Run Afoul (32 page)

“That one reads
‘Peruvian Bark,'
” Jack Winter said proudly, pointing to the one that read

Wiki nodded, because the steward's unknowing translation of the Latin was perfectly correct. That bottle, of course, was empty, but the others—those holding piperine, powdered iron, and gentian root—were one quarter full.

“Which bottles did he use for the second batch?” he asked on a hunch, partly because he had not been around to watch Dr. Olliver make up the second lot of pills, and partly to check what had been said at the inquest.

“These three,” said Jack, and sorted out the ones that held the piperine,
ferri pulvis,
and gentian root. “Plus these,” he went on, and picked out two more, one reading
and the other,

Chinoidine and opium,
thought Wiki. It was exactly as Dr. Tweedie had testified at the inquest. He was silent, staring at the labels, thinking about Dr. Olliver's last words—
I killed for him!
—and Grimes's final ghastly convulsion. He remembered the dead, contorted rat that had been found under the credenza, where one of Dr. Olliver's first lot of pills was lost—the rat that, according to Dr. Tweedie, had taken at least a week to die, and which Forsythe reckoned had been dead four days when they found it. Had it been poisoned by the pill, even though Dr. Tweedie had said that the pills were harmless?

But Dr. Tweedie had only known about the
second
lot of pills, the ones that Dr. Ohlsson had analyzed. The apothecary's Scotch voice echoed again in his head: “
Strychnine is a cumulative poison—with repeated applications the amount of strychnine in the body builds up until there is enough in the system to finish
—”

Wiki exclaimed, “Those pills had to be
finished!
”

“I don't know what you mean, Mr. Coffin,” the steward replied in his prissy way. “The pills never ran out, not before Mr. Grimes died. I could show you, except that they were taken away for that analyst to work on. Far as I know,” Jack Winter went on moodily, as if he resented it, “he's still holding on to that bloody bottle, and the ones with the liquid medicine, too, specially the one what turned out to be poisoned.”

“I didn't mean that,” said Wiki. “Dr. Olliver had to coat the pills with some kind of powder to stop them from sticking together in the bottle. That, apparently, is called ‘finishing.'”

“I didn't see him do anything like that. All what I saw him do is add some powder after he'd put the dried pills inside the bottle, and shake them around.”

That was an easy way of finishing them, Wiki supposed. If enough powder was left in the bottles, the pills would remain separate, instead of sticking together. He asked, “Do you remember which powder he used?”

“Of course,” said Jack Winter loftily. He pulled out a bottle with the label

Licorice root,
Wiki thought; it was as both the analyst and Dr. Tweedie had said. He had a depressing feeling of getting nowhere.

Then Jack Winter added, “That powder was for the second lot of pills.”

Wiki sat up straight. “He used a different powder to finish the first lot of pills?”

“Aye. After Dr. Olliver made up a
first
lot of pills, after Mr. Grimes
first
got sick, he added
this
powder to the bottle.”

And the bottle that Jack Winter picked out was labeled

Twenty-four

The inquiry into the death of Dr. Winston Olliver was held in the same small courthouse on the Praça da Constituição, and Captain Coffin's Brazilian friends were crowded into the same alcove, with Sir Patrick Palgrave in the front. Wiki recognized several, who inclined their heads when they saw him. Even Senhor da Silva was there: he waggled his yellowed fingers in comradely fashion, obviously remembering their encounter with affection.

Then Captain Coffin was escorted into the court, flanked by two guards even though he was wearing shackles. Wiki contemplated him with misgiving, because he looked as calm and confident as ever, not at all intimidated by the circumstances and setting. They hadn't had another chance to talk privately, even though Wiki had called at the prison several times, as his father had always had other visitors—the U.S. consul, once, and at other times, Brazilian friends. Sir Patrick Palgrave had been there at least twice, to Wiki's certain knowledge, as he had found the two men engaged in deep discussion, which had stopped the moment he had entered the cell. Now, he wondered what they had been talking about—surely not Dr. Olliver's gasped confession, he hoped. While he now knew how Dr. Olliver had murdered Grimes, he still had not a notion why.
“I killed for him!”
Him? Who? After forty-eight hours of puzzling, he had come no closer to the answer.

