The Clairvoyant Countess

by Dorothy Gilman

  Madame Karitska nodded. “Was that enough?”

  “No,” went on Pruden, “but it was enough to open things up.” With a faint smile he added, “We then applied for permission to exhume the body of Alison’s mother.”

  “Interesno,” murmured Madame Karitska, with a lift of her brows.

  “It made Madison nervous,” said Pruden. “That man’s a superb actor but it began the slow process of breaking down his confidence, and before the results of the lab tests were back we hit pay dirt on Madison’s real identity. It turns out that he was born Norman Palos, and was an old hand at being a widower: he’d married twice before, each time to a young widow with money, and each time his wife had died of a heart attack in her sleep.”

  “Poison?” suggested Madame Karitska.

  “It certainly was in Francine Bartlett’s case. She’d inhaled it consistently for some months by way of a nose spray she used for asthma attacks. Madison had been a chemist; he doctored the vials. She may very well have died of a heart attack—it would weaken any heart to cope with increasing doses of arsenic—but there was enough poison still in her body to change the whole picture. At that point Madison cracked and confessed to murdering the two of them, which saved us a good bit of time.”

  “Yes,” said Madame Karitska, and then, very simply, “I am glad he will not be allowed to do this again. He was a very evil man.”

  “You realize,” Pruden said, looking at her squarely, “how much I’m indebted to you for this.”

  “I realize,” she said imperturbably, “what you thought of my words when I spoke them several weeks ago to you in this room. You are more flexible than I supposed, Lieutenant.”

  “And very curious at this point,” he admitted.

  “I believe we were intended to meet,” she told him with a faint smile, “and I am a little curious myself. Have you something on your person that you wear every day and have worn for some years?”

  “You mean a reading?” he asked, and looked a little alarmed. “Well, I suppose—here, I’ll give you my watch. A high-school graduation present worn for fifteen straight years.”

  “Very good,” she murmured, and gave him a reassuring smile as he handed it to her. Closing her eyes she concentrated while Pruden watched her, half skeptical, half apprehensive. “Ah yes,” she said at last, “I see how it is. My instincts were sound, we are not strangers to one another at all. I get an impression of a very fine brain, a most intelligent man.”

  “Of course,” Pruden said flippantly.

  “But,” continued Madame Karitska, paying him no attention, “a rather inhibited man, a little narrow and literal. You have been too busy for love—a pity—but inside of fifteen months you will be married.”

  “That I refuse to believe,” Pruden said, flushing.

  “Believe it,” Madame Karitska told him firmly. “She will have long pale hair—really very pale, so light in color it is very near to white, and she is—how interesting!” Madame Karitska opened her eyes and smiled at him. “She will have considerable clairvoyant ability, Lieutenant.”

  “Good Lord,” he said mildly.

  “But before you meet her you will have a very near brush with death,” she went on, and her voice quickened. “Yes, yes, I see it, and it is very bad, you could be gravely harmed. There will be a Buddha-like figure, I cannot tell whether this is a living man or a statue. He wears reds and blues and he sits, and when you meet him you will be in terrible danger from something unseen behind you.”

  “Buddha?” he repeated skeptically. “It sounds rather exotic for my line of work.”

  She opened her eyes. “Then perhaps having been warned you will notice it more acutely,” she said in a stern voice. “It looms like a shadow over your whole future, over the girl, over your becoming Commissar of Police.”

  “Over my becoming what?”

  “Oh yes, you will go far,” she assured him. “But you must take care, you understand?” She smiled. “One hopes so, for I look forward to getting further acquainted with you, Lieutenant. And now if you will forgive me,” she said with a glance at her wrist watch, “I have an appointment in ten minutes.”

  Pruden rose and moved toward the door. As he reached it he heard a knock and, after a questioning glance at Madame Karitska, opened the door. A small boy stood there with a dirty, tear-stained face. “This is your appointment?” he asked, amused.

  “He has lost his kitten,” she told him calmly. “You must not think, Lieutenant, that the loss of a kitten is not also a cosmic event. We hope, between us, to discover where he may find it.”

