Too Many Murders

by Colleen McCullough

  “Yes, it was,” said she. “I see no point in dissimulation. If you talk to any of the faculty attached to Dante, they’ll tell you the same. John and I had a marriage of convenience. To be dean, a man has to be married, and the possession of a scholar for a wife is an advantage. Put plainly, I am frigid. John was prepared to overlook that. His own sexual tastes ran to young girls, though he was always very careful. He had to be! His ambition was to be president of an Ivy League university, and he had all the prerequisites, including an ancestor off the Mayflower. My own aspirations didn’t conflict with his in any way.” She let her thick, perfectly painted lids fall over those remarkable eyes. “We got on together extremely well, and I worried for him.”

  “Was there anything different about him yesterday morning?”

  “No, not really. If anything, his mood was somewhat sunnier than usual. I remarked on it to him over breakfast—we ate in the dining hall—and he laughed, said he’d had good news.”

  “Did he tell you what this good news was?”

  The yellow eyes widened. “John? Pigs would fly first, Captain. Frankly, I thought he was tormenting me.”

  “How did you feel when you were told what had happened?”

  “Stunned. Yes, I think that’s the most accurate word to describe my feelings. John just wasn’t the kind of man to be murdered—at least, not in this way, and inside his own study. Nor by such a subtle method, if one may call a brief agony subtle.”

  “What kind of murder wouldn’t have left you so stunned?”

  “Oh, something violent. Shot—beaten to death—stabbed. No matter how careful one might be, it’s dangerous to philander with young girls. They have fathers, big brothers, boyfriends. I never remember his being afraid of the consequences, because of his special genius, and it was genius! Any one affair lasted from three to six months, depending upon the girl’s sexuality allied to her intellectual stupidity—he didn’t choose them for their brains. But the moment he began to tire of a girl, he became carping, critical, unpleasant. It usually took two weeks for her to break off the relationship, convinced that the grievances were all hers.”

  “He satisfied her self-esteem, you mean.”

  “Precisely. And he did have a genius for it, Captain! He played those silly young things like a virtuoso plays a violin. And when she broke it off, the girl would be terrified of being found out, since she was leaving it behind her.”

  “Did he foul his own nest, Dr. Denbigh?”

  “Never. A Dante girl—this is the first year we’ve had girls, of course—was absolutely safe. He picked up his prey in Joey’s Pancake Diner on Cedar Street. I gather that’s a haunt for kids from East Holloman State College and the Beckworth Secretarial College. He rented a little apartment in Mulvery Street, just a walk from the diner, and went by the name of Gary Hopkins, which he said had a plebeian ring. To the best of my knowledge, he was never found out.”

  “Sooner or later he would have been.”

  “Then I’m profoundly glad about whoever put the cyanide in his tea, Captain.”

  Wow! thought Carmine, leaving Dante College some time later. Dean John Kirkbride Denbigh was quite a guy. Until his murder, luck had smiled on him. With a patricianly beautiful wife whose scholarship matched his own and whose frigidity allowed him to indulge a perilous penchant for undergraduate girls, he couldn’t lose. That is, if what his wife said was accurate. And there was no reason for her to lie; dead or alive, Dean Denbigh had ensured that her career would prosper. Still, rarely had he encountered such a cold fish. Had her husband been equally detached? No, probably not. He at least had appetites above and beyond scholarship. How old was he? Thirty-six. Plenty of time left to scramble up the academic ladder, not toward a full professorship in his field, but toward university administration. M.M., who was President of Chubb, still had a full ten years in the job, but the Secretary of Chubb, Henry Howard, was due to retire in four years. Odd that Mawson MacIntosh was always known as M.M., whereas Hank Howard had never managed to become H.H.

  Midafternoon: time to return to County Services and see what his men had learned.

  Abe and Corey shared an office, but when Carmine walked in, only Abe was there, head bent over sheaves of paper.

  “How goes it, Abe?” he asked.

  “Skeps’s murder is one not short on suspects,” Abe said. “By tomorrow I ought to have a paper trail a mile long for you.”

  “Fantastic,” said Carmine, going out the opposite door.

