'There are fingerprints on this card that match the fingerprints on the bellpush. For some reason we don't yet comprehend, the perpetrator left this item at the scene of his attack. It could be a coded message: it could be a symbol of something the perpetrator wanted to say. We really don't know.'
'How do you know that the perpetrator left it there?' asked Craig. 'It might have been there already. It might have fallen to the floor, he might have picked it up.'
Lieutenant Hook politely took the card back. 'We're assuming that he left it there because there were no other playing-cards in the apartment, only this one. What's more, an identical card was found on the body of an Egyptian-born hack, Mr. Zaghlul Fuad, who was found with his throat cut in his taxi only about an hour later. Different knife, but a right-handed assailant, quite tall, who had the nerve and the strength to cut through his windpipe with one quick slice. Rare that, to do it in one. Takes extreme nerve.'
'And, again, you found a playing-card at the scene of the crime?' asked Craig.
Sergeant Winstanley nodded. 'Not just any old playing-card, sir. The nine of diamonds.'
'Fingerprints?'
'Partially smudged, but identical. Mr. Fuad was almost certainly killed by the same person who killed your partner Mr. Fisher and his girlfriend.'
'Killer on the rampage, huh?' said Craig.
'That's right, Mr. Bellman. Killer on the rampage. And he didn't stop with Mr. Fuad. A little under an hour later, he killed three members of a black gang that hangs out around the theatre district, the Aktuz, they called themselves. He didn't use a knife this time, he used an eight-pound cast-steel blacksmiths' sledge, oil-finished, with a thirty-six inch hickory handle. Samuel Joseph Carter, aged twenty-four years, also known as Up or The Prince; Malcolm Oral Deedes, aged twenty-two years, also known as Tyce; and Susan Amelia Clay, aged nineteen years, also known as Scuzz or Suzi-Kue. He hit those kids so hard and so often that nobody could recognise them, except by their clothes. They were pulp.
'And, lo and behold, what should we find on the dressing-table where their bodies were discovered? The nine of diamonds, no less.'
Craig sat back. 'The nine of diamonds. Any idea what that means?'
Lieutenant Hook shook his head. 'We've tried all kinds of leads. We've talked to cardsharps; we've talked to fortune-tellers; we've even talked to a voodoo guy on 116th Street, Doctor Deadeye. So far nothing.'
Effie suddenly frowned. 'The nine of diamonds? Why does that ring a bell?'
'I don't think it does, sweetheart,' said Craig.
'But wasn't that the card that-?'
'No, no,' Craig interrupted her. 'That was the seven. You can look it up.'
Lieutenant Hook said, 'You want to tell me what was on your mind, Mrs. Bellman?'
'I don't suppose it's relevant… but there was a gambler in the 1920's, Jack Belias. We're just about to buy his house. He played against the Greek Syndicate, did you ever hear of them? And there was one time when he was playing baccarat with Nico Zographos, who was one of the leading members of the syndicate, and he almost bankrupted him.'
'I don't get it,' said Lieutenant Hook.
Craig laughed. 'When Effie tells a story, nobody gets it.'
'Listen. It's in the book I read about Belias,' Effie retorted. 'Nico Zographos saved himself with one card, the nine of diamonds.'
'The seven,' Craig interrupted.
'The nine, I'm sure it was the nine. Anyway, Jack Belias was so impressed that he bought Nico Zographos a diamond pin, with nine diamonds in it.'
'Seven,' Craig insisted.
'Nine, I'm positive.'
'Well, why don't you go get the book and prove me wrong,' Craig suggested, and his voice was throaty with annoyance.
Lieutenant Hook picked cress from his lip. 'Why don't you do that, Mrs. Bellman? It could be helpful. Right now we're looking for anything.'
Effie said, 'Right then, I will.' But it was only when she stood up and Craig looked up at her that she understood the implications of what she was doing. Supposing Nico Zographos had played the nine of diamonds? She was sure that he had, and she was sure that Craig remembered it, too. So why had Craig insisted it was seven? There was no reason for him to say that at all. Except if- 'I think I took the book back to the library,' she said, sitting down again. She felt chilled and sweaty and trembling, in spite of the heat.
