“I am afraid I won’t be in today,” she said to her secretary, a meek creature named Jenny Marx who had long taken an inferior position to Walter Jenkins, and certainly wouldn’t be a problem now. “If the police should need to see me, tell them I’m at home and will be glad to see them here at any time.”
There. That was it. An aneurysm!
Like most scholarly persons who had chosen a solitary life, Jess Wainfleet’s home was centered around the room she called her library, though it was not a room visitors ever saw. They were accommodated in a kitchen breakfast booth.
The library was shelved from floor to ceiling wherever no windows intruded, and provided with a broad-stepped, bannistered ladder anchored in tracks on the floor; it held a Barcalounger, an upright easy chair, a desk with an office chair behind it, two console tables and two lecterns on wheeled stands, one holding her stereotaxic atlas of the brain. The floor was black carpet, the ceiling a uniform cloudy brilliance from inset fluorescent tubes overlaid with milky plexiglas. The kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom and a door to the cellar opened off a hall.
When Carmine and Delia arrived at Jess’s front door, she led them straight to her library.
Its furniture had received two additions: a pair of stern hard-backed chairs facing the office chair across the desk.
“Please sit there,” she said, taking the office chair.
Delia sat; Carmine walked about a little at first, his manner polite, patently awed.
“Everyone from Voltaire to Thucydides,” he said, smiling at his hostess, “and you’ve had your Scientific Americans bound in leather year by year. I used to do that until I married, then I couldn’t afford it anymore.”
“Has married bliss been worth the pain of loss, Captain?”
His face registered genuine astonishment. “Good God, yes! Infinitely. I can still afford the annual subscription, and by the time my sons can reach the shelves where they’re stored, they will be pulling them out to read, not to rip.”
“A miracle!” Jess exclaimed.
“Excuse me?”
“You are a thinking parent, a luxury I never had.”
“I’d rather call a thinking parent a necessity than a luxury.”
“And what may I do for the Holloman police?”
“Why did you take their heads?” Delia asked, setting the tape recorder on the desk, its innards already in motion.
This time it was Jess astonished. “Oh, really!” she cried, exasperated. “All I needed from the pathetic creatures were their brains, and it’s a great deal easier to extract an intact brain from a cranium if the entire body isn’t attached.”
“Margot Tennant was the first, long before Walter Jenkins came on the scene,” Delia said, keeping her voice neutral. “Perhaps you would explain to us what happened to her. From the beginning, I mean. Where did she come from?”
“I reiterate, she was a private patient from another nation signed over to my care by her relatives, who were financially exhausted and emotionally quite beyond caring what happened to her. I reiterate, all the Shadow Women, as you so aptly named them, were from foreign parts,” said Jess Wainfleet.
“It would be a great help if you told us your source, Jess, and also more about Ernest Leto,” Delia said.
“Oh, I’m sure it would be, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. Modern authorities make it so difficult for people to rid themselves of intolerable burdens because modern authorities never seem to experience one iota of the pain or the hardship of caring for the hopeless. All that interests them are the pieces of paper, and pieces of paper inevitably end as ass-wipes. I know the pain, I know the hardship. Therefore I refuse to join the bureaucratic conspiracy. You will learn what I choose to tell you, nothing else.”
“Then let’s see what you choose to tell us,” said Carmine. “Margot Tennant was acquired. What did you do next?”
“She became the first of six experiments on a neurosurgical technique, the prefrontal lobotomy. You know this because I have already described the operation to you. However, I followed the patient’s progress through six months of her apartment life. At its end I put a photograph of her in the apartment that served as a trigger telling her it was time to go. She obeyed by leaving at once to come to this house. I went to the apartment and cleaned up, knowing I had six weeks’ leeway.”
Jess lit a cigarette and continued. “I returned here and sacrificed my subject by perfusing her brain with my own fixative solution through both carotid arteries. Death is absolutely instantaneous. Once the subject was dead and the fixative given enough time to suffuse through all the brain’s tissue, I amputated the head and then removed the brain.
“Without sacrificing my experimental animal, you must realize, I know nothing. But after studying the effect of my neurosurgical intervention, I learned everything there was to learn. And I was correct. Six subjects were sufficient.”
Never had Delia come so close to vomiting during a case; she felt her mouth go dry, felt the first premonitory retch, and fought to keep her gorge down. That she succeeded felt no victory; was Jess Wainfleet human? Detached, impassive, pitiless … And I had fun with this woman! I liked her!
“How did you dispose of the bodies?” Carmine asked.
“I bought a huge chest freezer—it’s still in the basement. After I succeeded so fantastically with Walter, I brought him here to my house four times to remove the first four frozen bodies. The task was beyond my physical capabilities, but no one checks my car when I drive into HI. I don’t know what Walter did with any of the bodies, including the last two, which I gave to him unfrozen and on site, so to speak. I presume he buried them somewhere.”
Carmine too was having trouble assimilating the degree of utter coldness, and a part of him had room to grieve for Delia—poor, deluded, betrayed Delia! That hurt. The rest just revolted.
“Are you saying, Dr. Wainfleet, that you deliberately made use of an inmate to conceal your personal activities?” he asked.
“Yes, yes!” she snapped, goaded.
“Their skulls are missing,” Carmine said.
“I know! I had Walter crush them in a vise, then pound the pieces to powder. He worshipped me,” she added in a confiding voice, “absolutely worshipped me!”
“Dr. Wainfleet, I must arrest you on six charges of murder in the first degree. Anything you say or do may be taken down and used against you in a court of law. You are entitled to legal representation,” Carmine said.
The handcuffs came from inside Delia’s spacious purse; Jess Wainfleet held out her hands without comment, even after her arms were repositioned at the small of her back before the cuffs were clicked into place.
“I didn’t think you’d give in without a fight,” Delia said.
