Leave Her to Heaven (34 page)

Ruth had not seen Doctor Seyffert since the night Ellen died. He was older than she remembered; yet his voice, when he spoke, was the same, loud and bruising. Perhaps his lack of a reassuring presence accounted for his narrow practice in a small Maine community. It was possible that if he had been more easily liked, if his voice and manner had given strength and hope to his patients, he might have become a great physician. There was the tragedy of unnecessary failure in the man.

He described, under Quinton's questions, his summons to Leick's house, and Ellen's sufferings; and Quinton led him carefully from one step to the next, till Doctor Seyffert said Ellen sank into a coma from which she did not rouse.

‘Now, doctor,' Quinton asked. ‘Did you have any conversation with Mrs. Harland before her death?'

‘No.'

‘Did you hear her speak?'

‘I suggested she might have been poisoned by a bad lobster, and she said Leick Thorne would resent my saying that.'

‘Did she say anything else — then or later?'

Doctor Seyffert hesitated, and his face was red. ‘She said one word.'

‘What was the word?'

‘“Poison.”' Ruth, her spine cold, remembered.

‘She said the word “poison ”?'

‘Yes.'

‘Thank you. Now was there at any time any question of calling in another doctor?'

‘Not till after she died.' Doctor Seyffert spoke more easily, as though in relief. ‘Then I suggested they might want another doctor's opinion as to the cause of death.'

‘You were yourself uncertain?'

Mr. Pettingill started to rise, but before he could do so Doctor Seyffert shouted: ‘I was not!' So Mr. Pettingill, with a twinkle in his eyes, sat down again.

‘When she spoke the word “poison” did that suggest to you the wisdom of getting another opinion as to the cause of her death?'

‘It did hot. I knew what was the matter with her.'

‘What reply did your suggestion that another doctor be called receive?'

‘Her sister, the defendant, said, “No!” Mr. Harland backed her up.'

Quinton nodded. ‘That is all,' he said. Doctor Seyffert seemed about to leave the stand, but Quinton checked him ‘Wait,' he directed. ‘Mr. Pettingill may wish to ask some questions.'

Pettingill spoke to Ruth and to Harland beyond her in a whisper. ‘Did she say “poison”?' he asked.

Ruth said breathlessly: ‘Yes. Doctor Seyffert kept giving her emetics, and Dick wanted him to stop, and the doctor said she was full of poison and Ellen just said the word after him.'

The lawyer's eyes went blank with thought. He rose heavily, a big, slightly stooped, helpless-seeming man. ‘Well, doc,' he said in casual and friendly tones, ‘I can see you're a man has. had a lot of experience taking care of sick people. How old are you?'

‘Fifty-one.'

‘Been a doctor all your life, since you grew up, likely? Seen a lot of people get well, and seen a few die?‘

‘Yes, of course.'

‘You signed a death certificate that Mrs. Harland died of indigestion, didn't you?'

‘Yes. Acute gastritis. It's the same thing.'

‘That was your opinion?'

‘Yes. It still is!' The man's voice rang on the words, and Ruth almost smiled. Quinton must prove that Doctor Seyffert had made a mistake, that what he called gastritis was actually arsenic poisoning; but Doctor Seyffert had the stubbornness of ignorance, and he would never admit that he had been wrong. Mr. Pettingill, knowing this, was presenting Doctor Seyffert to the jury of farm folk — some of them were perhaps his patients — as a man of their own sort, and thus winning for the doctor their sympathy, and preparing them to resent Quinton's next move.

‘That's still the way you figure it,' Pettingill agreed. ‘It looked to you like indigestion — and you've been taking care of sick people for twenty or thirty years?'

‘Yes, I have.'

‘You thought something she'd eaten had made Mrs. Harland sick? Tainted lobster or something?'

‘Yes.'

‘Thought she was poisoned by it?'

‘Yes.'

‘So you gave her emetics?'

‘Yes, to get the poison out of her.'

‘Anybody object to that?'

‘She became very weak and her husband asked if it was necessary.'

‘What did you say to that?'

‘I said she was full of poison and we'd have to get it out of her.'

‘Was that when she said “poison”?'

‘Yes.'

‘What'd you think she meant?'

‘She didn't mean anything! She was delirious.'

‘So you didn't take her seriously.'

‘She didn't know what she was saying.'

