The Case of the Musical Cow

Chapter 28

Rob Trenton observed the surge of spectators crowding towards him, intent upon shaking his hand.

He moved over quickly to Dr. Dixon before the physician could leave the space reserved for attorneys and witnesses. “I want to thank you,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” Dr. Dixon told him. “I merely performed a complete post-mortem, which I contend should invariably be done in every case of unexplained death, particularly where the circumstances indicate a homicide.”

Rob led him to one side. “I have a favour I want to ask of you.”

“What’s that?”

“Isn’t there some way I can get out of here without going through that crowd of people?”

“They’re waiting to shake hands with you,” Dr. Dixon said, his shrewd eyes studying the young man’s face. “They want to congratulate you, and make something of a hero of you.”

“I know it,” Trenton said, “and if the judge had ruled the other way and bound me over for murder, they’d have been looking at me as though I were a snake.”

Dr. Dixon’s eyes softened. “What do you want me to do?”

“I think there’s a side door out of here,” Rob Trenton said. “I want to get out. Can you show me where it is?”

Dr. Dixon hesitated only briefly, then nodded. “You could go into the door over there which leads to the judge’s chambers, as though you were intending to thank the judge for what he’d done, and then you could go down through the corridor and there’s a door there that opens on a side street. Come on with me if you want.”

Rob Trenton moved towards the door to the justice’s chambers.

On the other side of the rail, Merton Ostrander gestured that he wanted to see Rob, and Rob, smiling, nodded vaguely, made an ambiguous gesture of his hand, and accompanied Dr. Dixon through the door to the judge’s chambers.

“It just happens,” Dr. Dixon said smilingly, “that I have my car parked out here and I’ll give you a ride across the bridge. Something seems to tell me it will be a little better for you to get out of the state.”

“Flight?” Rob asked.

“Changing your base of operations,” Dr. Dixon said. “And incidentally leaving the jurisdiction of a hostile district attorney who has sustained wounds to his vanity and his political prestige, and who may, therefore, try to recover lost ground by having you rearrested if he can only find some ‘new’ evidence. After an hour or two he’ll remember that the two smugglers who are in custody are only too willing to buy themselves immunity by turning ‘state’s evidence’. When that happens it’ll be well for you to be in another state, and to resist extradition.”

They moved down the corridor, out of the side door and found that as yet no one, not even the reporters, had anticipated such a move. The crowd was still either in the courtroom or milling around the doors on the main street, and Dr. Dixon and Rob Trenton entered the physician’s car and glided down the road without attracting any attention.

“I hope you realise,” Rob said, “that, regardless of what the district attorney may do, I’m just starting on this thing.”

Dr. Dixon looked at him in a sidelong glance of shrewd appraisal, then said conversationally, “I presume you know that Harvey Richmond was investigating the death of Madame Charteux. The body was exhumed and it was found there was enough arsenic in it to have killed a horse.”

“So I understand,” Trenton said.

“And,” Dr. Dixon went on, “just in order to keep the record straight, you’ll remember that the Customs men took two capsules containing a white powder from your bath robe, capsules which you said Merton Ostrander had given you to settle your stomach?”

Trenton glanced at him sharply.

Dr. Dixon’s face was enigmatic, completely without expression. His eyes were concentrated on the road ahead.

“Go on,” Trenton said.

“I don’t know exactly what you have in mind,” Dr. Dixon went on, “but the Customs men turned those capsules over to Harvey Richmond. When we searched his effects we couldn’t find those two capsules.”

“Good heavens!” Rob said. “I hope you didn’t think I thought the solution would be that simple.”

Dr. Dixon flashed him a keen-eyed glance. “I’m glad to hear you say that, young man. I’m afraid the solution isn’t simple at all, but rather complex.”

“What else do you know?” Trenton asked.

“Very little for certain,” Dr. Dixon said. “We have, of course, investigated all of the parties concerned, to the best of our ability. Linda Mae Carroll and Linda Carroll were in South America two years ago. Linda Mae Carroll was in Europe a year ago, and Linda Carroll was in Africa. They evidently like to travel.”

“Where did they get their money?”

“Apparently Linda’s father died, left her some money and some money to his sister, Linda Mae Carroll.”

“Just money?” Trenton asked.

“Well, there was a fair amount of cash, quite a few stocks and some savings bonds, and there were three pieces of property, farm property of three hundred and twenty acres, and the Londonwood apartment building, which went to Linda Carroll, and the house in Falthaven which went to Linda Mae Carroll.”

“How much of a search has been made for Linda Carroll?”

