Cold Poison (13 page)

Sergeant Callan rubbed his heavy chin with a thick red thumb. “That’s a new one.”

“New to us at Centre Street, too. Dr. Bloom became personally interested in the case, though he usually leaves these things up to his assistants. He did a lot of research on it, and you’re, of course, most welcome to what we have.” Oscar Piper brought out his voluminous brief case. “According to Bloom, and the best available authorities, poison ivy and its close cousin, poison oak, aren’t poisons at all, they’re allergens.”

“I had a dose of it oncet,” admitted Sergeant Callan. “I bruck out. I don’t know about the allergy angle—I’m allergic mostly to my wife’s mother, and when she comes around I break out of the house and go down to a bar. But I never heard that poison ivy was fatal.”

“Not usually,” Piper said. “But it hits different people in different ways. A person can handle it with impunity for years—and then suddenly get hit by it. There is no true immunity to the weed except in Eskimos and in infants up to the age of about a year—don’t ask me why. Nobody knows the full answer. According to Dr. Bloom, who took the time to do considerable research on the thing, the basic element of poison ivy is something absolutely inimical to the human system, almost as if the weed had been transplanted here from Mars or someplace.” Piper shrugged. “Anyway, some years ago at the graduate school at Columbia University a Dr. Charles Dawson put on an experimental project as part of advanced research in the field of allergies, and found a way of isolating the toxic agent in poison ivy by breaking it down into four parts, later synthetizing two of them. Other men found ways of concentrating these four interlocking parts into a colorless, tasteless oil, one drop of which—placed on a man’s arm—would make him break out in a boil. After the experiments were over, the university published the results in an obscure pamphlet or so that nobody ever read, and forgot the whole thing. But it certainly wouldn’t have been impossible for some smart chemistry student to have had access to the deadly stuff while it was still around the lab; it would have been fairly easy for anyone with a smattering of chemistry and of botany to have repeated the processes by which they concocted it.”

“You mean one of those college kids—?”

Piper nodded. “The essential toxic substance in poison ivy is something called
urishiol
, because that was the name given it by the Japanese chemist who first found the same element in the lac tree—from which we get the raw material for lacquer. It wouldn’t be too hard for somebody to get into the act, and misuse the stuff.”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Sergeant Callan. “In those experiments at Columbia, did anybody try tasting this concentrate?”

“Luckily for them, no. But our medical examiner says that the mucous membranes of the body are the most sensitive parts—sensitive at least to allergies, I mean. Some doctors believe that coryza, the common cold, is only an allergy. Anyway, the poison ivy thing is literally poison—a few months after the Columbia University pamphlet was published, Zelda Bard died horribly from poison ivy laced into brandy.”

The sergeant shook his head stubbornly. “But folks don’t
die
from allergies!”

“Not usually, but Dr. Bloom says it has happened. He told me about a case ten years or so ago out on Long Island. A girl out at Oyster Bay who was very allergic to tuna fish went out for a Sunday sail with some friends on Long Island Sound. The cook who put up the picnic lunches ran out of chicken and sneaked some tuna into the sandwich spread. The girl unknowingly ate three sandwiches and a few minutes later came down with an attack. The wind died down and the sloop was becalmed or stuck or whatever they call it. Anyway, by the time they got back to shore the girl was dead as Kelsey.”

Sergeant Callan unhappily studied the ash of his cigar, obviously wishing he was back on his motorcycle again. “So, Inspector, you’re saying that you think there’s maybe a link between your Zelda Bard case and the death of Larry Reed and now this Karas thing I’m stuck with?”

“I very much suspect it. Only times this particular poison has been used, to my knowledge—and we get pretty accurate reports from all over the country, and from abroad.”

Callan nodded. “That list of your dead dancer’s boy friends—was the name of any of these studio people there?”

“No. But people have been known to change their names, and it’s likely that we don’t have a list of half of the men she knew—or the men who would have liked to know her. From her photographs she was a dish.” The Inspector gave out with a man-to-man wink. “There’s no pinning it down by age groups, either; the Bard girl seems to have played the field, anything in pants from sixteen to sixty, and left them all—as far as we could find out—gasping and feeling foolish.” The Inspector shook his head. “I don’t know, sergeant, but maybe it’s about time for you to huddle with my friend, Miss Hildegarde Withers, the hatchet-faced old biddy who tried to crash the gate a few minutes ago.” He explained briefly why the ex-schoolteacher was in the studio, and about the poison-pen valentines.

