The Golden Goose

6

The pair constituted precisely half of Cibola City’s plainclothes force. The one in charge was very tall and very lean, with squared-off shoulders and a square-jawed head that he kept cocking, first on one side and then on the other. This gave him a disconcerting appearance of continuous skepticism. As Prin learned later, his name was Sherm Grundy, his rank was lieutenant, and he was reputed to be as sour-souled as a stoat. Somehow, Prin doubted it.

At that moment, having just been admitted by Twig, Lieutenant Grundy looked as if he thought he were being made the victim of an impractical joke.

“What are you made up for?” Prin heard Lieutenant Grundy demand of Twig as she and Coley and Dr. Appleton came down the stairs. “Halloween?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Twig stiffly.

“Skip it. What’s your name?”

“Twig O’Shea. Mr. Slater O’Shea’s nephew.”

“Well, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong.”

“That’s what I thought!”

“I mean,” said Cousin Twig, “nothing is wrong in the lawful sense of the word. Our Uncle Slater has died in his room today, and that old fool Appleton insists on making a federal case out of it.”

“We’ll see who’s a fool,” shrilled Dr. Appleton, coming up on Twig from the rear and making him jump a foot. “It’s my professional opinion, Lieutenant Grundy, that there’s something very funny here, and I don’t mean funny. I might add that everything I’ve seen and heard since my arrival has only confirmed my suspicions.”

“Whoa, Doc, let’s take one thing at a time,” said Lieutenant Grundy. “Slater O’Shea is dead. Two-fisted drinkers like Slater O’Shea lead a risky life. They die all the time.”

“Damn it, you don’t need to tell me about two-fisted drinkers,” cried Dr. Appleton, “I know more about confirmed crocks than the rest of you put together! But they don’t die all the time, or any time except their allotted time, when they’ve got the constitution of a Slater O’Shea. Slater O’Shea is dead, all right, but not from drinking. Alcohol, anyway.”

“You mean—?”

“Certainly I mean! By God, do I have to spell out everything I say?”

“Not so fast,” said Grundy. “First things first. O’Shea is dead, you say. Now he died from either natural causes or unnatural causes, right? Right. So the first thing we have to do is find out which it is.”

“Exactly my point,” said the old doctor vigorously. “That’s why I called you in. I don’t want to tell you your business, Lieutenant, but I suggest you begin with these two here.”

The lieutenant looked around suspiciously. “Which two?”

Dr. Appleton stabbed his bony forefinger first at Coley Collins and then at Princess O’Shea. “I had locked the door of the death room. I pocketed the key. This precious pair sneaked upstairs while I was in the living room with the others and broke into the locked room. I caught them sneaking out a moment before you arrived.”

Lieutenant Grundy possessed a very snaky eye, and Prin felt herself immediately look guilty. “What’s your name?” he asked her softly.

“Princess O’Shea. Uncle Slater’s niece,” said Prin. “And I live here, which is more than Dr. Appleton does, though he acts as if he owns the deed to the place.”

“Never mind that,” said Grundy, directing his reptilian gaze upon Coley. “And who are you?”

“My name is Coley Collins,” said Coley with a little bow.

“And do you live here, too?”

“No,” began Prin, “but you see—”

“I’ll handle this, my dear,” said Coley. “No, Lieutenant, I do not have the good fortune to be entitled to claim this as my residence. However, Miss O’Shea and I have an understanding that, while not yet formalized, will soon culminate in a legal relationship, if I make myself clear—”

“If you’re going to marry the girl, why don’t you just say so?” snapped Grundy. “Anyway, is Dr. Appleton’s charge true?”

“It is not,” said Prin, snapping back, snake eye or no snake eye. “To charge that we broke into Uncle Slater’s room is a gross exaggeration. I’ll change that. It’s a damn lie. I got the key from my own bedroom door and we unlocked Uncle Slater’s door with that.”

“Point two,” said Coley. “We were not — I repeat — not sneaking. We simply went up there and went in and came out again. If you ask me, Dr. Appleton requires the immediate services of a geriatrician.”

“What’s that?” demanded the old doctor, who had been following the conversation between alternate attacks of apoplexy and asthma.