A door opened, and the clerk of the court rang a bell and announced the arrival of the coroner, setting the flies to buzzing in the ceiling. To Wiki's surprise, it was Dr. Vieira de Castro. Just as before, the lean, elegant figure studied the court through a pair of pince-nez, and then, with a bow, sat down behind the bench. A long moment passed as he sorted papers, dipped his pen in a pot of ink, and finally nodded to the clerk, who summoned Lieutenant Christian Forsythe to the bench.

Forsythe's testimony was necessary because Dr. Olliver's corpse had been buried back at Rio Macae, on account of the tropical heat, and so there had been no postmortem. Being an officer of the U.S. Navy, he was considered the man most competent to testify to the cause of death. “He was struck over the back of the head, and bl—very hard, too,” he informed the court. “From behind. Someone approached from the back and hit his head hard with a cudgel—a lump of wood.”

The southerner was repeating himself, and speaking very loudly and slowly, as if the coroner not only had a poor grasp of English, but was deaf and mentally deficient, as well.

“Just once, or several times?” Dr. Vieira de Castro queried patiently.

“Just once,” Forsythe confirmed. “But very accurately, and very hard. It's bl—incredibly amazing that the victim got himself any farther up the trail. Most men would have curled up on the spot.”

“You ascertained the place on the trail where he was attacked?”

“Aye, sir, that I did, not that it was difficult. There was blood on the bushes where it had sprayed from his head, and big splotches in the mud.”

“Showing the path of his struggle to the ranch?”

“Aye, sir, though the struggle was bl—entirely pointless, in my candid opinion, on account of what he was going to die, whatever,” Forsythe said flatly. “There was nothin' in this mortal world what was going to fix that great hole in his head.”

“And was he still alive when you and the soldiers arrived in the courtyard?”

“No, sir, he was as dead as a duck.”

“So how did you determine the identity of his attacker?”

“Wa'al, when you find a man holding the cudgel what did the dirty work, and hear everyone who was present declare that the victim called out that man's name in his last accusing breath, jumping to a conclusion is not so very hard.”

“But you were relying on the testimony of others?”

“Wa'al,” said Forsythe, and his lips pursed with a judicious air. “I guess that testimony is reliable when a whole bunch of people say the same thing?”

“They all informed you that they heard the deceased call out ‘Captain Coffin'?”

“Nope. They all told me he called out the name William.”

“Captain Coffin's first name is William? I believe,” Dr. Vieira de Castro said with an air of great sophistication, “that the English often shorten the name William to Bill.”

Everyone, including Wiki, looked at his father. Someone in the alcove actually laughed, because the thought of calling Captain William Coffin something as common as Bill was so outrageous.

“No, sir, no one called him Bill,” Forsythe expressionlessly assured him.

“They called him William?”

“No, sir. Everyone called him Captain Coffin.”

“But they knew his name was William?”

“Aye. That's what they told me, anyways.”

“So when they heard the deceased call out the name William, they assumed that he was referring to Captain Coffin?”

“Aye, sir.”

Dr. Vieira de Castro shook his head, his expression surprised. “But didn't the rest of the party address each other by first names?”

“Nope, they did not; it was Mister this, and Doctor that, and Captain whoever.”

“But I've always considered Americans remarkably informal people, who get on a first-name basis in an astonishingly short time, usually without waiting for an invitation. This survey doesn't sound like a very amicable affair.”

“If you mean unfriendly, sir, then you've hit the nail right on the head.”

“Why? What was the problem?”

“Partly on account of they're scientifics—who are mighty dignified fellows, and get insulted if that dignity ain't noticed. And then,” Forsythe added, “there was the nature of the victim, Dr. Olliver.”