Death of the Magpie

CHAPTER SIX

  Morning dawned grey and damp from the showers of the night before. Janet forewent her customary swim and huddled in a small lounge at the elbow of the lodge wing that extended toward the area where Professor Antwhistle's bedroom was situated. From this spot he would be seen whether he left the room by the hall or the path outside the building. After a short wait he emerged from the lodge resplendent in a bright blue jogging suit, with binoculars slung around his neck. By exiting from the other end of the wing Janet was able to intercept him apparently by coincidence as he followed the path around the building. His boisterous greeting seemed calculated to arouse the remainder of the conferees still gently slumbering.

  "Ah, Janet! Just in time to join me in an ornithological expedition!" The Professor ambled and rambled along on the subject of their first conversation. "A simply marvellous spot for aves rara and otherwise, don't you find?" He continued without waiting for an answer, cataloguing the natural feathered inhabitants on his list of sightings. It was evident that the Professor did not confine his attentions to the conferees, nor to the waterfowl observable from his canoe. He pointed out several varieties of finches, barely distinguishable to Janet's untrained eye. She had to admit to herself that her mind was flitting not with the birds, but among the tangles in the case of Karl Elster, and she hoped an occasion would arrive when she could break in upon John Antwhistle's lecture. Unfortunately, she recalled from long experience, when he began enlarging on a theme it generally ran its full natural course of fifty minutes assigned for a standard exposure of the brain in his classroom.

  Janet kept step, and tried to keep pace with the discourse, hoping against hope for a diversion from the landscape or the weather. But the woods rolled by relentlessly, similar in features, and the clouds, although discharged of all expressible juice the night preceding, billowed along like so many identical fruits in a supermarket display.

  "Now here," said the Professor grasping her wrist and lowering his voice, is one of my more interesting finds (or almost finds at all events)."

  With the cautionary wariness invoked by his tone, Janet slowed her steps and became more alert.

  "Do you remember our earlier discourse about the magpie?"

  "Of course," she whispered back.

  "A curious bird in the true sense of that adjective. Much maligned in our efforts to draw moral lessons from nature. As scientists who are similarly motivated we should be paying homage to the magpie for his curiosity. You see, he is in fact one of the great observers of nature: he is attracted indeed by those things outside the commonplace of his experience. You might say that, like the great comet discoverers or remarkers of new species who are so praised in the scientific community, the magpie is an observer par excellence, attracted by and noting the anomalies of life. Those events in short that make a difference somehow because they are out of context, are the significant ones to us in science. And the magpie sees such differences ; the shiny trinkets of our civilization that intrude on the natural world for example, and duly notes their existence in the best tradition of our astronomers or lepidopterists by collecting them. Man with his misplaced proprietary interest in his trinkets, and his misplaced morality of possession, brands the poor creature unjustly as a thief. He is in simple fact a scientist in the natural world, a collector of significant data."

  After this lengthy peroration Janet began to wonder if any of the Professor's feathered quarry would be remaining within an observable distance. But at this point he lowered his voice and drew her quietly further along the trail until they faced a line of high trees along the river bank, not very far from the spot where they had first met at the outset of the conference.

  "I have been tracking the magpie," continued the Professor sotto voce, "and now I think I have him!" and his voice rose a little in exultation.

  "This is very near the spot where you first pointed him out to me in flight," responded Janet, thinking that it was by a stroke of irony the vicinity of the place where the magpie from their laboratory had met his violent end.

  "And I have spotted him here at several times of the day," said Antwhistle scanning the boughs with his binoculars. "For very good and sufficient reasons I do not wonder," he went on: "It is my firm belief that it is in that brake of trees the fellow has concealed his nest. And along with it possibly a trove of collectibles. It has long been my ambition to examine this fabled collecting activity at first hand, to find what elements of our leavings may be enticing to the bird."

  Together they lingered for twenty minutes or so combing the limbs for signs of life, but to no avail. The Professor slung his binoculars over his shoulder with a sigh.

  "Well, we must not be despondent. I had really hoped to share the moment of discovery with somebody. Perhaps we can return at dusk and make our find."

  As they started back toward the breakfast hall Janet seized the opportunity of the hiatus in the Professor's monologue to raise the matter she had been longing to discuss with him.

  "It seems a trivial point but had you any further thoughts about the comic interlude in Karl's talk?"