“Oh, come now, Inspector!” Callan waved his cigar. “It sounds—”

“Okay, I confess I thought at the beginning that this was a false alarm, which was why I turned Hildegarde loose on it, thinking that she was just the one to cope with poison-pen valentines. Only it turned out to be serious, which is why I flew out.”

“We got a nut,” decided Sergeant Callan. “And they say it takes one to catch one.” He turned toward the uniformed man at the door. “Get this Withers dame in here pronto.”

It was easier said than done. But the schoolteacher was finally located in her office, still on the telephone. Officially escorted back to the music stage and planted on a chair in the inquisitorial office, she had her say. She also displayed the only two trick valentines available—Larry Reed’s and her own. She brought them up to date on all that had happened, with only a few minor reservations. Sergeant Callan, perspiringly, made notes as she talked.

“Penguins and stuff,” he said. “It’s an inside job, obviously. Now maybe we’re getting somewhere! Huh!” His
huh
was hopeful. “This Lucy thing—”

“Now maybe we’re getting
nowhere
,” the schoolteacher interrupted. “We’re going down seventeen blind alleys all at once. I happen to know a hawk from a handsaw, and also a red herring when I see it dragged right out in front of my eyes.”

“But the description of the man who paid her funeral expenses fits Mr. Karas and nobody else?” Callan licked his pencil and made some more notes.

“Maybe it does,” grudgingly admitted the schoolteacher. “And the use of initials is suspicious. But it still makes no sense to me. Karas was one of the passengers in the car that struck Lucy, he was one of the recipients of the left-handed valentines, and now he’s in the hospital supposed to be dead or dying. Are you gentlemen trying to suggest that he should also be an old swain of hers, setting out at this late date to avenge her and then somehow getting a dose of his own medicine? No, no! I can swallow some coincidences, but not that.”

“He could have taken a tiny dose of the poison as a blind,” suggested the Inspector. “And it could have hit him harder than he planned; we know that sensitivity to the weed varies with the individual.”

“Fiddlesticks,” said Miss Withers.

“But where else to look?” put in Sergeant Callan.

“How about looking for one of the employees of this studio who was in New York City four years ago this Christmas and sent Zelda Bard the brandy?” The Inspector sat back and waited.

Miss Withers sniffed, but Callan was already giving orders to have the studio people brought in for questioning, one at a time. As his visitors made no move to go, the sergeant shrugged and said, “I guess you can both stick around if you want to, since you’re in it this far.”

“I had no intention of leaving, unless forcibly ejected,” Miss Withers told him. “After all, this is
my
case.”

Guy Fowler was first on the list, a young man somewhat worried beneath his surface sophistication and faintly on the defensive, though trying hard to appear otherwise. His statement—taken down in shorthand by a bored policeman—was short and to the point; he had come down to the studio today, even though he had not had a work call, because he had hoped to get Mr. Karas to listen to a new number that he had just composed last night. The music manuscript was produced in evidence. Guy said he had noticed that Karas had left his treasured cigar holder and most of a perfectly good cigar on the desk, which was very unlike him. That had started the young man to wondering—

“I can attest to that part of it,” Miss Withers put in. “I was here.”

“Thanks,” he said. “So as I said, I started wondering what would take him off in such a hurry, I thought maybe he’d got another of the valentine notes or something. I waited around a bit and he didn’t come back, so I started looking for him. The first place I looked was the—the washroom, and there he was, doubled up on the floor like—”

“Like a pretzel?” the schoolteacher suggested helpfully.

Sergeant Callan glared at her, the Inspector concealed a grin, and Guy nodded. “I suppose you could put it like that. His face was all red and swollen—”

“Like a poisoned pup?” Miss Withers prompted.

“You might say so, yes.”

“You might also say that those that hide can find, too,” said Callan with professional nastiness. “Maybe you knew that something had happened to the guy, and maybe you
knew
where to look.”

The young man stiffened.

“Can you deny that you were in New York City four years ago last Christmas?” This last from the Inspector.

“I can, indeed,” Guy Fowler said. “If it matters, and I don’t see why, I was up in New Haven at Eli Yale’s University, not having the money for a week end in New York or Boston and not wanting to go home for the holidays and have my father harp on my grades all the time. That I can prove—I was practically the only man in my dormitory that week.” He stood up. “Am I being accused of having tried to murder Mr. Karas, and if so, how and why?”

