The Golden Goose (10 page)

Dear God, Prin thought, dear good God, let it not be the monster. She covered her ears. She pulled the summer blanket over her head. She burrowed under her pillow. But she could still hear the tapping.

Prin sat up in bed. She swallowed first, hard. “Who is it?”

“It's me. Let me in, Prin.”

Brady. It was Brady! “Go away, Brady,” Prin said. “I'm in bed.”

“Prin, I want to talk to you.”

“I don't want to talk to you.” How wonderful of Brady.

“You may as well let me in. I won't go way until you do.”

“Oh, all right,” said Prin. “Just a minute.”

She crawled out of bed and, with her hand on the key, had a horrid thought. “Are you
alone
, Brady?”

“Of course I'm alone,” he said peevishly. “What kind of question is that?”

The best kind, Prin thought; oh, the best kind. “Wait a minute,” she said, “till I get back into bed.” She turned the key and got into bed and said, “All right, now … Lock the door, Brady.”

“What's the matter with you tonight?” He locked it and came walking through a wall of moonlight and sat down on the edge of her bed. He sat in the shadows, and she could not see his face. But his voice sounded strained.

“I'm sorry, Prin, but … you're the only one I trust around here. A brother and sister have to stick together.”

“Do we?” said Prin.

“I know I haven't been much of a brother. We hardly know each other.”

“That's a fact. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

He shifted his weight on the bed. “About what you and Collins were really doing in Uncle Slater's room.”

“Just what Coley and I told that policeman—looking around to see what we could see. We also did some smooching, but not much. With Uncle Slater lying there …”

“Look, Prin.” Brady made an impatient noise. “Whom you smooch with and where are your business. But what you saw may be the business of all of us—if that old maniac of a doctor is right about Uncle Slater's being murdered, that is. Do you really think he was?”

“I don't know, Brady. We'll know soon enough.”

“Did you see that bottle when you were in the room?”

“I must have. I'm sure I'd have noticed if it wasn't. Bottles and Uncle Slater sort of went together.”

“It's a damn shame you didn't take it away.”

“Why, Brady?” asked Prin curiously. “If Uncle Slater was poisoned, don't you want his poisoner punished?”

“Hell, no. What difference would that make to Uncle Slater? Now there's probably going to be a messy investigation.”

“Oh, I see. You've done something you're afraid they'll find out.”

“Never mind that!” said Brady savagely. But then he said, “All right, suppose I have?”

“It couldn't be that
you
put poison in that bottle, could it?”

“My God, Prin, don't talk like that! What reason would I have? And even if I had, would I have been dumb enough to leave the bottle there? I'd have come back and taken it away. Anybody with sense would.”

“I don't know about reasons. All I know is that it was an awful thing to do to Uncle Slater—if it
was
done, I mean—and, frankly, I'm not sure you weren't capable of doing it.”

“That's a hell of a thing to say about your own brother,” Brady said angrily.

“If you
are
my brother.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Brady.”

He was silent. Then he muttered, “You mean you forgot me so completely during the years I was away that you even doubt I'm the real Brady O'Shea?”

“It was a long time,” said Prin, feeling sorry for him suddenly.

“I take it, then, that you feel no affection for me at all.”

“I don't know, Brady. It's troubled me a great deal. I just don't know.”

This time his silence went on and on. Finally, days later it seemed, Brady said, “In that case I'd better get out of here and leave you alone.”

He got up from the bed. He stood there without moving, however, for some time, as if he were hesitating about saying or doing something more. But then he stalked to the door, unlocked it and stalked out. Prin got swiftly out of bed, flew to the door, shut and locked it, and stood with her back to it, trembling.

The house was full of darkness. Dark people, dark thoughts, dark motives, dark pasts … darkness everywhere.

Uncle Slater had been murdered, all right.

Prin was suddenly sure of it.

8

And so, two days later, was Lieutenant Sherm Grundy.

