The Golden Goose (8 page)

“Miss O'Shea,” Grundy began. Since there were three Miss O'Sheas present, a slight confusion ensued. The lieutenant restored order by indicating Prin. “You were the one who found Mr. O'Shea dead.”

Prin kept looking at him with interest.

“I asked you—”

“No, Lieutenant, you
told
me. But if you're asking, the answer is: Yes, I was, for the umpteenth time.”

“How come?”

“How come what?”

“That you,” cried Grundy, “were the one who found him!”

“I went up to call him to dinner.”

“Suspected something was wrong, is that it?”

“Of course not. We just thought Uncle Slater mightn't have wakened from his afternoon nap.”

“Oh, he took a nap every afternoon?”

“Well, he went up to his room every afternoon, so presumably it was for a nap.”

“For a nip nap, you might say,” said Twig.

“I'll get to
you,”
said Grundy; “but until I do I'll thank you not to interrupt. Miss O'Shea, how long did your uncle usually stay in his room when he went up for these so-called nips—I mean naps?”

“An hour or so,” said Prin, fighting an impulse to giggle.

“And you didn't think it queer that he stayed so much longer in his room today?”

“We didn't think about it at all till Mrs. Dolan—that's the cook—announced that dinner was ready. When Mrs. Dolan says dinner is ready, people jump around here. We were all down but Uncle Slater, and somebody asked where he was, and somebody else said he was probably still in his room, so I went up to see.”

“Did you see your uncle before he went upstairs?”

“I saw him on his
way
upstairs, which is a little different, I think. He'd been out somewhere, and when he got home about two o'clock he went straight to his room. I was sitting in here alone listening to
Till
, and I saw Uncle Slater going up the stairs. I waved to him and he waved back to me and that was it.”

“Who's Till?” asked Grundy suspiciously.

“Till Eulenspiegel
. That's a tone poem by Richard Strauss.”

“Poetry, huh?” Grundy's tone disposed of
that
. Prin wondered what the doughty lieutenant would have said if his range of general information had embraced the even more deplorable fact that a tone poem was a form of music. “How was Mr. O'Shea acting when you saw him go upstairs?”

“Perfectly natural.”

“Not mad or upset or anything like that?”

“No. He smiled and waved and was in the best of spirits, as far as I could tell—”

“He wasn't in the best of spirits, if I knew Uncle Slater,” said Cousin Twig involuntarily. “The best of spirits was in him.”

Over the lieutenant's glare at Twig, Prin said, “Well, yes. He was
very
cheerful-looking. I guess he was carrying a load of sorts at that.”

“Drinking.”

“Isn't that what I said, Lieutenant?”

“No. You said he was perfectly natural.”

“Uncle Slater
was
perfectly natural when he was drinking. It was when he wasn't that he wasn't.”

Grundy's head during this phase of the interrogation had been lolling to the left. Now he brought it erect with an appearance of great effort, but he brought it over too far, and it immediately lolled to the right.

“All
right
. So you went up to get him for dinner. Did you just walk into his room?”

“Of course not. Do I look like the sort of person who goes around just walking into other people's bedrooms? I knocked. When he didn't answer I opened the door and peeped in. And saw him lying on the floor, near his bed. At first I thought he'd fainted or something, but when I went in and took a closer look I knew he was dead.”

“Did you touch him?”

“I don't think so. He was so definitely dead.”

“What made you so sure, Miss O'Shea?”

“Oh, I don't know. It must have been the way his arms and legs were. Sort of
scattered
, if you know what I mean. And then, of course, he wasn't breathing.”

“Did you look closely at his face?”

“Not hardly,” said Prin with a little shudder. “He was lying on his stomach, his head turned so only one side of his face showed. Anyway, it was dim in the room by that time.”

“How long were you up there?”

“Two minutes, I suppose.”

“Did you touch anything?”

“You've already asked me that. I did not. I ran right downstairs and told everybody Uncle Slater was dead. No one would believe me.”