“You see?” said Coley sympathetically. “The old gentleman is so senile he can’t even remember a simple medical term. I doubt that anything he says can be relied on.”

“However you got into that room,” screamed Dr. Appleton, dancing a little, “and regardless of whether you were sneaking or walking on your hands, the fact is you two had no business going in there when I locked the door and told you — you, Miss O’Shea — that no one was to go in there and you knew I was calling the police but you went in anyway you and this young maniac and what I want to know is why why why!”

“Take it easy, old boy, or we’ll have to call a doctor for you,” said Lieutenant Grundy. “Just the same, the doc’s got a point. What were you doing in that room?”

“Prin,” said Coley, holding up his hand with dignity. “Allow me, since it was my idea entirely. Why, Lieutenant, this poor old fellow was making the wildest kind of accusations. Since my fiancée’s reputation, not to mention her safety from harassment, was vitally involved, I deemed it necessary to learn as much about the actual situation as I could while I still had freedom of movement.”

“We both did,” added Prin, and she clamped an armlock on Coley. “And don’t let him tell you different, Lieutenant.”

“I have no intention of interfering with Mr. Collins’s or your exercise of free speech,” replied Grundy, who seemed affected at last by the prevailing semantic elegance. “Inasmuch as you’ve both just admitted the doc’s charges are true. It will look even worse for you two if we find that he’s also right in suspecting that Slater O’Shea did not die of natural causes.”

“Yes,” piped Dr. Appleton, still doing his little dance. “And an autopsy will prove me right!”

Cousin Twig, who had been edging stealthily out of the line of fire, started with violence at the word “autopsy.” He coughed just a little and advanced a half step. “Excuse me,” Twig said. “We probably have never adequately expressed our appreciation for your unselfish devotion to the professional care of Uncle Slater, Dr. Appleton, but you have my word — speaking for our entire little family — that we are grateful, sir, grateful beyond words, which is why we never expressed it. What I mean is—”

“What do you mean?” growled Lieutenant Grundy, who seemed to have developed a dislike for Twig, not a difficult thing to do. And the truth was, his fawning speech to Dr. Appleton sounded like one great sneer, an unfortunate effect which Twig had not merely not intended but was wholly unaware of.

“What I mean,” said Twig hurriedly, “is that we wouldn’t hurt Dr. Appleton for anything in the world, in view of our great debt to him—”

“Which reminds me,” said Dr. Appleton nastily. “Slater didn’t pay my last two bills.”

“I mean,” continued Twig, his voice rising — here it comes, thought Prin; Twig can never keep his true feelings under cover for very long — “I mean, hurt Dr. Appleton or not hurt Dr. Appleton, to hell with this autopsy business! The answer is no! No autopsy! We forbid it!”

“So that’s it,” said Lieutenant Grundy, and Prin could have sworn she heard his rattles. “Well, let me tell you something, bud. If we find evidence of homicide, or even the suspicion of evidence of homicide, that uncle of yours is going to find himself on an autopsy table whether you forbid it or not!”

“Speaking purely in the spirit of science, Lieutenant,” said Coley, “I am all for it. How else can we prove that this once reasonably functioning disciple of Aesculapius is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf?”

“That’s about it,” said Lieutenant Grundy. “I’ve hacked around this nuthouse long enough. Now I operate! You filberts go on in there and wait. Boatner, you come along with me.”

Prin was startled to hear this strange name tossed suddenly into the conversation; but then she saw that the lieutenant was addressing the other plainclothes-man. Since entering the house with Grundy he had held up the lace-curtained front door, saying nothing and doing nothing — almost, as it were, being nothing. Prin could never afterward recall him in any way — as a face, for example, or as a voice, or as an influence on events to even a micrometric degree. If Boatner was important to Grundy, Grundy concealed it with cunning. Prin never saw him look at Boatner, even when speaking to him; and soon no one else looked at him, either.

Now he followed Grundy up the stairs, and Dr. Appleton sank into a hall chair, wearily livid. Prin, Coley and Twig went into the living room, where Aunt Lallie, Peet and Brady were pretending to be mice with a cat loose on the premises.

