Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

Suppressing what he felt was an excusable exasperation, Carmine leaned a little into Nancy Highman’s face. “Madam, you have been questioned twice. Each time you swore you’d seen no one-in fact, you didn’t even tell my men that you were in college last Monday!”

“Oh, dear! Please don’t be annoyed, Captain! I’m just not a remembering kind of person unless something jogs me, truly! Like that hat over there. It’s so ugly! And then-bang! There was the workman in brown, with the brown pancake on his head. He- he rose to the surface!”

“Was he a big man?”

“No, he was very small, like a child. Thin… And he had a limp, though which was the bad leg I can’t remember. If his boots had made a black mark on the marble floor I would have called him down and rebuked him, but they didn’t have those icky rubber soles that drive Bob crazy. So I went on into the dining room and forgot him.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No, I was looking at his back.”

“His hair?”

“Hidden by the brown pancake.”

“What about his hands? Was he a white man or a black man?”

“I think he wore workmen’s gloves.”

Jesus, the guy had balls! Here we’ve been assuming he picked an hour when the college was deserted, when all the time he was there while the dining room was serving lunch. At any moment a sophomore student might have taken it into his head to visit his upstairs room, and run into this limping, diminutive murderer. Who would have-done what? Nothing beyond what was expected of a carpenter, even if the youth who encountered him was Evan Pugh. But it hadn’t happened. The killer had a sublime faith in his luck, apparently substantiated. How many more surprises would Myron’s reception yield? And, wondered Carmine, who is the woman in the brown pancake hat?

Gus Purvey, Wallace Grierson and Fred Collins had circled their wagons, but Carmine had no trouble breaking their formation. Now he had Desdemona with him, and they were awed into submission. Purvey, deprived of Erica, had come alone. Collins was squiring his twenty-year-old wife, Candy. Grierson’s wife, Margaret, another tall woman, was looking indescribably bored when the Delmonicos arrived, and seized upon Desdemona with glee. They moved away a little and commenced animated talk.

“Your wife’s loaded with class,” said Grierson to Carmine. “Was she-or is she still, maybe-a detective?”

“No, she was a hospital administrator, one of the new kind that couldn’t castrate a tomcat,” said Carmine. “Hospitals are run as businesses now, more concerned about ledgers than the quality of nursing.”

“Pity, that. Health isn’t a commodity, it’s a state of being.”

“We’ll have to get you on the Chubb-Holloman Hospital board.”

“I wouldn’t mind that.”

“I envy any woman with a career,” said Candy with a sigh.

“Then go get a career, Candy,” Grierson said, not unkindly.

“You’ve got your career!” Collins snapped. “Wife and mother.”

Purvey laughed. “You’re just sour at being pipped at the post by the old grey mare,” he said through the guffaws. “It’s a good color for our Erica, grey. But cheer up, Fred! Maybe the race isn’t over yet.”

“It is for me. And for you. And for Phil. Not for good old Wallace here, of course. He’ll survive,” said Collins.

“You mean you could find yourselves out in the cold, cold snow?” Carmine asked.

“Bound to be,” Purvey answered.

“I guess it was a big shock” was Carmine’s next comment.

“What?” Collins asked.

“The will.”

“It was an insult! Disgusting!” Collins hissed.

“Did any of you expect it?”

Grierson chose to answer. “Not even Phil Smith, and he was closest to Desmond. I’d say it was a forgery, except that Tombs, Hillyard, Spender and Hunter drafted it, kept it, saw Desmond sign it, and then put it in their vault. It came up to Holloman in a top-secrets briefcase chained to the courier’s arm, and Bernard Spender opened it in our presence. It’s the genuine article, for sure. I’d hoped that somewhere it would say why Desmond decided on Erica, but it doesn’t. There’s not one personal reference in it, even as a footnote. Just pages and pages designed to foil Anthony Bera if he sues on Philomena’s behalf.”

“Don’t you think Dr. Davenport will make a good chief, sir?”

“I think she’ll run Cornucopia into the ground. That’s why I’m going to get an agreement out of her that I get first refusal of Dormus when the crash happens,” Grierson said.

“How many of you knew that Dr. Davenport was Mr. Skeps’s mistress?” Carmine asked.

That flabbergasted them; there could be no mistaking their reaction. None of them had known. And here am I, Carmine the mischief maker, inserting that barb under their skins, yet another poison. “Oh, come!” he said, sounding mocking. “You must have wondered the moment you heard the contents of the will, even if you hadn’t believed anything amorous existed between them before that.”

“I for one genuinely believed Desmond chose her for her ability,” Grierson said. “In fact, I don’t see how their being lovers changes that. Desmond wasn’t the kind of man to be influenced by emotions. He was wrong to judge her so capable, but it wasn’t a judgment he made because she was his mistress.”

“Thank you, Mr. Grierson. As a matter of fact, Mr. Skeps dispensed with Dr. Davenport’s services as a mistress four months ago, and didn’t make his will for two more months. Whatever his emotions were, they clearly didn’t enter into his decision, just as you contend. What fascinates me is that you go against the general direction of opinion in saying Dr. Davenport isn’t up to the job. Have you any reason?”

“My gut,” Wallace Grierson said. “Erica’s all smoke and mirrors, a con merchant. You’re a clever man, Captain Delmonico-also an enormously experienced one. There’s always a kid at the top of the class with near-perfect scores and a brilliant future. But there’s always another kid who hangs around the top without ever getting there because her-we’ll use the feminine-her work is too individual, too unorthodox. And guess what? At the twenty-year reunion, she’s the one with the brilliant career. Erica is the perfect kid with the perfect scores. But she’s never been the head of anything apart from Legal, so she has tunnel vision and a calculator for a mind. She leaned heavily on Desmond, who didn’t realize it.” He frowned. “My gut also says that her heart isn’t in running a business empire. She burns for something else, but what it is, I don’t know.”

“A gut, Mr. Grierson, is a splendid thing,” said Carmine solemnly, walking off without collecting Desdemona.

Parties, he thought, can be better sources of information than formal police interviews. If Myron hadn’t thrown this one, the woman in the brown pancake hat wouldn’t have jogged Mrs. Highman’s memory, and the old Cornucopia Board would not have been the worse for booze.

And our hostess is flagging, he realized as he wandered in her direction. Of course she’s flagging, because she isn’t a party person.

Whereas Myron, West Coast to the core, is utterly enamored of parties-no, put that another way, Carmine! He has to be perpetually surrounded by glitz and bustle, beautiful people strutting their stuff, the tinkle of tinsel, the chatter of people making deals all around him. Parties are just one aspect of it. Equally important are things like lunch at the Polo Lounge and dinner at whichever restaurant is in vogue this week. When Myron visits us, he’s doing penance. No, Jews don’t do penance. He’s like one of those guys who get flogged with a bunch of switches before taking the cold plunge or the steam or whatever. We are Myron’s bunch of switches so he can appreciate the deliciousness of his own world. Why do I love him? Because he’s a total gentleman, Sophia’s true father, kindness and generosity personified, and an all-round great guy. What kills me is my gut feeling that Myron is in for a rocky ride through the tunnel of love. First Sandra, now Erica. He’s a bad picker.