Роберт Голдсборо - Murder in E Minor

I assured her it was indeed all right and hung up, staring at the open checkbook. It was a long shot, no question, but if I had anything to lose by talking to her, I couldn’t see it. And just maybe, the Montenegro bit was for real. Montenegro, in case you don’t know, is a small piece of Yugoslavia, and it’s where Wolfe comes from. He still has relatives there; I send checks to three of them every month. But as for old friends, I doubted any were still alive. His closest friend ever, Marko Vukcic, had been murdered years ago, and the upshot was that Wolfe and I went tramping off to the Montenegrin mountains to avenge his death. And although Wolfe was anything but gabby about his past, I figured I knew just about enough to eliminate the possibility of a close comrade popping up. But there’s no law against hoping.

I got a good, leisurely look at her through the one-way glass in the front door as she stood in the drizzle ringing our bell. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and slender, she had a touch of Mia Farrow in her face. And like Farrow in several of her roles, she seemed frightened and unsure. But looking through the glass, I was convinced that with Maria Radovich, it was no act.

She jumped when I opened the door. “Oh! Mr. Goodwin?”

“The selfsame,” I answered with a slight bow and an earnest smile. “And you are Maria Radovich, I presume? Please come in out of the twenty-percent chance of showers.”

I hung her trench coat on the hall rack and motioned toward the office. Walking behind her, I could see that her figure, set off by a skirt of fashionable length, was a bit fuller than I remembered Mia Farrow’s to be, and that was okay with me.

“Mr. Wolfe doesn’t come down to the office for another hour and ten minutes,” I said, motioning to the yellow chair nearest my desk. “Which is fine, because he wouldn’t see you anyway. At least not right now. He thinks he’s retired from the detective business. But I’m not.” I flipped open my notebook and swiveled to face her.

“I’m sure if Mr. Wolfe knew about my uncle’s trouble, he would want to do something right away,” she said, twisting a scarf in her lap and leaning forward tensely.

“You don’t know him, Miss Radovich. He can be immovable, irascible, and exasperating when he wants to, which is most of the time. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, at least for now. Maybe we can get Mr. Wolfe interested later, but to do that, I’ve got to know everything. Like for starters, who is your uncle and why are you worried about him?”

“He is my great-uncle, really,” she answered, still using only the front quarter of the chair cushion. “And he is very well-known. Milan Stevens. I am sure you have heard of him — he is music director, some people say conductor, of the New York Symphony.”

Not wanting to look stupid or disappoint her, or both, I nodded. I’ve been to the Symphony four or five times, always with Lily Rowan, and it was always her idea. Milan Stevens may have been the conductor one or more of those times, but I wouldn’t take an oath on it. The name was only vaguely familiar.

“Mr. Goodwin, for the last two weeks my uncle has been getting letters in the mail — awful, vile letters. I think someone may want to kill him, but he just throws the letters away. I am frightened. I am sure that—”

“How many letters have there been, Miss Radovich? Do you have any of them?”

She nodded and reached into the shoulder bag she had set on the floor. “Three so far, all the same.” She handed the crumpled sheets over, along with their envelopes, and I spread them on my desk. Each was on six-by-nine-inch notepaper, plain white, the kind from an inexpensive tear-off pad. They were hand-printed, in all caps, with a black felt-tip pen. One read:

MAESTRO

QUIT THE PODIUM NOW! YOU ARE

DOING DAMAGE TO A GREAT ORCHESTRA

PUT DOWN THE BATON AND GET OUT

IF YOU DON’T LEAVE ON YOUR OWN,

YOU WILL BE REMOVED — PERMANENTLY!

In fact, all three weren’t exactly alike. The wording differed, though only slightly. The “on your own” in the last sentence was missing from one note, and the first sentence didn’t have an exclamation point in another. Maria had lightly penciled the numbers one, two, and three on the back of each to indicate the order in which they were received. The envelopes were of a similar ordinary stock, each hand-printed to Milan Stevens at an address in the East Seventies. “His apartment?” I asked.

Maria nodded. “Yes, he and I have lived there since we came to this country, a little over two years ago.”

“Miss Radovich, before we talk more about these notes, tell me about your uncle, and yourself. First, you said on the phone that he and Mr. Wolfe knew each other in Montenegro.”

She eased back into the chair and nodded. “Yes, my uncle — his real name is Stefanovic, Milos Stefanovic. We are from Yugoslavia. I was born in Belgrade, but my uncle is a Montenegrin. That’s a place on the Adriatic. But of course I don’t have to tell you that — I’m sure you know all about it from Mr. Wolfe.

“My uncle’s been a musician and conductor all over Europe — Italy, Austria, Germany. He was conducting in London last, before we came here. But long ago, he did some fighting in Montenegro. I know little of it, but I think he was involved in an independence movement. He doesn’t like to talk about that at all, and he never mentioned Mr. Wolfe to me until one time when his picture was in the papers. It was something to do with a murder or a suicide — I think maybe your picture was there too?”

I nodded. That would have been when Orrie died. “What did your uncle say about Mr. Wolfe?”

“I gather they had lost touch over the years. But he didn’t seem at all interested in trying to reach Mr. Wolfe. At the time I said, ‘How wonderful that such an old friend is right here. What a surprise! You’ll call him, of course?’ But Uncle Milos said no, that was part of the past. And I got the idea from the way he acted that they must have had some kind of difference. But that was so long ago!”

“If you sensed your uncle was unfriendly toward Mr. Wolfe, what made you call?”

“After he told me about knowing Mr. Wolfe back in Montenegro, Uncle Milos kept looking at the picture in the paper and nodding his head. He said to me, ‘He had the finest mind I have ever known. I wish I could say the same for his disposition.’”

I held back a smile. “But you got the impression that your uncle and Mr. Wolfe were close at one time?”

“Absolutely,” Maria said. “Uncle Milos told me they had been through some great difficulty together. He even showed me this picture from an old scrapbook.” She reached again into her bag and handed me a gray-toned photograph mounted on cardboard and ragged around the edges.

They certainly fit my conception of a band of guerrillas, although none looked to be out of his teens. There were nine in all, posed in front of a high stone wall, four kneeling in front and five standing behind them. Some were wearing long overcoats, others had on woolen shirts, and two wore what I think of as World War I helmets. I spotted Wolfe instantly, of course. He was second from the left in the back row, with his hands behind his back and a bandolier slung over one shoulder. His hair was darker then, and he weighed at least one hundred pounds less, but the face was remarkably similar to the one I had looked at across the dinner table last night. And his glare had the same intensity, coming at me from a faded picture, that it does in the office when he thinks I’m badgering him.

To Wolfe’s right in the photo was Marko Vukcic, holding a rifle loosely at his side. “Which one’s your uncle?” I asked Maria.

She leaned close enough so I could smell her perfume and pointed to one of the kneelers in front. He was dark-haired and intense like most of the others, but he appeared smaller than most of them. None of the nine, though, looked as if he were trying to win a congeniality contest. If they were as tough as they appeared, I’m glad I wasn’t fighting against them.