by George Baxt
“Fault,” corrected Hazel. Malke was breathing heavily and clutching her bosom as her eyes searched Villon’s face for a sign of empathy.
Villon now led her up a simpler path. “Do you know any members of the Baronovitch company, that is, are you acquainted with any? For instance. I’m sure you know Romanov and Nina Valgorski were once lovers?”
“Nina Valgorski and everybody were once lovers,” snorted Malke. “Her reputation covers the world. I heard plenty about her from Romanov.”
“You were his confidante?”
She said with pride, “He had no other confidantes. He had only me. It was always ‘Malke, did I tell you about me and the Iranian princess?’ or ‘Did I tell you about me and the Hungarian countess who was a chronic shoplifter?’ or how he was pursued by Princess Margaret of Great Britain at a garden party and had to climb a tree to escape her? How women pursued him! Oh, how they pursued him!”
Villon decided to ask her the question that he knew would give Hazel indigestion. “Malke. were you in love with the doctor?” Hazel thought she might sink through the floor. Mallory was trying to imagine Malke and Romanov having it off in bed and it made him giggle. Villon waved a hand at him impatiently byway of telling him to put a cork in it.
Malke had exhaled. Then she favored Villon with a look that should have told him she considered him to be a congenital idiot. When she spoke, she sounded as if she had chosen each word with the professional care a master jeweler took in assembling the precious stones for a queens necklace. “Mr. Villon, do not talk to me like you consider me a fool. I have little patience for the precious time it would require to fantasize about obtaining the unobtainable. If I did, 1 would concentrate on Cary Grant for he is just as unobtainable.”
“I’m sorry,” said Villon. “I did not mean to offend you.”
She stared at him for a few minutes. The silence in the room was deadly. She awaited his next question with a look she hoped told him she was prepared to accept all challenges.
“Are you and your nephew communists?”
That’s my Herb, thought Hazel, take the offensive and batter away at it.
Malke hit the ball back in his court. “What does being a communist have to do with poisoning the doctor?”
“Are you communists?”
She held her head high. “I am a citizen of this country and I am a Democrat. I voted for Harry Truman. Mordecai is not a citizen, he hasn’t been here long enough to apply for papers.”
He could tell there was no point in pursuing the attack. He looked around the room, at the Picasso on the wall.
“Is the Picasso authentic?”
“It most certainly is. It is, of course, very valuable.”
He indicated a Modigliani which hung over the bed. “And the Modigliani?”
“Also priceless.”
Villon examined another painting, the style of which was unfamiliar to him. The subject was a man behind a desk who might have been a newspaper correspondent.
Malke didn’t wait for him to ask her to identify the man in the painting. “That is Dr. Romanov.”
“Oh really.” He moved closer to the painting. “I suppose it could be.”
“It was painted by Ginger Rogers.”
Curiously, Hazel and Mallory joined Villon in studying the painting. Said Hazel, “I’m glad she has a day job.”
Villon said, “There’s a great deal of wealth in the house. Heavily insured, I suppose.”
“I think so. The doctor’s lawyer is Morris Synder. His office is on Beverly Boulevard.” After a second she said, “He lives in Pacific Heights. I phoned and told him the doctor was dead. He offered to come over now but I told him I thought there was no reason to come now. So he will come tomorrow morning. He said the doctor’s will stipulated Mordecai and I are to live here until his effects were inventoried and disposed of according to his wishes.” Hazel was busy manufacturing methods by which she could cash in on Romanov’s murder, and in Malke Movitz she saw a promising potential. “Doesn’t the doctor have any relatives?” Malke shrugged. “If he did, he never mentioned them. In Paris, I remember, he had no contact with anyone in Russia, or at least he never mentioned it if he did. No, Romanov was, how do you say, ah yes, a lone wolf.”
Said Hazel, “A wolf, yes, what with all those varieties of royalty pursuing him and nipping at his rear, but lone? Surely he had involvements here in Los Angeles.”
