by Medora Sale
“If?” he said. “You’re kidding. When you’re on Vice, you fight them off nightly. That’s how they pay off. It’s cheaper than cash.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Fight them off.”
“Oh, yes. I have more hang-ups about sex than you realize. I can’t make love to a woman who doesn’t want me. And whores by definition don’t want you.” His face went blank, and he turned his attention to the muesli until he was almost finished. When he spoke again, the topic was dead. “Why are you trying to con me into believing that Nikki couldn’t have done in her mother? She has as good a motive as any of the others. Why are you so sure? You don’t know her that well, do you?”
Harriet shook her head. “Hardly at all. I just met her Thursday. But it’s so unlikely. When you consider how many people were wandering in and out of that basement all evening . . . Anyone of them could have helped himself to the cyanide. The murderer didn’t have to live in the house.”
Sanders set down his coffee cup very carefully and stared at Harriet. “How in hell do you know who was down in the basement?” he asked. “Or did someone tell you? Because that doesn’t count, you know.”
“I was down there . . . for quite a long time, really. Looking at Klaus’s darkroom, telling him what was missing, where to store various chemicals, in general being very officious and overbearing. He was terribly polite about it. I’m sure he only wanted me to say how wonderful it all was, but when you ask my opinion about something technical, you have to be prepared to get it.” She noticed his expression and paused irritably. “Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked. “He’s just a kid. I don’t go in for cradle snatching, if that’s what’s bothering you. Anyway, lots of people came down: the housekeeper and the ghastly brother-in-law and the business manager; just about everyone. I remember wondering how he could possibly work down there. It was like Union Station on a Friday afternoon. In fact, Nikki was one of the few people who didn’t come down.”
Sanders waited until the muesli bowls disappeared and the heaping frying pans filled with scrambled eggs, rosti potatoes, bacon, ham, and sausages were put in their place. “Did it ever occur to you, Harriet, that what you saw just might fall into the category of what we like to call, for lack of a better word, evidence?”
“You’re annoyed,” she said flatly. “Well, I guess you have some justification. But actually, I had completely forgotten about Klaus’s darkroom. It must have been getting down to routine again that brought it back to me. But anyway, I did go down there, and I forgot, and I’m sorry.”
“Sorry,” Sanders muttered with heavy sarcasm. He reached into his pocket, extracted his notebook and a pen, and looked up at her. “Now,” he said, “let’s go over this again. When were you down there? Who did you see? Who came up before you or down after you left? Have some more coffee.”
Once more he stood in Clara von Hohenkammer’s sitting room and felt a powerful reluctance to start in on it. He had dropped Harriet off after breakfast, written up his notes on what she had seen, routed out Dubinsky, and the two men were back. A team was coming in on Monday to look at her files—a team who could understand both financial statements and the German language. Now they were looking for anything that Collins and his team might have missed. But drawn by the warm September sunshine, he wandered over to the French doors, opened them, and stepped onto the balcony. The prospect was utterly wild. Behind the garden was a tangle of trees and shrubs, falling away into a ravine; on the east side was a utilitarian fence half-hidden by lush plantings. The only building visible was the garage, with its upstairs apartment that belonged to the gardener and his dogs. That was what money bought you around here. Privacy.
He ran an impatient hand through his hair and walked into the bedroom. The room was light and uncluttered, with a large, comfortable-looking bed, a love seat and chair, a couple of small tables, and in one corner, a triangular-shaped dressing table with mirrors. He drifted around, looking without anything much in mind, and finally sat on the edge of the bed. He hoped she hadn’t been the sort of person who objected too strongly to people sitting on beds. The table beside him was almost bare. A clock, a lamp, and a copy of a paperback novel. He picked it up. The title meant nothing, but Günter Grass, the author’s name, acted like a bell, immersing him in nostalgia. And the illustration on the battered cover told him what the German title, Die Blechtrommel, did not. What mood had she been in that made her want to reread The Tin Drum?
