Corpus Corpus

by H. Paul Jeffers

  "He certainly was shot, but that wasn't the cause of death."

  The guests gasped and exchanged incredulous looks.

  'Janus was poisoned with a mixture of yellow oleander, yew, and nicotine," Bogdanovic continued as they quieted. "This stuff had been distilled into a concentrate that precipitated a heart attack. It was quite ingenious. The taste and aroma of the poison blended perfectly with the very strong flavor of Janus's private stock of Havanas. He preferred oscuros. Very strong."

  "What a brilliant concept," exclaimed Wiggins. "Because Theo never shared his Cubans, there was no chance that anyone but Theo would light up the lethal stogie. By the way, Sergeant B., how did the poison get into the cigar?"

  "It was injected with a thin syringe like diabetics use."

  "Wouldn't a lot of that mixture be required to spike a whole box of Janus's cigars?" Wiggins asked.

  "Examination and testing of the cigars showed that only three had been poisoned."

  "You said the poison was injected," Wiggins said. "I know from personal experience that Theo inspected his cigars carefully for flaws. It seems to me he would have found such a puncture and thrown away that cigar."

  "The injection was made in the part of the cigar covered by the band. The killer knew that Janus never removed the band when he smoked. The bands were removed, injections made, and the bands put back on."

  "To do all that," said Judge Simmons as though he were on the bench, "the killer would have to gain access to the cigars. This would require knowledge of Janus's domestic arrangements and habits. For the cigars to be poisoned, the killer had to know where to find them, and to be certain that Janus would be away at the time they were being tampered with."

  "I am talking of an individual capable of careful study and planning, and someone with a motive so powerful that he was willing to go to great lengths to attain his goal."

  "It seems to me that the culprit in your scenario," Simmons went on, "is intelligent and not without a keenly developed sense of humor. You must concede there is a delicious irony in Theodore Janus's being murdered with one of his cigars."

  "As ever, Your Honor, you grasp the essence of the matter. The murderer was someone who knew Janus very well, who possessed cunning and wit, and who had access to the cigars. All of this required, as you have so apdy pointed out, a powerful motive. But, as I noted, the murderer was an individual of almost boundless willingness to bide his time. You might even say that the killer had the patience of. . . a judge."

  Simmons's gaunt face went ghostly white. "This is outrageous! I demand you retract that groundless accusation, Sergeant."

  "Groundless? I don't think so, sir. Who has a more powerful motive for murder than a judge whose reputation was sullied by a humiliating reversal in a high-profile case that was expected to be remembered in the history of jurisprudence as the capstone of a long and otherwise distinguished career on the bench?"

  "What utter nonsense! If you don't apologize for this slander immediately, you'll be hearing from my attorney."

  Goldstein grunted. "You know the laws of libel, Reginald. Sergeant Bogdanovic is speaking as a police officer. As long as he is carrying out his sworn duty, he is protected. Besides, I'm not aware that he has accused you of anything."

  "Your point about access to Janus's cigars is well taken, Judge Simmons," Bogdanovic continued. "There is no doubt that the killer had to gain access to them. This could only have been done in two places. Either the killer got into Janus's automobile and a small humidor he kept in the glove compartment, or he'd visited Janus at his ranch. I believe the former is unlikely."

  Pendelton said, "I don't see why."

  "The only time the Rolls could have been entered was when it was parked in a public place. If Janus left the humidor in the car, it was because he expected to return shortly. I incline to credit the killer with not wishing to run the risk of being seen breaking into the Rolls, especially if Janus might come back. If the car had been left for a lengthier period, such as in a long-term parking area of an airport, Janus would take the humidor with him. That is why I concluded that the poisoned cigar Janus smoked on the night he died had been taken from the pocket case he had on him at the dinner. Therefore, the cigar that killed him had to have been brought from his home. It follows that either the cigar had been poisoned in the house in Janus's absence or brought to the house and given to Janus by the killer, possibly as a gift."

  "Pardon me, Sergeant B.," Wiggins said. "Nobody pays a visit to a cigar aficionado's home and brings only one cigar as a gift. He brings a box of cigars."

