by George Baxt
“There is still some left. It is very, very good slivovitz.” She handed the whistle to Villon, who sniffed it. It was undoubtedly a liqueur he smelled. He returned the whistle to Nina, who asked, “Would a person under suspicion of poisoning be stupid enough to use the same method again under the watchful eye of the detective who thinks she might have poisoned Romanov? Mr. Villon, why do you continue to forget I am a student of criminology?”
“I guess it’s because I have so much to think about.”
It was Hermes Pan who could use some consoling. His eyes were moist. He blew his nose. He watched the attendants wrap and strap Esthers body to a stretcher. Villon asked him, “Is there any next of kin?”
“Just a couple of hundred dancers, singers, and choreographers who will now not know how to get along without her.” Fred Astaire whispered something to Villon and he gave Fred a friendly clap on the back. Edgar Rowe said to Villon, “Where do we send the body after the autopsy?”
Fred Astaire told him to deliver Esther to the Forest Lawn mortician, the cemetery where so many celebrities lay in their final resting places. Ginger said to Fred, “I suspect you’ve told them you’ll pay for her funeral.” Fred shrugged, embarrassed. “I’ll pay for half,” said Ginger.
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” remonstrated Fred.
Ginger wagged a finger at him. “Now Fred Austerlitz”—reverting to his real name as she always did when she wanted to make a point—”don’t we always go Dutch?”
Hermes Pan assured Hurok he would procure an excellent pianist for the next days rehearsals. Mae Frohman was holding the smelling salts under her own nose.
Outside the ambulance attendants braved the phalanx of newspaper photographers as they carried Esther to the ambulance. Several reporters were on hand and were in the rehearsal hall shouting questions at Villon, and the photographers now began to descend on Fred and Ginger. Mallory and some detectives soon cleared them out of the hall.
Edgar Rowe had not yet gone and was busy soliciting Fred and Ginger’s autographs while softly singing to them “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.”
“My God,” said Ginger to Fred, “a musical coroner.”
A detective shouted to the coroner that his driver was impatient and Edgar Rowe shouted back something nasty and then finally made his exit. “Strange little man,” said Fred to Villon, who smiled.
“City officials in this town are noted for their idiosyncrasies.”
It was quiet in the rehearsal hall. The dancers had gone and Varonsky and Bochno were at one side of the room conferring with Hurok and Mae Frohman. The subject was Fred’s ballet and Hurok was refusing to substitute it with a ballet from the Baronovitch’s repertoire.
Mae Frohman found herself wandering to the other side of the room where Villon sat with Fred, Ginger, Jim Mallory, and Hazel Dickson. Ginger suddenly stood up and went to the piano. “Herb! Come here, please.” Herb hurried to her. She pointed to the container of coffee Esther Pincus had sipped from. “It’s Esther’s. I’ll bet that’s how she was poisoned. Well, it was mob rule around here when Esther and I were talking. Anyone could have placed the container there. Now that I think of it, out of the comer of my eye I saw somebody’s hand holding that container and putting it on the piano.” She went on, “Esther took a swig and the next thing, she’s not feeling well.”
Fred said, “Poor baby. No slow death for Esther.”
“No,” agreed Villon, “no slow death for Esther. Someone was in a very big hurry to get rid of her.”
Hermes Pan had come back to the rehearsal hall from the men’s room, where he had gone to have a quiet cry. He joined the group with Villon in time to hear why Esther was dispatched with such seeming haste. He asked angrily, “Why the hell would anybody want to kill Esther?”
“Esther whispered a name to me. It took what little strength she had left “ said Villon.
“Whose name?” demanded Fred.
“Feodor Vanoff.” Only Hermes Pan didn’t recognize the name. He didn’t know the Vanoff story.
Ginger asked with astonishment. “Here? In this room? Feodor Vanoff ? Herb? Did she tell you who Feodor Vanoff was?”
“No, but I can guess.” He looked around the room. “Anybody see Don Magrew leave?”
SEVENTEEN
The designer told Villon, “Mr. Magrew left with Nina a few minutes ago!” He stamped his foot and for several seconds spewed anger in Russian. Then reverting to English he said to Fred, “She was to discuss her costumes with me! She did not like what I had done. She wanted different costumes. On one she wanted feathers!”
