The Prodigal Son (25 page)

“True.”

Delia coughed delicately. “Um — have you considered Millie Hunter at all?”

Carmine lifted his head as though someone had speared him through the chest. “Yes, Deels, of course I have.”

“She could have done all three, Carmine. She knew John was in town because he visited her and Jim out on State Street, and she could have lain in wait for him immediately before the men went into Max’s study. She could have laced Emily’s water carafe, and tell me who better to substitute the B-12? The tetrodotoxin belonged to her.”

“Then, first of all, why did she declare the tetrodotoxin missing? And did she — or Jim, for that matter — know about Tinkerman and his problem absorbing B-12?” Carmine asked.

“Let me see Mrs. Tinkerman,” Delia said eagerly.

“Sure, whenever you like.” Carmine got to his feet. “I think it’s time I saw Dean Wainfleet.”

“Who’s he?”

“Dean of Divinity. Therefore Tinkerman’s old boss.”

If I have any complaints about Carmine Delmonico, Delia thought as she drove to Busquash, it is that he fails to see that some women witnesses should be questioned by a woman —
me!
The moment Mrs. Tinkerman told him about the B-12, he was out the door. Whereas I would have stayed for a cup of tea and a chat: those who drop one bombshell sometimes have two tucked in their bomb bays. Mrs. T. strikes me as the two-bomb type.

Though she had never set eyes on Edith Tinkerman before, one look told Delia that a weekend contemplating a future minus her husband and plus a quarter of a million dollars to spend had benefited the lady greatly. The home perm was still there and the clothes still made by her own hand, but the brown eyes sparkled and the face held no care-lines. A week ago, Delia divined, the eyes would have been dull and the care-lines many.

“I hope I don’t intrude?” Delia asked in her very poshest Oxford accent. “There are just one or two things to clear up.”

Nothing had the power to frighten Mrs. Tinkerman now that Tom was no more: she smiled. “Tea?” she asked, taking a punt on the accent.

“Oh, lovely! Yes, please!” Delia gazed around the kitchen. “How nice you’ve made it look. I always think that of all the rooms a house possesses, the kitchen gives its mistress away best. Oh, a choice! Twinings, too! Thank you, Earl Grey.”

The table, she was interested to see, had been cleared of the dressmaking impedimenta Carmine had described; Delia sat down, content to wait until the tea and her hostess arrived.

The Earl Grey was accompanied by sugar cookies — pounds to peanuts, thought Delia, that Mrs. T. hasn’t been allowed to make sugar cookies. She’d gone on a baking spree at the weekend.

“How long were you married?” Delia asked after expending sufficient effort on making Mrs. Tinkerman feel at ease.

“Twenty-four years.”

“All spent at Chubb?”

“Yes, at the School of Divinity. Tom was an ordained and fully functioning Episcopalian bishop, though his diocese was just Chubb and the Divinity School. He was also a prominent scholar of the Middle Ages. Dean Wainfleet’s interests lay elsewhere, so Tom was the school’s expert in his field.”

“You call him Tom. I would have thought your husband the kind of man who preferred to be addressed as Thomas.”

“Oh, he was! But I called him Tom.” She cleared her throat. “I’d feel more comfortable if you called me Edie, Sergeant.”

“Only,” said Delia with a magnificent gesture, “if you call me Delia. What did Tom call you?”

“Edith.”

“And was Tom potty about his work?”

Edith Tinkerman blinked. “Er — potty?”

“Nuts. Insane. My papa was an Oxford don before he retired — quite, quite potty, poor old dear! He has an atom bomb shelter in the backyard. My mother’s having a frightful time persuading him that he doesn’t need to shut himself up in it now that Mr. Nixon is President.”

“Your papa sounds interesting, at least. I’m afraid that Tom wasn’t interesting. He was very boring.”

“How long had he suffered from the B-12 business?”

“A long, long time,” said the widow vaguely. “I always thought it was Tom’s attempt to be interesting. Certainly he made no secret of it anywhere.”

“Did he not, now? That
is
interesting! Wasn’t he worried that when people knew he was shooting up, he’d be thought an addict to some nefarious drug?”

“No. B-12 is such a striking color, and he always waved the syringe around, or the ampoule, and it looked legitimate — or he thought it did, anyway. He made such a production out of needing his B-12 shot — had to sit down, fan himself, gasp a lot, complain of feeling faint. My guess is that most of those who saw him were convinced he had some malign disease, and he loved that. Then the minute he was given his shot, he’d jump about as if he’d been cured by Jesus Christ.”

