Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

The Tumbril by William Bankier

When it comes to the inventive and offbeat at short-story length, few can compare with William Bankier. The Canadian native, who lived in Eng-land for many years before settling in California, most often sets his stories in small fictional locations (usually Baytown) in Ontario. This time he’s penned a modern allegory of corporate greed. His very first story for us appeared in July of 1962, and he’s had stories in our pages almost every year of the forty-seven that have passed since then.

Loading the bodies seemed to be a job without an end. But Higgins could not complain because it was his idea, this throwback to the time of the Black Death. He and Elmer, his drinking buddy, drove the tumbril along street after street. And because it was his idea, Higgins called out in a stentorian voice, “Bring out your dead!”

Elmer sat up front holding the reins because it was his horse. Old Daisy used to haul a milk wagon back when Baytown still had deliveries. It was not an easy pull with those thick wooden wheels. Elmer had offered the tires from a Buick he had on blocks in his front yard. But Higgins insisted on wood be-cause he enjoyed the funereal sound it made on the pavement as the tumbril creaked and rumbled through the mournful town.

The better-off could afford a proper burial. There were many, however, whose sons or daughters had taken the pills prescribed by doctors who were prisoners, in effect, of Cummerbund Pharmaceuticals. The big drug manufacturer was the true villain, according to Higgins. The doctors were so bewildered, so scared, they had stopped returning the telephone calls of patients whose limbs were breaking in the night as a side effect of swallowing the miracle antibiotic called “Cintillate.”

Before building the tumbril, Higgins had given much thought to the doctors. These educated men, these ethical men and women, had sworn an oath before entering into practice — “First, do no harm.” That was all Higgins needed to know. He could only imagine how this catastrophic situation had evolved.

Surely the medics had learned that a course of Cintillate could, in a matter of days, turn a healthy person with an influenza fever into a permanent zombie with calf muscles that burst and eyes unable to withstand the pain caused by any light at all.

Thoughts of suicide preoccupied the minds of many users of the drug. And some took that way out. Others were terminated by parents or caregivers driven mad by the constant sounds of agony. A pillow on the face brought guilty silence. And then, from the street...

“Bring out your dead!”

What to do with the bodies? There had to be an answer to this problem; Higgins thought of it before they built the tumbril. Elmer’s late parents owned a farm. It was located east of Baytown and had several flimsy wooden outbuildings on it. Elmer lived there.

It took forty-five minutes to reach the farm with Daisy moving at top speed. The dire effects of Cintillate had rendered most of the corpses less than human. Higgins and Elmer rolled them in canvas and lugged them through the doorway of a ramshackle barn. When the entire load was inside and the door closed, Higgins took a gasoline-soaked towel from the back of the tumbril and tucked it under a loose wallboard. He lit it with a match and flames ran enthusiastically up the side of the bone-dry structure.

As they stood back watching, Elmer suggested, “We should say something.”

“I know.” All he could think of was a song he had learned as a child in Sunday School. Higgins sang it now.

In Washington, D.C., Jason Cummer looked up from his desk and frowned at his secretary. “This better be important,” he said. “I’m taking the Senator to lunch and I’m running late.”

“It’s what’s going on in Canada. I have another bulletin from our man up there.”

“File it,” Cummer told her. He slipped into his jacket and peered at his face in the mirror above the washbasin. His eyes were glassy from a recent snort of cocaine. The hollow cheeks pleased him; he looked lean and dangerous. “I’m out of here.”

The secretary, whose name was Enid, watched him go. Not for the first time she wished she had never taken the job working for the CEO of Cummerbund Pharmaceuticals. Maybe the job had driven him crazy or perhaps he had been crazy to start with. Could be a little of both, the wise lady thought.

The Senator said yes to another drink. It was his third, but who cared. His host was leaning back in his chair watching him with obvious amusement over the white linen with its sparkling crystal and glittering silver. He resembled a vulture. As always happened on his visits with Jason, the politician had to resist the urge to get up from the table and run. And again, as always, he had to remind himself... the money was good.

While they were both partially sober, it was time to give Cummer a slap in the face with the drug subject. “The news from north of the border,” he mused. “Not good.”

Cummer was locked and loaded. “Always remember, I could purchase that entire country and flood it and freeze it and turn it into a colossal hockey rink.”

“Just wanted to remind you we have a problem.”

“That’s why I pay you,” the drug manufacturer said. “Do I have to go up there and attend to it myself?”

“Might be a good idea,” the Senator said. “You’d get a first-hand view of what is going on.”