  "I can't agree with that, Wiggins," asserted Nick Stamos. "I had an occasion to visit Janus at his ranch last year on a business matter. But I had only two Cohibas on hand at the time, so I took one along for myself and gave him the other."

  "What did Janus do with his?" Bogdanovic asked.

  "What do you think he did with it? He smoked it!"

  "Of course he did, as he would have done with any cigar he'd been given. It would be an insult if a man stuck a gift cigar in his pocket for later. Someone with enough knowledge of cigars to know how to go about poisoning one would also appreciate cigar etiquette. He would know that if he presented Janus one cigar he would light it up immediately, as he did with yours, Nick."

  "I'm glad I didn't give him a whole box," Stamos said with a smile. "Otherwise, you might suspect me of killing him."

  "You could have given him a box of poisoned cigars at another time. You certainly had a motive to murder him."

  "Ridiculous. I had no cause to kill him."

  "Not true. You had two million reasons."

  Stamos laughed scoffingly. "That matter was on its way to being resolved to my complete satisfaction."

  Bogdanovic asked, "What about you, Ariadne? Were you satisfied?"

  "What a charmer you are, Sergeant," she said through an icy smile. "You may have been born in Brooklyn, but your thinking is stricdy Balkan in nature. Anyway, I know nothing about cigars."

  "Your husband does. And you both travel regularly to places where Cuban cigars are available. I assume it would be easy for a box or two of Havanas to be smuggled into the country aboard one of Nick's ships, even his yacht, as readily, for instance, as a shipment of heroin."

  "I am not the only person in this room with a yacht, and a motive to kill Janus," Stamos objected. "Have you considered a certain retired admiral?"

  The stately figure of Trevor Home jerked as if it were a puppet whose strings had been pulled. "See here, Nicky. That is a contemptible suggestion."

  "There is the troubling matter of Janus's law suit against you, Admiral," Bogdanovic said quietly. "And you do take your vacations in Bermuda. Cuban cigars have always been sold there."

  "I'm not alone in choosing Bermuda for vacationing," Home retorted. "Are you aware that James Hamilton has a condo there?"

  "I am indeed, Admiral."

  "Are you also aware that James Hamilton despised Janus so much that he tried to stop Wiggins from pushing through the plan to give Janus the Nero Wolfe Award, and when he did not succeed, boycotted the Black Orchid dinner?"

  "I am also aware that Mr. Hamilton has chosen not to attend this Christmas party."

  "I can explain that," Henry interjected. "There is nothing at all sinister about it. He is down with the flu. But really, Sergeant, I think your story hour has gone too far. You appear to suspect everyone here of murdering Theo. I hope you will forgive me for saying it, but I have the impression from all this casting about that you have no idea as to who killed Theo."

  "Well, you know what Nero Wolfe said: Any spoke will lead an ant to the hub.' In this case, the spokes were the cigars in a box of Cubans from which Janus selected the last he would smoke. There had been three poisoned cigars in the box. The question for me was not only how they came to be laced with that deadly mixture, but where, when, and how Janus had obtained them. They were Cohiba esplendidos, purchased at Dunhill's in London."

  "Of course they were," said
Oscar Pendelton, impatiently. "When he went to London, he always bought several boxes of Cubans at Dunhill's. So did I."

  "When were you last in London, Oscar?"

  "In January."

  "Do you know when Janus was there last?" "I have no idea."

  "I do. I checked his appointment calendar and his passport. He was there October a year ago, a few weeks before he went to California to do battle with Maggie Dane. He purchased four boxes of his usual Cohiba esplendidos. I know this because I spoke by phone to his tobacconist."

  "Proving again that you are a meticulous detective," said Oscar, "Everyone in this room knows his favorite cigar was the Cohiba esplendido. He was never without them."

  "He kept the bands on while he smoked them," Henry said in an exasperated tone, "so everyone would know they were from Cuba."

  "You are wrong that Janus was never without his Cohibas, Oscar," Bogdanovic said. "He was out of them at least once that I know of. He smoked his last one after dinner with Maggie in Los Angeles. Yet, he was smoking one at the time he died and he had a nearly full box of them in his office. So where did he get them?"

  "Someone must have bought them for him," said Pendleton.

  "Very good, Oscar! But they were not bought at his behest. Those cigars were a gift from the person who visited him at the ranch."