Two reports lay before him, one an analysis of Slater O'Shea's bourbon from the bedside bottle and the other of Slater O'Shea's interior. Neither report, from Grundy's point of view, was ideal. For they disturbed his personal concept of the good detective life, which was based on as little trouble as possible for himself. His reputation as a death-on-rats sourpuss stemmed from this—the more ruthlessly he pursued an investigation, the more quickly it came to an end and restored the pleasant
status quo ante
of police life in Cibola City.

He read the reports again. Slater O'Shea's bottle of bourbon had been liberally laced with a drug identified as a synthetic substitute for insulin. This drug was used in the treatment of diabetes. An overdose was fatal. But the effect was a delayed one, taking about an hour to produce unconsciousness and death. This delayed-action effect had indubitably taken place inside Slater O'Shea, where the identical insulin substitute had been found in lethal quantity. No trace of the drug had been found in the glass.

As Grundy reconstructed the last hour or so of Slater O'Shea's life, he had come home, gone to his bedroom, taken a few—in this case unhealthy—slugs directly from the doctored bottle, ignoring the glass, and lain down for his afternoon nap. Aware after a while that something more than simple drowsiness was overcoming him, he had got off the bed, taken a step or two, and collapsed. There, on the floor, he had shut his eyes and taken his nap at last, or his last nap, which in his case came to the same thing.

What Grundy disliked most about his reconstruction, aside from its homicidal indications, was its fanciness. He had known on contact that nothing simple or sensible could be expected from the O'Sheas, but he had at least hoped for an ordinary, decent poison, something you might buy at a hardware store in a can of weed killer or insecticide. He would really have preferred another kind of weapon altogether, such as a gun or a knife or a blunt instrument. But a synthetic substitute for insulin, for God's sake! Grundy was not at all sure he was up to it.

Cursing softly, the lieutenant put his mind to the problem of fancy murder. Even plain murder had been a rarity in his professional experience, Cibola City being a singularly docile community.

It took little experience, however, considering the O'Shea tribe even as he slightly knew them, to come to an immediate conclusion: profit, or the hope of it, must be the motive. The trouble was that damn will of Slater O'Shea's his heirs-in-residence had subsequently told him about. With the modest fortune divided among almost two dozen O'Sheas, how could the testator's death greatly profit any one of them? Especially the five who lived with him and off him? Of course, profit was a relative thing; what seemed small at one time might seem large indeed at another, depending on circumstances. Still, Grundy was uneasy. Perhaps, he thought, brightening, no such will existed. Brother, let us pray!

Digging a directory from his drawer, Grundy located the telephone number of the O'Shea residence. This done, he dialed the number and waited for a response, which was finally made by Mrs. Dolan. Mrs. Dolan, audibly disappointed at not being asked to relay a message, summoned Miss Lallie O'Shea. Miss Lallie O'Shea, sounding far more alert to the ear than she appeared to the eye, demanded to know when the police department was going to let Slater O'Shea's family have him back for decent disposal—“that is,” said deceased's sister, “if there is anything left of him to dispose of.”

“You may have the body back immediately, Miss O'Shea,” said Grundy. “I assure you it is almost entirely in one piece.”

“Thank you,” said Aunt Lallie coldly. “I have never in my born days heard of anything more disgusting. I suppose you found that that old fool of a doctor should be committed to a mental institution?”

“We're not ready with our findings yet,” lied Grundy. “By the way, Miss O'Shea, can you tell me the name of your brother's lawyer?”

“His lawyer? Why do you want to know
that?”

“Routine,” said the lieutenant, resorting to the magic word. “His name, Miss O'Shea?”

“It seems to me you're being terribly evasive, Lieutenant.”

“So are you!”

Aunt Lallie chuckled unexpectedly, “Too-shee.”

“I can get the information the hard way, Miss O'Shea. Why not be cooperative and save us a little trouble?”

“I don't see why I should. However, I suppose it can't do any harm. Slater's lawyer was Selwyn Fish.”

“Oh. Thank you very much.”

