The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man (33 page)

I thought of calling Lieutenant Tracy and telling him what I had found. That would have been the sensible thing to do. But I felt that this was my case. It involved personal demons that I and I alone could vanquish.

We planned originally to drive via Boston, mostly for the roads, but decided instead on a cross-country route in Diantha’s APC — armored personnel carrier. I suggested she call it Bigfoot given how few miles it got to the gallon. Still, it is comfortable. Di drove and I relaxed, taking in the scenery. It was reassuring to see that much of New England appears to have escaped the sprawl of malls that have disfigured so much of America the Beautiful.

We stopped for lunch at a country inn run by a couple who had left the rat race of New York’s financial world. A more harried-looking pair I have seldom seen. Karl and Nance skittered hither and yon, scarcely stopping to say hi to Diantha, who knew them when. Apparently, they have to do much of the work themselves to make ends meet.

We arrived in Shetland Falls by midafternoon. It is a
prepossessing small town, with a main street of good buildings in brick, stone, and wood. We slant-parked right and began an apparently aimless stroll. There was method in the approach. I wanted us to appear as absentminded, average tourists. We wouldn’t act dotty or anything like that as I showed the damaged brooch to Mr. LeBlanc, just a bit distracted.

With Di as my accomplice, we walked along in search of number 47, third floor. We found 21, then 33, then 43, and then a large gap where a building had obviously been until recently. A chain-link fence surrounded the cellar hole where bits of charred debris were still in evidence. On the other side the numbers continued with 73.

There we entered a gift shop calling itself The Wretched Stalk. It proved to be an emporium specializing in local artisanal items with dazzling price tags. The keeper, a woman in a painter’s smock, told us she had known Mr. LeBlanc only casually, but that Jed and Glad in the Donut Hole next door knew him well.

“Well, not well,” Jed explained, as we ordered coffees to go. “He was a nice enough guy. Very polite. He was French …”

“French Swiss,” Glad corrected him.

“I guess. He came in here every morning for espresso and orange juice to go.”

“He really liked our maple cakes.”

“But then the building burned. Just like that. We’re lucky we’re stone. Hard to burn granite.”

“How long was he here?” I asked. “In Shetland Falls.”

“Couple of years. Not long after we started.”

“Did he leave a forwarding address?”

“Not with us. You could check the post office. Or the chief of police. He knows everything about that sort of thing.”

“How did the fire start?”

“No one knows.”

We thanked them and, sipping our brews of coffee, walked a few doors down to the Shetland Falls Police Department. Chief Russell Ballard remained seated in a comfortable, worn swivel chair but seemed relieved to see us, to have something to do.

“Yeah, Mr. LeBlanc. He was a real foreigner. But a regular gentleman. He could make just about anything new again. Earl Mason took him an old samurai sword, the real thing. It was about two hundred years old but a bit tarnished. He got it back good as new.”

“Tell me about the fire,” I asked. “How did it happen?”

“Don’t rightly know. The state fire marshal told me privately he smelled a rat, but he also couldn’t prove anything. If it was arson, then they had a professional do it.”

“When did it happen?”

The chief squinched his mild round face. “Let’s see … late April? No, come to think of it, second of May. I got a call about four in the morning. When I got there they were just trying to save the building on the right side. The other one’s granite with a slate roof.”

“Was LeBlanc’s business still there at the time?”

“No. That’s why the fire marshal thinks there ought to be an investigation. Mr. LeBlanc cleared out about a week before. Told people he had to go back to Switzerland and take care of the family business.” He shot me a searching look. “You know, you’re the second person from Seaboard who’s been here poking around about Mr. LeBlanc.”

“Really?”

“Eyah … Not long after the fire, a fellow came through asking pretty much the same questions.”

“Did he give his name?”

“He did, but I didn’t write it down. Phil somebody. It sounded foreign in a fakey kind of way.”

Though I had a pretty good idea he was talking about de Buitliér, I asked if he could describe him.

“I can and I will. He was on the short side, beard, and a tweed jacket and tie even though the day was hot and humid.” He paused. “You know of him?”