“Were I ten years younger, I would have fought with every ploy known to the law,” Jess said, looking wry. “I’m too old to do it all again, even if I had another Walter to work on. But I don’t. Walter was a rare bird.”
“One the world won’t miss,” Carmine said. And nor, he added silently, will the world miss you, Dr. Wainfleet. I’m hard put to decide whether Walter was the worse monster, or you are. Whatever else he may have been, Walter was a dupe—your dupe. You used his capacity for murder to conceal your own murders, then condemned him for getting a kick out of killing.
By noon it was all over.
Dr. Jessica Wainfleet was in that sole woman’s cell that had seen so much, with a woman uniform right inside it with her, even when she used the bathroom. No suicide was going to happen on his watch, vowed Lieutenant Virgil Simms.
“Well, swoggle my horns!” said Commissioner Silvestri to his captains over lunch in his aerie. His black and sparkling eyes traveled from Carmine to Fernando and then back to Carmine, scant humor in them, which was almost unbelievable. “This has been a spooky and horrible case from start to finish, guys, not to mention two cases rolled in one—kinda. As my Aunt Annunziata used to say, ‘The sins of the flesh are the hardest to be rid of.’ I kno
w it’s only lunch, and normally at this hour my eagle’s nest is as dry as a water hole in a drought, but today, gentlemen, I am moved to offer a snifter of X.O. cognac squeezed out of Napoleon’s boot.”
Nothing loath, the gentlemen captains accepted this rare accolade. “And tonight,” Silvestri said, swirling his balloon, “we are all invited to Busquash Manor for dinner, including all wives and children down to newborns. The older kids will be screened first-release movies, and the younger ones will watch a pantomime-style concert. Infants will have lullabies.”
“That’s what I call civilized,” said Fernando with a grin; he was the father of a ten-year-old boy, an eight-year-old boy, and a five-year-old girl, so sitters were usually a nightmare.
Despite the darkness of Ivy and Jess lingering web-like still, it was a joyous gathering that evening at Busquash Manor. The kids were spirited away to environs that pleased even the most fussy among them, including beds as well as skilled entertainers, which meant the unexpected treat of freedom for parents, fed the most delicious foods and drinks. Rufus played Chopin, Rha sang Russian folk songs in a voice that went from soprano to bass, and then everyone lounged around in comfortable chairs to talk.
Carmine participated, but as an outsider. A rare privilege for one from a large and closely knit family. The Brothers Carantonio, he reflected, had subtly changed, thanks, according to Delia, to Jess Wainfleet’s one good deed. She had told Rufus to stop atoning for their father’s crimes, and he and Rha had seen her logic. Rufus, of course, was flirting with Delia, while Rha had captured an extraordinary duo: Betty Goldberg and Gloria Silvestri. If anything good had come out of this business, it was a steadier foundation for Rha and Rufus.
Stomach pleasantly full, Carmine leaned back in his chair and listened to John Silvestri on the subject of funny farms.
He must have fallen asleep, and Silvestri had compassionately moved away to let him doze in peace; when a hand rested lightly on his shoulder, he jumped.
“Phone, Captain,” said Rha.
Carmine got up and followed Rha down one of the Manor’s halls to a jade-green and citrus-yellow room where a phone was lying off its cradle.
“Delmonico!” he barked, not pleased to be aroused.
“Carmine, listen,” said a beloved voice, “I’ll have no arguments! I am well, I am rested, I am in an uplifted mood, I am as fat as butter, and I am bored to dry sobs. The boys are missing Frankie and Winston desperately. I am flying home tonight on the red-eye. Phone you from Kennedy.” Clunk.
Blinking, he emerged into the hall.
“Is everything okay?” Rha asked anxiously.
“My wife’s coming home on the red-eye.”
“That,” said Rha, “calls for a drink.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Colleen McCullough was born in western New South Wales in 1937. A neuroscientist by training, she worked in various Sydney and English hospitals before settling into ten years of research and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in the USA. In 1974 her first novel, Tim, was published in New York, followed by the bestselling The Thorn Birds in 1977 and a string of successful novels, including the acclaimed Masters of Rome and Carmine Delmonico series, and a memoir, Life Without the Boring Bits. In 1993 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Macquarie University for the meticulous research she conducted for her Roman novels. In 1997 she was declared an Australian National Living Treasure and in 2006 she was awarded the Order of Australia for services to the arts and to the community. In 1980 she settled in Norfolk Island, where she lives with her husband, Ric Robinson, and a cat named Shady.
BOOKS BY COLLEEN McCULLOUGH
Tim
The Thorn Birds
An Indecent Obsession
Cooking with Colleen McCullough and Jean Easthope
A Creed for the Third Millennium
The Ladies of Missalonghi
Bittersweet
THE MASTERS OF ROME SERIES
The First Man in Rome
The Grass Crown
Fortune’s Favorites
Caesar’s Women
Caesar: Let the Dice Fly
The October Horse
Antony & Cleopatra
The Song of Troy
Roden Cutler, V.C. (biography)
Morgan’s Run
The Touch
Angel Puss
The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet
Life Without the Boring Bits
THE CARMINE DELMONICO SERIES
On, Off
Too Many Murders
Naked Cruelty
The Prodigal Son
COPYRIGHT
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in the United States
by Simon and Schuster in 2013
First published in Australia in 2013
This edition published in 2013
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Colleen McCullough 2013
The right of Colleen McCullough to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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McCullough, Colleen, 1937-
Sins of the flesh: a Carmine Delmonico novel / Colleen McCullough.
978 0 7322 9803 6 (pbk.)
978 1 4607 0102 7 (epub)
A823.3
Cover design by Hazel Lam, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover image by Paul Debois/ Getty Images
Sins of the Flesh Page 29
