INTO THE DARK : A TOM DEATON NOVEL

by Richard B. Schwartz

  “Forgive me, but I very much doubt that, Miss Harrell,” Baker said. “All murders are crimes of passion. The trick lies in determining that passion’s object.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jermyn Street, London

  Friday, 10:57 p.m.

  “I’ve been worried about you,” Diana said. “I expected you sooner.”

  “Sorry. I had a lot to do,” Tom answered, “and I didn’t want to draw any attention to you by calling here.” They were sitting in the basement of a trattoria called Marco’s. The theatre crowd had filled the main floor dining area and Diana was seated in a corner booth next to the wine cellar, grateful for the privacy. When Tom arrived she had been waiting for him for forty minutes. Baker had taken both Diana and Margaret from Kepler’s house and left Tom to drop off his rental car. Margaret was sequestered in a safe house in Chiswick and Diana had waited with her there, under guard, until another officer brought her a new hotel key and drove her into central London at 10:00. Baker had arranged the rendezvous at Marco’s. He had also arranged to have their luggage discreetly removed from the Grosvenor House and transferred to the May Fair.

  “I’m glad you got here OK,” Tom said. “Baker’s very good, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Still mineral water.”

  “We can do better than that,” Tom said. He signaled the waiter, who was serving a couple at the only other occupied table in the basement room. “What do you want to eat?”

  “Anything . . . something simple.”

  Tom ordered tricolor salads, angel hair pasta, and a bottle of Barolo. “Aperitifs?” the waiter asked. Tom turned to Diana. She said, “Maybe just some coffee. White.”

  Tom ordered a bottle of Peroni. “Now, where should I start?” he said. “I left just as you did and followed Baker for a mile or so to make sure you weren’t being followed.”

  “Yes, he commented on that,” Diana said. “He seemed amused by it.”

  “After I was sure that you were all right I drove back to Kepler’s house and waited outside in the road. No one came by.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why?”

  “Without backup? Someone could have been following you. They could have followed you here.”

  “I stayed in the shadows. Anyway, I waited about thirty minutes and then left, but instead of getting back on the M25 I drove toward the city. I puttered around on the A3, turned off into Wimbledon and started driving back streets. From Wimbledon I cut over to Kingston, crossed the river, passed Hampton Court, and came into Heathrow from the back door, picking up the circle road from inside the M25 and avoiding the main traffic flow. The Hertz driver took me back to Terminal 3 and I stepped out of the van and into a taxi. I was in central London in twenty-five minutes.”

  “Did you go by the Grosvenor House?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “I got off the beaten track and spent most of the afternoon and early evening in Hampstead. I found a pub in Finchley Road called the Dog and Sparrow that had good food, good beer and a quiet room on the second floor. I called the Chief three times before I connected with him. We talked for nearly an hour. I brought him up to speed on everything that’s happened here and I told him what we needed. He’s conveying my wish-list to the feds.”

  “What are they doing?”

  The waiter brought Diana’s coffee and Tom’s beer. The coffee was steaming hot, as was the milk. Tom took a drink of the Peroni. “First they’re checking with the art history and German history people at UCLA. There’s always a chance that we might get lucky. Then they’ll run through European art magazines and German newspapers between the wars and see what they can find out about Tenedos. Basically I said that what we need are the names of all of Kepler’s Tenedos associates as well as their current whereabouts. If any of them are dead I said that we’d like information on the circumstances surrounding their deaths. I also said that we’re particularly interested in any individuals in London or southern California.

  “It’s probably a long shot, but Baker is checking on recent homicides and supposed suicides in the greater London area. There may be another victim or victims connected with the case. He’s also checking on any reports of art thefts. If he can find the staff he’ll also check on passengers travelling between London and Bordeaux, Bordeaux and Paris, and London and Paris over the last several days. Again, we could get lucky. If we don’t check we know we won’t find anything.

  “I’ve also asked the Chief to ask the feds to check with art dealers, particularly the very rich and the somewhat shady, to see if there’s any buzz on the street about this. This doesn’t look like spec work, but you can never be sure. There’s also the possibility that with a score this big one of the people involved will have trouble holding his tongue.”

  “Is there anything new on David?”

  “No. The Chief has asked Hector to keep an eye out. No change yet. Both the home and studio have been staked out, but except for some curiosity seekers there’s been nothing worth reporting. They’ve checked on Sandra Harkin—the woman who works at his gallery in Santa Monica . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing there. She was sick for awhile but she’s back at work now. There’s nothing suspicious in her background and nothing unusual in her behavior immediately prior to your brother’s death. She was never considered a suspect, but there’s always a chance that she could have been used in some way. If she was, there’s no evidence to that effect.”

  “What about Margaret Harrell?”