“As a matter of fact, he works for me.”

He glanced at me sharply. “Tell me, how do you spell his name?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I ain’t simple.”

So I spelled it out as best I could remember. I wondered what he had been doing here. I asked, “What was LeBlanc’s shop like?”

“Never was in it. Wally Marsden did odd jobs for him. He helped him pack up. I heard around town that there was some pretty high-tech stuff in there.”

“Such as?”

“Computers. Laser-guided lathes. Gas-fired smelters. Drills. Presses. All kinds of chemicals.”

“Did he leave a forwarding address?”

“Not with me. You could check the post office.” He rubbed his chin. Can I ask what your interest is in all of this?”

I took out my card. “I’m director of a museum up in Seaboard. I’m trying to trace the origin of some counterfeit coins.”

He glanced at it. “Right. You’ve had a couple of murders up there. Bad business all around.”

“Where could I find this Wally Marsden?”

“Wally lives over on the other side of Route Two. Go right on Bear Creek Road. First place on the left. Kind of run-down. Can’t miss it.”

We left Chief Ballard and ambled over to the post office playing tourist as we went. We duly took in the glacial potholes
worn into beautifully patterned granite bedrock along a green-banked river. We strolled along the Bridge of Blooms, an old railroad structure, now a marvelous linear garden of color and scents. Diantha took pictures of the displays with her remarkable little camera.

I paused to read the names on a war memorial dedicated to those from the town who had perished in recent conflicts. As I went down the list, I tried to imagine their faces, where they were born, how they died, the heartache.
These are the real heroes
, I thought to myself,
the ones who gave all
. Yet how small were their names. Compared with the very wealthy who, after some ingenious swindle of one kind or another, have their names emblazoned in huge lettering in granite on the outside of some building as proof of their magnanimity. And sometimes all over the interior as well, so that one cannot escape their futile, ostentatious benefaction. Futile because, as Felix so aptly pointed out, after a while a name is only a name.

It’s another reason I’m glad I turned down Elgin Warwick and his mummification scheme, even if his money is “old.” (The robber barons at least made and built things, unlike the latest crop of super-rich.)

But I digress.

The interior of the post office looked much as it would in Key West or Attu in the Aleutians what with special issues advertised on the walls and the usual array of packing materials.

Yes, Mr. LeBlanc did leave a forwarding address, a box number in Zurich, but a couple of things forwarded there had come back.

In Diantha’s formidable vehicle, we drove over to Route 2 and followed Chief Ballard’s directions. Sure enough, we arrived at a ramshackle sort of place, two old barns, one virtually collapsed near the road and, well up from there, a porched cottage set
back against a wooded hill. We drove into a clearing between them and parked beside a spanking-new pickup big enough to be a trailer truck.

I morphed into my private eye persona and made my way through a litter of junk that included an overturned ski mobile, a rusting lawn mower, old tires, what might have been a hay baler, and assorted car parts. I mounted uncertain steps to the paint-blistered porch. I knocked on the screen, though there was a man standing just a few feet away in the gloom of the interior.

“Wally Marsden,” I said neutrally.

“Who wants to know?”

“A friend of Alain LeBlanc’s.”

I guessed the man to be in his late thirties. He had stringy light hair, dissipated eyes, bad teeth, and wore a sleeveless T-shirt tucked into oil-stained jeans. He pushed open the screen and came out far enough to stand in the doorway.

“How do I know that?”

“You don’t. I’m not exactly a friend. He did some work for my company.”

His eyes stayed skeptical and puzzled at the same time, as though trying to gather his wits. “He did lots of work for lots of people.”

“Actually, Mr. Marsden, I owe Alain money and I’m trying to find out where to reach him.”

“He left a forwarding address at the post office.”

“I know, I tried.”

He glanced down at the yard. “Who’s that down in the four-by-four?”

“My wife.”

He nodded. “Nice.”

“I think so.”

“You say you owe Alain money?”

“I also have a piece of jewelry I want to send him.”

“How much money you owe him?”

“Depends.”

A sly smile came and went. “Depends on what?”

We didn’t entirely drop the pretense. I said, “I need to know a few things.”

