The Case of the Horrified Heirs by Erle Stanley Gardner Page A

can."
    "Better let me do it," Mason said. "It will attract less attention that way, and I have some connections which will give me a report within a very short time."
    "Well, I'd be very glad to have you do it," Dr. Alton said, "but now that you've planted the suspicion in my mind, I have an uneasy feeling that we're going to have positive reactions; that there will be at least two areas in the hair that will show arsenic.
    "The first attack took place approximately seven and a half months ago-too long a time, I'd guess, for any traces of the poison to remain. But the second was five weeks ago, and the last one about a week ago."
    "Did you get a dietary history?" Mason asked.
    "I wasn't utterly naпve," Dr. Alton said. "I wanted to find out if this was the result of an allergy or, as I suspected, contaminated food.
    "On all occasions, she had eaten Mexican food."
    "Who cooked it?" Mason asked.
    "She has a chauffeur, a George Eagan, who has been with her for some time. She is very much attached to him-in a business way, of course. He is young enough-Well, I believe there's quite a discrepancy in ages… oh, say fifteen years or so.
    "He drives her everyplace and he is the one in charge of the outdoor cooking; whenever they have a barbecue, he does the steaks and the potatoes, does the cooking and the serving, toasts the French bread and all the rest of it. I gather he's very expert.
    "He's also expert in cooking; the Mexican foods I mentioned are cooked out of doors."
    "Wait a minute," Mason said, "she would hardly have the Mexican food cooked just for herself. There must have been others present."
    Dr. Alton said, "In getting a case history, I wasn't even suspicious of poisoning. Therefore, I asked only about what my patient had been eating. I didn't ask about others. I believe other relatives were also present. Eagan, the chauffeur, did the cooking. Apparently no one else besides Lauretta Trent had any symptoms."
    "I see," Mason said.
    "If it was poisoning, and I am now satisfied it was, it was done very expertly… Now then, Mr. Mason, I have a responsibility to my patient. I want to keep from having any recurrence."
    "I told you what to do," Mason said sharply. "Get three nurses, put them on the job around the clock."
    Dr. Alton shook his head. "I am afraid that won't work."
    "Why not?" Mason asked.
    Dr. Alton said, "We're not dealing with a child, Mr. Mason. We're dealing with a mature woman who likes to have her own way; who is rather arbitrary and-damn it, I've got to have some sort of an excuse to put out special dishes for her."
    Mason's mouth tightened. "How many nurses are on the job now?"
    "Just one… a nurse she has from time to time."
    "And how did you get the fingernails and the hair?"
    Dr. Alton said, uncomfortably, "I had to use a little subterfuge. I rang up the nurse and told her that I was going to give Mrs. Trent some medicine which might cause a temporary itching of the skin; that it was highly important that she not do any scratching and that I would like to have her nails trimmed down; that I wished she'd explain to the patient what I had in mind and what I was trying to accomplish. I also told her that I'd like to test the hair to see whether her digestive upsets had been due to an allergy caused by either a shampoo or a hair dye. I explained to the nurse that I didn't want to suggest that Mrs. Trent was coloring her hair; but that I felt there might be an allergy, particularly if she had had any itching or sore spots in her scalp and had scratched and had thereby caused an abrasion in the skin that would enable the dye materials to penetrate the bloodstream. I told the nurse to put the nail clippings and the hair in sterile phials."
    Mason said, "Nurses take courses in poisons and their treatment. Do you think your nurse suspected anything?"
    "Oh no, not a thing," Dr. Alton said. "I told the nurse I'd been puzzled about Mrs. Trent's case; that I couldn't believe that the disturbance resulted entirely