by Medora Sale
“Ed’s gone for help,” said John, bending over the injured man and removing the manuscript, sheet by sheet, from his torso. Blood welled up from two separate places in his chest and abdomen. John glanced around him quickly to see what aid the surroundings could offer, extracted his handkerchief from his pocket and looked helplessly at the two wounds.
Harriet pulled off her sweatshirt and handed it to him. “It was clean this morning,” she said.
He shook his head at such irrelevant considerations and held it down over the wounds in a futile attempt to staunch them. “He’s been stabbed,” he said unnecessarily.
Professor Martin opened his eyes and blinked. “Both of them,” he said hoarsely. He was stopped by a fit of coughing.
“Did you recognize them?” asked Sanders urgently. “Who attacked you?”
“The little one,” he whispered and closed his eyes again.
“Is it real, Professor? The map? Is it really Columbus’s map?” asked Harriet.
Sanders glared at her. “For chrissake, let’s keep this to essentials,” he said very quietly.
Martin’s lips formed themselves in a kind of sly grin. “Remember Frederick,” he whispered. “Huren, Professoren—” It came out with the slickness of an old and favourite joke. His mouth worked again and he clutched Harriet’s hand in his bloodied fist. An indecipherable sound emerged, his eyes clouded over and were still.
“Frederick?” asked Sanders frantically, his hands still pressing down in their futile attempt to hold life inside the body. “Who in hell is Frederick?” he said, turning to Harriet. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”
“It’s a joke,” said Harriet. “Is he . . .”
“Looks like it,” said Sanders, without moving from his position.
She extricated herself from the dead man’s loosened grip and stood up. Sanders released the pressure long enough to give her his handkerchief, and she used it to wipe her bloodied hand automatically, over and over, a wide-awake Lady Macbeth. “I haven’t heard that one for a long time. Frederick the Great. He said it about whores, professors, and ballet dancers, actually. That you can always get them with money. So that means that the map is—”
“A fake.” He shook his head. “And is he . . .”
“Nina’s tame expert? Oh yes, that’s who he is. Or was.” Harriet spoke somberly. “He looked like a nice man. I guess he just wanted his slice of the pie, too.”
“But why kill the person who was going to authenticate the map?” asked John irritably. “It doesn’t make sense. And who is the little one?”
“His murderer? Someone who can identify the forger? Maybe the forger is the little one.”
“But he was into it up to his neck as well. He couldn’t identify the forger without incriminating himself. Who in the name of God is chasing all over the city looking for that fucking map? Nina Smithson? Is the little one her little boy?”
“Nina?” said Harriet in astonishment. “Running around with a knife? Ruthlessly butchering innocent professors while wearing a white linen jacket straight from the cleaner’s and a pleated skirt?” She swept her hands down her body in a parody of Nina’s flawless dress and then tears sprang to her eyes. “My God. What a picture. John, you have to let reality temper your imaginative flights now and then. Nina wouldn’t know which end of the knife to hold.”
“You think she’s too sweet and gentle to kill someone.” The icy contempt in his voice froze every word.
“I would never say that. Not about Nina. Just too neat and tidy.”
In the distance they heard the muted clang of the elevator bell; the sound of voices and footsteps running filled the hall.
“Here they come,” said John. “Let’s just drift quietly along the hall until we’re wanted. Let Ed handle this.”
“But where’s Jane?” cried Harriet suddenly.
“But I tell you she isn’t here, and I don’t know where she is. She isn’t at home. I know that, because I called, and the housekeeper hasn’t seen her since she left for work this morning.” There were the beginnings of tears in his eyes, and once more Christopher Smithson looked like the gawky adolescent that Harriet remembered.
“She didn’t leave a number or anything like that?” asked Harriet gently.
“No. And I don’t know what to do. Except that I’m going to close the gallery for the afternoon,” he said, with an uncharacteristically stubborn set to his jaw. “It’s horrible of mother to open up the day after Dean’s funeral anyway. It looks as if she doesn’t give a damn about him.” Christopher pulled a damp handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose fiercely. “She called the school and left a message that I was to take a cab down to the gallery as soon as I finished my exam, because she had been called out on an emergency. I’ve got the message here,” he muttered, fishing around in his trousers pocket and extracting a crumpled piece of paper.
Sanders read it. It said exactly what the boy had said it would, and was dated with the current date, at 11:05.
“She left the key with Madeleine in the dress shop next door,” Christopher went on. “When I got here she was gone—Madeleine said she’d left just after twelve.”
“When did you get here?” asked Sanders.
“About twenty past twelve, I guess. The school called a cab for me and as soon as I walked out of my exam I was hustled into it.”
“Nice school,” said Sanders.
“Expensive school,” said Christopher wryly, turning away embarrassed. At that moment, a cruiser pulled up outside the gallery, and two constables heaved themselves out of it. “Are they coming here?” he asked in a panic. “Has something—”
“No. I called them,” said Sanders. “We needed to talk to your mother about another matter. And they’re here about that other matter.”
