The Cherry Blossom Corpse (23 page)

“Nobody,” said Svein, the expert, promptly. “The only thing that might happen is somebody dropping and spilling a bottle with some in when they are dead drunk.”

“Quite. And does it often happen?”

“Hardly ever. Because they cling on to it like death.”

“Exactly. I can't see even Martti letting his grip slacken on a bottle that had something in it. You cling on to it like death because it's so bloody expensive here.”

“So?”

“And when you're away at a conference or something, and you're having drinks together—as Wes Mackay had drinks with Amanda—what do you do? If you're foreign, you get together and you drink your duty-free.”

“Of course,” agreed Svein. “It happens all the time in Norwegian hotels. That's why the bars are so empty.”

“And yet when Lorelei invited Mackay and Leino up to her room, little Miss Maxwell went down to the bar three times in order to fetch drinks.”

“But,” objected Stein, after he'd thought about it, “Mrs. Zuckerman drinks a lot of brandy and water, doesn't she? She'd probably drunk her duty-free.”

“In three days? And these are inter-continental travellers: they have double the allowance of European travellers. And yet, ignoring all the duty-free in the room,
everyone has what they want, and Felicity goes and gets it from the bar. If Lorelei went on drinking her own brandy, as she says she did, then that is two rounds for three, at over a hundred kroner per round. Two rounds at over ten pounds or fifteen dollars each—and then one round just for Martti at thirty-odd kroner.”

“It's a lot of money,” admitted Stein.

“And though it was Amanda who was the obviously tight-fisted one, does la Zuckerman strike you as the type who would joyously shell out for bar drinks for an alcoholic Finn who could never get enough?”

“No,” said Stein.

“Could it be, in fact, that Martti was asked because he was an alcoholic, and could be relied upon to have a hazy memory, and because he drank vodka, which Felicity Maxwell had a supply of in her room?”

“Only of course it was the wrong kind,” said Svein, who had a sharp brain and an excellent memory.

“Exactly. Not something she could have foreseen. Martti drank only, or for preference, Smirnoff, which is what they stock in the bar. The bar is very tiny: it only has one brand of each drink. Yet Martti's third drink, when she got one for him alone, was the wrong brand. She relied on Wes Mackay not noticing how long she was gone, because she wasn't getting drinks for him. What she couldn't foresee was that the
brand
would be noticed by Martti. The frustrating thing is, Martti's the sort who would know, and yet there's not a juryman in the world who would put any weight on his word.”

Stein nodded sadly in agreement.

“This is how I see the whole set-up. Some time earlier in the day Felicity broaches the matter of a meeting with Amanda, and mentions the boathouse. There is a developing hostility between Amanda and la Zuckerman, though Felicity is not to know that Amanda does not
take it too seriously—merely enjoys it with the actress part of her nature. No doubt Felicity needed to say little more than that she had information about Lorelei that Amanda might find interesting, and that she'd get a note with the time on it to her some way or other—put it in her hand, slip it under her door, or whatever. Lorelei is a demanding mistress, she might say, with truth, and she doesn't know when she can get away. When they've set up the meeting with the boys in Lorelei's room, she decides on that night. And while she is fetching the first or second round of drinks, she slips into the little room off the lounge and types the note, setting 9:30 as the time for the meeting. She will guess that by about then Martti will be in need of another drink, but she and Wes are drinking much more slowly, Wes particularly taking care, since his hostess is paying, not something likely to bother Martti. OK so far?”

“Sure,” said the Norwegian.

“So Felicity that evening fetches a first round of drinks from the bar, then fetches a second. Probably with the second she fetches a lot of ice—more than she needs. As she could obviously expect, by 9:20 Martti's glass is empty. She takes it into her room, fills it with ice and vodka from her duty-free supply, then takes the bottle with her when she goes down the back stairs, through the kitchen, and out the least obtrusive way to the boat-house.”

“Why does she take the bottle?”