  A quick visit to Patrick revealed no further progress, so he went down to the basement parking lot, climbed back into his Ford Fairlane while its engine was still cooling down, and drove out to the Cartwright residence, himself behind the wheel. He just wasn’t in the mood to hang around waiting for a driver, and he had Delia for his paperwork anyway.

  The mood at the Cartwrights’ had changed, and drastically; with Grant in custody for the murder of Jimmy, a pall of gloom had descended over the three remaining Cartwrights, suddenly horribly aware of Cathy’s death. The haughty princess Selma was in the kitchen trying to prepare dinner, her tears running unchecked into a bowl of cooked elbow macaroni. Several different kinds of cheese stood on the counter together with a carton of milk. Carmine took pity on her.

  “Grate a cup each of cheddar, Romano and Parmesan,” he said, tearing off a sheet of paper towel and handing it to her. “Wipe your face and blow your nose, then you’ll be able to see.” He took a piece of macaroni, popped it in his mouth, and made a face. “No salt in the cooking water.”

  The girl had obeyed him and was now gazing into a cupboard. “What does a grater look like?” she asked, sniffling.

  “This,” said Carmine, producing it from a cabinet. “Hold the block of cheese against it and shove it downward—onto a plate, not the counter. Find the measuring set and keep each cheese separate. While you do that, I’ll find your father. When you’re finished, wait for me, okay? We’ll get there.”

  Gerald Cartwright was in his office upstairs, weeping quite as hard as his daughter.

  “I don’t know what to do, what would work out for the best,” he said helplessly when Carmine came in.

  “Get your mother down here, first off. And a sister, yours or hers. You can’t bring up your daughter in ignorance of domestic routines and then expect her to pitch in like a trained housekeeper—which you should have employed when Jimmy was born, then at least the Grant half of this mess wouldn’t have happened. Can’t you afford a housekeeper, Mr. Cartwright?”

  “Not right now, Captain,” Cartwright said, too dejected to defend himself. “Michel just quit—he’s gone to a restaurant in Albany. Now I have to decide what to do with l’Escargot—close it, or change the cuisine along with the name.”

  “I can’t help you there, sir, but I do suggest that you think a little less about your businesses and a little more about your children!” Carmine said tartly. He sat down and glared fiercely at Gerald Cartwright. “However, right at this moment I want to know about your wife. You’ve had time to think, and I hope you’ve used it. Did she have any enemies?”

  “No!” Cartwright said on a gasp. “No!”

  “Did you engage in pillow talk when you were home?”

  “I guess so, insofar as Jimmy let us.”

  “Which one of you did the talking?”

  “Both of us. She was always interested in what Michel was doing. She thought I was too soft on him.” Cartwright stopped to mop his eyes. “She talked about Jimmy, how unhappy the other kids were—and you’re right, she kept asking for a full-time housekeeper. But I thought she was exaggerating, honest! We’ve always had Mrs. Williams once a week for the heavy cleaning.”

  “Did Mrs. Cartwright ever mention anyone stalking her, or otherwise annoying her? What about her friends? Did she get on with them?”

  “It’s like I told you before, Captain, Cathy didn’t have time for a social life. Maybe other wives complain about catty friends or the bargains they picked up in Filene’s Basement,
but not Cathy. And she never once mentioned a man.”

  “So you have no idea why she was murdered?”

  “No, none at all.”

  Carmine got up. “Make your business decision quickly, Mr. Cartwright, and bring some family in. Otherwise you might have Junior in trouble with the law too.”

  Gerald Cartwright went sheet-white, and bent his head over his books defensively.

  Junior was glued to the giant television in the den next door; on his way past, Carmine beckoned imperiously.

  “Come on, kid, turn it off. Until she gets some help, your sister needs a hand in the kitchen.”

  The boy did as he was told, but sulkily, and followed Carmine downstairs with dragging steps.

  The cheese was grated, but the recalcitrant block of Parmesan had bitten back. Its crumbling tendrils were stained, and Selma was sucking her knuckles.

  “Junior, get a Band-Aid,” Carmine commanded, inspecting the graze. “Lesson number one when grating: watch your hands when the cheese wears down.”