  Chapter 5

  Madame Karitska opened her door to Lieutenant Pruden one early morning several weeks later. “I came on impulse, without calling,” he said. “Are you alone?” When she hesitated he rephrased this. “Can you be interrupted?”

  She nodded. “Of course, Lieutenant.”

  He came in, looking around him. “I met your young landlord on the curb putting out the garbage, and he said you always act as if someone’s with you, or shouldn’t I mention the impression you’ve given him?”

  “Consider it a small idiosyncrasy,” said Madame Karitska with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

  “As an opener you could tell me how in hell you look so cheerful mornings, and,” he added with a grin, “if you’re offering coffee I’ll take Turkish.”

  “Marvelous, you will soon begin to appreciate it!” Lighting a match under the carafe on the table she said, “I have the advantage over you of spending many years in the Far East and in eastern Europe as well. The reason for my sanguinity in the morning is both simple and complex: I have experienced much in the way of wise men and prophets.” Carefully she poured Turkish brew into tiny cups. “If psychologists and sociologists claim that we went from the Age of Anxiety into the Age of Alienation, then the next era—for survival, I assure you—must be the Age of Consciousness.”

  He laughed. “If you’re implying that none of us is conscious, Madame Karitska, I shall resent that very much.”

  She smiled at him. “Ah but actually, Lieutenant Pruden, almost every human being is totally sound asleep. We are sleep-walkers … Now what can I do for you, please?”

  He removed a small plastic bag from his jacket, turned it upside down over the coffee table, and delivered a cascade of silver rings to its surface. There were perhaps a dozen of them, all alike. Madame Karitska picked up one and examined it: its design was one of a black enamel seal encircled by crimson with a motto in Latin. Inside the ring were the initials D.H.L. ’78. She picked up another: its initials were G.A.M. ’78.

  “St. Bonaventure’s School,” contributed Lieutenant Pruden. “I’ve made half a dozen trips there and gotten nowhere. Let’s see what a clairvoyant can do.”

  She gave him a sharp glance. “I’m not so sure I’m delighted to have met you! What precisely is the problem?”

  “Petty thefts, but they add up and the school has a famous old reputation to preserve. These rings have been worn—presumably with pride—every day since January, when they were distributed among the freshman class upon their return from the holidays. You said you picked up—well, vibrations,” he growled. “These rings belong to the students and one of them has to be the thief.”

  “A schoolboy thief,” she mused. “But surely the police are well-equipped to uncover the culprit, and isn’t there a school psychologist?”

  “Yes to both,” he said grimly. “But officially the police aren’t in on it. My superior in the police department graduated from St. Bonaventure’s and they’ve asked his help in avoiding any publicity. We’ve done what we could. We know it’s one of these fourteen boys because the thefts occur only in Beecham Cottage, and always at night, when the dorm is locked securely.

  “As for the school’s psychologist,” he continued, “he’s examined the records of each of these fourteen boys and he can find none of them with any striking emotional problem or pattern that could lead to this sort of thing. The tests essen
tial for admission are pretty thorough—Rorschach, Achievement, etcetera—and since these boys are freshmen the tests were all done within the last year. Running fresh tests on these boys would run into money and consume valuable school time. In the meanwhile the thefts continue—the ninth last night.”

  “What exactly has been stolen?” asked Madame Karitska curiously.

  He handed her a small typed list. “It’s getting to be a very bad business for St. Bonaventure’s, this. The boys write home, the atmosphere’s uneasy, the rumors growing. A number of parents have already called in, inquiring.”

  Madame Karitska was looking at the list.

  Rosary. Belonging to housemother. Antique. Amber. Value $175.

  Baseball glove, $15.

  Ivory cross, value $80.

  Silver cross, value $92.

  Hand-carved Tyrolean cross, about $15.

  Hand-carved chess set, Yugoslavian, $25.

  2 Tennis racquets, $15. and $45.

  Prayer book, antique

  “An interesting list,” said Madame Karitska thoughtfully.

