The Golden Goose

3

It was Prin, in the end, who called the doctor. It was almost always Prin, in the end, who did the things that needed doing. Uncle Slater’s late wife’s first husband’s family physician was an elderly curmudgeon named Dr. Horace Appleton, and Prin looked up his telephone number in the directory in the hall. Dr. Appleton answered the phone with a kind of yelp, like an incensed terrier, and she told him hurriedly that he must come over at once to see Uncle Slater. It was Dr. Appleton’s opinion, shrilly told, that Uncle Slater could probably wait without serious consequences until tomorrow, at which time he could come to the office. Prin replied that Uncle Slater could wait, all right, but that he couldn’t possibly come to the office, tonight or tomorrow or ever.

“Why can’t he?”

“Because he’s dead.”

“How do you know he’s dead?”

“Because he’s lying on the floor in his room,” Prin said, “and he isn’t breathing.”

“In that case,” Dr. Appleton said, “I’ll come right over.” And he did.

It took him about twenty minutes to get there. In the meantime, Prin went back to the living room and sat quietly with Aunt Lallie and Cousin Twig, who had mixed himself a large dark highball in lieu of solid nourishment and was mumbling obscenities to the memory of his uncle. Then, unexpectedly, Cousin Peet and Brother Brady came back from the dining room, having decided that eating was not something they wanted to do after all, especially since they had to serve themselves in the face of Mrs. Dolan’s defection. Brother Brady headed for the bar.

“Prin,” he scowled, mixing drinks for himself and Peet, “are you absolutely sure Uncle Slater is dead?”

“I suppose an autopsy would establish it beyond question,” said Prin, “but, as a layman, I’m satisfied that he is, yes.”

“I wonder,” said Aunt Lallie to the empty air. “I mean, if the rest of us ought to rely on your judgment, child, in a matter of such importance.”

“Then don’t,” said Prin. “Anyone’s free to go upstairs and form his own judgment.”

“Twig?” said Aunt Lallie. “Brady?”

“Not me, thank you,” said Twig. “I’ve been avoiding dead people all my life. I don’t like dead people.” It was rather like hearing the Giant confide in Jack that he didn’t care for bread made from the bones of Englishmen, Prin thought. “You do it, Brady.”

“Well,” said Brady. Then he brightened. “Sure. I’ll go. If Peet will go with me. What do you say, Peet?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Oh, no?” said Peet. “Well, I’m not going.” And she took the drink from Brady’s hand and curled up on the sofa again, the velvet of her Capri pants threatening to split. Brady studied them hopefully.

It was apparent to everyone that Uncle Slater, dead or alive, had nothing to do with Peet’s declining Brady’s invitation. Brady, looking sullenly dangerous again, went upstairs alone. He was back in remarkably short order, a little blue around the edges.

“Prin was right,” he said, heading for the bar. “Uncle Slater is completely dead.” He laced his highball powerfully and threw his head back and drank like Thor trying to drain the sea.

“Completely dead?” said Peet. “You mean it’s possible to be incompletely dead?” In Peet’s primitive state of intelligence, she sometimes exercised a disconcerting logic. “I don’t believe you can be incompletely dead.”

“Atta girl, Peet,” her brother Twig sneered. “Any more than you can be slightly pregnant.”

“Please,” Peet said haughtily. “I don’t like people who use risqué language.”

“Yes, Twig,” sniffled Aunt Lallie. Now that Uncle Slater’s veritable decease had been established to her satisfaction, she had her dainty handkerchief in her outsize hand and was punching at her eyes with it. “And your uncle lying up there dead.”

“What am I supposed to do, sob?” snarled her nephew. “It was damn inconsiderate of him to kick off, Aunt Lallie — as if you didn’t know it!”

“Well, it’s true a man Slater’s age ought to have taken better care of himself,” wept Aunt Lallie. “After all, he did have a responsibility to his family.”

“Look,” said Brady. “Dying was his own business. But that will he left — that’s our business.” He added in gloomy afterthought, “Some business!”

“How much am I going to get?” asked Peet with a trace of anxiety.

“Enough to keep you in clothes,” growled Brady, “which, considering how little you need for that purpose, doesn’t comfort me a damn bit.”

“Peet,” said Twig, “do you think you can add five — the five of us — to the seventeen outside O’Sheas? Don’t bother, it’s twenty-two. You heard Uncle Slater. How much of a slice can you expect from a pie cut into twenty-two pieces?”