“Feathers!” said Ginger with delight.
“Feathers!” echoed Fred ominously through clenched teeth. He said to Ginger, “Did you put her up to feathers?”
Ginger ignored him while snapping her fingers. “That’s it! That’s got to be it! Magrew is Feodor Vanoff. And Nina’s his girlfriend! She’s been his girlfriend for years!’’ Fred’s face had lighted up.
Fred said, “She must have pushed Nikolai to his death from her apartment.”
Ginger asked, ‘‘What about her alibi? No, Fred, Feodor murdered his brother in retaliation for Nikolai having murdered their parents. What a screwed-up family!” She saw Villon rushing from the ballroom with Jim Mallory and Hazel Dickson. “Where do you suppose they’re going?”
“After Magrew and Nina. Come on, lets follow them. I want to be in on this finish!”
Ginger was running after Fred, who was hot in pursuit of Villon. “Where are we going?” shouted Ginger.
“To Romanov’s!”
As Villon emerged from the rehearsal hall with Jim Mallory and Hazel Dickson, a detective told Villon he’d been trying to get through to the Romanov house but the line was continuously busy.
“Keep trying!” shouted Villon.
“Hey, Herb!” Fred shouted, “we’ll be right behind you!”
Fred and Ginger were not the backup Villon had asked for, but he knew it was no use trying to discourage them. Jim Mallory was behind the wheel of his unmarked police car and as soon as Mallory and Hazel piled in, he took off. Hazel asked Villon, “What was that whistle bit all about?”
Villon was busy making sure Mallory remembered the way to Romanov’s place. Mallory assured him he did while wondering where the turnoff to Beverly Hills was. Villon asked Hazel, “What did you ask me?”
“The whistle!” cried an exasperated Hazel. “The one around Nina’s neck.”
“It held slivovitz,” said Herb. “It was the wrong whistle.”
“Herb, stop confusing me!”
He told her about visiting Nina in her suite that morning, and the scene with the whistle which Villon was almost positive had contained the final fatal dose of cadmium.
“Smart lady,” said Hazel, “rinsing it clean.”
“She didn’t rinse it clean,” said Herb. “There’s another whistle.” He yelled at Mallory. “Make a right! Make a right! This is the turnoff!’’ Wheels screeched as Mallory worked the steering wheel and the car swerved sharply, almost throwing Hazel, in the backseat, to the floor.
“For crying out loud!” shouted Hazel, “you trying to cripple me?”
Herb was back with the whistles. “There’s the slivovitz whistle and there’s the cadmium whistle. Nina didn’t have to switch them last night because they weren’t suspect then.”
“She couldn’t have had a second whistle on her last night. That gown was form-fitting, she’d have had a bulge,” reasoned Hazel.
“Magrew had the second whistle on him,” said Villon. “His suit wasn’t form-fitting.”
“A very expensive suit,” said Jim Mallory, hunched over the wheel as though participating in a race at Indianapolis.
“I know,” said Villon. “You don’t afford that suit on a CIA salary.”
“Maybe he takes in washing,” suggested HazeL They heard Mallory say, “There’s a car up ahead tearing hell out of the asphalt.”
“Sure,” said Hazel, “and not
a motorcycle cop in sight. If it was me I’d be ticketed within seconds.”
“I hope its Magrew and Nina,” said Mallory, “and not some crazy kids from Hollywood High out joy riding.”
“It’s some crazy kids,” said Villon, “but not from Hollywood High.”
In Fred Astaires car, speeding at eighty miles an hour. Ginger wished her heart wasn’t in her mouth so she could say something. Fred had been theorizing about the murders and Ginger was fascinated at how unusually knowledgeable he seemed. He had gleaned information from Villon, but better yet Hermes Pan had known about Esther’s life in Paris firsthand from Esther. “Esther met Feodor Vanoff at Malke Movitzs restaurant and apparently found him irresistible. She thought he was a handsome American student who smoked a pipe, and when he got around to asking ‘Your place or mine,’ it had to be his because she lived with her aunt and didn’t know or want to know aunties reaction to her entertaining a young man in her boudoir.”
Ginger asked, “Did she know him as Feodor Vanoff?”
