Murder in a Good Cause (12 page)

“Go and take a shower.” She left him there and slipped quietly down the back stairs to see what she could produce. The sight of Bettl scrubbing the already-clean kitchen cabinets evoked a response in the girl somewhere between irritation and compassion; but Nikki decided that if she had to run the house for the next few days, she would have to quell the compassion and establish some ground rules. “Bettl,” she snapped. “We'll have a pitcher of orange juice, a large pot of coffee, and some rolls with jam and butter for breakfast. In the sewing room, please, since the police seem to be everywhere else. As soon as possible.” She turned rapidly and went back up the stairs to the sewing room.

Klaus strolled into the sunny little room, clean, wet headed, and relatively clear-eyed. “And where is our coffee, may I ask?” he said in mock horror. “I thought you'd be down in the kitchen opening a jar and boiling a kettle, not sitting here doing nothing.”

Nikki silenced him with a gesture and pointed wordlessly at the door. He heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, and then Bettl entered with a large tray. On it were glasses, cups, plates, napkins, cutlery, a pitcher of orange juice, sugar, three kinds of jam, and butter, along with a basket covered neatly with a white napkin. “I'll bring the milk and coffee in a minute,” she said in a neutral tone, then put down the tray and left.

“No flowers?” asked Klaus. “My God, Nikki, how did you do it?”

“I screamed,” said Nikki. “It's the only form of communication she understands. But it never worked when Mamma was around. It just made her mad. Shhh. Here she comes again.” And this time she had a small heating element with a china jug filled with coffee and one of hot milk on it. She plugged it in and turned. “Thank you, Bettl,” said Nikki crisply. “You had better order in groceries for the weekend. Theresa and her husband might be here a great deal. We will need to have plenty.” Bettl nodded and left. “I may be about to get arrested, but until that happens, I don't intend to starve to death.” Her eyes were wet, and her chin quivered, but she turned resolutely to the array of food and drink on the large table. “Orange juice?”

“Please,” he said, taking the proffered glass. “And what do you mean, you may be about to get arrested?”

“Breakfast first, and then we can talk. I've been thinking.” Fifteen minutes later, Klaus helped himself to another large cup of café au lait, leaned back comfortably on the chintz chesterfield, and said: “Right. Now what in hell are I you talking about?”

“Klaus, darling, you can't be as stupid as you're pretending to be. You must realize what's going on.” She put down her half-eaten roll and curled up with her feet tucked under her, shivering in spite of the warm sun. “No matter what Theresa says, I can't believe that Mamma killed herself.”

“Killed herself! That's preposterous.” Klaus shook his head in amazement. “How could anyone, even Theresa, believe that?”

“It's easy. Either you believe that, or you believe that one of us killed her. Who could have wanted her dead?” Nikki's eyes swam with tears again, she blinked and went on. “Only someone who was going to benefit from her death. And that's either me or Theresa. And Theresa didn't move from the fireplace all night. I thought she had turned into a statue.”

“Except when the two of you were in the hall,” said Klaus slowly. “What were you fighting about?”

“Who?”

“You and Theresa.”

“Oh, that. That was nothing.” Nikki shrugged and turned away in embarrassment. “I was just teasing her a little, that's all.”

“Teasing her? What about?”

“Well, she had the idea that you and I were going to get hundreds of thousands of marks—well, fifty thousand dollars—out of Mamma for this business of yours and that this would cut into her precious children's inheritance, and so on.” Nikki looked up and shrugged, the ghost of a smile on her face. “I'm not sure where she got the amount from.”

“I think I mentioned it in a theoretical way as the cost of setting up a first-class studio from scratch.”

“That's it, then. Anyway, she said we'd never get away with it.”

“Maybe she—”

“No. If there had been cyanide in
my
drink, maybe, but why Mamma? She couldn't do anything like that. Not Theresa.”

“Maybe Milan did it for her?”

“Him! That lecherous little worm. He's scared of his own shadow. He'd do it only if you could guarantee he wouldn't get caught.” She clutched her knees tightly to her chest to keep them from trembling. “And that leaves just—”

“You. I don't see why. If you know you didn't do it, then somebody else must have. All we have to do is figure out who it is.”

