told, I’d go to jail-I will go to jail, won’t I?”
“Just keep on telling it the way it happened, Grant, and things will go better for you. Jail is for grown-ups,” said Carmine. “What did you do then?”
“I wrapped him in a sheet off his crib and took him down the stairs,” said Grant more easily. “I went out the back door and carried him down to the Pequot, then pushed him in. He sank right away, so I walked back home and put the sheet back in his crib, and checked up on Mom. She was still asleep. Only she wasn’t, was she, sir? She was dead too.”
“Yes, since before your first visit,” Carmine said. “What did you do when you reached your own bedroom?”
“Tried to clean up the bathroom floor, then got into bed and went to sleep. I was whacked.”
No qualms of conscience, thought Carmine. Nor may there ever be. Though he’s a smart kid. If his father finds him the right lawyer, he’ll prove a good student. By the time the social workers get to him, he’ll be oozing penitence, and by the time the courts get to him, he’ll have developed all the necessary memory lapses.
But what fools indeed these parents were! Which one was so frugal that no housekeeper was hired after Jimmy was born? If ever a woman had needed a full-time housekeeper, it was Mrs. Cathy Cartwright. They could afford the expense, in spite of three sets of Dormer Day School fees.
“It would never have happened if the mother hadn’t been overwhelmed,” Carmine said to Patrick. “Why do I feel the parsimonious one is Gerald Cartwright? Though Cathy must have been spineless where he was concerned, not to insist on help.”
“It also would never have happened if the mother hadn’t been dead,” said Patrick, arranging instruments on a cart.
“True. What set the kid off was the smell of shit-an indication that Cathy had already been dead for several hours when Grant went to find her, probably sometime after four. I knew he was concealing something when he didn’t admit to going in search of his mother, because all kids go in search of Mom if they’ve thrown up, especially if they’ve missed the toilet. I didn’t expect a confession of murder, but that fits too. The father is selfish and career- oriented, which has led to his spending a great deal of his time away from home, and the mother had suddenly been inflicted with a super-demanding child after waiting hand and foot on her first three. Poor little Jimmy was the inadvertent cause of much hatred and resentment.”
“Well, Jimmy’s murder at least might have been averted if the parents had been more aware of how their older children felt, but what about the mother’s murder?” Patrick asked.
“A different horse entirely. Thus far, no leads whatsoever. Gerald Cartwright may be unpardonably selfish, but he’s not an unfaithful husband or a bad provider. When he’s staying at the French restaurant in upstate New York, he’s surrounded by family-hers as well as his. He’s regarded as a model husband, an image he took some pains to reinforce. As for Cathy herself-ask me where she’d find the time for extramarital affairs with four kids, and the youngest with Down’s syndrome?” Carmine scowled.
“Did she get out at all?”
“Very occasionally, according to Gerald, who likes a social life. They’d go to plays trying out at the Schumann, to movies that got good reviews, charity dinners, country club events. If the chef threw a tantrum and Gerald was called away, he insisted that Cathy go on her own. Probably not as bad as it sounds-they’re well known, she’d meet up with friends. The last time she got out was a solo expedition to a Maxwell Foundation charity banquet, something she didn’t want to miss because the Maxwells give generously to handicapped children’s research. I got all that at great length from Gerald, who managed to keep his act together if he could hug a cushion.” Carmine poured himself fresh coffee. “Any other news on the pathology front, Patsy?”
“The poisoning cases are all in,” Patrick said, but not in triumphant tones. “Peter Norton was dispatched with enough strychnine to kill a horse. It was in the orange juice. His blood revealed no other toxic tampering over a longer period of time, which tends to support Mrs. Norton’s likely innocence, as does the choice of poison. It’s a strong-stomached poisoner who can administer something as horrible as strychnine and then stick around to witness the dying.”
“I agree, Patsy. It’s a good thing for her that she did go upstairs to get the kids ready for school.”
“You’ve only got her word for it.”
