Rourke said, “Ex-patient, Doctor. Ellie Blake has become news, whether you like it or not. I won’t quote you if you prefer not, but I would like to get my dope from the horse’s mouth instead of having to pick it up in bits and pieces and rumors from around town.”
“I do definitely prefer not to be quoted. Now, what is it you want to know?”
Timothy Rourke sat in a straight chair and got out a pencil and some copy paper and matched the doctor’s own cold, impersonal tone.
“What do you make the time of death?”
“Between ten P.M. and two A.M.”
“And the cause?”
“Manual strangulation.”
“By a strong man?”
“That is a matter for conjecture. It wasn’t accomplished by a weakling.”
“Did she struggle much?”
“As much as any woman could, I presume, with a man’s hands throttling her. You know this isn’t a proper subject for medical testimony, Mr. Rourke.”
“I’m trying to get a picture. Was she undressed before or after she was murdered?”
“How on earth would I know a thing like that?”
“Had she been sexually attacked?”
“Exactly what does that euphemism mean to you… and your readers?” the doctor demanded disagreeably.
Rourke looked up guilelessly. “All right. We’ll skip the euphemisms. Was she raped?”
“I can’t say. She was a mature married woman with a six-year-old daughter. There are no definite outward signs of rape, but that signifies nothing.”
“Had she had sexual intercourse?”
“There was a quantity of fresh seminal fluid with live spermatozoa in the vaginal passage,” the doctor informed him drily.
“You took samples, Doctor?”
“I made several slides from smears obtained from the interior of the vagina.”
“Did you test for blood-grouping to possibly identify the source?”
“I did not,” snapped Doctor Higgens. “Perhaps you labor under the delusion of many laymen that all proteinaceous body fluids carry the same isoagglutinogens found in the blood corpuscles. In some cases this is true, but often it is not the case.”
“Are you saying, Doctor, that seminal fluid cannot be tested to indicate the blood group of the man who produced it?”
“In some instances it can. Often it cannot.”
“And you haven’t determined which is which in this case?”
“I have not yet done so.”
Rourke shrugged and tapped the end of his pencil against his teeth. “I’m a layman, of course, but I have covered a lot of crimes and it has been my understanding that semen can be typed the same as blood. How about this, Doctor? I’ve also been told that the spermatozoa themselves can be identified under a high-power microscope as having come from a certain individual. That they have definite characteristics that are identifiable. Is that not true?”
Doctor Higgens made a tent out of his ten fingers and peered over the top of it at the reporter with an irritable frown. “I haven’t the time to give you a classroom lecture on the subject. Nor the inclination.” He hesitated and then went on stiffly, “There are some indications that the morphology of spermatozoa may be characteristic of the individual… and can be positively identified by a highly trained technician in that field.”
Timothy Rourke shrugged and dropped the subject, which he felt was getting beyond him. “Did you test the victim for alcohol in the blood?”
“I did. With the generally inconclusive results that are normal with such tests. It is my opinion that Mrs. Blake had had from one to three drinks following dinner.”
“Then she wasn’t drunk?”
Doctor Higgens shrugged and stood up. “That is a completely relative term. A matter of semantics. And also a matter of the individual capacity to absorb and carry alcohol. Mrs. Blake was not a drinking woman. It is impossible for me to form any opinion of the effects one to three drinks might have had on her following dinner.” He paused and looked at his watch pointedly. “And now, if you don’t mind, I have an appointment.”
Rourke said blithely, “I don’t mind at all. And thanks.” He thrust the copy paper in his pocket and went out.
10
Dave’s Bar and Grill-Package Liquor was on Main Street just past the City Hall where Mabel Handel had told him it would be. Rourke found a parking slot just beyond, and glanced at his watch as he strolled back to the entrance. It lacked five minutes of twelve o’clock, but the door was invitingly open and Rourke went in hopefully.
There was a short bar on the left and half a dozen tables in the small room that was partitioned off from the dining room with an archway between the two. At the end of the bar there were shelves of bottled goods with an iron latticework drawn across the front of them and secured with a padlock.
There were no customers, but there was a slight, sandy-haired man wearing a fresh white jacket polishing glasses behind the bar. He looked at Rourke curiously as the reporter seated himself at the far end of the bar, nodded amiably and said, “Morning,” giving an extra flourish to the glass in his hands.
Rourke said sadly, “If it’s still morning I suppose that’s too early to get a drink.”
“Well, sir.” The bartender turned and craned his neck to look up at the big clock behind the bar. The big hand was two minutes short of twelve. “I reckon that clock of mine could be a couple minutes slow. What’s your pleasure?”
“Bourbon. Make it a double shot just to celebrate the beginning of a new day. With a little water but don’t drown it.”
The bartender made his drink, splashing in extra whiskey to give it a good dark color, and set it in front of him. “Stranger in town?”
Rourke took a long experimental drink and smacked his lips. “I’ll probably be sticking around a day or so… on account of that murder you had last night.”
“Terrible thing, wasn’t it? Mighty fine woman. First time anything like that ever happened in Sunray Beach, I can tell you. Gives the town a bad name. Say you’re here on account of it? State police, or like that?”
“Reporter,” Rourke told him. “Miami News. We’re offering a thousand-dollar reward for pertinent information.”
“Is that a fact? Well, I sure hope you get to pay out that reward money, Mister. Man that’d do a thing like that just isn’t human, the way I look at it. I’ll help string him up my own self when they catch him. Some damned hobo, you can be sure of that. Marvin and Ellie Blake was mighty well liked here in Sunray. I guess you might say there wasn’t a better-respected woman in town. Hanging’s too good for a bastard’d do a thing like that. Oughtta string him up by the balls and set a slow fire going underneath him.”
Rourke nodded soberly and said, “It was a mighty nasty thing. Tough on the little girl. The husband, too.”
“It’ll just about finish up old Marv. God! Think about coming home to that. After being off on a convention and all. He just about worshipped the ground his wife and little Sissy walked on, Marv did. I’m telling you I’d hate to be the man to meet that train this afternoon and tell Marv the news.”
“You mean he hasn’t been notified yet?”
“I reckon not. I was talking down the street in the drug store a little while ago and one of the fellows there had just been talking to Ollie Jenson… he’s Chief of Police here… and Ollie said he didn’t see any good in breaking the bad news to him till he had to. Stands to reason there’s nothing Marv can do about it. Bad enough when he does get home and has to find out.”
A party of three men entered the front door and seated themselves on stools. The sandy-haired man bustled to them and took their orders, and Rourke turned his head to watch them idly over the rim of his glass.
As the bartender set drinks in front of them, he leaned forward and spoke rapidly in a low voice, and all three of them turned their heads simultaneously to look at Rourke.
He blandly disregarded their interest, emptied his glass thirstily and set it down. When the bartender approached him again, he said, “I’d like another. Better make it a single this time.”