“I'm just trying to think the way the police will. Either someone had a reason to want Mamma dead, or there's a maniac running around dumping cyanide in drinks and anyone at the party could have been killed.”

“Be reasonable, Veronika,” said her cousin sharply. “If you're talking about motive, Theresa stands to inherit as much, or . . . in fact . . .”

“Yes. I've thought of that. I may be out searching for a job once the will is read. I knew I should be learning a trade of some sort.”

“Do you know if your mother left you anything?”

“All I know is that she was mad as hell at me last spring and she was thinking of changing her will. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm featured in it in an unpromising way. You know, ‘And to my daughter, Veronika, I leave one hundred marks and the wish that she may learn to change her life for the better.'”

“But you see,” said Klaus, checking to see if there was any more coffee, “if that's true, then no one will suspect you.”

“That's a wonderful choice, Klaus. Impoverished and free or rich and in jail. Do you think I should get a lawyer?”

“Whatever for?”

“We really don't know the police around here, do we? They're not all like that nice man up at the lake. He probably works up there to get away from real criminals in the city. Murderers and so on.”

Klaus shook his head. “Not even the same kind of police. But if you think you should get a lawyer, why not ask Frank? He seems to know everyone in the city.” He glanced sideways at her. “But isn't running for a lawyer going to make you look guilty? Maybe you should just be straight-forward and honest and tell them everything that happened and assume they'll catch whoever did it.”

Nikki looked at him steadily. “And if they don't? Then what do I do?”

“We'll worry about that when it happens.”

The lunchtime crowd had already thinned out when the buru walked quickly into the little Portuguese restaurant on College Street and sat down in a booth close to the kitchen. He ordered coffee and a pastry before asking casually whether the chef was available. The waiter nodded amiably. “He'll be out in a moment,” he said. “He just has one order to finish, and it's time for his break.”

Before his friend had finished his pastry, Manu pushed through the swinging doors that led from the kitchen, carrying a plate of chicken and rice in one hand and a coffee in the other. He put them down, walked over and picked up a napkin and cutlery, set a place carefully on the other side of the table, and finally eased himself down onto the bench. “What's happening?” he asked casually. “I thought we had decided you should not come here.”

“We have reached a crisis point,” he said. “It is time to decide whether to go on or give up. Can they understand?” he added softly, nodding in the direction of the two waiters who were lounging by the coffee machine, waiting for the last of the lunch crowd to finish.

“Not a word,” said Manu. “A Columbian and a Chilean. I don't like the idea of giving up,” he added in his mournfully gentle voice. “Not after we've done all the dirty work. And I don't leave without the money. That's what we came here for, isn't it?”

“Yes, of course,” said the buru. “I didn't mean that. We'll get the money all right. We'll get the money for everything that has already crossed the border.”

“How much has he sold?”

“A lot. Almost half of what has been taken across. At decent prices, too. The other half could take up to a year to dispose of, but that doesn't matter, does it? We have time. That is not what worries me.”

Manu smiled gravely and went over to get the coffee pot, refilled both cups, and sat down again. “What is it that worries you, then?” he asked, bending over his coffee.

“It's obvious, isn't it? We have to make our move now, before it's too late.” He pushed his coffee cup away, the worried frown on his face making him look like a fifteen-year-old, and ran his hands through his light brown curls. “I hate this,” he said with passion in his voice. “I wish there was some other way to raise the money.”

“There isn't,” said his friend. “You were the one to realize that. This isn't '36. There aren't crowds of helpful foreigners out there to pity us, to send us money for guns and rice. And the better things get, the harder it is to get money. So here we are, two paces along the road to freedom and independence, and we cannot move a single step farther. Unless we do what we are doing. What I hate is having to use a pig like Carlos. Or his friend.”

“Once you accept the necessity of subverting honesty to achieve your goals, you accept the necessity of a Carlos. That is why they exist,” said the buru mournfully. “That is why they exist.” He shook his head. “But it is too late now to worry about that. I have worked out the only way to do it and keep us safe. Because that is what is important. It is complex, perhaps too complex, but it should enable us to get clear. The others appear in their proper roles,” he said, all of a sudden grinning angelically, “as mules, bearing their burdens patiently and stupidly.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil and once more began to jot down the beginnings of a plan.