“That’s impossible,” Delia said flatly.

“Tell me about it, Delia. The doctors all said it takes days for the shot to have any effect, but that didn’t impress Tom. He was convinced it worked immediately.”

“So it was really an attention-seeking mechanism,” Delia said. “However, he was fairly furtive at the banquet, yes?”

“That fit too,” said Edith. “He was too pedantic to be any kind of speaker except a boring one, but he thought he spoke well because his sentences were properly parsed and analyzed — Tom had a passion for correct English. It had been years since he had had a wider audience than Divinity students, and he was very nervous. M.M. disliked him, and he knew it. And, of course, he knew M.M. had fought against his appointment as
Head Scholar strenuously. Roger and Henry Parson got him the post, and they were in his audience too. So he was petrified, Delia.”

“I understand, Edie. Go on, dear.”

“M.M. reminded him that he was only minutes away from his big moment, and he panicked. The only thing that could calm him down was a shot. Even from where I sat three over from him, I could see it coming — sure enough, he signaled me. So I left the table at once, did my thing with the ampoule and the TB syringe, then left the Ladies. He was waiting in the corner, in a real stew. His agitation made me nervous, and I started to cry.” She shivered, remembering. “Anyway, I gave him the shot in his neck and he rushed back to the table. I don’t think anyone even noticed I was missing.”

“Where did you get that particular ampoule, Edie?”

“That was weird!” she exclaimed. “It was sitting with the syringe right next to my handbag, but I don’t remember putting it there. I must have, I guess — Tom was in a bad mood before we started out, and I get — got — flustered when he was in a bad mood. I put the things in my bag.”

“Where do you keep the B-12?”

She got up and went to a full-length door that opened into a pantry — a closet shelved at intervals on three sides that contained groceries and stores of non-toxic kind from toilet paper to washing powder. A wooden box about half the size of a shoe box sat on a shelf; Edith Tinkerman carried it to the table and Delia.

“There, that’s where I keep it.”

Delia opened it to discover order and method: ten tuberculin syringes in sterile paper packets, a 10cc bottle of ruby-red cyanotobalamin with a rubber diaphragm in its top, six 1cc glass ampoules of the vitamin for single doses, and a box of swabs.

“Who knows it’s there?”

“At least half the Divinity School.”

“How come?”

“Sometimes Tom would send a student home for the box — he never kept any supplies at school.”

“So he gave himself a shot if necessary?” Delia asked.

The brown eyes widened incredulously. “Oh, no! Never! He hated even looking at the needle. There were several people at the school who were willing to give him a shot.”

“Was he a bit of a joke at the school?”

“A lot of a joke, I’d say. Tom was so pompous, and I’ve always thought pompous people make the best joke material. One year it even crept into the student concert — a sketch about Tom and his B-12. I laughed myself sick.”

“What did Tom do?”

“Pretended it never happened.”

Delia scooped up the box. “I have to confiscate this, dear. For all we know, it might contain more poison.”

“Am I going to be arrested?” The widow gave a harsh laugh. “It would be just like the rest of my life to be thrown in jail for Tom’s murder.”

“No, Edith, you’re definitely not going to be arrested,” said Delia in her most soothing voice. “You were simply what we
call a vector — a method of transmitting the poison to its target. As far as you were concerned, the syringe contained vitamin B-12. Everybody understands that, I do assure you. Let me help wash the dishes.”

“You’ve set my mind at rest, Delia,” said Edith over the dish mop. “I was worried.”

But, thought Delia, you haven’t set my mind at rest, Edith! Somewhere in your bomb bay there’s another bomb, and I haven’t located it. So she said, “May I come again?”

“Oh, I’d love that!”

“Are you going to stay in Holloman?”

“No. The girls and I talked it over yesterday, and we’ve decided to go to Arizona. We’re going to buy three apartments next door to each other. The girls will work as secretaries and I’ll take in dressmaking. Our inheritance money we’ll save to go on cruises and long vacations,” said the widow, painting a picture that perhaps would not have been everybody’s idea of bliss, but clearly twenty-four years of Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman had lowered the expectations of all three Tinkerman women.

“Your daughters might find husbands,” Delia said.

A giggle erupted. “And pigs might fly!”

Dean Charles Wainfleet was upset at the manner of Dr. Tinkerman’s passing, but immensely pleased to be rid of him.

“The most painful bore ever wished on this school,” he said to Carmine frankly.

