Temple watched the infant ghostwritten Hunter/Tharp collaboration combust before her very eyes in a puff of surly smoke.
“I can’t believe what was going on at Pennyroyal Press,” Mavis Davis said. “It was every man for himself and exploit the women. I’m glad no more of my books will appear under that awful imprint.”
“Nor will any others.” Avenour suddenly spoke up. “I’ll deny it if anyone leaks the news, but R-C-D is deep-sixing the imprint. I’d advise Mr. Hunter and Mr. Tharp to find new publishers.”
“What about my sales figures!” Hunter blurted out. He got no reply.
“I’ve been very patient,” Lieutenant Molina put in, shifting her weight.
Temple held up her palms to quell the objections. “Just a few more points.” She turned back to the audience. “Certainly Chester Royal was unique in the ill will he managed to foster through Pennyroyal Press—but his murder had little to do with authorial or editorial ego, or business exploitation, or publishing, period. Which, of course, is why it happened at the ABA, where everyone—even the police—would presume that it did.”
“What about the ‘STET’ you said was written on the body?” Owen Tharp asked.
“That ‘stet’ cuts both ways. It was a decoy to underline the publishing connection, but the killer was cocky enough to make a play on words at the same time. It’s also an abbreviation of the doctor’s most notable prop, the stethoscope.”
Lorna Fennick was frowning. “Temple, you’ve got a mega-creative imagination. Even if it implied a stethoscope, so what? Everybody knew Chester Royal put out medical thrillers, so that leads right back to publishing.”
“Not... necessarily. This killer was sending a message, one that had festered for a long, long time. The knitting needle was more than a crude attempt to focus suspicion on one of the many women in the case, such as Mavis Davis, or Rowena Novak, or even you, Lorna, because the killer knew of Chester’s misogyny. The knitting needle was as symbolic as the ‘stet.’ A knitting needle especially fit the crime for which he was paying with his life.”
25
Killer Exit
“This is ridiculous!”
Lieutenant Molina stood with her fists on her hips, her dark head lowered like an angry bull’s. She looked ready to close down Temple’s act.
“A minute! I promise. Just a minute.” Temple snatched up the knitting needle. “This is not just a knitting needle. It did something else in times past, something awful.”
“My God...” The voice was low and shaken. Rowena Novak was burying her face in her hands. Finally she looked up at Lieutenant Molina.
“She’s right. I never thought of it, and it was so obvious! Chester hid his medical past because of a malpractice suit. He’d performed an illegal abortion on a woman years ago, in the early fifties. In those days there was no safe alternative to unwanted pregnancy except the filthy back-alley abortionist, or homemade methods like coat hangers and knitting needles.”
Molina grew stern. “You didn’t mention your ex-husband’s former profession—or legal difficulties—when I interviewed you.”
“It happened nearly forty years ago. Chester was decades removed from it when I married him. I forgot about it, that’s all. Not even the knitting needle reminded me.”
“The knitting needle was a message from one killer to another,” Temple said. “Chester’s death was an execution.”
“Why do we have to be here?” Avenour asked. “If this has nothing to do with publishing?”
Temple held her temper. “The murder has nothing to do with publishing, but the murderer does.”
“Then you’re still saying it’s one of us,” Claudia Esterbrook said angrily.
Temple eyed them all. “Yes. I’m saying it’s one of you.”
“And you know who it is.” Lanyard Hunter’s silver head had lifted like a hound’s scenting the air.
“I know who it is.”
Silence held. Someone cleared a throat.
Temple had them, her whole audience, including Electra on the sidelines and Matt, who had completely abandoned the organ keyboard to turn around and watch. Even Midnight Louie had paused in his grooming, his black hind leg slung over his shoulder like a shotgun.
“Get it over with! Tell us!” Mavis Davis burst out nervously.
“I have to show you—and the police. Mr. Jaspar, except for the Pennyroyal authors, you don’t know these people?” The elderly lawyer shook his head.
“But you knew Chester from college days. You knew him better than anyone?”
“Longer, anyway,” Jaspar said with lawyerly qualification.
“Then tell them about the Gilhooley case.”
Jaspar leaned forward to adjust his body on the hard pew. His eyes grew watery and reflective.
“I lost the case.” He grimaced. “You always remember the ones you lose.”
“Of course, defending an obstetrician-gynecologist against malpractice charges involving an illegal abortion in the fifties was fool’s work. I was practicing law in Albert Lea, and I knew Chester, so I did it. For some damn-fool reason, maybe money, Chester aborted one Mary Ellen Gilhooley, who was pregnant with her eighth or ninth child. I can’t remember. They had big families then. Anyway, she hemorrhaged. It couldn’t be stopped and she died. I didn’t get Chester off. He lost his license to practice medicine for doing an illegal abortion. He never blamed me. It was the breaks.”
“Did he do it just for the money, Mr. Jaspar? Several women here have told me that Chester was pathologically hostile to women. Why would he have risked his license to help a woman—or is that when he became bitter?”
“Chester was always railing against somebody or something. It was his nature. He never told me why he did it. But you must remember that he was a doctor in the old days when folks—especially doctors themselves—really thought they did know best. If you ask me, he suffered from a high-handed streak.”
“Didn’t you tell me that the Gilhooley family claimed that the mother—Mary Ellen—never would have sought an abortion, that it was against her religion, against her wishes and her will?”
“Yeah, but families get hysterical when something like this happens. The fact is that she was on that operating table and she died. Nobody’s ever questioned that Chester Royal was responsible and was violating the law at the time.”
“Wait a minute!” Lorna Fennick sat forward. “I see what Temple’s getting at. Knowing Chester much later as well as I did, seeing—and enduring—the full flower of his misogyny... did anybody then ever ask whether the doctor might have deceived the woman?”
Lorna pushed her bangs back as if to clear her thoughts. “Anybody ever consider that he got her on the table on some pretext and then did what he felt ought to be done? Didn’t matter that she wanted this baby, whatever number it was. Dr. Chester Royal had decided she’d had too many. He planned to abort her and say it was spontaneous. Maybe he was even going to sterilize her if she hadn’t hemorrhaged. Doctors used to do things like that. It would be just like him! That man was so... twisted about women!”
Avenour was frowning, too. “What about the husband, the dead woman’s husband?”
“He’d be dead himself by now,” the unidentified woman with Avenour objected.
“Or surviving children?” Lanyard Hunter asked, his face screwed into speculation. “How old would they be?”
They all looked to Temple. She glanced to the impatient Molina and picked up the faxes.
“According to clippings on the case that Lieutenant Molina received this morning, the father was Michael Liam Gilhooley. The children ranged in age from toddler, Mary Clare, to the mid-teens. Mr. Jaspar remembered some of their names. Want to see how you do against the clipping?”