The Prodigal Son (10 page)

“Darn! I’ve been hanging out for that. Is he good for things like science and Dr. Jim’s book?”

“Perfect,” said M.M. with satisfaction. “There’s no denying either that C.U.P. can do with the funds a huge bestseller would bring in. The Head Scholar will have money to publish books he couldn’t have otherwise. C.U.P. is well endowed, but the dollar is not what it used to be, and these days alumni with millions to give think of medicine or science. The days when the liberal arts received megabuck endowments are over.”

“Yes, that’s inevitable. A pity too,” said Carmine; he was a liberal arts man. “Last name Millstone? As in the Yankee Millstones, or the ordinary old Jewish immigrant Millstones?”

“The ordinary old Jewish immigrants, thank God. Chauce, as he’s known, is worth a whole clan of Parsons.”

Carmine rose. “I’ll have to see people I’m bound to offend, sir. Be prepared.”

“Do what has to be done.” The good-looking face was at its blandest. “Just get Dr. Jim out from under, please. It has not escaped me that he’s bound to be the main suspect.”

Her tiger bonnet on her head to keep her ears warm, her short arms encumbered by folds of fake fur, Delia drove her cop unmarked out to Route 133 and found Hampton Street. An odd neighborhood for relatively affluent people, but her preliminary research had revealed that Max and Val Tunbull had each built on Hampton Street in 1934, just as America was recovering from the Great Depression, on land that had cost them virtually nothing, and using building contractors grateful for the work. Probably they had believed that Hampton Street would become fairly ritzy, but it had not. People wishing to be ritzy had preferred the coast or the five-acre zone, farther out.

Max Tunbull’s house was imposing. Delia parked her Ford in the driveway so that other cars could get around it, and rang the doorbell: it chimed the first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony, a choice she abominated.

In spring, summer and fall there would be a pleasant garden around the knoll upon which the house stood, though whoever selected the plants seemed indifferent to what ice did to Mediterranean things. Someone homesick for the Dalmatian coast, perhaps? wondered Delia as she waited.

One of the tiniest women she had ever seen opened the door. Four feet six, no more, and shapeless, clad in a shapeless grey uniform dress. She looked what Delia’s father would have called “wrong” — the skull structure of a cretin, yellow, speckled skin too. But the very dark little eyes were full of intelligence as they surveyed Delia, no giant herself.

“What you want?” she demanded, her accent thick and Balkan.

Delia flashed her gold detective’s badge. “I am Delia Carstairs, a sergeant in the Holloman police, and I have an appointment to see Mrs. Davina Tunbull.”

“She sick, no see.”

“Then she has ten minutes in which to get well, and she
will
see me,” said Delia, stepping adroitly around the gnome. “I’ll wait in the living room. Kindly show me the way.”

Rage and fear fought for domination; the fear won, so the gnome conducted Delia to a large room furnished in an unconventional way: mismatched chairs and coffee tables, shelves of mementos and art pieces, a wall of leather-bound, gilded books, a large thick rug that bore a pattern reminiscent of a Paul Klee painting. The colors went together well, the chairs were comfortable but the fabric very modern — the decorator loved Paul Klee. There were several paintings on the walls that Delia fancied were genuine Klees. An interesting choice, to feature a post-impressionist master not well known outside art circles. This Davina Tunbull might have as many layers as flaky pastry.

“What is your name?” she asked the gnome.

“Uda.”

“You’re the housekeeper?”

“No. I belong Miss Vina.”

“Belong?”

“Yes.”

“Then please go and inform your mistress, Uda, that she cannot avoid this interview. If she is ill, I will accompany her to the Holloman Hospital and question her there. Or, if she thinks not to grant me an interview at all, I will arrest her for obstruction of justice and see her at the Holloman Police Department in a proper interrogation cell.”

Extraordinary, the effect the word “interrogation” had on eastern Europeans! Uda vanished as if conjured out of existence while Delia divested herself of her outer garb; the room was well heated. Someone was a smoker, but no odor of cigarettes lingered in the air, so the ventilation must be excellent. Odd cigarettes that Delia knew well, having smoked them herself in days gone by. Sobranie Cocktails, made of Virginia tobacco with gold paper tips and several pastel colors of paper — pink, blue, green, yellow and lilac. At night the Cocktails smoker apparently switched to black Sobranies — gold paper tips, black paper encapsulating pure Turkish tobacco. There were no butts in any of the immaculate modern glass ashtrays, but there were six boxes of Sobranie Cocktails and three boxes of black Sobranies scattered around the coffee tables.