'That's okay,' said Lieutenant Hook. 'If you can tell me what it was called, I'll drop by and pick it up myself. No need to bother you, not with those feet.'
Sergeant Winstanley said, 'Did you know Ms. Khrystyna Bielecka, sir?'
Craig thought for a moment, and then slowly shook his head. 'If she was Steven's girlfriend, I might have met her without knowing it. But that's all.'
'Your name and office telephone number were entered into Ms. Bielecka's telephone book, sir. Can you account for that?'
'I can't, no. Maybe Steven gave her my number in case of emergencies. She never called me.'
'Some of Ms. Bielecka's friends say that she told them about her lover… a married man, a lawyer. A man who was really going places, that's what she said.'
'That was Steven all over. I was the plodder, but Steven was always the star.'
Lieutenant Hook took another sip of iced tea. Then he leaned back so that his face was concealed in shadows from the tree. 'On the night of March 16 this year, you were admitted to the Emergency Room at New York Hospital suffering from a severe injury to your genital region - inflicted, you said, with a hammer. Subsequently you told one of my detectives that you had been attacked by two black youths in a disused drugstore on 48th Street. The description you gave of those two dudes leaves me in not very much doubt as to who they were. Samuel Joseph Carter and Malcolm Oral Deedes… Up and Tyce.'
'So what are you trying to suggest?' asked Craig, without any hint of emotion. 'You're trying to suggest that I killed them, in revenge for what they did to me?'
'That would be sufficient motive to make you a prime suspect, sir, yes. And since all of the homicides were distinguished by the perpetrator leaving the nine of diamonds at the crime scene, that would be sufficient circumstantial evidence to make you a prime suspect in all six homicides. Killer on the rampage.'
'Craig!' Effie whispered. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Craig could be obstinate and bad tempered if he didn't get his own way, but she couldn't imagine him killing anybody. She felt suddenly chilled, as if somebody had opened an icebox door right behind her.
'Well?' said Craig. 'What are you going to do? Read me my rights?'
Lieutenant Hook leaned forward again, so that his face came back into the light. 'No, sir. I just thought you'd be interested to hear how a case like this can seem so cut-and-dried - we can have motive, opportunity, evidence - when all the time the truth lies someplace else. As I said, the perpetrator left fingerprints on the bellpush of Ms. Bielecka's apartment, and on the playing-card that was found on her bed. Matching prints were found on the door handle of Mr. Fuad's taxi, and again on the playing-card that was left next to Mr. Fuad's body. We lifted even clearer prints from the playing-card left in the dressing-room at the Lyceum theatre, and yesterday a patrolman found the blacksmith's hammer under the Henry Hudson Parkway at West 82nd Street. More prints on the head and handle. Very good prints on the head, because of its oil finish.'
Effie felt like clutching Craig's hand, but at the same time she thought, Supposing it was him? Supposing he really did it?
Sergeant Winstanley said, 'You were kind enough to let us take your fingerprints when we interviewed you on Wednesday. None of the fingerprints we lifted from the crime scenes remotely matched yours.'
'Which leads me to the surprising but unavoidable conclusion that the perpetrator wasn't you, sir,' said Lieutenant Hook. 'Couldn't have been.'
'That doesn't mean that I couldn't have paid somebody to do it,' Craig put in. 'You know, a hired hitman or something like that.'
'That possibility hasn't escaped me,' said Lieutenant
Hook. 'With your permission, I'd like to access all of your bank accounts and telephone charge records. Only routine, to make my superiors feel happy.' He paused. 'I could get a warrant if I have to.'
'You can look through anything you want. I don't have anything to hide. Anyway, I've spent most of my money buying Valhalla. I couldn't afford a hitman even if I wanted one.'
Lieutenant Hook was unamused. 'I'd also appreciate if you didn't stray too far. I might have a few more questions for you.'