  "You are referring no doubt to the 'soft core pornography' as I believe it is termed in the popular press."

  "I could be off track, but it might be important to talk to whoever was responsible."

  "I already have!" exclaimed the Professor, with such a mischievous gleam that Janet began to wonder whether he would claim credit for the prank himself.

  "The culprit shortly confessed when convinced that I had the goods on him, and was not totally out of sympathy with his motivation. I really thought none the less of Douglas for what he did. Might have done something similar myself if l had been younger and had the opportunity." he chortled.

  As they strolled back toward the lodge, the Professor recounted Doug’s confession: how he had obtained the slide from a friend in another department who had pulled the same trick on a fellow-student; how he had calculated from Karl’s rehearsal the point in his script where the 'double-peaks' would appear; how he had palmed the slides from the projection table in the interlude, inserted the extra one, and then replaced them in the carousel just as the lights went out.

  "Which probably accounts for the person who jostled me as I returned to my seat. I thought it was an earlier speaker retrieving his slides."

  "Desperate times require desperate measures," quoted the Professor. Janet didn’t dispute the point. But she resolved to have a chat with Doug herself. Perhaps the person who felt the situation to be desperate might have envisaged even more desperate measures to do more than merely ridicule his adversary. An admission of guilt on the lesser count did not ensure implication in the serious case of Karl's 'accident', but it did leave an aura of suspicion about a possible connection between the two events.

  This time Janet decided that she would not wait for a chance encounter, but would rather create the opportunity at once. Accordingly, as she parted from the Professor at the entrance to the lodge she immediately walked to Doug's room. Along the corridor there were signs of people stirring as the breakfast hour approached. But no sounds emanated from the room which Doug had been assigned, and several rappings on the door brought no response. After a few minutes' wait Janet frowned and headed down the hall. She had just reached the end of the passage when she chanced to look back in time to catch sight of Doug entering the room. She returned the way she had come, a rap on the door bringing an instant response this time.

  "I thought we should have a final look at the layout for the poster presentation," she explained. Doug showed little enthusiasm for the suggestion; evidently he felt quite capable of setting up the poster on his own. Reluctantly he pulled out the selection of graphs and tables describing his work on membrane receptors for the cytomitin cell stimulators, and assembled them into a mock-up of the final layout for his supervisor. After reviewing the familiar data and making a few minor suggestions about Doug's method of presenting and discussing his experiments, Janet turned to the true re
ason for her visit, with as much of a casual manner as she could muster.

  Doug was clad in bathing-suit and his kneecaps were noticeably reddened.

  "Doing a little canoeing?" asked Janet not waiting for an answer. "Must be a regular early morning routine for you."

  "As a swim in the river is for you."

  "I suppose," said Janet leaning against the window-ledge, "that was you on the river the morning that Karl fell from the cliff." She made it a statement rather than a query.

  Doug paused and nodded.

  "Were you in a position to see clearly what happened?" Again that long hesitation, and finally, a wary reply.

  "I'm not really sure what I saw, or what I thought I saw," he answered slowly.

  "You saw him fall?"

  "I saw him, but only vaguely you know, through the fog. I could tell who it was, though his movements were unnatural. At first I thought he was reading or examining some thing in his hand, then it seemed to fly out of his hand, and at the same time he flew off himself."

  "You mean he jumped?"

  "I didn’t see anyone behind him but if I had I might have guessed that he had been pushed off. He just shot forward all hunched over, did a sort of a flip. Then I heard somebody splashing up the river behind me."

  "That was me."

  "Well, I thought it might have been you that--"

  "Pushed him off?"

  Doug nodded silently.

  "I suppose I sort of panicked. At the time I just thought (I know it's awful to say) good riddance, and I hoped the bastard broke his neck. If someone had given him a bit of a push I wasn’t going to complicate her life."

  "You thought it might be me at the time. But if I had been in the river behind you--."

  "I don’t know. I thought about it a good deal afterward. Maybe he took an epileptic fit or something?"

  "I think we would have had some inkling if he had been subject to such attacks. But now that you mention it his movement was rather convulsive. More like an involuntary jump than an assisted one."

  "Perhaps you could ask his wife if he had a history of fits or attacks before he joined us. Not that it particularly concerns me how he was finished off," concluded Doug vehemently.

