Richard Deming - Gallows in My Garden

“It’s not an off-chance,” I insisted. “I know the conversation I heard doesn’t sound very passionate, but he has her hooked, all right. You can tell by a woman’s tone when she’s in love with a man.”

“How would you know?” he asked irritably. “Besides, according to the testimony, Doctor Lawson was the one who first noticed the odor of the milk. If he poisoned it, he’d have kept his mouth shut.”

“Maybe he saw one of the others sniffing the air, realized the poisoning wasn’t going to work, and beat the other person to the jump. And who but a doctor would have a better opportunity to obtain poison?”

“That,” he said triumphantly, “is where your whole case falls down. Would a doctor use a poison that smells?”

“Maybe not,” I admitted. “But let’s check up on his alibi, anyway.”

“What alibi? For all we know, Don may have gone over the bluff between ten-thirty, when he was last seen, and one a.m., when the doctor claims he left.”

I said patiently, “Maybe eventually we’ll turn something up fixing the time of death. Maybe the morgue will find he wore a watch that smashed when he fell, for example. If you phone the hospital now, you’ll catch the same night supervisor who was on when the doctor delivered his baby.”

After grumbling some more, Day used the study phone to call Millard Hospital and talk to the night supervisor. He talked about five minutes, then hung up the phone.

“Alibi checks,” he said sourly.

I looked at my watch and saw it was one-thirty. “The only guy left to interview is Hannegan,” I told the inspector. “You can do that if you want, but I’m going to bed.”

I set my mental alarm clock for eight. Sometimes my mental alarm clock works and sometimes it doesn’t, mostly the latter when I have been in the habit of sleeping till noon for some time, a habit I automatically develop between jobs. This Sunday morning it was off by an hour and a half, popping me awake at six-thirty. I spent fifteen minutes trying to shut it off and go back to sleep, then gave up in disgust and climbed out of bed. I took my time shaving, showering, and dressing, so it was nearly seven-thirty before I finally left the room.

I was reaching for the knob of the door across from mine in order to give it a routine check, when it turned by itself from inside. I stepped back, the door opened, and out walked Arnold Tate, still resplendent in his purple-striped orange pajamas and his maroon robe. His hair was twisted in the kind of cowlick you only get by sleeping on it.

Quickly he pulled the door shut behind him and eyed me with a mixture of belligerence and embarrassment.

“It’s not what you’re thinking at all, Mr. Moon.”

“Was I thinking something?” I asked.

“You’re thinking I’m carrying on some kind of illicit love affair with Grace,” he said heatedly. “I can see it in your face.”

“That’s just the reflection of your guilty conscience,” I assured him. “I know you were just guarding her against murderers.”

His face reddened, and his long jaw thrust out. He took a step toward me with both fists clenched. “If you weren’t a cripple—”

I nodded agreeably. “It wouldn’t be fair to hit me, but I guess I take advantage of it.”

He said, “You could stand to have your mind dry-cleaned,” padded his bare feet across the hall, and slammed the door of the room he was supposed to have slept in.

I knocked on the door he had just left, and when Grace called, “Yes?” opened it and went in. She was still in bed, a sheet pulled up to her neck, more for decorum than insulation, for already it was beginning to get hot. Her tumbled hair formed a golden halo about her head, and she looked like a fairy princess.

I sat on the foot of her bed.

“Look, angelpuss,” I said. “I’ve got a sister who was your age the last time I saw her. It’s none of my business, except you bring out the paternal in me. Can’t you kids wait till you’re married?”

She grinned at me unabashed. “You caught Arnold leaving, huh? I told him he’d get caught.”

When I scowled at her, the grin faded. She said, “Don’t have such an evil mind, Mr. Moon. It’s not what you think at all.”

I sighed and rose. “All right. It’s not what I think. As I said, it’s none of my business, anyway, except I told you not to open your door. If you want me to continue guarding your body, you’ll obey orders. And Arnold Tate isn’t any exception to the orders.”

“Yes, sir,” she said meekly.

“Long as you’re awake, you might as well get up and keep me company. I’ll wait in the hall.”

“Yes, sir,” she said again.

“And stop calling me ‘sir,’ ” I said irritably.

“All right, Mr. Moon. I’ll be ten minutes.”

Her female ten minutes proved nearly thirty by my watch, and it was eight by the time we got downstairs. The rest of the household began drifting down shortly thereafter, and we breakfasted rather glumly in the dining-room, the only conversation being Gerald Cushing’s assurance to Ann that he would take care of funeral arrangements and try to have the funeral scheduled for Monday, which was the next day.

After breakfast we all gathered on the front veranda in an effort to find a cool breeze, for the day was rapidly developing into a scorcher. Here conversation remained as dead as it had at breakfast, the sole effort being a question to me by Jonathan Mannering as to whether I thought the police would allow anyone to go to church.

“You’ll have to ask the inspector,” I told him. “He’ll be here at nine.”

Promptly on the hour a lone squad car deposited Warren Day in front of the house. He came up the veranda steps alone, apparently having given Hannegan a Sunday off. To me this indicated the inspector had it all figured out — or thought he had.

“Good morning,” he said, scowling at everyone but Ann Lawson, and simpering at her.

“I see you have it solved, Inspector,” I said.

He looked at me nonplused. “How’d you know, Moon?”

“The intelligent light in your eyes.”

He gave a suspicious half-snort, half-sniff, examining my face for a trace of amusement. Finding none, he thrust his hands in his pockets, teetered back and forth on his soles, and prepared to give a speech. Apparently his address was directed to all of us, but as he spoke the corners of his eyes watched Ann Lawson.

“Our handwriting expert says the deceased’s note is definitely his own writing, and written under emotional strain,” Day announced in opening. “A psychologist we got out of bed at six this morning expresses the opinion it was a suicide note. We ordered a special autopsy last night, and there is no evidence of death being caused by anything but the fall. Experts who studied the top of the bluff found no evidence of a struggle there, and there has been no rain to obliterate traces of such a struggle had one occurred. After studying the evidence, the coroner therefore declared it a suicide, and we are closing the case.”

He looked around smugly, the living symbol of an efficient police system which neatly ties things up overnight, sparing no public official the inconvenience of being jerked out of bed or from a night club on Saturday night so that all these nice, influential people could go to church on Sunday. For some reason the remembrance of a week-end I once spent in jail because the coroner could not be bothered looking at a body before Monday popped into my mind.

“How do you fit the attempts on Miss Lawson’s life into that theory?” I asked.

He gave me an insufferably indulgent grin. “Easy, Moon. Who had the best motive to kill her off?” He answered himself. “Her brother, Don. There won’t be any more attempts.”