The Novel Art of Murder

by V. M. Burns

  “Probably wanted to make sure his baby brother didn’t get shot out of the sky by the allies,” Freddie added.

  Nana Jo nodded. “Probably. Anyway, he found a lot of information about their capture. Apparently the von Brauns didn’t want the Soviets to get the missile technology they’d been working on and Wernher tried to make sure all of the reports, as well as his team of scientists, were captured by the Americans. Magnus rode his bike to an American anti-tank division and announced the inventor of the V-2 rocket wanted to surrender to them. The Americans were suspicious but investigated anyway and found out he was telling the truth.”

  “About this anyway,” Freddie said.

  “Magnus, Wernher, and the scientist closest to the V-2 surrendered to the Americans and we got all of their documents and files.”

  “Small consolation for all the people killed by it,” Freddie griped.

  “True, but at least it didn’t end up in the hands of the Soviets or the cold war might have gone differently.” She flipped through her iPad. “He came to the United States in November 1945 through that Operation Paperclip Irma told us about. In 1955, he started working at Chrysler. I guess that’s when he moved to Michigan. Later, he moved to the UK and worked in London and Coventry. He retired from Chrysler in 1975. Lived in Coventry for a while and then moved back to the States.”

  Freddie snorted. “That takes nerve, moving to Coventry. That city was destroyed by the Luftwaffe. Have you seen pictures of the bombing? It was—”

  “Freddie, stop it. I know you have a lot of passion around World War II, but this isn’t helping. Magnus is dead.” Nana Jo squeezed his hand.

  He nodded. “I know. I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath and looked around at the rest of us. “I lost my brother in the war.”

  We expressed our condolences. Irma sat quietly with her head bowed.

  Nana Jo went back to her iPad. “Elliot’s still working on finding out what he can about the photo, but he thought it looked authentic. He also looked into Maria’s family tree. As we suspected, there’s nothing connecting her to Russian royalty. He couldn’t find anything about her medical health, but then HIPPA laws are pretty strict.”

  “I might be able to help,” Judge Miller said. “I got a look at the forensic team’s report. The police found some medicine bottles in her room.” He pulled out a notepad. “The coroner says the meds were basically sugar pills.”

  “You mean she didn’t have a bad heart?” I asked.

  “Nope.” The judge shook his head.

  “Why that lying little b—”

  “Irma!”

  “I agree with Irma,” Nana Jo said.

  Judge Miller held up his hands. “Hold on. I happen to know the doctor who prescribed the pills. He wouldn’t give me specifics about Maria. He made it clear he couldn’t talk about her but was only talking in general terms. He gave me a report on hypochondriacs. Apparently, it can be a debilitating psychological condition. For some people, their mental belief in a medical condition is so strong they can make themselves physically ill.”

  “Even though there is nothing medically wrong?” I asked.

  He nodded. “He told me a story about a man who got trapped in a refrigerated train car who died of hyperthermia even though the refrigerator wasn’t turned on.”

  “You mean he froze to death?” Dorothy asked.

  Judge Miller nodded. “He believed the refrigeration was turned on and his body responded accordingly. The mind is very powerful.”

  “So, Maria believed she had a heart problem, so she gave herself a heart problem?” Nana Jo asked.

  “Again, my friend wouldn’t specifically say he was talking about Maria Romanov, but what he said was if someone believed they had a heart problem, their body could respond with the symptoms of a heart problem. However, giving medicine, like say, Digitalis, to someone who doesn’t have heart disease could prove fatal.”

  “Mystery writers use Digitalis a lot,” I mused. “Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers both used it as a lethal poison.”

  “Isn’t Digitalis used to help heart disease?” Ruby Mae looked up from her knitting. “I had an uncle who used to take it.”

  Judge Miller smiled. “Yes. That’s why it was such a good way to poison people who had bad hearts. It used to be prescribed a lot more, but it’s tricky. Too much can kill someone who is already taking it for heart disease. Doctors expected to find the Digitalis in the blood, so it might not raise any flags unless the dosage was exceptionally high.” He shook his head. “Fascinating stuff.”