  Nor should it concern me, thought Janet as she walked across the lawn to the dining hall. But despite her lack of sympathy for the victim there remained something unexplained and peculiar about the manner of his death that she could not ignore. It was, as the Professor had said, the incongruities of nature that were the most intriguing. Doug's explanations of his own actions seemed plausible enough. However, she wondered if she had been in his place whether she could have simply backed away after witnessing the fall. He may have been simply motivated by loyalty to the person he presumed to need shielding from suspicion. How had he put it?- 'didn't want to complicate her life.' Interesting that he should implicate a 'her' in the scenario; and if not Janet who was the 'her' involved? CeIia? Linda? It was only considerably later that the true significance of what Doug had said fitted into the picture; only after another sizable portion of the peculiar unexplained aspects of that picture came clearer could she seize upon the important incongruous word in Doug's recital.

 

  The breakfast hour was well underway by the time that Janet reached the dining-hall. She picked up a muffin to go with her usual orange and looked about for a table. Most were fully occupied, but she noticed Bob Hayes and Margot seated together and she sat down in a vacant space at their table with suitable apologies for the intrusion.

  "Looks as if you could polish off that lot standing up," snorted -Bob tucking into a lumberjack's stack of pancakes and bacon. "They certainly make money on you here. You know they charge the same whether you eat or not."

  "Well, whatever they save on me will be more than taken care of by certain of my colleagues!"

  Margot was tentatively nibbling at a plate of scrambled eggs. She seemed quite edgy and uncomfortable with the banter passing across the table. This in no way distracted from her allure. Margot was so quintessentially feminine, her gentle vulnerability and state of widowhood with impending motherhood only added to her appeal; she was virtually crying out for protection. Janet felt like a rather awkward bull next to the dainty fragility of Margot's china-doll appearance. Despite her best efforts, Janet's words when they came seemed to her to be harsher than she had intended; nonetheless, she found it hard to explain the effect they had on Margot and on Bob.

  "Was there an autopsy report on Karl's death?"

  They both blinked, looked furtively at each other, but neither showed much inclination to answer. Finally it was Bob who laid down his fork and responded.

  "It was so obvious, there wasn't any need to inquire. Cause of death was the fall."

  "And cause of the fall?"

  "You were in a better position to answer that one," replied Bob pointedly. "Anyway, aren't you confusing an autopsy with an inquest? You're not really inquiring about the cause of death are you?"

  "I'm not sure," said Janet thoughtfully. "But as it turns out there was another witness; semi-witness actually, because like me he only perceived the event through the fog. Nonetheless, he confirms what I thought all along. Karl didn't just slip off the edge. It was more as if he were propelled," and she described Doug’ s version of the scene, and how it matched her own perception.

  "Now what I want to know is, was Karl susceptible to some sort of spell or fit?"

  During the discussion Margot had been growing more and more fidgety. Finally she could contain herself no longer and broke in.

  "I suppose you could say that. I guess you didn't realize that he was diabetic."

  "I certainly did not!" Janet tried to recall some clue from her previous knowledge of Karl. How little she really did know him! Perhaps some of his helter-skelter approach to life was attributable to his health problem.

  "He carried an insulin supply," Bob went on, "but he was not very regular about it, or about his diet. There were several occasions that he overdid it."

  "0.D.ed on insulin?"

  "Or on food, without taking his insulin on time. You know you can become comatose from either too much or too little relative to sugar intake."

  "So he might have been either hypoglycemic or hyperqlycemic?"

  "You couldn't have known about that, but it might have had something to do with his fall," said Margot. It could have explained why he seemed unsteady. I guess it also explains the preoccupation of your fussy hotel manager."

  "Yes," interjected Bob with a laugh, the poor man must have been convinced that Karl was an addict, with all the vials and syringes they had seen in his room."

  "He was concerned about a scandal of some kind no doubt," Janet said reflectively. "He wanted you to come and claim his personal effects before someone attributed his death to a drug overdose."

  "So it may have been a drug overdose, if you consider insulin or glucose as a drug," said Bob devouring a good measure of the latter in a mouthful of pancakes drenched in maple syrup.

