Death Shall Overcome Read online

  “Yes, McCullough was executor for his brother-in-law’s estate. And his brother-in-law was a doctor. There were all the poisons any murderer could want, right at hand. And the police have gotten hold of the office nurse and the poison log. They’re in a position to show that there’s nicotine missing. The pure alkaloid, too, whatever that is.”

  Damning, agreed Parry. “But the thing that’s so hard to believe is that he could do all that, then settle down to being a hardworking broker again.”

  “Oh, he didn’t just settle down. That’s when he began his career as an agent provocateur. It wasn’t comfortable for him to have a full-scale investigation into the murder going on. He felt reasonably safe about the shooting. But the poisoning was a different matter. If the police continued their painstaking inquiries, their suspicions would be roused, then they would be onto the question of access to nicotine.”

  “I don’t see how,” grumbled Parry. “I probably did as much thinking about it as anybody, and it never occurred to me to suspect Vin McCullough.”

  “You did a lot of thinking in the absence of facts,” Thatcher corrected him. “Inevitably, that means you were thinking about who would want to kill you. And that led you into the whole morass of the race question. But the police, very sensibly, thought in terms of opportunity. Probably going on the assumption that almost anybody there might want to kill you. And that worried McCullough. Everybody knew the police were working on a timetable, and the possibility of confusion about Foote’s drink. Well, the one thing that emerged was that the people at Schuyler & Schuyler had the best chance to know about Foote’s regimen.”

  Ed Parry raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t thought of that one.”

  “Once the police had gotten that far, what else would they discover? That Vin McCullough had arrived late. Everybody else from your brokerage house was present long before Foote took that glass of tomato juice. And Foote was with your group most of the time. Assuming the murderer had kept an eye on his potential victim, if only to be able to locate him, he could scarcely miss the fact that Ed walked over without a drink to join Foote, who did have a glass. The tomato juice was actually ordered in front of Lee Clark and carried back to both of you. Caldwell was in the room. It’s barely conceivable that he might have missed this activity, but one thing was sure. McCullough was certain to have missed it, because he hadn’t yet arrived. You recall, he didn’t come in until you were all huddled together over the press release. Then there was the business of Owen Abercrombie charging over and being pulled off by Caldwell and Lee Clark. Clark was virtually cleared, unless it was Foote he was aiming for all the time. The other two might have done it. But the one with the best opportunity was McCullough, and that’s the kind of situation that makes the police think. McCullough wanted to short circuit that line of reasoning. And that’s where the whole race question became a godsend to him, just as it had promised disaster earlier.”

  “You mean because it was so easy to divert attention?” probed Schuyler. “Yes, I can see that. But he was still extraordinarily lucky that Abercrombie and Caldwell made such fools of themselves.”

  “Luck, I think, had very little to do with it,” replied Thatcher dryly. “McCullough was not the man to sit back and wait for fortune to bestow its favors. You were on the right track when you first suggested Caldwell might be using Abercrombie, but you had the casting wrong. Caldwell, in his own perverted way, was sincere. It was McCullough who was the mainspring, and he was much more subtle than young Caldwell could ever have been. He played the role of trying to save Caldwell from himself. I caught him at it during the television broadcast. He was warning the boy not to be fool enough to try anything at Lincoln Center. It was obvious that, up to that moment, Caldwell hadn’t even thought about the concert.”

  “I remember asking McCullough if it was wise to let Caldwell know. He looked a little self-conscious, but said that he wanted to give the boy some good advice. At the time I accepted the explanation in good faith. The world is filled with people doing the wrong thing from the best motives. But McCullough had accomplished just what he intended. First, he had conveyed information. Then he also made sure that Caldwell and Abercrombie would do something surpassingly silly by waving a red flag at Caldwell. By the time he was done with his propaganda effort, he was virtually certain that they would draw attention to themselves in some way.”

  “But he couldn’t know that Abercrombie was going to pull a gun,” protested Parry. “Even Caldwell didn’t know that he was carrying one, and I doubt if he intended to use it. It’s hard to explain, but I think he was carrying it simply to show . . .”

  “To show how warlike he was,” supplied Schuyler, who was not going to shilly-shally around for terms defining Owen Abercrombie’s eccentricity. “Undoubtedly that incredible lunatic had talked himself into a frame of mind where it seemed the manly thing to do.”

  “And never dreamed of using it until that detective injured his sense of amour propre by touching him.”

  “Exactly. Except for that intervention, Abercrombie would probably have harangued you in abusive terms and made a number of vague and disagreeable threats. Which would have suited McCullough very well. You have to realize that he had no thoughts of anybody being convicted for his actions. No one knew better than he the unlikelihood of proving access to poison for Abercrombie or Caldwell. But if the two of them persisted in adopting a consistently homicidal attitude, he had every reason to hope that the police and the public would ultimately assume one of them was the murderer. It would be another case closed for lack of hard evidence. There would be grumblings from civil rights workers until the next big headline came along, and that would be that. McCullough was in a paradoxical position vis-à-vis the race question. On the one hand, he saw himself forced into murder because of his clients’ reaction to the problem; but on the other hand, he had a very strong protection against anyone spotting his motive, for just the same reason.”

