INTO THE DARK : A TOM DEATON NOVEL

by Richard B. Schwartz

  “That it wasn’t at all important to whoever killed him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what we have to do is forget the cargo because the number of possible objects is endless.”

  “Right.”

  “And forget the method, because this thief will always find a method, no matter what the cost.”

  “Yes.”

  “The key is in his heart, in his nightmares and obsessions.”

  “Yes, or in her’s.”

  “And if we know those we know him or her.”

  “Yes, I think we would.”

  As she stood up and walked toward the far wall the room seemed to fill with the mix of fragrances. “Can I get you anything?” she asked. “There’s juice and mineral water in the minibar.”

  “No thanks,” he said. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

  When she returned from the bathroom she was wearing a silk nightgown. She saw that he was still awake. “Tom . . . ” she said.

  “What?” he answered.

  “Nothing really. I just wanted to thank you for all that you’re doing for me.”

  “Forget it,” he said, “get some rest.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” she answered, standing beside her bed and looking toward him. “Never.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The May Fair Hotel, Stratton Street

  Saturday, 9:17 a.m.

  “You do know that it’s a little after one in the morning here, don’t you Tom?”

  “Yes, Chief. Isn’t that about the time you used to get up at Ranger School?”

  “Actually a little earlier,” Dietrich answered. “Anyway, I’ve got some information for you. The feds are still in Westwood. They’ve got a couple of sleepy professors on their hands but they’ve been able to piece together part of the story.”

  Tom was using a public phone in a hallway a few dozen yards off of the May Fair lobby. It was too early in the morning for heavy traffic to and from the hall toilets and even though the phone was not enclosed someone had been kind enough to place an overstuffed wing chair next to the stand on which it sat. He took out his notepad and a May Fair ballpoint. “What have we got, Chief?”

  “I’m not sure what it all means, but it’s anything but dull.”

  “Run it down for me.”

  They met at Westminster Pier at 12:30 and boarded the boat for Greenwich. Baker was in tourist dress, with a striped rugby shirt under an open, poplin jacket. There was a .35 mm Nikon camera hanging from a black leather strap around his neck. Tom and Diana were wearing light sweaters over casual slacks. “Let’s go below and have a drink,” Baker said.

  “There’s a bar on board?” Diana asked.

  “Of course. Who would come aboard without a bar?” Baker said. “We’ll be less conspicuous there. I have some of my people above us to keep an eye on the stairs.”

  There were two men on the bridge, one at the wheel, one at the microphone, announcing sites along the Thames. Neither was wearing a formal uniform. The man with the mike was sprinkling his commentary with double entendres and cockney slang. It was cool on the river and the wind was beginning to pick up. The midday cloud cover brought a chill and the glassed-in bar deck was warm and comfortable.

  “Courtesy of the Yard,” Baker said, as he distributed whiskeys and soda. “Have a taste and tell me how they are.”

  “Good,” Tom said, after taking a sip. Diana also nodded her approval.

  “I know you yanks are discovering more and more of our whiskeys. This one is particularly good. Very peaty, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Tom said. “It’s very nice. Tell me, what have you learned?”

  “A great deal, actually. At least we think so.”

  “So have we. Why don’t you start.”

  “Very well,” Baker said. “We’ve been checking for suspicious suicides as you know and we’ve managed to come up with one. A man by the name of Michael Sechrist. He was found in his garage with the motor of his Rover running. Sechrist was an expert on writing and manuscripts, an appraiser and dealer as well. Far younger than your Mr. Kepler, I’m afraid, a mere 38 at the time of his death.

  “His wife said that there was no reason for him to want to take his own life. He was quite happy. They were quite happy. At first we were a bit suspicious. The problem, you see, is that this sort of thing happens all the time. The wives have no idea what their other half is up to. Infidelity, dressing up in women’s clothing . . . the whole lot. Sometimes, of course, they’re trying to protect them. Disease, embezzlement, that sort of thing. In Mr. Sechrist’s case there was no evidence of anything untoward. Unfortunately there was also no evidence of any foul play.”

  “Where were his offices?”

  “Why do you ask? They were nowhere near Mr. Kepler’s.”

  “Where were they?” Tom asked.

  “Just off Ludgate Circus.”

  “Near St. Paul’s.”

  “Yes, just down the hill. Is that important?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom said. “Last night we went back to the Tenedos offices.”

  “Really? That’s quite dangerous, you know. I wish you had said something first.”

  “Yes,” Diana said, “we know.” She was beginning to lose her patience.

  “How about another round?” Baker asked.

  “Not for me,” Diana said.

  “All right,” Tom said.

  “Jolly good,” Baker said, and got up to fetch the refills. “Coffee, Dr. Bennett? Tea?”

  “No thank you.”

  “You’ll ask if you change your mind?”

  “Yes, Inspector.”

  “I’ll be back in a jiff.”

  “Now, where were we?”

  “The Tenedos offices,” Diana said. “We found some photographs of the spotted horses. They were not there when we checked the first time.”

  “Planted, eh? Very interesting,” Baker said.

