Murder by the Book (21 page)

Pamela North snapped her fingers. She said, “Of
course
. How stupid of me.”

They both looked at her, both with surprise. Jefferson's surprise was, in fact, close to astonishment. Even as he was explaining it, and more with each word of explanation, it had seemed a pretty cockeyed notion. And here Mrs. North was—

“You mean to say,” Jerry said, “you think this—this elaborate conspiracy—and it's full of holes anyway—is—”

“Oh,” Pam said. “That.” She shrugged her shoulders, and it occurred to Jefferson that she shrugged “that” from them. “No.” She looked at Jefferson. “Not,” she said, “that it isn't very ingenious. But …”

She stood up.

“I think,” Pam North said, “that the first thing we'd better do is go to the library. Just to make sure. I think we'd all better go.”

They looked at her, neither rising.

“Come
on,”
Pam said. “I'll tell you on the way.”

They stood up.

“Listen,” Jerry said. “Just one thing. Has this anything to do with the Hippocratic oath?”

“Oh,” Pam said, “not directly, of course. I don't suppose there's anything about it in that. It just got mixed up with that. In the dream, you know.”

Jerry felt that he was in one.…

The woman at the reference desk was small and spare and severe. She reminded Jerry of an English teacher who, many years ago, had taken the dimmest possible view of hanging participles and of many things, including, he had always felt, Gerald North. The same rimless eyeglasses; the same frosty gaze through them. Jerry felt himself shrinking into boyhood.

“We want a poison book,” Pam said. It might, Jerry thought, have been “We want a cookbook.” Miss—what had been the name? Miss Reid, that was it. Miss Reid would not have approved.

The librarian repeated, “A poison book?” and she sounded like Miss Reid—precise, but frosty. (As if an infinitive had wantonly been split.)

Jerry stood on one side of Pam at the counter; Deputy Sheriff Ronald Jefferson stood on her other side. The librarian looked at Jefferson. She said “Ronald?” as to a smallish boy. (A boy who had left a verb out of a sentence.)

Jefferson said, “Yes'm, Miss Phipps. This is Mrs. North. And Mr. North.”

Miss Phipps did not say, “Indeed?” She merely looked “Indeed?”

She said, “A
poison
book?”

Jefferson looked at Gerald North, who quit revising long-ago themes and returned to the present.

“Toxicology,” he said. “A book on pathology.”

Miss Phipps said, “Really,” putting the word at the end of a long pole. She looked again at Ronald Jefferson. He said, “Please, Miss Phipps.”

“‘Legal Medicine, Pathology and Toxicology,'” Miss Phipps said. “By Gonzales, Vance, Helpern and Umberger.”
^*

“That,” Jerry said, “sounds fine.”

“I suppose so,” Miss Phipps said. “If you wish to sign for it, Ronald.”

Ronald Jefferson said, “Surely.”

It was a solid book, in greenish boards. They put it on a table and pulled chairs around it, and Pam opened it at random. She opened it, unfortunately, to a photographic illustration entitled: “Multiple suicidal stab wounds administered with a pocket knife.” Pam said, “Ugh,” and turned quickly to the index. She returned, this time with caution, to Page 833. There was no illustration on Page 833. (There was a small illustration on the facing page, which had to do with sulfadiazine crystals, but it was not especially alarming.)

“Digitalis,” Pam read, keeping her voice at low, or library, pitch. “Powdered leaves of
Digitalis
something I can't pronounce or foxglove. And so forth and so forth. And—here.” She pointed a finger. Jerry and Ronald Jefferson read, each over a Pam North shoulder:

“The symptoms of digitalis poisoning are slowing of the heart beat, 25 to 40 per minute, nausea, persistent vomiting, thirst, abdominal pain, suppression of urine, diarrhea, roaring in the ears, disturbance of vision, headache, hallucinations and delirium. Later the heart action becomes rapid and irregular, and is accompanied by dyspnea and collapse. Death may occur in convulsions and coma, or sudden cardiac failure may supervene.”

“More or less what Doc Meister—” Jefferson said.

“Up to a point,” Jerry said, at the same time, “the same symptoms from food poisoning or just a violent—”

Pam's finger moved on down the page. It stopped and tapped its nail.

