The Clairvoyant Countess (20 page)

“Every minute counts,” she told him. “Tepid water and a tablespoonful of this powdered mustard. She’ll need a stomach pump, you’ve called an ambulance?”

Pruden nodded. Lister was already bringing a glass of water. “Barely warm,” he said.

“Spoon,” said Madame Karitska.

Cas Johnson brought a spoon. They propped up Mrs. Larkin while Madame Karitska stirred the mustard into the water. Mrs. Larkin, opening her eyes, said very
clearly and indignantly, “That green tiger is no good, I tell you, put it under the microscope and shrink it, it has to be done.” She opened her lips to the emetic, swallowed, gagged, gasped, and by the time they forced the rest down her throat the ambulance was pulling into the yard.

They sat in Lister’s office, Pruden, Madame Karitska, and Jake Bellam from the police lab. “In America,” Bellam said, “thorn apple is more familiarly known as Jimson weed. It’s a narcotic. The kids fool with the leaves once in a while and occasionally you hear of a death, but it’s never received the publicity that LSD or marijuana have.

“The seeds,” he continued, “are the
really
poisonous part of the plant, although you can get dilation of the pupils just from handling the leaves. The seeds you can boil and you can dry but nothing dilutes their poison.”

He picked up the jar of instant coffee, poured some of it into his hand, and shook his head. “The other jar was only 30 per cent Jimson weed but this one—” He poured some of it into the palm of his hand. “As
you can see, it’s pure Jimson-weed seed. This is the one Mrs. Larkin must have made her coffee with. I see maybe a few grains of instant coffee but most of it’s been replaced by the seeds.”

Pruden shivered. “They look so much alike.”

“Not really,” Bellam said, “but when you open up a jar labeled instant coffee you assume the grains in it are coffee. There’s a superficial resemblance but the instant’s coffee’s lighter brown. Your freeze-dried grains have the same weight, a shade chunkier perhaps, and with sharp edges instead of round. Still, to the casual glance—even to a not-so-casual glance—it would resemble coffee.”

“Random killings,” said Madame Karitska musingly, and lifted her glance to Pruden.

“The worst kind,” Bellam said. “Aimed at no one in particular, which takes you into very deep psychological territory.”

Pruden looked doubtful. “Unless a young child, a very young child—”

“Always possible,” agreed Bellam. “Very young children fantasize—turn mud pies into real pies, make doll pillows out of thistledown and tea out of sugar and water. He or she could think these seeds are coffee and helpfully put them in a jar of coffee. But that’s your department,” he said rising. “You’ve rescued Mrs. Larkin in time, and you’ve found your poison. I’ll take this jar with me, Lieutenant, have it labeled and tucked away safely for you. All I can say is—good luck.”

When he had gone Pruden looked at Madame Karitska and smiled wryly. “My work is just beginning but at least they can’t blame this one on Mrs. Trumbull. Any suggestions?”

“Yes,” said Madame Karitska firmly. “Begin with those three young people who were sitting on the steps of the Dunlap house on Monday.”

“The two Dunlaps and Joe Lister junior? I suppose one has to begin somewhere,” he said thoughtfully. With a sharp glance he added, “Any particular reason?”

Her smile was dazzling. “There are always particular reasons but I am not a policeman. I find confusing threads here but perhaps you can explain them. First the motive, which is important, but there is also the astonishment to me that with this coffee so accessible there haven’t been more people poisoned.”

“Lister pretty much explained that,” said Pruden. “He himself drinks Coke most of the time. Cas Johnson prefers tea and brings his own tea bags with him—except when he forgets. Lister says that really nobody drinks the coffee except when the Coke machine’s empty.” He added bitterly, “We’ve had unseasonably hot weather lately. The Coke machine ran out last weekend and delivery isn’t due until tomorrow, and then of course there were
two
instant-coffee jars to choose from.…”

“Like Russian roulette,” mused Madame Karitska. “Very diabolical, actually. The person who could conceive of this deliberately would have no reverence for life at all, I think, since another human being means no more than the blade of grass he or she walks on. This person would be incapable of suffering.”

Pruden stared at her. “
Incapable of suffering?
What a strange way to put it! Surely mad?”