“I’m listening.”

“I know that he made … replicas of old coins.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“True. I just want to know if he did any work for anyone up in Seaboard.”

“I think you would owe him about a hundred for that.”

I took out my wallet and fingered a couple of fifties. I gave him one and hung on to the other.

He nodded and glanced with longing toward our vehicle. “LeBlanc never told me much. There was a guy with a German name that dropped off a set of really old coins.”

“Heinrich von Grümh?”

“Sounds about right.”

I gave him the second fifty. “How many copies did you make?”

“Hey, listen, I didn’t have anything to do with what he did.”

“What did you do?” I still had my wallet out.

“I did odd jobs. Cleanup. Supplies. Packing and shipping. He said he’d teach me how to use his gear, but he never did.”

“So how many copies of those coins did you make?”

“You’d owe another … fifty for that.”

I took out two twenties and a ten and looked at them.

“Okay, I’m pretty sure he made two copies.”

“And sent them both back?” I handed him the money.

“As far as I know.”

“Nice truck.”

“Yeah, ain’t it.”

“How did the fire start?”

His eyes turned hostile for a flash. He shrugged. “Fire marshal’s been up here asking me the same thing. An insurance guy, too.”

“What did you tell them?”

“The truth.”

“I’m still listening.”

“Look, I had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. There was lots of chemicals left behind. Oil-soaked rags, that sort of thing. Could have been spontaneous combustion.”

“And you don’t know where I could reach Mr. LeBlanc?”

“He’s back in Switzerland all’s I know.”

“Well, thank you, Mr. Marsden. You’ve been a great help.”

“What about that money you owe him?”

“I thought I just paid that.”

We drove up into the hills for some sightseeing through forest and farmland before checking in at the Inn at Mountcharles. A rambling quaint clapboarded affair, it dated from the Revolutionary War. I liked it immediately, though Diantha balked at the accommodations, which were rudimentary but comfortable. We settled in and then lingered down to the bar and restaurant. I was charmed by what might be called the inadvertent authenticity of the place, especially the framed sepiatoned photos from long ago and folk art in the reception rooms with the chintz-covered armchairs and sofas.

“It’s very local,” Diantha said after we had taken our drinks to a table by a window looking out over a well-wooded ski slope.

“That’s exactly what I like about it.” I was perusing the menu but really thinking about the case. It was clear now that de Buitliér had found something that led him to suspect the authenticity of Heinie’s collection. He had a few samples tested, confirming
his suspicions. Did he then try to blackmail Heinie, threaten to expose him unless …? Heinie refused to pay. De Buitliér leaked the story to the
Bugle
. They met, argued. De Buitliér got the gun away from him and shot him. It didn’t add up.

“I’m going to have the chicken,” Diantha said to the matronly waitress, who had highly recommended the rib roast.
Local,
I thought, looking up at the work-worn, pleasant face. “The rib,” I said, “medium rare.”

Later, on a comfortable bed in our sparsely furnished room, I lay spent in the aftermath of lovemaking that had been truly lovemaking. In the course of our prolonged encounter, Diantha had noticed that the level of my amatory expectations had risen. Not that she objected except to say, with a rueful laugh, “It’s Merissa, isn’t it? She’s spoiled you.”

I must confess that I have been remiss in not investigating Feidhlimidh de Buitliér’s possible role in the murder of Heinrich von Grümh. He still does not appear to me as a probable suspect. What did he have to gain? Academic spite can corrode steel. But murder? Members of the professoriat of whatever rank are seldom people of action. With the exception, perhaps, of paleontologists and other natural historians.

Perhaps I simply cannot take him seriously as a suspect in a murder when I do not take him seriously as a man. I could not believe that he would have the gumption to kill someone in cold blood. Not when I thought of what it takes to hold a revolver up against the temple of a fellow human being and pull the trigger.

But Chief Ballard’s description had been smack-on. De Buitliér had been out to Shetland Falls snooping around. Or had he been in on the deal? Had LeBlanc double-crossed him? I had a moment of unease wondering about the authenticity of the other items in the Greco-Roman Collection.