Davina Tunbull tottered in, supported by her servant. She was wearing a purple satin nightgown and had a billowing lilac chiffon negligée over it. Long black hair, white skin, blue eyes,
a bonily beautiful face of the kind Delia fancied Mata Hari might have owned. She looked like a mistress, not a wife. One long, graceful hand was pressing red fingertips to her brow, the other clutched at Uda, who must be remarkably strong. Mrs. Vina Tunbull wasn’t feigning giving her a lot of weight to support.

“Sit down, Mrs. Tunbull, and cut out this utterly ridiculous nonsense,” Delia said crisply. “Hysterics are wasted on me, and histrionics make me want to laugh. So none of either, please. Sit up straight and behave like a very intelligent woman who owns and runs a highly successful business.”

The lush mouth had fallen open; evidently Mrs. Tunbull wasn’t used to such plain speaking. “Pink!” she rapped at Uda, who opened a Sobranie Cocktails box, removed a pink cigarette, lit it, and handed it to her mistress. “What do you want?” she asked Delia rudely, the smoke trickling from her nostrils like a lazy dragon not prepared to stoke its furnace.

“First of all, what prompted you to have a formal dinner party in your home last Friday?” Delia asked.

The pink cigarette waved around as Davina shrugged. “It was overdue,” she said, her accent more an asset than a liability; without it, her voice wasn’t attractive. “My husband, Max, had his sixtieth birthday at New Year, that was one reason. For another, I wished to celebrate the birth of our son, Alexis — I have been very slow recovering. Finally, John had come back from the dead.” Her lids went down to veil her eyes; she handed the partially smoked cigarette to Uda, who stubbed it out. “It really was the prodigal son returned, my dear Sergeant Delia Carstairs.”

Well, well, so Uda told her my name and rank and everything, thought Sergeant Delia Carstairs.

“Max and his brother, Val, certainly regarded John as long dead,” Vina went on. “There had been a huge police search for John and his mother in 1937, and it was not abandoned for some years. It is traditional to kill the fatted calf when the long lost prodigal son returns, and I did — I had roast veal for the main course — wasn’t that clever of me?”

“Very clever,” said Delia dryly. “Was Mr. Tunbull sure that John was his son?”

“In the end he was quite convinced,” Vina said. “John had his mother’s engagement ring. Oh, there were many documents and papers, but it was the ring slew Max, who believed his eyes. Martita — John’s mother — had admired the stone in a geology shop, and Max had it made into an expensive ring for her. It is an opal, but the opal is in bands striped through a solid black stone, like a zebra. I will show you,” she said, literally snapping her fingers at Uda, who went to a box on a shelf, opened it, and brought a huge ring to Delia.

Amazing indeed! Delia had never seen anything like it, even when thumbing through the books of gemstones police sometimes had to consult. The stripes, black as well as white, were about two millimeters thick, the black dull and opaque, the opal white flashing from red to green fire as the stone was moved. The stone — about twenty carats — was mounted in yellow gold.

“As a gem it’s probably not all that valuable,” said Delia, handing it back to Uda, “except for its rarity, which would raise its worth considerably.”

Uda had put the ring away and returned to stand by Davina; waiting for the next snap of the fingers?

“There were physical similarities too,” Vina said. “John was different in coloring and features, but his facial expressions were pure Max. Ivan saw it immediately. Ivan is the nephew.”

“Why did you invite the Doctors Hunter to your dinner?”

“To please John. He knew them in California, and I thought it would be nice for him to have some friends of his own there.” Another shrug; she used them for all sorts of reasons. “After all, Sergeant Carstairs, Max, Val, Ivan and I all know Dr. Jim very well through C.U.P. It was his wife we didn’t know.”

“I understand you have high hopes for his book?”

“Naturally!” Davina said impatiently. “If
A Helical God
is a big bestseller, then Tunbull Printing and my own Imaginexa stand to make a lot of money. We do well out of printing any C.U.P. book, but Dr. Jim’s is unique. Max has already printed twenty thousand copies.”

“But isn’t the title still a matter of debate?” Delia asked blankly. “Wasn’t it rash to go to press?”