  “We also found a note that referred to a project called ‘St. P’. It said ‘For value received.’”

  “Some sort of payoff, then.”

  “So it appears,” Diana said.

  “I’m afraid we have a great many St. P’s in England, Dr. Bennett.”

  “But only a few obvious ones.”

  “Yes, quite. Sechrist was in Ludgate Circus for a reason, of course. In London we take these historical things quite seriously. For many years the booksellers set up shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard, just next to the cathedral. The printers, of course, were in Fleet Street long before the modern newspapermen arrived, though most of them are gone now as well . . .”

  “Ludgate Circus is right in between,” Tom said.

  “Yes, of course. A nice compromise in a way. There’s very little business in the churchyard just now and Fleet Street is all sandwich shops and bustle.”

  “Is it possible that something could have been stolen from St. Paul’s?” Tom asked.

  “What a horrid thought,” Baker answered, “what a perfectly horrid thought.”

  “But possible,” Diana said.

  “Certainly. If this lot could steal a stone slab from a French cave they could steal something from an English cathedral.”

  “But Sechrist was an expert on manuscripts.”

  “Yes, but on many other things as well, I’m afraid. Ancient lettering, carving, scripts, that sort of thing. He was an expert on, how would you say . . . texts. Texts on paper, texts on papyrus, texts on stone. He sold autographs as well as manuscripts, for example, and he authenticated them as well. He was a man to whom one would go for verification of the authenticity of some form of writing.”

  “Or for the fabrication of some form of writing,” Tom said.

  “Quite possibly. He had no criminal record, however. I checked on that myself.�
�

  “He would have been familiar with the contents of the cathedral,” Tom said.

  “Oh my, yes,” Baker answered. “St. Paul’s is more than a cathedral. It’s a . . .”

  “A museum,” Diana said.

  “Quite,” Baker said. “The crypt is filled with graves and busts and statuary. And it has Wren’s original model for the church. All in miniature, of course, but quite spectacular. St. Paul’s is filled with treasures. But there are people there constantly, either touring or worshipping.”

  “There were people in Pech-Merle as well,” Diana said.

  “Look,” Tom said, as the black dome of St. Paul’s came into view through the boat’s windows, looming above the Thames.

  “Good God,” Baker said. “We’ll have to get right on this.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The Thames, off Limehouse

  Saturday, 12:58 p.m.

  Baker put his cell phone back inside his camera bag. “I very much hope you’re wrong,” he said.

  “So do I,” Tom said. “Let me tell you what we’ve learned.”

  “Yes, please do.” Baker crossed his legs and picked up his glass of whiskey, cradling it in his hands as if it were a small child.

  Tom opened his notebook, flipped through several pages, took a sip of his whiskey, and then began: “Kepler left Germany in 1938. He, of course, was not the only one to leave. His departure was overshadowed by Freud’s but it still made the papers. Like Freud he went to London, but Kepler survived nearly eighty years. Freud lasted a little more than one. Apparently they were friends. Freud was a great collector of antiquities and Kepler helped him acquire part of his collection. They both lived in Hampstead initially but after Freud’s death Kepler moved to Surrey.”

  “Margaret Harrell never mentioned Freud,” Diana said.

  “Curious,” Baker said. “Please go on.”

  “Kepler left behind four partners.” Tom checked his notepad. “Karl Bachmann, Heinz Berthold, Rainer Erhard, and Klaus Driessen. Kepler continued to use the Tenedos name when he established his business in London. An acquaintance of Kepler’s was interviewed by the Times in 1939 and said that Goering had personally gone to Kepler’s office just before his departure the previous year and told him that he would see him again in London.”

  “What did he answer?” Baker asked.

  “He asked Goering if he would be so kind as to send him Nazi artefacts. ‘They will be of considerable value to collectors,’ he said.”

  “Jolly good,” Baker said. “Just what that great fat bastard deserved.” He took a drink of his whiskey, suddenly realized what he had said, and turned to Diana. “Sorry, Dr. Bennett.”

  “That’s quite all right,” she said.

  “The other Tenedos partners chose to remain in Berlin,” Tom continued. “There’s no way of knowing what they were thinking. Perhaps they expected Hitler to win the war. That, of course, was not to be. After Normandy things moved quickly. The Air Corps had already been bombing Germany in January of 1943. A year and a half later we were in France. Paris was liberated in August. On December 16 Germany counterattacked in the Ardennes, but the 4th Armored Division relieved Bastogne the day after Christmas. By late February the flag went up on Mount Suribachi. Two weeks later the First Army crossed the Rhine at Remagen and three weeks after that we were on Okinawa. In April the GI’s liberated Buchenwald and the Tommies liberated Bergen-Belsen. Hitler killed himself in late April as the Russians approached Berlin. The Tenedos partners had waited too long to leave.

  “At this point everything becomes murky. Bachmann and Erhard are mentioned in a story in 1947 about entartete kunst—the modern art which the Nazis labelled degenerate. Driessen was photographed at a conference in Zurich in 1948 and Berthold published an article in a French art magazine in 1949. They appear to have been bankrupted by the war since they were never again able to mount any serious business ventures. Either they were destroyed financially or their property was confiscated by the Russians after they took Berlin, possibly both.