He began to turn the pages, mildly regretful that he’d never bothered to learn German. Here and there, in the sea of meaningless black symbols, only a few names leaped out at him. He was jeering silently at his own sentimentality, watching himself sit there, staring at a book he couldn’t read because it reminded him of university days, when a folded sheet of airmail-weight paper fluttered out and fell on his lap.
It was neatly and closely written over in black ink, and, of course, in German. “Meine liebe Clara,” it started, and it ended, “Peter.” The rest was mystery. The chances were excellent that it was a chatty letter from a friend that she had picked up and used as a bookmark and that after he had gone to great efforts to have it translated, he would discover that the weather had been good and little Hans had had a bad cold. Nevertheless, something had to be done with it. He stood up again, regretfully. He liked this room. What he would really like to do would be to slip off his shoes and stretch out on the big bed and stare up at the wide, cool ceiling. “Dubinsky,” he roared.
“Yeah?” Dubinsky’s voice floated through from the sitting room.
“Find Bauer.”
Constable Bauer was, in fact, at home, enjoying a rare Sunday off duty, standing in the driveway of his neat brick house, supervising two small children who were washing the family car. The air was filled with shrieks, giggles, soapsuds, and water. Bauer was not pleased at the sight of Sanders and Dubinsky drawing up to the curb in front of his house. “Hi, Martin,” said Dubinsky, getting out and leaning his elbows on the roof of the car as though there were no reason Bauer would not be delighted to see them. “Sorry to bother you, but—”
Sanders unfolded himself from the front seat. “I need you to read this letter and tell me what’s in it,” he interrupted. “Now.”
Bauer dried his wet hands on his jeans, took the letter, and started in on it, squinting from time to time at peculiarities in the handwriting. He shook his head slowly and started to reread it. “It’s weird. It came in another envelope because he didn’t want someone to read it.”
“What?”
“He doesn’t want her to sell some . . . uh . . .” He looked up. “It’ll be faster if I just type up a translation, instead of trying to explain it to you. Just a minute. Jan!” he yelled.
A dark-haired young woman came to the door. “What do you want?”
“Could you keep an eye on the kids for five minutes while I do this?”
She sighed and nodded. “I knew it was too good to be true,” she said, frowning. “Remember . . .” On that note she came down the steps, grasped one slippery child in each hand, and headed for the backyard.
Dubinsky remained draped across the car in an attitude of total relaxation; Sanders paced irritably back and forth on the sidewalk.
“I translated it as literally as I could,” said Bauer when he finally emerged a few minutes later. “Here it is, for what it’s worth.”
Sanders took the two pages out of his hand, thanked him perfunctorily, and started reading as he walked back to the car. Dubinsky winked at one of the Bauer children, shrugged his shoulders at their father, and followed after. The letter was not terribly long.
Munich, Sept. 7
My dear Clara,
Such an old friend will excuse the childish trick I have played with the envelopes. I know when you open this you will be expecting a letter from your sister, but Friedl assures me that she will send you a rea
l letter of her own next week. She is well.
Because of what I wish to say, I did not want this to be opened by another, perhaps by a secretary, believing it to be just another dull business communication, and so I have dressed it for a masked ball, as it were, for your eyes only.
Your latest request to sell, among other things, AMZ Gmbh. alarms me greatly, especially after what you sold in the spring. It is unwise to let your holdings in assets that are easily liquidated drop to such a low level. If I sell this now—and I have risked your anger by ignoring your request—not only would most of your European holdings be in real estate and other assets difficult to realize, but because of the current value of the mark vis-à-vis the US dollar and a certain amount of reorganization in the company itself, its shares are temporarily at an artificially low level. This is a disastrous time to sell.
If you are in difficulties of some sort, Marthe and I would much rather advance the cash ourselves than have you placed in such a position.