“He was now Don Magrew, and being trained by our CIA in Paris to be one of them. He painstakingly lost his Russian accent and, cliché of clichés, acquired a pipe, and was very quickly indispensable. And when he was ready to be assigned to the U.S., he did a quick disappearing act.”
“But Esther reacted to Vanoff just before she was killed.”
“I suspect that’s because the Vanoff case had been a red hot scandal and probably discussed in Malkes restaurant. Maybe Esther had a suspicion or two and planned to get around to asking Magrew some questions, like how come he was hanging out so much in Malkes place when most Americans spent their time and money in the Cafe des Deux-Magots, Le Boeuf sur le Toit, or Ben Benjamin’s Jazz Club on the Right Bank. Ben still runs the place. He’s an old friend of my sister Adele. Or maybe at some point Malke slipped up, as could very well be expected, and referred to him as Feodor, you know, the way you occasionally call me Fred Austerlitz..”
“And you occasionally call me Virginia McMath.” She added wistfully, “I still get those days when I miss Virginia McMath.” She was looking ahead out the windshield at the unmarked police car and said, “Mallory’s driving like a maniac! Look at him!”
“He’s probably got Magrew and Nina in front of him!”
In Magrews car, Nina Valgorsld was shouting, “Feodor! Feodor! Not so fast! We are not pursued by wolves!”
“Oh yes we are, two-footed ones.”
She suddenly turned dramatic. “This wasn’t supposed to turn out this way! I am ruined! We will be tried and found guilty and shot as spies.” Thinking quickly, she said, “I shall throw myself on the mercy of the court! I shall convince them I was a poor innocent young girl duped into espionage!”
“You might have been poor but you were never innocent. You knew exactly what you were getting into, my little pirogen ….”
“Pirogen!” she exclaimed, “how I wish I had some! I am starving to death!”
“That’s not the way you’ll die if we’re caught and you cooperate with the authorities.”
“You are threatening me!”
“You are beginning to panic and panic is dangerous. There are many routes set up for us to escape the CIA. When I was ordered to eliminate Malke Movitz and her nephew I was assured by the one person I can trust that we will be safely rescued and spirited out of this country to any place we desire.”
“Not the Soviet Union?” asked a wide-eyed Nina.
Magrew’s laugh was far from a hearty one. “Feodor Vanoff can never set foot in the Soviet Union again.”
Nina stormed with indignation. “And why not? You have served your country faithfully! You have murdered those you were ordered to murder. Could they be so ungrateful?”
“Nina baby,” said Magrew, “you don’t know the half of it.”
Back in Sol Huroks suite at the Ambassador Hotel, a council of war was underway, the participants being Hurok, Mae Frohman, Theodore Varonsky, and Mikhail Bochno. Hurok was pacing the floor and punctuating the air with a hand that held a very expensive cigar. Mae was busy refilling glasses with strong tea and wishing she could go to a movie. Any movie but a Russian movie. Hurok and the executives of the Baronovitch Ballet were conversing in Russian, and Mae understood very little. Occasionally Hurok paused to give Mae a quick translation of what had been said, but Mae didn’t give a damn. Murder and espionage had never been her dish, but the forced feeding she’d been getting lately gave her something worse than acid indigestion. Under discussion now was Fred Astaire’s ballet and the executives were all for canceling it. They hadn’t seen much of Fred’s choreography, but what they had seen was totally discouraging.
Castanets!
Mikhail Bochno hid his face in his hands and moaned. Varonsky murmured soothing words but Bochno continued to rock back and forth in pain. He associated castanets with Generalissimo Franco of Spain, and Franco during the war had given aid and comfort to Hitler, Hitler the archenemy who had betrayed a peace pact with Stalin. Mae was thinking the Soviets had conveniently short memories. Hurok was busy badgering the men and Maes money was on her boss, who suddenly reverted to broken English. “You must not break faith with me. I will not let you!” Mae waved away cigar smoke that threatened to both choke and blind her. “To break faith with me would be worse than a doctor betraying the hypocritic oath!”
“Hippocratic,” corrected Mae despite a coughing fit.
In the unmarked police car, the Romanov inheritance was under discussion. Hazel asked, “Who do you suppose gets the loot if Magrew wipes out the heirs?”