“Oh but my dear Lieutenant,” she said sadly, “a human being incapable of suffering is viciously crippled. We may reject suffering but just think what we would
be without it! There would be no empathy, no compassion, no remorse, and above all no growth. To have feelings so blocked, to be lacking in any sense of tragedy—” She shook her head. “What is left but hatred?”

“I’d still vote for insanity if this turns out to be premeditated murder.”

“Insanity,” she said, “is only a
word.
”

Pruden nodded. “Okay, I’ll accept that.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “School should be ending about now and in half an hour the neighborhood will be humming. I’ll begin by questioning those three young people and then I’ll—”

Madame Karitska gently interrupted him. “If I might make a suggestion, there is, I think, a little experiment you might perform, a little drama you might play out that could get to the heart of the matter without any waste of time.…”

The three sat on up-ended wooden crates just outside the rear door to the garage and regarded Pruden with varying emotions. Kathy Dunlap’s eyes were eager; Birch Dunlap looked sulky but undeniably curious; and Joe Lister junior suspicious. Pruden had caught them as they descended from the school bus; their schoolbooks lay beside them.

“I asked for a few minutes of your time because I wanted to make an appeal to you three, as leaders in the neighborhood,” began Pruden, and turning over an empty barrel he sat down facing them. “I’ve just told you what happened to Mrs. Larkin. We have no idea how she came to be poisoned, or with what she was poisoned; we only know she stood in this doorway
trying to frame the word
Help
, and she had pretty much the same reactions as you did, Kathy.”

“Wow,” said Kathy, her eyes wide.

“So we have to conclude that the poison’s somewhere in this neighborhood and we need your help.”

“How, sir?” asked Birch. “You know we’ll do anything we can.”

“Count me in too,” said Joe junior, nodding.

“And me,” added Kathy.

“We need—the Coke machine’s empty?” he said to Madame Karitska in surprise.

“Yes, what a pity after you gave me all those quarters,” she told him. “But the water’s boiling for coffee, I’ll pour everyone some coffee instead. Three coffees coming up.”

“Good, because we have to get down to brass tacks on this. We have to figure out a plan.”

Young Joe Lister said uneasily, “Look here, you make it sound as if somebody could be going around doing this deliberately. I mean, that maybe it’s not an accident?”

“Could be,” said Pruden judiciously. “Could be. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He accepted a cup of coffee from Madame Karitska’s tray, added a spoonful of sugar and thanked her.

“I don’t really like coffee,” Kathy Dunlap said, “but if you have lots of milk it tastes like coffee ice cream.”

“There’s lots of milk,” Madame Karitska told her, handing her the milk pitcher, and moved on to Joe Lister junior.

Joe hesitated, then reached for a cup and rejected sugar and milk.

“Birch?” said Madame Karitska.

He took a cup absently, his eyes on Pruden. “Is what Joe says possible?” he asked. “I mean, that it’s murder?”

“You have here a pattern of random incidents,” said Pruden, “that add up to—” He paused to watch Kathy Dunlap lift the cup to her lips and drink. “Add up to more than coincidences, maybe. First you have illnesses, and then the tragic death of—Too hot for you, Joe?” he asked.

Joe looked down at his coffee and said, “No, I was just listening to you.”

“Have some.”

“Sure. You mean Julie’s death.”

“Julie’s death was rotten,” Birch said angrily. “If it turns out to be a murder then I’d sure like to get my hands on—”

Pruden was staring incredulously at Joe Lister junior, who had just lifted his cup and was drinking down his coffee without hesitation. He said to Birch, “What did you say?”

“I said, if you think it’s murder I’d sure like to get my hands on—”

Pruden turned to him, glanced at the cup still in his his hands and said gently, “Drink your coffee, Birch.”

Birch, too, looked down at his cup and then at Pruden. “I really don’t care for any, sir, I just took it to be polite.”

“Drink it.”

Birch looked startled. “I don’t want to.”

“Drink it.”

Birch whitened. He said curtly, “I told you, I don’t want to. I’m not going to.”

Pruden moved swiftly: he took the cup from Birch’s
hand and lifted it to the boy’s lips, pushing his head back with one arm and holding him with the other. “I said drink it.”

