Colleen McCullough - Too Many Murders

They reached Fred Collins’s medic first.

“I don’t think he’s suffered much internally,” the woman said, folding up her stethoscope. “Blood pressure’s okay. Comminuted fracture of his right femur-he won’t be going skiing for a while. Grazes and bruises. That’s about it.”

“Head injury,” said Smith’s medic. “Broken right humerus, right scapula is suspect too. His skull impacted on the road, but the water cushioned it some. No left-sided weakness that I can find, but we’ll know more when he’s examined by neurosurgeons. His pupils are reacting. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get him to where they can deal with any cerebral edema.”

Wal Grierson and Gus Purvey were waiting anxiously, prevented from approaching by the customary police cordon. Sergeant Terry Monks and his team had just arrived, and would inspect the site of the accident to reconstruct it and apportion blame.

“Though,” Terry Monks said to Carmine angrily, “what are two stupid old men doing in an E-type Jag with no roll bar and no seat belts?”

“A roll bar would spoil the car’s looks, and seat belts are for people who drive Yank tanks. However, if you’re fair, Terry, you’ll have to admit that not wearing seat belts saved their lives,” Carmine said, just to ruffle Terry.

“Yeah! But a roll bar and seat belts would have seen the stupid old geezers walk away.”

Onward to Grierson and Purvey.

“This is terrible! Terrible!” Purvey said, face ashen. “I can’t count the times I’ve told Phil to stop behaving like Stirling Moss! He drives like a bat out of hell!”

“A pity he’s not conscious to hear himself described as a stupid old geezer,” Carmine said. “That’s the verdict of our traffic accident men.”

“Stupid is right,” Grierson said through his teeth, more angry than upset. “I guess we’re not going to Zurich. Gus, you get to tell Natalie and Candy while I deal with things here.” As if on cue, the little Ford and the Rolls appeared and parked just down the road.

“Take the car. It can come back for me as soon as you get home and get your own wheels.”

Purvey, looking hangdog, set off along the airport’s chain-link fence in the direction of the Rolls.

“I thought you were a Mustang man,” Carmine said.

“The Rolls is the most comfortable car on the road,” said Grierson, smiling slightly. “Jesus, what a mess!”

Carmine looked at Corey and Abe. “Corey, drive across the tarmac and out the far gate. Abe, you’re still with me.”

The Fairlane followed Corey’s car closely. Only when they were out of the far gate and back on the road past the fuel farm did Carmine breathe a sigh of relief. He had used the time to fill Abe in on what resided in Corey’s trunk, and Abe’s hands were trembling in sheer excitement. He glanced at Carmine.

“One chance in four it’s the right briefcase,” he said.

“Where’s Delia?”

“Out like a bloodhound on Dee-Dee’s trail.”

“There’s a phone booth, and I do believe the phone is still connected,” Carmine said, pulling in to the side of the road. “Abe, get on to Danny and ask him to send out search parties for Delia. This isn’t something I want going out on our radio; it’s too important for truckers and bored housewives. The one person we need most in this operation is Delia.”

Who was waiting, eyes bright, when Carmine and Abe walked in. Two Plant Physical workmen had erected a setup consisting of as many trestle tables as the office would hold, their tops newly covered with butcher paper held down by thumbtacks. The limp and sodden contents of Philip Smith’s briefcase were stacked haphazardly on a chair seat under Delia’s martial eye. As soon as the last table was finished and the two handymen had left, she began distributing the papers, one sheet at a time, on the off-white surfaces at her disposal.

“Oh, the man is a treasure!” she exclaimed, bustling from one table to another with various sheets. “Meticulous in the extreme! Not his secretary’s doing, I can assure you-apart from Yours Truly, no secretary would dream of such precision. See? Every follow-on page is labeled in the top left-hand corner with subject or person plus date of the missive, while the page number is in the right-hand corner. Wonderful, wonderful!”

In all, there were 139 pages of letters and reports, plus a bound 73-page dissertation on the advantages of maintaining a research facility. That seemed peculiar to Carmine; Cornucopia Research was at least five years old, so why carry a bulky book full of long-established facts well known to the whole industry?

“He’s a paper snob,” said Delia when every page had been laid out and the bound report sat wrapped in a clean towel to dry its outer leaves and edges. “Nothing but high rag content paper, even for his memo pads. No cheap pulp for Mr. Smith! Nor ordinary print for his captions and letterheads-hot-pressed print only. At the same time, he’s not splashy. Plain white stationery, black print, not even a color horn-of-plenty logo. Yes, everything of the very best, yet understated.”

“Then you and I are going to go to work reading, Delia,” Carmine said. “Corey, you take the hospital watch. Report any change in Smith’s condition to me the moment you hear. The chief neurosurgeon, Tom Dennis, is a friend of mine, so I’ll make sure we know as soon as a change happens. Abe, you hold the fort with Dee-Dee, Sir Lancelot, Pauline Denbigh and anyone else of interest. If there’s a new case, you take it.”

“What are we looking for?” Delia asked as Abe and Corey left. “Naturally I have some idea, but I’d like detailed instructions.”

“The trouble is that if it’s a verbal code, I don’t think we stand a hope of cracking it,” Carmine said, frowning.

“You mean statements like ‘the clouds are dark over dear old Leningrad’?”

“Yes. If ‘the rifling commences two feet down the barrel’ actually means ‘don’t expect more from me quickly,’ we won’t know. But I don’t think that kind of information interests us. We’re looking for plans and formulae, probably reduced to microdots.”

“How big is a microdot?” Delia asked.

“According to Kelly, whatever size will look logical, from the dot over an i to a fly speck or the bull’s-eye in a two-inch drawing of a target. They don’t have to be round, anyway. Round is less likely to be detected, Nature being nonlinear.”

Her face puckered in dismay. “Oh, Carmine! There must be literally a million dotted i’s here! Even if Mr. Smith’s comatose state lasts several days, we have no chance of finding anything.”

There was a fresh carafe of coffee on the counter. Carmine poured himself a mug and sat down on the wheeled chair he had stolen from the typists’ pool because he could move around with his chair still attached to his butt. “That’s why I don’t think microdots are above an i. Or at least, an i with an ordinary dot. We should be looking for dots that are too big. That look like typos or smears. Kelly’s so cagey that I haven’t got much useful out of him, so we’re winging it, Delia. To the best of my knowledge, cameras have finite limits, so maybe the reduction process can only be taken so far before another shot has to be taken and the reduction process recommenced. Since the space race began, things have miniaturized fast, but… I’m in true ignorance as to how it’s done or how small a reduction in size can go.” Carmine shrugged. “The best advice I can offer you is to use your common sense, Delia. If it looks wrong, we should see if it comes off. If it comes off, we should examine it under fifty or a hundred power on one of Patsy’s microscopes.”

They started to read, Delia on the letters, Carmine on the reports. An hour went by in silent intensity.