Aunt Lallie did not approve of Coley Collins (“on principal,” as Prin had told him, “since you don’t pay dividends”), and her reception of him now was not entirely cordial.

“Oh, it’s you again,” said Aunt Lallie. “Why are you here, and when did you come?”

“Your niece Princess is my reason, Miss O’Shea,” said Coley with proper respect, “and my arrival time was about a half hour ago.”

“A half hour?” Aunt Lallie’s tone suggested that she had slipped with no sweat into the head-of-the-family niche so unexpectedly vacated by Uncle Slater. “Where have you been, young man? What have you been doing to my niece?”

“‘With’ would be the more appropriate preposition,” said Prin quickly, before Coley could answer. “We’ve been in the hall closet making love.”

“The hall closet?” frowned Cousin Peet. “Isn’t that rather small for things like that?”

“Not if you’re talented,” said Prin.

“You’re being facetious, of course,” said Aunt Lallie coldly, “and showing extremely poor taste, with your Uncle Slater lying upstairs dead and the house full of police. That was the police you admitted, Twig, wasn’t it?”

“You know damn well it was,” replied her nephew. “Two detectives named Grundy and Boatner. They’ve gone upstairs for a look at Uncle Slater. Incidentally, that’s where Prin and this Collins character have been, not any hall closet. Old Appleton caught them sneaking out of Uncle Slater’s room and told Lieutenant Grundy about it.”

“Prin!” said Aunt Lallie. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” said Prin tiredly.

“But why? Aren’t we in enough trouble without you and this — this bartender making matters worse?”

“Don’t blame your niece, Miss O’Shea,” said Coley. “It was my idea, and bartending is only a trivial avocation—”

“Your idea!” frowned Aunt Lallie. “And what business was it of yours, pray, to barge in where you are not wanted?”

“My turn,” said Prin to Coley. “Why, Aunt Lallie, Coley didn’t barge in on anyone but Uncle Slater, who couldn’t have cared less. As for Coley’s not being wanted here, I want him, and I’ll remind you that this is my home as well as yours. Also, I think we’d better stop bickering and start remembering that Dr. Appleton has practically accused one of us of murdering Uncle Slater. And if he gets that lieutenant to agreeing with him—”

“But that’s so silly. Why would one of us wish to murder poor Slater?”

“Exactly, exactly,” said Brother Brady nervously. “Uncle Slater was the patron saint of freeloaders. None of us with a brain cell in his or her head would have knocked him off.”

“Brady, you have a crude and disgusting manner of expressing yourself, do you know that?” said Aunt Lallie. “And anyway, what do you mean by that remark?”

“If I may interpret, Miss O’Shea,” said Coley, “your nephew is not sure that everyone here measures up to his specification.”

“Specification,” said Peet. “What does he mean by specification?”

“His specification that no one with a brain,” explained Twig, “would have dreamed of murdering Uncle Slater.”

“Is that what you meant, Brady?” demanded Peet. “That I’m stupid?”

“It’s all right, Peet,” muttered Brady. “I don’t think I could stand it if you added intelligence to your other equipment. You’d be a bigger menace than the H-bomb.”

“Why, Brady,” said Peet, mollified. “What a nice thing to say.”

“Peet darling, why don’t you change your position a little?” suggested Prin. “You’re disturbing Brady. And I’m not sure he’s the only one.”

Peet, startled, lifted her right knee off her left and switched legs. This accomplished nothing but an inversion of the view, as in a mirror; and Coley, who had glanced guiltily away at Prin’s last sentence, glanced guiltily back. Brady, glowering, repaired to the bar just as Lieutenant Grundy marched in, followed by Dr. Appleton and the silent Boatner.

The lieutenant was carrying a brown bottle by the very tip of its neck. It was the same half-empty bottle of bonded bourbon, Prin was sure, that she had seen upstairs on Uncle Slater’s bedside table. Detective Boatner — Prin took note of this phenomenon quite without reference to him personally — had Uncle Slater’s glass, also from the night table, balanced on one virtually invisible palm.

