“Yes,” said Darwina, “one part in 100. Only it doesn’t necessarily follow he was killed in ten minutes, or even half an hour.”
“Why not?”
“Because carbon monoxide is insidious. It can sneak up on one. Suppose,” suggested Darwina, “he lighted the heater before seven o’clock. He might have absorbed up to perhaps a thirty per cent saturation and not have noticed any definite symptoms—and then just suddenly collapsed.”
This was not what Kenmore had hoped to hear. His expression changed; his face did not exactly fall, but it became profoundly contemplative.
He confronted a difficult decision.
How far should he trust Darwina Roydan?
Kenmore didn’t question her personal integrity. It was just the opposite . . . He knew where the young woman stood in La Jolla’s estimation; she was candidly radical. Only her radicalism had nothing to do with anything so remote as Communism, for instance. She believed ardently in reform, and concretely, in reforming the village.
And she believed in direct action. Thus she had been known to patrol the beaches, snatching up discarded ice cream paper cups and fragments of sandwiches. “Here,” she would say, thrusting the offensive article under a picnicker’s nose, “do you realize you’ve left a rat a day’s rations?”
It was in this forthright manner that she undertook to renovate and enlighten La Jolla. Undoubtedly, Darwina was something of a busybody; but at least she was busy in the public interest . . . Only as so often happens, the public needed to be shown where its best interest lay.
Kenmore knew she was an optimist, as every sincere crusader must be. To believe in Causes, she had first to believe in human nature; she could never permit herself a moment’s disillusion about the essential goodness in people. Or what would have been the use of trying to change mere conditions?
Darwina Roydan, who was a scientist in respect to leucetta losangelensis, was an idealist in respect to the human race.
And that, thought Kenmore, was just the trouble. Her honesty was too transparent. She was too candidly transparent.
You could pledge her tongue to silence, and her eyes would nevertheless speak eloquently.
But the lieutenant had reached a point where he needed help; and Darwina was assuredly his best bet.
“That’s no good, then,” said he, and took the plunge. “I’m trying to get around it—the heater part. I’m not satisfied about it a bit.”
Darwina’s eyes opened widely in the shadow of the galleon’s prow. “But then you must mean—!”
“Yes,” said Kenmore, “if it wasn’t accidental, it was on purpose.”
Murder . . . That chasm yawned too wide.
Darwina shook her head.
“If it wasn’t the heater, you would have to get the carbon monoxide in by some other means. And then it probably wouldn’t have worked at all. It might be possible to kill a sleeping man or a drunken one that way. And while the poison is insidious, still in a majority of cases your victim would be warned by headache and dizziness and nausea. He’d simply step out for some fresh air. It would be a stupid and improbable way of trying to kill anyone, really.”
Lieutenant Kenmore smiled at the corners of his mouth, an unconvinced smile. He wasn’t going to rule out the possibility of homicide merely because the apparent method seemed stupid and improbable to Darwina Roydan.
“Would this mean anything to you?” said he.
She peered at the face of the envelope.
“No.”
“This, then.”
He turned it over.
“Good heavens!” said Darwina thinly. She moistened her lips. “You mean he was killed after he phoned you about her? Because he had this?”
“Was he, though?” Lieutenant Kenmore looked perplexed. “Maybe. If that’s it, he must have read the letter inside. But the letter itself is gone. And that’s only one difficulty. Bowling seems to have run onto this thing in the last few minutes of his life. Or why didn’t he act on it sooner?
“From that point,” he shook his head, “it gets worse than confusing. The thing contradicts itself. For if Bowling only stumbled onto this in the last few minutes of his life, apparently his death was a last-minute necessity, too. But to kill a man and make the murder look like accidental death caused by a defective heater needs preparation and planning. Such a crime is not thought-out and executed in ten or eleven minutes. If it was the kind of murder the set-up indicates, of course it was plotted hours in advance. But why plot to kill a man because of this envelope he hadn’t yet seen?”
He stepped to the filing case, opened its upper section, ran his thumb along the index cards to the one headed Henry R. Bowling, 222 Laguna Terrace.
“Darwina,” said he, “I suppose it has occurred to you this envelope may be a plant?”
“A—?”
“A plant, a decoy, a red herring.”
She looked momentarily enlightened. And the next moment, distrustful. “Why? This was supposed to be accidental death. Not murder. And people don’t leave false clues scattered around a scene of accidental death.”
“Unless it was desired to have two strings to the bow. I had a case once in which a man pushed his wife off a cliff. He hoped it would pass for suicide. When he saw we wouldn’t swallow that, he got busy and helped us find some footprints along the top of the cliff. He had gone to a second-hand store and bought a pair of oversized boots, figuring if the suicide theory wouldn’t wash, the crime might be pinned on some unknown tramp or hitchhiker.
“Well, then, Darwina. It might have been hoped Henry Bowling’s death would pass as accidental, but if not, the envelope would point away from the murderer.”
And the detective got down to brass tacks:
“That brings the family into it. They may be innocent. I hope so. If they are, they’ll probably be glad to cooperate with the police. But I can’t rely on it. Because if they are guilty, after all, I don’t dare put them on guard, point out the little discrepancies in the thing, in fact show them the little lies they must tell . . . It’s a delicate job. And you can help with it. You know them, you can tell me what I’m going into here.
“First—” his grey glance dropped to the card “—Mrs. Axiter. Who and what is she?”
“Bowling’s sister. She managed the house for him.” Darwina pursed her lips. “I think if you told her Henry was murdered—well, perhaps murdered—I suppose her first reaction would be to faint. Then she would burst into tears. Finally, she would be insulted.”
“Insulted?”
“Because murders don’t happen in nice families,” said Darwina, “and Jessie is wonderfully adept at closing her eyes to unpleasant truths.”
“Yes,” said the lieutenant. “What truths?”
“I don’t suppose it has anything to do with Henry Bowling,” said Darwina hurriedly. “I mean Lally. Lalitha is Jessie’s youngest. Younger. There are two daughters. Lally married a man named Al Dearborn, and the marriage turned out badly. They’ve separated. Lally’s staying with her mother. The gossip is—I don’t like to repeat gossip, but you should know—she’s consoling herself with alcoholic beverages and pick-ups at the local bars.
“I suppose,” said Darwina thoughtfully, “she’s in psychiatric difficulties, as almost all dipsomaniacs are, and perhaps the same difficulty was what upset her marriage. Though I’m told Al Dearborn is no bargain,