Cold Poison (20 page)

“I’ll try,” said the schoolteacher. She turned back on Guy Fowler. “You wanted to go home in triumph, didn’t you? But Janet Poole, the girl from a Polack family south of the railroad tracks, couldn’t possibly fit into the picture. Yet you’d borrowed a lot of money from her and lived on her and registered at hotels with her; maybe you even went through a wedding ceremony with her in Tijuana, though that sort of thing has no legal hold. Anyway, she was easier to get than to get rid of, wasn’t she?”

He gulped like a beached fish.

“We might as well,” continued Miss Withers, “clear this up here once and for all. It will perhaps be hard to prove that you sent poisoned brandy to Zelda Bard through the mails, though under the circumstances it is quite possible to believe that some years ago you fell in love with her, as college boys often fall in love with glamorous Broadway dancers, who unfortunately have a tendency to lead them on a little and then say no. It will be hard to prove that you put the poison-ivy concentrate into Larry Reed’s bottle of mineral oil, or into Mr. Karas’ bottle of
slivowitz
, or just now into my coffee cup. Perhaps I’ve done you an injustice, Mr. Fowler—”

Tip Brown had Janet up in the seat again and was chafing her wrists. “Let her stay out for a few minutes,” recommended the schoolteacher. She turned back to Guy. “I will be glad to give you an apology, and sign it with a flourish, if you’ll just lend me your fountain pen.”

He looked inches smaller. “What—
what
did you say?”

“I mean,” Miss Withers said, “the big gold-encrusted fountain pen that you’ve always carried and never used, to my knowledge. You
didn’t
use it in signing your statement to the police in the Karas investigation, you
didn’t
use if for initialing your drawing of the penguin today. Why not? Unless there is something in it instead of ink—such as poison-ivy concentrate, perhaps? Do you mind if we look?”

Joyce Reed suddenly started to laugh, and then cut off as she saw Guy Fowler’s face. The handsome young man was trying hard to smile a withdrawn, derisive smile, but he had suddenly come all apart, like a puppet loosed of its strings.

“Curtain,” said the studio boss to Miss Withers. “Cut, and print it.” They all watched in a sort of paralyzed horror as Guy Fowler tried to throw away his fountain pen, tried to run for the door, tried to become invisible. He fell down, he drooled and slobbered.

“I’m glad,” Miss Withers thought, “that Janet fainted.”

“…
The mental spasms of the tortured Cain.
…”

WILLIAM E. ATOUN

T
HERE WAS REALLY NOTHING
left of Guy Fowler now, no real resistance at all under the firm pressure which Inspector Oscar Piper applied, professionally and mercilessly. Guy had run out of lies, he had run out of pretense, he had run out of pulp-magazine fiction and had sent his last valentine. He talked, he talked there in front of them all, a spate of ugly words….

It was not a happy scene, even though it ended the whole thing in a way which Miss Withers had feared. She was glad to see the man taken away at last by the local policemen, hopelessly involved in his own lies and not even now counting on his family’s lawyers.

“We got him cold,” said Oscar Piper. “With that fountain pen.”

She nodded. She nodded again as the head of the studio shook her hand and said nice things, as Mr. Cushak made apologies, and as the others gathered around to voice their thanks and relief.

“So we don’t close down,” said the boss. “Understand, everybody? Back at the treadmill at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Peter Penguin rides again.”

The studio people slowly started to file out of the projection room. Mr. Cushak put in his five cents. “You heard the orders,” he said. “That’s nine, and not nine-thirty or ten, understand? We have lost time to make up.”

Somebody made a vulgar sound, no telling who. But the heat was off, and they all felt like laughing, even if a little worn by the afternoon. And Peter Penguin would be laughing, too, tomorrow morning, laughing again on thousands of movie screens for months and years to come, eternal laughter which somehow couldn’t be stilled by the machinations of one deluded young man who had crowded into the picture and used it for his own purposes and now would probably be crowded into the death chamber at San Quentin—unless the local authorities gave him up for extradition. “It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other,” said Oscar Piper. Anyway he had his confession, taken down on a wire recording by studio sound men. The Zelda Bard case would go into the closed file the moment he got back to New York, and the thought gave the wiry little Hibernian a certain grim satisfaction.