“Because as soon as we see that she has vodka in her room, we might ask why she hadn't supplied Martti's needs with that. Right, now: on the way down on that back path towards the boathouse, which only has a few feet across the lawn before taking the normal path down to the water, she collects a cherry blossom bough from the tree under Amanda's window, to give the corpse a
romantic hallmark. When she gets there Amanda is waiting, she starts talking, then fells Amanda with a blow, holds her head under the water, then throws the cherry blossom bough on top of the corpse. Before going back to the house, she tips away the vodka behind the boat-house, and discards the bottle. Then it's back to her bedroom to collect Martti's vodka, and back into Lorelei's sitting-room.”

The other two sat thinking for a minute or two.

“There's two things I don't understand,” said Svein, “and one is why do it at all? Somehow we've got to find that out. But the other is, why the cherry blossom? Why tie it down to the romantic conference, to Amanda's last book? Why not kick her out into the fjord? Surely any normal murderer would at least attempt to make it look like an ordinary drowning?”

“Yes, those are questions,” I said, getting up. “To be precise, they are questions for you. I've given you my ideas, and now I think I may be allowed to go and join my family.” I put my voice into falsetto and sang “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” I realized it is not as easy to imitate Julie Andrews as Julie Andrews makes it sound. My performance was greeted with silence. I looked down at the garden, where Cristobel and Bernard had resumed their swinging-arms routine, interspersing it with their locking-eyes routine in a thoroughly nauseating manner.

Stein and Svein had come to join me by the window. Stein said: “There's more, isn't there?”

I nodded.

“If you don't mind the most blatant conjecture. Though perhaps it's a bit more than that. Perhaps we could call it the logical progression from what I've just said. Say we grant that Felicity Maxwell did the murder. We then ask ourselves the question: why did Lorelei Zuckerman
ask Wes and Martti to her room that night.”

“You think it was uncharacteristic?”

“I know it was uncharacteristic. We all commented on it at the time. And if we grant that Lorelei, by some quirk of fancy, did such an unlikely thing, why didn't she have Felicity offer them drink from her own duty-free stocks? The answer is: Lorelei was part of the set-up.”

“Used by Felicity?” asked Svein incredulously.

“No, using Felicity. A commissioned murder. And one which brazenly announces itself as a murder. Let's take the question of the cherry blossom bough. Why throw it on the body at all?”

“I thought it must be to mislead,” said Svein.

“Exactly. That's the first possibility. To suggest that the murder had something to do with the romantic writers, when in fact it was nothing to do with them at all. But who do we have on the suspect list who is
not
connected with the Romantic Novelists' Conference?”

“The Bavarians, and the American family?” suggested Stein.

“Precisely. And have you managed to nose out any connection between them and Amanda?” Stein shook his head. “Now what other possible reason could there be for the cherry blossom bough?”

The other two shook their heads slowly, but Svein said: “It seemed almost like—a piece of theatre.”

“Yes,” I said. “Something of that kind. A theatrical touch, a challenge. Who might gild the lily in that way?”

“A madman?” suggested Svein. “Someone puffed up with his own conceit—maybe Arthur Biggs, perhaps?”

“Yes. But he is not the only one who is sick with self-love. Lorelei is another, and I believe she organized the murder for pleasure, having nothing to lose. Murder is the ultimate assertion of power over another person. Asserting power, in different ways, is something Lorelei
has been doing all her life. And Lorelei gives this last assertion a further twist: she asserts power over the victim, and over the murderer.”

“But I still don't see:
why
the cherry blossom?” asked Stein.

“Have you noticed what pleasure she gets out of tyrannizing over a cool, independent girl like Miss Maxwell? A cruder lover of power might tyrannize over a drudge, but Lorelei is an epicure. Similarly with murder: someone else might hug themselves over murdering a total stranger—knowing he will get away with it because there is nothing to connect him with his victim. To that extent Agatha Christie was right: murder is easy. But what satisfaction can be got out of something that is
easy,
that anyone could do? Lorelei has a horrendous sense of her own greatness.
Her
murder must announce itself. She must challenge the police to pin it on her.”