Grundy hung up and pulled his long nose longer. He might have known, he reflected bitterly, that an oddball client like Slater O'Shea would go for an oddball attorney like Selwyn Fish like a fly for an open garbage pail. Professionally, Fish gave off a mephitic aroma. Everything about him—his person, his office location, his methods—offended the nostrils. He was an expert in the art of marginal dealing, said art consisting in a talent for pursuing the questionable while remaining just inside the purlieus of the law. There was a certain poetic unity in the revelation that the victim of a fancy murderer had engaged the services of a shyster lawyer, but Lieutenant Grundy did not warm to it. Grundy's lack of empathy with art in whatever form has already been remarked.

Consequently, he rose from his desk with a scowl; and he covered his head with a hat and left his office, Selwyn Fish-bound.

It was a short walk from police headquarters. The shyster's office was located over a cheap-john clothing store in the seediest section of old Cibola City, on a crooked side street with gaps in its cobbles, like broken teeth. The two-story frame building leaned a little on its foundations, and its ancient dirt-colored walls always reminded Grundy of the scaling hide of a dying old dwarf elephant. It was twenty years past its just deserts of condemnation, a fate it successfully avoided by the fact that it was owned by the most influential member of the Cibola City Council.

The lieutenant pushed open the street door, which screamed feebly, and he groped through the sour dimness of a flight of narrow creaking stairs to the upper floor. Here, lurking along the grimy little hall, were grimy little offices, their half-pebbled glass doors announcing a chiropractor, the headquarters of a local sect known as The Sublime Order of the Sons of the Sun, a public stenographer, and finally—in scabby gilt lettering—Selwyn Fish, Attorney-at-Law.

Grundy walked in. He found himself in a sort of closet, presided over by a desiccated female with a new purple pimple on the end of her nose and a shroudlike black dress over her bones. All Grundy could think of was a disinterment order.

“Yes” this lady snapped. Then she noticed who it was, and she said, this time in a wary tone, “Yes?”

“Lieutenant Grundy, police,” Grundy said. “Mr. Fish in?”

“Police?” she repeated, as if she had
not
noticed. “Mr. Fish has a client with him. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” said Grundy; and he looked around for a chair. There was none except the chair occupied by the talking corpse. He leaned against the door and waited.

He waited twenty minutes. Then the inner door of the closet opened and a woman with dried-out yellow straw for hair and an improbable chest measurement appeared. At sight of Grundy she froze like an alley cat. Then she tiptoed across the closet floor, Grundy politely held the door open for her, and she clattered down the hall and down the stairs on her three-inch heels as if she expected him to come racing after her, gun in hand. Grundy knew her well. Her name was Big Suzy.

“Come in, Lieutenant, come in,” called a boomy voice; Grundy shut the hall door and went into the inner office. Selwyn Fish was on his feet behind his desk, showing his crystal teeth in what Grundy supposed was intended as a smile. “Sit down, sit down. What can I do for you?”

Grundy sat down in an armchair with a broken spring. He placed his hat precisely in his lap, taking his time about it; accommodated his lean buttocks to the lumpy seat; then deliberately sat back and looked Selwyn Fish over. Fish had been fashioned in the same remarkable workshop that had produced Twig O'Shea. He had a long thick torso set on short bandy legs, so that when he stood he looked like a dwarf and when he sat down—as he now rather uncertainly did—he seemed gigantic. Above the enormous shoulders wobbled a pin-head, without a hair on it, but whose contents, Grundy knew, were out of all proportion to its container. The whole effect was that of an android made up out of spare parts by a drunken workman of the year 2783. The lawyer's only savory feature were his eyes—large, black, brilliantly beautiful, like some gorgeous flower growing in a swamp.

“I understand,” began Grundy, “that you were the late Slater O'Shea's attorney, Mr. Fish.”

“Who told you that, Lieutenant?” asked the lawyer, cautiously.

“Miss Lallie O'Shea.”

“I see. Well, yes, I was old Slater's lawyer. Quite a shock, his dying so suddenly.”

“He's dead, there's no question about that.”

“Why are you interested, Lieutenant? Did Slater break a law before he died? If so, you're a bit late.”

“He didn't break any law. Not that I know of.”

“Well, I'll venture that he broke quite a few you don't know of. He wasn't greatly inhibited by scruples, the old rascal. Just ran down a bit in his later years.”