  “Baker’s investigating her. I talked to him about an hour ago. She seems OK. She grew up in Plymouth and worked as an assistant at the Plymouth library. Baker talked to her supervisor there, who’s now retired—a woman named Pauling. Plymouth is Reynolds country and they have a number of his portraits at the library. Margaret got hooked on eighteenth-century painting as a teenager and later studied art history at the University of London. She worked with Kepler as an intern on a special project while she was still in college and then went to work for him full time after she graduated. He was starting to wind down and she was covering the office for him more and more as the years passed.”

  “How long was she with him?”

  “Eleven years full time and a year and a half as an intern.”

  “And that’s her whole life?”

  “So it seems. She lives in a two-room flat in Cobham, drives a used Mini, when it’s running, and stops into the local for a drink once every two or three weeks. From all appearances she spent most of her waking hours working for Walter Kepler.”

  “It sounds like a father-daughter thing.”

  “She says ‘teacher-student’ but there was a strong personal attachment too. Nothing suspicious, just old-fashioned affection.”

  “That’s a nice switch.”

  The waiter brought the salads. The lettuce base was crisp and fresh, the olive oil, avocado, tomato, and mozzarella up to expectations. The waiter ground some fresh pepper on each and hurried back up the stairs to get their wine. The cellar was kept locked and loose bottles were displayed in the main dining area on shelves surrounding the rear tables.

  “So that’s about it,” Tom said. “Now we wait.”

  “Baker’s assistant gave me our hotel key. It’s an unmarked Vingcard.”

  “In the May Fair?”

  “Yes, room 218.”

  “Good. That’s only a few blocks away.”

  “A block and a half from Tenedos,” Diana said.

  “We can walk by on our way back to the hotel.”

  “What do you expect to find?”

  “I don’t know. Margaret Harrell’s still alive and Walter Kepler was alive until last evening at approximately 11:30 p.m. That’s the time of death according to Ba
ker’s med tech. They always seem more certain of it here than the people back home. We were in the Tenedos office yesterday and there were no obvious signs that the office had been searched. If it had been, we might have noticed and Margaret certainly would have. If they had walked in on her while she was there they would have killed her, but that didn’t happen. They didn’t walk in on us either. Now that Kepler’s gone, Margaret’s incommunicado, and we’ve dropped out of sight, they might make a move.”

  The waiter cleared the salad plates and replaced them with their pasta. He also refilled their wine glasses. Tom asked for some mineral water and the waiter brought it with ice and a see-through sliver of sliced lemon.

  “The Tenedos connection is real,” he said. “We’re not sure what the nature of the connection is, but we know there’s a connection. Walter Kepler died because of it. If I were his murderer I’d wonder what was sitting there in his files. I’d wonder if anything was there that had my name on it. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Diana said, digging into her pasta. “Let’s pass on dessert.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Dover Street, London

  Friday, 11:58 p.m.

  Piccadilly was nearly deserted except for three tipsy French teenagers, standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders, waiting for the Fortnum & Mason clock to sound, and a group of middle-aged, middle-eastern men filing into a dance club at a B-list hotel. The last trickle of taxis was heading east, looking for theatre and movie stragglers. The streets were dry and the dust in the air was light. The slightest hint of coal smoke and diesel fumes was blowing in from the west. Stars were visible beyond the streaks of clouds in the northern sky.

  The basement wine bar across from the Tenedos office was still open, the sounds of music and loud conversation seeping through the glass doors and into the street, and an elderly man with a heavy coat and cane was just emerging from Dover Yard.

  “Here,” Tom said, stepping into a doorway on the east side of the street. “Let’s take a look.” The moonlight reflecting against the Tenedos windows blinked and faded with the movement of the clouds. “There,” Tom said, as the moonlight briefly dimmed. “The office is dark; let’s go in.”

  The front door was heavy, with an oversized handle, but Tom slipped the lock quickly. After pausing to listen for a moment, they hurried up the stairs. Listening again at the Tenedos door, he slipped that lock and they walked inside. “Stay back from the windows,” he whispered. “There’s a light in the clothes closet. We can take stacks of documents in there if we need to check them closely. That way we won’t draw any attention from the street.

  “It looks the same,” Diana answered, “but I’d expect that. I’ll do the desk and tables; you take the file cabinets, OK?”

  “Fine,” Tom answered.

  It only took eight minutes. “Look at this,” Diana said. “I haven’t touched them, though I’m sure they’ve been wiped clean.” Tom walked behind the desk. As Diana had worked her way through the pile of documents on the left side of Kepler’s desk she had found them: two photographs of the Pech-Merle horses. The first was a full view, taken approximately eight to ten feet from the slab with a view of the cavernous background in which the slab was situated; the second was an enlargement of the first, focusing specifically on the horses.

  “Which is it, the original or the copy?” Tom asked.

  The moonlight was dim but bright enough for Diana to be able to see the triangle of dots on the left horse’s side. “It’s the original,” she said.

  “They didn’t need to plant a picture of the copy. All they needed to do was establish a connection between Kepler and the theft. I wonder if they planted anything else.”