“Whatever he did was ephemeral,” Malke said somewhat airily. She sounded for a moment somewhat lyrical and Villon almost expected her to raise her hands over her head, hop on point, and do a few pirouettes around the room. On second thought, he dreaded the idea. If she did, it would be reminiscent of the dancing hippo in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.
Hazel still held center stage. “So, in effect, you and Mordecai were, so to speak, his only near and dear ones.” Villon let her alone. He didn’t interfere. She was after something and whatever it was, it was in some way bound to be useful. “Imagine, Miss Movitz, if the doctors entire estate was left to you.” Malke said nothing. “Goodness, you’d be an heiress if you came into all his assets. Isn’t that something nice to contemplate?”
Malke said with a smile, “In Russia we have an expression. My mother used it all the time in her sober moments. ‘Do not roast the chicken until it is hitched.’“
“Hatched,” corrected Hazel. “But the possibility is something pleasant to contemplate.”
“Yes, if one is greedy. So my dear lady, if you are intimating that I knew the contents of Romanov’s will and presumably he left everything to me, that I engineered his death”—she inhaled and folded her arms with head held high again—“you are barking up the wrong housekeeper.”
There was a gentle knock on the door. Mordecai entered, eyes sparkling and face flushed while contemplating his possible appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. “Forgive me if I interrupt, but there is a great deal of impatience downstairs. The reporters and photographers wish to photograph the interior of the house and they wish to photograph you, Malke, and especially me, since my friends Fred and Ginger have told them they will try to arrange a sport for me on the Ed Sullivan show. ‘Sport’ is correct, no?”
Hazel said, “I think they meant a ‘spot’ on the show.”
Mordecai was agreeable. ‘That would be fine too.”
Herb assigned Mallory to hold the fort in the bedroom until he could send up another detective to replace him. “I want nothing touched in this room until it is thoroughly dusted.”
Malke bristled. “I dusted the room myself this afternoon. It was spotless until the police tramped all over it.”
Herb said patiently, “Your kind of dusting and our kind of dusting are different kinds of dusting. When the police dust, it is in search of clues, something that might be of use to use in solving the crime.”
“I see,” said Malke. “We do not have that expression in Russia. There is so little time between the committing of a crime and the execution of a suspect.”
A grim-faced Herb led the procession out of the master bedroom downstairs to the reception room where Alida presided during the doctor’s office hours. He instructed one of the detectives in the downstairs hall to go upstairs and replace Mallory in guarding Romanov’s bedroom. The detective told Villon a forensics team was expected momentarily as dispatched by Edgar Rowe, and Villon dispensed a silent benediction on the absent coroner. Villon entered the reception room followed by Hazel, Malke, and Mordecai. He saw Theodore Varonsky and resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow. Ginger interpreted the look on Villon s face. “Mr. Varonsky and Alida are husband and wife,” she explained in the tone of voice that might lead one to believe she had just invented the wheel.
“We are reunited after too many years apart.” Varonsky’s arm was around Alida’s shoulder again. Their presence together confirmed Ike the valet parking attendant’s information and Villon stopped suspecting he’d been swindled. Jim Mallory came into the room and was also startled at Varonsky’s presenc
e but Hazel quickly explained about Varonsky and Alida. Varonsky asked Herb Villon, “Alida has been Romanov’s nurse for many years. Is there any reason to fear now that he has been murdered that Alidas life might also be in danger?”
“I can’t answer that one,” said Villon. “It depends on how much she knows about him. Likewise Miss Movitz and her nephew,” indicating Mordecai, who stood next to Ginger and Fred propri- etorially. “We suspect Romanov was a Russian secret agent.” Hazel looked at Malke, whose face betrayed nothing. Clever lady, thought Hazel, very clever lady. “Likewise he was working for the CIA. You don’t look surprised, Mr. Varonsky. Neither does your wife and she was his nurse.” His eyes locked with Alida’s.
She said, “1 had no reason to suspect Romanov indulged in espionage.”
“Unless you were indulging with him,” countered Herb. Alida’s face flashed anger. “I am loyal to the United States. I have applied for citizenship.”
“Even though your husband lives in Russia?”
