Pale Betrayer (11 page)

“If I
did
see him,” Hank said, now full of doubts again, “it must’ve been before. Once the
Timeses
come in, you see …”

It was remarkable, Marks thought, driving away and once more forgetting lunch, how the events of the night seemed to dovetail. And as Inspector Fitzgerald would be the first to point out, it was amazing how Miss Russo had avoided bumping into Bradley himself. Hers had been the one unpredicted—unchartered—course so far as Bradley’s assailants were concerned. Or had it been? Without stronger proof, no reasonable detective could eliminate her from complicity.

It now, more than ever, had to come down to motive.

B
Y MID-AFTERNOON MARKS
was able to compare the statements of all those who had attended the Bradley dinner. The physics group had been invited through Bob Steinberg whom Louise had called at the office just before lunch. “Janet wants us to come up for a drink and a bite to eat about six. Peter will be home.” The wording of Steinberg’s announcement to the group did not vary much from one man’s version to another’s. Nor indeed did any other testimony, including Anne’s and Bob Steinberg’s.

They had all known about the film, but until talking with Peter, they had tended to be suspicious of a gift the Russians were making such good propaganda out of. Peter, however, as young O’Rourke put it, had caught fire in Athens. He had a hunch they might have been given something worthwhile.

None of them had arrived for dinner thinking they would be going on to the laboratory afterwards. But none of them was surprised when it was decided to go. The curious thing was—and Marks had been particularly careful in his uniform phrasing of the question to each of them—no one was able to say positively who had brought the matter to a head. Anne thought it happened when Louise said: “You aren’t going to the lab tonight, are you?” Steinberg assumed they were going from the moment Bradley himself said: “It wouldn’t take long after setting up.” O’Rourke had suggested that he and the other fellows would go along early and set up. Steinberg said they would all go together. It was understood that Bradley would come later, so thoroughly understood that not even a passing reference was made to the fact.

No one remembered Eric Mather to have been in on any part of their conversation. But then not one of the scientists mentioned Mather in his statement beyond listing him among those present, except Anne. Two of the boys could not even remember his name. Anne recalled having facetiously invited him to come along and see the film.

Marks probed her on why she had asked him.

Anne bit at her thumb while she thought about it. She looked so earnest, Marks thought, so eager to help, he would turn in his badge if she were in any way implicated. “I guess I must have thought he would say something clever,” she answered finally.

“And did he?”

“Not very. He said Russian movies were too hammy. Something like that.”

Marks was also particularly careful in the way he asked: “If the dinner party had been given at Mather’s, say, would you have gone?”

The answer was the same from all of them: if the party had been given for Peter Bradley, yes. But the three young men added that if it had been given there they did not think they would have been invited. Steinberg had been at Mather’s place on a few occasions. He had had a couple of good chess games with Mather. Except for that, he said, he’d rather go to the Dean of Women’s tea party. For one thing you got as much to eat there as at Mather’s.

The three male students had not been out of each other’s presence from the time of their arrival at Bradley’s until they left the laboratory at ten forty-five. Marks saw no need to involve them further in the investigation, and Fitzgerald agreed.

“They’re a tribe to themselves, aren’t they?” the Inspector remarked.

“They probably think the same of us.” Marks called the desk to see if Pererro had reported in. There was no question in his mind that Mather was the enigma in the lot.

“Yes, sir,” the desk sergeant said. “I told him you were busy so he went in to the Captain’s round-up. I’ll get hold of him right away.”

“Never mind,” Marks said. “I’ll come down.”

Some twenty detectives had gathered around Redmond in the squadroom. Seeing Marks, Redmond invited him to join them. It was Marks’s first real opportunity to see the Captain in action with his men. He was halfway through briefing them on the general background of the case, the combined work of his department and homicide: the findings of the medical examiner, the nature of the assault and its possible motive, the theft and return of everything on the victim’s person except his money.

Each man reported on his own detail, including Herring, who afterwards told Marks he had been transferred to the detective force with a second-grade rank. The admirable achievement of what Redmond called his “round-up” was that every man working on the case and not out on assignment at the time, was made aware of the full picture.

