Masterclass

by Morris West

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘About midday.’

  ‘Before or after?’

  ‘Just after.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I switched on the radio as I came in; the midday news had just begun.’

  ‘How did you get to the studio?’

  ‘By taxi.’

  ‘What time did you arrive?’

  ‘About ten to one.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘By the front door. I rang the bell and Madi let me in.’

  ‘How was she dressed?’

  ‘As always on a working day: a smock over a jumper and slacks.’

  ‘What was she doing when you came? Painting, drawing, writing…what?’

  ‘Painting. There was an unfinished canvas on the easel.’

  ‘But you said she was unwell.’

  ‘No. I said she sounded unwell and she told me she was unwell. She looked pasty and puffed around the face and her speech was definitely not normal.’

  ‘So then what?’

  ‘I asked her what was the matter. She told me the doctor had put her on sedatives, but she complained they were too strong and were slowing her down. I saw the whisky bottle and the glass. I warned her she shouldn’t drink with sedatives, but she said she’d only had one small drink. Then I made her take off her smock and shoes and lie down. I covered her up and sat on the edge of the bed talking to her until she fell asleep. I didn’t know quite what to do. I didn’t want to stay there. I didn’t want to leave her. So I went downstairs and hung the “Not back till 5.30” notice on the door. Then I called Mr Bayard at his office. They said he was out for lunch, would I leave a message? I thought better not. Then I tried Hugh Loredon. I knew they’d had a big fight over something, but Hugh was always very protective of her – and of me, for that matter. We’d made love a few times together and while it wasn’t great it wasn’t too bad either. Hugh was in his office. He told me not to hang around, just make sure Madi was covered and the heaters were left on. He’d be down in fifteen to twenty minutes, he said. I was glad to leave. Ever since the Peter episode I’d been wary of the bunch at Negroni’s. So I let myself out of the back door, walked half a dozen blocks and took a taxi uptown.’

  ‘With your permission, George,’ Mather cut across the narrative, ‘I’d like to ask about the heaters. That place is a great, cold barn. We’ve had to install air-conditioning to make it habitable. What was Madeleine Bayard using?’

  ‘Gas heaters,’ said Leonie. ‘Those with a gas bottle on a trolley. You can move them from place to place, adjust the height and focus the heat. There were three on the second floor and six on the top floor, because there was no insulation under the rafters and the place cooled down very quickly.’

  ‘So,’ said Munsel, ‘you’ve given us your story. Now let me give you the one the prosecutor is going to put to the jury, with certain supporting evidence. Then Max here has another set of variations on the same theme. But just before we come to that, he has another question for you.’

  ‘You sent to me in Zurich a summary of the police and press reports on the case. You sent me photographs. But you mentioned not one of the facts you’ve just revealed now. Why?’

  ‘Because I had no idea I was under suspicion. I saw no reason to complicate my life with unnecessary revelations. And our relationship – yours and mine, Max – was on a strictly limited basis.’

  ‘That’s clear. Thank you. Over to you, George.’

  ‘The case for the prosecution, as you will hear it outlined in court, is as follows. First, the time. A witness who was drinking coffee in Negroni’s will testify that you entered the front door of the studio at ten minutes after two. The late Hugh Loredon testifies in a notarised statement made just before his death that you called him about a quarter to three and told him Madeleine was dead. That he told you to take the weapon, leave the studio by the back door and walk some distance before you took a taxi home…he would take care of the rest. Later in the day – that part of the day you’re not very clear on – Loredon came to your apartment, where you told him how it all happened and he advised you to sit tight and say nothing and everything would turn out fine. So, the prosecutor will ask, how do you like them apples, Miss Danziger?’

  ‘It’s not true. It’s simply not true.’

  ‘But how do you prove that? You were seen going in to the studio more than an hour after the time you say you arrived. You admit you called Loredon. He says you were still there when he arrived and that you admitted killing Madeleine. The weapon was one you were familiar with. According to the diaries you had already threatened Madeleine with it. Even in your version, you threatened Peter. You say you called Ed Bayard first, but you didn’t leave a message so there is no record of the call. Loredon’s statement says he came to your apartment later. You say you remember very little of what happened that afternoon. Why is that?’

