The Golden Goose (7 page)

The lieutenant looked around suspiciously. “Which two?”

Dr. Appleton stabbed his bony forefinger first at Coley Collins and then at Princess O'Shea. “I had locked the door of the death room. I pocketed the key. This precious pair sneaked upstairs while I was in the living room with the others and broke into the locked room. I caught them sneaking out a moment before you arrived.”

Lieutenant Grundy possessed a very snaky eye, and Prin felt herself immediately look guilty. “What's
your
name?” he asked her softly.

“Princess O'Shea. Uncle Slater's niece,” said Prin. “And I live here, which is more than Dr. Appleton does, though he acts as if he owns the deed to the place.”

“Never mind that,” said Grundy, directing his reptilian gaze upon Coley. “And who are you?”

“My name is Coley Collins,” said Coley with a little bow.

“And do you live here, too?”

“No,” began Prin, “but you see—”

“I'll handle this, my dear,” said Coley. “No, Lieutenant, I do not have the good fortune to be entitled to claim this as my residence. However, Miss O'Shea and I have an understanding that, while not yet formalized, will soon culminate in a legal relationship, if I make myself clear—”

“If you're going to marry the girl, why don't you just say so?” snapped Grundy. “Anyway, is Dr. Appleton's charge true?”

“It is not,” said Prin, snapping back, snake eye or no snake eye. “To charge that we broke into Uncle Slater's room is a gross exaggeration. I'll change that. It's a damn lie. I got the key from my own bedroom door and we unlocked Uncle Slater's door with that.”

“Point two,” said Coley. “We were not—I repeat—
not
sneaking. We simply went up there and went in and came out again. If you ask me, Dr. Appleton requires the immediate services of a geriatrician.”

“What's that?” demanded the old doctor, who had been following the conversation between alternate attacks of apoplexy and asthma.

“You see?” said Coley sympathetically. “The old gentleman is so senile he can't even remember a simple medical term. I doubt that anything he says can be relied on.”

“However
you got into that room,” screamed Dr. Appleton, dancing a little, “and
regardless
of whether you were sneaking or walking on your
hands
, the
fact
is you two had no
business
going in there when I locked the door and told you—
you
, Miss O'Shea—that
no
one was to go in there and you
knew
I was calling the police but you went in
anyway
you and this young
maniac
and what I want to know is why why
why!”

“Take it easy, old boy, or we'll have to call a doctor for
you,”
said Lieutenant Grundy. “Just the same, the doc's got a point. What
were
you doing in that room?”

“Prin,” said Coley, holding up his hand with dignity. “Allow me, since it was my idea entirely. Why, Lieutenant, this poor old fellow was making the wildest kind of accusations. Since my fiancée's reputation, not to mention her safety from harassment, was vitally involved, I deemed it necessary to learn as much about the actual situation as I could while I still had freedom of movement.”

“We both did,” added Prin, and she clamped an armlock on Coley. “And don't let him tell you different, Lieutenant.”

“I have no intention of interfering with Mr. Collins's or your exercise of free speech,” replied Grundy, who seemed affected at last by the prevailing semantic elegance. “Inasmuch as you've both just admitted the doc's charges are true. It will look even worse for you two if we find that he's also right in suspecting that Slater O'Shea did not die of natural causes.”

“Yes,” piped Dr. Appleton, still doing his little dance. “And an autopsy will
prove
me right!”

Cousin Twig, who had been edging stealthily out of the line of fire, started with violence at the word “autopsy.” He coughed just a little and advanced a half step. “Excuse me,” Twig said. “We probably have never adequately expressed our appreciation for your unselfish devotion to the professional care of Uncle Slater, Dr. Appleton, but you have my word—speaking for our entire little family—that we are grateful, sir, grateful beyond words, which is why we never expressed it. What I mean is—”

“What
do
you mean?” growled Lieutenant Grundy, who seemed to have developed a dislike for Twig, not a difficult thing to do. And the truth was, his fawning speech to Dr. Appleton sounded like one great sneer, an unfortunate effect which Twig had not merely not intended but was wholly unaware of.

