Too Many Murders (33 page)

“Why so frank, Professor? Aren’t you talking to me about your treason as well as hers?”

“What treason? I’ve never done a thing,” Lefevre said smugly. “There’s nothing at the L.S.E. would interest Moscow apart from
persons.” He stopped suddenly and looked at Carmine in confusion. “Tea! You’re here for a cup of tea,” he said.

“Thanks, I don’t need one. Go on about Erica.”

“My superiors in the Party took over and arranged for Erica to go to Moscow and meet all the most important people. It was done on a special passport the KGB prepared for her, while her own passport was stamped to show a pilgrimage to the classical world, and she was equipped with souvenirs. Considering that the cold war was just commencing, Moscow was very careful with Erica, who might have to wait a very long time before she was activated.”

Lefevre got up and went to the window, staring down into a yard filled with unkempt long grass and rusting pieces of junk—old kerosene heaters, chamber pots, tin trunks. No discarded washing machines here, Carmine thought, coming to gaze over the old man’s shoulder. The tenants must all belong to the Communist Party.

“So Erica went off to Moscow in the summer of 1948?”

“Yes.” Lefevre stopped again, frowning and pulling at his lower lip. Sighing, he returned to his chair.

“What happened in Moscow?”

“The first trip—three weeks—went splendidly. Erica returned in alt—over the moon. She had met all the members of the Central Committee, and held Josef Stalin’s hand. He wasn’t terribly well, you know. Then she had to return to Moscow for her training, and Moscow wanted to be absolutely sure of her loyalty. It was a nine-week sojourn. For anyone else it would have been longer, but she was an apt pupil, on fire with zeal. Also capable of significantly contributing to her story.”

He stopped again, clearly distressed. Had it not been for the news of her horrifying death, Carmine knew, he would have fished in vain for any of this. No doubt FBI and CIA agents had encountered him in their own enquiries when Ulysses first came on the scene, and he had stuck to Erica’s “pilgrimage” to the classical world. Luck travels
with the harbinger of death, Carmine thought. He’s old, lonely and by-passed. Now he can talk about her without endangering her.

“You’ve already told me she was a traitor, Professor. What else is there to know?”

He finally took the plunge. “On her last night in Moscow, Erica was raped. From what she told me, it was at a drunken dinner attended by Party officials and KGB officers just below the top ranks. Why they picked on her I don’t know, save that she had been highly favored by their superiors, she was American, very beautiful, and not sexually generous.”

“It was a terrible rape,” Carmine said softly. “On autopsy twenty years later, she still bore the physical scars. How did she survive, sir?”

“Bound herself up and came back to London as arranged. To me. I sent her to Guy’s Hospital, where I had a friend. It was manic in those days, battling with the teething troubles of the National Health. We arranged that her medical records should get lost in the system. London was a very different place then. The country was still on ration books for food, it was difficult to get decent clothes—a fruitful situation for us teaching in institutions of higher learning. Some very promising students fell into our hands like ripe peaches.”

“What about Erica? She must have returned from Moscow that second time changed out of all recognition,” Carmine said.

“In one way, yes. In another, no. The fire had gone, but an icy determination took its place. She abjured all sexual activity until someone in high authority made her understand that sex is a beautiful woman’s best tool. She was instructed in the art of fellatio. A large amount of money was placed in a Boston bank in her name, and, as far as I know, she began her upwards climb. After a few mawkish letters, I lost contact with her.”

“Then you don’t know that she rose to be the highest executive in a very large American company that manufactures weapons of war?” Carmine asked.

“No, really?” Hugh Lefevre looked delighted. “How truly marvelous!”

“But she didn’t spy for Moscow.”

“You can’t possibly know that. After her training, she would be able to dupe anybody.”

“Erica was a blind for someone else. She must have had a controller—someone who guided her actions and told her what to do. She never behaved like a master spy because she wasn’t a master spy. She was just a blind.”

“I hope you’re correct, Captain. If you are, then Erica’s company is still penetrated. Splendid, splendid!”

When Carmine left, he walked all the way back to the Hilton, as much of his way as possible through Regent’s Park, among azaleas and rhododendrons, blossoming trees and rich carpets of impossibly green grass. Hyde Park it wasn’t, but it had its charms. Only when he found a refreshment pavilion and had that cup of tea did he lose the last of the sour taste in his mouth that was Professor Hugh Lefevre. Old, crippled, fueled by an ideology. There were plenty of people like him; differing ideologies, perhaps, but the same end result.