At precisely two, Frank Whitelaw walked into the sitting room without bothering to knock. He was a very different creature from the red-faced and brandy-soaked buffoon in the crumpled dinner jacket of the night before. He was now dressed with casual nonchalance in velvet corduroy and Irish tweed; his silvery gold hair billowed in richly shaped clouds around his elegant head. Sanders did some rapid mental revisions in his estimate of Whitelaw's possible function in Clara von Hohenkammer's household.

“Was it you who tried to call off the meeting this morning?” asked Sanders.

“Meeting?” said Whitelaw in apparent astonishment. “What meeting?”

“The meeting with”—and Sanders drew out his notebook, which he consulted ostentatiously—“Mr. Charles Britton, an accountant.” He looked up again. “The one Mrs. von Hohenkammer asked you to arrange. To discuss her finances, I assume. Only she died before he got here.”

“Oh, no,” said Whitelaw easily. “That meeting was to look into Triple Saracen Development, Milanovich's company. Clara was considering helping her son-in-law out of his current disastrous mess. She wasn't worried about her own financial situation. I would have known if she had been. As for who canceled it, I don't know.” He cocked his head charmingly to one side. “I should have, I admit. But in the stress of the last twelve hours, I forgot about it. Mr. Milanovich must have called and canceled. A thoughtful gesture.”

“Did your employer have any enemies that you know of? She was a famous woman. Had she received any threats, by telephone or in the mail? Who opened her mail, Mr. Whitelaw? You?” asked Sanders.

“Enemies?” Whitelaw stood up and walked over to the other side of the room, where he paused to straighten a pen-and-ink drawing that had drooped a millimeter out of true; he turned and slowly shook his head. “No, I don't think so. And yes, I usually opened and answered her business correspondence. There were no threats that I knew of. Who could possibly have—” He suddenly sat down on a small damask love seat. “This has been a great blow to me. She was a great lady, a very great lady.”

Sanders regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “That's an interesting sketch over there,” he said, nodding at the one that Whitelaw had just straightened. “Is it valuable?”

Whitelaw nodded. “Clara didn't bother hanging things that aren't valuable. By and large. And except for the Mondrian in the living room, her best pieces are all in here. For security, really. She never let strangers in this room.”

“What else is in here,” said Sanders, “besides a fortune in art?”

“Her business records,” said Whitelaw, nodding at the filing cabinet set against the wall. “All the ones that aren't in Munich, that is.”

“Perhaps you could give me a quick run-through on her filing system,” said Sanders gloomily. “Before we start going through them.”

“Certainly,” said Whitelaw in tones of the gravest courtesy. “How's your German?”

“German?”

“All of her financial records except for a few Canadian bank statements are in German, of course.” Sanders could hear the deep belly laughter that Frank Whitelaw was suppressing as he stood there and looked solemnly in their direction.

By the time John Sanders had recovered his equanimity sufficiently to check through the filing cabinet to see if Whitelaw was telling the truth—he was—and to come back downstairs, the von Hohenkammer family had gathered in the dining room. Theresa was in a black skirt and white blouse and carefully, but not garishly, made up. The perfect grief-stricken daughter, thought Sanders. Her sister was in jeans and bare feet, looking white faced and miserable. Sorrow? Guilt? Maybe both.

“Do you think,” said Theresa, “that we could sit somewhere more comfortable than this room?”

“Just a minute,” said Sanders. “I'll check the state of things.” In the conservatory, Collins was standing by the table, holding several sheets of paper in his hand. “Did you find anything?” asked Sanders.

“Nothing significant, as far as I can tell.” Collins shook his head gloomily. “There's nothing here but writing paper and airmail envelopes and stamps and things like that.”

“Then leave it and start in on the upstairs sitting room.”

Collins gave him a mutinous look. “Give us a break. We've been working down here all morning. O'Connor just went out for sandwiches; we thought it'd be nice to eat for a change. If you don't mind.”

