The Clairvoyant Countess

by Dorothy Gilman

  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.”

  “This girl?”

  “Yes, what did she come here for? What did she want? You’re some kind of fortuneteller?”

  Madame Karitska surveyed him steadily from beneath her curiously hooded lids. “I’m a psychic, Mr.—?”

  “Lieutenant Pruden.”

  “She did not know why she came here,” went on Madame Karitska, “and the advice I gave her she could not accept. She is dead by violence?”

  Pruden barely concealed a derisive smile. “Then of course you read the newspapers. Yes, she’s been murdered. Some psycho broke into her apartment last night and killed her with a butcher’s knife.”

  Madame Karitska shook her head. “You are quite wrong.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Madame Karitska nodded, ignoring the dangerous tilt of his eyebrows. “I said you are quite wrong. On the contrary, you will eventually discover she was not killed by a stranger. I will tell you this: the clue to her murder lies in the death of her mother some months ago. Presumably the mother died of natural causes—a heart attack, the girl said—but in truth she was murdered. I saw it clearly—a vivid picture. Her mother was poisoned.”

  Pruden did not know whether to explode into anger or to laugh; in the end he only concealed a smile and said politely, “I see.”

  Madame Karitska’s smile was open and very charming. “You need not believe me, Lieutenant Pruden; it is of no consequence to me whether you do or not, but you will not find your murderer among the violent ones in this city, I assure you. Did you find a letter in Miss Bartlett’s wallet?”

  He stared at her. “No.”

  “Then it had been removed. But find the letter that she carried folded in her wallet, a letter from someone she trusted and adored, and you will find her murderer.”

  “She showed you this letter?”

  Madame Karitska gestured impatiently. “Of course not, but I could feel its emanations: they were terrible, ugly, vindictive, warped.”

  Pruden sighed, crossed his legs and decided to try a different tack. “Perhaps you would describe for me everything the girl said?”

  “Of course,” said Madame Karitska cheerfully, “but it was very little—I disappointed her and she did not remain. I’ll try to think—” She put both hands to her temples and slowly recreated her few moments with the girl, describing the visit in detail.

  “This picture you claim comes to your mind,” said the lieutenant, curious in spite of himself.

>   “I never explain it to skeptics,” she said firmly. “I will say only that it is a sixth sense, a gift for sensing what is invisible to others, for seeing what is and has been. In this case I was holding a ring which had belonged to the girl’s mother. She was undoubtedly wearing it when she died.”

  Pruden nodded. “Very interesting,” he said, and put down his cup of Turkish coffee.

  “You’ve not finished it,” said Madame Karitska with an amused smile.

  Pruden found himself smiling back at her, and then—suddenly uneasy at what she might guess of his thoughts, for there was something uncanny about her—he frowned. “I’ve got to be going. I won’t say I swallow any more of this than I did of your coffee but it’s interesting. Something they never mentioned in Police College,” he added wryly.

  “A pity,” she said. “I understand the Russians are devoting whole college courses to psychic phenomena, but of course Americans continue to resist it.” She sighed and stood up to usher him to the door. “Oh by the way, Lieutenant Pruden,” she said as he reached the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Your father is in the hospital and not expected to live, is this not correct? I think you will find the doctors are quite wrong and that he will begin to mend by the weekend.”

  Pruden looked hard and long at her and then flung open the door and went out.

  Alison Bartlett’s body was claimed by her stepfather the next day, and Pruden met him at the morgue, where the man introduced himself as Carl Madison. He looked distraught, his eyes red-rimmed, his tie askew. He was guilt-stricken, he said; he had taken great pains not to interfere with Alison’s desire to be independent after her mother’s death and now this had happened; he should never have allowed her to come to the city. Pruden murmured the usual, asked a few questions about Alison’s life in Massachusetts, the body was signed over to Madison, and he left on his sad journey home.

  A week later the public murmurings over the Bartlett murder had grown into an uproar and Pruden and Swope had learned nothing more than they’d known twenty-four hours after the girl’s death. Every possible lead had been followed to its source, every molester, loiterer, pimp, and known psychotic in their files checked out and still there was nothing. A big fat cipher. The county prosecutor was beginning to make angry statements. He was threatening his own investigation, and that, as Pruden’s superior grimly pointed out, threw a very bad light on the efficiency of the department.

  Pruden said, “I’d like to go to Massachusetts and poke around for a few days.”

  “She wasn’t murdered in Massachusetts,” pointed out the Chief. “She was murdered here in Trafton.”

  Pruden hesitated, a little embarrassed. “Look,” he said uneasily, “there’s always the chance we’ve gone about this wrong, isn’t there? I know McGill checked Massachusetts but it was only an inquiry to see if the girl had any rejected boy friends or had mentioned any men she met in Trafton. I think there could be more to it than that.” He said doggedly, “I’m thinking of the questions we ask in premeditated murders, like who benefits from a person’s death, that sort of thing.”

  The Chief sighed. “You’re grasping at straws, Pruden. This was no premeditated murder, it was a crazy, insane, violent act. A dope addict, a psycho—”

  “Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to think,” Pruden said stubbornly.

  “Pruden, 99 per cent of murders in the city are stupid, spur-of-the-moment, unpremeditated, insane acts of rage. Don’t complicate things for yourself.”