“Fatal cases of digitalis poisoning are rare with fractionated doses since vomiting and diarrhea would tend to prevent further absorption,” they read, and the moving finger descended the page and tapped again. “Fatalities are more apt to occur after intravenous injection of large dose of digitalis or strophanthin. In fatal poisoning death may occur after 1 or 2 days or not until 5 to 13 days have elapsed.”

“Intravenous,” Jefferson said. “It still could have been—Dr. Piersal could have made—It's probably the sort of drug doctors carry in their bags for—”

Pam turned the page, and again her finger moved down it; again the finger stopped, and the pink nail tapped.

“The determination of digitalis poisoning at autopsy presents great difficulties in the absence of a history revealing the quantity of the drug administered.… If death occurred as a result of an overdose of digitalis during its therapeutic administration for heart disease, this could hardly be established at autopsy.”

They read on, although there was not much further on to read. Pam did say, “How awful,” but that was when she read that cats were used, along with frogs, “to standardize preparation of digitalis for medicinal use.”

“I'm sorry even about frogs,” Pam said, “but
cats—”

She closed the book, putting Drs. Gonzales, Vance, Helpern and Umberger in their places. Then she turned to face the two men and said, “Well?”

“It's still more or less what Dr. Meister said,” Jefferson said, and spoke slowly. “Except—a fractionated dose could be a tablet, I suppose?”

They both supposed it could.

“Dr. Piersal could, I suppose, have made a mistake,” Jerry said, and heard no conviction in his own voice. “It only says that fatal cases are ‘rare' from fractionated doses. Not that they—”

It occurred to him that both Pam and Deputy Sheriff Jefferson had already read what he was about to remember for them.

“And Dr. Piersal could have injected the stuff intentionally,” Pam said. “And we can find other bushes to beat around. But—Mr. Jefferson, Dr. Upton did say he'd given his wife her usual shot of insulin before he left Saturday morning.”

“Yes.”

“And Dr. Meister said she probably was taking insulin twice a day? So she probably gave herself another injection in the evening?”

“I suppose so. But we've nothing really to—”

“Oh,” Pam said, “yes. Enough to start, I think.”

They returned the book to Miss Phipps, who sniffed slightly and took it to an apparently distant shelf. They went out into the heat of late afternoon.

They went to Jefferson's office. It was hot, but it was private, and there were chairs to sit on.

There was also a message from the New York Police Department. The Seaboard's “Silver Comet” had arrived, more or less on time. If Mrs. Peter Coleman was on it, they had missed her on the dark arrival platforms. If she had been on it, she had declined to respond to paging on the public address system. Detectives had ridden on with the empty train to the Sunnyside yards, and Pullman porters were being questioned. Sometimes they remember passengers and sometimes they don't, and most often it is merely “maybe.”

“Everything ends up in the air,” Jefferson said, morosely.

They considered this for some time in silence. It was Pam who broke the silence.

“There's something we could try,” Pam said. “It isn't very ethical, but murder isn't either. Suppose—”

*
And published by Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc. New York.

16

Dr. Tucker Upton, asked if he could spare a few minutes, was resigned to it—his whole attitude was, Ronald Jefferson thought, one of almost numb resignation. Nothing mattered much, one way or the other. He said the autopsy was taking a long time and added, “For something which will come to nothing.” Jefferson apologized for that; said that the pathologist had been delayed in getting started; added that Dr. Meister was getting along in years and probably wasn't as fast as he had been. He was also very thorough, a man not to be hurried.

“It doesn't matter,” Upton said, in the tone of a man to whom nothing mattered. “I've canceled appointments for the rest of the week. It's only—well, it's the sort of thing one wants over.”

Jefferson understood that. He was sorry to bother the doctor again. But—

“It's the Piersal business,” he said. “It's still got us licked. Got me licked. I guess I need all the help I can get.”

“Anything I can do,” Dr. Upton said. “I can't imagine what. I didn't know him, except by reputation. I keep telling you that.”

But there was still resignation, not asperity, in his voice.

“It's in connection with his treating your wife,” Jefferson said, and Dr. Upton sighed and said, “Not that again, surely. We went over that.”

They were in Paul Grogan's private office, which was air-conditioned. Even now, at nine in the evening, the air-conditioning was welcome.

“Something new's come—” Jefferson said, and there was knocking at the closed door. “Yes?” Jefferson said.