  He sprinkled salt into the macaroni, teaching as he went, showed Selma how to make a tolerable cheese sauce, then made her mix half the Parmesan with breadcrumbs and sprinkle it on top of the macaroni and cheese. Into the oven it went, then, perched on a kitchen stool, Carmine found Cathy Cartwright’s copy of The Joy of Cooking and picked out half a dozen easy recipes for Selma to follow. She was displaying some enthusiasm, having just (with Carmine’s help) produced an edible meal on her first try. The princess was only skin deep.

  “Did your mom have any enemies that you know of, Selma?” he asked, thumbing the pages of the cookbook.

  “Mom?” The girl looked incredulous. “No!” The first sadness entered her eyes, and she blinked rapidly. “What time did she have for enemies, Captain?”

  He put the cookbook down, slid off the stool and pressed her shoulder briefly. Then his gaze fell on Junior, about to disappear through the inside door; his lips tightened.

  “And you,” Carmine said to her brother as he opened the back door, “are going to do your share of the chores in future. If Selma is the cook, you’re in charge of the laundry.”

  Snap! The door closed on Junior’s outraged protests.

  As he walked to his car, Carmine was grinning. It was rare for him to involve himself so personally in a family’s tragedy, but the Cartwrights were a special case. Not one but two murders, each by a different killer. They would survive, but thanks to Selma rather than to either Gerald. Though she hadn’t known how, she had already been trying to cook when he arrived. The tragedy had thrown her in at life’s deep end, but she was paddling bravely.

  Carmine went back to County Services and a desk piled high, sat himself down and thanked his lucky stars for his secretary, Delia Carstairs, who happened to be Commissioner John Silvestri’s niece. One incidence of nepotism actually working, he thought as his gaze traveled over the neat piles. Delia was a treasure he had inherited along with his captaincy; mere lieutenants didn’t have secretaries, they availed themselves of the typing pool or their own typing skills, and they did their own filing. The odd thing was that she had belonged to Danny Marciano, his senior still, yet Danny had given her up with no more than a loud wail of anguish—and two secretaries to replace her.

  She walked in from her tiny office, tiny only because all four of its walls were taken up by monstrous filing cabinets.

  “About time,” she said, distributing another sheaf of papers on various stacks.

  She was thirty years old, short, and dressed in a manner that she called smart but that Carmine privately called appalling. Today she wore a fussy suit of some multicolored, knobby fabric whose skirt barely reached her knees. Two utterly shapeless legs of the kind seen on grand pianos supported a tubby body and the weight of far too much massive costume jewelry. Her face was caked with makeup, her frizzy hair was an improbable shade of strawberry blonde, and her shrewd, twinkling, light brown eyes were surrounded by enough paint to satisfy a Cleopatra. The only product of a union between Commissioner Silvestri’s sister and an Oxford don, Delia had been born and raised in England.

  Both parents despaired of her. But Delia required no parental guidance of any kind; she knew exactly what she was going to do and where she was going to do it. A course at a top London secretarial college saw her graduate at the head of her class; as soon as her papers and certificate were in her hands, she packed her bags and climbed on a plane for New York. There she went to work in the NYPD headquarters typists’ pool, and soon found herself the private secretary of a deputy commissioner. Unfortunately, the bulk of his work concerned social misfits, and it quickly dawned on Delia that she was actually too desirable to wind up where she wanted to be—in Homicide. The NYPD was just too vast, and she was too good at her job.

  So she took a train to Holloman and asked Uncle John for a job. Since his phone had been ringing off the hook about her all the previous day, Silvestri ignored his dictum about nepotism and grabbed her. Not for himself, but for Danny Marciano, whose administrative duties were far heavier. What Delia didn’t know about police work could have been written on the head of a pin, but it didn’t occur to Uncle John that his niece craved blood and gore until Carmine was promoted to captain. Please, begged Delia, could she work for Captain Delmonico, the murder expert?

  “There’s hours of reading here,” said Carmine to her.

  “I know, but it’s all absolutely riveting,” said Delia in her polished Oxford accent. “Twelve murders in one day!”

  “Don’t rub it in, you horrible woman!”

  She laughed and tittupped out on very high heels, leaving her boss to stare at the surface of his desk. Where to begin?

