Too Many Murders (21 page)

“Dante’s old enough to have been replumbed,” Abe said. “I don’t think this pipe’s connected.”

Corey got the camera out and started taking photographs while Carmine found Dr. Marcus Ceruski.

“You’re our witness, sir,” Carmine said.

“I know nothing about this!” Ceruski protested.

“That’s the whole idea. You’re here to watch us remove whatever is in that secret cupboard, okay?”

Resting in the elbow of the pipe was a black drawstring bag, now well photographed. Gloved, Carmine lifted it out and put it on the counter, where the camera recorded its angular bulk before Carmine loosened its mouth and with a rapid movement turned the bag inside out. Abe and Corey fielded in case any item rolled, but nothing did; even the spool of thread that fit the sewing machine lay where it fell. The blue flashes went on for some time as Carmine moved the contents around.

“If her prints are on any of this, she’s a done dinner,” Corey said, grinning.

“They will be,” said Carmine tranquilly. “Go get the evidence bags, Corey.”

There was a box of Dean Denbigh’s jasmine tea from his special shop, a roll of glossy pink paper printed in black with Art Nouveau lettering and detail, a roll of filmy gauze of the kind used to make tea bags, lengths of thin twine each ending in a jasmine tea label, the spool of thread, and a glass jar of potassium cyanide bearing a commercial label.

“Not a word, Dr. Ceruski,” said Carmine, ushering him out. “If the defense alleges this evidence was planted by the Holloman Police, you will be called to the stand, not otherwise.”

“She made her own tea bags and the paper jackets wrapping the tea bags,” Corey said in tones of wonder. “Where the hell did she get the pink printed paper and the gauze? The strings with the labels on the end?”

“From the supplier,” said Abe. “Label says, in Queens.”

“Where else? Abe, find out from the supplier if she got her bits and pieces openly or by stealth. I’m picking she stole them. It wouldn’t be hard, just a trip to Queens late at night. Security wouldn’t consist of more than a night watchman. The cyanide would have been more difficult.”

“She’s a resourceful woman,” Abe said. “A chem lab?”

“No way! Cyanide’s on any lab’s poison register, it has to be kept in a safe, you know that,” said Carmine.

“Huh!” Corey grunted. “Nerds are nerds, Carmine. They go round in a daze, leave the safe open, probably use it to keep their lucky rabbit’s foot from sticky fingers.”

“That’s bigotry! I know nerds as sharp as tacks!” said Abe.

They were happy, thought Carmine, only half listening. We just solved another one, we’re down to ten unsolved.

And, he admitted to himself, he was happy too. Won’t Doug Thwaites be pleased? What a nose for a villain!

* * *

He didn’t see her again until he walked into an interview room late that afternoon.

“You are aware of your constitutional rights?” he asked.

“Yes, perfectly.” She looked composed and better groomed; one of their three woman cops had found the clothes she wanted, and brought them to her together with a full selection of makeup. So the glorious red-gold hair puffed softer around her face, and the yellow lion’s eyes had been emphasized with mascara and pencil. Her dress was severely cut, but its flattering tawny shade needed no embellishments. Carmine knew she was frigid because she had told him, but no man would have believed that, looking at her.

“Would you like a lawyer present?” he asked, nodding to the woman cop to move her chair into the far corner.

“Not yet,” she answered, then gestured irritably at the cop. “Must that poor girl be here? I’d rather talk to you in private.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, she has to stay. She’s a chaperone, she ensures that I do nothing untoward.”

“You’re a puzzle, Captain. One moment speech larded with colloquialisms, the next the speech of a well-educated man.”

“But colloquialisms are wonderful, Dr. Denbigh! They prove that English is a living language, always moving on.” He sat down and turned the tape recorder on, gave it the details.

“We found your cache inside a concealed cupboard in the Dean’s apartment kitchen, Dr. Denbigh.”

The yellow eyes went wide. “Cache? Cupboard? I know nothing of either.”

“Your fingerprints say differently, ma’am. They’re all over every printable item in the bag, as well as on the pipe and the door. We have you, Dr. Denbigh,” Carmine said.

She didn’t cease to fight; rather, she changed her tactics. “After they hear my story, Captain, I don’t think there’s a jury alive would condemn my actions.”

“You want a jury trial? That means pleading not guilty, but you’ve virtually confessed. Confession means no jury trial.”

“I haven’t confessed to
murder!
I acted in self-defense.”