It was Pam North who opened the door. Jerry North was behind her. Pam said that Mr. Grogan had said he wanted to see them.

“Yes,” Jefferson said. And, to Dr. Upton, “Hope you don't mind, doctor.”

Upton's expression remained that of a man who didn't mind anything, and wasn't much interested in anything.

“Mr. and Mrs. North,” Jefferson said. “Mr. North's connected with the New York police. Unofficially, that is. I've been—call it picking his brains. And his wife's. Mind if they sit in, doctor?” To the Norths, “This is Dr. Upton.”

Upton said, “Why should I mind?”

Pam said, “We were so sorry about—” and Upton nodded his head slowly, cutting that off. A man who had had enough of that, of all that was obvious and didn't matter.

The office was large. Jefferson sat behind Grogan's desk and Upton at the end of it. Pam and Jerry sat on a leather-covered sofa. The air-conditioning unit hummed softly. Over it, through the closed windows and faintly, there was sound of music from the patio.

“This has turned up,” Jefferson said, and took an envelope out of his pocket. “Missed it the first time.” He handed the envelope, which was empty, to Dr. Upton, who looked at it. It was addressed to Dr. Edmund Piersal, at The Coral Isles; it was postmarked New York. “Other side,” Jefferson said, and Upton turned it over. “Seems to be about your wife, doctor.”

There were penciled notations on the back of the envelope. Upton looked at them carefully; looked several times. Then he looked up at Deputy Sheriff Jefferson and waited.

“Made a copy,” Jefferson said, and took a sheet of paper from his pocket and laid it on the desk in front of him. “Thought we might go over it together. Doesn't make much sense to me. But it does seem to be about your wife. ‘Re Mrs. U.'”

“It would seem to be,” Dr. Upton said, and again read the notations on the back of the envelope. “You're back on that, sheriff? That Piersal did something wrong and killed himself because of that?”

His voice didn't change much. It did suggest weary surprise, but, with it, forbearance.

“To be honest,” Jefferson said, “we're up in the air.”

He did, Pam thought, sound very honest indeed; very much like a man up in the air.

Jefferson studied the notations in front of him. The lines he studied read:

“Re Mrs. U. Sl ovds dig? Symp comp. 9 pm impr inj ins her req hs prep hypo ck hs dos dig.”

“‘Re Mrs. U.'” Jefferson said. “That's clear enough, isn't it?”

He looked at Dr. Upton for agreement; Upton was studying the notations, but nodded his head.

“In the other notes,” Jefferson said, “‘sl' meant slow. Anyway, we thought it did. But ‘sl ovds dig' with a question mark. Slow what would you guess, doctor?”

Dr. Upton evidently gave the matter thought.

“Looks,” Jefferson said, “like he was guessing about something, doesn't it?”

“It could be,” Upton said, after a further pause, “that he was speculating as to whether my poor wife had taken a slight overdose of digitalis. She told him she was taking it. The ‘symp comp' could mean symptoms compatible, of course. They would be, to some degree. Nausea. Slowing of the heart beat.”

“That's probably it,” Jefferson said. “It had us licked.” He turned to the Norths. He said, “See? I figured he would help us.”

“Only,” Pam said, discouragement in her tone, “it doesn't seem to get us any place, does it?”

“Guess not,” Jefferson said. “She was taking digitalis, doctor?”

“As I told you,” Upton said. “One fifteen-hundredth of a milligram tablet a day. Maintenance dose. Couldn't harm her.”

“If she got confused. Took more.”

“Throw it up,” Upton said. “Before it did any real harm.”

Jefferson sighed. He said he guessed they weren't getting anywhere. However—

“The next thing,” he said. “‘9 pm impr.' Suppose that means he went back at nine Saturday evening and found her improved?”

“Could mean that,” Dr. Upton said. “Would have been, I'd think. Probably half asleep. Dramamine does that, in large enough doses.”

“The next? ‘Inj ins her req?' If that's a grouping.”

“Probably,” Upton said, “she asked him to give her the shot of insulin which was due about then. I told you, she hated to do it herself.” He sighed. “The poor thing,” he said. “The poor, unhappy woman. Knew she had to have it to stay alive and—and dreaded it so she'd sometimes—well, she'd say she forgot it.” He sighed again. “Lots of people are like that,” he said. “If patients do half what you tell them to do …”