Marks himself picked up certain information he had not known:

Anne Russo’s story of taking the Ninth Street bus had been corroborated by the driver, a regular on the run.

Peter Bradley had purchased a package of cigarettes at Third Avenue and St. Mark’s, which left little doubt that he had approached the laboratory building from Astor Place, a desolate stretch after business hours.

The preliminary report on the bloodstained handkerchief had come in from the laboratory: it had undoubtedly been used by the killer—the blood type checked with Bradley’s; no identification marks; mass laundered, the laundering chemicals were now under analysis. The handkerchief had been disposed of in a trash basket half a block east and two blocks north of the scene.

Pererro and his partner, their findings not yet evaluated, merely so reported, and at the end of the session, gave Marks the rundown he had been waiting for. Mather’s itinerary from the Red Lantern on pretty accurately checked out. The bartender at the Red Lantern was sure that Mather had been there by nine thirty.

“How could he be sure?” Marks demanded. “Did he look at his watch? Does he keep that tight a check on all his customers?” The apparent neatness of the timing in this whole operation was infuriating.

Pererro said: “This is how he knew, sir: at a quarter to ten there’s an intermission break at the Triangle Theater across the street and a crowd comes in for a quick drink. Mather had to fight his way out through that crowd when he was leaving, and the bartender knew he’d been there fifteen or twenty minutes before that. He was a guy you couldn’t miss, sir. He’d been reciting for the kids. You couldn’t miss him any place he was last night.”

“Okay, okay,” Marks said, aware of Pererro’s defensive “sirs.”

“‘He had to fight his way out.’ Is that how the witness put it?”

Pererro consulted his shorthand. “Yes, sir. His very words.”

Marks grunted.

“The kids meet there every night almost, Lieutenant. They got a club they call the Imagists, whatever the hell that is.”

Marks intended to find that out for himself. But first he wanted to pay another visit to the Bradley house.

M
ARKS STOOD A FEW
moments across the street from the Bradleys’, studying the neighborhood, watching the children pass on their way home from school. There was a nineteenth-century atmosphere to the street—the graceful poplar trees, the fine old houses shoulder to shoulder, all well kept, their shutters neat and freshly painted. Most of the children went on, he noticed. This was not a street of large families. And to his back where he stood was the Armory, a city block of solid stone with high windows out of which no one ever looked. All day the police had sifted the area for anyone who might have seen Bradley leave the house. No one had yet been turned up who had seen him before he reached the gates of St. John’s Church. People were moving to and fro within the Bradley second-floor apartment. There were lights on in the middle rooms. As he crossed the street he saw Louise coming along the Bradley side with an armful of groceries. He went to meet her and took the bag.

“Things I forgot to order. I don’t know what it is between me and the telephone. I keep feeling it’s trying to gyp me.”

Marks held the outside door. “How’s Mrs. Bradley?”

Louise shrugged. “Everybody’s here. Family, I mean. There’s going to be a service at St. John’s tomorrow. Then Chicago for the burial.” She glanced at the mailboxes in the vestibule while rummaging in her pocket for the door key. “Something this morning that really threw me: I came down for the mail and there was a postcard from Peter—mailed in Athens before he left there. I didn’t show it to Janet. I hid it in my purse and I’ve kept thinking about it all day—like it was something alive in there.”

“Could I see it?”

“It’s upstairs. I just brought my change purse.”

Marks and Louise went directly into the kitchen. It was like being household help, Marks thought, vaguely liking it.

“Sit down and have a cup of coffee,” Louise said.

Marks sat at the table while Louise turned on the gas under the coffee pot. A feeling remembered from childhood came over him: coming home to something happening in the kitchen. A baked ham was cooling on the table, the glaze shining and mottled with brown crust, the juices seeping down to the plate. The aroma made his eyes as well as his mouth water. Louise surprised him staring at the roast.

“I didn’t have any lunch,” he blurted out.

Louise covered her mouth to stifle the laughter. She made him a sandwich, slicing directly into the middle of the ham.