But the show of strength had its uses. The gallery door swung open, and a tall, middle-aged woman clad startlingly but effectively in fuchsia and white dashed in. “Christopher,” she called. “Are you here? Is everything all right?”
“I’m here,” said the young man in a miserable voice. “And I think so—I don’t really know. Thank you for coming over. Madeleine, this is Inspector Sanders, who’s looking for Mother. Inspector, this is Madeleine Moore, from the dress shop next door,” he added, his training holding good even under duress.
“Do you have any idea where we might find Mrs. Smithson?”
“Oh, lord,” said Madeleine, who sounded much more down-to-earth than she looked. “I haven’t the foggiest. I assumed she was out delivering something terribly important.”
“Why is that? Did she say something about—”
“No. But she and that young man were loading a very large piece of sculpture into the back of the station wagon just before she asked me to take the key.”
Christopher’s brow cleared instantly. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he said. “If it was a delivery it’ll be in the book—with the address and everything, because she charges by the mile.” He turned and darted into the office in the back. “I never even looked in the book, because she didn’t say anything this morning—but that doesn’t mean anything, of course, because she doesn’t tell me everything anyway.” While he was talking, Christopher yanked a book off the shelf, extracted a key from behind it, and with a wink, unlocked and opened a drawer in his mother’s desk. He pulled out a large, green leather-bound book and turned to the day’s date. “This should—” And he stopped, puzzled.
“What’s wrong?” asked Madeleine, who had crowded with everyone else into Nina’s office.
“There isn’t a delivery today. Or for the rest of the week. Except for a set of six small etchings, tomorrow.” He frowned and pulled out another book, also leather bound, but in red. He flipped past several pages and began running his finger down the middle column of each page. “How big was this piece?” he asked. “More than thirty-six inch
es in height?”
“Oh, good lord, yes,” said Madeleine. “They had to put down the backseat to fit it in.”
“How deep is the back of your station wagon?” asked Sanders.
“Forty-eight inches,” said Christopher. “Just about exactly. We have to know,” he added apologetically, “for transporting big pieces. So this would be a piece longer than forty-eight inches,” he muttered, continuing with his search. “No way,” he said, looking up. “Nothing that size has come in or out of the gallery in the last three months. We keep meticulous records. We have to—otherwise we’d be in big trouble. The artists we represent have to be able to go through the books and verify that we’re not ripping them off, and so everything has to be clear and accurate.”
“What did you see, precisely, Mrs. Moore?” asked Sanders. “You said it was a piece of sculpture—”
“Well, that was just a wild assumption on my part, of course,” she said sardonically, “because what she moves around are paintings and sculptures and obviously, they look different when they’re packed up. What I saw, actually, was something long and sort of narrow, wrapped in those gray padded things Nina uses to protect stuff she’s moving. I mean, it could have been a load of two-by-fours, for all I know. Except that she doesn’t sell lumber.”
Harriet opened her mouth in horror and John glowered in her direction. “Let’s say it wasn’t something she was selling, but really was a load of two-by-fours,” he said, his mind whirling ferociously to come up with something, “or something she’d bought for her own use, like—”
“A patio umbrella?” suggested Harriet. “Or maybe a long, skinny ironing board?”
John glared at her. “Would something like that have the right dimensions?” he asked.
“I suppose so,” said Madeleine, looking oddly at him.
“Then does anyone know where she would be taking it? And who is the young man you mentioned? An employee?”
An expression of acute discomfort spread over Christopher’s face. “Not really,” he said. “Mother’s only employee—except for us—is Joe, the caretaker, and he’s about sixty.”
“So who was this?”
“He was mother’s latest diversion.”
“An artist?”
“Oh—they’re all artists. Con artists.” He smiled maliciously. “Under the terms of Father’s will, she loses all her money if she remarries,” said the young man. “So you can be damned sure she’s not going to. Instead she amuses herself with these little toys.”
“Do you know who this one is?”
“The latest? That’s Peter. Pretty Peter Bellingham. And if she had some goodies and Peter in the station wagon, they’ve probably headed for the farm.” He wrapped his arms around his chest with the expression of acutest misery on his face. “Goddammit. If she dragged me away from school one more time just so she could go off with that little prick . . .” He stopped, blushing, when he realized that Harriet and Madeleine were still in the room.
“Don’t worry about it, Christopher,” said Harriet. “He is a little prick. But where is the farm?”
The next thing Jane was conscious of was dust. Dust and darkness. Her face felt as if it were buried in little furry, fuzzy bits of things, and her arms were caught in something rough and dusty. She itched. She tried to move her arms but whatever was covering them was holding them down, and she felt terribly sleepy. With one last effort of will she half-raised her body and wriggled ferociously. The covering loosened and one arm popped free. She rubbed her face, sneezed, and lost hold of consciousness again.
In thirty minutes, they had secured the gallery, leaving a constable posted there, and delivered a very unhappy Christopher home to the care of the housekeeper, leaving another constable posted outside the house. The housekeeper had looked at Sanders, and then at the boy, said, “Have you eaten?” and when Christopher shook his head, whisked him off with a glare to the kitchen.