“That was mean of him,” Peet said angrily.

Aunt Lallie broke off in mid-sniffle. “I just thought. Let’s break the will! It isn’t as if Slater were in his right mind. If he had been, he’d have left his entire estate to me. After all, I’m his sister.”

“I have news for you, Aunt Lallie,” said her nephew Twig with a certain malevolent enjoyment. “I’d rather have one twenty-second of a sane uncle’s estate than nothing of a crazy one’s. So I’m prepared to fight. Right, Brady? You with me?”

“I guess so,” said Brady glumly, “though it would have been a lot simpler if he’d left everything to Prin. Then we could all have stayed on here on the old basis, just as if Uncle Slater hadn’t died at all.”

Prin wondered if that were true, or if she would have thrown them out to shift for themselves. But she supposed that in the end she’d have permitted them to stay, for it was Uncle Slater’s money, and Uncle Slater had observed the family tradition that no O’Shea was expected to work seriously at anything, or to starve as a consequence of not doing so. It would have been a moral obligation. Prin sighed and stirred, ashamed of herself. What was she thinking? She was as bad as the others, speculating over the material considerations while Uncle Slater grew progressively colder and stiffer upstairs, like the dinner he hadn’t been able to come down to eat.

At that moment the doorbell began to ring petulantly. It was automatic for Prin to get up to answer it, since no one else paid the least attention and Mrs. Dolan was in her room deaf to everything but the biff-bang cowboy show she was raptly watching.

The annoyed finger on the bell belonged to Dr. Appleton, who came in carrying a black bag, although what for — under the circumstances — Prin couldn’t imagine. Dr. Appleton looked very much put out, as if Uncle Slater had played the worst trick of all on him. He was at least seventy, but he moved like a young man — or a gnome, Prin thought, for he was short and stocky and quick and sly and his face was full of bristly gray hair.

“Where is Slater, young woman?” Dr. Appleton demanded. He had a voice like a gnome’s, too — high and clear, a piping sort of voice with a snap in it.

“He’s up in his room, Doctor,” said Prin, “as I told you over the phone.”

“So you did,” piped Dr. Appleton nastily, “and it’s awfully queer. Slater’s keeling over like this, I mean. Are you sure he’s dead?”

“Everyone keeps asking me that! Go see for yourself, Dr. Appleton. That’s why I called you. Aunt Lallie and Peet and Twig and my brother Brady are in the living room. Do you want them?”

“Good God, no. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s relatives of dead patients. Who found Slater?”

“I did.”

“Did you touch him?”

“No.”

“Did anyone?”

“The only other one who’s looked at Uncle Slater was my brother, who went upstairs after I came down. And I’m sure Brady didn’t get farther than the doorway. He’s one of those tough, rugged lads who faint at the sight of their own blood.”

“You’d better come along with me.”

Prin dutifully followed Dr. Appleton upstairs to Uncle Slater’s room. Brady had left the door open, and the doctor went briskly in. Prin hesitated; she would much have preferred to stay in the hall. But she supposed Dr. Appleton needed her to answer questions or something, so she followed him into the bedroom. And there was Uncle Slater, lying on the floor exactly as she had left him, which for some reason was rather a shock. Dr. Appleton was just getting down on his knees. He rolled Uncle Slater over, felt the temple where Uncle Slater used to have a pulse, thumbed up Uncle Slater’s eyelids and peered, opened his black bag and took out his stethoscope and listened here and there; finally he got to his feet and stuck the stethoscope in his hip pocket, so that it hung down in a loop under his seat.

“He’s dead, all right.”

“Well,” said Prin. “That’s settled.”

“And,” the doctor went on thoughtfully, “it’s damned odd.”

“Odd?” Prin said. “What’s odd about it, Doctor? People — especially people Uncle Slater’s age — die all the time.”

“Not for no apparent reason.”

“Well, for goodness’ sake, Doctor, I’m no doctor and even I know that. His heart stopped.”

“Agreed,” snapped the little old doctor. “I’ve never known a dead man whose heart kept on beating.”

Prin blushed. “What I meant, Dr. Appleton, was that Uncle Slater must have had a heart attack.”

“That,” said Dr. Appleton in a very queer way, “is questionable.”

“But why?” Prin cried, bewildered.