“By everybody you mean the people in this room now?”

“Except Coley—Mr. Collins. He didn't come till later.”

“Did anyone else go into that room between the time you found your uncle dead and the time Mr. Collins came?”

“My brother Brady. That was after I'd phoned Dr. Appleton.”

“Brady.” Lieutenant Grundy looked around. “That's you, I take it?”

“Right, Lieutenant,” said Brady powerfully.

“You went upstairs to your uncle's room?”

“To, but not
in
to, if you get the distinction,” said Brady.

“You didn't actually set foot in the room?”

“Not I. I had a quick look at Uncle Slater from the doorway, and came right back down.”

“Why didn't you go in?”

“I'm allergic to dead people. I break out in goose pimples.”

“You were satisfied that he was dead?”

“I accepted it, but I can't say that it gave me any satisfaction. He
is
dead, isn't he?”

“Oh, he's dead, all right.”

“Then I can't see why we have to keep going over and over it,” said Brother Brady crossly. “Do we have to circulate a petition to make it legal?”

“If Dr. Appleton's right,” said Grundy grimly, “you people will need all the legality you can get.”

“And if Dr. Appleton is
not
right,” piped Aunt Lallie spitefully, “I shall sue him for one million dollars.”

The little old doctor walked over to Aunt Lallie, laughed in her face and walked back again.

“Let's not start the suing talk,” said Grundy, “not before we do a little more spadework. For instance: I want everyone here to tell me where he or she was and what he or she was doing this afternoon as nearly as he or she can remember it, which had better be the way it actually was if he or she knows what's good for him or her. And we'll start with …
you!
” and his forefinger speared Aunt Lallie, who went very nearly blue as she jumped.

This was the auspicious beginning of the most inauspicious interrogation thus far. No one, it seemed, had had anything significant to do, and no mnemonically linked place to do it; as a consequence, everyone had been all over the premises at one time or another during the day, and no one could be more specific than that. But Lieutenant Grundy persisted. Gradually he elicited a few statements that might vaguely be considered facts.

Aunt Lallie had spent most of the afternoon in her room, she was sure of that, but she had been out of it once or twice for reasons that had slipped her mind. Cousin Peet had lain in the sun on the terrace, which Twig, Brady and Prin could verify; but then she had gone upstairs after talking with Prin. She had not the least idea what time that had been, time never having had any particular significance for her; and there was only her word that she had showered and admired her luscious nude self in her pier glass, for so far as she knew she had seen, and had been seen by, no one. Brady, after itchily leaving Peet on the terrace, had gone around back and knocked some golf balls around, which may have had something symbolic about it; and later, after sitting a while in the sun contemplating his navel (Prin thought it had much likelier been Peet's), he had trudged upstairs and talked to Prin in her room before going to his own room and biting his fingernails for an hour or so (he placed his fingertips in evidence). Twig had been out of sorts, he said. He had considered going into town to a movie, but he had decided against it because neither feature was a horror picture; and all in all he had just drifted around the premises, in and out and downstairs and upstairs. He had noticed Peet, yes, and Brady, too—Peet on the terrace and Brady swatting golf balls, but he had avoided them (as too obvious targets for his malice). Prin told about faking the little-girl's lunar complaint shamelessly and coming home and the rest of it, some for the second and third time.

It was Lieutenant Grundy's opinion that they had all had plenty of opportunity to abridge Uncle Slater's constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and he said so snidely.

“With your permission, Lieutenant,” said Coley Collins, “I should like to make a point, to wit: There is absolutely no evidence to indicate that Uncle Slater's constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
was
abridged.”

“No evidence to prove it, maybe,” said Grundy, “but plenty to indicate it.”

“Is that so?” said Prin with interest. “Would you be kind enough to tell us what? And you listen, Coley—maybe you'll learn a thing or two about the science of detection.”