  “Let’s see,” she said, checking the rest of the documents on the desk and then working her way through the materials on the tables. She didn’t expect them to be too obvious about it, but neither did she expect them to bury something in the bowels of an ancient file cabinet.

  They worked for two hours and a half. “Anything?” Diana asked. “I think this is new,” Tom said. “At least I don’t remember seeing it earlier.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In the cupboard, stuffed in Kepler’s sweater pocket.”

  “Let’s see,” she said. Tom was holding it by the edges: a small slip of paper with a handwritten note:

  For value received. St. P project.

  “A payoff note,” Tom said. “At least that’s what we’re supposed to believe. It looks unofficial and off the books, the kind of thing you’d stick inside a rubber band wrapped around a roll of bills.”

  “Who is St. P?” Diana asked.

  “Hard to say. There are a lot of saints whose names start with the letter P: Peter? Paul? . . . Saint Patrick? Try this: the abbey in Westminster is actually Saint Peter’s and the cathedral in the City is Saint Paul’s. The royalty are in Westminster, the money in the City. In the old days the king had to ask permission of the Lord Mayor to cross Temple Bar and enter the City of London. The two are traditionally in competition, with the fear that one is subsidizing the other. That’s where we get the saying ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul.’ If these people would steal prehistoric cave drawings they’d certainly rob Peter. Think of the possibilities in the abbey. Where would you start, with the Coronation Chair or the body of Edward the Confessor?”

  “If the P stands for Peter.”

  “Right,” Tom said. “The point is—if this note was planted—there’s been more than one theft. There were no saints at Pech-Merle, not sixteen or eighteen thousand years before Christ. We’ll get Baker involved first thing in the morning. He can check on cathedrals and major churches and see if there have been any closings or suspicious activities.”

  “How long were they inside?”

  “Nearly three hours. It’s five minutes before three o’clock.”

  “Very diligent. They must have found the note and pictures.”

  “Yes.”

  “Kepler is implicated then.”

  “If they believe it.”

  “They have nothing else. What of the assistant?”

  “The police must have her in custody. She has not returned to her flat.”

  “They will only protect her for a short while. She can be removed at any time. A young fool fawning over an old fool.”

  “We don’t know what he might have told her.”

  “He could only tell her what he knew.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where have Deaton and the sister gone?”

  “Back to their hotel.”

  “And are they now intimate?”

  “They appear so.”

  “Good. That will make it easier.”

  Diana walked into the bedroom, the oversized white towel encircling her body. Tom was dressed, sitting on the bed, his back leaning against the headboard. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  He looked up at her and said, “Nothing, really.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of anything. Just old stories, from long ago.”

  “Tell me, I’m interested.”

  “OK. Just now I was thinking about a television program. It must be at least twenty years since I saw it on a rerun channel. It fascinated me at the time. If I saw it now it would probably look simple and crude, but I’ve never forgotten the story. It was like a locked-room mystery, except that there was no room and everything was in motion. Beautifully simple too.”

  “Tell me about it.” She sat down, drying the back of her neck with the corner of the towel.

  “OK. The authorities are anxious to protect some very special cargo from a group of highly skilled thieves. They put the cargo on a car in the center of a train and send it hurtling across the country at night. The train is not permitted to stop at any point. Who, the authorities reason, could steal
a cargo weighing many tons, particularly when that cargo is in motion, travelling in darkness at sixty or seventy miles an hour? When the train pulls into the station the authorities breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy a short moment of self-congratulation, until they discover the fact that the car has disappeared, even though the train has never stopped.”

  “Good story,” she said. “How did they do it?”

  “It was easy or at least they made it seem easy. They ran a cable attached to a heavy winch between the cars above and beyond the car in question. As they approached a siding they uncoupled the car in between and let the train space out. The car they wanted to steal went off on the siding; the tracks were realigned, and they pulled the train back together using the cable and winch.”

  “It suddenly seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

  “Once you hear the explanation.”

  “And you were thinking about the theft of the horses, how easy it seems once you see how they did it.” She had finished drying her hair. Tom could smell the twin scents of the shampoo and bath essence.

  “I was thinking about the train,” he said. “I don’t remember what it was that was actually stolen. It doesn’t really matter. The method was the whole point; the object of the theft was quickly forgotten. It was a television show: entertainment. This is different. We know what was stolen and we can’t forget it. We think about what else they might steal, never mind the method. The story here is the thief. The mystery is the darkness at the center, the ravenous greed, the towering ego. What happened to your brother and to Walt McNeise and to Walter Kepler was terrible, but I have the feeling that their deaths are only footnotes. Something horrible stands behind this.”

  She had wrapped the towel around her tightly again, as if it might somehow protect her. Her eyes were moist with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Tom said.

  “I asked.”

  “I didn’t mean to minimize the importance of your brother’s death. What I meant was that . . .”