With the empty tumbril safely parked under an apple tree behind one of Elmer’s barns, Higgins shook his partner’s hand and headed home. It was a long walk but with Connie dead and the house empty, it was not long enough.

All it had been was a case of the flu. People came down with this sickness all the time and they took something and got over it. But now there was a new drug — Cintillate. Dr. Farley prescribed it and Connie began the course of seven capsules taken over seven days.

She only got to day three. First there was the pain in the legs, the ankles, the feet. It was excruciating, unlike any pain she had ever experienced. Higgins did what he could after calling Dr. Farley, who said bed rest. And keep on with the capsules.

After day four, her eyes could not tolerate the light. Higgins would stand in the doorway of the darkened room listening to her gasp with every breath. She could still walk to the bathroom — only just.

“I can’t go on like this,” she whispered to him. “Do something.”

“I called Dr. Farley. He’s supposed to call back.”

“Shoot me. You’ve still got your gun?”

“That’s crazy talk.”

“This is not going away. I can tell. It’s getting worse.”

Higgins walked to Farley’s office. He encountered the doctor on his way out. He looked panicky, like a thief caught in the act. He spoke first. “You should be with Connie.”

“She’s talking about killing herself.”

“Then you should really be with her.”

“What are we giving her?”

“It’s a miracle drug, Cummerbund’s newest. Sometimes there are side effects.”

“Don’t they test these things? Doesn’t the government make them?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

“No system is perfect.”

“That’s a sickening answer.”

Higgins hurried home and found the place empty. He heard and saw through a window some sort of commotion at the freeway a quarter-mile from the house. This is what had happened: In her robe and slippers, Connie had managed to limp to the overpass where she flung herself down into rush-hour traffic. She was struck by three vehicles, killed by the second.

After the funeral, alone in the house for the first time in twenty-six years, Higgins missed meals, watched television, slept in a chair. A lot of people were dying from the flu epidemic. A news program showed a gathering of surviving family members outside the Cummerbund head office on Baytown’s west hill. When the pharmaceutical giant moved its operations to Baytown six years ago it was seen as a huge economic boost for the community. Now it was being said that the company founder was in town. Like the climactic scene from a horror movie, here was the monster fleeing from the wrath of enraged villagers.

The camera caught a shot of the vulture face as Jason Cummer ducked into a waiting limousine. His lips were moving; Higgins read the words. “Cintillate is a miracle drug. Go home, go home!”

That had been the moment when the bereaved man saw something in his mind’s eye — the tumbril!

Building the tumbril was not a problem. There was an old wagon on Elmer’s farm. And Daisy was available for locomotion. Was it the dynamite that gave Higgins his idea for some sort of revenge? “What’s this?” he asked, peering into a wooden box of explosives.

“My old man used it for clearing stumps.”

That was when Higgins refused the wheels from Elmer’s old Buick and set about building wooden ones. He made them hollow and six inches thick. They were like drums.

“What’s this in aid of?” Elmer asked as they fitted the wheels to the axles.

“For the sound they’ll make as we go down the street. Hollow and spooky. The sound of a tumbril.”

The rumble of the wheels was disturbing enough that the Baytown Banner sent a reporter to interview Higgins and find out what the hell he thought he was doing. They met up late one afternoon when the tumbril was half full of bodies. Higgins was not eating much these days since Connie was no longer feeding him. As a result his voice was weak. It broke into a yodel as he uttered his invitation, “Bring out your dead!”

The reporter was on a bicycle. He pedaled slowly beside the wagon, teetering for balance as he put his questions. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I’m making a point,” Higgins said. “I want to get through to Jason Cummer. His new product is killing people.”

“Cintillate? They tell me it’s a wonder drug. I’m taking it myself. First capsule this morning.”

“Then hail and farewell.”

“If you get to see Cummer, what will you tell him?”

“I’ll think of something.”

The reporter snapped a picture of Higgins and then sped away on his bike. The photograph appeared next day alongside his story on the front page of the Banner.

As for the reporter himself, he continued with his course of the new drug which had certainly killed his flu symptoms. He got as far as the sixth capsule before he died in agony. The tumbril happened to be approaching that evening along the street where the journalist lived. His father brought the body out and placed it on the flat bed of the tumbril. Higgins recognized the face. “Still writing?” he asked. “Scribble scribble?”

His secretary had traveled to Baytown with her boss. When she drew the article in the Banner to his attention, Jason Cummer read it and then said, “I’ve had enough, Enid. Get hold of this Higgins person and bring him here.”