  With Larry Pisano’s cases, that was logical, the three shootings and the prostitute.

  Three different handguns, all silenced. Now why had it been done that way? What about the victims dictated the use of three different firearms? The answer kept coming back to nothing, which didn’t make sense. Silencers indicated professional killers, not the style of shooting common in the Hollow and in the Argyle Avenue district. And that spoke of big money to take out three harmless blacks…. What on earth could they possibly know to warrant such an outlay? Pisano and his team had burrowed assiduously, without results. The woman was elderly and inoffensive, both the youths fine types. Blood analysis on all three had found its way into the pile, to reveal no trace of any illicit substance either over time or on the morning of their deaths. They were just what they appeared to be, the kind of people who didn’t get killed by a deliberate act, by selection. Yet these three had been selected, had been deliberately killed, by men taking no chances, men who were professional assassins. The whole thing screamed of out-of-state to Carmine. Though Connecticut had its share of black militants, gangsters, and hoods, it didn’t run to hired assassins using silencers, men competent enough to pick their moment on the street when the victim wouldn’t be noticed going down in a heap until the getaway had been invisibly made.

  Okay, thought Carmine, setting the shootings aside, I am going to presume that the perpetrators are out-of-state, and bring Larry and his boys onto fresh fields as soon as I make up my mind where the exhaustive investigations are going to yield fruit.

  Next he went to Larry’s last case, the prostitute. Everybody knew Dee-Dee Hall, and not because she was always in trouble: far from it. Though she worked the street, she had her beat and never strayed from it. Her pimp was Marty Fane, part of the reason why she stayed out of trouble; he was easygoing for a pimp, and he valued Dee-Dee too highly to ill-treat her. Though she was now thirty-two years old, she had weathered her eighteen years on the street better than most and kept her striking good looks. The pity of it was that, had she only been a few years younger, Carmine reflected, she would have become a call girl rather than a streetwalker, but by the time call girls were a common phenomenon, Dee-Dee’s gloss was gone. At six feet, her height was in her shapely legs, and she still had a voluptuous body. Her hair was brassy, her eyes g
reen, her skin the color of café au lait. All of which procured her plenty of johns, but was not the basis of her popularity. That lay in her ability to give a great blow job; it was said she had more suck than Eskimo Nell. This particular speciality also meant no unwanted pregnancies, hence her good health and the preservation of her figure. Her pimp, Marty Fane, pampered her by feeding her heroin habit and making sure her room with bath and kitchenette on the fringes of the Argyle Avenue ghetto had cleaning and laundry service. Dee-Dee was his top earner.

  According to Larry, who had taken on Dee-Dee’s case personally, Marty Fane was devastated at his loss. No matter how intensively Larry questioned the denizens of that seedy world in which Marty and Dee-Dee lived, he could find no evidence of a falling out between pimp and prostitute. The two had been seen giggling together as they took a break somewhere around two a.m. Which made Marty the last person known to have seen her alive. Her beat lay behind the Holloman City Hall, where the neighborhood was far less salubrious than in front. It was an area of parking lots, workshops, warehouses and blue-collar offices, deserted after dark save for those who cruised looking for a little sexual action, like Chubb students, commercial travelers and night workers.

  Bitter at her murder, even grief-stricken, Marty Fane was quick to yield up the names of her regular johns insofar as he knew them, which had led to some embarrassing interviews with men foolish enough to deny their connection. The young Chubbers tended to be rather thrilled until it dawned upon them that they were suspects in a murder, whereupon those with powerful daddies suddenly demanded to see their lawyers and tried to say nothing. Once the lawyers were persuaded that their clients were more a source of information than suspects, they coöperated, but to no avail. Dee-Dee’s death remained shrouded in mystery.

  Zilch, said Carmine to himself, adding the prostitute to the three shootings. Whoever had done it was as cool as Dr. Pauline Denbigh, though he doubted it was her. Not an out-of-stater either; the killer knew exactly where to find the hapless victim. Maybe someone to whom she’d given one of her fabled blow jobs in the past? Weep your heart out, Marty Fane! It will be a very long time before you find another Dee-Dee Hall.