  “But how does this help?” Nana Jo asked.

  “Sorry, I got distracted.” He grinned. “Someone who believed they had a bad heart might be prescribed something harmless to help alleviate the symptom their mind might produce.”

  “So, if Maria believed she had a heart problem and he did nothing, then her body could replicate the symptoms,” I said. “A doctor couldn’t ignore it, and he couldn’t prescribe the real pills because they would be deadly because there wasn’t actually anything wrong.”

  He nodded.

  “So, he prescribed a harmless sugar pill,” Nana Jo said.

  “That’s the scenario I put forth and he agreed that a physician might do something like that, especially if the patient had been to a number of doctors and wouldn’t accept there was nothing wrong with them.”

  “For all intents and purposes then, Maria did have a heart condition.” Nana Jo typed.

  “That’s about the size of it.” Judge Miller sat back. “There wasn’t really anything else in the forensic information I looked through that raised any flags.”

  Dorothy leaned forward. “Well, I talked to my sister, Gertie, and showed her the pictures from Magnus’s room and boy, was she excited.”

  “Why?” Nana Jo asked. “Are they valuable?”

  Dorothy nodded. “She said she would have to examine them in person to be sure, but if they’re the pieces she thinks they are, they’re not just valuable, they’re priceless.”

  Her comments had the desired effect of generating awe and Dorothy didn’t let her moment pass. “She said this one”—Dorothy pulled out a paper copy of the picture Nana Jo sent—“might be View of a Dutch Square by Dutch artist Jan van der Heyden, painted in the seventeenth century. Apparently before the war, the painting was owned by a family named Krauss.” She read through her notes. “Yes, Gotlieb and Matilde Krauss. They were Jews who fled Vienna before the war, but the Gestapo confiscated their art.”

  We stared at the small painting with a new look of awe.

  “The ballet dancers look like a missing painting by Degas.” Dorothy read through her notes and then looked up. “Of course, they could just be imitations. Only an art expert could tell for certain.”

  “Suppose these paintings are the real deal. What does that mean?” I asked.

  Dorothy leaned back. “She said they would have to be authenticated. The tricky thing is proving ownership. Apparently, some of the art was stolen. Others may have been forcibly sold.”

  “What’s that?” Ruby Mae asked.

  “The original owners may have been forced to sell against their will. The new owners may have all of the right paperwork to show they paid for the art. All of the original parties are most likely dead now, so it could prove hard to show ownership.” Dorothy passed around the other papers she’d printed from her sister. “She suggested we contact this organization with the details.”

  They looked at the papers and then handed them to me. I looked up.

  “You should pass that along to Stinky Pitt,” Nana Jo said.

  I folded the papers and nodded.

  Dorothy didn’t have anything else, so I went next. I recapped the information I’d learned about Magnus from Isaac Horwitz.

  Irma was exceptionally quiet. She eventually looked up. “I didn’t know all of that about Magnus. If I had, I would never have . . .”

  We all looked at each other, unsure of how to proceed.

  Nana
Jo looked at Irma. “Irma, you need to tell us what you do know about Magnus and what really happened that night.” She stared hard at Irma. “I mean all of it.” Her tone was kinder than her words.

  Irma took a deep breath. “He told me he’d been a German pilot during the war. He also told me how he worked as his brother’s personal assistant.” She looked around at each of us. “But he never mentioned a word about hurting people. He said he wouldn’t have been allowed in the country if he had been guilty of war crimes.” She looked down. “I guess he only told me what he wanted me to know. I didn’t look at the art in his bedroom. I’d only been in there once before and I wasn’t exactly looking at his artwork.”

  Irma seemed so despondent, no one made comments.

  She then told about bringing oysters and whiskey to his room the night he was murdered. She swore they both ate and drank the same things, so the cyanide couldn’t have been in the food.

