“Actually I didn’t know. The penthouse has a private elevator. Eido and his wife I’ve seen. Are you married, Doctor?”
“Not I! There are too many beautiful fish in the sea for me to have singled just one out. I am a bachelor.”
“Do you have a girlfriend here at the Hug?”
The black eyes flashed – amusement, not anger. “Oh, dear me, no! As my father told me many years ago, only a foolish bachelor mixes business with pleasure.”
“A good rule of life.”
“Would you like me to introduce you to Dr. Schiller?” Satsuma asked, sensing that the interview was over.
“Thanks, I’d appreciate it.”
Well, well, another Hug looker! A Viking. Kurt Schiller was the Hug’s pathologist. His English had a very slight Germanic inflection, which no doubt accounted for the look of savage dislike Dr. Maurice Finch had produced when he mentioned Schiller’s name. No love lost there. Schiller was tall, a trifle on the willowy side, with flaxen-blond hair and pale blue eyes. Something about him irritated Carmine, though it had nothing to do with his nationality; the sensitive cop nose smelled homosexuality. If Schiller isn’t one, there’s something wrong with my cop nose, and there isn’t, Carmine thought.
The pathology lab occupied the same site as the O.R. did on the floor below, save that it was somewhat larger thanks to an animal room without any cats. Schiller worked with two technicians, Hal Jones, who did the Hug’s histology, and Tom Skinks, who worked exclusively on Schiller’s projects.
“Sometimes I am sent brain samples from the hospital,” said the pathologist, “due to my experience in cortical atrophy and cerebral scar tissue. My own work involves searching for scarring of the hippocampus and uncinate gyrus.”
And de-de-da-de-da. By this time, Carmine had learned to switch off when the big words started. Though it wasn’t the size of the words, it was their abstruseness. Like Billy Ho the electronics engineer talking about a magnetic mu of less than one as if Carmine would automatically know what he meant. We all speak our own kind of specialized lingo, even cops, he thought with a sigh.
By this time it was 6 P.M. and Carmine was ravenous. However, best to finish seeing everyone so they could all go home, then he could eat at leisure. Only four on the fourth floor to go.
He started with Hilda Silverman, the research librarian, who ruled over a huge room packed with steel bookshelves and banks of drawers that held books, cards, papers, abstracts, reprinted papers, articles, significant excerpts of tomes.
“I keep my records on our computer these days,” she said, waving her unmanicured hand at a thing the size of a restaurant refrigerator, equipped with two fourteen-inch tape reels, and, on a console in front of it, a typewriter keyboard. “Such a help! No more punch cards! I’m much luckier than the medical school library, you know. They still have to do things the old way. At the moment there is a facility being put together in Texas that we’ll be able to tap into. Enter key words like ‘potassium ions’ and ‘seizures’ and we’ll be sent the abstracts of every paper ever written as fast as a teleprinter can produce them. Just one more reason why I quit the main library to come here and have my own domain. Lieutenant, the Hug is swimming in money! Though it’s hard to be so far from Keith,” she ended with a sigh.
“Keith?”
“My husband, Keith Kyneton. He’s a postgraduate fellow in neurosurgery, which is right down the other end of Oak Street. We used to eat lunch together, now we can’t.”
“So Silverman is your maiden name?”
“That’s right. I had to keep it – easier, when all the pieces of paper say Silverman.”
He guessed her at the middle thirties, but she could have been younger; her expression was a little careworn. She wore a badly tailored coat and skirt that had seen better days, scuffed shoes, and no jewelry other than her wedding band. The wavy auburn hair was badly cut and held back with ugly bobby pins, her rather nice brown eyes were diminished by a pair of Coke-bottle-bottom glasses, and her face was free of makeup, neutrally pleasant.
I wonder, asked Carmine of himself, what makes librarians look like librarians? Paper mites? Dust bunnies? Printer’s ink?
“I wish I could help you more,” she said a little later, “but I really can’t ever remember seeing one of those bags. Nor have I ever visited the first floor, except for the elevator foyer.”
“Who are your friends?” he asked.
“Sonia Liebman in the O.R. No one else, really.”
“Not Miss Dupre or Miss Vilich on your own floor?”
“That pair?” she asked scornfully. “They’re too busy feuding to notice my existence.”
Well, well, a useful item of information at last!
Who next? Dupre, he decided, and knocked on her door. She had the southeast corner room, which meant windows on two sides, one looking over the city, the other looking south across the misty harbor. Now why hadn’t the Prof grabbed it? Or didn’t he trust himself not to waste time looking at a gorgeous view? Miss Dupre, who was definitely not gorgeous, also had enough steel, he judged, to resist what lay outside her windows.
She rose from her desk to tower over him, something she clearly enjoyed doing. A dangerous hobby, madam. You too can be cut down to size. But you’re very clever, and very efficient, and very observant; they’re all there in your beautiful eyes.
“What brought you to the Hug?” he asked, sitting down.
“A green card. I used to be a deputy administrator in one of England’s regional health care areas. I had responsibility for all the research facilities in the area’s various hospitals and red-brick universities.”
“Uh – red-brick universities?”
“The ones they send the working-class students to – my sort. We don’t get into Oxford or Cambridge, which are not red brick, even when their new buildings are.”
“What don’t you know about this place?” he asked.
“Very little.”
“How about brown paper dead animal bags?”
“Your inexplicable fixation upon dead animal bags has been noticed by many more than me, but none of us have any idea what their significance may be, though I can guess. Why not tell me all the truth, Lieutenant?”
“Just answer my questions, Miss Dupre.”
“Then ask me one.”
“Do you ever see the dead animal bags?”
“Of course. As the business manager, I see everything. The consignment before the last one consisted of an inferior product, which led me to go into the matter exhaustively,” said Miss Dupre. “However, as a usual event I don’t see them at all, especially when occupied by a corpse.”
“At what hour do Cecil Potter and Otis Green finish work?”
“Three in the afternoon.”
“Does everybody know that?”
“Naturally. From time to time it leads to complaints from a researcher – they sometimes assume that the whole world exists to service their needs.” Her pale brows flew up. “My answer to them is to say that Mr. Potter and Mr. Green work animal care hours. The circadian rhythms of animals like attention within three or four hours after sunrise. Evenings matter less, provided they have been well serviced with food and clean premises.”
“What other jobs does Otis do apart from animal care?”
“Mr. Green’s day is largely taken up by his duties in the upstairs animal rooms; his other duties are not terribly demanding. He does the heavy lifting, maintenance of light fixtures, and the disposal of hazardous wastes. It might surprise you to know that female technicians ask Mr. Green to fetch them cylinders of gas. We used to let the girls move their own until a full cylinder was accidentally knocked over and the pressurized contents escaped. No harm was done, but if the gas had not been an inert one -” She looked rueful. “There are also times when one of the researchers works with substances giving off gamma radiation. That requires the erection of barriers consisting of lead bricks – very heavy.”