  “They surface again briefly in the 50’s and 60’s and they were photographed together in 1972. I haven’t seen the picture, but I’m told that they all appear broken and old beyond their years. Erhard was working as a restorer; Driessen was teaching in a polytechnic; Bachmann was arrested twice for public drunkenness; and Berthold was working as a factory watchman.”

  “I don’t understand,” Baker said. “Even if they had lost their fortunes they hadn’t lost their knowledge. Surely they could have found something.”

  “True,” Tom said, “but they didn’t. Maybe they were dead inside.”

  “What finally happened to them?” Baker asked.

  “This is where it starts to get interesting. No one knows.”

  “You mean there were no more notices?”

  “No, there were notices on each of them. Each of them disappeared. The time span was broad: from 1975 to 1989. One by one they simply fell off the edge of the earth. The Berlin papers are quite explicit. Erhard took a trip to visit a sister in Austria and never reached his destination; his rental car was found abandoned on the side of the road. There was no blood, no sign of violence, nothing. Berthold simply failed to report for work one day; his apartment was searched; everything was in its place except for its owner. Bachmann was seen in an alley in Leipzig, drunk and disorderly. He had accosted an elderly couple, demanding money. When the police came to arrest him he was gone. Driessen told his cousin that he would meet him for dinner. It was a holiday weekend and they had travelled together to Bavaria. The man waited for two hours; Driessen never appeared. They looked for him but found nothing. The bed in his hotel room was made. His clothes were hanging in the closet; his toiletries were in the bathroom; his travel clock was ticking on his nightstand. He was gone without a trace.”

  “And where was Kepler when all of these crimes were being committed?”

  “In the U.K. apparently. He was interviewed when Erhard disappeared and again when Driessen did. There was no suggestion in the press that he was suspected of involvement in their deaths. From the dates of the reports and the interviews it appears that he was in London and Edinburgh when his former partners died, assuming, of course, that they did die.”

  “They must have died; they’ve never been seen again,” Diana said.

  “That would seem to be a reasonable conclusion,” Baker said.

  “But then who killed them?” Diana asked.

  “A very good question,” Tom answered. “Assuming that it was not Kepler (who had no apparent motive in any case), there are three possibilities . . .”

  Baker interrupted him. “Either another party or parties killed one or more of them or one of the Tenedos partners was the murderer,” he said. “Or, of course, some combination of the two, though that is unlikely. Which one was the last to disappear?”

  “Driessen.”

  “The one in Bavaria.”

  “Yes, in Garmisch.”

  “It doesn’t have to have been him,” Diana said. “Driessen might have tried to kill one of the others. That man escaped, hid out, and then returned to take vengeance on Driessen.”

  “Possibly,” Baker said, “but there is one very large problem here. Where is the motive? These men were partners; they were photographed together years after the war. Why would they wait so long to take vengeance if there were some kind of problem between them?”

  “There could be any number of reasons,” Diana said. “Perhaps it took them years before they discovered what one or more of them had done to the others. Perhaps the killer enjoyed seeing his victims fall farther and farther into the pit. Perhaps they expected to be murdered and were on their guard; it could have taken months or years for the right opportunity to present itself. Who knows what happened? These people go back at least fifty years together. Their lives and business were intertwined. Besides
their endless dealings with one another there were two very large problems with which they had to cope: the Third Reich and the Red Army.”

  The boat lurched as it turned in to dock at Greenwich. The tourists were already lining up to disembark. “Do we have to get off?” Tom asked.

  “No, no,” Baker said. “This one’s going right out again. Just stay there. I’ll get us all another round. Dr. Bennett?”

  “All right,” Diana said.

  He returned and placed the drinks on the table, removing the empty glasses and placing them on an adjoining table. “Now,” he said, “if it was only that easy to discover who was responsible for the murder of the Tenedos partners.”

  “My associates and I are working on a solution,” Tom said.

  “Really?” Baker said. “I trust that you’ll be good enough to tell us about it.”

  Chapter Forty

  The Thames, off the Isle of Dogs

  Saturday, 1:32 p.m.

  “The Tenedos partners did not begin to disappear until thirty years after the war. They were photographed together in 1972. In 1975 Erhard disappeared. There’s no way of knowing one way or the other at this point, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that something happened which led to their disappearance. People don’t start dying in groups for no apparent reason. If the event which resulted in the murders happened earlier, why did the killer wait so long to act? I believe that we should begin with the assumption that something happened much later, something prior to 1975 and probably later than 1972. If the men could be brought together for a photograph they could be brought together for a murder. Something must have happened after that occasion.”

  “But what?” Baker asked.

  “I have no idea. That’s what we have to find out.”

  “And why were the murders so widely spaced?”

  “Perhaps because the victims started to realize that they were being hunted down. Once their friends started to fall the remaining partners made themselves scarce.”

  “You mean it took him fourteen years to find them all.”