  “A damn puzzling one. After every theft we’ve searched the dormitory—the last three times while the students were still there behind locked doors—and we found only two items.”

  “The tennis racquets,” said Madame Karitska, nodding.

  He gave her a sharp glance. “What made you guess that?”

  “For one thing, they’re the largest items. Have you searched the boys?”

  Pruden shook his head. “This headmaster refuses—so far. I can’t say I blame him. Parents of St. Bonaventure’s boys don’t shell out nearly four thousand dollars a year to see their sons stripped and searched like common criminals. On the other hand I’ve told Father Tuttle he may have to see it done if he wants this cleared up.”

  “And so you bring me the rings,” said Madame Karitska musingly.

  “Yes.” He added wryly, “You know my skepticism. You understand my hopes.”

  She said with humor, “You are moving from disbelief to ambivalence. That is progress, no? I will call you. This will take a day at least.”

  “Right,” he said, and with a sigh left an extremely comfortable chair to return to work.

  Madame Karitska had three appointments that day. One of them surprised even her: she had reason to speak some very tough words to a spoiled, middle-aged woman who not only accepted them with good grace but left behind twenty-five dollars in the basket by the door. Between appointments Madame Karitska accomplished her chores with one or another of the fourteen rings on her fingers. She learned from the rings a great deal about St. Bonaventure’s School and about the sort of boys who went there, as well as their grievances, affections, hatreds, and resentments, but by midnight she had learned nothing that would help Lieutenant Pruden.

  “However,” she told him at nine the next morning when she telephoned him, “there is one child there who is extremely disturbed about his family. I’m sorry that I can be of no help to you about the thefts but I pick up—I can only call them tragic emanations—from one of the rings. I want to talk to this boy if I may. The initials on his ring are”—she held up the ring to the light—“G.U.O.”

  “If it has nothing to do with the thefts,” began Lieutenant Pruden.

  She said crisply, “Please give me the name of this child.”

  Pruden sighed. She heard the crackling of paper; a list was apparently consulted and the lieutenant replied, “That would be Gavin Ulbright O’Connell, I daresay.”

  “Thank you. Shall I visit him at school, or would you suggest bringing him here to me?” She added gently, “I can only tell you, my dear Lieutenant Pruden, that this is of far more importance than nine thefts. To Bonaventure’s as well as to the child.”

  “You don’t care to explain?”

  “I cannot possibly. I’m not being difficult, it is not clear to me yet, I can only compare it to reception being confused by static. But something is wrong.”

  Pruden was silent and then he said, “I’ll telephone St. Bonaventure’s and see what can be arranged.”

  When he called back ten minutes later it was to say that any interview would have to wait until Monday. “The office tells me that this morning the boy’s father telephoned and asked that Gavin be sent home for the weekend. They’re putting him on the four-o’clock train for Princeton.”

  “Isn’t that rather unusual?”

  “Yes, but the father was very firm.”

  Madame Karitska felt suddenly chilled. She said, “Bring him here before he leaves, will you?”

  “Madame Karitska, for heaven’s sake—”

  “I think it can be managed if you yourself personally volunteer to escort him to the train afterward, don’t you?”

  “Look, I’m a busy man,” growled Pruden.

  “I believe you will find the stolen crosses hidden somewhere in the chapel of St. Bonaventure’s,” she told him quietly. “You can tell me whether I’m correct when you bring the boy here at three o’clock.” She hung up.

  At three o’clock there was a knock on Madame Karitska’s door and opening it she nodded to Pruden and then turned her attention to the young boy beside him. “Gavin?” she said lightly.

  The boy nodded. He was slightly built, small for his fourteen years, with sensitive, finely drawn features in a face that was strikingly pale at the moment. “I have to get home,” he told her edgily. “I’m wanted. Will this take long?”

  “Come in, won’t you? I want to talk to you, Gavin.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you to go home tomorrow, or even later. I do not wish to see you go home tonight.”

  “Hey, now wait a minute,” broke in Pruden.