  Janet finished her orange and walked back pensively to her room. As she passed her desk she noticed the orange from that earlier morning three days ago. She picked it up from the ash-tray where it had been sitting and pitched it in the waste-basket. After she had brushed her teeth and washed she set out for the conference hall. Except for a short summary session before lunch, the morning would be taken up with the poster presentations. Although she didn't like to curb Douglas's creative initiative, she dreaded more than somewhat the surprises that were bound to spring from his inventive mind. Despite her earlier questioning of the content of his poster display, and his seemingly orthodox answers about the data he proposed to present, she was certain that Doug would not be able to resist the impulse to construct some crazy mobile or pop-up gimmick in his poster; if not he would doubtless find some outlandish way of wording his conclusions. Janet hurried into the conference hall ready to wield her censorious scissors.

/>   "And now for the side-show to our week of theatre!" exclaimed the Professor catching her up. Each of the poster displayers, mostly the younger conference participants, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, junior faculty, was nailing up the charts and texts upon his allocated piece of fibre-board. Some of the displays were finished with professional flair (precisely spaced lettering, clear-captioned diagrams, multicoloured legends); other's were at the opposite extreme (hastily constructed, hand-lettered, with more results than the space could hold).

  "Why is it I wonder," the Professor continued, "that I find it hard to take these poster sessions seriously?" and then not waiting for Janet he provided his own answers to the question, which was in no doubt of being mistaken as rhetorical. "It smacks too much to me of hawkers selling their wares. The advertising mania has invaded science with a vengeance, Janet. The sellers of cells, entrepreneurs of enzymology, merchants of membranes-"

  "Whores of hormones," muttered Janet sotto voce.

  "I suppose I must seem archaically wedded to the old ways," he rambled on oblivious to her comment. One used to have but two ways to communicate discoveries, either extempore to a roomful of peers, with the awesome prospect of being shot down in flames during question time, or cast in print and subject to the baleful eyes of the journal referees. Nowadays any young upstart can tart up the most egregious nonsense with a fancy display and get away with it. Did you see that poster on parthenogenesis by that brazen post-doc from Beadle’s lab? Nothing new in it at all! And all those fanciful quotes on virgin birth. Is this biochemistry or theochemistry? Most inappropriate, if not sacrilegious in the truest sense! I trust that your student's stuff has more substance."

  At this point they had reached Doug's station. His poster had been fully assembled but Doug himself was nowhere to be seen. The Professor scanned the figures and tables, read the discussion and nodded approvingly.

  "Fine fellow, Douglas, he commented. " You know you’re lucky to have one like that, for the first student. First student can make or break you. Mind you mine have been exemplary, first and last," he added graciously with a chuckle.

  "I had wondered whether your last hadn't perhaps finished you! You have only had post-docs in your lab since I did my Ph.D."

  "Well, once you have attained perfection you may also appreciate the urge to quit while you are ahead. I've actually spent more time in the lab myself since my sabbatical leave. Let the younger fellows raise more families of M.Sc.s and Ph.D.s. All my 'children' are grown and producing their own scientific offspring. As a grandparent I'm into second generation stuff now, and the post-docs keep things lively enough. Ah, there's old Beadle headed this way. Think I'll beatle off myself and let him pick your brains instead. Careful what you divulge, Janet," he cautioned in an audible whisper, "the fellow will phone his lab and put somebody working on your problem if you’re not careful" and he scuttled down the aisle.

 

  Janet was relieved when Doug returned to man his poster before Professor Beadle had finished reading the text. She was particularly glad not to have to answer a lot of technical questions about Doug’s approaches, some of which had been unorthodox bordering on the eccentric. Besides the ventilation in the building must have been awry. She felt decidedly flushed, perspiring, and a bit 'closed in'-- short of breath. She made for the open doors at the far end, and slumped down in a chair on the terrace. The strange events of the preceding days must be exacting their toll on her: had she not been sitting she might have fainted.

  "My glory, you look as limp as I feel!" Mary Kay Jacobs sat down in the chair opposite and regarded Janet quizzically. "Can I get you a drink of something?" she offered while examining Janet's flushed countenance. "Are you coming down with something infectious?"

  " I don‘t know. I don't think so," Janet replied confusedly, “I just felt a bit woozy in there-- must be the air. Think I'll be OK in a minute or so." Was it her imagination or was her vision getting a bit blurry also? Her eyes felt weary as though she had been exposed to some irritant, but without the irritation.

  "Are you hoping to go back tonight? You don't look as if you should be trying to travel in that state."

  "No. As a matter of fact I drove up with John Antwhistle. He plans to stay an extra day to do some birding."