She took Varonsky s hand and said firmly, “He will stay here.” Now Hazel could read something in Malke Movitz’s face. But she was having difficulty interpreting what it was that she was reading. She thought she saw surprise and shock and then thought maybe Malke was a bit bilious. Villon said to Varonsky, “You’re planning to defect?”
“I don’t have to. I have an exit permit.”
“Don’t all the others in the company?”
‘Theirs is limited to the amount of time it will take to complete the tour. We are all thanking God Hurok arranged the television show as it adds to the time we can stay away. I speak, of course, of the remainder of the company.”
“Why’d you keep your marriage such a secret?”
Alida spoke up. “It was for my sake. For my safety. We feared it might jeopardize my chance of getting citizenship papers.”
“It wouldn’t go well with the authorities if they caught you lying to them.”
“1 do not intend to lie,” said Alida staunchly. “I do not have to lie. My lawyer assures me all will go well.”
“Who’s your lawyer?”
“His name is Morris Snyder. He came highly recommended.”
“He’s also Romanov’s lawyer.”
“Yes. How did you know?”
Malke spoke up. “I told him. I called to tell Morris, Romanov was dead.”
“Oh poor Romanov,” said Ginger as Fred recognized her impatience at not being in the spotlight. “I don’t care if he was a spy, he was a wonderful psychiatrist. I shall eulogize him at his funeral.”
Fred said, “You better not tell your mother.” He responded immediately to the dirty look Ginger flashed him. “Be realistic. Ginger; according to your mother, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a spy is a spy is a spy.”
Ginger said angrily, “Fred Astaire, where is your heart? Why, the poor man’s wife was shot trying to escape with him..
Villon asked, “Who told you she was shot?”
“Why, Mr. Varonsky told us …”
Villon faced Malke. “You said she was taken fatally ill.”
“That is the truth,” said Malke. “She was not shot. Mr. Varonsky was misinformed. I was in the gulag when she died. It’s like I told you—Romanov helped carry her casket to the cemetery in a ferocious blizzard and that is how he made his escape and that is the truth.” She stared defiantly at Varonsky.
Varonsky said, “There are always conflicting stories about escapes from the gulag. I told you what I was told. And the housekeeper has another version. Perhaps a third will turn up and then you can pick and choose the one you find most acceptable.”
Fred asked, “Is it all that important? The doctor and his wife are dead, let them rest in peace. I say we all go home and get some sleep.”
“Just a minute,” interrupted Ginger. She said to Villon, “I think I ought to tell you you’ve got a nut case working in your precinct.”
Herb asked, “Which of the many do you have in mind?”
“A little man burst in here a little while ago shouting ‘My idols! Fred and Ginger!’ He sang a couple of bars of ‘Change Partners’ and then did us the honor, or so he said, of inviting us to watch Romanov’s autopsy tomorrow morning. He wanted to know if we’d ever thought of doing a number in the morgue! Can you beat that?”
TWELVE
The lead item on that night’s television news was the suspected poisoning of Igor Romanov. Murder usually took precedence over any other news items as it had long ago been confirmed that American television viewers were a bloodthirsty lot. What made Romanov’s death even more exciting was the fact that he was the most prominent psychiatrist in Beverly Hills. The commentator reeled off a laundry list of who were supposedly Romanov’s patients, which was suspect by the knowledgeable, who knew the names of a psychiatrists patients were privileged information. True, in Hollywood no such thing existed, everybody knew everything about everybody else. There was no such thing as privacy in Hollywood, where the hired help were notorious for ratting on their employers in return for monetary considerations. Every columnist had his or her own army of informants without whom the columns would cease to exist.
Lela Rogers gasped when she heard her daughters name, not because she wasn’t aware Ginger was a Romanov patient but because there were those nincompoops out there who chose to confuse psychiatry with insanity and if her public thought Ginger had a screw loose, acting jobs could become few and far between. And if they did, who would pay the mortgage on Lela’s house? True, she had made a lot of money as the acting coach at the RKO studio when her daughter reigned as the studios leading female star. Her greatest success had been with a pupil named Lucille Ball, but now Lucy was defending herself before HUAC who suspected her of subversion, the actress heatedly explaining that she adored and respected her grandfather, who gave her books and pamphlets to read to further her skimpy education and how was she to guess it was all communist propaganda because it seems grandpa was what was referred to at the time as a “parlor pink.”