I am coming to Toronto as soon as I can arrange it; probably the week of September 17th. You have often invited me; I now accept. As an old friend, I must insist that you permit me to talk these things over with you in person.
Please do not be too angry with me. Until next week, then,
Peter
Sanders read it again, then read it aloud to Dubinsky, who was weaving through the Sunday traffic. “Now what?” he said gloomily. “Peter, of course, is the lawyer. And that means this trip isn’t something he just laid on. What do we know about who opens her mail?”
Dubinsky shrugged. “Whitelaw does,” said the long-suffering sergeant. “When he’s around. But why is she selling all her stock?”
“Broke suddenly? Transferring cash into some other project? Blackmail? A boyfriend? Someone could be conning her out of it. Although she didn’t sound easily conned.”
“And whatever was going on, she was being secretive about it, because we haven’t heard anything. Not even from the accountant.”
“If whatever she was doing was so drastic that her lawyer was going to fly out from Germany, there must be a whiff of it somewhere.”
“You want me to go back for Bauer? Put him to work on the files?”
“No good,” said Sanders morosely. “I tried him yesterday. He can understand the German, all right, but it’s all financial stuff, doesn’t mean a thing to him. Back to our own files, then.”
Ed Dubinsky was working steadily and unhurriedly through the file on Frank Whitelaw, making his usual precise jottings on the material as he worked. Sanders had collected everything on Clara’s family and was flipping erratically through it, occasionally stopping to read something that seemed to be of interest and otherwise apparently paying little attention to the material in front of him. Finally, he piled all the folders up again, pushed his chair back, and slouched down in an attitude of total collapse.
“Find anything?” said Dubinsky.
“Hard to say,” said Sanders. “Did you?”
“Whitelaw keeps claiming that he ran all her business affairs,” said Dubinsky, “but I don’t see how he could have had anything to do with all this.” He nodded at the letter from the Munich lawyer lying on the desk in front of him. “He wasn’t even in the city most of the summer. Off visiting friends in New York and Cape Cod, even went to Paris for a week.”
“There are such things as telephones,” said Sanders repressively.
“Yeah, but if he had been the one helping her raise all that cash, or whatever she was doing, then why would the lawyer worry about him opening the mail when he wasn’t around? If you see what I mean. I mean if he’s an accomplice— Dammit!” he said, and scratched his head. “The lawyer addresses the letter that way because someone is helping her do whatever she’s doing, and that person opens her mail for her, and he doesn’t want that person to open this letter.”
Sanders was staring at him as if he were the family dog, suddenly endowed with the gift of speech. “What in hell are you talking about?” he said finally.
Dubinsky took a deep breath. “I’m trying to figure out who he didn’t want to open the letter, that’s all.”
“Could be anyone,” said Sanders. “She could have told anyone to open the business mail and sort it and to send on the personal mail unopened.”
“Like who?”
“Mrs. Milanovich,” said Sanders. “Mr. Milanovich. Her neighbour. Her nephew. Wasn’t he around part of the summer?”
Dubinsky nodded. “Maybe the other daughter was, too.”
Sanders yawned and nodded. “Sure. She was back and forth. Between Toronto and Muskoka. It’s in there somewhere.”
“What I can’t see is how that could have anything to do with why she got killed. Suppose someone was helping her raise cash. Why kill her? And why does she need someone to help her, anyway?”
“You’ve got it backwards, Ed,” said Sanders coolly. “She was doing it on her own, and someone killed her to stop her from throwing all her money away. Like her daughter. Like both her daughters.”
“So why the crazy letter?”
“Just because this Peter doesn’t want Whitelaw or whoever reading a letter where he’s rapping her knuckles? It’s tact, Dubinsky. That’s all. Just tact. Or is that a concept you’ve never run into?”
“So it doesn’t matter why she was spending all that money.”
“Or whatever,” said Sanders. “Probably not. Just that she was. We’ve got to get those damned files read,” he added in a mutter, running his hands impatiently through his hair.