He joined Desdemona for lunch in the coffee shop, as she had just come in from a long walk through Hyde Park pushing Julian in what she now called a “pram”—less than a day, and his wife’s Englishness was back with a vengeance. But she looked rested and relaxed despite her hike. Myron might be a pain in the ass, but occasionally he got some things right.

How to tell her that he was going home? Directly, no apologies and no prevarication.

“I got everything I needed from Professor Lefevre,” he said, reaching to take her hand. “That means I have to go home.”

The light died in her eyes, but she mustered all her resources and managed to look merely disappointed. “I know you’d stay if you could,” she said steadily, “so it must be very urgent. I imagine all policemen’s wives go through this sort of thing—the divorce rate is so high.” She stretched her mouth into a smile. “Well, Captain Delmonico,
you’re not going to get rid of me as easily as that! Yes, I’m disgruntled, but I knew when I married you what sort of person you are. And you do have a fatal attraction for nasty cases! It rubbed off on me straight away, so I must have the same quality. My bed will be cold, but not as cold as yours—I have Julian. Just promise me that when it’s all over, you’ll bring me back here. Not in Myron’s luxury! Some smelly private hotel out on the Gloucester Road will do—I can bear the curry and the cabbage. And we won’t need to hire a pram because Julian seems to prefer a stroller. He’s inherited your curiosity, my love, and likes to see where he’s going.”

“It’s a deal,” said Carmine, kissing her hand. “I’ll worry just the same. London’s a big place.”

“Oh, we won’t be in London,” Desdemona said blandly. “I arranged it with Delia. We both knew you’d go home quickly, so Julian and I are going to stay with Delia’s parents in the Cotswolds. No one will find out where we’ve gone. Myron’s generosity can get us there—I confess I quail at the thought of battling with a baby, a pram and luggage on a train. We’ll travel in a Rolls.”

“It will be trains, buses and taxis next time,” he warned.

“Yes, but you’ll be there to help. I am a very large person, Carmine, but I have only one pair of hands.”

Light was dawning on Carmine. “You are pissed off at me! What a relief!”

“Yes, of course I’m pissed off!” she said crossly. “It’s no fun trying to be a perfect policeman’s wife, I can tell you! I didn’t expect you to find what you were looking for quite so quickly. I thought Julian and I would have you for at least three days. I’ve never seen the crown jewels!”

“That’s good, neither have I.”

“How long have I got?” she asked.

“I was going to see if there’s a plane tonight, but I’ll try for one tomorrow morning. Is that a lynching party?”

“No, at least we can cuddle in a king-sized bed tonight. I’ll call Mrs. Carstairs to tell her we’re coming, then we’ll check out together
tomorrow morning and set off in Myron’s Rolls. Our route is west, and so is Heathrow. We can drop you off,” said Desdemona.

“That’s very smart, lovely lady. I don’t think you’re in any danger here, but it won’t do any harm to behave covertly, to use spy terminology. No one knows Delia has parents here.”

“This
is
a spy thing, isn’t it?”

“My interest is purely murder,” Carmine said.

At last, thought Carmine complacently as the car set him down at the bedlam of Heathrow, I am free of Myron Mendel Mandelbaum! I can use my economy class ticket and suffer the proper indignities of air travel for nine hours. But Myron had the last laugh. No sooner was Carmine on board the 707 than the chief hostess came swanning into the tail of the plane and upgraded him to first class. Accepting a bourbon and soda in a crystal tumbler, Carmine surrendered to the fleshpots.

“You have all the luck,” Ted Kelly said when Carmine ended his story. “We had several tries at Professor Lefevre, but he swore that Erica Davenport was just one more bright American student availing herself of the economic wisdom of the L.S.E. The lying old goat! He fooled us, all the time prating about his membership in the Communist Party. England’s riddled with open Communists, while our really dangerous ones dived underground with the coming of Joe McCarthy. He did more harm than good.”

“Witch hunts always do,” Carmine said.

“We’re no farther ahead for knowing about Erica.”

“I disagree. Ulysses has lost his blind. Have you ever established when exactly Cornucopia began losing secrets?”

