stood and shook hands with Mr. Cable and Mr. Clemens. “I’ve heard about that business on the riverboat, where you caught that murderer, Mr. Clemens. A good piece of detective work,” he said. “A lot of policemen don’t like it when outsiders do their work for them. Me, I’m thankful for any kind of help we can get.”
“Well, I appreciate the compliment, although I don’t expect to make a habit of solving murders,” said Mr. Clemens. “It’s more work than I’m accustomed to, for one thing. But it was more or less in the line of self-preservation, and that’s a pretty good antidote to indolence.”
After the introductions, Mr. Clemens and Mr. Cable seated themselves on either side of the detective, and I took the fourth chair at the table. We ordered drinks, and when the waiter had gone to fetch them, Mr. Cable told my employer, “Richard is one of the few honest policemen still left in New Orleans. He’s assigned to the Robinson murder, and he’s agreed to tell us something about the case. So where would you like to begin?”
“Well, all I really know is what that newspaper said yesterday: that Robinson was poisoned and that the police have arrested his cook for it,” said Mr. Clemens, looking at the detective. “That seems straightforward enough, but I was a reporter long enough to know that no newspaper ever gets the whole story. Why don’t you start with the main facts. How did Robinson die, and how did the police decide it was a murder?”
The detective looked at Mr. Clemens intently for a moment, as if sizing him up. “Well, Mr. Clemens, Robinson died of jimsonweed poisoning. Now, jimsonweed is powerful stuff. The whole plant is poison, and most people around here know it. There’s not much chance Robinson would have took it by accident. For one thing, it has a pretty rank smell. The country folks call it stinkweed, and it’s hard to mistake for much else. We found some of it growing in a vacant lot near where the cook lives, and the cook admits that he fixed Robinson’s last meal.”
“How long was that before he died?”
“The coroner says four hours at least—maybe a lot longer. Sometimes the poison takes twelve, fifteen hours to kill a man. Split the difference and say eight or ten. We figure the poison was in his food at supper the evening before he died, disguised somehow so he wouldn’t smell or taste it—most likely in some kind of spicy sauce. He was the only one who ate the meal, on account of his wife was out of town to visit family. Later that evening, Robinson saw his brother-in-law, and complained of a headache and blurry vision. The servants say he went to bed early. The next day—this was Friday, nearly two weeks ago—his wife arrived home late in the morning and got worried when she learned he hadn’t come down for breakfast. She went into his room and found him. Old Doc Soupape was suspicious right away and asked for an autopsy.”
“And found evidence of the poison, I assume.” Mr. Clemens took a puff on his cigar. “Any reason to suspect the cook besides the plants growing near his home?”
“Yes. A couple of days before, Robinson found the cook drunk on the job. He dressed him down pretty fierce in front of the other servants, docked him the day’s pay, and sent him home in shame. The cook didn’t like it one bit. Would anybody? The way it looks is that he went home mad, stayed mad, noticed the weeds, and decided to put them in his master’s soup or maybe his salad. Nobody else was home for the meal, so he didn’t have to worry about killing the rest of the family.”
“Has he confessed any of this?”
“No,” said the detective, “but that don’t mean anything. Sometimes they confess, sometimes they deny everything. And sometimes they confess when they didn’t do it.”
We were interrupted by the waiter arriving with our drinks: lemonade for me and Mr. Cable, a whisky and soda for Mr. Clemens, and a fresh coffee for the detective. We ordered our food, the waiter departed, and Mr. Clemens leaned both elbows on the table, a thoughtful look on his face. “So,” he said at last, “the cook’s guilt or innocence seems to ride on whether his motive is strong enough to make him poison his employer.”
“True enough,” said LeJeune. “That’s right where the case stands or falls, the way I see it. Nobody denies the cook had the chance to get the poison, though he claims he didn’t know it was growing there, and he had a perfect opportunity to give it to the victim. The main question is whether being yelled at and docked his pay made him mad enough to kill the man who did it to him. George doesn’t think so, and he claims to know this fellow pretty well. And the cook doesn’t have any history of previous trouble with the law. So I think maybe there’s some room for doubt.”
“Well, if everyone whose boss yelled at him turned into a killer, we’d be in a sad way,” said Mr. Clemens. “From what you say, the cook had plenty of time after Robinson bawled him out to sober up and think things over. What makes the police think he stayed mad? Did any of the other servants hear him make threats, or anything like that?”
“No, but that’s normal. These people always stick together—”
“As well they should, seeing how little help they can expect from anyone else!” Mr. Cable interrupted angrily, but Mr. Clemens silenced him with a gesture.
“Now, George, let’s stick to our business,” said my employer. “Mr. LeJeune’s come here to tell us what he knows about the case, not to argue about the racial question.”
Mr. Cable glared at both Mr. Clemens and the detective for a moment. Then the detective looked at him with a wry smile and a shrug, and the little man’s anger seemed to melt away. “That’s all right, Mr. Clemens,” said the detective. “George and I know where each other stand. We go back a long way. The fact is, one of the things that bothers me about this case is that the papers are talking as if the cook is some sort of black monster who killed his boss because he hated white men. Well, I was one of the men who questioned the cook when we arrested him, and if he hates anybody, I sure didn’t see it. So when George asks me to take a closer look at the evidence, I think maybe I should listen to George. But the prosecutor wants to treat the Robinson murder as a closed case, now that we’ve made an arrest. And the captain has been making hints that maybe I should get on with the rest of my caseload, which is plenty big enough, no question about that. Trouble is, I don’t think we’ve nailed the lid on it yet, and I guarantee you I don’t like being told to stop looking when there’s still something I’m not sure of.”
“So you figure you’ll let us do your looking for you,” said Mr. Clemens.
“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” said the detective. He took a sip of his coffee, put his cup down precisely in the center of the saucer, and continued. “I’m going to give you enough information to let you start, and then you’ll tell me anything you find out. I’m taking a bit of a chance, because most amateurs don’t know the first thing about a murder investigation. But you did do a pretty good job in that riverboat murder, so maybe you will find something. If you can prove the cook is innocent or even raise enough of a doubt that he did it, maybe I can still arrest the right person instead of going into court with the wrong man in the dock and making myself have a guilty conscience. And if you find something to prove the cook really did kill Robinson, I will trust George to tell me. So I can’t really lose, can I?”
“I suppose not, now that you put it that way,” said Mr. Clemens. “George says you’re an honest man, and coming from him, that means a good bit. I think we can all play straight with each other. If you promise you won’t hold back anything we need to know about the case, I can promise to tell you anything we find out, one way or the other. Is it a deal?”
“I think we can work with one another,” said LeJeune, and he reached out to shake Mr. Clemens’s hand. Just then the waiter arrived with our food, and a lull fell over the conversation as
