So I baby-crawl my way up the mortar, and find my naked fangs can work out the cheesy aluminum vent that was installed up here a few years after the Flood. Then it is a dark, dusty crawl through a horizontal tunnel that abruptly turns vertical. Luckily, I am well padded and soon am butting one of those lightweight ceiling panels off its metal gridwork. I hop down atop a bookshelf and then down into the artistically cluttered interior of the bookstore.
Unfortunately, Ingram is part of the clutter.
"I hope you did not dislodge any spiders," is his greeting.
"Only a few snakes and lizards," I answer, just to watch his back twitch.
"I like to get a solid twelve hours shut-eye," he adds. "So tell me what you want now, and I will do my best to satisfy you and get back to my beauty sleep."
Twelve hours. What a nonlife!
"I need to know about anything called hyacinth."
"I did not know you were interested in horticulture, Louie. Are you perhaps developing some refined interests in view of your upcoming retirement years?"
"Gumshoes do not retire, especially for twelve hours at a stretch. No, I need this dope for a case I am working on."
Ingram shakes his head until his rabies tag chimes; then he leaps atop a desk, following it to another section of the store. I follow the leader, such as he is.
"Hyacinth is a flower, Louie, a lovely fragrant growth with massed blossoms of curling petals.
I always think of them as pale blue-purple, but they can be white or yellow as well. They are also of the interesting family of plants that develop from bulbs."
"They need light bulbs to bloom, like shrinking violets or something?"
"Your botanical knowledge is sadly primitive. No, they grow from bulbs, underground self-contained food-storage systems. Remarkable, really."
"What I am looking to find out about hyacinths is how they would figure in a murder."
"I cannot imagine that they would. A more delightful, benign flower cannot be found. But here is the plant section. Look for yourself."
I scan the shelves, seeing a lot of titles mentioning roses and violets. Only one title reads
"Bulbs," so I leap right for it and soon have it spread open on the floor.
First I run across a mug shot of the perp I am tracing: a closeup of a field of purple hyacinths on the loose in a garden. A handy rap sheet in the book's back lists the breed's salient characteristics: short (under one foot), partial to hanging out around gardens and rock gardens, sun worshipers, but can also be found in a potted state in ordinary homes. Blossoms from one-to-two inches, but some run over two inches, so these can be swell-headed types. Cocky, you might say. Known for a distinctive body odor.
By now I figure I would recognize one if I found it, but I am still in the dark.
"Other than a tendency to hang out in dark nightspots at certain times of the year, what would these bulb-type characters have to do with a murder? Are they toxic?"
"Not that I have heard, Louie. Your oleander is, of course, and all sorts of common yard and house plants. But I have never heard the hyacinth so described."
"Well, you got a poison how-to book in this place? I thought mystery readers went for that sort of thing."
"Mystery writers certainly do."
"So there are some local ones?"
"Some would-be local ones."
"Hmm. Maybe I could find a partner to write my memoirs with.
My roomie would ordinarily be right for the job, but she is lavishing her talents in another direction at the moment."
Ingram is uninterested in my domestic wrinkles. I secretly suspect that he does not approve of me living with an unmarried woman. He leads me back to the mystery section, but to a series of shelves weighed down with nonfiction. I peruse such titles as Deadly Doses, Preferred Poisons, Planted Evidence, Murderous Mushrooms, and the elegantly titled Spiders and Spitting Toads and Snakes, Oh, My!
Although I knock off several of these venomous guides, and although I learn that many innocuous plants are thoroughly poisonous, the hyacinth is not among them, although the hydrangea and the heliotrope are. Close, but no cigarette.
When I express my frustration, Ingram sniffs before replying.
"You certainly are a bloodthirsty fellow, Louie. I am afraid that your line of work leads you to look for the worst in everything and everybody. I for one am glad that the fragrant hyacinth has been cleared of wrongdoing despite your best efforts."
This sanctimonious speech is highly irritating. I desperately peruse the shelves one more time until the initials "AMA" leap out at me. We will see what the croakers have to say about this in their guide to "injurious" plants.
I hit pay dirt in the index at the rear. Several citations for hyacinth all lead to a startling conclusion: the hyacinth is not only poisonous, but every cell of it is lethal, and this occurs in a species called "Hyacinth-of-Peru." (To confuse matters, it seems that hyacinth is also referred to as jacinth in some places.) My roomie would ordinarily be right for the job, but she is lavishing her talents in another direction at the moment."
Ingram is uninterested in my domestic wrinkles. I secretly suspect that he does not approve of me living with an unmarried woman. He leads me back to the mystery section, but to a series of shelves weighed down with nonfiction. I peruse such titles as Deadly Doses, Preferred Poisons, Planted Evidence, Murderous Mushrooms, and the elegantly titled Spiders and Spitting Toads and Snakes, Oh, My!
Although I knock off several of these venomous guides, and although I learn that many innocuous plants are thoroughly poisonous, the hyacinth is not among them, although the hydrangea and the heliotrope are. Close, but no cigarette.
When I express my frustration, Ingram sniffs before replying.
"You certainly are a bloodthirsty fellow, Louie. I am afraid that your line of work leads you to look for the worst in everything and everybody. I for one am glad that the fragrant hyacinth has been cleared of wrongdoing despite your best efforts."
This sanctimonious speech is highly irritating. I desperately peruse the shelves one more time until the initials "AMA" leap out at me. We will see what the croakers have to say about this in their guide to "injurious" plants.
I hit pay dirt in the index at the rear. Several citations for hyacinth all lead to a startling conclusion: the hyacinth is not only poisonous, but every cell of it is lethal, and this occurs in a species called "Hyacinth-of-Peru." (To confuse matters, it seems that hyacinth is also referred to as jacinth in some places.)
What is not confusing is the particular toxin the plant dispenses when administered in sufficient quantity: digitalis. I am not a chemist, but it has not escaped me that digitalis is a drug of choice in simulating--or stimulating--heart attacks in victims.
I am not a medical examiner, either, but I would love to see the autopsy report on Mr. Cliff Effinger. Did he die of drowning, or did he die of cardiac arrest in anticipatory fear of drowning?
Did anyone look for traces of hyacinth digitalis in his system?
"Is there anything else on hyacinth in this bookstore?" I ask Ingram, letting the AMA book fall shut with a triumphal slap.
"Only a 'hyacinth glass,' which is a two-tiered bulbous bibulous vessel for containing and rooting hyacinth bulbs."
"I do not believe I am interested in 'two-tiered bulbous bibulous vessels,' which in my book are dim bulbs indeed."
I stare at Ingram so that he realizes I am obliquely referring to the biggest dim bulb of all, Ingram himself.
He clears his throat, confounded that my slapdash search has unearthed information he was not privy to.
"I can do no more for you," he concludes.
He is right, except for one thing. "You can find me the key to the front door. I do not plan on making like an earthworm and wiggling my way back up the ventilation shaft."
"You cannot unlock the door and then open it! And what will Miss Maeveleen say when she finds the shop unlocked tomorrow?"