Too Many Murders

by Colleen McCullough

  “Thank you, Mr. Grierson. As a matter of fact, Mr. Skeps dispensed with Dr. Davenport’s services as a mistress four months ago, and didn’t make his will for two more months. Whatever his emotions were, they clearly didn’t enter into his decision, just as you contend. What fascinates me is that you go against the general direction of opinion in saying Dr. Davenport isn’t up to the job. Have you any reason?”

  “My gut,” Wallace Grierson said. “Erica’s all smoke and mirrors, a con merchant. You’re a clever man, Captain Delmonico—also an enormously experienced one. There’s always a kid at the top of the class with near-perfect scores and a brilliant future. But there’s always another kid who hangs around the top without ever getting there because her—we’ll use the feminine—her work is too individual, too unorthodox. And guess what? At the twenty-year reunion, she’s the one with the brilliant career. Erica is the perfect kid with the perfect scores. But she’s never been the head of anything apart from Legal, so she has tunnel vision and a calculator for a mind. She leaned heavily on Desmond, who didn’t realize it.” He frowned. “My gut also says that her heart isn’t in running a business empire. She burns for something else, but what it is, I don’t know.”

  “A gut, Mr. Grierson, is a splendid thing,” said Carmine solemnly, walking off without collecting Desdemona.

  Parties, he thought, can be better sources of information than formal police interviews. If Myron hadn’t thrown this one, the woman in the brown pancake hat wouldn’t have jogged Mrs. Highman’s memory, and the old Cornucopia Board would not have been the worse for booze.

  And our hostess is flagging, he realized as he wandered in her direction. Of course she’s flagging, because she isn’t a party person. Whereas Myron, West Coast to the core, is utterly enamored of parties—no, put that another way, Carmine! He has to be perpetually surrounded by glitz and bustle, beautiful people strutting their stuff, the tinkle of tinsel, the chatter of people making deals all around him. Parties are just one aspect of it. Equally important are things like lunch at the Polo Lounge and dinner at whichever restaurant is in vogue this week. When Myron visits us, he’s doing penance. No, Jews don’t do penance. He’s like one of those guys who get flogged with a bunch of switches before taking the cold plunge or the steam or whatever. We are Myron’s bunch of switches so he can appreciate the deliciousness of his own world. Why do I love him? Because he’s a total gentleman, Sophia’s true father, kindness and generosity personified, and an all-round great guy. What kills me is my gut feeling that Myron is in for a rocky ride through the tunnel of love. First Sandra, now Erica. He’s a bad picker.

  “Had enough?” he asked Erica, reaching her.

  She looked startled. “Does it show?”

  “Not really. But you don’t have the gift of small talk, and you’re not motivated to acquire it.”

  “Are you suggesting that I find the motivation?”

  “That depends. If you’re serious about Myron, then yes. He lives in a world of small talk, banter, double-talk and the patois of wheeling and dealing. Where did you meet?”

  “In New York, at a board meeting of Hardinge’s, the bank. I thought Myron was tremendously attractive.”

  “You and half the feminine world. No doubt he’s told you that he’s married to my ex-wife?”

  “Yes. I confess I can’t understand how he and you would ever have eyes for the same woman.”

  “Oh, that’s because you’ll never know what Sandra was like at twenty! Very much in your mold, though without the brains. What she did have was an adorable waifish quality that made a man want to shelter her from every wind that blew. Sophia is very like her physically, but her intelligence masks that.”

  “Just as well, in my opinion. I loathe stupid women!” said Erica tartly.

  “Stupidity doesn’t mean a woman’s unlikeable, surely.”

  “It does to me!”

  “So you’re glad Sophia is smart.”

  “Yes. She doesn’t despise her face, but she’s not going to let it decide her destiny.”

  “You think of Sophia’s beauty the way you think of your own—as a tool if your back’s against the wall, but otherwise as a nuisance. Whereas Sophia is very different. She thinks of her face as part and parcel of what’s behind it. Sophia doesn’t live in compartments.”

  “You always manage to put me in the wrong!” she snapped, turned, and spotted two latecomers. “Philomena, Tony!”