Distressed and hungry as he had been, however, his directions to the farm were clear.
They pulled up in front of a charming red brick farmhouse that presented its east face to the road. A well-kept circular gravel drive swept past its front door; its front lawn was planted with groupings of birches and willows. The drive on the north side extended along the house to the back; on the south side was a garden with roses and other bright flowers and more gravel paths. The barn in back looked as if hundreds of thousands had been spent to restore it, and nothing as messy as an animal was ever going to set foot in it again. There were large woods on either side of the house, and a stream angled across the property. But to call it a farm was stretching one’s definition of the word, except that it was isolated from its neighbours. Ed Dubinsky parked the car at the corner of the house, out of the way of front or side windows. The front end of what could well be a silver, shiny-new station wagon extended a foot or so past the back of the house. The windows were shrouded in heavy curtains and, except for the car, there was an air of emptiness about the place. Sanders nodded once in the direction of the rear of the house and then beckoned Harriet to follow him.
The next time Jane reached consciousness she was aware of a whole range of miseries. She was desperately thirsty; she itched all over; she was lying on a very hard surface of limited dimensions and was unable to straighten out her legs. She pushed herself cautiously to a sitting position without hitting her head; the blackness swam around her and she felt seasick. She reached out her hands in desperation for support. Her fingers touched three surfaces of rough plaster and one of painted wood. Small amounts of light trickled in around that particular wall. Simple, my dear Watson, she muttered to herself, the words billowing and echoing in her head in an unsettling manner, you have been shut in a closet. That is, first you were wrapped in an exceedingly dusty covering—she picked up a segment of it and felt it lightly with her sensitive fingers—and then left in a closet.
The next question was, is this closet locked? Or merely closed from the outside? As her mind grappled with this enormous problem, she sank back down onto the canvas and floated far away.
A creak of a floorboard and a whiff of a scent oozed her back into consciousness. For some reason she could not remember, they engendered fear in her and she crawled back into the dusty padded cover.
A voice drifted in on a wave of cool air. “She’s still out. I told you. This stuff is good for a minimum of eight hours—more like twelve.”
“What are we going to do with her?”
“I think she should join her husband, don’t you? A nice little gesture of loyalty and fidelity—”
“Loyalty and fidelity.” The words bumbled about in the dark, repeating themselves over and over without meaning anything.
“—the map. After all that work—”
“Darling, you don’t seem to realize that the map is the least of our problems right now.”
Whose voice was that? She blinked, hard, several times, but it didn’t help her mind to focus, and the voices were reduced to distant babble.
“But why?” with its mocking echo, “—why?—why?” trailed in from far away.
Jane blinked and tried to concentrate.
“Because of those fucking pictures you stuck on the wall, you fool. She recognized Edward. Whatever possessed you to put that photograph on the wall of the goddamn office where anyone could see it? And where in hell did you get it? My connection with the whole British operation is my own business and no one else’s. The cops were happy to have poor stupid Dean thrown at them and to close the books on the whole thing. What did you think you were doing?”
“I only wanted to dress up the office,” said a distant voice. “And Christopher had a whole box of photographs of you with various people. We got bored while you and Dean were off in New York and slipped them into some old frames. By the way, who took that picture?”
“None of your goddamn business who took it.” The voices
drifted farther and Jane slept.
When next she heard a voice, it was clear and very close at hand. The voice of a young and nervous man. “Do you think they’ll believe that she killed Martin?”
“That depends. If no one saw you leaving his office, they might. Or they might not connect him with Guy’s death at all. Who knows we know him, after all?”
“No one saw me. I was very careful, really I was, Nina.”
“Careful! You call tearing over to the university and stabbing a well-known professor in broad daylight careful? He wouldn’t have said anything, you dolt. He was in it up to his ears.”
“I told you, Nina, he said he was going to the police. He was writing out everything he knew, sending in his resignation and going to the police. What else could I do?”
“I can think of several things,” said Nina acidly. “But it’s too late now. You can turn your ingenious brain to dealing with her.”
“Ring the doorbell,” said John. “I’ll be at the corner of the house, just in case.”
“Where’s Ed?”
“Covering the back. At least I hope he is.”
Harriet leaned on the doorbell, listening hard for sounds from inside. After a minute, she heard a swish of stocking feet on bare wood and the door opened. “Harriet,” cried Nina Smithson, “how very unexpected. How did you find out about this place? I thought it was one of my best-kept secrets.”
“Ah, well,” said Harriet sweetly, “it’s hard to trust anyone these days, isn’t it? John is admiring your roses over there. He’s such an avid gardener,” she added, raising her voice. John raised a hand in salute and sauntered over to join them.
“Come into the living room,” said Nina. “We just lit the fire to take the chill off the place. You know, I got to work this morning and realized that I simply couldn’t carry on, and so I just came on up here for a little peace and quiet. I’ll probably be back down again Sunday. Would you like some tea? Peter, darling, you might as well bring in the tea instead of skulking out there in the kitchen.” And Peter Bellingham walked in with a scowl, a tea tray, and four cups.