Sergeant Winstanley said, 'Would you have any idea, sir, who might have wanted this particular combination of people dead, apart from you?'
'You're making a false assumption, Sergeant. I didn't want them dead. How could I possibly know why anybody else would?'
'A close friend of yours, maybe, who knew what had happened to you, and wanted to take revenge on your behalf?'
'Craig doesn't have any friends who would do anything like that,' said Effie.
Lieutenant Hook turned towards her, cold-eyed. He looked as if he was capable of flicking out his tongue and catching one of the midges that were dancing in the sunlight under the tree. 'You never know what your friends are capable of doing. Some people have a very distorted sense of loyalty.'
***
On the way up to their room, Effie hissed, 'It was the nine of diamonds. I'm sure of it.'
'Seven, nine, I don't remember.'
'It was the nine. And it's such a coincidence. You know, one minute we're reading about Jack Belias and buying his old house, and now there's this. My God, if it hadn't have been for your fingerprints not matching, they probably would have arrested you.'
'They still think I had something to do with it. They're not very good at lateral thinking.'
'What does that mean?' asked Effie, unlocking the door. The bedroom was filled with sunlight and flowers.
'It means that Sherlock Holmes didn't get it quite right. He said that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. But supposing nothing remains, not even anything improbable?'
'I don't know.'
Craig nudged the door shut with his back and reached behind him to twist the key in the lock. He took hold of Effie quite roughly and looked down at her with an expression that was almost approaching a leer. 'If nothing remains, then the impossible must be the truth. It's as simple as that.'
He started to unbutton her blouse.
'Craig, not now. My feet ache.'
'Unh-hunh. Feet-ache doesn't count.'
He lifted her up and carried her over to the bed.
'Craig…' she said, as he leaned over her to kiss her.
'What is it? You're going to ask me if I killed those people, is that it?'
She didn't answer, didn't dare to, but looked intently into his eyes and saw nothing at all. It was like staring down two deep wells, in a vain attempt to catch the glitter of water, far below.
She touched his cheek and she was surprised how smooth it was. He seemed to have lost some of his freckles, and she was sure that his eyebrows were browner. He seemed to have acquired a new allure; a dark glamour that he had never had before.
For the first time since he had quoted to her Mallarme's line about a distant ghost, seen in a mirror, she began to wonder who he really was.
FRIDAY, JULY 16, 5:56 P.M.
A V-shaped formation of Canada geese suddenly burst over the rooftops, dolefully honking, and startled her. Valhalla had been creepy enough when she had visited with Effie, but now she was here on her own she felt as if the whole house was alert to her presence, as if the walls were whispering to the stairs, as if the windows were turning their glassy eyes toward her, as if the floorboards were silently running up behind her.
She decided to start with the ballroom. It was here that the psychic vibrations had been at their strongest and their most disturbed. It was here that times past and times present overlapped each other like flickering cinematic negatives, one event dimly perceived through the shadows of another.
This time, she intended to take no risks of being overwhelmed by the psychic panic that had affected her so strongly before. She had brought a circular mirror, which she propped in the centre of the floor. If anybody from another time did manifest themselves, they wouldn't be able to touch her, because her soul was contained in the mirror for as long as she was reflected in it. At least, that was the theory. Catherine de Medici had used a circular mirror to foretell how long her sons would live, and the Prince of Navarre had circled around it twenty-two times before vanishing. Tribes people in New Guinea and parts of Southern Africa still refuse to look into mirrors in case their souls can never escape.
Pepper had studied a book called Lookynge-Glass Magyke by Thomas De La Raiz, published in Massachusetts in 1650. She didn't believe very much of it, and some of it was nothing more than idiotic superstition; but one night she had used a mirror to tell the fortune of a young folk-guitarist and his mirror-image had been crowned with flames. Two days later he had burned to death when his tour bus overturned in heavy rain on the Garden State Parkway. She always remembered his name, Orkney Taylor. He was so burned that firefighters had thought at first that he was a monkey. Pepper had prayed for weeks afterwards that it wasn't her fault.