“It was my idea,” Davina said triumphantly. “Dr. Jim is in love with his title. So if the book and its cover are already in print bearing his title, we win!”

“You could as easily wind up in a court battle with C.U.P. that could go on for years,” said Delia, hardly able to credit her ears. She reasoned like a small child! And Max and Val and Ivan had actually risked their business on her instincts? When in the right environment, Davina Tunbull must be able to sell the Brooklyn Bridge ten times a day.

“You have the cow by the feet instead of the ears,” Vina said, sounding blithe. “We only stood in danger if Tinkerman was the Head Scholar, and I knew he would not be. I asked Uda to look in the bowl of water at the future — she is never wrong! She said Tinkerman was going to choke to death at the banquet, and that is exactly what happened. Dr. Jim will keep his title. We stand in no danger now that Tinkerman is dead.”

Ye gods, the woman
is
a child! thought Delia, alarmed. “Mrs. Tunbull, I think it’s time I reminded you that you are entitled to have a lawyer present while you’re being questioned,” she said urgently. “I’ve endeavored to keep our conversation neutral, but you are incriminating yourself out of your own mouth. Juries are not impressed by soothsayers. Do you wish to continue to speak to me, or would you rather have a lawyer present?”

“I need no lawyers,” said the lady loftily. “I did not kill the man. I went nowhere near him. As for my dinner — why should I kill poor John? He told Max and me that he didn’t want Alexis’s inheritance. His adopted father is very rich and has already settled millions on John. If I were you, I would look at Ivan. He thought he would be the big loser.”

“Thank you for this most illuminating interview,” Delia said hollowly. “Is there anything else I ought to know?”

“Only that John —” Vina’s voice dropped to a whisper “— was enamored of me. I could not tell Max, and I did not tell Max! But it was a good thing John died in that respect, Sergeant. He was so ardent that I had to fight him off with my
teeth and my nails. Then Uda came in, and I was saved. Is that not so, Uda?”

“Yes.”

“When did this happen, Mrs. Tunbull?”

“Last Friday. At the dinner. He got me alone.”

“Bad man!” said Uda, glowering.

“At the dinner, Mrs. Tunbull, did you go into the study at any time after the men repaired there?”

“No,” said Davina.

“No,” said Uda.

“I do advise you to ask your husband to seek legal counsel, Mrs. Tunbull. You have a tendency to be indiscreet,” said Delia, rising to depart.

“Indiscreet! What a good word! I will remember it. Now I will be indiscreet on a different subject, Sergeant. Your clothes are very bad. Very, very bad.”

Her best poker face didn’t betray her; Delia looked curious. “Are you qualified to judge?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. I was model in New York City. TV commercials. My face was on some billboards. My legs too. Davina Savovich, but as model I was just Davina. About you, Sergeant. You need to lose at least thirty pounds,” the high, remorseless voice went on, “and seek the right exercises to get a waistline at least. Wear slacks to hide your legs, they are beyond all hope. When you lose the weight, come back to me, and I will dress you.”

By this, the tiger bonnet was on and its ribbons tied beneath Delia’s chin; Uda was holding the door open, her black currant
eyes lit with derision. Delia stepped out on to the mat and turned with a brilliant smile.

“It is a miracle to me, Mrs. Tunbull, that nobody has ever murdered
you
,” she said, and stomped off to her car.

“Impudent bitch!” she yelled to the freezing air as she wrenched open the Ford’s door. In the driver’s seat, she turned the rear-vision mirror down to regard her face in its framing bonnet; her fury died. “What rubbish!” she said as the car moved. “My dress sense is impeccable. Aunt Gloria Silvestri says so, and look at her! The best-dressed woman in Connecticut, according to the
Hartford Courant
. That skinny bitch is a fashion ignoramus.”

However, she was still tending to stomp when, on the off-chance, she called in to the morgue on her way to her office. Luck at last! There at a desk, carefully writing up notes, was Dr. Gustavus Fennell, Deputy Coroner. He was as anonymous as many in the business of handling the dead tended to be: neither tall nor short, fat nor thin, fair nor dark. Mr. Average And Totally Forgettable.

“Gus, did you post John Hall?” she asked.

Down went the pen; he considered the question. “Yes.”

“Did the body bear any bruises, bites or scratches? The sort of marks a man might have if he tried an unsuccessful rape?”

“No, definitely not.”

“Could bruises develop post mortem? Is he still here?”