And then as Lela fumed at the television set, there before her very eyes were her daughter and Fred Astaire entering the Romanov house with Ginger pausing and addressing the microphones shoved in front of her face while the wiser Fred found refuge inside the house. “Dr. Romanov helped me survive a terrible personal crisis and I shall always be grateful to him. This is a terrible tragedy and I am here to comfort his staff as I feel it is my duty to do so. No, I do not in any way think the doctor was a communist, because he fled that country many years ago and if he was a communist, he wouldn’t own this gorgeous mansion and two limousines. Yes, he was at the gala given by Sol Hurok tonight in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel where Mr. Astaire and I entertained to celebrate our forthcoming NBC television special in which we will be privileged to dance with this remarkable Baronovitch Ballet.”
Lela was in the bathroom pressing a cold compress to her throbbing temples and taking some whiffs of smelling salts. Murder! Poison! Communists! A witches’ brew if ever there was one! Ginger had said the doctor was taken ill at the gala. Ginger was there! Oh God have mercy. Now she might be a suspect. Lela rushed back into the bedroom and dialed the number of a trusted member of her Christian Science group. She might have some ideas as how to rescue Ginger. Ginger was a freelance, no longer under exclusive contract to a studio, so without a studio she had no protection, she was vulnerable.
She cried into the phone, “Elvira, this is Lela. I need… What? You saw Ginger on the TV? Did you really think she looked wonderful? Why yes. I thought she handled herself beautifully too. Oh yes, for Ginger to rush to comfort the doctors staff, yes, it’s so like her. Well, she does take after me. I’m always quick to volunteer aid and comfort. What, dear? Why yes. I’d love to have lunch and read a chapter together. Noon will be fine. Just really fine.”
In Caplan’s kosher delicatessen on Fairfax Avenue, one of the few restaurants in Hollywood to offer late-night service, Mrs. Rogers’ delinquent daughter was chowing down with Fred Astaire
, Herb Villon, Jim Mallory, and Hazel Dickson. The place was unusually crowded with a lot of the guests from Sol Hurok’s affair and Fred marveled how after the marvelous cuisine at Sol’s party, so many people could repair to Caplan’s for additional refreshments. The five had been discussing suspicions and suppositions and who was lying and who, if anyone, was telling the truth. Varonsky’s version of Mrs. Romanov’s death as opposed to Malke’s. Villon held Fred and Ginger in thrall repeating Malke’s story of poisoning the former SS men in her restaurant in Paris, standing trial and winning an almost instant acquittal.
Fred said, “If she’s so well versed in poisoning and was in Romanov’s employ for so many years, why wait until now to minister death in small doses?”
“Well, maybe everything was just fine until recently,” reasoned Ginger, wishing there was less fat on her hot pastrami.
Fred said to Herb, “She’s a prime suspect, isn’t she?”
“They’re all prime suspects,” said Herb. ‘The housekeeper, the nurse, the nephew, the two prima ballerinas, Gregor Sukov, and the Ritz Brothers.”
Fred asked, “How did the Ritz Brothers get into this?” The three Ritz boys were pals of Fred’s for years. He knew the zany trio were very capable of mayhem but not murder, and he told Villon as much.
Villon said, “What’s fascinating about this cast of characters is that none of them are really what they’re supposed to be.”
Fred made a flat statement. ‘They’re all spies.”
“If so,” said Villon, “then what degree of spy is each individual? Somebody has to be giving the orders. Which one is capable of that?”
From out of left field, Jim Mallory brought up Ike, the valet parking employee who had been of use earlier in the evening. “Say, Herb, Ike did real good fingering Varonsky and the nurse.” He then explained to Fred and Ginger about Ike and his function.
Villon said, “He also fingered Mordecai and Luba Nafka. But I can’t see them as being married.” Hazel Dickson, who had just asked a waiter for more pickles and celery tonic, picked up where Villon left off.