“When our blind arrived ten years ago. The rocket fuel governor two years ago brought the thefts into the open when too many people got to know of it,” Kelly said.

“Has Cornucopia lost anything more since Erica began to get cold feet?”

“You think that happened after the Maxwell banquet, right?”

“Sure.”

“We don’t know,” Kelly said gloomily. “There haven’t been any leaps-and-bounds advances in Red designs, though we’ve made real big ones. Our own espionage network can’t find anything.”

“Well, my guess is that Ulysses is lying low. He’s got a cache of secrets waiting to go, but he’s not sure if the storm’s blown over. With Erica silenced, he’s probably relaxing, though that depends on what she told him when he tortured her.”

“What could she have told him?” Kelly demanded.

“Whatever passed between her and Skeps at the Maxwell event, first off,” Carmine said. “Ulysses may not have been there that night, but deputed Erica to quiz Skeps about something—maybe what Skeps knew about him? But she sidestepped until the Pugh blackmail letter. What we don’t know is whether it was addressed to her and she passed it on to Ulysses, or whether it was directly addressed to Ulysses.” Carmine growled in the back of his throat. “Like it or not—and I don’t like it!—I have to make that god-awful drive to Orleans to see Philomena Skeps again. Now that Erica’s dead, the lady might be more forthcoming about her relationship with Erica.”

“Why don’t you fly up?”

Carmine sneered. “Oh, sure! There’s no air service, and I can just see the Commissioner authorizing the hire of a plane.”

“Jesus, Carmine, sometimes you’re dumb! I’ll get you there and back in an FBI helicopter.”

“And that,” said Carmine grimly, “is why we small-time cops hate the FBI! Money to burn. Which is not going to stop me taking you up on the offer.”

“Tomorrow?”

“The sooner the better.”

“How’s your family doing in London?”

“Gallivanting all over the shop,” said Carmine, not about to tell this new ally that Desdemona and Julian were actually staying in a house outside a pair of villages called Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter. In fact, so paranoid had he become that he had fitted his
home phone with a scrambler and conversed with Delia about his family in whispers. In some corner of his mind he wondered what the Carstairses thought when their phone was fitted with a scrambler too, but he didn’t care; no one was going to get at Desdemona and Julian again if he could help it.

“Pity you couldn’t stay with them a little longer.”

“Yes, but they’re safe, and having a great time seeing all the sights.”

“I’ve realized,” Ted Kelly said slowly, “the significance of the shots on that telescopic camera. Ulysses wanted to see how to get to your house by sneaking along the water’s edge. There’s no public access, all the properties go clear down to the water.”

“My interpretation too, Ted. Though he sent his assistant, who’s either fitter or younger or both. If he thinks we don’t know he has an assistant, sending him would let Ulysses establish an alibi.” Carmine gave a wry smile. “The odd thing is that hers isn’t the first body to wind up on that piece of land. A poor murdered teenaged girl was dumped there during the tenancy of the previous owner. That body was moved by a rowboat, whereas Erica was carried or dragged along the shore.”

Kelly was staring, astonished. “Jesus! Lightning does strike twice!” he exclaimed. “That was the Ghost case, right?”

“Yes. She was artistically arranged on the edge of the path, not anchored underwater.”

The FBI agent got to his feet. “Call me when you have a time set up for Philomena Skeps. I’ll have a chopper waiting at what Holloman calls an airport.”

Carmine grinned. “We do have weekday flights to New York and Boston,” he said. “Have you forgotten Chubb has a law school and a medical school that grow experts like a vacant lot grows weeds? There’s always a bunch of Chubb experts testifying in some court.”

What a difference flying made! Carmine was on the ground at a tiny airport for private planes in Chatham twenty-five minutes after rising precariously off the ground in Holloman. It was a curious sensation,
especially staring down at the scene—often water—between his feet; the chopper was like a glass bowl inside and a mosquito outside. His pilot was a silent guy who concentrated on keeping the insect flying, though he did speak as Carmine alighted.

“I’ll be waiting here” was all he said.

A Ford Fairlane lookalike was parked by the fence, the keys in its ignition but not a soul in sight. Well, well, Carmine thought, the FBI wants Mrs. Skeps and Mr. Tony Bera to think I drove here in my cop car, ass sore and temper ruffled.