Carmine leaned forward. “Dr. Denbigh, this was a premeditated crime! Carefully planned and executed. Premeditation negates self-defense.”

“Nonsense!” she said with a snort of contempt for his density. “Fear for one’s life, sir, engenders different reactions in people because all people are different. Were I some battered housewife, I would have used a hammer or a hatchet. But I am an associate professor at Chubb University, and my husband, the source of my terror, was a dean of that same institution. Naturally I hoped that my participation in his death would not be discovered, but the mere fact that it was does not make me a cold-blooded murderer. I lived in fear for my life through every day of it because I was the only person who knew of John’s sexual activities. If I was plotting to save my life, Captain, he was plotting to end it! The story I told you just after John’s death was true, but it merely touched the peaks of mountains of sordid details and six—yes, six!—attempts my husband had made to kill me. A car crash, a skiing accident, three attacks of food poisoning, and a shotgun accident while we were in Maine. John liked to shoot hapless deer, then actually
eat
them!”

Carmine stared at her, rapt, and thanked God that not many murderers were this smart, or this good-looking. At thirty-two years of age, she was in her prime. “I hope you can produce proof of these attempts on your life,” he said.

“Witnesses, certainly,” she said coolly.

“What made you decide on saving your life with a dose of cyanide in a tea bag?” he asked.

“The cyanide, actually. I found it sitting on a shelf in the freshman common room. I’d gone hunting for one of my books I knew a freshman had borrowed—most irregular! He didn’t ask my permission, of course, but I suspected him because few in their first year are interested in Rilke. I removed the cyanide, of course—so dangerous! Then it occurred to me that I had found the ideal way to get John out
of my life forever, provided I could find a way of administering it that did not imperil any other person. And that led to the jasmine tea at his idiotic Monday fortnight sessions. After that”—she shrugged—“it was easy. The shop was in Manhattan, but the place where the tea bags were made was in Queens.”

“You haven’t made a satisfactory case against the Dean, Dr. Denbigh,” Carmine said.

“Here? Now? Why should I even bother? I will plead my case in court. Mr. Anthony Bera will conduct my defense,” said the lioness, licking her chops. “And that is all I have to say before Mr. Bera arrives. I think it is very fair of me to—er—show my hand, so to speak. You know how I will plead, and what my defense will be.”

Carmine stopped the tape recorder. “I thank you for your frankness, Dr. Denbigh, but I warn you, the prosecution will prove murder, and ask for the maximum penalty.”

“Any bets she slips the net?” he asked Silvestri a few minutes later. “That’s one helluva smart woman, sir.”

“Depends how well Bera picks his jury,” Silvestri said, his cigar rolling from one side of his mouth to the other. “He’ll ask that the case be heard in a different jurisdiction, and that’s in the lap of the gods. But it’s always been hard to get a conviction when the defendant is a looker. You’d think the women jurors would take against them, but they don’t, and the men are putty. So yeah, Carmine, you could be right.” His sleek cat face bore an expression of content despite the uncertain outcome of Pauline Denbigh’s trial. “Ask me, do I care? Not much. The important thing is that Dean Denbigh’s murder is one hundred percent solved.”

“I don’t think the other ten are going to be that easy.”

“Do you still go for the idea of one killer?”

“More than ever. There’s no one else outside the pattern, chief,” Carmine said. He frowned. “And damn that woman! She threw me off with this self-defense nonsense so badly that I didn’t ask her the one question I intended to.”

“Then go back and ask.”

“With Bera present? He’ll direct her not to answer.”

“Bail hearing is in an hour, Captain, so Dr. Denbigh can’t give you much time,” Bera said the next morning.

“I am aware of that, Mr. Bera.” Carmine sat down and turned on the tape recorder. “Dr. Denbigh, how are you?”

“Well, thank you,” she said, unaware that Judge Thwaites, who would be on the bench, thought her capable of anything.

“There is one question I would like you to answer, ma’am. It doesn’t directly pertain to your own case or its defense, but it’s very important to the investigation of ten other murders.”

“My client did not do murder,” said Bera.

“Ten murders,” Carmine amended, swallowing his ire.

“Ask your question, Captain Delmonico,” said Bera.

“Was there any reason that you decided to preserve your life by terminating your husband’s life on Monday, April third?”

His head to one side, Bera considered the implications, while Pauline Denbigh sat side-on, staring into his face.

“Dr. Denbigh had a reason,” Bera said.

Exasperated, Carmine shook his head. “That’s not the kind of answer I want,” he said. “I need specifics.”