He and the schoolteacher came out into the studio street, into a chilly dusk. “Buy you a hamburger somewhere, Hildegarde—just to celebrate?”

“No,” Miss Withers said firmly. “You’re on an expense account, and you’ll buy me dinner at Larue’s. They say you can get a nice steak there for seven dollars. And I think I’ve earned a nice steak.”

They were driving down Sepulveda Boulevard toward the Los Angeles municipal airport (which isn’t in Los Angeles) some hours later. The two old friends had joined forces in so many murder investigations—and from the very nature of things could hardly expect to join in many more. The sands were running through the glass, and they both knew it.

“Thanks for coming out,” she said.

“You’re welcome—though I didn’t do anything to help except fall over my own feet, I’m afraid.” He stiffened. “Watch that truck!”

“Why? It’s not doing anything interesting.”

“I am impressed enough with your recent triumphs to keep my mouth shut about your driving, but it takes an effort,” the Inspector confessed. “That’s a red light, in case you didn’t notice.”

She stopped, halfway across the intersection. “Poison-ivy concentrate in a fountain pen—handy at all times. It was a fantastic thing, Oscar, contrived by a fantastic mind.”

“Sure. Too smart for his own good. Remember Loeb and Leopold? The guy’s family will come to the rescue with a horde of expensive lawyers, and he’ll plead not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity and a lot of good it will do him. The light is now as green as it will ever get, Hildegarde.”

She lurched ahead, thinking of other things. “It was there all the time, Oscar. If I’d had the wits to see it. I mean the truth about Guy Fowler. He’d committed one successful murder four years ago, using an original technique. He killed a glamorous dancer who flirted with him a little and then laughed at him when he got serious, using the particularly sneak technique of mailing her a Christmas present of poisoned brandy. He drifted out here to Hollywood and managed to get himself deeply involved with a girl he didn’t mind using and borrowing money from, but whom he considered beneath him. He couldn’t pay her the money she’d advanced, he couldn’t square it by marrying her because that didn’t fit in with his desperate desire to go back home and show off as a success to his precious family—they’d never approve of a Polack peasant, or so he thought. Though she was seven times too good for him. Perhaps he had thoughts of getting back his first wife and her millions. A most devious mind, Oscar.”

“Some people are like that. Not many, happily. That’s a boulevard stop, by the way. I only mention it in passing.”

“I’m afraid I’ve already passed it.”

“You have. I’m thinking that this whole thing is tough on the girl.”

“Janet? Of course it’s tough. So is
she
—and maybe you noticed that it was Tip Brown who picked her up when she fainted, and who later carried her out of the place and comforted her as much as anyone at such a time could be comforted. They speak the same language, and he adores her, and I think that after she catches her breath she’ll fall into his arms and be very happy there, too. Any dog is allowed one bite and any girl is allowed one mistake.”

“You and your quest for happy endings,” said the Inspector, grinning.

“Yes, Oscar. And one more thing—I don’t want you to go back to New York without knowing about Professor Ainslee. His real name is something else; he’s an ex-actor who agreed to play the part for me, at regular Screen Actor’s Guild rates. He is also a field man for the Motion Picture Relief Fund; he was the middle-aged man with the cigar and the accent (all actors have accents, and most of them, particularly those of his vintage, cultivate English accents) and as part of his routine duties he paid the costs of burial at Forest Lawn for poor Lucy—Lucinda Wersbeck, who had once been a motion-picture extra and thus was entitled to this last gesture.”

“Mr. P.R.F.” said Oscar Piper.

“Exactly.”

“I’ll be everlastingly damned,” said the inspector.