“I’m sure Snyder the lawyer has that all worked out. I suspect he’ll be a very rich man.”
Villon said with assurance, “Magrew won’t wipe out all the heirs.”
“But if they7re in the house with Malke,” insisted Hazel. “They’re not,” said Villon.
He was annoying Hazel. “Now how the hell do you know?”
“Alida and Mordecai just passed us in a limousine going in the opposite direction.”
“You’re kidding!” Hazel turned to look out the rear window and saw a limousine racing past Fred Astaire’s car.
In his car, Fred asked Ginger, “Did you notice the two in the limousine heading back to town?”
“What limousine?” Ginger was trying to figure out what lay in store for them at Romanov’s. A suspicion was growing in her mind and she decided it was worthwhile to nurture and cultivate it, a suspicion that there might be more to Malke Movitz then met the eye.
“Malke’s nephew was driving Alida Rimsky back to town.”
“Oh, the poor dears,” said Ginger. “Probably driving to the rehearsal, Mordecai to see his Luba Nafka and Alida to see her husband, and how are they to know Esther was murdered and the rehearsal’s been canceled.”
“Ginger,” said Fred patiently, “it’s probably been on the radio by now!”
Ginger snapped her fingers. “Of course! Malke is addicted to the radio. She has it going in the kitchen all day!” She paused and then said, “Fred?”
“What?”
“Malke Movitz.”
“What about her?”
“Why do 1 suspect she’s more important than we think she is?”
“Because she’s more important than we think she is.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Russians work in pairs and Romanov had to be one half of a pair and who more likely to be his secret sharer then Malke Movitz?”
‘That’s exactly what I’ve figured out.” She folded her arms and wished they’d get to Romanov’s.
Fred smiled to himself while thinking. Dear Ginger, a threat only to fiction’s Nancy Drew, girl detective.
At the wheel of the Romanov limousine, Mordecai worried aloud to Alida. “But who would want to murder a rehearsal pianist? If she is inadequate, you replace her, you don’t kill her.”
Alida said nothing. She was preoccupied with how this second murder would affect her and Varonsky. The police aren’t fools. L
ike all police forces the world over, they harbored a certain percentage of idiots, and Villon and his partner Jim Mallory did not come across as idiots. Mallory was slow and plodding, but no idiot. Villon was slow and plotting and would soon come up with the necessary logic that would lead to the revelation of how and why Romanov was murdered, and by whom. She had to discuss this with Varonsky. She had tied up the Romanov phone for almost an hour but her husband couldn’t be found. The hotel had not been apprised of the council of war in Hurok’s suite.
Mordecai said anxiously, “Alida, you are not listening.”
“Not to you, but to myself. Drive faster, Mordecai. I must find my husband.”
“You think he is in danger too?”
“Mordecai, you dear innocent lamb, we are all in danger.” Her statement was followed by a sigh so heavy that had it fallen in Mikhails lap it might have fractured his knee.
In Villon’s car. Hazel asked, “Herb? How long since you began suspecting Magrew wasn’t all that kosher?”
“The time he spent on tour with the ballet and didn’t come up with anything all that feasible. But it wasn’t until he began reeling off who participated in Romanov’s poisoning, I knew he wasn’t what he wanted us to think he was.”
“Herb, I’m confused.”
A frequent state for Hazel to be in, but Villon didn’t mention that. “Magrew listed three participants. He left out the fourth. He accused Malke, Mordecai, and Alida. But not a mention of Nina. And he knew she’d brought the glass of soda to Romanov with plenty of opportunity to doctor it with the cadmium. That whistle carried a heavy dose, the way the other whistle carried a heavy helping of slivovitz. When Nina took a swig of the alternate whistle, there was at least another healthy swig left. They ended up doing what they had so cleverly, they thought, avoided to suspend suspicion. Death in small doses. The Dr. Crippen bit.” He explained, “A classic case of slow poisoning in England a lot of years ago. Look it up. It’s fascinating. That’s Romanov’s place on the right. Hazel, you wait a few minutes before coming in.”
“Herb”—there was suspicion in her voice—“you think there’s more to this than you’re letting us in on.”