Too Many Murders

by Colleen McCullough

  “He’s a paper snob,” said Delia when every page had been laid out and the bound report sat wrapped in a clean towel to dry its outer leaves and edges. “Nothing but high rag content paper, even for his memo pads. No cheap pulp for Mr. Smith! Nor ordinary print for his captions and letterheads—hot-pressed print only. At the same time, he’s not splashy. Plain white stationery, black print, not even a color horn-of-plenty logo. Yes, everything of the very best, yet understated.”

  “Then you and I are going to go to work reading, Delia,” Carmine said. “Corey, you take the hospital watch. Report any change in Smith’s condition to me the moment you hear. The chief neurosurgeon, Tom Dennis, is a friend of mine, so I’ll make sure we know as soon as a change happens. Abe, you hold the fort with Dee-Dee, Sir Lancelot, Pauline Denbigh and anyone else of interest. If there’s a new case, you take it.”

  “What are we looking for?” Delia asked as Abe and Corey left. “Naturally I have some idea, but I’d like detailed instructions.”

  “The trouble is that if it’s a verbal code, I don’t think we stand a hope of cracking it,” Carmine said, frowning.

  “You mean statements like ‘the clouds are dark over dear old Leningrad’?”

  “Yes. If ‘the rifling commences two feet down the barrel’ actually means ‘don’t expect more from me quickly,’ we won’t know. But I don’t think that kind of information interests us. We’re looking for plans and formulae, probably reduced to microdots.”

  “How big is a microdot?” Delia asked.

  “According to Kelly, whatever size will look logical, from the dot over an i to a fly speck or the bull’s-eye in a two-inch drawing of a target. They don’t have to be round, anyway. Round is less likely to be detected, Nature being nonlinear.”

  Her face puckered in dismay. “Oh, Carmine! There must be literally a million dotted i’s here! Even if Mr. Smith’s comatose state lasts several days, we have no chance of finding anything.”

  There was a fresh carafe of coffee on the counter. Carmine poured himself a mug and sat down on the wheeled chair he had stolen from the typists’ pool because he could move around with his chair still attached to his butt. “That’s why I don’t think microdots are above an i. Or at least, an i with an ordinary dot. We should be looking for dots that are too big. That look like typos or smears. Kelly’s so cagey that I haven’t got much useful out of him, so we’re winging it, Delia. To the best of my knowledge, cameras have finite limits, so maybe the reduction process can only be taken so far before another shot has to be taken and the reduction process recommenced. Since the space race began, things have miniaturized fast, but… I’m in true ignorance as to how it’s done or how small a reduction in size can go.” Carmine shrugged. “The best advice I can offer you is to use your common sense, Delia. If it looks wrong, we should see if it comes off. If it comes off, we should examine it under fifty or a hundred power on one of Patsy’s microscopes.”

  They started to read, Delia on the letters, Carmine on the reports. An hour went by in silent intensity.

  “How extraordinary!” Delia said.

  Carmine jumped. “Huh?”

  “Hasn’t Mr. Smith always had a reputation for doing nothing?”

  “So my sources have led me to believe.”

  “Well, for someone who has coasted through the however-many years of his—er—emboardment—he’s kept a close eye on all sorts of people. Nor, it seems, is he happy to leave some of his observations behind during his absence. I’m reading a letter Mr. Smith apparently means to send to an M. D. Sykes, who bears the title of general manager of Cornucopia Central. I gather this means Mr. Sykes orders the stationery, checks the salaries and wages, looks after cleaning contracts and all sorts. Though from time to time over the years Mr. Sykes has had to substitute for men more senior than he.”

  “Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Carmine exclaimed, careful of his expletives when ladies were present. “I wouldn’t have thought that Smith so much as noticed Cornucopia Central employed a general manager, let alone noticed it’s Sykes. But to notice what Sykes has done! Is the letter interesting?”

  “Yes and no. It’s quite long. Mr. Smith lays out the feats Mr. Sykes has accomplished over the years when substituting for more senior executives, and praises his diligence and experience. Mr. Smith informs Mr. Sykes that, in his capacity as Chairman of the Board, he is promoting Mr. Sykes to the position of managing director, immediately under the Board. Mr. Sykes will now be responsible for overseeing all the Cornucopia subsidiaries on an executive level, and will answer only to the Board.”

