The Clairvoyant Countess (2 page)

“That will do,” said Madame Karitska, and accepted a worn alligator wallet. “You’ve not finished your coffee,” she said gently. “Let me concentrate a moment on this.” After a pause she said, “You grew up—I see the state of Massachusetts, is this not right? A gray house with white shutters and a sundial in the back yard … A very old sundial set on a cement foundation.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “That’s true.”

Madame Karitska’s eyes had turned remote. “And you are—” She stopped as she felt a chill run down her spine. “Is there a letter in this wallet?” she asked. “Or something—a memo—written by another person?”

The girl said in an astonished voice, “Why, yes, there’s a letter. I keep it there.”

Madame Karitska looked at the girl. She said quietly, “I don’t know who the letter is from but I must tell you not to trust the person who wrote it.” She felt suddenly very alarmed. “You are surrounded by violence, do you know that? Have you been aware of it?”

The girl had gone white. She said in a primly angry voice, “I think you’re quite mad. That letter is from a very dear person, the only person left in the whole world whom I trust. How dare you say he’s not to be trusted!”

Madame Karitska looked deeply into her eyes. She said softly, “If you continue to believe this then you may find yourself in a difficult situation. I get a picture of a person whose charm—and there is great charm—conceals very disturbed emotions. This person is motivated by a deeply destructive—”

The girl put down her coffee cup and stood up. She
said angrily, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sorry I ever came, I—”

“But you did come,” pointed out Madame Karitska calmly.

The girl turned scarlet.

“You came,” said Madame Karitska, “because at some level deep within you there is awareness of something very wrong. Think about this, it is all I ask of you, for why should my words disturb you if you are so very certain I am in error? No, no, I will not accept money, this has been uncomfortable for me as well. You think I like to upset people?”

“You’ve not upset me at all,” the girl said furiously, and picked up her purse.

Madame Karitska reached out and caught the girl’s free hand. She turned it, palm up, and glanced at it, then holding it quivering for a moment in hers she said very gently, “You do not know me, I do not know you, is this not right? What could I want from you? What have I taken from you except a few minutes of your time? Consider me only a stranger who warns you—even a fool—but allow yourself to think carefully.” She released her hand and stood up. “If you do not,” she said, “grave harm may come to you. You trust too easily.”

The girl looked at her, started to say something, and then flung herself instead toward the door. Opening it she said over her shoulder in a choked voice, “One of the girls at the office said you were great—just great.” She was like a child who has been cheated as she said,
“Good-by!”

When the door had closed behind her Madame
Karitska stood silent, her eyes thoughtful, and then with a sigh she picked up the empty cups and carried them into the kitchen.

When Detective-Lieutenant Pruden arrived at the apartment the lab man and the police photographer were already there. “Thought you’d never get here,” said Sergeant Swope. “We’ve begun fingerprints. Could you tell me inside of four minutes if you want anything else?”

“You running late too?” Pruden murmured absently, his eyes moving over the scene. He was a compact, well-put-together man with fair hair and tilted, skeptical, thick brows over slate-blue eyes. He detached himself from Swope and walked across the room to the body of the girl that lay sprawled across the couch, her dead eyes staring ceilingward. This was a bloody one, a
very
bloody one he realized as he stepped over the pool of blood beside the couch. The knife still lay on the floor, a long butcher’s knife red
to the hilt. With it the girl had been stabbed in the chest at least half a dozen times.

“No prints on the knife,” Swope said, following him. “Wiped clean. Not even a bloody footprint on the rug.”

“Smart killer.”

“Good-looking gal.”

Pruden was only too aware of this: slender, blond, a neat little figure in bell-bottom slacks and a turtle-neck sweater. He leaned over and touched her and was surprised. “It happened around midnight, then?”

“That’s Doc’s estimate. Between eleven and 1
A.M.
”

“She live alone?”

Swope nodded. “The clock-radio’d been set for 6:30
A.M.
, and loud, very loud. Apparently like a siren. The neighbors on both sides came over and knocked and shouted, and still it kept ringing, and there was no answer to their knock, so they called the super and he went in with his key.”

“Interesting,” said Pruden, his glance falling on the face of the girl on the couch. “She doesn’t look to me as if anything in her life was too loud. Soft gray sweater, soft gray slacks, all the colors in the room pale, as if she went through life on tip-toe.” He called to the fingerprint man, “Charlie, dust the clock-radio, front, back, sides, and knobs. Okay, how did her assailant get in?”

“The front door was locked. The super’s absolutely positive about this. It has to have been the fire escape at the kitchen window.”

“Show me,” said Pruden, and they walked across the small living room to the tiny box of a room beyond it. There was a large window with a drop-leaf table in
front of it. The window lacked bars but held a screen that hooked on the inside; it was unhooked now. “It was like this when you arrived?”

“Yes. Ogilvy’s already taken pictures of it.”

He called, “Charlie? Make sure you dust this window out here for prints, inside and outside; he may have gotten careless on the fire-escape side.” He leaned over and examined a smudge of red on the soiled white sill. “Get me a close-up of this, too,” he added, “and then have one of the lab boys dig it out and run a test on it.” His eyes ran over the kitchen: everything clean and tidy, no unwashed dishes or glasses. “All right,” he said, “tell me about her, give me a run-down. Name?”

“Alison Bartlett, age twenty-one. Lived in this apartment eleven months. Secretary. Quiet. Kept to herself. Landlord says he’s never been aware of visitors here.”

“Where did she work?”

“According to the papers at her desk, at Ebbets Publishing. I checked it out on the super’s phone, and an Alison Bartlett has worked there for eleven months, first as typist, then as secretary. That’s all I got from a routine call to personnel. Her boss’s name is Stevenson.”