“You’re not going to get them, Captain.”

“Let me try again. Whatever your reason might have been, Dr. Denbigh, was it in any way connected to—say, a rumor you’d heard that other deaths might occur?”

“Claptrap,” Bera said disdainfully.

“Was it to do with a pact, or an agreement, that other people should die? Or was it sheer coincidence that your decision to act on Monday, April third, happened to be the same day eleven murders happened in Holloman?”

“Ohhh!” she exclaimed, ignoring Bera’s fierce grimaces. “I see what you mean! My reason for choosing that day will come out
in court, Captain, but it had nothing to do with ten—or eleven—murders. It was sheer coincidence.”

Carmine’s sigh of relief was audible. “Thank you, ma’am! I can’t do anything to help you, but you’ve just helped me.” He decided to press his luck. “Who knew you were afraid of your husband? That you feared for your life?”

“If you answer that, Dr. Denbigh, I can’t help you,” Bera said ominously.

She lifted her shoulders and smiled at Carmine ruefully. “I am in Mr. Bera’s hands, Captain. To answer you would damage my defense, I can see that for myself.”

Which was, Carmine reflected as he left, a brilliant way of saying that yes, she had confided in at least one other woman. Now he had to find her best friend.

Erica Davenport? Philomena Skeps? Or some unknown, unmet proponent of women’s liberation?

He lurked outside until Anthony Bera left the interview room and detained him. “You shouldn’t have any trouble getting her acquitted,” he said affably.

“So I believe.”

“How can she afford your fees, Mr. Bera? Chubb isn’t famous for overpaying women faculty.”

“I’m acting pro bono,” Bera said shortly.

Are you indeed? said Carmine to himself. Now why? I think I have to go back to the Cape and talk to Philomena Skeps again. She becomes more and more like the lady spider at the center of the web.

He called a little conference in his office: Abe and Corey, Delia and Patrick.

“Okay, we’re down to ten,” he said, not trying to conceal his pleasure. “We can forget the three shootings, that’s an absolute. But I’m putting them down as solved when we catch our mastermind, because they were definitely commissioned. That leaves us with
six cases—Beatrice Egmont, Bianca Tolano, Peter Norton, Cathy Cartwright, Evan Pugh and Desmond Skeps. For the moment we shelve Beatrice Egmont as unsolvable. Okay,
five
dead people, and that’s where we begin. Everything we have we throw at the textbook rape murder of Bianca Tolano. Commissioned, yes, but after a bit of thinking I’ve realized you don’t shop for a sex killer. Money doesn’t interest them. Therefore he’s a local. Our mastermind found out about his fantasies, took him in hand and educated him. If we don’t get him, he’ll kill again, now that he’s had a taste of it. If the Ghost taught me nothing else, he taught me that sex killers can’t stop.”

“How do we know what to look for?” Patsy asked. “That was our trouble with the Ghost—anonymity. How is this any different in that respect?” He glowered. “I thought you weren’t going to call the murderer a mastermind?”

“I hate it, yes,” said Carmine patiently, “but it’s both accurate and convenient. Unless you want to go all FBI and give the guy a code name? How about Einstein or Pauling? Moriarty? No? Let’s just stick with what we’ve got. As to how this one is different, Patsy, it is because someone else—the mastermind—evicted the killer from his fantasy home, and our hermit crab isn’t comfortable yet in his new shell. Walking sideways still terrifies him, and he’s no Ghost. I have an idea where to look for him—the Ghost was fantastic training. Refresh us on Bianca, Patsy, please.”

“She was found naked,” Patsy began, “wrists and ankles tied with single-strand steel wire. She was conscious throughout, except for brief periods of asphyxiation induced by a pair of pantyhose around her neck. Burned in twenty-nine places by a cigarette, cut in seventeen places by something like a Sheetrock knife. Particular attention was paid to the breasts and pubes. Multiple rape, but no semen was found in any orifice. Death was caused by a broken bottle shoved into the vagina; she bled out. There’s a case exactly like it in a book about sexual deviance that’s well thumbed by psych students.”

“How old is the book?” Delia asked.

“Published ten years ago to an outcry. It was felt to be too accessible to thrill seekers.” He looked wry. “Not like wading through Krafft-Ebing and wondering what frottage was—dictionaries didn’t give definitions of words like that in my day. I think the author was German and the book was translated from the German. Kaiserine Germans invented the sex vocabulary.”