“Maybe we should call the lawyer,” suggested Dubinsky, “and find out what he knows.”
“No point,” said Sanders. “He left yesterday. He’s in London, and no one knows exactly where. Or if they do, they’re not telling us.”
“Hell,” said Dubinsky. “Why should they? Nobody tells us anything over here.”
“Quit bitching, Ed. You can drop me off on your way home. I need some sleep,” he added without specifying the reason. “We should be able to get a line on things tomorrow. Nothing’s going to happen tonight.”
Which, as it happened, was true enough. But the consideration of what tomorrow might reveal was causing the drafting of some interesting, or even drastic, contingency plans here and there about the city.
Chapter 9
At nine-thirty Monday morning, in a state of extreme irritation, Harriet Jeffries walked up to the front door of Clara von Hohenkammer’s house. She had sleep to catch up on, work to get finished, and some profound disruptions in her life that needed time and thought. Simple humanity and ordinary charity had been battling with her own selfish interests ever since Nikki had telephoned her an hour and a half ago, but with guilt on their side, humanity and charity had won hands down. They hadn’t been able to make her feel happy about this mercy visit, though.
Nikki was sitting in the conservatory in the full morning sun, still looking white with exhaustion, the morning paper spread out, unread, in her lap. She struggled to her feet when Harriet walked in and smiled a pale smile. “I’ll get you some coffee,” she murmured, and pressed the bell on the desk. When Bettl appeared, however, her voice lost its languor; she snapped something too rapid for Harriet to catch, and the housekeeper hustled out again as fast as she had arrived. Nikki was getting very like her mother, thought Harriet, very quickly.
“I won’t ask you how you are,” said Harriet as soon as the coffee had arrived. “But tell me if there’s anything I can do.” As soon as the words fell out of her mouth, she realized she had made a horrible mistake. She was right.
Nikki took the opening at a dead gallop. “Could you stay here with me for a few days?” she said. Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but . . .” Harriet stared at her in amazement, wondering if this child had any idea just how much she was asking. “I need someone. I am so tired and miserable;
I can’t cope with people, and they seem to be turning up all the time, asking me to make decisions about everything.”
“Isn’t your cousin staying here?” asked Harriet. “Can’t he help?”
“Oh, Klaus,” she said with just a touch of amused contempt in her voice. “He’s not very good at that sort of thing. For one thing, he doesn’t understand how to deal with staff. If Bettl asked him what we wanted for dinner, he’d tell her not to worry about cooking, we could all go out to eat.”
“I’m not sure that I’d do any better,” Harriet said cautiously. She paused to think. “I wouldn’t mind staying here, really,” she said, lying furiously, “but I have to work this afternoon, out of town. An overnight assignment. I won’t be back until tomorrow morning. If then.”
“Can’t you put it off for a few days?”
“No. It’s the way the business works. If I can’t do a job when it’s wanted, it goes to another firm.” She felt a twinge—very small—of guilt as she said this, since although what she was saying was true enough, it certainly didn’t apply to this particular project. It was a small condominium development, and when she had told the architect ten days ago that she wouldn’t be able to start until this week at the earliest, he hadn’t cared at all. “Just get it done before the snow hits the landscaping,” he had said briskly. She had no intention of telling Nikki that.
“I’m sorry, Harriet,” said Nikki, with a stricken look. “But it’s so lonely here. I don’t know anyone who isn’t involved day and night in some important project or other, and I can’t occupy myself for two consecutive hours,” she added bitterly. “I’m worse than Theresa. She at least has the children, even if she lets other people clean up after them.” She looked out the window to hide the tears that had welled up as she spoke. “I lead a completely useless life. I have no occupation, no interests, nothing I can do well. Not like Mamma,” she said in a very low voice. “Mamma was so good at what she did, and loved it so much. She never had time to sit around and feel sorry for herself.”