  “That’s a real bombshell,” Carmine said, grinning. “Michael Donald will be happy! I can understand why Smith wouldn’t want it lying around on his desk while he’s away, though I wonder why he didn’t just ship it off as internal mail before he went? A minor mystery. He plays Napoleonic war games.”

  “Who, Mr. Smith?”

  “No, Mr. Michael Donald Sykes. On his new salary, he’ll be able to stage his hero’s coronation in Notre Dame, complete with gold and jewels.”

  “How odd!” Delia exclaimed, still on the letter to Sykes.

  “What’s odd?”

  “Mr. Smith’s system of tabulation—to which, by the way, he is much addicted. I’ve always preferred the letters of the alphabet to numbers when I tabulate because, provided one does not need more than twenty-six items, the tabulation column remains the same width. With numbers, once the number ten arrives, the column is one character wider, and to the left side at that. Most annoying! Whereas Mr. Smith neither enumerates nor eletterates—he uses a big, round black spot to tabulate—” She drew a hissing breath. “A big, round black spot!” she squealed.

  Carmine scooted around the table on his wheeled chair and looked. “Holy shit!” he cried, forgetting ladies.

  “There’s another thing, Carmine,” Delia said, voice shaking. “What machines can make a spot this size? A typewriter can’t, nor anything I can think of apart from a printing press setting type. These tabulation spots must have been applied by hand. If they’re not microdots, then Mr. Smith has gone to the trouble of using Letraset, and a man as fanatically tidy as that would be insane, even if he did force his secretary to do it.”

  “One thing for sure, Delia, Mr. Smith is not insane,” said Carmine in grim jubilation. “I’ve got the bastard!”

  “You mean he’s Ulysses?”

  “Oh, I’ve known that for some time.”

  He propelled himself across to a little table on which he had assembled a box of glass microscope slides, another of glass cover slips, some fine tweezerlike forceps, and a thin, pointed scalpel. Picking up the tray holding them, he returned to Smith’s letter to M. D. Sykes and, working very delicately, tried to get the tip of the scalpel under the edge of a spot. It slid in easily; the spot came away, balanced on the scalpel tip. Carmine transferred it to a slide and dropped a cover slip on top. He took a total of five of the eleven spots in the Sykes letter, chosen at random.

  With five glass slides on a paper plate, he walked to the Medical Examiner’s department, Delia at his side.

  “Tell me these aren’t Letraset spots,” he said to Patrick, giving him the plate. “Tell me they have typing on them, or schematics, or anything that shouldn’t be there.”

  “You have found yourself a genuine, one hundred percent, twenty-four karat, first-water microdot,” Patsy said after examining the first slide. “A hundred-power—man, what a camera! What reduction ratios! Even so, it must have taken a dozen separate shots to get this down so small. No resolution has been lost, the definition’s perfect.”

  “So now we know why Smith didn’t send M. D. Sykes’s letter by internal mail before he left,” Carmine said to Delia as they went back to his office. “It had to travel out of the country with him. In Zurich the microdots in it would have been removed and Letraset spots substituted. Once back in Holloman, he could personally hand Mr. Sykes his promotion.”

  “Oh, Carmine, I am so delighted for
you!”

  “Save your ecstasies, Delia. Now I have to call Ted Kelly and tell him what we’ve found. I’m afraid that our participation in the case of Ulysses the spy is at an end.”

  An accurate prophecy. The astounded Ted Kelly arrived in minutes, gasping at what he called Carmine’s luck.

  “No, it wasn’t my luck!” Carmine snapped, temper flaring. “It was the initiative of Sergeant Corey Marshall that got you your proof of espionage, Special Agent Kelly, and I insist that he be properly credited! If his name and his feat don’t appear in your report, I’ll tear Washington down around your ears!”

  “Okay, okay!” Kelly yelled, backing away with palms up. “It will be written into my report, I promise!”

  “I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, Kelly!” Carmine thrust two typewritten sheets of police paper at him. “This is Corey’s report of what happened, and that’s how your own report starts. Fuck the FBI, and fuck you! You’ve piggybacked on our work, and I want that acknowledged.”

