Shapiro hunkered and picked it up. Its clasp was broken. He pulled it open, and stopped breathing for a second. In one corner was a tissue-wrapped ball of candy. As if fearfully, his forefinger inched and pushed the tissue aside to expose the tempting creaminess of a coconut bonbon.
“Doc,” Shapiro said in a far-off voice, his broad, bent back toward the room, “what did our killer pigeon die of?”
“I won’t have a complete report until after the autopsy,” Jefferson said.
“But you could give me a very educated guess right now.”
“You birds always want your forensic medicine instant,” Doc said. “Okay, for what it’s worth, I’ll wager McJunkin’s freckles against Adams’ eyeteeth that the autopsy will back up the symptoms. Our vulture died of poisoning. Arsenic, I’d say. He gulped a walloping dose of arsenic.”
“The lab boys found little tissues scattered all over the floor,” McJunkin said, “the kind they used to use in the old-fashioned candy stores.”
Shapiro mumbled to himself. McJunkin said, “What’d you say, Shappy?”
“I said,” Shapiro bit out angrily, “that I’m never surprised at anything the lab boys find.”
Wearing a flannel robe, felt slippers, and a net about her soft white hair, Miss Nettie ushered Shapiro into her parlor.
“I’m very sorry to rouse you at this hour,” Shapiro said, “but it was necessary.”
“I’m sure it must have been, for you to have done so. Would you like some tea?”
Shapiro gave her a stare and sigh. “Not this go-round. Sit down, please.”
She sank to the edge of an over-stuffed chair and clasped her hands quietly in her lap.
Shapiro faced her with his hands cocked on his hips. “Was your purse a dark blue, with a white band across it?”
“Yes it was, Mr. Shapiro. And I assume from your question that you have found it.”
“In the room of a dead man. A young, skinny dead man with a W-shaped scar on his cheek.”
He thought he saw the faintest of smiles on her soft lips.
His hands came loose from his sides. He banged a fist into a palm. “Miss Cooksey, blast you, you’ve made a total fool of me!”
“Oh, no, Mr. Shapiro! I’m much too fond of you to do anything like that.”
Shapiro snorted, kicked a table leg, spun on her again with the mien of a grizzly. “You made bait of yourself, Miss Cooksey. I had told you about the previous muggings he’d pulled around here. You saw a pattern. You hoped he’d return — and take the bait.”
“Mr. Shapiro—”
He silenced her with a stern finger waggling in her face. “Don’t you open your gentle little peep to me one more time until I’m finished. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mr. Shapiro.”
“You took those nightly walks, waiting for him to return, wanting him to, hoping he would strike again. And when he struck, you threw a veritable body-block at me so he could get away with your purse and everything it contained — maybe a little cash, and a batch of bonbons loaded with arsenic!”
“Where would I get—”
“Don’t play innocent with me!” Shapiro almost popped a vein across his forehead. “You have a yardman. Your sister grew roses. Anybody can get arsenic, in plant sprays, insecticides.” His teeth made a sound like fingernails scraping across sandpaper. “You pegged him to a T, Miss Cooksey. He gulped the arsenic-loaded candy. Almost all of it.”
“Almost, Mr. Shapiro?”
He reached in his side pocket and brought out the tissue-wrapped bonbon he had taken from the rooming house closet.
With exaggerated care, he peeled back the tissue and extended his palm. “It’s the one that stuck in the corner of the purse when he dumped it on his bed or dresser. It’s the one he didn’t eat. Do you deny making it?”
She rose slowly. “It’s a lovely bonbon, Mr. Shapiro, although a bit squashed from so much handling.”
She peered, lifted a dainty forefinger to touch the candy. She picked it up. Then she popped it in her mouth and swallowed before Shapiro had the first inkling of what she was up to.
Flat-footed and with a dumb look on his face, Shapiro received her soft smile.
“Mr. Shapiro, would I eat poisoned candy?”
He shook off a faintly trance-like state. “Yes,” he said. “Faced with a situation of sufficient urgency, I’m beginning to believe you’d have the courage to do anything, Miss Cooksey. I think your question is rhetorical. I think you have already, just now, eaten a piece of poisoned candy. I’m also certain that the amount contained in a single piece is not enough to kill you.” He shook his head hopelessly. “Whatever am I going to do with you, Miss Nettie?”
“Arrest me for destroying evidence?” she suggested.
“I doubt that I could make it — or any other charge — stick,” Shapiro said. “Even if we could prove you made some poisoned candy, you didn’t offer it to anyone. The only shred of evidence we have that involves you, come to think of it, is the purse — evidence of a crime against you.”
She strolled with him to the front door. “Will you come some afternoon for tea, Mr. Shapiro?”
He studied her a moment. “No, Miss Nettie — I think I never want to see you again.”
She nodded and patted his hand with a touch of gentle understanding. Then she turned a little in the dark front doorway, looking from his face to a point far along the sidewalk.
“Given the chance,” she said almost in a whisper, “I’d have been the first to warn the young man to mend his ways in time — and never to take candy from strangers.”
The Way Out
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July 1969.
Stanley didn’t bother to stir on his bunk when he heard the guard rattling keys in the cell door.
“Mr. Graves,” the bulky guard said in a polite tone that even a civilian review board would have approved, “you have a visitor. Fellow wants to talk to you.”
“Tell him to see my secretary for an appointment,” Stanley grunted, his eyes remaining closed.
“That’s pretty good, Mr. Graves,” the guard chuckled courteously. “But this fellow is a lawyer. He wants to take up your case. He arranged his appointment through the judge.”
Stanley lifted the long, thin arm draped across his face. He cracked one eye against the bands of sunlight streaming through the cell window.
Pushing past the uniformed guard was a plump, earnest young man in a gray suit cut in the latest Madison Avenue fashion. He brought into the antisepsis of the cell a hint of good cologne. His necktie, shirt, and shoes were carefully coordinated. His face was round and pink, the kind that men ignore when replaying a golf match at the nineteenth hole. Behind heavy, square-rimmed glasses, his china blue eyes beamed at Stanley with a consciously summoned vitality, optimism, and determination.
The gray-suited figure cleared its throat in a good imitation of a masculine rumble. “Tough spot, eh, Graves? Convicted of a capital crime, gas chamber the next stop, cards all stacked against you. One lone man against the massive Establishment.” The rosebud mouth curled in the best Mittyish mimicry of a John Wayne grin. “But the ball game isn’t over, even in the ninth inning. Right Stanley? We’re not licked yet. We’ll find a way out.”
Stanley raised his head a few inches from the lumpy pillow to study the stranger. Even with the prison haircut, Stanley managed a hippie look. His sprawled body suggested ennui. His gaunt hungry-looking face hung in lines of self-sorrow. His large brown eyes, in the shadows of cavernous sockets, were depthless pools of soul. “Go away,” he muttered. “I didn’t smoke any signals. I got no bread to fee a lawyer.”