“Of course,” said Coley. “It is always instructive to pay heed to the words of a professional.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Lieutenant Grundy handsomely, “we make our mistakes. But I would have you note—if my understanding of the point is correct—that anyone who dies while awake, with his eyes open, will be found after death with his eyes still open. Slater O'Shea died with his eyes shut. From this we may conclude that he died while asleep or in a comatose condition. And this leads us to the crucial question: Was he naturally asleep or unnaturally unconscious at the time of death? I would doubt the former, since it seems extremely unlikely that Mr. O'Shea enjoyed lying down on the floor for his nap when there was a bed available a foot away for the purpose. Unconscious—let us say from simple overindulgence in spirits? That will be determined by the percentage of alcohol found in his blood measured against his normal capacity, and other scientific considerations. But it is my preliminary view that mere overindulgence will not explain his position on the floor. Because there is something very rotten in the state of this bourbon we found at his bedside, or I miss my guess.”

Until Lieutenant Grundy had launched into his analysis, Prin had thought of him as a small-time cop of nasty personality and mere brute intelligence. It seemed to her the grossest deception for him now to prove himself otherwise.

“Well, I'll be damned,” said Prin.

“Someone here will,” smiled Grundy, “if I'm not mistaken. However! I'm through for the present, although it's likely I shall see you all again after the autopsy. Boatner, phone for an ambulance and then join me upstairs. We'll wait on the scene of the suspected crime till the meat wagon comes.”

The lieutenant turned to follow Boatner out when Cousin Twig stopped him. “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” he said. “I understand why you want to take Uncle Slater's bottle of bourbon with you—after all, if it's full of poison it isn't any good to us anyway—but why are you taking the glass?”

“Because,” said Grundy, “it's the connecting link between the bottle of bourbon and your uncle's tummy. Not an indispensable point, perhaps,” he said modestly, “but we like to be thorough.”

“Well,” said Cousin Twig glumly. But then he brightened, if a lesser darkness could be called brightness. “If the glass turns out all right, or anyway when you don't need it any more, would you make a note to return it to us? We've got to start economizing around here.”

7

With Lieutenant Grundy and Detective Boatner waiting upstairs with Uncle Slater for the meat wagon, they all had to agree that the situation looked pretty grim. Everything considered, they agreed to a surprising degree. The conviction was voiced by everyone that Uncle Slater had not been murdered by anyone present, because none of them would have been fool enough to kill the lovely golden goose. So if it had been murder the obvious explanation was that an unknown somebody had slipped into the house at considerable risk and poured a shot of something deadly into Uncle Slater's bourbon bottle for no reason anyone present could think of. It all made so little sense that the longer they discussed Uncle Slater's death the surer they were that he had not been murdered at all. Still, Grundy and Dr. Appleton had seemed so positive that something
would
be found in the bottle and in Uncle Slater.

“But can they just go ahead and autopsy Uncle Slater without permission?” Cousin Peet wanted to know.

“We've been all through that, Peetie,” said Prin kindly.

“They've got to have the permission of the next of kin,” said Coley, “or evidence of an unnatural cause. If they find poison in the bottle of bourbon that's all they'll need to go right ahead and autopsy Mr. O'Shea on their own.”

“Damn that bottle of bourbon,” said Cousin Twig viciously.

“I didn't like that business about Uncle Slater's eyes, either,” Brady muttered.

“I agree,” Aunt Lallie said. “Slater has made things difficult for us in a number of ways. In the end, he behaved badly.”

“Well,” Prin said, “however badly he may have behaved, it was not so badly as we're behaving now. Uncle Slater is a lot worse off than we are, and I simply will not talk any more about it. Coley, I'd like to go outside and sit on the steps or take a short walk or something, if you don't mind.”

“I don't mind,” Coley said.

“How about you, Peet?” Brady said. “Wouldn't you like to go for a short walk?”

“With you?” asked Peet.

“Yes.”

“No.”

Prin and Coley went out to the front porch, sat down on the top step and began holding hands. But they had hardly begun when the ambulance came for Uncle Slater.