  Carmine retired to a good vantage point and watched Erica take Philomena Skeps and Anthony Bera to meet Myron, who, as ever delighted to see new faces, welcomed them with all the verve of a host greeting his first guests rather than his last.

  Philomena, Carmine decided, was probably at least five years younger than Erica, and quite cast the ice queen in the shade. Like Delia, she was wearing a tight-waisted dress of pink frills, but there the comparison ended. Despite what she had said to Carmine about Skeps’s miserly tendencies, she was wearing a suite of amazing pink diamonds. Paired with Bera, she looked complete.

  Some talk passed between Philomena and Erica, then Myron took Bera away to meet the Mayor while Philomena and Erica continued their discussion. Their manner seemed pleasant, their smiles genuine, but Carmine still felt that whatever they were saying was not all sweetness and light. A glass of champagne was refused, but one of a Chilean red wine accepted; Erica fluttered around Desmond Skeps’s ex-wife like a nervous bride around a fierce mother-in-law. Lobster? No? Chicken vol-au-vent? No? This wonderful country terrine? Oh, good!

  Finally Bera extricated himself from Myron’s clutches and rescued Philomena, escorting her to a chair, finding a little table, then giving her the glass of Chilean wine and putting a piled plate down on the table where she could pick at it. Having settled her, he took up his station behind her and let his gaze follow Erica Davenport wherever she went. There were undercurrents here, but Carmine wasn’t sure of their origin or their nature. Phil Smith arrived, with his wife, who—ye Gods!—was saying hello to Philomena in all the glory of her brown pancake hat.

  Smith’s visit with Philomena was brief. His wife, poor soul, was unhappy to be dragged away willy-nilly, and tried to stay, but Smith hustled her off as if afraid of what she might say. Recognizing a kindred sartorial being, Delia grabbed her out from under her husband’s grasp, and the two worst-dressed women in the room went off together. Gus Purvey and Fred Collins paid court next, Collins without Candy. Anthony Bera greeted them stiffly, then fell silent and listened to Philomena talk. When Collins, drunk enough now to stagger, began to get agitated, Bera moved quickly in front of Philomena’s chair and obviously told Purvey to remove him. Purvey obeyed, but not a minute later Philomena gave Bera orders to leave her. He protested, but she lifted her chin in a gesture so imperious that Carmine was intrigued. Biting his lip, Bera stalked off, leaving her alone on her chair. Who did she want to see?

  Then Myron joined her, and that meant the excellent host had just ruined the lady’s plans. How exactly she got rid of him the watching Carmine couldn’t know, but she did, and so charmingly that he gave her a worshipping smile as he went away. Philomena Skeps was alone again.

  Several more people approached her and were dismissed with the same charm she had used on Myron: Dr. Pauline Denbigh (interesting, that one!) and Mawson and Angela MacIntosh. Carmine inched closer, wishing that the room wasn’t beginning to empty; he would never be able to overhear what Philomena Skeps said.

  And finally came the desired one; the body language was unmistakable. Erica Davenport.

  A waiter passed by; Philomena detained him, and the little table was stripped bare instantly. Erica perched herself on it, turning sideways to see Skeps’s ex-wife, who slewed sideways as well. Frustrated, Carmine stared at their profiles as they talked; he could lip-read dialogue if it was well enunciated and its speakers face-on, but side-on it was impossible.

  They talked with such a determined air of isolation that several people, heading their way, backed off. Possibly too the n
ews of Erica’s guardianship had spread party-wide, and no one wanted to be the inadvertent destroyer of a pact. It certainly seemed as if negotiations were going on, and it solved the riddle of why Philomena Skeps had come to the party at all. Neutral ground. Where else could she plead her case without the specter of Cornucopia looming? At Orleans? Erica would never come.

  Anthony Bera watched the two women with painful intensity, absently answering the questions Wallace Grierson was throwing at him. Then Phil Smith and the brown pancake came up, blocking Bera’s view of Philomena’s chair, and he gave up.

  Treaty negotiations must have lasted a good half hour, at the end of which Erica Davenport looked very tired and Philomena Skeps more beautiful than ever. Then Erica slapped her hands on her knees and got up from her perch. She leaned down to drop a kiss on Philomena’s brow, and walked off toward Myron.