“Hence the rivalry with Amanda,” said Svein.

“Exactly. She engineers the rivalry, by a most unusual degree of accommodatingness (not friendliness, or niceness—she could never have managed that). Thus she is murdering someone she is known to be competing with to be the centrepiece of the conference. Amanda was chosen as the victim because Lorelei was the
most
likely murderer in every way except physically. The cherry blossom was a challenge. I can murder, I can be the most likely murderer, I can announce the motive, yet I can get away with it. And she's right. She will.”

“But why would the girl go along with that?”

“Ah—that you would have to find out. And, having found out, see if you can break her. But I don't think you will find it as easy to break her as would appear. She is no fragile little blossom herself. There's a vein of iron somewhere there. Just the manner of the murder tells you that.”

Stein looked me in the eye.

“You have a suggestion as to where I should start looking, haven't you?”

“I would have thought the mother's death, wouldn't you? Just look at the facts: the mother dies, and Felicity goes straight from nursing her to nursing Lorelei next door. It's not natural, whatever the girl herself may say. Did Lorelei know something, and hold it over Felicity? And if I were you, I'd try to find out whether the girl took judo classes, or something of that sort. It's a natural thing for a young girl living alone or with another, older woman to take, living in New York. She'd need something like that to kill Amanda quickly and easily—so quickly and easily that she cannot have got herself wet, or no wetter than could dry off in a few minutes. It was a very dexterous kill, and she had to have the training. The investigation in detail is up to you. Keep me informed . . .”

I looked down again at the lawn, and the couple who were now sitting cross-legged and giggling together.

“Do you have a father?” asked Stein.

“No, my father—died.”

“I think you'll soon be giving your sister away.”

I sighed.

“I rather think I will.”

And, really, I may as well jump ahead a bit in time and announce it in the approved manner.

Reader, she married him.

I
KEPT IN TOUCH
with Stein Bjørhovde from Oppheim, where we walked through flower-strewn meadows and ate the most predictable food. Jan was annoyed that I had picked on anyone other than Arthur Biggs as the murderer, but Stein and Svein were brought round entirely to my way of thinking by their interrogations of the two people involved. What they could not do, though, was pin the murder on them, and in the end, in one of our last telephone conversations, I was reduced to pointing out that the real perpetrator was Lorelei Zuckerman, and that she had received a death sentence anyway.

I was most interested in the subject of Felicity Maxwell's mother, and the circumstances of her death. It seemed a remote chance, but I wondered if, when the
matter was brought up again, the New York police would find any way of pinning that killing on to her. It was, after all, a killing much closer to her, with a more easily definable motive.

I heard the details of this a week after I'd left Kvalevåg, on my first day back at the Yard. Joplin had got the details for me, and I studied them with interest. Homicide in New York had indeed been less than happy about this death, but there was evidence that Mrs. Maxwell, though not an old woman, was an alcoholic and depressive, as well as being an incurable invalid, and had had the habit of pretending to suffocate herself on the grounds that her daughter didn't love her and wanted her dead. They came to the conclusion that in one of these performances fluid had collected in the bronchial tube to such a degree that she died even though she had thrown the bedding off her face. They were helped to this conclusion by the testimony of a neighbour who dropped into the apartment and was talking to the daughter of the dead woman almost at the moment of death—indeed, while they were talking they heard choking sounds from the bedroom. By the time they got there the woman was dead. The neighbour, of course, was a Mrs. Zuckerman.

The New York police could see little to be gained by reopening the case, and I could see their point. They had doubtless had three or four thousand murders in the city since the death of Mrs. Maxwell, and there was little enough reason to revive that particular inquiry rather than any other of the unsolved thousands. One could only take the view that the deed had indeed been manslaughter, and that the perpetrator had been sufficiently punished by being pressed into the service of Lorelei Zuckerman for her dying years. Still, one would dearly like to have known what exactly Lorelei overheard in that flat.