  “I’m so happy I’d consent to anything,” Kelly said. “Are Smith’s papers here?”

  Carmine handed him a Holloman Police Department cardboard box. “Every last one, minus five spots off the Sykes letter. Which, by the way, I photocopied to make sure Mr. Sykes gets it. There’s probably a copy in Smith’s office, but I wanted to make sure. M. D. Sykes has been screwed around enough.”

  Kelly took the box as if it contained the crown jewels, then looked enquiring. “Um—the five spots?” he asked.

  “Are going, together with a microscope, with me to the chambers of Judge Thwaites. I need proof of wrongdoing to get a search warrant. As soon as I’ve done that, I’ll send you the evidence,” Carmine said.

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Try and stop me. I told you, you’ll get them back. I was not kidding when I said I don’t trust you or the FBI, Special Agent Kelly. As far as I know, the contents of Smith’s briefcase may never come to light, or his person be tried for treason. But he will be tried for at least one murder, and for that, he’ll go to prison for a very long time. Now piss off and leave me to my own business.”

  “Do you think they will try Mr. Smith for treason?” Delia asked, looking at a room full of trestle tables.

  “I have no idea. Get rid of the tables, Delia. I’m going up to see your Uncle John.” In the doorway he stopped. “Delia?”

  “Yes?” she asked, one hand on the phone.

  “You did a brilliant job. I don’t know what I’d do without you, and that’s the truth.”

  His secretary made a sound like a squeezed kitten, went very bright red, and turned away.

  “Once Doubting Doug gets a look at my microdots, John, I should get my warrant,” Carmine said.

  “The more so because it vindicates his issuance of warrants after the sniper,” Silvestri said. “No egg on his face. I hope the proof of Dee-Dee’s murder is where you think it is, Carmine, because I have a funny feeling the Feds don’t want this guy tried for treason. The days of the Rosenbergs are over. Smith’s a high-end Boston WASP.”

  “I don’t think so,” Carmine said thoughtfully. “There was a Philip Smith, I’m sure, but at some time over the past twenty-five years, a KGB colonel assumed his identity. Sometimes Smith makes weird mistakes about American customs and traditions, and his wife, according to Delia, is not a Sami Lapp. Delia thinks she hails from one of those Stans that comprise Siberia or the Central Asian steppes. Her native language is not Indo-Aryan.”

  “Nor are Turkish and Hungarian, for that matter.”

  “True. Despite which, John, I’d bet my last buck Smith’s a plant. There is no Anna Smith in the Peace Corps in Africa, and the Stephen Smith who’s doing marine biology in the Red Sea—interesting color choice—isn’t really attached to Woods Hole. He has a kind of honorary status there thanks to hefty donations to projects the Woods Hole people find difficult to fund. As for Peter Smith, petroleum engineer, he was in Iran working for BP, but went off wildcatting to Afghanistan, of all places.”

  “You suspect all three kids are in the USSR?”

  “Between assignments, yes. Think how valuable they are! Totally bilingual, as American as apple pie.”

  “There’s apple pie everywhere, Carmine.”

  “Yes, but not flavored with cinnamon. Flavored with cloves.”

  “What’s really worrying you?” Silvestri asked.

  “First off, the assistant. We still haven’t found him, and he’s even more resourceful when it comes to murder than Smith is. He’s why I’ve had Danny put a guard on Smith’s hospital room—the most vigilant men only, and in pairs.”

  “Any ideas at all about who he is?”

  “Only that he’s attached to Cornucopia. Lancelot Sterling was my pick, but I was wrong. It’s not Richard Oakes the male secretary—he’s too frail. So whoever it is hasn’t been noticed as a suspect of anything. If he is caught, we may not even know his face, let alone his name.”

  “Don’t Communists usually congregate in cells, Carmine?”

  “The ideologues do, but does anyone know about the people who conduct active sabotage or espionage? That’s where the Communist witch hunts failed. Ideology tended to be equated with damaging activity. It didn’t always follow. But there might be a cell of damaging activists centered on Holloman and headed by Philip Smith. We know Erica Davenport was involved, and we know Smith has an assistant. That’s three. How big is a cell? I don’t feel like asking Ted Kelly, but that’s my stubbornness. Say, four to six members? In which case, we’re still in the dark about one to three of them.”