“Good enough.” He walked over to the couch and stared down at the girl. “Funny,” he said, frowning, “she doesn’t look terrified, she looks astonished.”

Swope nodded. “It hits them that way sometimes. Fast. Too fast to register.”

Pruden nodded. “She can be moved now. They get a picture of that desk over there?” When Swope replied in the affirmative he approached it with interest. It was a small student desk with a typewriter stand at right angles to it, and a stack of good bond paper
beside it, all of it inscribed with the name of Ebbets Publishing Company. The two drawers he pulled open showed nothing of particular interest: writing paper, canceled checks, colored pencils, four six-by-eight reproductions of Van Gogh paintings, a paperback Bartlett’s Quotations, one earring, a swizzle stick, a guidebook to the city. All of these would be examined later, slowly and patiently. The top of the desk was more communicative: there were bills and an engagement calendar with loose-leaf pages.

He turned the pages of the latter curiously, noting the number of empty pages. Those carrying inscriptions were meager: lunch with Ginny, a hairdresser appointment, reminder of a book due at the library, lunch with Ethel, hairdresser appointment … this seemed to be the shape of Alison Bartlett’s life: neat, organized, and empty. Ten days ago, however, she had jotted down the words “Ask for tomorrow off,” and with interest he turned the page. This time the sheet held a name and an address: Karitska, 11 Eighth Street.

It was something, anyway. He copied the address into his memo pad and tucked it away in his pocket. The phone rang and Swope wrapped a handkerchief around the receiver before plucking it from the cradle. He said, “The super says there are three news reporters waiting downstairs. Impatiently.”

“They’re going to love this one,” Pruden said dryly.

“You can say that again.” Swope’s voice was savage. “It’ll scare the daylights out of every young girl living alone in Trafton. Killer loose. Mad killer?”

“That,” said Pruden, “is up to us to find out.” He turned and looked again at the small dead face as the
body was placed on the stretcher. In death it was almost but not quite nondescript. He wondered what the sterile pages of that engagement calendar concealed: an affair, blackmail, drugs, abortionists, or just one more lonely victim of the big city? He knew that before the case was finished he would come to know Alison Bartlett better than her friends and even her parents had known her.

It was midafternoon before Pruden zeroed in on the notation in the engagement calendar. Swope was still at work canvassing the neighborhood to find anyone who might have seen the murderer on the fire escape, or suspicious strangers entering the building. So far nothing had turned up. The afternoon paper was on the street, carrying Alison Bartlett’s high-school graduation picture on its front page, and a headline that read
GIRL BUTCHERED IN APARTMENT.
By this time Pruden knew a little more about Alison Bartlett but not as much as he’d expected. One of the few things he did know, however, was that she didn’t belong on Eighth Street, and he was curious. It was a cloudy, oppressive afternoon, and the brief thunderstorm at noon had accomplished nothing for the neighborhood except to blow over a few garbage pails, which did not improve the appearance of a block that hovered precariously on the edge of being a slum. Number 11 had a bright yellow door; to the left of the door, on the first floor, hung a sign:
Madame Karitska, Readings.

What the hell—
readings?
thought Pruden, and rang the bell. When no one answered he opened the unlocked front door, walked into the hall, and knocked
on the first door to the left. He thought this added a new dimension to Alison Bartlett; her coming here was the first untidy note that appeared to have entered her immaculate life.

The door opened, and Pruden found himself surprised. The woman facing him was tall, in her mid-forties, and dressed in a well-cut tweed pants suit. Good bones, was his first clinical impression; dark hair parted in the center, pulled severely back into a knot, and a face strong enough to survive the severity. Her eyes were striking, deeply set and lidded but oddly penetrating. A passionate face, he decided, and an unusual one. He rather enjoyed the unusual. He decided that she didn’t belong on Eighth Street either.

“Come in, won’t you?” said Madame Karitska, and turned her back on him to lead him inside.

The room he entered seemed flooded with light after the dark hallway. It contained almost exclusively books set in bookcases that occupied every inch of wall space. Arranged in the center of the room, however, was a couch, a low, intricately carved table in front of it, and a chair. He said grimly, “If you read the newspapers you ought to know you shouldn’t allow strangers inside so casually.”

She turned and looked at him with interest. “But I don’t feel that we’re strangers at all. Sit down, won’t you? I’ve no appointments for an hour, and I’ve coffee in the kitchen. Would you prefer Turkish or American?”

For some reason Pruden said, “Turkish. What kind of appointments?”

She emerged from the other room, bearing tiny cups on a tray, and without reply poured an almost lava-like
substance into the cups. “I’m delighted that you prefer Turkish,” she said. “It’s my one luxury in America. So many people find the grains abrasive and the brew too strong for them.”

Pruden took a sip of Turkish coffee, shuddered, but withheld comment.

“But I think,” she added with a faint smile, “that you have come for a more specific purpose than to ask what I mean by appointments.”

“Yes.” He removed the small photo of Alison Bartlett from his pocket and watched her closely as he handed the slip of cardboard across the table to her. She looked at it and a flash of something resembling pain crossed her features. Handing it back she said, “Yes, I recall her very well.”

“Recall her?”

“She came here about ten days ago. By appointment but without giving a name.”

“Of course you’ve read about her in the newspaper,” he said.

“On the contrary, I do not read newspapers,” she said firmly, “but I would guess that you are from the police.”

“Then it’s a bit difficult to believe that you don’t read newspapers.”

She shrugged. “Many people come here, I don’t have to read newspapers. The outside world has no interest for me, only the inner worlds. Out there”—she waved a hand—“out there is only negativeness, violence, confusion, hostility—”

“That’s why police are necessary,” he said dryly. “Now tell me about Alison Bartlett.”