“No!” shouted Birch, trying to squirm beyond Pruden’s reach.

Pruden held him resolutely while the others stared in astonishment. “Then tell me why you won’t drink it, Birch, or I’ll force it down your throat.”

“Damn you,” sobbed Birch. “Damn you, let me go!”

“Why, Birch, why? Drink it or tell me why.”

“Because it’s poison!” Birch screamed at him. “It’ll kill me, that’s why. Let me go, I want to go home!”

“I’ll let you go,” said Pruden, and turning to the others said sadly, “It isn’t poisoned, of course, but he’s the only one who knew it could be. Yes it was murder, Joe, and I owe you an apology; I thought if it was any of you three it would be you. Kathy, you’d better run home and get your mother now … in a hurry, Kathy.”

On Saturday morning the Dunlap house was shuttered and silent except for Kathy Dunlap sitting on the front steps talking earnestly and tearfully with Joe Lister junior. There were no bicycle riders on Mulberry Street this weekend, or children playing hopscotch. At quarter past ten a somewhat pale Mrs. Larkin carried a tray of sandwiches through the gate of Mrs. Trumbull’s house and joined a substantial number of people already inside the yard: children with grass clippers, a teenager with a power mower, and two men on ladders pruning vines away from the boarded-up windows. In the living room, from which a great number of boxes had been removed, Madame Karitska lay curled up on the couch asleep. She opened her eyes at Mrs. Larkin’s
arrival and sat up. “It’s ten o’clock?”

“Fifteen minutes past,” said Mrs. Larkin, offering her a sandwich. “Mrs. Trumbull ought to be here any minute. Lieutenant Pruden insisted we let you sleep.”

“I appreciate that.”

“And Lieutenant Pruden asked me to tell you that he hung a sign on your apartment door saying you’d be back at one o’clock.”

“Now that really is kind,” said Madame Karitska, smoothing her hair. “I’m afraid I’ve lost rather a lot of business these last few days.”

Mrs. Larkin grinned. “Well, I’ll be one of your first clients when you go back,” she said. “After watching you at work yesterday and most of last night—”

“My record, alas, was very poor,” sighed Madame Karitska. “It took so long—hours! I must have been very tired.”

“We’re all tired,” said Mrs. Larkin, and abruptly sat down and put her head between her hands. “To think it was Birch,
Birch Dunlap
, of all people. Once in a while, Madame Karitska, once in a while I used to wish my two boys could be a little more like Birch. He was so self-contained, so
polite.
He never climbed trees so he could fall out of them, his clothes were always clean and tidy and his grades at school so marvelous. I used to wonder sometimes what I was doing wrong,” she said, and lifted a troubled face to Madame Karitska. “He was such a
good
boy.”

“Yes,” said Madame Karitska.

“Is it true—did he really scream at everyone when they took him away that he wasn’t sorry, that it was the first fun he’d ever had?”

“Yes,” said Madame Karitska.

“My God!”

“But it would be wise to forget what he said,” Madame Karitska pointed out gently. “He’s very young, you know, and it’s to be hoped that he’ll become healed in time, and that someone may be able to teach him how to enjoy life. It
can
be taught,” she said, and then, getting up, she added, “Do I hear a car?”

They hurried out to the porch in time to see Pruden help Mrs. Trumbull out of his car. Her hat fell off and he rescued it. She straightened, stared at the scene in front of her and gasped, “People?”

Pruden grinned. “You’ve just discovered you’re sane, which is something not all of us know, and you’re going to have the best-groomed yard on the block. Come and meet some of your neighbors now.”

Very quietly Mrs. Trumbull began to cry. “It’s just—just that it’s so terribly kind,” she explained, wiping her eyes. “but I won’t be able to stay in my house.”

Madame Karitska said, “You haven’t told her?”

“No, I saved the big surprise until we got here.” He led her through the gate and up to the steps and suggested she sit down. Pulling a sheet of paper out of his wallet he handed it to her. “Exhibit A, Mrs. Trumbull: a photostat of what Madame Karitska found among your junk early this morning. We were here all night looking. Her good old ESP singled out the right carton in the living room, but the problem was that what turned out to be of value was a stamp. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack but at four o’clock this morning we found it.”