She looked around the high, dusty ballroom, with its leaf-clogged skylights. She wasn't entirely sure why she was doing this cleansing. Maybe she had told Effie the truth, that she was lacking some good old honest excitement, here in Cold Spring, with its tourists and its bed-and-breakfasts and its prissy stores. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe she needed to test her strength. Maybe she needed to find out what she was made of. It was all very well purveying pantry-magic in little jars and pouches; but what of real magic? What of lives that were lived in parallel? What of coincidence? And by that she meant coincidence, two things happening at one and the same time, even though they might be separated by seven decades of calendar years.
She stood up, making sure that she could see her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing a long white dress of very thin linen, with small puffed sleeves. Underneath it she was completely naked except for the thin silver chain that she always wore around her waist and her ouanga, her talisman. Her nipples showed through the dress like the petals of fading roses seen through thin curtains. All around the mirror she had placed a circle of seven pink candles, handmade out of beeswax. Their small flames nodded in the draught from the broken windows. They made her silver eyes shine.
On a glossy tablet of white marble she had placed her other magical accoutrements: her moss, and her peony, and her verbena. These were surrounded by a pattern of small gold crosses, eight altogether, seven for the magic number and one for the soul she was trying to protect.
She didn't have the same hazel twig this time, but a twig with seven different branches which she had cut from her own yard. It was not as sensitive as the usual two-forked dowsing rod, but it would help to diffuse the potent energy of Valhalla's disturbances, and protect her from any serious harm. It was the psychic equivalent of an electrical transformer.
All the same, it was necessary for a psychic cleanser to be vulnerable. Hence her nakedness under her dress; hence her bare feet. As she had explained to Effie, ghost-busting aggression would simply make the memories of what had happened here - what was still happening here - flicker and melt away as soon as she approached.
She lifted her hazel twig and slowly moved it from side to side. At the same time, she opened her mind, in the same way she did when she meditated. It was almost like gradually opening a canal lock, so that the cold water of everybody else's unconscious mind could come pouring in. She didn't use chants, or mantras, or any of the spoken spells which she had learned in her Aquarius days. What was needed here at Valhalla was silence, complete openness, complete neutrality.
At first, she had no response at all, and she began to wish that she had brought her two-forked twig. She shuffled around a little more, so that she could dowse the area behind her, al
though she still made sure that she didn't lose sight of her reflection. She emptied her mind even more, until she was thinking of nothing but time and space and the infinite rooms of the house known as immortality.
The candles dipped and swayed. The ballroom seemed to darken a little, as if the sun had been masked by a cloud. She glanced down at the mirror and it looked strangely misted, so that her reflection was blurred.
Something-
Very faintly she felt the hazel tingling in her hands. She thought she could hear music, too - not The Blue Danube that Effie had heard when she was dancing, but jazz music. Tinny, flat jazz music, playing on an acoustic Victrola.
She moved the hazel in a hesitant semicircle. When she pointed it towards the north-western corner of the ballroom, it faded away. When she pointed it back at the south-eastern corner, she could hear it more distinctly, although it was still very feint. It sounded like one of those really early Chicago jazz bands, Johnny Dodds and the Footwarmers, or King Oliver, or Johnny De Droit.
She heard doors opening, and footsteps. It sounded as if a man were running quickly and lightly downstairs. She heard more doors opening. A draught blew into the ballroom, and three of her pink candles were snuffed out. Broken, scented smoke drifted across the floor. Pepper felt the seven-branched hazel shiver and twist, almost as if it were frightened, almost as if it wanted to break free.
The footsteps came nearer, across the library. There was a moment's hesitation, and then the double doors were flung open, and Craig walked in.
'Well, well,' he said. 'If it isn't Ms. Moriarty.' He came towards her, and looked around at her candles and her mirrors and her dishes of magic plants. 'What's this, then, raising the devil?'
'I didn't see any vehicles. I didn't think there'd be anybody here.' Pepper lowered her hazel, although it was still twitching and writhing, and the branches were bending back like spindly fingers.
The House That Jack Built Page 21