“Siddown, young man. The
how
is easy. It was done with a concentrate of poison ivy administered in some way—” Callan scratched his head.

“If you ask me, which nobody has, it was probably planted in a bottle of some foul brew called
slivowitz
which I just happened to see in that desk over there this morning,” Miss Withers pointed out. “Just as Larry Reed was killed with the same nasty stuff put into the bottle of mineral oil he kept in his office, and which later disappeared. I suppose the
slivowitz
, too, has vanished?”

Sergeant Callan was turning red in the face, redder still beneath his tan, but he looked. The bottle was gone, nor was it to be found anywhere in the office.

“Perhaps you’d like to search
me
?” cried Guy Fowler, white with suppressed rage. He whipped off his flannel jacket, turned out his pockets, disclosing only a rather flattish but expensive alligator wallet, two or three gold-encrusted fountain pens and pencils, a comb, nail file and handkerchief, some assorted keys and a dollar or so in small change. “There!” he said. “Though how anybody in his right mind could think a bottle that size could go in anybody’s pocket—”

“But you knew about the bottle, and its size?” put in the Inspector.

“Of course I knew! Anybody who worked with Mr. Karas knew that he nipped on his national beverage every once in a while. And besides—” Guy looked at Miss Withers—“I came in here this morning to see this lady sniffing the cork and I thought about to have a short snort, though she put it out of sight fast enough. So I got a good look at the bottle.” He turned on Callan. “All right, officer. So if I’m being accused of trying to murder Mr. Karas—the only person in this town who’d give me even a part-time job when I needed it worst—then I demand my constitutional rights and I want to have a lawyer present—”

“Oh, shut up!” barked Sergeant Callan, not unreasonably. “You were asked a couple of questions and I guess you answered them. Nobody is as yet accusing anybody of nothing, see? That’s all from you for now. Siddown and wait until your statement is typed and then you can sign it and go.”

Guy Fowler sat, replacing his belongings in his pockets. After the brief statement was typed out in triplicate and he had read it at least twice, he went over to the desk and affixed his signature—somewhat callously, Miss Withers thought—with a dying man’s pen. Then he left the room, slightly chastened.

“I just don’t like the fellow,” Inspector Piper said.

Miss Withers sniffed a prodigious sniff at him. “I thought that
I
was the one who’s supposed to have the psychic hunches around here. And just because a young man speaks with a cultured New England accent doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the person for whom we’re looking.” She turned to the sergeant. “Honestly, I don’t see how we can at the moment put Mr. Fowler very high on the list of suspects; not after the ambulance doctor admits that it was Guy’s finding Karas as soon as he did, and administering first aid, that gives the man whatever chance for life he’s got. One doesn’t put a rare poison in somebody’s drink and then break his neck to save him; it’s not reasonable. Not,” she added thoughtfully, “that much of this entire thing is really reasonable.”

“Oh,” said Callan. “Thanks,” he added, not at all thankfully. He turned to the uniformed officer at the door. “Bring in another one.”

Mr. Ralph Cushak was next, obviously harried and just as obviously intent on being helpful and getting it all over as quickly as possible. He hastened to point out that he himself had never been in New York City except on flying business trips with the big boss; that he had no interest in the houris of show business and that he had never heard of Zelda Bard. Questioned further, he was unable to say definitely about the whereabouts of any studio employee four years and more ago.

“They come and they go in this business,” Cushak explained. “The movie cartoon field is a sort of closed shop; the three or four hundred creative people who work in it are always pushing for better jobs—they drift back and forth from Metro and Paramount’s New York offices to the commercial cartoon outfits in Chicago and then back here to Disney’s and Warner’s and Lantz’ and our own place, almost always the same people. It’s a very difficult field for a young artist or writer to break into; you have to be a mixture of both and be a little crazy besides. We have a saying—‘The business needs new blood; send us some and we’ll shed gladly.’” The only studio artist he was sure about was the late Larry Reed, who had been with the company almost from its inception and who had never taken any long trips except that last long trip into the unknown. On second thought, Cushak seemed to remember vaguely that Janet Poole had had a year at the Art Students’ League in New York, that Rollo Bayles had taken leave of absence once or twice to visit relatives and his mother’s grave in Weehawken, that Tip Brown went back to New York every fall to catch the new shows….