"I have bad news for you," Dr. Wiley said. "Mr. Ralston — " He hesitated.
"Why, Mr. Ralston is sleeping in his room." She turned her head to the nurse and I saw the tendons in her neck. "Isn't Mr. Ralston still asleep, Jane?"
Jane bit her lower lip, which was full and purplish like a plum.
"Mr. Ralston is dead," the doctor said. "He drowned in the pool last night."
Mrs. Ralston's hands closed on the arms of her wheelchair. She sat bold upright, supported by her straining arms. The bony structure of her face became apparent, and the shadows there deepened.
"Poor Henry," she said. "How did it happen?"
Before anyone could answer she fell backward and covered her face with her long and graceful hands.
A young man in neat sailor blues appeared at the gate and came running across the grass towards us. He went by us like a blue streak, half-kneeled by the wheelchair and took hold of Mrs. Ralston's shoulders. "Mother," he said. "How are you feeling, darling?"
"Johnny," said Mrs. Ralston, removing her hands from her face, where the convulsions of grief gave way to the convulsions of maternal feeling. "My dear boy, I'm so glad you've come."
"Yes, how are you feeling, Mrs. Ralston?" said Dr. Wiley. "I think I should take your pulse."
He and Mr. Whittaker hovered around her for a few minutes more, attending to her physical comfort and telling her the details of her husband's death. Then they moved away to rejoin us, leaving her alone with her son and her nurse.
"An amazing woman," said Dr. Wiley. "She took it better than I could have expected."
"She has courage," said Mr. Whittaker.
"Courage is her middle name," said Dr. Wiley. "You'd never think to look at her that she has no more than three months to live."
"Three months to live?" I said.
"I've consulted with the leading specialists in the country," Dr. Wiley said. "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive disease, and can never be fully arrested. She can't live more than three months, and she knows it. But what a stiff upper lip she maintains!"
Before we entered the hotel I looked back at Mrs. Ralston. Johnny Swain was still half-kneeling beside her, supporting her head on his shoulder. The nurse was still standing in the background, looking worried.
The police lieutenant who was handling the case was waiting in the lobby. He wanted to interview Mrs. Ralston and her nurse, and line up the other witnesses for the inquest.
"Is the autopsy completed?" I asked him.
"Dr. Shantz is working on it now."
"What's the dope so far?"
"A straight case of drowning. What did you expect?"
"A straight case of drowning," I said.
I took Al aside and told him, "I'm going down to the police lab and talk to Dr. Shantz. There are a couple of things you can be doing. Check Johnny Swain's alibi. Find out for sure whether he was aboard his ship last night. And see if you can find anything to shake the nurse's story that she spent the night in bed. She didn't look to me as if she did."
"Right," said Al, who seemed glad to have something to do.
I took my car out of the parking lot across the street and drove downtown to see Dr. Shantz. He was in his office when I got there, having completed the autopsy, but he still had on his surgical whites. With his domelike belly and three chins, he looked more like the popular idea of a chef than a medico-legal expert.
He said to me when I came in, "I didn't know you were interested in this cadaver, Joe."
"I'm always interested. I'm an occupational necrophile."
"I've got a beautiful Lysol burn in the back room. Want to see it?"
"Not just now, thanks. The hotel hired me to check on the Ralston accident. They don't like people drowning in their swimming pool. No signs of foul play, I suppose?"
"None whatever."
"Heart failure?"
"Nope, except in the sense that the heart usually stops when you die. The old man drowned. His lungs were full of water."
"No foreign substance of any kind?"
"You can't make a murder case out of this one, Joe. Mr. Ralston was killed by pure city water. I applied Gettler’s test to the blood content of the heart, and that's definite."
"When did he die?"
"It's hard to say exactly. His stomach was empty, except for some water, and he ate dinner at seven. His temperature was almost down to the temperature of the water. Between two and three in the morning, I'd say."
"That was about my guess," I said. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it. That Lysol burn will still be here tomorrow if you want to see it."
"Thanks again," I said and went out. I was almost certain now that a murder had been committed, since I'd never known Shantz to make a professional mistake. I decided to go and see Mr. Ralston's brother Alexander. He got ten thousand dollars out of Mr. Ralston's death. How badly did he need ten thousand dollars?
I found him in the phone book and drove to his address, a one-story stucco house on a middling street in South Los Angeles. He answered the doorbell, a scrawny man in his sixties with thin grey hair and stooping shoulders. His thick glasses made his eyes seem unnaturally large and solemn.
He spoke solemnly. "What can I do for you, sir?"
"Rogers is the name. I'm investigating your brother's death — "
"A sad affair. Johnny Swain phoned me not long ago. I didn't realize, however, that it was under police investigation."
"I'm working for the hotel. All they want to do is make sure it was an accident. You may be able to give me some information about your brother's habits?"
"Won't you step inside? I haven't seen much of Henry in recent years, but I'll tell you what I can. Don't get the notion that we weren't on good terms. We were. You may know that he left me ten thousand dollars in his will?"
He led me into the living room and waved me towards a shabby chesterfield. Except for the shelves of books which lined the walls, everything in the room was shabby. In his collarless shirt and drooping trousers, Alexander Ralston suited the room. I wondered if he was a lifelong victim of primogeniture.
He saw me looking around the room and said, "I'm afraid things are in rather a mess. I do my own housekeeping, you know. I won't attempt to deny that for a retired teacher like myself that ten thousand dollars will come in very handily, very handily indeed."
"You say you hadn't seen a great deal of your brother in recent years?"
"That's quite true. Our interests differed, you see. I like to think of myself as something of an intellectual, and Henry was by way of being a hedonist. I won't accuse him of having no intellectual interests, but they weren't sustained. In a word, his money spoilt him for the life of the spirit."
"Where did he get it?"
"His money? Of course, you must be struck by the contrast between our ways of life. It was really quite a comic situation — I pride myself on being able to laugh at it still, though in a way I was the butt of the joke." He smiled wanly and stroked his one day's beard.
I began to suspect that I was dealing with an eccentric. "I don't quite get the point," I said.
"Naturally you don't. I haven't told you the situation. Henry and I had a very devout aunt who married well and in the course of time became a very wealthy and devout widow. Henry had never been given to religiosity, but Aunt Martha cracked the whip of gold over him, so to speak, and persuaded him to enter the church when he was in his early twenties. I was a freshman in college at the time, and I was a militant atheist. I still am, sir. Anyway, Aunt Martha left all her money to Henry.
"It's just as well, I suppose," he said after a pause. "Over-much money would have suited ill with the austerities of moral philosophy and metaphysics. Still, that ten thousand dollars will come in very handily."