“So there you are,” said Aunt Lallie huffily. “You, the tall one with the pickleface. Would you be so good as to explain why you have entered my house and tramped all over it without permission? According to the TV shows, you should have produced a warrant or something. Well?”

Grundy seemed a little thrown. “Madam,” he said, “I came here to look into the allegedly suspicious circumstances of a man’s death at the request of the deceased’s physician. For that no warrant is necessary.”

“Yes!” shouted Dr. Appleton.

“In the second place, Madam, it’s my understanding that this is not your house but the deceased’s house—”

“Point of order, Lieutenant,” said Twig. “Aunt Lallie is not a madam but a mademoiselle — on the well-aged side, like a good cheese, but a mademoiselle nevertheless.”

“I should say so!” said Cousin Peet indignantly. “Isn’t a madam somebody who runs one of those awful places where men go? I don’t think it’s very nice of you to accuse my aunt of a thing like that when it isn’t true.”

“By God! this is too much!” Grundy exclaimed. “No one is accusing anyone of anything! I’m only conducting an investigation in a legal and orderly manner!”

“I would like to know,” Prin said, “exactly what you are investigating.”

“I’ve just told you! I’m investigating the death of Slater O’Shea.”

“Isn’t it true that deaths are investigated only when they are not natural?”

“When they’re not natural, or when someone thinks they’re not natural.”

“I would like to know, then, what you have discovered to make you think that Uncle Slater’s death was not natural.”

“I haven’t discovered anything yet, to tell the truth,” said Grundy reluctantly. “All I have so far is Dr. Appleton’s professional opinion.”

“If I were a policeman,” Coley said, “I would hesitate a long time before going out on a limb with poor old Dr. Appleton. It seems to me a highly precarious procedure.”

“When the autopsy has been completed,” Dr. Appleton said with a corpse-like grin, “we will see how precarious it is!”

“Autopsy?” Aunt Lallie screeched. “Did you say autopsy? I simply will not subject Slater to such an indignity, and that’s that!”

“That is not that,” said Dr. Appleton with enjoyment. “And the sooner you get used to the idea, Miss O’Shea, the better for all concerned.”

“We’ve had enough horsing around,” growled Lieutenant Grundy. “Let’s get to it.”

“To what?” asked Brady in an alarmed tone.

“Everybody sit down!”

Momentarily cowed, everybody who was standing sat down; those who were sitting, unconsciously burrowed deeper into their seats with their bottoms, as if to establish the fact. Lieutenant Grundy, still carrying the bottle, stood in the middle of the room, prepared to swivel in any direction.

“Miss O’Shea,” Grundy began. Since there were three Miss O’Sheas present, a slight confusion ensued. The lieutenant restored order by indicating Prin. “You were the one who found Mr. O’Shea dead.”

Prin kept looking at him with interest.

“I asked you—”

“No, Lieutenant, you told me. But if you’re asking, the answer is: Yes, I was, for the umpteenth time.”

“How come?”

“How come what?”

“That you,” cried Grundy, “were the one who found him!”

“I went up to call him to dinner.”

“Suspected something was wrong, is that it?”

“Of course not. We just thought Uncle Slater mightn’t have wakened from his afternoon nap.”

“Oh, he took a nap every afternoon?”

“Well, he went up to his room every afternoon, so presumably it was for a nap.”

“For a nip nap, you might say,” said Twig.

“I’ll get to you,” said Grundy; “but until I do I’ll thank you not to interrupt. Miss O’Shea, how long did your uncle usually stay in his room when he went up for these so-called nips — I mean naps?”

“An hour or so,” said Prin, fighting an impulse to giggle.

“And you didn’t think it queer that he stayed so much longer in his room today?”

“We didn’t think about it at all till Mrs. Dolan — that’s the cook — announced that dinner was ready. When Mrs. Dolan says dinner is ready, people jump around here. We were all down but Uncle Slater, and somebody asked where he was, and somebody else said he was probably still in his room, so I went up to see.”

“Did you see your uncle before he went upstairs?”

“I saw him on his way upstairs, which is a little different, I think. He’d been out somewhere, and when he got home about two o’clock he went straight to his room. I was sitting in here alone listening to Till, and I saw Uncle Slater going up the stairs. I waved to him and he waved back to me and that was it.”

