They stared at her blankly.
“Now?” Julie demanded. “The help will be back tomorrow? Since when are we supposed to do their work?”
“I was just thinking that the police may want to examine all that stuff,” Lucy said. She paused meaningly. “In case of poison.”
There was a pregnant silence for several seconds, then Martha gave a whimpering cry of protest: “Oh, Lucy — no! Not poison! They couldn’t think that.”
“They could — if Dr. Wilson isn’t a hundred per cent sure it’s a heart attack.”
Just then the bell rang.
“Too late,” Lucy sighed. “That must be the doctor now. He won’t let us touch a thing, and anyhow it wouldn’t be smart with him as a witness.” She shook her head. “I’ve a feeling this place will be crawling with the gendarms by tomorrow.”
Sheriff Pete Denton didn’t believe in murder. This was true in two senses. He didn’t believe in it as a solution to anybody’s problem; and he didn’t believe in it until all possibility of accident or suicide had been ruled out.
Unlike many lawmen, he hated the crime far more than the criminal, considering the latter to be either foolish, panicky, or — as an anti-climax — badly brought up.
He was tall and wire thin, and, to a casual observer, melancholy of temperament. He was never known to laugh, and seldom to grin, but his eyes smiled often; and he had a soft chuckle that was more contagious than any bellow of glee.
In eighteen years as sheriff, he had dealt with only six murders, all of them simple, brutal affairs requiring little skill as a detective. On the other hand, he had done well with lesser crimes of a more subtle nature, including the ubiquitous poison pen writer endemic to smaller communities. Ordinarily he was highly laconic, never using two words where one — or a semaphoric eyebrow — might do. But when working on a difficult case, he changed completely, becoming quite garrulous, and using one of his two young deputies as a sounding-board. The other was kept busy with leg-work, since Denton favored for himself reasoning over bird-dogging.
Although he had little formal education, the sheriff knew people, and loved the area itself, which was oppressively hot in season, chillingly damp at night, dry as an old law library, and had the kind of flora and fauna — skunks, lizards, oppossoms, cacti, snakes, sage, iceplant, crows, and coyotes — that only a self-deluded native could approve. But he loved it all, from the gaunt, messy eucalyptus trees fighting hopelessly against the drought to the buccaneer ravens croaking in the foothills.
Right now he stood in the Talbott home, where Dr. Wilson had summoned him.
“I just don’t like the look of this,” the doctor said bluffly. “It’s not heart, and not an ordinary stroke. It looks like anphyllatic shock.”
Denton raised an eyebrow; it wasn’t yet time for garrulity to set in.
“A very strong allergic reaction,” Wilson explained. “It can be a killer, and fast; awful fast if the victim’s sensitive enough.”
“Cause?” Denton asked gently.
“Can’t say, yet.” He looked squarely into the sheriff’s eyes. “The only think I know that affected him this way was penicillin; I almost killed him with it myself a couple of years ago.”
“Fast,” Denton said, half to himself. “Not by injection, obviously; not at the table.” He turned to Dave Hicks, the young deputy who had come with him to the house. “Get samples of all the food on the table. Coroner’s away,” he told Dr. Wilson. “Will you take over again?” The doctor often acted as a substitute for the official Medical Examiner, who liked special courses and conventions of fellow professionals.
“We all ate the same food,” Lucy said loudly.
“Except for the honey,” Julie corrected her. “He was hogging that.”
“Irrelevant,” Denton said, and then looked embarrassed. He never felt at ease with words having more than three syllables. “Penicillin wouldn’t hurt anybody ordinarily, would it Doc?”
“Of course not. These others — as far as I know — could eat a pound of it and never get more than a bellyache.”
While Hicks was gathering his samples, the sheriff began to question the family.
“I have no indication yet, except for Dr. Wilson’s opinion, that any crime has been committed; and you don’t have to answer my questions, but it might help later, if there was foul play.”
“We have nothing to hide,” Malcolm said stiffly. It was coming home to him, not unhappily, that he was now head of the house. Besides, as a lawyer, even if a mediocre one, he had a certain flair for words, and didn’t mind holding the center of the stage. He suspected that his brother and the other relations had no better opinion of him than his father. If so, maybe he could change that a little now, or at least make a start at it.
“If the rest of you don’t mind,” he said in a bland voice, “I’ll tell the sheriff what went on here tonight.” He coughed. “Without going too far into personalities,” he reassured them.
Denton listed in silence to Malcolm’s account of Hiram’s sadistic harangue. As a loving father and devoted husband, it pained him to hear of such relations among members of a family; but intellectually, if not emotionally, he was shockproof. Nobody involved with law enforcement can ever have any illusions about human perfection — nothing, from motherhood to warm puppies, is above suspicion to an experienced cop.
There was one point he asked about.
“This matter of Talbott’s daughter,” he said. “Naturally, I know something about it, but not enough. Of course, if you’d rather pass it by for now...”
“Not at all,” Malcolm said. “It was Dad’s taboo, not ours. To put it simply, our sister, Gloria, married a man Dad couldn’t stand. There were few he could,” Malcolm added sourly. “Anyhow, Dad did have some kind of need for Gloria; she was clever efficient, and a bit ruthless, like him. I think he hoped to keep her for a long time; but she fell for this fellow, a young scientist of sorts, poor as a churchmouse, and Dad, in his usual direct, brutal way disowned her. He even used his influence to mess up the kid’s career. And when Gloria broke down, and got sick, Dad wouldn’t even help her then. She needed help, because Dan — her husband — was horribly wounded in a lab explosion; he can just barely hobble. That’s why mother suggested tonight that Dan ought to get some money — for Gloria June’s sake; she loved him. She’s dead,” he added, as Denton looked blank. “Cancer. Dad blamed Don instead of himself; no sense to it, but that’s the way he was. Wouldn’t let us mention either of them after that.”
The ambulance Dr. Wilson had phoned for came, and when the body had been removed, the sheriff and Hicks left with their samples. They would be sent to the crime lab in Los Angeles, which was the nearest city big enough to have one.
The next day, having sent one deputy — Bill Alvarez this time — to gather more information about the Talbotts, Denton put his feet on the scarred desk, and began to talk “at” Hicks. The young deputy knew his part in this procedure: to nod, look wise, and at rare intervals, comment.
“We don’t know yet that it’s murder,” the sheriff said. “If Talbott was killed by penicillin in the food, maybe it was an accident. Sometimes, I’ve heard, feeders give cattle drugs. Could be that steak had natural penicillin.”
Hicks cocked his head, started to nod, and then frowned. Clearly he didn’t find this a convincing theory. Denton sighed. Much as he hated the idea, accident probably was not the explanation, and murder was.
“On motive,” the sheriff continued, “there’s all we need. Talbott was a lousy father, and both sons hated him. So did their wives. We know that the sons were weak but kinda stubborn. Talbott wanted them to work with him, but they had to get free, and tried to go it alone. When they goofed off, and came crawling back, it was too late. He wouldn’t forgive them. All they ever got was a few handouts from the mother, and a dinner now and then so the old guy could insult them for the hell of it.”