Mary Clark: The Cradle Will Fall

The afternoon was busy. She managed to push the thought of Vangie to the back of her mind. Finally at five o'clock she could leave. Warmly wrapped in a leopard-spotted fake fur coat, she drove home to her apartment in Edgeriver, six miles away.

IN THE autopsy room of the Valley County Morgue, Richard Carroll gently removed the fetus from the corpse of Vangie Lewis. It was a boy, and he judged that it weighed about two and a half pounds. He noted that the amniotic fluid had begun to leak. Vangie Lewis could not have carried this baby much longer; she had been in an advanced state of toxemia. It was incredible that any doctor had allowed her to progress so far in this condition.

Richard had no doubt that it was the cyanide that had killed the woman. She'd swallowed a huge gulp of it, and her throat and mouth were badly burned. The burns on the outside of her mouth? Richard tried to visualize the moment she'd drunk the poison. She'd started to swallow, felt the burning, changed her mind, tried to spit it out. It had run over her lips and chin.

To him it didn't make sense.

There were fine white fibers clinging to her black coat. They looked as though they'd come from a blanket. He was having them analyzed, but, of course, they might have been picked up at any time.

Her body had become so bloated that it looked as though she had just put on any clothes she could find that would cover her.

Except for the shoes. They were an incongruous note. They were well cut, expensive and looked quite new. It was unlikely that Vangie could have been outdoors on Monday in those shoes. There were no water spots on them, even though the ankles of her panty hose were spattered. Which suggested that she must have been out, come in, decided to leave again, changed her shoes and then committed suicide. That didn't make sense either.

Another thing. Those shoes were awfully tight. Particularly on the right foot. Considering the way she was dressed, why bother to put on shoes that will kill you?

Richard straightened up. He was just about finished. Once more he turned to study the fetus. Suddenly something struck him. Was it possible? It was a hunch he had to check out. Dave Broad was the man for him. Dave was in charge of prenatal research at

Mount Sinai. He'd send this fetus to him and ask for an opinion. If what he believed was true, there was a good reason why Chris Lewis would have been upset about his wife's pregnancy. Maybe upset enough to kill her!

SCOTT Myerson, the Valley County prosecutor, had scheduled a five-o'clock meeting in his office for Katie, Richard and the two Homicide Squad detectives assigned to the Lewis suicide.

Katie arrived first. As she eased herself into a chair, Scott looked at her with a hint of a smile. He was a small man with a surprisingly deep voice. Large-rimmed glasses, a dark, neat mustache and meticulously tailored conservative suit made him look more like a banker than a law enforcer. Now he observed Katie's bandaged arm and the bruise under her eye.

"Thanks for coming in, Katie," he said. "If you start feeling rotten, you'd better go home." Then he became businesshke. "The Lewis case. What have we got on it?"

While she was talking, Richard came in with Charley Nugent and Phil Cunningham. Silently they settled in the remaining chairs. Scott listened to Katie, then turned to the detectives. "What did you come up with?"

Phil Cunningham pulled out his notebook. "That place was no honeymoon cottage. The neighbors liked Chris Lewis, but they thought Vangie was a pain in the neck. At parties she was always hanging on him; got upset if he talked more than five minutes to another woman. Then when she got pregnant she was really insufferable. Talked baby all the time."

Charley opened his notebook. "Her obstetrician's office called to make an appointment. I said we'd talk to her doctor tomorrow." Richard spoke quietly. "There are a few questions I'd like to ask that doctor about Vangie Lewis' condition."

Scott looked at Richard. "You've finished the autopsy?"

"Yes. It was definitely cyanide. She died instantly. Which leads to the crucial point."

There were some paper cups and a water pitcher on top of the file cabinet. Walking over to the file, Richard poured a generous amount of water into a cup. "Suppose this is filled with dissolved cyanide," he said. "I take a large gulp." Quickly he swallowed. He held up the paper cup. It was still nearly half full. "In my judgment, Vangie Lewis must have drunk at least the approximately three ounces I just swallowed in order to have the amount of cyanide we found in her system. But here's the problem. The outside of her lips and chin and even her neck were burned. The only way that could have happened would have been if she spit a lot of the stuff out. But would she then take another mouthful? No way. The reaction is instantaneous."

Richard went on to explain his belief that Vangie Lewis could not have walked comfortably in the shoes that had been laced on her feet. While Katie listened, she visualized Vangie's face. The face she had seen in the dream and the face she'd seen on the bed slid back and forth in her mind. She forced her attention back to the room. Charley was saying, "Richard and I feel the husband noticed something about the body that he didn't tell us."

"I think it was the shoes," Richard said. Katie turned to Scott. "I told you about the phone call Chris Lewis made."

"You did." Scott Myerson leaned back in his chair. "All right. You two"-he pointed to Charley and Phil-"find out everything you can about Lewis. See who this Joan is. Find out what time his plane came in this morning. Check on phone calls Vangie Lewis made the last few days. Katie, try to see Mrs. Lewis' doctor and get his opinion of her mental and physical condition."

"I can tell you about her physical condition," Richard said. "If she hadn't delivered that baby soon, she could have saved her cyanide."

"There's another thing. Where did she get the cyanide?"

"No trace of it in the house," Charley reported. "Not a drop."

"Anything else?" Scott asked.

"There may be," Richard said. "But it's so far out. Give me another twenty-four hours. Then I may have something."

Scott stood up. "I believe we all agree. We're not closing this as a suicide." He looked at Richard. "Is there any chance that she died somewhere else and was put back on her bed?"

Richard frowned. "It's possible."

Katie started to get up. "I know it's insane, but-" She felt Richard's arm steadying her.

"You sure look stiff," he interrupted.

She'd been about to describe the crazy dream she'd had in the hospital. His voice snapped her back to reality. What a fool she'd have appeared to them. Gratefully she smiled at Richard. "Stiff in the head mostly, I think," she commented.

HE COULD not let Edna destroy everything he'd worked for. His hands gripped the wheel. He could feel them trembling. He had to calm down.

It was ironic that she of all people had seen him drive the Lincoln out of the parking lot. Obviously she'd assumed that Vangie was with him. The minute she told her story to the police, everything would be over.

Edna had to be silenced. His medical bag was on the seat next to him. In it he had put the paperweight from his office desk. He didn't usually carry a bag anymore, but he'd taken it out this morning, planning to put the moccasins in it. He'd intended to drive into New York for dinner and leave them in separate litter cans.

But this morning his housekeeper, Hilda, had come in early. She'd stood talking to him while he put on his tweed overcoat. He'd had no chance to transfer the moccasins from his Burberry to the bag. No matter. He'd get rid of the shoes tomorrow night.

It was a stroke of luck that Edna lived quite near the hospital. Several times he'd dropped off work for her when she was laid up with sciatica. That was why he knew her apartment. He'd make it look like a murder committed during a felony; take her wallet, grab any bits of jewelry she had. Once, when he'd left some work at her place, she'd shown him a butterfly-shaped pin with a minuscule ruby, and her mother's engagement ring with a dot of a diamond in it. She kept them in a plastic jewelry box in the night-table drawer.