Mrs. Zimmerman answered his knock at the rooming-house door. She patted her carelessly dressed hair, as if making sure she looked her best for her visitor. “Mr. Malloy, how nice to see you,” she said with a smile so broad, it showed her missing molars. Frank thought she might be trying to flirt with him, so he played along.
“It’s very nice to see you, too, Mrs. Zimmerman. How’s young Calvin doing?” he asked, stepping into the house.
“The same as always. He’s been quiet as a mouse this morning. Didn’t even come down for breakfast.”
“Is that like him?” Frank asked, a little disturbed by this news. She hadn’t seen Calvin this morning and hadn’t checked to see if he was still there. Maybe Potter was right, and the boy had finally fled. He didn’t like the idea of explaining that to Potter.
“No, come to think of it, it isn’t like him at all,” she admitted with a frown. “I just thought… He gets up real early. Maybe he was down and got something before I was up this morning. He does that sometimes…”
Frank didn’t wait for her to show him upstairs. He took the steps two at a time, instinct telling him something was wrong. If the boy had escaped, Potter would be furious with him, and rightly so.
He knocked on the door. “Calvin?” he called, and received no answer.
The knob turned easily in his hand, and he threw the door open. To his great relief, he saw Calvin still curled up beneath his covers on the bed, fast asleep.
“Calvin, wake up!” Malloy called pleasantly, going over to shake him. But when he touched the boy’s shoulder, he felt the chill and stiffness of his body.
Calvin Brown was dead.
10
“IT’S NO MYSTERY HOW HE DIED,” THE CORONER explained, having given Calvin’s body only a cursory examination. “The arsenic is sitting in plain sight and see how yellow his face is? That’s always a sure sign of arsenic poisoning.”
Frank had to admit he was right. Calvin had left the box of rat poison out on the dresser. An empty bottle of sarsaparilla sat on the table and had apparently been mixed with the poison to kill the taste.
“There’s the suicide note, too,” the coroner pointed out. “That’s usually enough to convince most people it’s a suicide.”
Frank ignored his sarcasm. He just didn’t want to make a mistake. Or rather, he just didn’t want to be wrong about Calvin Brown. He’d been so certain the boy was innocent, and truth to tell, he’d wanted the boy to be innocent. But here it was, a confession written with his own hand right before he’d taken his own life.
“Dear Mother,” he’d written. “I can’t live with this no more. I shot father and tried to make it look like he killed himself. He refused to help us or even to admit he was my father. I couldn’t stand thinking that he was living so rich while you worked so hard to support us. I’m sorry I did this, and I don’t want to bring more shame on the family by being arrested for it. I love you and the girls.” He’d signed it, “Calvin.”
Frank swore silently as he stuffed the note into his pocket. This didn’t make sense. The boy hadn’t acted a bit guilty, and Frank considered himself an expert in judging such matters. He also hadn’t run away, which would have been the only sensible thing to do if he’d killed his father. And certainly far less drastic than killing himself. There was an irony here, he supposed. Calvin had tried to make his father’s death look like a suicide, and now he’d committed suicide himself.
“He went awful quick,” the coroner said, as if offering Frank comfort. “It’s a mercy. Sometimes they suffer for days.”
Frank had seen the results of such suffering, and he could only be glad Calvin had given himself a large enough dose so that he succumbed almost immediately. “Tell them they can take the body away,” Frank said. “I’ll get his things together to send back to his mother.”
He could have left this for the landlady, but for some reason he felt he had to do it himself. It would be a penance of some sort, to help assuage the guilt he was feeling for his own mistakes. If he’d arrested Calvin, at least the boy would still be alive.
As he collected Calvin’s meager belongings and laid them into the cheap suitcase he’d carried with him from Virginia, Frank couldn’t help thinking how gratified Amos Potter would be to have been proved right. Collecting the reward for solving this case would give Frank no pleasure, though.
While he was putting away the last of Calvin’s things, the orderlies came to fetch the body. They had a time of it, since Calvin was still stiff. When they’d gotten him on the stretcher, lying on his side because he was fixed in a fetal position, he looked small and vulnerable under the sheet, like a child curled up for warmth or safety. It didn’t seem fair that a boy so young should have cut his life short because of a man like Edmund Blackwell. But then, as Frank had learned only too well, life was seldom fair.
When all trace of Calvin Brown had been removed from the room, Frank started down the steps after the orderlies, carrying the boy’s suitcase. He should write Mrs. Brown a letter, explaining what had happened, he thought. That was when he realized he didn’t know Mrs. Brown’s address. Calvin had carelessly not written it on his note, either.
Frank stopped at the bottom of the stairs and saw Mrs. Zimmerman, the landlady, sitting in the parlor, weeping softly into her handkerchief.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said.
She looked up, her red-rimmed eyes brimming. “Oh, Mr. Malloy, I’m so glad you was the one who found him. That sweet boy, I don’t know if I could’ve stood it or not. I should’ve knowed something was wrong, though. I should’ve gone up to check when he didn’t come down to breakfast. Maybe if I had-”
“The coroner said he died real quick,” Malloy said by way of comfort. No use in the woman torturing herself. “There was nothing you could’ve done.”
“I wish he’d come and talked to me if he was feeling poorly. Maybe I could’ve said something to stop him.”
“I wish he’d come to me, too,” Frank said, “but he didn’t. Sometimes, you just can’t help, Mrs. Zimmerman. If someone is determined to kill themselves, they’ll do it. There is something I’d like to ask you, though.”
“Oh,” she said, as if remembering. “You’ll be wanting a refund on the rent you paid for him. There’s three days left, I think. I’ll get-”
“No, it’s not that,” Frank said. “You keep the money, for your trouble. It’s just… I packed his things to send them home, but I don’t know his address. I was wondering if you had any idea-”
“Oh, my, yes! I’d almost forgot. He give me a letter to mail to his dear mother just yesterday. Wait right here, I’ll fetch it.”
Calvin had written to his mother yesterday. He’d made his decision quickly, then. He wouldn’t have bothered with a letter if he’d known he was going to be leaving a suicide note so soon. What could have caused him to decide to do something like that when he seemed to be getting away with the crime? Certainly, he had every reason to believe he’d fooled Frank, at least.
Before Frank could make any sense of it, Mrs. Zimmerman was back. She held out an envelope to him with one hand while she dabbed a damp handkerchief at her nose with the other.
The envelope was cheap, and the address had been printed in a bold, childish scrawl in pencil. Frank stared at the address for a long moment, trying to identify what was wrong. Finally, it all came together in his mind. He ripped open the envelope.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Zimmerman cried. “That’s the last thing he wrote to his dear mother! Don’t you have any respect at all?”