  Madame Karitska looked at him. “Gavin knows what I mean. Gavin knows exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you, Gavin?”

  The boy looked up at her in astonishment. Suddenly a look of infinite relief illuminated his face and he burst into tears. He walked into her arms and she held him.

  “Let him cry,” Madame Karitska said to Pruden, and over the boy’s shoulder added, “Did you discover anything in the chapel?”

  “Nothing yet, but they’ve only begun searching. Look, what is it with this boy? I talked to the school psychologist about him and he says he’s unusually bright, stable, interested in his studies—”

  “He’s quite normal,” said Madame Karitska, “but he has one—deformity, shall we say? He’s extremely psychic. I also get the impression looking at him that he’s been severely punished for it as a child. It is not something he’d mention to anyone.”

  “In the meantime, if he stays here much longer it’ll be kidnapping.”

  “Then arrest me,” she said tartly.

  “Look, all I did was ask you to examine fourteen rings—”

  “The ways of God and karma are exceeding wondrous, are they not?”

  “His parents—”

  “Hush. If you know the parents’ address you must send them a wire. Tell them he missed the train, tell them he has German measles, tell them he sprained his ankle. Tell them he will come tomorrow, or Sunday.”

  “Madame Karitska, for heaven’s sake, I’m a policeman!”

  She said stiffly, “I am a somewhat reputable person myself. Very well, give me their address and I shall send the wire myself. Gavin—?”

  Sniffing and blowing his nose, Gavin blurted out the address. “But don’t you think—oh, don’t you think I must go?” he cried, beginning to tremble again.

  Madame Karitska smiled tenderly at him. “We will speak of it later, Gavin. You are very tired but there is nothing you can do. It is cruel to say but true.” To Pruden she said, “I will send the wire, don’t worry. Come back this evening if you like, and see how we fare. In the meantime Gavin and I shall have some dinner, and I shall tell him stories about other people with the sixth sense. He may come to feel it not a sin or a crime after all.”

  “How did you know I thought it a sin?” asked Gavin.

 
“Ah—I too was once beaten for it,” she assured him cheerfully.

  By ten o’clock that evening Gavin was restless to the point of feverishness. “Oh please,” he begged Madame Karitska. “It was my father who phoned, you know. Shouldn’t I go home? Shouldn’t I?”

  “Perhaps you would care to talk about it now?”

  The boy shivered. “No I can’t, it’s too horrible. I can’t, and anyway it can’t be true, I don’t believe it.”

  She tucked him into bed and told him a few stories of yogis in the East. He was asleep when Pruden knocked at the door. It was late, nearly midnight.

  “You must be very quiet,” she cautioned him, letting him inside. “It’s better for him to sleep.”

  Pruden threw himself across the couch and said almost angrily, “We found every one of the stolen items in the chapel. Every one of them except the chess pieces. It took hours and I’m exhausted.”

  “The chess pieces had crosses on them, didn’t they?” asked Madame Karitska.

  “Yes, but how the devil did you know that?”

  At that moment a terrible cry came from the bedroom, the door was suddenly snatched open, almost torn from its hinges, and Gavin stood there with burning eyes. “I have to go home!” he shouted, and then he screamed, a terrible heart-rending scream, and fainted.

  As Pruden caught the boy and laid him on the couch Madame Karitska said in a quiet voice, “It is two minutes after midnight.”

  It was during his lunch hour the next day, twelve hours later, that Pruden brought her the newspaper and wearily handed it to her. “Second page, third paragraph,” he said tonelessly, and sat down rather abruptly.

  Madame Karitska read the words softly aloud. “ ‘MODEL FATHER KILLS FAMILY AND SELF. Five Dead in Princeton.’ ”

  “Shortly after midnight,” added Pruden in a strained voice. “Gavin’s the only surviving member of the family, except nobody knew he’d survived until I told the Chief this morning that he’s safe.” He added savagely, “You knew?”

  “No,” she said calmly, “but Gavin did. It was his terror I picked up, his terror over something at his home.”