“What I mean,” said Twig hurriedly, “is that we wouldn't hurt Dr. Appleton for anything in the world, in view of our great debt to him—”

“Which reminds me,” said Dr. Appleton nastily. “Slater didn't pay my last two bills.”

“I mean,” continued Twig, his voice rising—here it comes, thought Prin; Twig can never keep his true feelings under cover for very long—“I mean, hurt Dr. Appleton or not hurt Dr. Appleton, to hell with this autopsy business! The answer is no! No autopsy! We forbid it!”

“So that's it,” said Lieutenant Grundy, and Prin could have sworn she heard his rattles. “Well, let me tell you something, bud. If we find evidence of homicide, or even the suspicion of evidence of homicide, that uncle of yours is going to find himself on an autopsy table whether you forbid it or not!”

“Speaking purely in the spirit of science, Lieutenant,” said Coley, “I am all for it. How else can we prove that this once reasonably functioning disciple of Aesculapius is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf?”

“That's about it,” said Lieutenant Grundy. “I've hacked around this nuthouse long enough. Now I operate! You filberts go on in there and wait. Boatner, you come along with me.”

Prin was startled to hear this strange name tossed suddenly into the conversation; but then she saw that the lieutenant was addressing the other plainclothes-man. Since entering the house with Grundy he had held up the lace-curtained front door, saying nothing and doing nothing—almost, as it were, being nothing. Prin could never afterward recall him in any way—as a face, for example, or as a voice, or as an influence on events to even a micrometric degree. If Boatner was important to Grundy, Grundy concealed it with cunning. Prin never saw him look at Boatner, even when speaking to him; and soon no one else looked at him, either.

Now he followed Grundy up the stairs, and Dr. Appleton sank into a hall chair, wearily livid. Prin, Coley and Twig went into the living room, where Aunt Lallie, Peet and Brady were pretending to be mice with a cat loose on the premises.

Aunt Lallie did not approve of Coley Collins (“on principal,” as Prin had told him, “since you don't pay dividends”), and her reception of him now was not entirely cordial.

“Oh, it's you again,” said Aunt Lallie. “Why are you here, and when did you come?”

“Your niece Princess is my reason, Miss O'Shea,” said Coley with proper respect, “and my arrival time was about a half hour ago.”

“A half hour?” Aunt Lallie's tone suggested that she had slipped with no sweat into the head-of-the-family niche so unexpectedly vacated by Uncle Slater. “Where have you been, young man? What have you been doing to my niece?”

“‘With' would be the more appropriate preposition,” said Prin quickly, before Coley could answer. “We've been in the hall closet making love.”

“The hall
closet?”
frowned Cousin Peet. “Isn't that rather small for things like that?”

“Not if you're talented,” said Prin.

“You're being facetious, of course,” said Aunt Lallie coldly, “and showing extremely poor taste, with your Uncle Slater lying upstairs dead and the house full of police. That
was
the police you admitted, Twig, wasn't it?”

“You know damn well it was,” replied her nephew. “Two detectives named Grundy and Boatner. They've gone upstairs for a look at Uncle Slater. Incidentally, that's where Prin and this Collins character have been, not any hall closet. Old Appleton caught them sneaking out of Uncle Slater's room and told Lieutenant Grundy about it.”

“Prin!” said Aunt Lallie. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” said Prin tiredly.

“But why? Aren't we in enough trouble without you and this—this bartender making matters worse?”

“Don't blame your niece, Miss O'Shea,” said Coley. “It was my idea, and bartending is only a trivial avocation—”

“Your
idea!” frowned Aunt Lallie. “And what business was it of yours, pray, to barge in where you are not wanted?”

“My turn,” said Prin to Coley. “Why, Aunt Lallie, Coley didn't barge in on anyone but Uncle Slater, who couldn't have cared less. As for Coley's not being wanted here,
I
want him, and I'll remind you that this is my home as well as yours. Also, I think we'd better stop bickering and start remembering that Dr. Appleton has practically accused one of us of murdering Uncle Slater. And if he gets that lieutenant to agreeing with him—”

“But that's so
silly
. Why would one of us wish to murder poor Slater?”

“Exactly, exactly,” said Brother Brady nervously. “Uncle Slater was the patron saint of freeloaders. None of us with a brain cell in his or her head would have knocked him off.”