While he was eating she brought the postcard, looking first to make sure that Janet was at the front of the house.

It was a colorful picture of the Plaka, the old section of Athens teeming with activity beneath the awesome whiteness of the Acropolis. The message read: “Even as two thousand years ago. I want to see more. And you with me next time.”

“‘I want to see more,’” Marks said, and gave back the card which Louise returned to her purse.

“That’s the story of his short, short life. My God. You’d think he was a poet to die so young.”

“Poets are living longer these days,” Marks said.

“He could have been one, you know. Maybe he was in a way. Eric always called him the Renaissance man. Peter started in literature, switched to history his last year in college, and finally to science. He took a lot of math of course all the way.”

“Did he ever consider medicine?” Marks asked, his mind returning to the involvement of “a doctor” in his death.

“He left that to the rest of the family. Both of his brothers are doctors.” Louise put her purse in a cupboard. “He always wanted to do more, to see more, to understand better. Janet told me once that his journal was marvelous—a thousand questions. Even his answers asked questions.” She refilled Marks’s coffee cup and poured a cup for herself. “What tears your heart out now is that all there’s left is the ‘why?’ Why did he have to die—that way?”

Marks said: “It isn’t hard enough to give life meaning. You want death to mean something too.”

Louise smiled ruefully, studied her coffee for a moment, then lifted the mug. “Skol.”

“Skol,” Marks said. “The truth is, Mrs. Steinberg …”

Louise interrupted him. “Nobody calls me Mrs. Steinberg, not even the milkman. Louise.”

“Louise,” Marks repeated. “We’ve reached the place where we’re asking why, too. It wasn’t the money in his wallet. I’m almost sure of that. There was a plan, and when there’s a plan there’s brains at work, and they work on something already known. I keep wondering if something went wrong with somebody’s plan, if maybe it wasn’t intended that he be killed. If there was a plan that didn’t include death—what went wrong with it? Did he recognize someone? I could be completely wrong about this, Louise, but I can’t help feeling that the most ruthless killer would still think twice before destroying a person of Dr. Bradley’s stature. I’m sure the return of the empty wallet and the briefcase was an afterthought, something intended to throw us off the track. Was somebody trying to frame him with Anne Russo? If something went wrong, what was supposed to have gone right?”

Louise was just looking at him. Finally she said: “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I’m just thinking aloud.” Marks finished his coffee and got to his feet. “I wonder if you would ask Mrs. Bradley if I might see her husband’s journal, if I might have permission to go over her husband’s papers?”

A few minutes later Marks sat alone in Peter Bradley’s study. Janet herself about to close the door on him turned back to where he was sitting in the swivel chair at the desk. “That chair squeaks terribly,” she said. “Peter was always going to oil it, but he never did.”

Marks, knowing her thought to be that he never would do it now, got up carefully from the chair when she was gone and exchanged it for the straight one by the window.

There was a lot of the adolescent in him still, Marks thought of himself, as he lifted and looked at one and another of the books on the desk and finally opened the notebook Bradley had used for his journal. In the atmosphere of scholarship, he longed to be a scholar. Much of the journal was incomprehensible to him, equations and mathematical symbols. The question marks he understood, but not the questions. He remembered that Steinberg had offered the loan of a book. What he really needed was to start school all over again. Then he lost himself in the non-scientific entries, discovering Bradley the human being. Most of his entries did end in questions. Marks was amused at his remarks on a very successful modern composer:

“Discovered another of his sources tonight, Beethoven’s
Violin Concerto
. He
is
an original composer, using the original as his source. But then, where did Beethoven pick up that theme?”

He read on, looking for personal items, comments on family, friends, colleagues, of which there were virtually none, unless they were anecdotal, as for example the last entry in the book, written in Athens three days before:

“After today’s session, Grysenko and I walked through the Plaka and searched out the Byron monument. All the Russians I’ve ever met love market places. I do too. We sat for a while in the little park. I tried to explain that Byron, an English poet, had fought for the Greeks in their war of independence. G. was profoundly skeptical. ‘An Englishman?’ he kept saying and he would shake his head. ‘I cannot believe that.’”