had used too free a hand with the pepper pot, but with frequent sips of lemonade to quench the fire, I found it palatable enough. Strike that—I found myself asking for a second helping, much to Mr. Cable’s satisfaction.
After the noise of forks and spoons had died down enough to permit conversation, Mr. Clemens wiped his mouth with a napkin and fixed the detective with his gaze. “Let’s take a different angle on this murder business,” he said. “Suppose there wasn’t any reason to blame the cook for it, and you had to figure out the whole thing from scratch. What would you be looking at?”
“Well,” said LeJeune, “we have a man killed in his own home, and by poison. That eliminates a lot of things you’d have to think about if he’d been shot, or stabbed. It’s a good bet he didn’t surprise a burglar in the act, for instance. On the other hand, we have to make sure it’s not suicide, or an accident, which it might be, if the poison were something you’d expect to find around the house. But we can pretty much rule that out, if it’s jimsonweed. Robinson wouldn’t have been out picking greens for his own salad, and if he had, the cook would have known it wasn’t fit to eat.”
“Never mind the cook,” said Mr. Clemens. “Pretend we don’t know how Robinson was given the poison, just that we know it was poison. Who are your suspects? Are we sure it’s not suicide?”
LeJeune rubbed his chin. “I’d say suicide is even less likely than an accident. Odds are there are two or three faster and surer poisons he could have laid hands on: arsenic, maybe laudanum . . . besides, a man isn’t as likely to take poison as to put a pistol to his head. There wasn’t any note, or any kind of scandal he might have been trying to escape. And the autopsy would have found out if he’d had some incurable disease. I’d lay long odds against suicide.”
“Fine. We’ll set it aside for now,” said Mr. Clemens. “That brings us back to murder. Assume for the sake of argument we’ve got a gilt-edged, government-bonded, ironclad alibi for the cook. Let’s say he was in Mexico. Who’s the most logical suspect?”
“Usually, we’d be looking at the wife—except, this time, the wife’s the one with the gilt-edged alibi. She was out of town, visiting family up near Baton Rouge, for nearly a week. She didn’t get back until the morning Robinson was found dead. I checked her story myself, and it’s solid as a rock.”
“Did you check her story just out of routine, or was there a reason to suspect her?” asked Mr. Clemens.
“You always suspect the wife when a man’s been poisoned in his own home,” said LeJeune. “Eugenia Holt had her choice of beaux twenty years ago, and she married John David Robinson. Now, I don’t have any special reason to think Mrs. Robinson might have regretted her choice. These respectable people, they have a knack for keeping their scandals quiet. But she is still an uncommonly pretty woman, Mr. Clemens, and he was a very important man, and these very rich people don’t live their lives the same way as you and I. Of course I checked. And she was where she claims to have been, when she claims to have been there. Unless she could poison him by long distance, she is no suspect.”
“How about other close family?” Mr. Clemens had taken out one of his corncob pipes and was packing the bowl with tobacco. “Any domineering mother-in-law, or worthless brothers, or jealous sisters?”
“Mrs. Robinson has a brother and a sister, both living here in New Orleans. The brother, Reynold Holt, is a war veteran, a brooding fellow with a limp. He was wounded and captured by the Federals at Chancellorsville, and spent six months in a military prison. Her sister Maria has literary inclinations; if you wanted to talk to the family, she might be the one to start with. She’s married to Percy Staunton, who’s a bit of a reckless fellow, although he comes of good family. I don’t know anything that would make any of them likely to kill Robinson. Of course, once we arrested the cook, we didn’t really go prying for evidence against any of them.”
“What about other enemies?” Mr. Cable asked. “Robinson was getting ready to run for mayor, or so say the papers. Who would have run against him? Whose share of the pie would have been smaller if he’d won?”
“Robinson was a Democrat, on the reform platform,” said the detective. “There’s been some noise about corruption in the city government in the last few months, and Robinson was one of the main agitators. So Mayor Fitzpatrick could be vulnerable, next election. That’s two years off, though, and Fitzpatrick could turn things around. He might be stronger than ever by then. Or Joe Shakspeare might make another run, and a lot of the reform Democrats would stick with him. Or some other candidate might have knocked Robinson out of the lead—maybe dug up a scandal or found a hot issue to beat him on. So he wasn’t guaranteed the nomination. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything in New Orleans politics, but nobody’s head is really on the block until ’96.”
“No reason to suspect anybody of killing off the opposition, in other words,” said Mr. Clemens. He’d gotten his pipe lit and was puffing away merrily. “But you probably didn’t look far enough to eliminate anybody there, either, did you?”
LeJeune gave a nod and a wry smile. “Not really. Like I said, once we had the cook in custody, the investigation pretty much stopped. So, where do you think you want to start?”
“There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of leads,” said Mr. Clemens, “but there’s no single area of suspicion strong enough to tell me I ought to concentrate on it alone.”
He paused, puffing on his pipe and wrinkling his brow in thought. Finally, he said, “Let’s go straight for the brass ring and see if we can prove or disprove the main argument all in one shot. The key to the whole case is Leonard Galloway. If I can satisfy myself once and for all whether he’s innocent—or guilty, if that’s how the cards fall—I know whether to stop right there or go looking for another killer. Can you get me a chance to talk to him?”
“I suspect so,” said the detective, standing up. “Let me go make a telephone call. I know a place around the corner where I can use the phone. I’ll have your answer before you’ve finished your pipe.”
4
“Do you really intend to embroil yourself in this murder case?” I asked Mr. Clemens. He was strolling at his usual leisurely pace (as I forced myself not to rush ahead) along Orleans Street, away from the river in the direction of the Parish Prison.
Detective LeJeune had arranged for my employer to visit the Parish Prison that afternoon, and to spend half an hour talking to a certain prisoner: Leonard Galloway, the cook accused of murdering John David Robinson. Somewhat to my surprise, Mr. Clemens had accepted the invitation without hesitation.
Mr. Cable, obviously pleased at how quickly events were moving, offered to accompany us to see the prison. At that, Mr. Clemens shook his head. “No, George, I have to do this one by myself—well, I’ll want Wentworth to come along. But the point is for me to make up my own mind. It’ll be hard enough to keep the cook from saying what he thinks I want to hear, without having somebody there he’s known since he was a boy to complicate things. I promise I’ll tell you everything when I get back.” Mr. Cable reluctantly admitted that Mr. Clemens’s objections were well-founded, and we left him and LeJeune sitting over their coffee.
“I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do, Wentworth,” said Mr. Clemens now. “George Cable believes that Galloway is an innocent man; it’s damned near an article of faith with him. But George has been away from New Orleans for ten years, and a man can change a lot in that much time, especially if you figure that the cook couldn’t have been much older than twenty