“Brady, you have a crude and disgusting manner of expressing yourself, do you know that?” said Aunt Lallie. “And anyway, what do you mean by that remark?”

“If I may interpret, Miss O'Shea,” said Coley, “your nephew is not sure that everyone here measures up to his specification.”

“Specification,” said Peet. “What does he mean by specification?”

“His specification that no one with a
brain,”
explained Twig, “would have dreamed of murdering Uncle Slater.”

“Is that what you meant, Brady?” demanded Peet. “That I'm
stupid?”

“It's all right, Peet,” muttered Brady. “I don't think I could stand it if you added intelligence to your other equipment. You'd be a bigger menace than the H-bomb.”

“Why, Brady,” said Peet, mollified. “What a nice thing to say.”

“Peet darling, why don't you change your position a little?” suggested Prin. “You're disturbing Brady. And I'm not sure he's the only one.”

Peet, startled, lifted her right knee off her left and switched legs. This accomplished nothing but an inversion of the view, as in a mirror; and Coley, who had glanced guiltily away at Prin's last sentence, glanced guiltily back. Brady, glowering, repaired to the bar just as Lieutenant Grundy marched in, followed by Dr. Appleton and the silent Boatner.

The lieutenant was carrying a brown bottle by the very tip of its neck. It was the same half-empty bottle of bonded bourbon, Prin was sure, that she had seen upstairs on Uncle Slater's bedside table. Detective Boatner—Prin took note of this phenomenon quite without reference to him personally—had Uncle Slater's glass, also from the night table, balanced on one virtually invisible palm.

“So there you are,” said Aunt Lallie huffily. “You, the tall one with the pickleface. Would you be so good as to explain why you have entered my house and tramped all over it without permission? According to the TV shows, you should have produced a warrant or something. Well?”

Grundy seemed a little thrown. “Madam,” he said, “I came here to look into the allegedly suspicious circumstances of a man's death at the request of the deceased's physician. For that no warrant is necessary.”

“Yes!” shouted Dr. Appleton.

“In the second place, Madam, it's my understanding that this is not your house but the deceased's house—”

“Point of order, Lieutenant,” said Twig. “Aunt Lallie is not a madam but a mademoiselle—on the well-aged side, like a good cheese, but a mademoiselle nevertheless.”

“I should say so!” said Cousin Peet indignantly. “Isn't a madam somebody who runs one of those awful places where men go? I don't think it's very nice of you to accuse my aunt of a thing like that when it isn't true.”

“By God! this is too much!” Grundy exclaimed. “No one is accusing anyone of anything! I'm only conducting an investigation in a legal and orderly manner!”

“I would like to know,” Prin said, “exactly what you are investigating.”

“I've just told you! I'm investigating the death of Slater O'Shea.”

“Isn't it true that deaths are investigated only when they are not natural?”

“When they're not natural, or when someone
thinks
they're not natural.”

“I would like to know, then, what you have discovered to make you think that Uncle Slater's death was not natural.”

“I haven't discovered anything yet, to tell the truth,” said Grundy reluctantly. “All I have so far is Dr. Appleton's professional opinion.”

“If I were a policeman,” Coley said, “I would hesitate a long time before going out on a limb with poor old Dr. Appleton. It seems to me a highly precarious procedure.”

“When the autopsy has been completed,” Dr. Appleton said with a corpse-like grin, “we will see how precarious it is!”

“Autopsy?” Aunt Lallie screeched. “Did you say autopsy? I simply will not subject Slater to such an indignity, and that's that!”

“That is not that,” said Dr. Appleton with enjoyment. “And the sooner you get used to the idea, Miss O'Shea, the better for all concerned.”

“We've had enough horsing around,” growled Lieutenant Grundy. “Let's get to it.”

“To what?” asked Brady in an alarmed tone.

“Everybody sit down!”

Momentarily cowed, everybody who was standing sat down; those who were sitting, unconsciously burrowed deeper into their seats with their bottoms, as if to establish the fact. Lieutenant Grundy, still carrying the bottle, stood in the middle of the room, prepared to swivel in any direction.