“Because Slater O’Shea has come to my office for regular checkups every six months since he married Millie Quimby. I have a file on him a foot thick, including electrocardiograms. I last examined him no later than a week or ten days ago. He had a heart like a bull and the blood pressure of a young man. There’s never been the slightest indication of a coronary condition, incipient or otherwise.”

“But, but,” said Prin, “couldn’t he have had a heart attack, anyway? Or couldn’t there have been something wrong that you missed?”

“Possible,” said Dr. Appleton frostily, “and no doubt it would be convenient to think so. But I don’t. There wasn’t a thing wrong with your Uncle Slater except a very slight kidney condition from his drinking.”

“But you’ve got to put something down on the death certificate, Doctor. What are you going to do?”

“What I am going to do,” piped the little doctor, “is call the police.”

He motioned her peremptorily to precede him, and Prin did so. She noticed that he removed the key from the room side of the door and moved the little doo-jigger by the knob into the lock position before he shut it. Then he tucked the key away in his vest pocket. Prin frowned. It seemed to her that Dr. Appleton was making a great deal more of Uncle Slater’s death than needed to be made of it. It was her private opinion that Horace Appleton was the kind of doctor who might miss a case of leprosy in a routine check, let alone a leaky valve or a thrombus or something like that. There was nothing to be gained by saying this, however, so she silently went downstairs with him. The family was in conclave, whispering. It immediately became a public hearing as the doughty old physician stalked into the living room.

Little do they know, Prin thought.

“Dr. Appleton,” Aunt Lallie said, addressing a point three feet above his head, “have you examined my brother Slater?”

“I have,” said Dr. Appleton.

“What is your professional opinion?”

“My professional opinion is that he’s dead.”

“Oh, dear,” said Aunt Lallie, as if this was what she had been afraid of all along.

“Did Uncle Slater just die?” asked Peet. “Or did he die of something?”

“I don’t know,” said Dr. Appleton, adding grimly, “yet.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” demanded Twig. “Are you a doctor or aren’t you?”

“I sometimes wonder.”

“What the doctor means,” explained Prin, “is that he won’t be able to tell until there’s an autopsy, so he’s going to call the police.”

“Police!” Brother Brady whirled from the bar as if he already felt the first surge of high voltage. “What do you want to do that for?”

“So he’ll get his name in the papers,” said Twig.

“Maybe me, too,” said his sister, clapping her hands.

“Peet, stop,” said Aunt Lallie. “Doctor, I insist on knowing this very instant what you have in your mind!”

“It’s not so much what I have in my mind,” said the doctor, looking almost as if he were beginning to enjoy himself, “as to what your brother may have in his belly.”

“His belly,” said Brother Brady.

“His belly?” said Cousin Twig.

“His... belly?” echoed Aunt Lallie faintly.

“Please,” said Peet. “Must you use such words?”

“Doctor,” said Prin, looking sick. “Do you mean that Uncle Slater might have died of — of being given something?”

“Might have,” said Dr. Appleton, looking around as if inviting more questions. “Just might have.”

“Ridiculous,” said Brady. He groped for his drink.

“Stupid,” said Twig. “The only thing you’ll find in his belly is bourbon or Irish whisky, or more likely both.”

“Will somebody please tell me what an autopsy is?” asked Peet. “I don’t think I really know.”

“An autopsy,” said Brady, swallowing, “is when they cut somebody open and poke around to see what’s in there.”

“They only do it to dead people,” said Twig, sounding as if he would have felt far happier with a more liberal policy on the part of the authorities.

“How perfectly icky,” said Peet. “I’m against doing a thing like that to Uncle Slater.”

“I’m against it, too,” said Brady quickly. “You, Twig?”

Twig turned a splayed thumb down.

“Well, so am I,” said Aunt Lallie sharply. “As Slater’s next of kin, I definitely will not permit it.”

“Madam,” said little Dr. Appleton, “and ladies and gentlemen, I’m for it; and in this case, I think, none of you will have a damned thing to say about it.”

With which he went out into the hall to the phone. They heard him dial, and then talk, presumably to a policeman. Peet had just said that she didn’t believe she liked Dr. Appleton very much, to which Brady had muttered that he didn’t like Dr. Appleton at all, when the doorbell rang. Everyone looked at Prin. So she went out past Dr. Appleton and opened the front door; she was instantly glad that she was the one who had to do it, for there, across the threshold, stood Coley Collins.