The Golden Goose

8

And so, two days later, was Lieutenant Sherm Grundy.

Two reports lay before him, one an analysis of Slater O’Shea’s bourbon from the bedside bottle and the other of Slater O’Shea’s interior. Neither report, from Grundy’s point of view, was ideal. For they disturbed his personal concept of the good detective life, which was based on as little trouble as possible for himself. His reputation as a death-on-rats sourpuss stemmed from this — the more ruthlessly he pursued an investigation, the more quickly it came to an end and restored the pleasant status quo ante of police life in Cibola City.

He read the reports again. Slater O’Shea’s bottle of bourbon had been liberally laced with a drug identified as a synthetic substitute for insulin. This drug was used in the treatment of diabetes. An overdose was fatal. But the effect was a delayed one, taking about an hour to produce unconsciousness and death. This delayed-action effect had indubitably taken place inside Slater O’Shea, where the identical insulin substitute had been found in lethal quantity. No trace of the drug had been found in the glass.

As Grundy reconstructed the last hour or so of Slater O’Shea’s life, he had come home, gone to his bedroom, taken a few — in this case unhealthy — slugs directly from the doctored bottle, ignoring the glass, and lain down for his afternoon nap. Aware after a while that something more than simple drowsiness was overcoming him, he had got off the bed, taken a step or two, and collapsed. There, on the floor, he had shut his eyes and taken his nap at last, or his last nap, which in his case came to the same thing.

What Grundy disliked most about his reconstruction, aside from its homicidal indications, was its fanciness. He had known on contact that nothing simple or sensible could be expected from the O’Sheas, but he had at least hoped for an ordinary, decent poison, something you might buy at a hardware store in a can of weed killer or insecticide. He would really have preferred another kind of weapon altogether, such as a gun or a knife or a blunt instrument. But a synthetic substitute for insulin, for God’s sake! Grundy was not at all sure he was up to it.

Cursing softly, the lieutenant put his mind to the problem of fancy murder. Even plain murder had been a rarity in his professional experience, Cibola City being a singularly docile community.

It took little experience, however, considering the O’Shea tribe even as he slightly knew them, to come to an immediate conclusion: profit, or the hope of it, must be the motive. The trouble was that damn will of Slater O’Shea’s his heirs-in-residence had subsequently told him about. With the modest fortune divided among almost two dozen O’Sheas, how could the testator’s death greatly profit any one of them? Especially the five who lived with him and off him? Of course, profit was a relative thing; what seemed small at one time might seem large indeed at another, depending on circumstances. Still, Grundy was uneasy. Perhaps, he thought, brightening, no such will existed. Brother, let us pray!

Digging a directory from his drawer, Grundy located the telephone number of the O’Shea residence. This done, he dialed the number and waited for a response, which was finally made by Mrs. Dolan. Mrs. Dolan, audibly disappointed at not being asked to relay a message, summoned Miss Lallie O’Shea. Miss Lallie O’Shea, sounding far more alert to the ear than she appeared to the eye, demanded to know when the police department was going to let Slater O’Shea’s family have him back for decent disposal — “that is,” said deceased’s sister, “if there is anything left of him to dispose of.”

“You may have the body back immediately, Miss O’Shea,” said Grundy. “I assure you it is almost entirely in one piece.”

“Thank you,” said Aunt Lallie coldly. “I have never in my born days heard of anything more disgusting. I suppose you found that that old fool of a doctor should be committed to a mental institution?”

“We’re not ready with our findings yet,” lied Grundy. “By the way, Miss O’Shea, can you tell me the name of your brother’s lawyer?”

“His lawyer? Why do you want to know that?”

“Routine,” said the lieutenant, resorting to the magic word. “His name, Miss O’Shea?”

“It seems to me you’re being terribly evasive, Lieutenant.”

“So are you!”

Aunt Lallie chuckled unexpectedly, “Too-shee.”

“I can get the information the hard way, Miss O’Shea. Why not be cooperative and save us a little trouble?”

“I don’t see why I should. However, I suppose it can’t do any harm. Slater’s lawyer was Selwyn Fish.”

“Oh. Thank you very much.”

Grundy hung up and pulled his long nose longer. He might have known, he reflected bitterly, that an oddball client like Slater O’Shea would go for an oddball attorney like Selwyn Fish like a fly for an open garbage pail. Professionally, Fish gave off a mephitic aroma. Everything about him — his person, his office location, his methods — offended the nostrils. He was an expert in the art of marginal dealing, said art consisting in a talent for pursuing the questionable while remaining just inside the purlieus of the law. There was a certain poetic unity in the revelation that the victim of a fancy murderer had engaged the services of a shyster lawyer, but Lieutenant Grundy did not warm to it. Grundy’s lack of empathy with art in whatever form has already been remarked.