  “I panicked and tossed the shells and the whiskey before the police came. That detective made me show him where. He got it out. Said it was evidence.” She coughed.

  “I’m really confused,” I said. “If you two both ate and drank the same things, how did Magnus get cyanide poisoning?”

  Irma shrugged.

  “Sam’s right. He had to have eaten or drank something you didn’t. Now think,” Nana Jo ordered.

  Irma paused for a few minutes but then shook her head. “Well, let me see.” She recapped each moment from the time she knocked on his door. “We ate the oysters and then moved into the bedroom.” She recalled. “He . . . that’s right. He went to the bathroom. Said he had to take his medicine.”

  “Did you tell the police?” I asked.

  Irma shook her head. “I forgot. Do you think that’s when it happened?”

  “Depends. What happened when he came out?”

  “He came back to the bed and we were . . . well, you know, but then he started choking and clutching his chest and shaking.” She shivered. “I thought he was having a heart attack.” She coughed and took a drink from her flask. “Then he died.”

  “That has to be when it happened,” Freddie added.

  I thought for several seconds.

  “What’s wrong, Sam?” Nana Jo asked.

  “I was just wondering how the poison got in the medicine. Detective Pitt didn’t mention it, but I’ll ask him tomorrow if he checked the medicine for cyanide.”

  We discussed cyanide further and Nana Jo pulled up an article on her iPad and read it to us. Depending on the dosage, it could have done the trick.

  “I guess cyanide capsules might have been given to important German officers,” Freddie spoke softly. “In case they were captured. That’s how Himmler died.”

  “What did they do with the pills after the war?” Nana Jo asked.

  No one knew the answer.

  Freddie went next. “I watched the copy of the security footage. There wasn’t anything memorable on it. I’m going to go back and look through some of the other footage from the day Maria died. Maybe I’ll find something helpful.”

  Ruby Mae finished the row she was knitting. “Well, I got some information I think you all are going to find very interesting.” She looked up. “I talked to Gaston Renoir.”

  Judge Miller looked puzzled.

  “He’s the chef at Shady Acres. Remember Sam told us someone saw him bringing a tray to Maria’s room the night she was killed?” She looked around and we nodded.

  “Plus, Detective Pitt mentioned the contents of her stomach, Lobster Thermidor, asparagus, pears poached in champagne.” She sniffed. “Well, I asked him about that. He didn’t want to say anything, but I could tell he was terrified. Turns out Maria was blackmailing him.”

  We gasped. “Blackmail?”

  Ruby Mae nodded. “She found out he’d been arrested and tried for murder.”

  She looked at all of the stunned faces and paused to pick up her knitting before she continued. “He was a prestigious chef at Le Cordon Bleu and left to open a five-diamond restaurant in New York. He was very successful until he got embroiled in scandal.”

  “What kind of scandal?” Irma leaned forward. “This sounds juicy.”

  “His lover’s husband was poisoned.”

  “Poisoned?”

  She nodded.

  “Was it cyanide?” I asked.

  She paused and then shook her head. “No. He said the man was allergic to shellfish. The police believed he knew and deliberately put something in the food to cause him to go into some kind of shock.”

  “Anaphylactic shock,” Judge Miller added. “I had a case like that once when I was a public defender.”

  “So, our chef is a convicted felon?” Nana Jo looked incredulous. “That Miss Bennett must be out of her mind. If the residents knew about this, there’s no way she’d be able to charge what they charge for the place.”

  “He was never convicted.” Ruby Mae stared at Nana Jo. “He was in prison in upstate New York during the trial but got released on a technicality.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t be allowed to cook. What’s happening to this place.” Nana Jo pounded the table. “This needs to go before the board of directors.”

  Ruby Mae looked sad. “I suppose, but I don’t believe he killed Maria.”

  “Why not? He had motive. He had opportunity and he had the means.” Nana Jo wasn’t going to be distracted.

  “But you’re forgetting something. Maria wasn’t poisoned,” I said.

