Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

“If the bottle was full, about sixty grams-two rounded tablespoons,” Patrick said.

“You were right, Carmine,” Silvestri said. “One killer.”

“An adroit and ingenious killer. He used whatever tools were available to him-usually frustrated people. Barbara Norton and Pauline Denbigh both wanted to be free of domineering men without messy divorces and visualized persecution. Joshua Butler wanted to live his fantasies in the real world, but needed to be shown how.”

“What about the rest, Carmine?” Corey asked.

“More direct, if by ‘rest’ you mean Evan Pugh and Desmond Skeps. We can forget solving Beatrice Egmont, Cathy Cartwright, and the three shootings. An insurance company would call them collateral damage.”

“You don’t think that of Dee-Dee Hall?” Marciano asked.

“No, I think he killed her in person-why, I don’t know.”

“Okay, next phase?” Silvestri asked, parking his ashtray and its cigar under Danny’s nose.

“A general regrouping,” Carmine said, and sighed. “Oh, how I hate Cornucopia! But it’s back into the fray, guys.”

“Erica Davenport?” Corey asked hopefully.

“She’s involved, but she’s not the mastermind. I put her down as-” He broke off, frowning. No, he couldn’t mention Ulysses. “I put her down as a red herring.”

“That wasn’t what you were going to say,” Silvestri said as everyone filed out of his office.

“Well, I couldn’t say it! That’s why I hate Cornucopia-too many secrets.”

Myron was waiting in his office, eyeing it appreciatively.

“You could do with a coat of paint and some new furniture” was his opening remark. “But it sure beats the previous premises.”

His friend was turning into an old man almost overnight; the eyes were red-rimmed, the cheeks sunken, the mouth slack, and his perky, straight-backed posture had sagged.

“No one touches it until I’m on vacation,” Carmine said, seating himself behind his desk. “A mug of cop coffee?”

“No, thanks! I’d like to live to see a lunch menu.”

“What can I do you for, Myron?”

“I’m flying west this afternoon.”

“Not before due time, I would have said in the old days. Now”-Carmine shrugged-“that’s debatable. Does Erica know?”

“Yes.”

“Have you proposed to her yet?”

“No,” Myron said unhappily.

“Why not, if you love her?”

“That’s just it-I do love her! But I don’t think she loves me. At least, not the way Desdemona loves you.”

Carmine sighed. “Myron, you have to remember that Desdemona and I are a special case. We shared a common danger, and that tends to forge a special bond. We started out disliking each other-Jesus, you can’t look at us and wish for the same relationship! That’s sophomoric.”

Myron went scarlet, compressed his lips. “Well, okay, I admit that. But how do I get inside the defenses of a woman I know isn’t the cold WASP princess she pretends to be?”

“I can’t help you,” said Carmine, bewildered. “What makes you think I could?”

“Because when she speaks of you, she has strong feelings! If it weren’t for you, I’d genuinely believe she doesn’t own any.” He waved his hands about wildly. “No, she doesn’t have the hots for you, so don’t start looking for the fire escape! I thought that maybe you had a cop technique…” He trailed off miserably.

“And that wasn’t what you meant,” Carmine comforted. “All you really mean is that something about me gets under her defenses, and you’re hoping I know what it is. But I don’t, Myron. Even if I did, I wouldn’t pass it on. You can pull women effortlessly. You pulled her. And actually you’ve gotten under her defenses enough for her to have confided in you. No one at Cornucopia knows she’s not a cold WASP princess, whereas you do. I’d call that major progress.”

“It’s chickenfeed,” Myron said despondently. “She lets me make love to her-she initiated our first time, I didn’t-but she goes away somewhere, Carmine. ‘Lie on your back and think of England’ might have been written just for her, except it’s not England she thinks of.”

“That’s not you, Myron. That’s her,” said Carmine, dying for the conversation to be over. “If I were you, I’d go talk to Desdemona.”

But Myron shook his head emphatically. “No, it was hard enough talking to you.” He got to his feet. “Give my undying love to our daughter.”

“You should do that yourself.”

“I can’t. I need to get away from here as fast as I can.”

And he was gone. Carmine stood listening to the sound of his footsteps retreating down the hall, and prayed that his most beloved friend would chance upon a greener feminine field in his own purlieu.

“But I think you can rest easy about your mother,” he said to Sophia that evening. “Divorce is not in the cards.”

“Then I forgive him for going,” Sophia said magnanimously. “That icy bitch would kill him.”

When Carmine came in on that Friday, April twenty-first, at eight in the morning, Delia was waiting for him. It was clearly some kind of red-letter day for her; she had dressed in her smartest outfit, a combination of purple and orange that hurt the eyes unless, like Carmine’s, they were inured to her palette.

“If you don’t mind,” she said, sitting on a chair across from his at the desk, “I would rather speak to you privately in the first instance. Is that permissible?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

A rolled-up sheet of paper was laid reverently on the desk, together with several sheets of ordinary size. Carmine looked at them and then back at her, brows raised.

“I have found a function at which all eleven of the dead people were present,” she said, carefully excluding triumph from her voice. “It was held on Saturday, December third of last year, in the Holloman City Hall, and was given by the Maxwell Foundation in aid of research funding for long-term children’s disorders.” She stopped, beaming.

“Wow!” Carmine breathed, a better vocabulary knocked out of him. “And they were all present? Including the three black victims?”

“Yes. It was a dinner-dance for five hundred people, who were seated at round tables for ten people or five couples. Most of the tables were ‘bought’ by a company or institution of some kind-undoubtedly you and Desdemona would have been there at Uncle

John’s table if you hadn’t been new parents. It cost a hundred dollars a plate, which brought in a thousand per table. Most of the sponsoring companies and institutions donated a matched thousand per table. Cornucopia and its subsidiaries sponsored twenty of the fifty tables. Chubb sponsored ten tables, the Mayor had one, Police and Fire ended up sharing one, and so forth.” She paused again, eyes bright.

“Amazing,” said Carmine slowly, feeling some comment was called for, but having no idea what, beyond marveling.

“I am floored, Carmine, at how much planning goes into a function of this sort,” she said in tones of awe. “It’s worked out like a battle, though I strongly suspect that if most battles were worked out so scrupulously, the results would be different. Where a table sponsored by an organization should go, its relationship to other tables belonging to that organization, placement of tables to left, right, up, down, and sideways-I doubt Lord Kitchener ever devoted the same time to planning his bloodbaths! When the table master plan was finished, each table was given a number. Then came the business of seating the guests! Due attention had to be paid to those who came as a group of five couples, or wanted to sit at X or Y table, or asked to be seated with anything from one to three other couples. There were also guests who came alone or with a companion, who did not have any preferences, such as Beatrice Egmont. A small group of Maxwell volunteers dealt with all these logistics, and they did it truly magnificently. They even abolished that dreadful crush in the foyer when hundreds of people simultaneously try to see their names listed on a board. Six volunteers with lists sat at a reception desk to give each enquirer his or her table number.” She stopped.