“Who’s Till?” asked Grundy suspiciously.

“Till Eulenspiegel. That’s a tone poem by Richard Strauss.”

“Poetry, huh?” Grundy’s tone disposed of that. Prin wondered what the doughty lieutenant would have said if his range of general information had embraced the even more deplorable fact that a tone poem was a form of music. “How was Mr. O’Shea acting when you saw him go upstairs?”

“Perfectly natural.”

“Not mad or upset or anything like that?”

“No. He smiled and waved and was in the best of spirits, as far as I could tell—”

“He wasn’t in the best of spirits, if I knew Uncle Slater,” said Cousin Twig involuntarily. “The best of spirits was in him.”

Over the lieutenant’s glare at Twig, Prin said, “Well, yes. He was very cheerful-looking. I guess he was carrying a load of sorts at that.”

“Drinking.”

“Isn’t that what I said, Lieutenant?”

“No. You said he was perfectly natural.”

“Uncle Slater was perfectly natural when he was drinking. It was when he wasn’t that he wasn’t.”

Grundy’s head during this phase of the interrogation had been lolling to the left. Now he brought it erect with an appearance of great effort, but he brought it over too far, and it immediately lolled to the right.

“All right. So you went up to get him for dinner. Did you just walk into his room?”

“Of course not. Do I look like the sort of person who goes around just walking into other people’s bedrooms? I knocked. When he didn’t answer I opened the door and peeped in. And saw him lying on the floor, near his bed. At first I thought he’d fainted or something, but when I went in and took a closer look I knew he was dead.”

“Did you touch him?”

“I don’t think so. He was so definitely dead.”

“What made you so sure, Miss O’Shea?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It must have been the way his arms and legs were. Sort of scattered, if you know what I mean. And then, of course, he wasn’t breathing.”

“Did you look closely at his face?”

“Not hardly,” said Prin with a little shudder. “He was lying on his stomach, his head turned so only one side of his face showed. Anyway, it was dim in the room by that time.”

“How long were you up there?”

“Two minutes, I suppose.”

“Did you touch anything?”

“You’ve already asked me that. I did not. I ran right downstairs and told everybody Uncle Slater was dead. No one would believe me.”

“By everybody you mean the people in this room now?”

“Except Coley — Mr. Collins. He didn’t come till later.”

“Did anyone else go into that room between the time you found your uncle dead and the time Mr. Collins came?”

“My brother Brady. That was after I’d phoned Dr. Appleton.”

“Brady.” Lieutenant Grundy looked around. “That’s you, I take it?”

“Right, Lieutenant,” said Brady powerfully.

“You went upstairs to your uncle’s room?”

“To, but not into, if you get the distinction,” said Brady.

“You didn’t actually set foot in the room?”

“Not I. I had a quick look at Uncle Slater from the doorway, and came right back down.”

“Why didn’t you go in?”

“I’m allergic to dead people. I break out in goose pimples.”

“You were satisfied that he was dead?”

“I accepted it, but I can’t say that it gave me any satisfaction. He is dead, isn’t he?”

“Oh, he’s dead, all right.”

“Then I can’t see why we have to keep going over and over it,” said Brother Brady crossly. “Do we have to circulate a petition to make it legal?”

“If Dr. Appleton’s right,” said Grundy grimly, “you people will need all the legality you can get.”

“And if Dr. Appleton is not right,” piped Aunt Lallie spitefully, “I shall sue him for one million dollars.”

The little old doctor walked over to Aunt Lallie, laughed in her face and walked back again.

“Let’s not start the suing talk,” said Grundy, “not before we do a little more spadework. For instance: I want everyone here to tell me where he or she was and what he or she was doing this afternoon as nearly as he or she can remember it, which had better be the way it actually was if he or she knows what’s good for him or her. And we’ll start with... you!” and his forefinger speared Aunt Lallie, who went very nearly blue as she jumped.