“I doubt it. But you must admit that he earned his regular fee of $17.50 for this afternoon’s performance, and I have a feeling that, in spite of his having hammed it up considerably as we say out here, he’ll get a job at the studio being the voice of Charley Crocodile or something. He made an excellent impression on the powers that be.”

They had parked the little coupé by this time. Inspector Oscar Piper hurried into the airport office, and then came back to her. His plane, whose motors were humming and which was obviously about to get going, stood nearby on the runway.

“Well,” said Oscar Piper. He hesitated, and then on a warm Irish impulse he reached over and kissed the schoolteacher full on the lips. “There’s your gold star for merit,” he said, and rushed away.

But a few minutes later as she watched his plane take off down the runway and soar into the skies toward the east, the maiden schoolteacher made up her mind that some of his feeling was for her, personally, as a woman. And she drove home without touching the pavements.

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I
N THE OFFICE AT CENTRE
Street Headquarters where Inspector Oscar Piper kept his desk and hung his hat, the phone began to ring. The inspector, suffocating in a welter of the administrative chores that he still considered an unreasonable imposition, came up for air and grabbed the noisy instrument with the reprieved feeling that it was at least something different to do. His bark was answered by the suave voice of the commissioner himself.

“Oscar? How’s everything in Homicide?”

The inspector, taking this question as rhetorical, raked the fingers of his free hand through grizzled hair and responded cautiously, with a touch of Black Irish humor, that things in Homicide were pretty dead. He was rewarded with a polite chuckle at the other end of the wire.

“I’m sending someone over to see you, Oscar,” the commissioner said. “He’s on his way.”

“What does he want?”

“I’ll let him tell you that. Frankly, more than anything else, I think he needs to have his hand held.”

“Wrong sex. I’m only holding hands with females this week.”

“Seriously, Oscar, I wish you’d do whatever you can for him. As a favor to me, if you need a reason. His name’s Bernard Gregory. Corporation lawyer. Substantial citizen. To tell the truth, I know him quite well, although I wouldn’t exactly call him a personal friend.”

“Why hand him to me?”

“Because it occurred to me while I was talking with him that you might be the one person in a peculiar position to do him some good. You’ll understand, I think, when you listen to his problem.”

“My peculiar position is running Homicide. Is homicide his problem?”

“Nothing like it. Consider this a diversion, Oscar. Something for a change. Look out for him, will you, Oscar? There’s a good fellow. I’ve got to run now.”

The commissioner hung up and, presumably, ran. Inspector Oscar Piper, immobilized by a plethora of paperwork, remained anchored at his desk. Again he raked his grizzled head, cursing soft Irish curses. For no specific reason, directed at no selected thing or person. It was just that he had been inclined by experience as well as nature to an uneasy and profane reaction when commissioners came bearing gifts or asking favors.

It was about half an hour later when Bernard Gregory was ushered through the door by the uniformed watchdog on the other side. Inspector Piper, mindful of the commissioner’s artfully implied request for kid-glove treatment, got his short, wiry body to its feet and offered a greeting with a bony hand. He resumed his seat behind his desk after Gregory had, on invitation, occupied one in front of it. Inspector Piper, without appearing to do so, inspected his visitor with a sharp eye. The commissioner had said that Bernard Gregory was a substantial citizen, and he looked it. Broad shoulders, thick bole, sturdy legs with some spring left in them. Gray hair, sharply parted and smoothly brushed. Clipped gray mustache between a bold nose and thin lips. Wide forehead and direct eyes, now slightly clouded by whatever problem had brought him where he was. He was groomed and polished and tailored, but he wasn’t soft. Why is it, the little Irish inspector wondered, that all corporation lawyers look like variations of an old Calvert ad and all criminal lawyers look somehow disheveled and slightly soiled, as if they were wearing dirty underwear. Well, that wasn’t true, of course. It was a libel on the latter, at any rate, a tenacious image invulnerable to all contrary examples, probably established by Clarence Darrow and carried on by John J. Malone.