“No very great search. She has an apartment at 194 °Chestnut Avenue, Londonwood, the apartment house where her father lived. Linda Carroll went there immediately after she returned from her European trip. For some reason she seemed to want privacy and apparently gave that address to no one. When she obtained her passport she had been living with Linda Mae at the Falthaven address, so she used that passport address in this European trip.

“It would seem that both you and Merton Ostrander went to call on her at the Falthaven address. Linda Mae gave you both a run-around, but Ostrander was more lucky than you. He actually ran into Linda when she came to call on her aunt, presumably to give the aunt some instructions.”

“What sort of instructions?”

Dr. Dixon’s face was completely impassive. “I’m afraid that that’s as far as we can go. You apparently know the rest of it as well as we do.”

Dr. Dixon eased his car across the big concrete bridge, said, “Well, you’re now in a new state. Where do you want to get off?”

“I think I’d like to get off in Londonwood, if it’s all right with you.”

“She isn’t there,” Dr. Dixon said.

“I know. I think I’d like to get off there just the same.”

“Any place in particular?”

“Well,” Rob Trenton replied, “perhaps... no, just let me out anywhere.”

Dr. Dixon drove in silence until they entered Londonwood, then stopped the car near the centre of the town. “How’s this?” he asked.

“That’s fine,” Rob Trenton said.

Dr. Dixon shook hands.

“I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am,” Rob Trenton said.

“You don’t have to be grateful,” Dr. Dixon said. “I merely performed a medico-legal necropsy to determine the cause of death.”

“And what you found proved me innocent,” Rob reminded him.

Dr. Dixon nodded. “That’s fine as far as you’re concerned, but we have a responsibility. We have to find the real murderer.”

Rob Trenton looked at him sharply. “Any clues?” he asked.

Dr. Dixon said, dryly, “You may use your own judgment, young man. Harvey Richmond didn’t go aboard that boat voluntarily. From what you have told me and what the police have been able to find, I know that Richmond had a line on the smugglers. He had constructed a blind from which he could watch the houseboat with binoculars. He was planning to make a raid on it that night. I think he’d have had the raid sooner if the boat hadn’t been moored across the river, which put it out of the jurisdiction of the State Police.

“The smugglers happened to locate that blind. They crept up behind Richmond, rushed him and overpowered him. It’s my idea that that’s when he was hit over the head and when that blood clot formed in the skull.

“Now we can begin to fit certain things together into a pattern. You know from what you overheard the smugglers say they had planned to get this dope, to abandon the houseboat, and start a fire that would burn up all the evidence. Now suppose you quit looking at it from your angle, and consider the facts from the viewpoint of one of the smugglers.

“It obviously couldn’t have been Harvey Richmond who was running down the deck when you shot. I think Harvey Richmond was unconscious at the time. But the man you shot was running aft on the port side of the houseboat. He would, therefore, have his right side towards you and be running slightly away from you, but the bullets which penetrated his body were fired a little more from the front and they were fired at close range.

“You’ll remember that you shouted at the man on the boat to stop, and then added that he was under arrest. Then you fired twice. The man flung himself flat on the deck.

“Now suppose you had been one of the smugglers waiting on the boat. What would you have thought?”

“That it was a police raid?” Rob asked.

“Exactly,” Dr. Dixon said. “So the smugglers threw the switch that set off the incendiary device which they intended to use to start a fire in the boat and consume the evidence. Then they started to abandon the boat, but then the man who had flung himself down on the deck got to them and reported he had only seen one person. They looked for you and found you had escaped. So then they started trying to put out the fire, probably because they still had stuff they wanted to get off the boat. Before they got the fire out, Harvey Richmond, lying unconscious in a cabin probably near the bow of the boat, inhaled enough smoke and carbon monoxide to cause his death.”

“I see,” Rob said, eagerly. “Then before they abandoned the boat the smugglers fired the two bullets into his body.”

Dr. Dixon’s shrewd eyes gimleted their way into the innermost recesses of Rob’s consciousness. “Shot him with the gun you had in your possession, Rob?” he asked.

“But they must have! They... No, they couldn’t. And they couldn’t have shot him before the fire broke out because then he wouldn’t have been breathing to inhale the smoke. They...”

Dr. Dixon said, “Start using your head, Rob. Those people on the other side of the river are a little chagrined. They’re a little punch groggy from the sudden turn of events, but I think within an hour they’ll have another warrant issued for you and perhaps a new theory of approach. Remember, they still have two members of the smuggling gang who will swear to anything that’s necessary in order to gain immunity for themselves.

“Within the next hour you’ll either be under arrest again, or else be a fugitive from justice. Don’t waive extradition and return voluntarily to face that second murder charge. You sit tight on this side of the river and fight extradition every step of the way. And don’t say that I gave you that advice.

“All right, Rob, this is where you get out,” and Dr. Dixon extended his hand in farewell.