This was the auspicious beginning of the most inauspicious interrogation thus far. No one, it seemed, had had anything significant to do, and no mnemonically linked place to do it; as a consequence, everyone had been all over the premises at one time or another during the day, and no one could be more specific than that. But Lieutenant Grundy persisted. Gradually he elicited a few statements that might vaguely be considered facts.

Aunt Lallie had spent most of the afternoon in her room, she was sure of that, but she had been out of it once or twice for reasons that had slipped her mind. Cousin Peet had lain in the sun on the terrace, which Twig, Brady and Prin could verify; but then she had gone upstairs after talking with Prin. She had not the least idea what time that had been, time never having had any particular significance for her; and there was only her word that she had showered and admired her luscious nude self in her pier glass, for so far as she knew she had seen, and had been seen by, no one. Brady, after itchily leaving Peet on the terrace, had gone around back and knocked some golf balls around, which may have had something symbolic about it; and later, after sitting a while in the sun contemplating his navel (Prin thought it had much likelier been Peet’s), he had trudged upstairs and talked to Prin in her room before going to his own room and biting his fingernails for an hour or so (he placed his fingertips in evidence). Twig had been out of sorts, he said. He had considered going into town to a movie, but he had decided against it because neither feature was a horror picture; and all in all he had just drifted around the premises, in and out and downstairs and upstairs. He had noticed Peet, yes, and Brady, too — Peet on the terrace and Brady swatting golf balls, but he had avoided them (as too obvious targets for his malice). Prin told about faking the little-girl’s lunar complaint shamelessly and coming home and the rest of it, some for the second and third time.

It was Lieutenant Grundy’s opinion that they had all had plenty of opportunity to abridge Uncle Slater’s constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and he said so snidely.

“With your permission, Lieutenant,” said Coley Collins, “I should like to make a point, to wit: There is absolutely no evidence to indicate that Uncle Slater’s constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was abridged.”

“No evidence to prove it, maybe,” said Grundy, “but plenty to indicate it.”

“Is that so?” said Prin with interest. “Would you be kind enough to tell us what? And you listen, Coley — maybe you’ll learn a thing or two about the science of detection.”

“Of course,” said Coley. “It is always instructive to pay heed to the words of a professional.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lieutenant Grundy handsomely, “we make our mistakes. But I would have you note — if my understanding of the point is correct — that anyone who dies while awake, with his eyes open, will be found after death with his eyes still open. Slater O’Shea died with his eyes shut. From this we may conclude that he died while asleep or in a comatose condition. And this leads us to the crucial question: Was he naturally asleep or unnaturally unconscious at the time of death? I would doubt the former, since it seems extremely unlikely that Mr. O’Shea enjoyed lying down on the floor for his nap when there was a bed available a foot away for the purpose. Unconscious — let us say from simple overindulgence in spirits? That will be determined by the percentage of alcohol found in his blood measured against his normal capacity, and other scientific considerations. But it is my preliminary view that mere overindulgence will not explain his position on the floor. Because there is something very rotten in the state of this bourbon we found at his bedside, or I miss my guess.”

Until Lieutenant Grundy had launched into his analysis, Prin had thought of him as a small-time cop of nasty personality and mere brute intelligence. It seemed to her the grossest deception for him now to prove himself otherwise.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Prin.

“Someone here will,” smiled Grundy, “if I’m not mistaken. However! I’m through for the present, although it’s likely I shall see you all again after the autopsy. Boatner, phone for an ambulance and then join me upstairs. We’ll wait on the scene of the suspected crime till the meat wagon comes.”

The lieutenant turned to follow Boatner out when Cousin Twig stopped him. “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” he said. “I understand why you want to take Uncle Slater’s bottle of bourbon with you — after all, if it’s full of poison it isn’t any good to us anyway — but why are you taking the glass?”

“Because,” said Grundy, “it’s the connecting link between the bottle of bourbon and your uncle’s tummy. Not an indispensable point, perhaps,” he said modestly, “but we like to be thorough.”

“Well,” said Cousin Twig glumly. But then he brightened, if a lesser darkness could be called brightness. “If the glass turns out all right, or anyway when you don’t need it any more, would you make a note to return it to us? We’ve got to start economizing around here.”