Murder by the Book (22 page)

He did not finish that. Jefferson gave him time, but he seemed, again, to have gone far away, gone into the blankness of his inner life.

“‘Hs prep hypo,'” Jefferson read. “Comes right after the bit about her request, if that's what it was. Mean anything to you, doctor?”

Dr. Upton looked at the notes again, looked up at Jefferson, said, “Can't say it does, sheriff.”

“It didn't to us either,” Pam North said. “But then, so little of it—wait a minute!”

“In the other notes,” Pam said, and spoke quickly, as if to get words out before an idea slipped away. “In the notes in the notebook, ‘hs' meant you, doctor. That is, we decided it meant ‘husband.' And this time—couldn't it read, ‘husband prepared hypodermic?' That is, for the insulin shot. And—did you, doctor?”

“Yes,” Dr. Upton said. “I usually did. To make sure of the right number of units.”

“This other medication,” Pam said. “Dramamine or whatever it was. It wouldn't be—incompatible with the insulin shot? Or—contra—what's the rest of it? Of course. Contraindicated because she'd been sick?”

“She asked that,” Dr. Upton said. “Looking—looking for an excuse. I told her that he was a doctor. Wouldn't use anything incompatible with insulin since he knew she was on it.”

“I guess this isn't getting us anywhere, Dr. Upton,” Jefferson said. “As for the last—”

The door of the office opened, with no preliminary knocking. A slim dark woman in a dark linen suit stood in the doorway.

“You're this sheriff,” she said, her voice high, excited. “What have you been doing to my baby?”

They turned and looked at her. They looked at her blankly. Paul Grogan appeared behind her and shook his head and spread his hands, indicating hopelessness; indicating he had tried and failed.

“Becky,” she said. “You've been hounding Becky.”

“I don't—” Jefferson said.

“I've come back to stop that,” the woman said. “I've brought Tony with me. It won't be just defenseless women any more. I've—why, hello!”

The last appeared to be addressed to Dr. Tucker Upton, who appeared to look surprised.

“I'm amazed,” the slender, black-haired woman—the woman who did, in fact, look not a little like her daughter—said. “I'm really
amazed
. You actually
found
him!”

We had it in hand, Pam North thought; I really thought we had it in hand. And now—
this!

“I suppose,” Jefferson said, and there was a kind of wariness in his tone, “that you're Mrs. Coleman?”

“Of course I'm Mrs. Coleman. Who did you think I was?”

Several appropriate answers occurred to Gerald North. “Avenging fury” was among them.

“I suppose,” Mrs. Coleman said, “that this gentleman—I heard you say Dr. Upton?—has told you?”

Jefferson looked at Upton, who was looking, it seemed rather fixedly, at Mrs. Peter Coleman. Upton appeared to become conscious that Jefferson was looking at him. He looked at Jefferson, and raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

“About what, Mrs. Coleman?” Deputy Sheriff Jefferson said, as patiently as he could.

“The beach bag, of course,” she said, with no patience at all. “What did you think I was talking about? About helping me pick things up and being so nice after I caught the beach bag—”

She stopped, as if she had stumbled over something incomprehensible.

“I don't understand at all,” she said. “Isn't that why he's—why you're questioning him?”

Jefferson looked again at Dr. Upton.

“I'm sorry,” Upton said. “I haven't the least idea what she's talking about.”

“The beach place,” Mrs. Coleman said. She spoke slowly and distinctly, as if to a very backward child. “The place called the ‘Sun and Surf'. I caught my beach bag on the corner of a table and it spilled everything and you were just coming in for breakfast and helped me pick things up. Of course you remember.” She looked at Dr. Upton. “Of course you do,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” Upton said. “I'm afraid you've got me confused with somebody else.”

“I,” Mrs. Coleman said, “do not forget faces, Dr. Upton. Anybody can tell you that.”

It was entirely out of hand, Pam North thought. She reached for it.

“Mrs. Coleman,” Pam said, “when was this?”

Mrs. Coleman looked at Pam as if, for the first time, she was conscious of her presence in the room.

“I,” Pam said, “am Mrs. Gerald North. This is my husband.”

She indicated her husband.

“Mrs. North,” Mrs. Coleman said, acceptingly. “Mr. North. What did you say?”