  “Pauline Denbigh?” Silvestri asked.

  “I doubt it. She’s an elitist and a feminist. The Reds may have loads of women doctors and dentists, but the Communist Party isn’t stuffed with women at a high level, is it? No, I think she was tricked into killing her husband on the correct date, and is getting her kicks out of refusing to admit it.”

  “What about Philomena Skeps?”

  “I can’t imagine she’s anything worse than an overprotective mother, but I intend to see her again,” Carmine said. “For one thing, the ultimate control of Cornucopia is undecided, and that’s not helped by this car accident. Can Philomena Skeps run the company? Or will she hand it over to her cat’s-paw, Anthony Bera? Or leave it with the suddenly invigorated Phil Smith, given that she doesn’t know he’s a traitor and a killer?”

  “Maybe Mr. Michael Donald Sykes will inherit the mantle,” Silvestri said with a grin.

  Carmine sighed, so loudly that the Commissioner blinked. “What’s that for?” he asked.

  “The FBI helicopter that made it so easy to get to Orleans on the Cape. I don’t suppose County Services can afford one?”

  “About as likely, Carmine, as a ticket to Mars.”

  “I hate that drive!”

  “Then take Desdemona and make a day of it.”

  “I will, but not until Saturday,” Carmine said.

  “How’s Smith?”

  “Coming around, Tom Dennis says. No subdural hematoma or gross cerebral contusions, just a fractured skull and some swelling of the brain that’s going down nicely. His right upper arm and shoulder blade are more painful. Collins needed surgery to fix his broken leg, and is swearing he’ll never ride in an open car again. According to Corey, it was amazing to watch that machine flip in midair.”

  “Middle-aged teenyboppers!” Silvestri said. Suddenly he looked curious. “Carmine, what exactly tipped you off that Smith was Ulysses? I mean, it could have been any of them.”

  “No, I never suspected Grierson, John. What tipped me off was the verb Bart Bartolomeo used when he described what Erica Davenport said to Desmond Skeps at the Maxwell banquet. Not her words—those he didn’t hear. But he said she kept hissing. It took a while for the lightbulb to go on, and I’m not sure when suspicion became certainty, but you can’t hiss Collins or Purvey or Grierson. Smith, you can. Big time. Whatever else she said must have been full of esses too, but if sh
e’d spoken a name that interrupted the sibilants, Bart would have noticed. Once I realized what Bart had actually said, I concentrated on Mr. Philip Smith.”

  “So it was all in a name,” Silvestri said.

  Warrant in hand, Carmine drove the next morning together with a squad car and Patsy’s forensics van to the beautiful valley wherein Philip Smith had built his mansion.

  Natalie Smith met him at the door, her profoundly blue eyes flashing fire, the anger distorting her smooth, yellowish face. “Can’t you leave him alone?” she asked, her thick foreign accent making the words difficult to understand.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Smith, I have to exercise this warrant.”

  “Must I sit in the folly? It’s cold today,” she said.

  “No, ma’am. It’s the folly we’re searching, so you can stay in your house.”

  Carmine walked across the lush grass between the garden beds to where the little round temple stood, its Ionic columns, each fluted, supporting a tiled terra-cotta roof that sat on it like a Chinese coolie’s hat. Only the English could have termed a garden adornment a folly, Carmine thought, treading up the steps. Steps and floor were both greenish terrazzo; the rest of the folly was constructed of pure white marble. Who in America had the skill to fashion this? he wondered. No one, he decided. The columns were probably imported from Italy, where sculptors abounded. American equivalents would be carving fancy tombstones.

  A cursory inspection revealed no overt hiding place, but he had Abe Goldberg.

  “Think you can find the secret compartment?” Carmine asked.

  Abe’s fair, freckled face broke into a smile, his blue eyes sparkled. “Does a fat baby fart?” he asked.

  Carmine moved off the steps onto the grass and watched Abe work. First he had two cops remove the white table and chairs, then he stood at the center of the folly and rotated, his head tilted toward the roof. That over, he repeated the rotation, this time gazing at the floor. Then he walked each circular step all the way around, using Carmine as his marker. After which he lay flat out on the floor and started rapping it with his knuckles.