“I have the kids’ words as well. They’re a little young to be coached as accomplices. What brought them all downstairs was the noise their father made, and though Mrs. Norton did try to shoo the kids away, they both witnessed the death. I’m inclined to believe Mrs. Norton’s story that she squeezed the juice before going upstairs, and that she was up there for ten minutes before she heard her husband go down to breakfast, which he ate running.”
“Poison is a woman’s weapon,” said Patrick.
“Usually, yes, but not always. What makes you think this is not a female poisoner?”
“That window of opportunity. Literally, as the juice could only be seen through the kitchen window, but not reached through it. Seizing an opportunity on the spur of the moment isn’t very female, yet that’s what this killer had to do. See the juice, go in the back door, add a hefty dose of strychnine to the glass, then leave. What if someone had come downstairs? He’d have been discovered, so he must have had a convincing story ready. No, this poisoner is a man.”
“Chauvinist,” Carmine said slyly. “What about Dean Denbigh?”
“Oh, that one’s up for grabs-and you know it! Potassium cyanide crystals mixed with jasmine tea leaves inside a perfect bag in turn enclosed inside a hermetically sealed paper packet that my technicians are willing to swear in court was opened only once-by Dean Denbigh himself. And the tea bag is machine stitched, not stapled-stitched only once, those swearing technicians again. All four of the students invited to his klatch were men.”
“While Dr. Pauline Denbigh the wife held her own klatch around the corner in her study,” Carmine said with a grin. “Her guests were all women.”
“‘Klatch’ is disrespectful,” Patrick said solemnly. “Granted, you can’t very well call morning coffee a soiree, yet I gather the function operated rather like one-poetry read out, and so forth.”
“It should really be matinee, but that’s taken. How about a matutinal recitation?”
“Spot on, Carruthers! Your Limey wife is showing.”
“But you like her better now, Patsy, don’t you?” Carmine asked anxiously.
“Of course I do! She’s ideal for you, and that alone makes me love her. I guess it was being towered over that set me against her, and that snooty Limey thing. But now I know she’s brave, and gallant, and very smart. She’s also sexy,” Patrick said, still trying to mend his fences. Carmine’s doubts were receding, but it was still a conversation they had from time to time. The trouble was, Patrick hadn’t read the signals correctly, hadn’t known just how deep Carmine’s feelings for the lady were. If he had, he would never have breathed a disparaging word about her. And Sandra she wasn’t, thank God.
“Anything else in Denbigh’s blood?” Carmine asked.
“Nothing.”
“What about Desmond Skeps?”
Patrick’s face lit up. “Oh, he’s a doozy, Carmine! He had no long-term drugs or toxins in his blood, but he got a cocktail the day he died.”
“Day?” Carmine asked, frowning.
“Yes, I think the process started well before the sun went down-maybe as early as four in the afternoon, when he took a glass of single-malt Scotch laced with chloral hydrate. While he was out, the killer put a Luer-Lok IV needle in his left intercubital fossa and taped it down. It stayed until he was dead.”
“The same technique as Mrs. Cartwright?”
“Superficially. The similarity ended with the introduction of the IV. Mrs. Cartwright was killed as soon as the needle was in the vein, but that wasn’t Skeps’s fate. He was intubated and given a medical curare that enabled the killer to inflict painful bodily harm on the poor bastard, too immobilized to fight back. He was bag-breathed, but if it was attached to a respirator I don’t know. The torture was burns, mostly, but never severe enough to interrupt pain pathways to the brain-he felt it all, believe me! That says the killer must have some medical knowledge. Third- degree burns aren’t felt; the pain pathways have been destroyed too.”
“The instrument of torture?”
“Some kind of soldering iron is my guess-a red-hot tip that could be manipulated. He even wrote Skeps’s name on his belly, after a sloppy dry shave of the body hair that left the skin grazed and raw. I photographed it extensively. Wouldn’t it be interesting to nail the sucker on a handwriting analysis?”