“Yeah, go on,” Sanders muttered, looking down at the desk. “You didn't find anything else in the room?” he asked. “This is it?”

“That's it. I checked everywhere: in the plant pots, under the furniture, behind the radiators, everywhere except under the tiles. I didn't have a chisel. You want to go over the room again?”

Sanders chose to ignore the implied insubordination and went back to the crowd in the dining room. “The conservatory is free,” he said from the hallway. “If you'd rather be in there. We'll be out of the upstairs rooms by the end of the day, I imagine; the living room may take longer.” He turned to Klaus. “Don't try to use your photo lab until further notice.”

Klaus nodded somberly. “I don't think I'd feel much like using it right now, anyway,” he said. “Feel free.”

Sanders sat grimly in the study once more. Mrs. Theresa Milanovich had just stalked out the door, filled with righteous indignation. She had certainly not been in the kitchen, had not exchanged any cross words with her sister or any other person in the house, and was devastated that Sanders could suggest such things. And now Veronika von Hohenkammer was huddled in the leather armchair, her feet tucked under her, shivering.

“When did you take your mother's tea out into the kitchen and pour it out?” said Sanders, looking up from his page of notes.

“Who told you that?” she said quickly. He could see that her hands were trembling; when she noticed the direction of his eyes, she thrust them quickly down around her knees.

“And then you replaced the tea you poured out with more from the pot, didn't you? And what did you put in that tea, Miss von Hohenkammer?”

“Nothing,” she said, her voice slightly hoarse. “I didn't put anything into the tea. I just poured more from the pot and put the cup back where it was on the table.”

“Why?”

Veronika stared at him, confused. “It was cold,” she said at last. “No other reason.”

He looked back down at his notes. “What were you and your sister quarreling about last night?”

Veronika pulled herself upright in her chair and looked steadily at him. “I believe that even in this country I don't have to answer your questions unless I have a lawyer present to advise me. Is this not true?”

Sanders was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of exhausted irritability and stood up. “Yes, Miss von Hohenkammer, it is. But it's a privilege innocent people don't invoke,” he said, his voice heavy with threat. “In my experience. I'll see you later. With or without your lawyer.” He turned to Dubinsky. “Let's get the hell out of here before I fall asleep,” he muttered. “Don't go anywhere, Miss von Hohenkammer,” he added, yawning.

Veronika headed straight for her bedroom. She sat down on the bed, reached under the night table, and took out the telephone book. After looking up a number, she picked up the receiver and began to dial.

Harriet Jeffries was sprawled in a comfortable chair, clutching a mug of coffee and staring out at the deck. When she had finally reached home that morning, the sky was graying in the east, and the first birds were chirping and grumbling themselves awake. Grimly, she had showered, changed, and set about finishing off the work that had to be delivered by morning. At seven-thirty, she had driven over to the architect's office and dropped it all off. The rest of the morning she had spent in bed, in and out of sleep, dreaming lurid dreams of people dying in agony, spewing brilliantly coloured poison from their lips and clutching accusingly at her. It hadn't seemed worth staying in bed, and now she was staring out the French door, the unread morning paper in her lap and the foulest cup of coffee she had ever tasted becoming tepid in her hand. The telephone rang.

As she set the receiver down again, she cursed softly. Stupid, stupid Harriet. Overwhelmed with work, sick and tired of other people's problems, yet she had just promised to drop everything in order to solve all of Nikki von Hohenkammer's life crises. Why, with a city filled with relations, with a downtown bursting with lawyers, and plenty of money to spend on them, did she decide she needed to confide in Harriet Jeffries? Because her Mamma trusted her, she had said. Bullshit! She was simply fastening herself on the first convenient object she found, like any other leech. No, that was unfair. Her sister was a bitch, her brother-in-law a jackal, and she wouldn't trust that business manager unless she had him right under her nose. But why me? was Harriet's silent wail. Why not someone who enjoys collecting waifs and strays? Another shower, another change of clothes, and she would go over to comfort the oppressed.