  ‘I went to Roxanne’s.’

  ‘And who is Roxanne?’

  ‘It’s a club, a women’s club. They call it the Sapphic Spa. I met some friends and we had drinks – too many drinks. Some of us decided to walk ourselves sober; the walk turned into a giggling bar-crawl. The only thing I remember clearly is coming home quite late and having to borrow my cab fare from the doorman.’

  ‘And you have no recollection of Hugh Loredon’ s visit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come back to Madeleine. You say you put her to bed with her clothes on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The police say she was naked and her clothes were folded neatly on a chair. The suggestion is, of course, that she had been entertaining a lover – a female lover, since there was no evidence of congress with a male. Now you two did have such encounters in the past, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And sometimes, as you have told us, they ended in quarrels?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As this one did?’

  ‘We did not make love. It happened exactly as I told you.’

  ‘If you didn’t kill Madi, who did?’

  ‘The watcher in Negroni’s. Hugh Loredon himself. How can I possibly know?’

  ‘Who was the watcher in Negroni’s?’

  ‘It had to be Peter. He hated me enough to set me up for this.’

  ‘But how could he know you would be there?’

  ‘He could have persuaded Madi to invite me. He’d done it before. Madi was working on a male figure. It’s possible he was the model.’

  ‘Look at the other possible – Hugh Loredon. Can you see him as the killer?’

  ‘I could never read Hugh very well. At first I liked him; everybody did. He…he was good for me emotionally at a very bad time. He was great at first aid, but never at after-care. But yes, there was . a dark side to him and sometimes I think Madeleine awakened it.’

  Once again Mather interpolated himself into the dialogue. Holding up the sketchbooks to George Munsel, who nodded a silent assent, he explained them to Danny Danziger.

  ‘These sketchbooks go with the diaries. Have you seen them?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then be prepared for a jolt. When you’re over that, I want you to put a name to every person you can identify on every page.’

  He passed the books to her. Both men watched her intently as she absorbed the first shock, then with deliberate care began to turn the pages. Finally she closed the books and looked up. She said coolly:

  ‘They’re like the diaries – wishful thinking, passion remembered long after passion was spent. They’re like Beardsley drawings – exquisitely polished, no redundancies, no false steps. But if you’d ever watched her first thrusts at a subject, the bravura, the careless mastery.…Where are those sketches now? I know they existed because I was there when some of them were done.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Munsel mildly, ‘she destroyed them herself after translating them into the form you have before you.’

  ‘It’s possible.’
Nevertheless she sounded very dubious about it.

  ‘Now,’ Munsel directed her, ‘let’s go through the sketches again. You put a name to every face you know.’

  When that was done, Mather made another incursion into the talk.

  ‘Something bothers me. We can postulate a motive for Hugh Loredon to murder Madi. But why would he set you up to take the rap? No, don’t say anything for a moment…I want to read you what he said to me in Amsterdam. This is not quite verbatim, but it’s near enough: “I was her first man – which I was very proud of – a special kind of victory. Jesus, how naïve I was! The encounter was a mess for both of us.” True or false, Danny?’

  ‘True.’ She was coldly angry. ‘It was a mess – a scrambling humiliating little episode. He laughed it off. That was his way. I was sore inside and out. I hated him for that. Why would he set me up? He’d have set up his own mother if it suited him. But where does all this get me? Madi and Hugh are dead. Who speaks for Danny Danziger?’

  ‘I do,’ George Munsel smiled for the first time. ‘And Max here is doing a splendid job of devilling for me. You’ve stood up well to a rough session, so I think you’re grown-up enough to listen to some straight talk – and at the same time not to start building false hopes. The fact is I don’t want this case to go to trial at all. Nobody will come out clean; a lot of people will be smeared for life; the press will have a field day and justice will not be served. As of this moment the State’s case isn’t strong, but neither is ours. Between now and the trial date we’ve got to put together a brief that I can slap on the prosecutor’s desk and convince him that he’d be a fool to proceed.…Not easy, mind you, not to bet on; but we’ll be trying.’