  “There was no look of terror on her face,” pointed out Pruden. “I keep remembering that. There was only astonishment. A girl like that, finding a strange person in her apartment in the middle of the night and seeing him with a butcher’s knife—”

  “She didn’t see it coming,” pointed out the Chief. “It’s happened before. The killer assures her he’s only after her radio, her cash, etcetera. A nice girl like that believes him, feels maternal about him, a little helpful, and then—pow. There isn’t time for terror, only astonishment.”

  Pruden sighed. “All right, then let me put it this way. There’s one tip I’ve never investigated.”

  The Chief’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding. Who from? What is it?”

  Pruden winced. “I’d rather not say, at least until I’ve checked it out. It’s too far out—way out. In fact if I told you, you’d laugh your head off. But we’ve found nothing and I figure even the wildest tip is worth looking into at this point.”

  The Chief considered, his eyes on Pruden’s face. “All right,” he said slowly, his eyes narrowing. “I’ve no desire to laugh in your face, not when I can see the day coming when the county prosecutor laughs in mine. I don’t know what I can tell the press while you’re gone but Swope can take over for the moment. How much time do you need?”

  Pruden reflected. “I haven’t seen the papers, the funeral was held in midweek?”

  The Chief nodded. “In Massachusetts. Full coverage by the press.”

  “Do you know who her lawyer is?”

  The Chief shook his head. “No, but it’s a small town, population eight hundred and fifty, and she lived there all her life. There’ll be her friends, teachers, minister, stepfather.”

  Pruden nodded. “I’ll leave this afternoon.”

  “Oh by the way,” said the Chief as Pruden reached the door, “anything new on your father?”

  Pruden’s face brightened but his voice, when he spoke, was singularly dry. “Quite a bit, actually. Over the weekend he came out of his coma and they believe he’s going to pull through now.”

  Chapter 3

  It was strange, Pruden thought, how strikingly different Alison Bartlett’s murder seemed from this end of the telescope, this sleepy New England village, population 858. A light snow was falling, one of those perverse spring flurries that happen in April in the North. He stopped first at the bank and inquired the name of the family’s lawyer; it seemed reasonable to suppose they would have one.

  “They opened Alison’s safe-deposit box just this morning,” the manager said. “The will goes into probate now. Tragedy,” he added with a shake of his head. “You’ll find Eben Johnson across the street. Second floor, the white clapboard building.”

  He walked up creaking wooden stairs and entered a door marked Johnson & Taggart, Attorneys-at-Law. It was a pleasant, cluttered, shabby office; a cheerful teenager with long blond hair waved him to a seat, poked her head into the adjoining office, and then said he could go in.

  “Eben Johnson?” he said to the man behind the desk, and holding out his hand added, “Lieutenant Pruden, detective division of the Trafton police.”

  Johnson stood and reached across the desk to shake his hand. He was a man who had seen his most active days. He looked frail, his skull showing under thin gray hair, mouth pursed, his eyes warm and kind. “You must be here about Alison,” he said, and an expression of sadness crossed his face. “A tragedy-stalked family, a terrible shock to us all. Sit down, won’t you?”

  “Gladly,” said Pruden.

  “Ruthie,” he called, lifting his voice, “bring us coffee.” He sat back and looked at Pruden. “I’ve known Alison all her life and I never thought—it’s shaken this town, shaken our beliefs, our smugness, our—” He stopped and shook his head. “Suppose you tell me.”

  Pruden considered a moment and decided the contents of any will or safe-deposit box could wait. “I want to know, not about Alison, but about her mother.”

  “Her mother!” exclaimed Johnson, and looked not only taken aback but alarmed. “Alison’s mother,” he repeated as Ruthie walked in bearing a tray with two cups of coffee on it. “Thanks,” he said absently, and as the girl headed out he called, “Close the door behind you, will you, Ruthie?”

  Pruden sat still, wary and alert. “I startled you?”

  The man hesitated. “Yes.” He held out one of the cups to Pruden. “Sugar? Cream?”

  “Just sugar. Why have I startled you?”

  He s
hook his head. “It’s difficult to say. Francine—Alison’s mother—has been very much on my mind this week, somehow, and you walked into this office and seemed to read my mind. She’s dead, you know. Died over a year ago. March 7,” he added.

  Pruden sipped his coffee, eyes on the man. “Heart attack, I understand?”

  “Yes.” His voice was short.

  “You’re not sure?”

  Johnson looked down at his coffee. “Of course I’m sure. Of course I’m sure,” he repeated slowly. “It’s just—”

  Pruden said softly, “If you’d talk it out, no matter how whimsical it might sound—”

  Johnson’s mouth curved in an ironic smile. “Lawyers are not whimsical, Lieutenant Pruden. As a lawyer, however, I’ve represented the Bartlett family for as many years as I’ve been practicing law. When Tom married Francine and they bought the old Whittaker house I handled the closing and the title search. I drew up Tom’s will, just as I’d drawn up his father’s, and I amended it for him after Alison’s birth. When Tom was killed in a car crash in ’60 I handled the estate, or what was left of it, and drew up a new will for Francine after she was a widow.”

  “I met her second husband in Trafton early this week.”

  “Yes, she married again.… Let’s say I could never reconcile myself to Francine’s death because I could never reconcile myself to her second marriage.”

  “I see,” murmured Pruden, recalling the stocky, good-looking, distraught man he’d encountered at the morgue. “Why?”