Told of the appointment, Higgins joined Elmer at the farm and expressed his satisfaction. “It’s working,” he said. “I’m to go and see Cummer tomorrow morning, ten o’clock.”

“Congratulations,” Elmer said. “I think.”

“Now where’s that dynamite?”

The sticks of explosive fitted neatly into the four wheels. Now the problem was detonation. Higgins showed his friend a length of fuse protruding from a hole drilled in one of the wheels. “I light this and up she goes,” he said.

“You figure if one wheel goes the others will too?”

“Why not?”

Elmer had an anxious look on his face. “What about Daisy?”

Higgins placed his hands on Elmer’s shoulders. “Next to you, Daisy is my best friend. When we roll the tumbril down into the underground parking at Cummerbund Pharmaceuticals, you’ll unhitch your horse and lead her outside while I go in to face the Devil.”

Jason Cummer’s inclination was to tell this wasted little man to go to hell. But he kept his temper. “Have you any idea how much money we spend on research and development? Miracle drugs don’t just fall off the tree.”

“How much on testing?”

“A fortune. We test them on mice, rats, gerbils, hamsters...”

“Any people?”

Cummer looked away. “Lots of people.”

“May I speak to them?”

“You may not. Try to understand. This organization provides work to thousands of wage-earners. We pay millions in taxes. Cintillate is not our only new product. We have many others in the pipeline.”

“Heaven help us,” Higgins said quietly. Then, “I read somewhere you have a contract with the army to develop chemical weapons.”

“It’s not a secret.”

“Is it possible that there’s some sort of unintended leakage between projects? Some element from a weapon of mass destruction has found its way into Cintillate?”

“Where did you read that?” Cummer’s cheeks began to inflate. “My lawyers are about to terminate that journalist’s career.” He got up from behind his desk, went to the office door, and held it open. “As for you, I want you to take that medieval meat wagon off the streets and keep it off. Now get out!”

As Higgins passed through the doorway he paused and said, “Don’t worry. The tumbril will never be seen again in Baytown.”

Elmer was waiting in the underground garage, having already unhitched Daisy from the cart. “What’s that bell I hear?”

Higgins was taking out a book of matches. “I touched off the fire alarm on the way out. I’m not sure how much damage the explosion will do to the building. But I don’t want to hurt any employees.”

Elmer led Daisy up the paved ramp and called back, “They all seem to be outside.” He jumped astride the horse’s back and urged her onto the street. That sight amused the office workers, who were enjoying an interruption in yet another boring day.

Higgins lit a match and touched the flame to the fuse. It began to hiss and sputter. He hurried to the ramp and left the garage. When he was outside and standing in the street beside Daisy and Elmer, a loud explosion sounded from the garage. This was followed by a blast three times as loud. The building shook and some windows fell out. Dark smoke began to issue from the garage and from the main floor of the damaged building.

Employees with cell phones began calling police and the fire department. Higgins slapped his hands on Daisy’s flanks and leaped up onto her back behind Elmer. “This would be a good time for us to disappear,” he said.

And they did, moving at old Daisy’s milk-wagon pace.

The head office building was not destroyed but it was damaged severly enough that no work could be done as it was being repaired. While this was taking place their employer demonstrated his sensitivity by paying his workers at one quarter their weekly rate.

Chief Greb had no difficulty in attributing blame for the explosion. When the fire was extinguished the damaged remains of the tumbril were found in the garage. Higgins and Elmer were arrested and taken into custody.

At the trial, the magistrate pronounced a lenient sentence. He himself had lost a daughter to the effects of Cintillate and he was aware of the suicide of Higgins’ wife.

The builders of the tumbril were placed under psychiatric care at the Ontario Hospital in Kingston.

Two important results followed these events. As the flu epidemic waned and Cintillate ceased being prescribed, the company withdrew the drug from distribution without comment. And a Baytown rock band recorded a song entitled “Bring Out Your Dead.” It went like this:

The colorful and dramatic story of the tumbril made it into America’s leading news magazine. It occupied two pages and readers pelted their elected representatives with letters, telegrams, and phone calls. Cummerbund Pharmaceuticals explained that there was no need to worry. The Canadian “test market” would not be duplicated in the U.S.A.

Not satisfied, public opinion demanded an example be made of the CEO of the company. Washington moved quickly to cure the problem. Jason Cummer was forced to resign in disgrace, after which he contributed a hundred million dollars from his numbered account in Zurich to the election fund of the party in power. Then he accepted the position of Ambassador to Mozambique and hopped a fast plane out of town.

Copyright © 2009 William Bankier