“When—”

“Why, yesterday morning, of course,” Mrs. Coleman said. “At a little after seven. I'd gone for an early dip and then had a cup of coffee and toast—I never eat much breakfast—and caught my bag when I was going out. You know how it is, my dear—sun glasses, sunburn lotion, comb, reading glasses—so many things. And when I got back to the motel my daughter—my own daughter—didn't believe me. Oh, she didn't say so. Not in so many words. But I could tell—”

She stopped abruptly.

“Why,” she said, “are you all looking at me like that?”

“Yesterday morning?” Jefferson said. “At a little after seven? Yesterday?”

“How many times?” Mrs. Coleman said. “He was wearing bathing trunks and a beach coat, like everybody does there all the time. It's a very informal place and—”

“Well, Dr. Upton?” Jefferson said.

“I never saw Mrs. Coleman before in my life,” Tucker Upton said, his voice heavy. “At that hour, sheriff, I was on U.S. 1, somewhere between Miami and Homestead. Probably nearer Miami. I got here about ten and found—”

“I know,” Jefferson said. “You told me. You're sure, Mrs. Coleman?”

“Of course I'm sure,” Mrs. Coleman said. “I've no idea why he denies it. I—
oh!”

“Yes,” Jefferson said, “it was at a little before seven yesterday morning, Mrs. Coleman, that Dr. Piersal was killed. And that's why you wanted to make it so clear you were at the Sun and Surf, isn't it?”

“But I was there. You don't listen. I woke early and it was a beautiful morning and I decided to go for a dip. People at the motel have beach privileges at the Sun and Surf, you know. It's supposed to be a club—”

“I know,” Jefferson said. “When was this?”

“About six-thirty. So I had my dip and then coffee and toast and then, when I was going out, there was this about the bag and this gentleman—yes,
you
—helped me and—”

“Mrs. Coleman,” Pam said, “did you know Dr. Upton was here? Before you came in? Mr. Grogan tried to stop you, didn't he? Didn't he tell you Dr. Upton was here?”

Mrs. Coleman looked at Pam North, and looked from her to Ronald Jefferson, and then raised her eyebrows.

“All right,” Jefferson said. “Consider I've asked the same things. Officially. And that Paul Grogan is an old friend of mine and—”

“I don't,” Mrs. Coleman said, “see what difference it makes. For all I knew, he—” she pointed at Jerry North—“might just as well have been Dr. Upton. What you're trying to say is—”

She looked at Jefferson and said, “Well?”

“Dr. Upton,” Jefferson said, “has an alibi for the murder of Dr. Piersal. If he needs one. But if he was here in Key West at that hour, and only a few blocks from here, his alibi is shot, isn't it? At the same time, you yourself have an alibi of sorts. If you were going out when he came in you were there earlier. Perhaps at the time Dr. Piersal was being killed.”

“This,” Mrs. Coleman said, and now there was neither excitement not stridency in her voice, “is the man who helped me pick things up. It was at about seven-fifteen yesterday morning. At the Sun and Surf, which is about ten minutes' walk from here.”

“I,” Dr. Upton said, “never saw this woman before in my life. I don't question her account of what happened. No doubt she'll be able to find the man who did help her. But it wasn't I.”

And then he started to stand up. He said, “For your information, deputy sheriff, the last notations undoubtedly mean ‘check with husband as to digitalis dosage.' And that, I'm afraid, is all the help—” He stood up. “I've told you the dosage. Fifteen hundredths of a milligram daily. I—”

“Won't keep you long, doctor,” Jefferson said. “Still—perhaps you can help us clear up this confusion. So—”

He looked at Dr. Upton's chair. Dr. Upton hesitated, then sat down again.

He didn't, Pam thought, look so far away now, so deep within himself, in the loneliness of his mind.

“Mrs. Coleman,” Jefferson said, “your daughter drove you to Miami. Put you on a train for New York.”

“That's just it,” Mrs. Coleman said. “Helping a fugitive to escape. I realized that. So when we got to Washington, I got off and called Tony up, and told him. And we decided to come right back. So you wouldn't hound her.”

“I see,” Jefferson said. “Who is this Tony?”

“Why,” Mrs. Coleman said, “Becky's husband, of course. He's been half out of his mind worrying about her.”

Half out of my mind is about where I'm getting to be, Jerry thought.