  "Hold on there, Sergeant B.," bellowed Wiggins. "I went to see Theo at the ranch, as you well know, but I did not take him a box of poison-laced Cuban cigars. He had a humidor full. He offered me one."

  "Lucky for you that you didn't take it. Marian would have had to find another Santa Claus."

  'Just a minute! If Janus had been given a box of cigars by this mysterious visitor," said Wiggins, "how come he didn't smoke a deadly one before Saturday night?"

  "Pure chance. As I said, only three of the cigars had been taken from the box, poisoned, and replaced. Now, this is speculation on my part, but I can't see the killer putting the three at the very top of the box and thereby running the risk that Janus would take one out, smoke it, and drop dead then and there. This very clever murderer was content to have Janus smoke a poisoned cigar at his leisure. The killer also assumed that the cause of death would be attributed to a heart attack, as it might have been at the autopsy had Janus not been shot after he was dead and the very observant medical examiner, Dr. Hassan Awini, not noticed something odd about the gunshot wound. For Awini, the lack of blood was the spoke. The hub was a cardiac glycoside by the name of thevetin, found in yellow oleander, and an alkaloid taxine from the yew tree. Plus a hefty dose of concentrated nicotine."

  "It's enough to make me consider giving up my pipe," said Wiggins with a forced shudder. "But on the other hand, Sherlock Holmes is alive, well, and keeping bees in Sussex."

  "The news that Janus had been killed with a gun," said Nick Stamos, "and that awful photograph in the Graphic, must have been a shock to the person who expected to kill him with a cigar."

  With an abrupt turn toward Henry, Bogdanovic said, "Perhaps Marian would care to tell us what she felt."

  Henry gave a surprised laugh. "Cheated."

  "MY NEXT EMOTION was anxiety," Henry continued. "I wondered if the police faked that photograph in the Graphic as part of a scheme to lull Theo's murderer into a sense of security."

  "We're not that smart, Marian," Goldstein declared.

  "It was a reasonable deduction," Henry said. "That the photo appeared only in the Graphic struck me as peculiar. It occurred to me that it might have been planted. I had to know."

  "Hence the invitation to Chief Goldstein, Maggie, and me to this party," Bogdanovic said. "You hoped that one of us might let you in on what was really going on in the investigation."

  "It was obviously an error in judgment that ranks up there with Nixon's refusal to burn the White House tapes."

  "You made several errors in judgment, Marian," Bogdanovic said, severely. "The first was your decision to kill Janus. If you had a grievance, you ought to have gone to court. The second mistake was using poisoned cigars."

  "I had to, Sergeant. I'm terrified of firearms."

  Goldstein asked, "Why did you want to kill him?"

  "I don't see that it matters. You're not obliged to present a motive to a jury."

  "That's true, Marian," Dane said, "but jurors have read so many mystery novels and seen so many courtroom dramas, fictional and real, that they always expect to hear one."

  "I assure you they would not hear a tale of a woman being driven to murder by love, hate, greed, revenge, or an unbalanced mind. I am afraid they would find my motive unfathomable."

  "I am confident," Bogdanovic said, "that a woman who writes the country's most popular books is able to explain anything."

  Henry sipped a glass of scotch. "Long before I'd met you, Sergeant, I knew of your reputation for solving complicated cases. You do not disappoint. If anyone might understand my motive, it's you."

  "Thank you. I take that as high praise." "Oh it is, Sergeant." "About your motive . . ."

  "It evolved, beginning with the trial in which Theo pulled trick after trick out of his hat to thwart Maggie and frustrate justice. At some point in the proceedings I received a phone call from Oscar. He astonished me by asking if I would be interested in doing a book on the case. I told him I would love to, but that I was a fiction writer. But Oscar pointed out that what the definitive book about the case needed was a novelist's touch. With our verbal handshake, Oscar's firm put out a press release announcing that I would write the book on the case."

  "That's all true, Sergeant," Pendelton exclaimed.

  "But there was soon a hitch," Henry said.

  Looking pained, Pendleton sighed. "I'll say there was."