  “That may be the way Vin sees it,” said Schuyler loftily. “I prefer to say that he was forced to murder because he chose to rob clients of our brokerage house.” The other two men bowed their assent. The head of Schuyler & Schuyler was understandably unsympathetic to such activities.

  Parry, after a moment’s silent propitiation of these sentiments, returned to the original question. “But still he had luck. He must have been hard put not to stand up and cheer when Abercrombie went mad at Lincoln Center.”

  “Oh, he had luck,” Thatcher agreed. “More than he expected and more, even, than he realized. Jackson tells me that, when the police started to investigate Abercrombie with a view to poisoning, they didn’t find anything. But when they tried the same thing with Caldwell, the first thing they hit was a visit of his to some pharmaceutical firm two weeks ago. They were bending every effort to find out if he could have picked up some pure nicotine while he was there.”

  “Good heavens! I’d forgotten about that,” exclaimed Schuyler. “I sent him to Downbill’s myself. They’re going public, you know.”

  “Well, Downbill’s maintained he hadn’t been anywhere near their stock of nicotine, but it was enough to keep the police interested. And, of course, nobody could have expected Abercrombie to be mad enough to lose his instinct for self-preservation.”

  “Is he really mad?”

  “That’s his story. He’s entered a plea of insanity on all those charges, you know. His son, I understand, is giving up California. Now it’s a villa in Majorca.”

  “It would be. Next thing we know, he’ll be publishing his poems in little lavender volumes.”

  Schuyler nodded knowingly. “You remember Owen’s Uncle Basil?” He shook his head sadly. “And now Owen. Terrible, the way these old families go to seed. The boy will probably end up the same way. Blood tells, you know.”

  Parry grinned cheerfully. “It may be that the air of Wall Street goes to their heads. Anyway, the beatnik strain has something to recommend it. I hear that the boy has sent a check for five thousand
to the NAACP.”

  “Wait until he hits Majorca,” advised Schuyler darkly.

  “And what about Caldwell? Any sign of atonement there?” asked Thatcher, genuinely curious.

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Schuyler distantly.

  Parry brayed his laughter. “Not on your life! He’s got a job with a broker in Atlanta. I think he may intend to tangle with my father.” A deep chuckle rumbled. “He doesn’t know what he’s taking on. Well, live and learn.”

  Sight unseen, Thatcher was prepared to credit the prowess and acumen of any Black person who had marched into Atlanta in the ’thirties and emerged a multimillionaire.

  “It may be the making of the boy,” he agreed gravely. “By the way, do you hear something odd going on out there?”

  Out there was the vestibule. And, indeed, there seemed to be some sort of low-keyed disturbance in progress. There were cries of: “But it’s all over!” “Hey! You can’t go in there!” “Not with the guitar, sonny!”

  And then they streamed in. The Troubles had left in their wake a small and determined band that had found a new way of life. When the sun rose each morning, like cocks crowing, like magnets turning to the north, like lemmings entering the sea, they took to the IRT and headed for Wall Street. So finally, Thatcher was able to gratify his ambition. The tune was the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”; the lyrics came through loud and clear as the little group followed its bearded, strutting leader: and “The Three Wise Men” resounded once again:

  There’s a mighty storm that’s blowing on the Street that’s known as Wall,

  Where the fat cats with their bowls of cream are heading for a fall,

  With a broom that’s new, we’re going to brush the rascals one and all,

  Helped by Three Wise Men!

  Waymark, Thatcher and Car-ru-thers!

  Waymark, Thatcher and Car-ru-thers!

  Waymark, Thatcher and Car-ru-thers!

  Wall Street’s Three Wise Men!

  We are marching for Ed Parry, we are Marching for the Seat,

  We are tearing triumph from the banker’s howls of defeat,

  Tempered by the flames of justice, we are turning on the heat,

  Helped by Three Wise Men!

  Waymark, Thatcher and Car-ru-thers!

  Waymark, Thatcher and Car-ru-thers!

  Waymark, Thatcher and Car-ru-thers!

  Wall Street’s Three Wise Men!

  Let the brokers count their money, let them count it day and night,

  Let the lawyers and their law books try to keep them lily white,

  There are thousands of us ready who are girding for the fight,

  Helped by Three Wise Men!

  Waymark, Thatcher and Car-ru-thers!

  Waymark, Thatcher and Car-ru-thers!

  Waymark, Thatcher and Car-ru-thers!

  Wall Street’s Three Wise Men!

  The End