  “I’m pooped,” Desdemona said, kicking off her sandals as soon as she was in the car.

  “Me too, my lovely lady. You looked fantastic tonight.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, you did. Your figure is as good as any Hollywood movie star’s, and that dress set it off just fine.”

  “Isn’t it funny? Women are always moaning that babies ruin their figures, but Julian did mine the world of good.”

  “How do you think Myron is feeling right now?”

  She frowned. “Good question. He’s fathoms deep in love—did you notice the diamond bracelet?—but it must be dawning on him by now that his darling Erica doesn’t relish a party. Sandra would have suited him better, I imagine.”

  “I did find out that he hasn’t filed divorce papers yet.”

  Desdemona sat up as the Fairlane eased out onto a deserted South Green Street. “Oho! He hasn’t removed his last defense.”

  “That’s how I read it.”

  She slid across the wide seat and snuggled into his side. “Did you notice the woman in that terrible brown hat?”

  Judge Douglas Wilfred Thwaites presided over the Holloman District Court, and was an institution. He had taken both his undergraduate and law degrees from Chubb, and was a Chubber to his bootstraps. Imbued with no ambition to move on to greater jurisdictions, he was a Connecticut Yankee who couldn’t conceive of living or practicing anywhere else. He had a delightful house on Busquash Point from which he could mess around in boats, a devoted wife who thought him deliriously funny, and two children in their early twenties who had escaped his tyranny by seeking higher education on the West Coast, a place he equated with the planet Mercury.

  It was probably a fanciful childhood memory of Ichabod Crane that had prompted Special Agent Ted Kelly of the FBI to call him an eccentric, a term that wasn’t fair either to Washington Irving or to Doug Thwaites. His Honor prided himself upon his detachment, which was real enough—provided, that is, that he hadn’t previously formed his own conclusions about a person. Though Carmine knew all this—and a great deal more besides—about the Judge, he was prepared to do fierce battle when he appeared in chambers at ten on Monday morning, April tenth. He needed a warrant to search the premises of Dr. Pauline Denbigh before Dante College politely asked her to vacate the Dean’s apartment, and he was sure he was going to be opposed.

  “Granted!” barked Judge Thwaites halfway through Carmine’s preamble. “That woman is capable of anything!”

  Oh! Myron’s party! Of course Judge and Mrs. Thwaites were there, and so was Dr. Pauline Denbigh. Their paths must have crossed. How was she to know that Doug loathed all women’s libbers with a passion? He believed ardently in righting their wrongs, but not in the antics of the visible, vociferous segment of the movement. Bra burnings and the invasion of hallowed male portals, not to mention psychic emasculation, were anathema. To him, it was a legislative struggle, and such shenanigans degraded it.

  Carmine went away with his head spinning, and kicking himself that he hadn’t been witness to the clash of that particular pair of titans. He’d have to phone Dorothy Thwaites and ask her for the gory details. In the meantime, he had his warrant.

  He took four uniformed cops to keep the rubberneckers at bay, and knocked on Dr. Denbigh’s study door.

  “Come,” said her languid voice.

  “Dr. Pauline Denbigh?” he asked, paper in hand.

  “Well, you know that!” she said tartly.

  “Please vacate these premises and the Dean’s apartment at once. I have a warrant to search both,” he said.

  The color drained out of her face instantaneously, leaving it as yellow as old parchment. She rocked on her feet, then righted herself and stood straight. “This is an outrage,” she said in a whisper. “I challenge your warrant.”

  “You are at liberty to do so, but it will be after the fact. Have you someplace you can go, Dr. Denbigh?”

  “The small common room. I want my cigarettes, my lighter, my papers, book and pen.”

  “Provided you permit us to examine them first, of course.”

  “Pigs!” she snapped, her color returning in a rush.

  Her goods vetted, she was escorted to the common room and settled there under the eye of a cop, while Carmine, Corey and Abe tackled her own study.

  Every book had to be opened and its leaves shaken, a huge task in itself. The walls backing the bookshelves were tapped, while Abe, who had an instinct for concealed doors, went over every inch of the dark paneling and knocked on the floorboards listening for a drummy one. The room yielded nothing; two hours later Carmine declared it clean.