  "Shortly after Theo returned to New York," Henry went on, "he invited me to his ranch. He demanded that I cancel my book. He said he did not want it competing with the one he was planning. He said that if I did not agree to abandon my project, he would tie up poor Oscar and me in litigation. He acted like a schoolyard bully. I recognized that it would be futile to argue with him. I told him I would meet with Oscar and cancel our deal as soon as I returned from a trip to London. But as I thought about all of this while I was away, I began to view the situation as if it were the plot of a novel. This amused me so much that I found myself thinking of a method by which the murder of a man might be mistaken as a death by natural causes. I knew about Theo's heart condition, of course, so the obvious way to kill him would be to somehow precipitate a heart attack. Then the question was how. The inkling of an answer came to me one evening as I was having dinner at the Sherlock Holmes Pub when a gentleman at the next table asked me if I would object if he smoked a cigar. Naturally, I did not. But as I watched him enjoying his postprandial smoke, I came up with the exciting prospect of poisoning one of Theo's cigars. Later that evening, I reasoned that the only way I might achieve that goal was to poison an entire box of cigars. The next day I went to Dunhill's. I knew it was Theo's tobacconist in London because I'd bought cigars for him there on previous trips. I asked the sales clerk for a box of Theo's favorite cigars." "Cohiba esplendidos," Bogdanovic said.

  "Yes. My next challenge was twofold: how to poison them and with what substance."

  "You found the answer to the latter problem in your garden."

  "Quite right, Sergeant. Then I got a book on cigars that explained how they were made. I visited a quaint shop in Union City where a lovely old expatriate Cuban demonstrated how handmade cigars are produced. Fascinating! A true art! That was how I learned that in a premium cigar the end that goes in the mouth has to be cut open. This was a crucial discovery, because I had formed a plan to inject a poison into the tips of Theo's cigars. I saw immediately that Theo might notice a puncture. I confirmed this by inserting a needle into several of the cigars that I bought from the man in Union City. The holes I made were quite plain to see. To test my hypothesis, I visited several of the cigar rooms that seem to have sprouted everywhere. In observing the rituals of men smoking cigars
, I found to a man that they did, indeed, examine their cigars before trimming them. I also noticed that some of the men removed the bands and others did not. I learned from one man that the on-or-off issue is quite a controversy. As it happened, he preferred the band off. In demonstrating how easily one can be removed, he expressed his opinion that smokers who did not remove them were nothing but show-offs who needed everyone to know that they smoked only the best cigars, meaning the most expensive brands. He ventured that the prime example of this phenomenon was invariably found in those who smoked Cuban cigars, because of the distinctive black and gold bands. I left him knowing exactly how to poison Theo's cigars without fear of his becoming suspicious. And I knew where to get poison that would not be detected."

  "That was another error. The substances you chose narrowed the field of suspects considerably. Very few people are familiar with the toxic qualities of yellow oleander and the yew tree. Those are exotic touches one expects to find in mystery novels. The wreath on your front door contains yew branches and leaves."

  "In literature, Sergeant, that flaw is known as hubris. It is also a fault in gardeners. My compliments on your powers of observation and your knowledge of plants."

  "I'm afraid that when it comes to knowing about agriculture, I looked up yellow oleander and yew in a book on poisons."

  'Just to be sure I have all this straight," said Goldstein, "your motive for killing Janus was to prevent him from suing to stop you from writing a book?"

  Pendelton answered, "By suing, Janus would have tied Marian and me up in the details of litigation. The result would have been to delay the publication of her book long enough for his to hit the bookstores first. It was the preemptive strike of an author who was also a lawyer."

  "Be that as it may, Oscar," Bogdanovic said, "I don't buy it as a motive for murder. It certainly is not what I'd expect to read in the final chapter of a Marian Pickering Henry novel."

  "Approximately two million dollars were at stake."

  "I can see how millions of dollars in royalties could be a powerful motive for an ordinary author," Bogdanovic replied. "Certainly it makes sense for a publisher. Or even for a Greek shipping tycoon, or his wife," he continued, turning and bowing slightly in the direction of Nick and Ariadne Stamos. "I can see someone killing out of revenge. A judge who felt his reputation had been besmirched, for example. But I find it difficult to accept the proposition that Marian Pickering Henry murdered to ensure herself a little more income. It is my impression that she has more than she could ever spend."