Death at Charity's Point by William G. Tapply Read Free Book Online Page A

desk.
    “Want some coffee?” I asked. “My turn to get it.”
    “No, thanks. I’ve had my quota already. You know,” she said, frowning at me, “you drink too much of that stuff.”
    “Yes, yes, I know. Ulcers, high blood pressure. Rots the brain. Ruins the bowels. You know, you get these little creases between your eyes when you glare at me. You don’t watch out, they’ll become permanent.”
    “It causes cancer of the pancreas, too,” she persisted. “Edward says you’re trying to destroy yourself.”
    “I thought Edward was a radiologist.”
    “He is.”
    “Not a psychiatrist.”
    Julie tossed her head. “He knows all those things. I worry about you. Cigarettes, coffee, bourbon. You don’t get any exercise. You’re not a young man.”
    I snorted. “He’s right. I am the living exemplification of the Death Instinct. On the other hand, there was nothing instinctive about George Gresham’s death. It seems to have been painstakingly conceived, scrupulously executed. I wonder,” I added, ostentatiously firing up a Winston, “if George regretted his clean living as he tumbled to his death. I bet his last thoughts were of bourbon Old Fashioneds and Lucky Strikes and shrimp scampi. Sad, huh?”
    “You’re being perfectly ghoulish, Counselor,” she said. “Have a bad morning.”
    “I had an accelerated course in more than you ever wanted to know about the abuse that can be heaped upon the human body. It takes a lot to kill a man. I don’t know very much about death. Or didn’t.”
    “It was suicide, then?”
    “Seems that way.” I summarized quickly what Dr. Clapp had told me. She listened intently, as I knew she would, sucking on the knuckle of her forefinger as I attempted to reconstruct the pathologist’s explanation of how the human body dies from drowning. When I had finished, she stared at me for a moment.
    “So it all hinges on the note?”
    “Well, yes, I suppose it does. Without the note, I guess it would be a lot of conjecture. But there was the note.”
    I removed it from my jacket pocket and handed it to her. “Tell me what you think.”
    She read it slowly. When she had finished, she handed it back to me. “Shakespeare, isn’t it?”
    I nodded. “Some of it.”
    “I recognize the Hamlet. His dying words. What’s the other mean?”
    I shrugged. “Who knows? It means whatever George meant it to mean. His father wrote a suicide note that was a joke , for God’s sake. The point is, the man who wrote it ended up dead on the beach.”
    “If you want to know why he ended up there, that’s not the point at all,” said Julie. “This note doesn’t say he’s going to kill himself. For heaven’s sake, it doesn’t say he’s going to do anything at all. It just—well, it says he’s sad.”
    “Right. Very sad. Depressed. Very depressed, I’d say. Very depressed people commit suicide a lot.”
    “No. People who commit suicide may tend to be depressed. But that doesn’t mean that depressed people tend to commit suicide. There’s a difference.”
    I waved my hand. “Whatever. George’s dead.”
    “Sounds like you’ve bought it all.”
    I shrugged. “Guess I have. It fits.”
    “Hell,” said Julie, her eyes flashing. “This could mean anything. It’s a poem. It’s not even a note.”
    “Except, you see, George did kill himself. And he left this behind. That makes it a suicide note. Q.E.D .”
    Julie grinned in triumph. “Correction, learned Counselor. George died . That’s all you know . What ever happened to reasonable doubt?”
    “Ah, there’s always doubt, Julie. How reasonable is reasonable? Dr. Clapp said to me, ‘The commonest things most commonly happen.’ Set reasonable doubt up against the preponderance of evidence here, and the doubt seems pretty unreasonable. Remember. The law does not say ‘beyond all doubt.’ They stuck the word ‘reasonable’ in there. It’s the rule of reason that still makes the law work.”
    “You damn lawyers. Always