Richard Deming - Gallows in My Garden

The inspector’s treatment of Abigail Stoltz was more in line with his usual manner. I suspect he was never quite comfortable with any woman, and hid his inferiority under a bullying manner. With beautiful women he was simply too floored to operate properly, but his courage mounted in direct proportion to the haggishness of his female opponent. Abigail got the works.

“Sit down!” he barked, as soon as she entered the door, and when she frightenedly hurried to comply, he shot at her, “Your name?”

“Abigail Stoltz,” she whispered.

“Speak up so I can hear you! Miss or Mrs.?”

“Miss,” she said. “I never married.”

Day scowled at her bitterly. One after another he hammered questions at her concerning her occupation, her private life, her reason for visiting her niece every week-end and a dozen other inconsequential matters. The net return in usable information was zero, and finally he ran down.

Having reduced the woman to the verge of tears, eventually he asked the only question for which he had called her in in the first place.

“This note young Lawson left for his stepmother. She says you had it last. What’d you do with it?”

“Gave it to Douglas,” she said. “Doctor Lawson, that is.”

Day swung his gaze from her face to mine. I shrugged.

“Round and round the mulberry bush,” I said.

“Send in Doctor Lawson,” Day ordered Abigail Stoltz.

When Douglas Lawson came in, he seated himself easily without awaiting the inspector’s invitation, crossed his legs, and lit a cigarette.

Day regarded him over the top of his glasses, switched his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, and said, “We’re trying to track down the note your nephew left behind, Doctor. Miss Stoltz says she gave it to you.”

“That’s right,” he admitted.

“Who’d you give it to?”

“No one,” the doctor said. “Have it right here in my wallet.”

He fished a leather case from his inside breast pocket, searched it for a moment, and produced a folded half sheet of stationery. Warren Day shot a look of gloating triumph in my direction.

“Another of the famous Moon deductions,” he said.

After giving the paper a cursory examination, the inspector tossed it to me. The note was written in ink on what seemed to be half a sheet of legal-sized typing-paper. It read:

Dear Ann:

I hate to leave this way, because undoubtedly the publicity will be unpleasant for you, but I think it the wisest course. Explain things to Grace, Uncle Doug.

There was no signature.

“Not quite what Mrs. Lawson said, but close,” I remarked, and handed it back to the inspector.

“You sure your nephew wrote this?” Day asked.

The doctor looked surprised. “Why, of course. It’s in his handwriting.” He regarded Day curiously, then dropped his eyes to the note in the inspector’s hand. “I suppose a handwriting expert could establish it definitely.”

The inspector grunted, referred to the note, and asked, “Any idea what the boy meant about explaining things to you and his sister?”

Dr. Lawson shook his head. “We all discussed that at the time, but it didn’t make sense to anyone. However, since we found Don’s body, I’ve been thinking it over, and it occurs to me possibly this was a suicide note. Suicide would explain the note’s apparent lack of sense, for suicides are seldom very coherent. Possibly Don’s use of the word ‘explain’ was merely a poor word choice. As we originally interpreted the note, we all thought he was asking Ann to explain to Grace and me why he was running away, which of course she didn’t know, but if you regard it as a suicide note, perhaps all he meant was he wanted her to break the news gently.”

The inspector’s expression was dubious. “Know of any possible motive for suicide?”

“Well—” Dr. Lawson paused to punch out his cigarette and immediately lit another. He seemed slightly embarrassed. “A suicide doesn’t necessarily have to have what you or I would consider a motive, Inspector. The condition of his mind is motive enough.”

“But Mrs. Lawson stated very definitely that in her opinion young Don was not pathological.”

“Pathological?” The doctor looked puzzled. Then he grinned. “Ann’s — Mrs. Lawson’s knowledge of psychiatry is at best sketchy. Apparently she meant psychotic. And I’m afraid I have to disagree with my sister-in-law. Don definitely had a psychotic personality, and I was even planning to refer him to a psychiatrist for treatment.”

Warren Day’s eyes lighted with interest. “What was his trouble?”

The doctor shrugged. “I’m not a psychiatrist. I do know enough, however, to recognize a psychotic when I see one. Among other things, Don was a hypochondriac. For the past year he has called at my office on the average of once a week with everything from tuberculosis to a brain tumor, but I’ve never been able to find the slightest thing wrong with him physically. He had always been a moody boy, but recently his fits of depression began to alarm me. I have to admit that the possibility of suicide never occurred to me, for if it had I would have referred him to a psychiatrist immediately. I did fear a possible mental breakdown, however, and while I would not have diagnosed Don as a potential suicide, it is not particularly surprising he became one.”

This masterful bit of post-mortem diagnosis seemed to satisfy the inspector, but left me with the mental resolve that if I ever started clawing the wallpaper, the first doctor I would stay away from was Dr. Douglas Lawson.

Day folded the suicide note and stuck it in his inside coat pocket. “Now about the attempted poisoning, Doctor. Understand you had the milk analyzed.”

“Yes. It contained enough paraldehyde to kill several people.”

“Paraldehyde?” I asked, surprised. “Isn’t that a peculiar drug to use as a poison?”

Dr. Lawson looked at me quizzically. “You familiar with it?”

“Only vaguely. Had an alcoholic client once who took it to make pink elephants disappear. The guy had a suicide complex, and it was my job to see he didn’t knock himself off on one of his periodic binges. I asked the doc who prescribed paraldehyde if an overdose could be fatal, and he said it might be, but he doubted that anyone could hold enough on his stomach to kill himself, because too much makes people throw up.”

The doctor’s expression was the tolerant one of a professional explaining the technicalities of his profession to a layman. “Probably your client took it in water. Undisguised it has a rather nauseating taste, but in milk a person could easily hold down a fatal dose. I think you’d find it listed as a poison in the Pharmacopoeia.”

“What difference does it make whether it would have killed her or not?” Warren Day interjected irritably. “It was obviously intended to, which makes it attempted murder. Where could a person get this stuff, Doctor?”

Douglas Lawson shrugged. “Any drugstore. You’d have to have a prescription, but anyone can obtain a prescription for a hypnotic by visiting a doctor and claiming insomnia. My own theory is that whoever is trying to kill Grace did just that, and was unlucky enough to have the doctor prescribe a hypnotic with a strong odor. The potential killer could hardly ask the doctor to prescribe a specific drug, and probably figured an overdose of any sleeping-potion would do the trick.”

The inspector said, “As I understand it, everyone in the house now was also present on each of the occasions attempts were made on your niece’s life.”

The doctor nodded.

“And Sunday night, when Don disappeared, everyone but Arnold Tate was here.”

“Depends on what time he disappeared,” Dr. Lawson said. “He told all of us good night and went to his room when the rest of us retired. If he disappeared before one a.m., we were all in the house. I received an emergency call about ten of one, and left in my car ten minutes later. I didn’t get back until seven-thirty, after the servants were up.”