“Would you have tolerated him were the Parsons not his most ardent patrons?” Carmine asked, smiling. The Dean was a formidable Renaissance scholar who had incorporated philosophy and history into his school, but, as his answer to Carmine’s question revealed, he knew which side his bread was buttered on.

“Without Parson patronage, he would have been gone,” said Wainfleet cheerfully. “As it was, Tom brought a lot of Parson money our way in the form of endowments for several chairs — including his own, I add. The humanities and religion are not pulling in the number of students they used to, but Chubb Divinity has enjoyed relative prosperity thanks to the Parsons, including the number of students enrolled in the college. They endow in many ways.”

“Is there anything I should know about Dr. Tinkerman that is known only within these college walls?” Carmine asked.

“Only that he didn’t give up his Chair of Medieval Christian Studies when he assumed his role as Head Scholar. He thought he could combine both, though he had taken a sabbatical for his first year at C.U.P. After that, both would function equally well. I didn’t agree, but the Parson Brothers did.”

“Either the man was a fool, or a demon for work.”

“A little of each, actually. For instance, he had managed to read every book C.U.P. had on its publication list, not only definitely to be published, but also possibly. Including several scientific works that can have meant nothing to him. He said he was reading them for — er —
style
.”

“That’s the fool,” Carmine said.

“Perhaps, but only perhaps, Captain. Tom Tinkerman wasn’t a critic of the colloquialism per se, nor even of what Percy Lee would call sloppy prose. His passion was style, and he really believed every author had a unique one. Dr. James Hunter was his obsession — he read
A Helical God
, he read Jim’s two other books, and every paper he ever published.
A Helical God
offended his ideals, ethics and principles, but style entered into it too, as it did Jim’s other works. He would rant in his stiff, quiet way about God’s taking as much offense from style as from content!— isn’t that extraordinary? I always felt that race lay at the bottom of Tom’s fixation on Hunter — at heart he was a bigot. Tom’s idea of God was of a white man, and black men with Jim Hunter’s degree of intellectual excellence had to be torn down.”

“That’s a terrible indictment, Dean.”

“I know it. Had he not died, anything might have happened.”

“Did Dr. Tinkerman and Dr. Hunter ever lock horns in public?”

“Once, that I know of. Just before Christmas, at one of M.M.’s professorial shindigs. Tom attacked Jim Hunter as if he’d personally crucified Jesus Christ. It was embarrassing.”

“Do you remember the gist of it?”

“Lord, no! We all moved out of earshot. It seemed wiser.”

“Just before Christmas? So the new Head Scholar’s identity was known?”

“Yes. Christmas Eve. M.M. was oozing bonhomie and Yuletide cheer — principally the egg-nog.”

“Did M.M. hear it?”

“No. Bobby Highman was telling one of his better stories.”

“How did Jim take the attack?”

“Nobly. A trifle pinched around the mouth, but he kept his cool. It was Tom who lost it.”

“As only uptight guys can lose it, I imagine. Thank you for that, Dean. It gives me one idea.” Carmine grimaced. “I’m not sure I can follow where the idea leads, but I can try.”

An extraordinary idea, but one that wouldn’t go away. Yet it had nothing to do with style, or with confrontations. It just popped into Carmine’s brain along with Dean Wainfleet’s verbal description of how things looked at a distance, when nothing could be heard, but much inferred from, when it all boiled down, very little.

Gus Fennell was just out of the autopsy room, and tired. “Oh, what now?” he demanded crossly, then gave himself a visible shake. “Sorry, Carmine. Having Patrick sequestered makes for too much work in my court and not enough in his.”

“We’ll move to fix that as soon as possible, Gus. Now sit down and I’ll get you a coffee.”

“I’d rather tea,” Gus said, still peevish.

Carmine brought him tea. “Lemon, or milk?”

“Just plain, thanks.” He sipped, closed his eyes. “Ah, better! What are you after, Carmine?”

“The answer to a question. Did you do histology on John Hall’s neck puncture?”

“Sure.”

“What did it show? I must have skimmed over it.”

The file was on his desk; Gus opened it. “A definite invasion of tissue, but very shallow. In fact, epithelium only.” He reached for his half glasses and read, frowning. “I see why you don’t remember. Whoever did the actual histology made a botch of it. I guess the lab was in a panic over this new and undetectable poison, and Paul had his best guy on that as well as himself. They pinch-hit, which is why they’re so good — no matter what the forensic task is, one of them can do the analysis or histology or ballistics or — or — it’s a long list. We don’t have the money or the work for separate technicians. But I remember this because he was a new guy — Brad. Turns out his skills are in ballistics, guns, that kind of thing.”