Mr. Pettingill nodded. ‘Much obliged, doctor. That's all.'

But before Doctor Seyffert could leave the stand, Quinton was on his feet. ‘One question, doctor,' he said sharply. ‘After she said “poison” did she say anything else?'

‘No.'

“‘Poison' was her last word before she died?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's all.' Quinton turned away and, as the other left the stand, called Doctor McGraw.

Doctor McGraw had a head like a lion, with a great mane of tawny hair. Quinton addressed him respectfully.

‘Your name?'

‘Robert Winston McGraw.'

‘Your occupation?'

‘Medical examiner of Suffolk County, Massachusetts.'

‘For how long have you held that position?'

Mr. Pettingill came to his feet. ‘You don't have to qualify Doctor McGraw, Brother Quinton,' he said in a friendly tone. ‘Everybody knows he's the best there is.'

But Quinton, ignoring this interruption, proceeded with his questions, leading Doctor McGraw to recite his years of experience with death by violence.

‘Now, Doctor,' he said at last. ‘I want to present you with a statement of certain symptoms.' He lifted a sheet of paper from his desk and began to read a careful catalogue, based upon Dr. Seyffert's testimony, of the phases through which Ellen passed before she died; and when he finished he asked: ‘Could you, doctor, on that statement, determine the cause of death?'

Doctor McGraw hesitated, and Ruth was surprisingly certain that he disliked Quinton; that he thought Quinton an incompetent blunderer. She guessed that he had so often been a witness in such cases as this that he knew better than Quinton how his testimony should be conducted. His tone was full of dry scorn as he answered.

‘No,' he said.

Quinton flushed as though under a sharp rebuff. He stepped back to the table, hesitated, turned again to the witness.

‘If you had been in attendance in this case,' he asked, ‘and the symptoms were as stated, what would your procedure have been?'

Mr. Pettingill climbed to his feet. ‘Your Honor,' he said agreeably. ‘Brother Quinton's trying to keep within the rules and
having a hard time of it, but I guess what we all want to know is what Doctor McGraw thinks Mrs. Harland died of. The defense wants the jury to have all the facts we can give them, so as far as we're concerned, the Doctor can go ahead and tell us, without all this beating around the bush.'

Judge Andrus' eyes twinkled under his black brows. He said to Quinton: ‘The defense will offer no objection if you allow Doctor McGraw to discuss Mrs. Harland's death in his own way.'

Quinton was crimson with humiliation, but he accepted the opportunity. ‘Doctor,' he directed, ‘give us your opinion as to the diagnosis suggested by the facts stated.'

Doctor McGraw's voice when now he spoke was deeper; it rumbled in the quiet room.

‘On the facts as stated,' he explained, ‘it is certain that this woman died of an acute digestive irritation. That might be gastro-enteritis, gastritis arising from natural causes, ptomaine poisoning, something of the sort. Or it might be from arsenic poisoning, or from some other artificial or mechanical irritation. In all such cases, where death results from a sudden onset of indigestion without known cause, an autopsy is indicated Superficial indications are seldom conclusive without a post-mortem. Examination of the rejected contents of the stomach, even before death, would probably reveal arsenic if it were present. A post-mortem would certainly do so. But without an autopsy, it's impossible to state positively the cause of death.'

Quinton asked insistently: ‘It might have been arsenic poisoning?'

‘It might have been, yes, certainly.'

Quinton dismissed him and when Pettingill asked no questions, Quinton called Doctor Rowan of Augusta, whose testimony paralleled that of Doctor McGraw. Then a Mr. Martinsbury whom Ruth had never seen testified to the cremation of Ellen's body and the delivery of her ashes to Harland; and the morning session ended.

Ruth spent that noon recess in a room in the courthouse, where she and Deputy Hatch and Mrs. Sayward were served
lunch on trays. The deputy — he was a ponderous and bulky man — ate enormously and in silence, and having done so he relaxed in a semi-somnolent condition to submit to the laborious processes of digestion; but Mrs. Sayward chattered while she ate, and afterward she produced a half-knitted sock and set her needles clicking; and she talked cheerfully about herself and her affairs. Her tongue rattled as amiably and as tirelessly as her needles, and Ruth found herself listening, interested and sometimes amused. The hour passed quickly.