Consequently, he rose from his desk with a scowl; and he covered his head with a hat and left his office, Selwyn Fish-bound.

It was a short walk from police headquarters. The shyster’s office was located over a cheap-john clothing store in the seediest section of old Cibola City, on a crooked side street with gaps in its cobbles, like broken teeth. The two-story frame building leaned a little on its foundations, and its ancient dirt-colored walls always reminded Grundy of the scaling hide of a dying old dwarf elephant. It was twenty years past its just deserts of condemnation, a fate it successfully avoided by the fact that it was owned by the most influential member of the Cibola City Council.

The lieutenant pushed open the street door, which screamed feebly, and he groped through the sour dimness of a flight of narrow creaking stairs to the upper floor. Here, lurking along the grimy little hall, were grimy little offices, their half-pebbled glass doors announcing a chiropractor, the headquarters of a local sect known as The Sublime Order of the Sons of the Sun, a public stenographer, and finally — in scabby gilt lettering — Selwyn Fish, Attorney-at-Law.

Grundy walked in. He found himself in a sort of closet, presided over by a desiccated female with a new purple pimple on the end of her nose and a shroudlike black dress over her bones. All Grundy could think of was a disinterment order.

“Yes” this lady snapped. Then she noticed who it was, and she said, this time in a wary tone, “Yes?”

“Lieutenant Grundy, police,” Grundy said. “Mr. Fish in?”

“Police?” she repeated, as if she had not noticed. “Mr. Fish has a client with him. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” said Grundy; and he looked around for a chair. There was none except the chair occupied by the talking corpse. He leaned against the door and waited.

He waited twenty minutes. Then the inner door of the closet opened and a woman with dried-out yellow straw for hair and an improbable chest measurement appeared. At sight of Grundy she froze like an alley cat. Then she tiptoed across the closet floor, Grundy politely held the door open for her, and she clattered down the hall and down the stairs on her three-inch heels as if she expected him to come racing after her, gun in hand. Grundy knew her well. Her name was Big Suzy.

“Come in, Lieutenant, come in,” called a boomy voice; Grundy shut the hall door and went into the inner office. Selwyn Fish was on his feet behind his desk, showing his crystal teeth in what Grundy supposed was intended as a smile. “Sit down, sit down. What can I do for you?”

Grundy sat down in an armchair with a broken spring. He placed his hat precisely in his lap, taking his time about it; accommodated his lean buttocks to the lumpy seat; then deliberately sat back and looked Selwyn Fish over. Fish had been fashioned in the same remarkable workshop that had produced Twig O’Shea. He had a long thick torso set on short bandy legs, so that when he stood he looked like a dwarf and when he sat down — as he now rather uncertainly did — he seemed gigantic. Above the enormous shoulders wobbled a pin-head, without a hair on it, but whose contents, Grundy knew, were out of all proportion to its container. The whole effect was that of an android made up out of spare parts by a drunken workman of the year 2783. The lawyer’s only savory feature were his eyes — large, black, brilliantly beautiful, like some gorgeous flower growing in a swamp.

“I understand,” began Grundy, “that you were the late Slater O’Shea’s attorney, Mr. Fish.”

“Who told you that, Lieutenant?” asked the lawyer, cautiously.

“Miss Lallie O’Shea.”

“I see. Well, yes, I was old Slater’s lawyer. Quite a shock, his dying so suddenly.”

“He’s dead, there’s no question about that.”

“Why are you interested, Lieutenant? Did Slater break a law before he died? If so, you’re a bit late.”

“He didn’t break any law. Not that I know of.”

“Well, I’ll venture that he broke quite a few you don’t know of. He wasn’t greatly inhibited by scruples, the old rascal. Just ran down a bit in his later years.”

“He was a wealthy man, I understand.”

“To you and me, yes. Wealth is relative, isn’t it? Inherited it from the widow he married. Quite the lady’s man in his day. I suspect Slater made a good thing out of more than one gullible female.”

“You drew up his will?”

“That’s right. It’s in my safe there.”

“Funny sort of will, I understand.”

Fish said quickly, “Why do you say that? Who told you about it?”

“The family. They all seem to think it was a dirty trick for him to split his estate up among so many heirs.”

“Oh, that.” Selwyn Fish laughed, and he sounded like Basil Rathbone doing the Witch in Hansel and Gretel. “That was no will. It was a fraud.”

“What!” said Grundy.