  ‘And what do I do in the meantime?’

  ‘You work. You live a normal life. You keep a low profile, stay away from places like Roxanne’s and don’t discuss the case with anyone but me.’

  ‘Not even Max?’

  ‘Not even. He’s a witness. I’m your attorney…which means…’

  ‘Moses coming down from the mountain with horns of fire!’ said Mather with a grin.

  ‘It also means,’ said Munsel, ‘that Miss Danziger now pays you a cheque for ten thousand dollars, in repayment of the fees you advanced to me.’

  ‘Can you afford it, Danny?’

  ‘I can afford it,’ she told him. ‘But I’m still in your debt, Max. I can never thank you enough.’

  Mather shook his head. He reached out to touch her hand.

  ‘No debts. We’re square now. We can afford to be friends. Also, we have work to do together.’

  ‘Now go home,’ said George Munsel briskly. ‘Max and I still have our work to do.’

  She was hardly gone when Munsel plunged into a new topic.

  ‘Mercy killing at the request of the patient in another jurisdiction…to date there has been no litigation by United States companies to classify this as suicide. If the death certificate issued by the jurisdiction in which death occurred is in order, the demise will be accepted as normal and the assurance will be paid. So we should have no qualms about disclosure to the police on the manner of Hugh Loredon’s death. Next question: the quarter-million trust fund established by Hugh, administered by Lutz & Hengst to the benefit of Anne-Marie Loredon. The original settlement was two hundred thousand dollars; the rest is accrued interest. The settlor was in fact Hugh Loredon.’

  ‘Which doesn’t help us much, does it?’

  ‘Wait, my eager friend. Wait! The fund was opened with a banker’s draft on Citibank. And that draft was paid for by a debit against the personal account of Edmund Justin Bayard. The date of the transaction was February 25th.’

  ‘One week after Madeleine Bayard’s death?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And that tells us…’

  ‘It tells us nothing.’ Munsel raised a cautionary hand. ‘But it makes us ask a question: what consideration could Loredon, a notorious spendthrift, offer to Edmund Bayard in return for two hundred thousand dollars?’

  ‘This was more than twelve months ago,’ Mather reminded him, ‘when Anne-Marie was still abroad but Hugh had received the first intimations of a death sentence.’

  ‘Let’s meditate on it,’ Munsel said. ‘Very shortly you’re going to have to front up to our two homicide investigators, Hartog and Bechstein. Your stance is full co-operation under advisement from me. Since you are being presented as an expert witness, they have to tread warily and you can be as friendly as your sunny nature dictates.’

  ‘My sunny nature needs a cup of coffee.’

  ‘While I’m getting it,’ said Munsel, ‘try this for size…. Hugh Loredon has got the big C. He’s under sentence of death. Ed Bayard is serving a life sentence with a brilliant but bad-news wife. Loredon has also had his problems with the same lady, therefore he proposes a no-loss deal: “I’ll knock her off if you set me up with a nest-egg for my darling daughter”.…Milk and sugar?’

  ‘Black, please.’

  When Munsel returned with the coffee, Mather read him the passage from the diaries describing Loredon’s announcement of his illness: ‘I shuddered at his touch…I have never seen anyone so frozen in anger, so filled with loathing…He said, “Someone will kill you one day, Madi. Maybe I’ll give myself the pleasure.…” ’

  Munsel pursed his lips in doubt, then put the doubt into words. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Max. If you say the diaries are part invention, you can’t suddenly turn them into factual evidence.’

  ‘Then try this, George.’ He turned back to his notes. ‘I’ve had conversations with Bayard, once over dinner in his house. We were talking about Hugh Loredon. Bayard said, “I don’t blame him for anything. I can’t blame any of her men for taking what she offered.” Question: why was Bayard so tolerant of a man who had made him a cuckold?’