  “But she’s hiding something,” he said as they moved to the Dean’s apartment, “so it must be in here.”

  A storage closet in the bedroom produced a small electric sewing machine. “We’re getting warmer,” said Carmine, smiling. “Where’s the workbasket?”

  Handy to have an embroidering wife!

  But the workbasket when found was innocuous: the cut-out pieces of a blouse, a skirt with darts. Dr. Denbigh liked to sew, and made some of her own clothes.

  Abe found the cupboard in a vacant section of kitchen wall. It opened on a spring mechanism that responded to pressure from a hand laid flat on the door. Inside was a thick pipe with a U-bend and a grease trap outlet at its base.

  “Dante’s old enough to have been replumbed,” Abe said. “I don’t think this pipe’s connected.”

  Corey got the camera out and started taking photographs while Carmine found Dr. Marcus Ceruski.

  “You’re our witness, sir,” Carmine said.

  “I know nothing about this!” Ceruski protested.

  “That’s the whole idea. You’re here to watch us remove whatever is in that secret cupboard, okay?”

  Resting in the elbow of the pipe was a black drawstring bag, now well photographed. Gloved, Carmine lifted it out and put it on the counter, where the camera recorded its angular bulk before Carmine loosened its mouth and with a rapid movement turned the bag inside out. Abe and Corey fielded in case any item rolled, but nothing did; even the spool of thread that fit the sewing machine lay where it fell. The blue flashes went on for some time as Carmine moved the contents around.

  “If her prints are on any of this, she’s a done dinner,” Corey said, grinning.

  “They will be,” said Carmine tranquilly. “Go get the evidence bags, Corey.”

  There was a box of Dean Denbigh’s jasmine tea from his special shop, a roll of glossy pink paper printed in black with Art Nouveau lettering and detail, a roll of filmy gauze of the kind used to make tea bags, lengths of thin twine each ending in a jasmine tea label, the spool of thread, and a glass jar of potassium cyanide bearing a commercial label.

  “Not a word, Dr. Ceruski,” said Carmine, ushering him out. “If the defense alleges this evidence was planted by the Holloman Police, you will be called to the stand, not otherwise.”

  “She made her own tea bags and the paper jackets wrapping the tea bags,” Corey said in tones of wonder. “Where the hell did she get the pink printed paper and the gauze? The strings with the labels on the end?�
��

  “From the supplier,” said Abe. “Label says, in Queens.”

  “Where else? Abe, find out from the supplier if she got her bits and pieces openly or by stealth. I’m picking she stole them. It wouldn’t be hard, just a trip to Queens late at night. Security wouldn’t consist of more than a night watchman. The cyanide would have been more difficult.”

  “She’s a resourceful woman,” Abe said. “A chem lab?”

  “No way! Cyanide’s on any lab’s poison register, it has to be kept in a safe, you know that,” said Carmine.

  “Huh!” Corey grunted. “Nerds are nerds, Carmine. They go round in a daze, leave the safe open, probably use it to keep their lucky rabbit’s foot from sticky fingers.”

  “That’s bigotry! I know nerds as sharp as tacks!” said Abe.

  They were happy, thought Carmine, only half listening. We just solved another one, we’re down to ten unsolved.

  And, he admitted to himself, he was happy too. Won’t Doug Thwaites be pleased? What a nose for a villain!

  * * *

  He didn’t see her again until he walked into an interview room late that afternoon.

  “You are aware of your constitutional rights?” he asked.

  “Yes, perfectly.” She looked composed and better groomed; one of their three woman cops had found the clothes she wanted, and brought them to her together with a full selection of makeup. So the glorious red-gold hair puffed softer around her face, and the yellow lion’s eyes had been emphasized with mascara and pencil. Her dress was severely cut, but its flattering tawny shade needed no embellishments. Carmine knew she was frigid because she had told him, but no man would have believed that, looking at her.

  “Would you like a lawyer present?” he asked, nodding to the woman cop to move her chair into the far corner.

  “Not yet,” she answered, then gestured irritably at the cop. “Must that poor girl be here? I’d rather talk to you in private.”