Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowning Duck

“And the police know about that rod?” Mason asked.

“Oh, yes. Mrs. Burr and the doctor were there at the time. I promised I’d get it for him, and then the doctor left to drive into town; and Mrs. Burr said she’d like to go in with him. I told her I was going to be in town later on, and I’d pick her up and drive her back.”

“So she went in with the doctor?”

“Yes... That left me there in the house alone, except for the servants.”

“And what did you do?”

“Well, I fooled around for a while with some odds and ends, and intended to go into the den to get Burr’s fishing rod, as soon as I got a chance.”

“What time was this?”

“Oh, around eighty-thirty or nine o’clock I guess. I had a lot of things to do around the place, getting the men started on their work, and so forth. Burr had told me he was in no hurry for the fishing rod. Sometime in the afternoon, I think he said.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said. “Get to the point.”

“Well, about an hour later one of the servants passed by the room. You know where his room is. It’s on the ground floor, and the windows open on the patio. The servant looked through the window and saw Burr sitting in bed, and from the position in which he was sitting — well, dammit, the Mexican saw he was dead.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“The servant came and called me. I dashed to the door, opened it, saw Burr there on the bed, and immediately saw a vase sitting on the table about ten feet from the bed. I got a whiff of some peculiar gas, and it keeled me over. The Mexican dragged me out into the corridor, slammed the door shut, and called the police.

“The sheriff came out, took a look through the window, came to the conclusion the man had been killed in the same way that Milter had been killed, and smashed in the windows and let the place air out. Then the officers went in. There’s no question about it. He’d been killed in the same way — cyanide of potassium dropped into the vase of acid. The poor devil had never stood a chance. He was there on the bed with his leg in a cast and a weight on the leg suspended from a pulley. He couldn’t possibly move out of bed.”

“Where was the nurse?” Mason asked.

“That’s just it,” Witherspoon said. “That damn nurse was at the bottom of the whole business.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, she got temperamental — or Burr did. I don’t know which. The nurse is telling an absolutely preposterous story.”

“Well, where was she?” Mason asked. “I thought Burr was to have someone in constant attendance.”

Witherspoon said, “I told you that they caught Burr trying to get out of bed, that Burr said someone was trying to kill him. The doctor said it was a plain case of nervous reaction after the administration of narcotics. No one paid very much attention to it — not then. Of course, later on, when this thing happened, his words had the effect of a prophecy. So the police got in touch with the nurse. The nurse said that Burr had told her in confidence that I was the someone he expected to try and kill him.”

“The nurse hadn’t said anything about that to the authorities?”

“No. She also thought it might have been a reaction from the narcotics. The doctor was certain of it. You know how a nurse has to defer to the doctor on a case. Under the circumstances, if she’d said anything to anyone, she’d have been guilty of all sorts of professional misconduct. She had to keep her mouth shut — so she says — now.”

Mason said, “That still isn’t answering my question as to where the nurse was when all this happened.”

“She was in town.”

“And Burr was there alone?”

“Yes. You see, Burr absolutely couldn’t move out of that bed. He could, however, use his arms and hands, and there was a telephone right by the bed. As a matter of fact, he really didn’t need a nurse in attendance all the time. He could have got action whenever he wanted to pick up the telephone receiver. I have an inter-room telephone communication in the house. You can press a key on the switchboard and hook your telephone in on one of the outside trunk lines, or you can switch it over to any one of half a dozen rooms in the house, simply by pressing the proper button. Burr could have called the kitchen any time he wanted anything.”

“Tell me about the nurse,” Mason insisted.

“Well, when Burr was first put to bed and the leg set, he had his wife take a bag out of the closet and bring it to him. That bag had some of his fishing flies, a couple of his favorite books, a little flashlight, five or six books of the pocket series, and various odds and ends. He could keep that bag by the side of his bed, reach down in it, and tie flies, look over his reels, or get a book.

“After this nurse came on the job, she told him that she thought it would be better for him to tell her whenever he wanted anything, so she was going to unpack the bag and put the contents over on the dresser. She told him to ask her for whatever he wanted. She said she wasn’t going to have the bag there where she’d stumble over it every time she walked around the bed.

“That infuriated Burr. He said no woman was going to mix his fly-tying stuff all up, that he’d keep his things by the side of his bed, and whenever he wanted them, he’d get them.

“The nurse tried to show her authority, and grabbed the bag. He managed to catch her wrist, and all but twisted her arm off. Then he told her to get out and stay out. He said he’d start throwing things at her if she so much as stuck her head in the door. The nurse telephoned the doctor. The doctor came out, and the nurse, Mrs. Burr, the doctor, and I all had a talk with Burr. The upshot of it was that the doctor and the nurse went back to town. Mrs. Burr went with them to pick up a new nurse. The telephone was left switched on to the kitchen, and the women in the kitchen were told to pay particular attention to see that Burr’s telephone was answered just as soon as he picked up the receiver in his room. It certainly seemed as though it would be safe enough to leave him alone under those circumstances. At least the doctor thought so.”

“And you?” Mason asked.

“Emphatically,” Witherspoon said. “To tell you the truth, I was just a bit fed up with Burr’s going temperamental. I told him, somewhat forcefully, that I thought it would be better for him to go to a hospital. Of course, I had to make allowances for the man He’d been suffering a great deal of pain. He was still very weak and very sick. The danger of complications had not yet passed. He was nervous and irritable. The after effect of the drugs was distorting his mental perspective. Undoubtedly, he was hard to get along with.

“However, I think his actions were very unreasonable, and his treatment of the nurse decidedly boorish.”

“And what connects you with his death?” Mason asked.

“The damn fishing rod. There he was on the bed with the fishing rod in his hands. He’d just started to put it together. He had two joints in his right hand, and the other joint in his left hand. Well, you can see where that leaves me. I’m the only one who could have got the fishing rod, the only one who could have given it to him. I was alone in the house. The dogs were loose. No stranger could have got in. The servants swear they hadn’t gone near the room. The poor devil never stood a chance. There he was, held motionless in bed, and this vase of poison stuck on the table about seven or eight feet from the bed, where he couldn’t possibly have reached it to have knocked it off, or done anything about it.”

“But he could have picked up the telephone?”

“Yes. Evidently the gas took effect too quickly for that. He didn’t even know what was happening. Someone — some friend of his had walked in the room, handed him that fishing rod, probably said, ‘Look, Roland, I happened to find your fishing rod. It wasn’t in Witherspoon’s study at all. You left it somewhere else,’ and Burr had taken the fishing rod and started to put it together. The friend had said, ‘Well, so long. If there’s anything you want, just let me know,’ and dropped some cyanide of potassium into the acid, and walked out. A few seconds later. Burr was dead. It had to be some intimate friend. Well, there you are.”