“None other than fending off well-wishers,” she said.
“Then I’ll call again in the afternoon, if that is convenient.”
“Of course. Do you expect to have something definite to tell me then?”
He said evasively, “No guarantees other than my best effort, as I told you yesterday.”
“But you may have?”
“I will say only that it’s possible.”
During his ten years as an operative for the San Francisco branch of the Secret Service, and his subsequent six years in private partnership with Sabina, Quincannon had cultivated contacts with individuals in all walks of life, from Barbary Coast denizens to high-level city officials. One such individual was Arthur Scott, an analytical chemist whose office cum laboratory was on Battery Street not far from the Custom House.
Quincannon made the chemist’s his first stop after leaving Rincon Hill, and found him in residence. After some mild haggling over an acceptable fee for his services, Scott agreed to do Quincannon’s bidding and to have the results available in the morning.
It was well past seven o’clock by the time the business arrangement was concluded. Peter Lehman’s bookshop would surely be closed by this time. And Sabina would long since have closed the agency for the day and gone home to her Russian Hill flat. Which left Quincannon to his own devices for the evening. So before proceeding to his own flat on Leavenworth, he hied himself to Hoolihan’s Saloon, his favorite watering hole in his drinking days, to trade good-natured insults with the head bartender and dine on the best free lunch in the city.
Art Scott, true to his word, had the test results on Judge Shellwin’s meerschaum ready when Quincannon arrived at his office shortly past nine A.M.. They were as he’d expected, a boost, if a grim one, to his spirits and his ego.
Onward, then, to Lehman’s Bookshop. Lehman, an accommodating middle-aged gent with a flowing mane of silver hair, supplied the remaining few answers Quincannon required. The last pieces of the puzzle were now firmly in place.
It was just noon when he entered Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Sabina was at her desk, fetchingly garbed today in a fashionable flared skirt and tailored jacket of sea green. Sunlight slanting through the window at her back created glistening highlights in her seal-black hair and the jade comb that held it in place. In lieu of answering her greeting with words, he went to her and bestowed a kiss on her cheek — a liberty he would not dared have taken prior to six months ago, when their relationship had (finally!) become personal as well as professional.
“Well, John,” she said, “you seem to be in fine fettle today. Quite pleased with yourself, if that Cheshire cat’s smile is an indication.”
“With good cause, my dear. The death of Judge Rupert Shellwin is no longer a mystery. It was, in fact, murder most foul.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Oh? You’re certain of that?”
“Positive. I know who committed the crime, the motive, and how it was done.”
“Then you were right to take her on as client and I owe you an apology. Was it Jorgensen, the ex-convict who wrote the threatening letter?”
“No. He had nothing to do with it, except as the catalyst that brought Mrs. Shellwin to our doorstep.”
“Then who—?”
“Jerome Paxson, the man next door.”
“And his motive?”
“One of the oldest. The breaking of the Tenth Commandment.”
“ ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife’?”
“Just so. Obsessive love and lust then drove him into breaking the Sixth Commandment.”
Sabina considered for a few moments before saying, “But he was with Mrs. Shellwin and her brother-in-law at the time of the fatal coronary. How could he have induced it?”
“He didn’t,” Quincannon said. “The judge did not die of coronary thrombosis. Dr. Phipps misdiagnosed the cause because the symptoms of what he called ‘death agony* were similar to those of the actual cause, and because the judge’s study was thick with tobacco smoke that clogged his sinuses when he conducted his examination.”
“For heaven’s sake, John, don’t indulge your flair for the dramatic by speaking in riddles. How did Judge Shellwin die?”
“He was poisoned.”
“Poisoned. With what?”
“Nicotine. Pure nicotine.”
“You mean it was put into his tobacco?”
“No. Raw nicotine has a strong odor and the amount necessary to toxicize the judge’s supply of tobacco would have caused a reek he’d have noticed the instant he opened the canister. Paxson’s method required only a drop or two, and relied on his victim’s smoking habits and Dr. Phipps’s sinuses.”
“There you go again,” Sabina said with a touch of exasperation this time. “Can’t you simply explain in a straightforward manner?”
He managed not to grin at her. “I was about to. Judge Shellwin was a careless pipe smoker in that he allowed a thick carbon cake to build up in each of his pipe bowls, instead of scraping them out with a penknife as you’ve seen me do with mine. Paxson, as much time as he spent in the Shellwins’ company, observed this trait and so developed his plan.”
“Which was what, exactly?”
“He had access to the Shellwin house because he and Mrs. Shellwin had traded keys, as neighbors sometimes do. He simply slipped in sometime during that day while the house was unoccupied and put the pure nicotine on the carbon cake in the judge’s favorite pipe, a meerschaum. When I sniffed the bowl, my nose told me it must have been doctored; I took the pipe to Art Scott yesterday, and this morning he confirmed from a quantitative analysis of cake scrapings that the poison had been absorbed into the porous carbon. When the judge charged and lighted it at his desk, his first few puffs of the volatilized nicotine were enough to bring about the fatal seizure.”
“I see. A fiendishly clever murder method.”
“And an excruciatingly painful one. Severe abdominal cramps is one of the symptoms of nicotine poisoning, which is why he shouted the word ‘cramps’ after being stricken. And why, in conjunction with another symptom, nausea, he was found with both hands clutching his midsection. The raw nicotine odor would have been pungent on the judge’s mouth, but Dr. Phipps failed to smell it because of weak sinuses — a condition of which Paxson was also likely aware. Not that the doctor would have realized its significance if he had smelled it, given how much strong tobacco the dead man regularly smoked. Otherwise, there was no physical evidence on his one superficial examination of the body to alert him to the true cause of death.”
“But how did Paxson obtain pure nicotine? It can hardly be bought commercially.”
“He had no need to buy it,” Quincannon said. “Mrs. Shellwin told me yesterday that he is an executive with Jackson and Langley Manufacturing. And Peter Lehman told me this morning that Jackson and Langley is a chemical company that produces, among other things, nicotine sulfate — a botanical pesticide used to kill aphids and spider mites.”
Sabina asked, “And what was it that put you on to Paxson and his ploy?” He couldn’t resist a wink. “Careful observation, knowledge of pipes and poisons, small clues, and deduction. In other words, stellar detective work.”
“John...”
“A combination of facts, to be specific,” he said, and went on to explain about the judge’s fastidiousness, the gouge in the desk edge, the burn marks and overlooked pipe ash on the carpet, and Paxson’s overly attentive attitude toward the widow. He finished by saying, “Paxson reentered the Shellwin house, likely yesterday while Mrs. Shellwin was out visiting this office and the funeral parlor, cleaned up most of the spilled dottle, and replaced the meerschaum in the rack with the other pipes. He couldn’t just remove and dispose of it, and substitute another in its place, because of the meerschaum’s distinctive carved design; Mrs. Shellwin surely would have realized it was missing.”