  “He could have shot her.” Nana Jo didn’t look as though even she believed that. She shook her head. “I guess you’re right.”

  “I could be wrong,” Ruby Mae said, “but he sounded sincere. He cried when he talked about how his greatest regret was not having had an opportunity to clear his name.” She looked around the room. “I gathered he must have had it pretty rough after that. He struggled to get work in New York for years. No one would hire him. Later he moved to Michigan.”

  “What happened to the woman?” Irma asked. “The one whose husband got poisoned?”

  Ruby Mae shrugged. “I didn’t ask him. I don’t think they got married, though. He didn’t get married until he got to Michigan. He lived a quiet life until his wife died. He sounded like he was pretty lonely. I guess that’s why he came to Shady Acres. He didn’t have a lot of money and was renting a small apartment. The old manager, the guy who was here before Denise Bennett, knew about his past and must have felt sorry for him. So, he offered to let him stay in exchange for cooking. He’s lived in fear of his secret coming to light.”

  “So, how did it come to light?” Nana asked. “How did Maria find out?”

  She shrugged. “He didn’t know, but she demanded special treatment to keep his secret.”

  “Well, that dirty, b—”

  “Irma!”

  She put her hand over her mouth as she broke into a coughing fit.

  We talked for several minutes, but no one had any useful ideas. We decided to call it a day. We would dig deeper and reconvene tomorrow. Hopefully, the new day would bring new answers.

  Nana Jo had been staying in her villa at the retirement village a lot, but tonight she stayed with me. We went upstairs and found a batch of cookies in the freezer. We heated them in the microwave for a few seconds until they were warm and soft and gooey. I poured milk, but Nana Jo made a cup of coffee to drink with hers.

  We sat on the barstools and ate our treats.

  “Something on your mind, Sam? Want to talk about it?”

  I munched my cookie and tried to put the questions floating through my mind into some type of logical order. “How did Maria find out about Gaston? It sounds like the incident happened years earlier in New York. So far, we haven’t found anything to indicate she knew him.”

  “Maybe someone told her?”

  “Maybe, but who?”

  She shook her head. “No idea.”

  “And another thing, didn’t Detective Pitt say Maria’s door was locked?”

 
She nodded. “Denise Bennett opened it and found her.”

  “Then how did the murderer get in?” I stared at her. “I hadn’t thought much about it, but you know how when I write, it tends to parallel things going on in my real life, well, I wrote a locked room murder.”

  “Who’d you kill?”

  “Jessica Carlisle. She was dating Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s son, but planned to toss him over for James.”

  “I thought Daphne and James were a couple?”

  I nodded. “They are, but that’s just how things went. I made Jessica into a real tart and I guess her nature just came out. Someone like that would try to go after a duke.”

  Nana Jo stared at me. “Interesting.”

  Something in Nana Jo’s eyes made me suspicious. “What?”

  “It’s just like you said, your writing imitates what’s going on in real life.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, Jessica is a tart in the book. Maria was a tart in real life. Jessica is killed in a locked room murder. Maria is killed in a locked room murder. Maybe your subconscious can figure out how the real murder was done if you can figure out how the murder in your book happens?”

  We stared at each other for several seconds. “I don’t see how. It’s not like I know what’s going to happen. I’m not a plotter. I don’t write out my entire plot ahead of time. I just create the characters and let them do what they do.” I shrugged.

  “Your subconscious follows the personalities of the characters. Your characters share characteristics of real people. So, if you write, maybe your subconscious can help figure out who killed Maria while you’re figuring out who killed Jessica.”

  I smiled. “Well, then, I guess I better write more.”

  “Write more and write faster.”

  We talked a little longer and then went to bed. I let the dogs out and processed what Nana Jo said. I wasn’t sure her logic was sound, but there was a tiny . . . germ of something that rang true. I knew my writing helped clear my thoughts, but the idea that it could help me solve this murder seemed farfetched. However, time was running out and desperate times called for desperate measures. So, I pulled out my laptop.