“O’Shea had a fine time over it. A joke on his free-loading family, he called it. He had me draw it up, but he never signed it. It has no legal standing at all.”

“The hell you say.”

“Whatever else he may have been, old Slater was nobody’s fool. He didn’t want his money scattered among a lot of relatives he didn’t give a damn for and who certainly didn’t give a damn for him.”

Grundy was thinking acidly, This complicates an already complicated mess. “I take it O’Shea left another will? A secret one that’s legal? Who inherits, Fish?”

“Well, now,” demurred the Little Giant, making a steeple out of his conical fingers, “I don’t know that I can tell you that, Lieutenant. As a matter of ethical practice.” Grundy suppressed a snort. “I’d have to have the family’s consent.”

“Counselor, this is a police inquiry.”

“Why should the police be interested?” asked Fish innocently. “Is there something suspicious about Slater O’Shea’s death?”

Grundy briefly considered coming clean, then decided against it.

“It’s just something that’s come up,” he said. “Let’s not get technical, Counselor. I’ll know shortly, anyhow. How about it?”

“Well... I always do prefer to cooperate with the police... All right, Lieutenant. The truth is that Slater O’Shea left his entire estate to his next of kin, his sister.”

“The one they call Aunt Lallie?”

“That’s right. Lallie O’Shea.”

“Does she know this yet?”

“No, indeed. I follow the custom in such matters. I shall read the will to the family after the testator is properly interred.”

“Any chance that O’Shea might have told his sister about this beforehand?”

“Slater? No, no. That would have given away the show — the fake will. I’m quite certain not a soul knows about the real will except myself. And now you, of course.”

Grundy rose abruptly. “Thanks, Counselor.”

Fish waved pooh-poohingly. “Happy to be of assistance. In any way short of betraying a client’s interests, Lieutenant. Everyone knows Selwyn Fish’s reputation.”

“And that,” said Grundy, “is a fact.”

Walking back, he went over the ground in the light of Fish’s information. That the “will” Slater O’Shea had told his relatives-in-residence about had been an invalid joke did not surprise Grundy in the least; the whole crew were lunatics, in his opinion. What did surprise him was O’Shea’s secret choice of heir. Even on slight acquaintance, Grundy would have guessed the heir to be Prin, not her aunt.

Aside from that, if he accepted Selwyn Fish’s assurance that the existence of the valid will was unknown to the family, then the motive-situation remained unchanged. Murderers were motivated not by what is the fact, but by what they think is the fact. If the five freeloaders still thought that on Slater O’Shea’s death his estate would be divided into twenty-two equal parts, none of them had a credible gain-motive to hasten his death; on the contrary, all had a vested interest in keeping him alive.

But suppose Selwyn Fish had been mistaken? In that case, it was quite possible that Lallie O’Shea had learned about the will by accident, or even by chicanery. The likeliest theory, Grundy ruminated, was that Slater himself had let the secret out when he was well into the bottle. Lallie O’Shea’s foreknowledge that she was her brother’s heir had to be considered.

Aunt Lallie as the poisoner did not tax Grundy’s credulity in the slightest. He could easily visualize her in the role of, say, Lady Macbeth, a Lady Macbeth who would have fewer dreams about it afterward (the pretty little lady’s large, hairy hands helped a great deal). If she were Lady Macbeth, she had a collaborator; and Grundy immediately thought of several prospects — Twig, Brady, Peet; it was even conceivable that they were all in it together, every damn one of them. Or was it? On second thought, it was doubtful that Lallie O’Shea would have let into her plot several potential blackmailers. One confederate would have been likelier; and in that case, Grundy thought reluctantly, the logical nominee was Princess O’Shea, because she worked in a drug store. He could not see Peet O’Shea as having knowledge of any drug more sinister than aspirin; and, while her brother Twig and Princess’s brother Brady could have the knowledge, they lacked Prin’s opportunity.

Unless, Lieutenant Grundy thought suddenly, one of the trio was a diabetic. A diabetic would surely keep up with the latest developments relating to diabetes, especially one that offered the oral advantage of the synthetic substitute for hypodermic-injected insulin. True, a diabetic known to be using the drug would be taking a monstrous chance to use it to commit murder. On the other hand, poisoners almost invariably expected their crimes to go undetected (and Grundy knew perfectly well the statistical estimate of the proportion of poisonings that did go undetected); so a diabetic murderer was not so far-fetched as it seemed.

In fact, the lieutenant decided, he had better check that theory at once; and, consulting his watch and finding the time to be well within office-hour probability, he headed for Dr. Horace Appleton’s abattoir.