With fifteen minutes' sleep, more coffee, and another shower behind him, John Sanders was sitting at his desk considering the probability that Clara von Hohenkammer had been killed by one of her daughters. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that the woman had had a lover who, enraged with jealousy, had done her in, but if that was the case, who was he? The business manager? Could a woman really take that posturing fool seriously? The doctor? Improbable, in spite of his lascivious air. And jealous of whom? Perhaps they should dig a bit. He stared at the pile of material in front of him, too tired to decide where to start. When Dubinsky came back into the office, he found him still staring, this time out the window at the hazy sky.

“I got them,” he said loudly.

Sanders dragged his head around from the window. “Got what?”

“The lab reports. Here.” He threw them down in front of him.

“You read them?”

Dubinsky nodded.

“Then how about just giving me the high points.” Sanders yawned.

“Sure. In simple English, it was potassium cyanide, a dose of probably 250 to 300 milligrams. There were traces of cyanide in the teacup and in that paper you found, but nowhere else. Her stomach was almost empty, consistent with a light supper six or seven hours before she died and nothing else but the tea. So the cyanide must have been carried up from the basement in that piece of paper and dumped into the tea.”

“Unless she had a cyanide pellet in her lower left molar,” said Sanders.

“Yeah, sure,” said Dubinsky sourly. “You want any more?”

“I'll look at it later,” he said. He had just picked up the notes he had been going over when the door to their office opened again.

“Excuse me, Inspector.” The intruder looked vaguely familiar. “A reply on your call to Munich. You want it now?”

“You the translator?”

“Not a professional translator, sir, but I speak German.”

“This from that lawyer?”

The translator nodded.

“Well, get on with it, then,” said Sanders irritably.

He took out a sheaf of notes from his pocket and began to read from them in the awkward manner of someone who is half-reading, half-translating. “Peter Lohr, the lawyer for the deceased, telephoned to say that the estate is being divided more or less equally between the two daughters, with individual bequests of between thirty and a hundred thousand marks going to her sister, her nephew, her housekeeper, and her business manager. He will be arriving in Toronto on Monday and staying at the Plaza II until he has settled the most pressing affairs connected with her estate over here. He would like to meet you and requests that you leave a message at the hotel naming a convenient hour. He speaks perfectly good English. And he is sorry to take such a long time to reply, but he was out for the evening. It's near midnight in Munich, sir,” added the translator, just in case.

“I realize that, Constable—”

“Bauer, sir.”

“Bauer. And we went to the trouble of finding an interpreter and having him do the calling when I could have just picked up the phone and talked to him. He didn't give you any more details?”

“He said they were complicated and that he would prefer to discuss them in person with you.”

“Wonderful,” said Sanders with a prodigious yawn.

“Well,” said Dubinsky. “That does it, doesn't it?”

“Does what?”

“All that crap about not knowing what's in the will and being sure that she had been left without a nickel to her name. She never got cut out of the will. So, do we pick her up?”

“Hang on,” said Sanders wearily. “She isn't going anywhere. Wait till the lawyer gets here. But let's ask her a few more questions.”

Whatever John Sanders had expected to see when he walked into Clara von Hohenkammer's conservatory that afternoon, it had not been Harriet Jeffries, in jeans and a sweatshirt, curled up on one end of the elegant little couch talking cozily to his chief suspect.

“Ah, Miss Jeffries,” he said, glaring at her. “Could I have a word with you?” His tones were clear and precise. And hostile.

“Certainly,” said Harriet coolly. “Why not? We could go—”

“No,” said Nikki. “Use this room. I have to talk to Bettl, anyway, about dinner and things like that. And I should call my sister.”

Sanders looked around the room and with heavy-footed deliberation sat down as far from Harriet as possible. She gave him an inquiring look and then waited, silent. He remembered her formidable capacity for unembarrassed silence. “What in hell are you doing here?” he asked finally.

“I should have thought that was obvious enough,” she said. “I'm visiting a friend. Veronika von Hohenkammer. I believe you've met her.”

“You're damned right I've met her!” he exploded. “Since when was she a friend? And what are you doing messing around with my investigation?”