  ‘Not enough to hang a case on, Max.’

  ‘We try, brother! We try!’

  ‘Indeed you do. Now let’s walk along the corridor and see how you handle a brace of New York’s finest.’

  Hartog and Bechstein were a very practised pair. Mather presented himself as a co-operative subject. George Munsel laid down the ground rules like a sensible umpire.

  ‘Mr Mather is here of his own free will to assist you in any way possible. Since he will be an important witness for the defence, I must, however, instruct him from time to time on his responses. Clear, gentlemen?’

  It was clear. Sam Hartog opened the dialogue.

  ‘What is your relationship to the accused, Miss Danziger?’

  ‘She is the editor appointed to me by Belvedere, the magazine for which I work. She’s very good at her job. Our relations are amicable and productive.’

  ‘Your relationship with the late Hugh Loredon?’

  ‘Arose from a prior relationship with his daughter whom I met in Italy and with whom I now work. It was she who introduced me to him.’

  ‘Did you have a close relationship with him?’

  ‘No, but he knew I was a good friend to his daughter. He saw me in a…a protective role.’

  ‘Protecting her from what?’ It was Bechstein who asked the question.

  ‘Business mistakes. She was just starting out on a risky enterprise.’

  ‘Did you know he was ill?’

  ‘Not until I spoke with him in London, before I joined him in Amsterdam.’

  ‘Before he left New York, he handed you a briefcase.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Containing what?’

  ‘What I later discovered to be diaries, letters, notebooks and sketchbooks which had once belonged to Madeleine Bayard.’

  ‘Were you not aware that this was evidentiary material in a murder case?’

  ‘It was not represented to me as such. The murder took place more than a year ago when I was working in Italy. I saw the material as invaluable background on the life of a fine artist whose work was about to be exhibited posthumously.’

  ‘In fact,’ said George Munsel, ‘the inve
stigation having issued in an arrest and an indictment, this material will be used in defence evidence and will be exhibited to the prosecution at the proper time.’

  ‘Your visit to Hugh Loredon in Holland.’ This was Bechstein again. ‘How did that come about?’

  ‘When I spoke to him in London, he told me he was in the terminal stages of cancer. He was going to Holland to die. He didn’t want his daughter to know or to be there. So he asked me.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Hold his hand, hear his last confession.’

  ‘Like a priest, you mean?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘So what did he tell you?’

  ‘A cock-and-bull story,’ said Mather flatly, ‘about how Danny Danziger murdered Madeleine Bayard, then called him and he told her to leave while he dressed the scene for the police. That’s the broad outline. I have detailed notes.’

  ‘Not just at this moment,’ said George Munsel.

  ‘And what was your reaction to this information?’ Sam Hartog asked the question; Bechstein was watchful as a cat.

  ‘I told him he was a bloody liar,’ Mather replied. ‘That his story was as full of holes as a Swiss cheese.’

  ‘And his answer to that?’

  ‘He admitted it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report this to us? You knew we had an ongoing investigation.’

  ‘Because I knew Hugh Loredon would be dead the next day. He’d arranged a mercy killing in the Dutch style. What evidence did I have of a one-to-one conversation? What I didn’t know, of course, was that he had written to you denouncing Danny Danziger as the killer.’

  Bechstein looked up sharply. ‘That’s an odd word, Mr Mather – denouncing.’

  ‘I lived a long time in Italy. That’s the phrase: you make a denuncia, you report someone. In the old days in Venice you slipped an anonymous note into a lion’s mouth. After that the Council of Ten took over.’

  ‘It’s an interesting metaphor,’ said Munsel. ‘What you have, gentlemen, is an accusation written in articulo mortis by a man who’s paying to get himself killed…and a perjured declaration from a witness at Negroni’s.’

  ‘How the hell do you know who our witness is?’ Sam Hartog was visibly shaken.