“You weren't a fugitive,” Jefferson said. “There was no charge against you. There isn't now. Why did you agree to—run?”

“Because I didn't want to get mixed up in it,” Mrs. Coleman said. “Oh, I said things about Dr. Piersal. That was a long time ago and I didn't mean them but—Oh, I didn't think clearly. Sometimes I—sometimes I don't. Becky thinks she's got a poor crazy mother and—and that's what makes her afraid. Afraid she'll be like me. That's why she left Tony. Got all mixed up. Only I'm not, really. Anyway, I realized after a while that I was leaving
Becky
mixed up in it, so of course I got hold of Tony and we came back.” She looked at Dr. Upton. “And whatever you say,” she said, “you were at the Sun and Surf yesterday morning, not on U.S. 1 somewhere.”

Upton did not bother to look at her. He merely sighed.

“I was wearing a white bathing suit,” Mrs. Coleman said. “With a blue beach jacket over it.”

She seemed to be trying to help the dark-clad, remote man remember something he had forgotten. It was as if, once he remembered, he would think better of his denial. She seemed to be entirely unprepared for the deep silence which greeted what she had said; for Jefferson and the Norths to look at her with such new intentness. After a few seconds she said, “Did I say something that—?”

“Mrs. Coleman,” Jefferson said, “when your daughter came to find you. After she had found Dr. Piersal's body. What was she wearing?”

“Why,” Mrs. Coleman said, “the same—why do you ask me that? What difference does it—?”

“White bathing suit with a blue jacket?” Jefferson said. “Very like what you were wearing?”

“Not very like,” Mrs. Coleman said. “Exactly like. I bought myself a suit and jacket last summer. They were matching, you know. The suit has blue decorations. Matches the jacket. Little darts down the—”

“Yes,” Jefferson said. “And—”

“And I bought Rebecca one too,” she said. “We're the same size. Sometimes people can hardly believe we're really mother and—”

“Mrs. Coleman,” Jefferson said, and his voice was heavy. “The woman who was seen—seen by a beachboy, but you know that—running on the pier Sunday morning, running away from what she had found, was wearing what the boy took to be white shorts.
And
a bluejacket. Was the woman you, Mrs. Coleman? You, not your daughter?”

She looked at him. Her perfectly applied mouth opened slightly.

“Why,” Mrs. Coleman said, “what a dreadful thing to say. What a really
dread
ful thing!”

17

It's all going wrong, Pam North thought—going “dreadfully” wrong. And I was so almost certain. Mrs. Coleman and her daughter together, after all? Not as Mr. Jefferson thought—not the farfetched way he thought. A way we're only now beginning to piece—

“Doctor,” Jerry North said, “when did you first learn that Dr. Piersal had treated your wife on Saturday? Grogan told you after she died? That's what you told the deputy, isn't it?”

Jerry looked at Ronald Jefferson, who said, “Yes. That's what he told me.”

“What's that got to do—?” Upton said, his tone dull, uninterested. “Not that it matters. Yes, Grogan told me.”

“A while ago,” Jerry said, “you spoke as if you had talked to your wife about it. But she was dead when you arrived. You said something about her having asked if what Piersal had given her would be incompatible with her insulin shot. And you—let me see if I can remember it—you ‘told her he was a doctor.' Wouldn't give her anything that was contraindicated for a person taking insulin. Don't you remember saying that?”

Jefferson looked at Jerry North, and his eyes narrowed. And Pam looked at Jerry, and her eyes widened. There was time for this before Upton answered.

“Grogan told me,” Upton said. “As I told the sheriff here. It's a—obviously a trivial point. I wasn't in a mood for trivial points. I'm not now, Mr. North. Or—absurd theories. That a man of Piersal's experience made a mistake of some sort. And killed himself because—good God, man.”

His tone was very weary. He shook his head in tired rejection of the absurd. They waited.

“However,” he said, “I knew Piersal had been asked to have a look at her, and had had a look at her. Knew this before Grogan told me. I telephoned my wife from my office in Miami Saturday afternoon. I usually did when we had to be separated. This stomach upset had started before I left Saturday. I called to ask how she was feeling. It was then she told me Piersal had been in and given her something, and she said she felt much better, and asked about the insulin shot—hoping I'd say she'd better not take it, poor Florence.”