea, Japan. Whether they can be bought in Toronto, I leave to you coppers to discover. I’d search first the fish shops in Asian neighbourhoods.”

  “Before I let you go, sir, you told me you’d found crumbs of chocolate cookies in the deceased’s knapsack. Could they have been brownie crumbs instead?”

  “All I could identify in the crumbs was chocolate. It could have been brownies she was eating. When I said cookies, I suppose I was speaking loosely.”

  “That would be a first.”

  “One more thing, Shenstone. It should be possible to extract th
e tetrodotoxin from the puffer without bringing the fishy odour with it. Your murderer wasn’t a scientist, it seems. He must just have hacked out of the beast one or two organs and chopped them up. Good thing too or we’d never have known the lady was the victim of foul play.”

  I said I appreciated Linacre’s call — which was putting it mildly. The university should have named a building after him.

  Talking to the professor had left me restless and frustrated. I couldn’t start checking fish stores till tomorrow. In the meantime, I gritted my teeth and got down to the drudgery of typing up my notes on the case so far. I was expecting that in the morning Sanderson would open a formal investigation and assign additional detectives to carry it out, so I made a couple of carbon copies to help brief my colleagues. That done, the copies all sorted and stapled, I couldn’t think what to do with myself. I called the Daily Dispatch on the off chance that Ruth Stone might be sitting at her Remington as well, writing up a story for Monday’s edition. She was.

  “Hey, Paul.” Her voice sounded playful, but she got straight to business. “You have a crime scoop?”

  I didn’t really. I couldn’t announce a murder investigation until I’d spoken to the inspector, and it wouldn’t have been prudent to tell the public, including the murderer, about my interest in tetrodotoxin.

  “I have some free time,” I said. “I thought if I could tear you away from your labours, we could go to an art gallery.”

  “You know any that open Sunday night?”

  “How about dinner?”

  “I brought something from home. I have to file this advice-to-the-lovelorn column tonight.”

  I imagined her pushing her wild red hair back from her face as she talked.

  “Work, Paul. You know what that is?” Once again, she didn’t leave me time to respond. “Call me any time you’ve got something for me.”

  “I’ll come by the newsroom right away and we can flirt a little.”

  “I’ll punch you in the eye.”