  "Just as well. You could do with a rest after everything that’s gone on here. You know, I wanted to ask you something, quite in confidence-- your reply need go no further. If it is an awkward thing for you just say so. It seems that dear old Dick Beadle has been organizing publication of the proceedings from the conference."

  "Yes, I know" said Janet, "I've got my manuscript almost ready."

  "And Karl's?"

  "That I don't know about. You'd probably have to ask his widow. So far as I know she picked up everything from his room, so she must have the manuscript, or a draft."

  "That's why I asked you. It's gone."

  "Gone?"

  "Well, if there was a manuscript --which Mrs. Elster could neither confirm or deny-- it was not among his papers in the room. I went through them with her."

  "But that's ridiculous " said Janet. "For one thing, we know that there was a paper-- he read his presentation from it."

  "Gone. Not a trace."

  "Then what--?"

  " It is possible that he lost it. Maybe he destroyed it, thought it was too rough to submit, or was upset about the way his talk turned out, decided he wasn’t going to submit it for publication, or -- "

  "Or what?"

  The older woman paused for a moment. "There is a suggestion that Dr. Elster would have used the text of his talk only for the meeting. That he would have had a finished manuscript ready to bring to the conference organizer, to assure it would be published."

  "But he didn't turn it in apparently."

  "No. And obviously he hadn't given it to you, or hadn't discussed it with you."

  Janet shook her head.

  "I hadn't thought so. I didn't want to raise any concerns, more than she’s already got, for his widow. But I felt I should find out. It would be nice to publish something posthumously. Perhaps you could scout around the Department when you return, see if he left a copy somewhere. I asked Dick Beadle about it. If something turns up and it needs some editing we'd like you to do it if you agree.”

  "Of course," Janet promised. "In fact if it doesn't turn up I can easily adapt the work, the collaborative parts, into a joint paper."

  " Splendid! It would be a fine memorial for Karl. Incidentally, as you know they’re doing the conference group photo at noon, and that, as tradition has it, goes in the frontispiece to the proceedings. Since Karl will be missing from that we've asked Margot Elster to provide a separate snap of him. Could we prevail on you also to write up a short dedication, evaluation of his work etc.?"

  Janet flinched. She could bring some objectivity to editing a manuscript or collating some data for a joint paper, but a tribute to Karl? She shook her head and forcefully declined.

  "I think you need some body with more perspective to do that. John Antwhistle, or you yourself. I'd feel a bit strange about it. You knew that our relationship was --"

  "Splitting up?"

  "It was only a matter of time. And in time I'll be able to be objective about Karl. But it would be hypocritical for me to praise his talents. He was a bit devil-may-care in the lab you know. Not sloppy, but reckless, even dangerous. He would take risky short-cuts."

  "Such as?"

  "Running the ultracentrifuge beyond top speed with derated rotors or using mismatched rotors without the proper overspeed devices. He also bore a number of scars from earlier lab explosions-- bragged a bit about duels with flying glass."

  "He was handling some pretty deadly reagents from time to time. It's a wonder he survived with an attitude like that."

  "I often thought so. He gave the impression that he put a low value on human life, his own or others," mused Janet. There was an unreal quality about her memor
ies of Karl. She could picture his abrupt, impatient actions in the lab, his irritating, caustic laugh when warned about what Janet first had assumed must be unappreciated hazards. But she could not picture his face as it had been then. The last sight of him, dominated by the staring eyes with piercing pin-prick pupils overwhelmed all her previous recollections of Karl alive. She shuddered again involuntarily.

  "l think you need a good lie-down," said Mary Kay. "Look, I'll walk you back to your room, then pick you up later in time to have our portraits immortalized. Your grad student is minding the stall well-- seems to be quite a take-charge fellow."

  Quite an inventive fellow, thought Janet as she allowed herself to be conducted rather unsteadily back to the lodge. In fact with Douglas his powers of invention at times exceeded his critical sense: his ingenious entrapment of Karl with the appropriately placed slide; how intriguing that he had chanced along the river just at the instant that Karl toppled off the bank. Doubtless, she thought later as she lay shivering in bed gazing at the ceiling, Doug knew about Karl's manuscript as well as he knew about the slides. As she finally dozed off her mind tried futilely to hang on to all these signs and arrows, pointing back guiltily to one person.