Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

“Darling, we’ve already met her,” said Angela. “Surely you remember? At a charity banquet four months ago. She was with Gus Purvey. I remember her because she’s so beautiful-an Aquarius with Scorpio rising and her Jupiter in Capricorn.”

“Huh!” M.M. grunted and stood back for the ladies to go out first. “You look delicious, Desdemona.”

They plunged straight into the fray, headed by Myron and Erica. Their hostess was in silver-grey taffeta and silver tissue, which turned her eyes pale grey; the heels were down under two inches, Carmine noted. Whatever kind of feminist she was-and she had to be one-her technique was subtle, didn’t include intimidation of the male on any tangible level. Myron was so proud of her, so anxious to introduce her to everyone who mattered, apparently oblivious to the fact that she was a major player of the power game in her own right. What was going to happen when they clashed in a board room, as inevitably they would? Or had she factored that in too?

Myron introduced her to Desdemona while Carmine watched. As she was obliged to tilt her head far back to look up into Desdemona’s face, she could only see it from beneath, not its most flattering aspect. So her eyes, seeking a more comfortable level, fixed on Desdemona’s rings.

“Lovely,” she said, forcing a smile. How could a grotesquely tall woman possibly feel at home with her grotesqueness? To wear high heels! Carmine Delmonico was a tall man, but she dwarfed him, and he didn’t seem to mind! How could she catalogue them?

“The diamond is my engagement ring,” Desdemona was saying, “and the sapphire is for the birth of our son.”

“You’re English?”

“Yes, but an American citizen these days.”

Desdemona smiled and moved away; the crowd was building up.

“What do you think of the snow queen?” Carmine asked.

“Not snow, love. Snow’s soft and yielding. Ice queen.”

“Good point. Does her age show?”

“To me it does. She’s very hard, in a way you can’t be at twenty or even thirty. I imagine that soon she’ll avail herself of face lifts-the grooves between the sides of her nose and the corners of her mouth are beginning to show.”

“Is she capable of murder?”

“Corporate murder, certainly. But in the manner of a shark. She’d bite you in half before you so much as noticed her in your vicinity. But I can’t see her getting herself into any situation that would require physical murder. Unless, of course, something pushed her into making a terrible slip.”

“While you stood with her she read you as a freak, but now we’re half the room away, she can’t take her eyes off you.”

“No, I think she was more interested in you, Carmine. She had hopes of seducing you, I think, but after seeing me, they died. She can’t cope with people outside her experience, which is actually quite limited. To her, men are such poor, insecure creatures that they couldn’t bear to be towered over, for example. Now she doesn’t know what to think.”

“That’s what I read on her face, though not the seduction. What does that mean, my oracle?”

“That she’s attracted to you, silly!”

Delia came up, extraordinary in pink frills; Carmine left his wife and his secretary to chat while he started to prowl. No one was absent, as far as he could see.

He stopped by Mr. Philip Smith, whose wife was elsewhere.

“How do you know Myron, Mr. Smith?” he asked.

The cat showed at once. “It’s Phil at social functions, Carmine. Myron is the head of a New York bank with which we do a great deal of business, Hardinge’s. A merchant bank only, no depositors in the First National sense.”

Condescending prick! “Is that how Myron met Dr. Davenport?”

“Erica, Carmine, Erica! Yes, of course. She’s Cornucopia Legal, always involved in our banking business.”

“When did this meeting occur?”

Smith shrugged. “I have no idea. Ask them. In fact, if you’re so intimate with Myron, I’m absolutely astonished that you don’t know. Or is the intimacy just a Myron exaggeration? He’s such a dreadful leg-puller sometimes.”

“Ask him,” said Carmine affably.

And eat shit, you stuck-up clotheshorse! said Carmine to himself as he walked away. Your speech is as stiff as your back.

Next, he encountered Dr. Pauline Denbigh and the acting Dean of Dante College, Dr. Marcus Ceruski. They were busy devouring lobster patties, ecstasy written on their faces.

“Not in mourning, Dr. Denbigh?” Carmine asked, Smith’s snaky gibes still smarting.

She snorted, unabashed. “I look like a terminal cirrhosis in black, Captain, so no. Besides, I was dying to meet the new head of Cornucopia. What a victory for women!”

“Yes, it is, particularly as the decision was made purely on merit. Why don’t you try for Dean of Dante? That would be just as great a victory.”

“Chubb would give the job to someone from Mars first- if he had a penis and was a Chubb alumnus. I’m trying for Lysistrata when it’s built.”

“Isn’t it weird to build a college exclusively for women when all-male colleges are being held discriminatory?”

“Of course. We’ll have our share of men students, I’m sure. The real victory will be a woman-dominated administration. Chubb owes us that at least,” said Dr. Denbigh.

“What if your husband hadn’t been murdered? Or perhaps I should say, what would happen if your husband were alive at the time Lysistrata is finished?” Carmine asked.

“I would still have applied for the deanship. If John had refused to go with me, I would have divorced him. Lysistrata, I am assured, will not be hidebound in the matter of a married couple. Such rubbish!”

“How do you feel about the crumbling of time-honored customs and practices, Dr. Ceruski?”

He flushed, looked confused. “Ah-it’s really none of my business, Captain. Especially given that it’s hypothetical.”

Bestowing a smile on them, Carmine moved on. Could she have done it? An idea was stirring in his head, but it would have to wait until Monday… And this isn’t bad fun, his unruly mind was telling him as his eyes fed it information. Thank God my wife can look after herself and knows exactly why I’m here. Good Lord, a woman in a hat!

The next fish he caught in his net were actually two fish, according to M.M.’s astrologically inclined wife: joined at the hip, one swimming upstream, the other down. Dean Robert and Mrs. Nancy Highman. She was charming and in the Dean’s own age group. Their children were grown and gone from the nest, which made living in college at Paracelsus ideal.

“I hope you find out who killed that poor, unfortunate young man,” Mrs. Highman said, sipping a glass of white wine. “I had his parents to lunch-such lovely people! What can one do to ease their pain? Try to give them back the body soon, Captain! As for Bob-he just isn’t himself. Well, how can he be? I don’t know how word gets around, but every parent of every student in college knows about the bear trap. Trying to persuade people that none of the other young men is in danger takes up so much of Bob’s time! I don’t suppose you’d let us tell the parents about Evan’s blackmail?”

Who the hell told the Highmans about that? The Pughs? “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Highman,” he said gently. “That’s what we call sequestered evidence. If it became general knowledge, it would muddy the waters.”

She sighed. “Yes, I see.” Then she brightened. “Well, I do have some information that might help,” she said.

“What?” he asked warily, not sure how far she was prepared to go to ease the weight off Dean Highman’s shoulders.

“I was in that afternoon. Usually I’m not-I have a life class in drawing at the Taft Institute. But our instructor got sick, and it was canceled. I came down late for lunch, about a quarter after one. The foyer was deserted, but there was a fellow in a brown uniform going up the sophomore stairs. I only remembered him tonight after I got here because of that woman over there in the brown tabard with the glittery tapestry tunic underneath it-see? See her? It’s that huge pancake of a brown hat! The fellow was carrying something on his head, brown and circular-the brown cloth made me think of the cover on an instrument. It was bigger than the hat by far, but the hat jogged my memory. Isn’t she a fright? Why’s she wearing a hat to a formal affair? The fellow in brown had a tool belt and pouch like a carpenter, which is why I never thought to notice him.”