When Judge Andrus once more took his place on the bench, Quinton called Leick to the stand. Ruth had not seen Leick since her arrest, and his eyes met hers in loyal greeting. Quinton, to her surprise, asked Leick nothing about the picnic on the shore Instead, omitting preliminary questions, he came at once to that moment when Ellen uttered her first cry of pain, and he made Leick tell how he and Harland tried to carry her to the house, how she collapsed on the way.

‘So I fetched a door — took it off its hinges — and I brought some blankets,' Leick explained. ‘And we carried her up to the house on that.'

‘What then?' Quinton prompted.

‘They sent me to fetch the doctor.'

‘How soon did you return?'

‘Soon's I could, but it was all of two hours. I had trouble finding him. It was getting on to dark.'

‘What then?'

‘Doctor Seyffert went to work on her, and I fixed them up some supper.'

‘They ate it?'

‘Yes. They took turns, one at a time, the others staying with her.'

‘Did you at any time go into the room where Mrs. Harland was dying?'

‘I don't know as I did. She was in bed.'

‘Did you hear her speak?'

‘No.'

‘Now, after she died, what happened?‘

‘Well, Mr. Harland was wore out. After the doctor left, he went to sleep. Come daylight, Mrs. Harland had me go telephone to the undertaker and we got ready to take her to Boston.'

‘The jury may not understand you. Mrs. Harland was dead. The defendant was not then “Mrs. Harland.” You wish to say that the defendant took charge, and that you arranged to have Mrs. Harland's body sent to Boston?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did you at any time go back down to the beach, the scene of the picnic?'

‘Yes, just before we left the house to drive to Bangor.'

‘For what purpose did you go to the beach?'

‘We'd left some stuff down there. I was going up into the north woods, the next week, to help build a logging camp and swamp out some roads, so I wouldn't be coming home again till spring; so I went down to get my wash boiler, that we'd boiled the lobsters in, and the lunch basket.'

Quinton turned to Mrs. Parkins. From beneath the table where she sat, she produced a wicker hamper, and Quinton showed it to Leick. ‘Have you seen this before?' he asked.

‘That's the lunch basket,' Leick agreed. ‘Or anyway, it looks like the same one.'

Quinton addressed the bench. ‘Your Honor, I ask to have this hamper marked for identification.' He looked toward Mr. Pettingill. ‘Unless there is some objection?'

Pettingill brought the hamper to where Ruth and Harland sat. Ruth told him quietly: ‘It's ours. I remember that scratch on the handle.' She opened it, but it was empty. ‘It's ours,' she repeated.

Pettingill spoke to Judge Andrus. ‘No objection, Your Honor.'

Quinton asked Leick: ‘Did you on that occasion open the lunch basket?'

‘No.'

‘Had you opened it before?'

‘We'd used some forks to eat the lobster. I scrubbed them with sand and put them in the basket, put the thermos bottles back in, and the leftover lobster and things. That was right after we et lunch.'

‘Did anyone use sugar in their coffee at that picnic?'

‘She did.'

‘The deceased?'

‘Yes.'

‘Was the sugar in a container?'

‘In an envelope. She tore the corner off.'

‘Did you see that envelope at any time after she last used it?'

‘She put it back in the basket.'

‘Now what did you do with the basket?'

‘I brought it up to the house and put it and the wash boiler in the shed.'

‘When did you next see it?'

‘Here, a minute ago.'

Quinton turned to the bench. ‘Your Honor, if there is no objection, I should like to excuse this witness at this time and recall him later. My present purpose is to establish a corpus delicti, to present the complete chain of evidence that a crime was committed.'

Judge Andrus looked inquiringly at Mr. Pettingill, and the big man stood up. ‘If the court please,' he suggested, ‘Leick Thorne was one of the three people — outside of Ellen — who saw what happened at the picnic. We'll want to hear him tell all about it.'

Quinton explained: ‘I propose to recall him for that purpose.'

Pettingill addressed the court. ‘All right, we'll let Brother Quinton put his case his own way, Your Honor.'

Judge Andrus nodded, and Quinton said: Then for the present, that is all.'

‘No questions, Your Honor,' Mr. Pettingill announced. ‘But we reserve the right to cross-examine on all this witness's testimony later.'

Leick left the stand. Quinton sat down, and after a whispered word, Attorney General Shumate rose. His movement hushed the courtroom; and he said quietly:

‘Your Honor, the State calls Russell Quinton!'