Marx coughed into a nicotine-stained hand. “I thought it was a woman who found the body.”
Diderot gave him a look. The prefect was beginning to think he had not sufficiently appreciated the late Captain de Blois. “We will get to her, Captain.”
Marx shrugged, and lit another cigarette. “I’ll wait,” he said.
“The man who rushed in was bleeding from his left cheek, three scratches—no, deeper, how do you say it—three gouges. He said that he had been attacked from behind by some sort of madman, and was lucky to have escaped with his life. The man identified himself as Dr. Ion Romanescu, a Romanian national, an astronomer. One of the baron’s guests. His papers bore him out, and of course, I have seen and spoken to the man since. Wait, I will show him to you.”
Brilliant, Diderot thought, sprinting to the back of the room. I take the trouble to have the visual aids prepared, then I forget to use them. The prefect turned out the lights, then switched on a slide projector. The fan hummed softly in the background as the light threw Romanescu’s picture on a pull-down screen that Diderot had forgotten was there.
Perhaps I am out of my depth, he thought.
He put the notion from his mind and collected himself while his audience had a chance to digest the picture.
“This photograph is from Romanescu’s identification card,” he said. The picture showed a man with a pale, unwrinkled face, wire-rimmed spectacles, and fine white hair that began at the crest of his head. He was unsmiling, and looked as if he were somehow in pain.
“Romanescu,” Diderot said, “is seventy years old. He has not left Romania since 1953, when he returned there after teaching two years at the Sorbonne.”
“Excuse me,” Benedetti said. “In what language did Dr. Romanescu converse with Constable Martin?”
“In English. As you may perhaps have noted, English has become a more or less official language of Mont-St.-Denis for the duration of OSI. Scientists, it seems, must speak or at least read English in order to peruse their journals, almost all of which are published in that language. As for my fellow citizens of the town—well, in any area whose economy depends on tourism, you will find most of the people can struggle along in English. Such is the power and popularity of Monsieur le Baron, that he has managed to persuade us to drop the cherished French pretense that this is not so.”
“Bien dit, mon ami,” Benedetti said. His French was better than Marx’s. The words sounded as though they had come through a smile. “Please continue.”
“It is particularly offensive to one,” the prefect said, “that Dr. Romanescu should be attacked. One would think the poor soul had suffered enough.”
“How do you mean?”
The voice was that of the exquisite Dr. Higgins. It came to Diderot with a sudden shock that to hear her voice in darkness was a remarkably agreeable experience.
He forced his thoughts back to business.
“Dr. Romanescu, I am told by those who understand such things, was, as a young man, one of the most promising astronomers in the world. He was, however, denounced to the authorities as a counterrevolutionary—by his own brother, a secret policeman. Apparently Romanescu’s reputation in the scientific world saved him from a firing squad. Romania, in those days and these, has never been a world power in science.”
“A tennis player or gymnast they might have been able to do without,” Gentry suggested.
“Precisely. In any case, Romanescu was kept under virtual house arrest until after the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in November of 1989. He has been proclaimed a national hero. All the other scientists, of whatever their political persuasion, have been saying over and over what an honor it is to meet the man. One said he hoped he would have as much courage in a similar situation.”
Diderot changed the slide.
“And so, the man has endured years of privation, isolation, and perhaps torture—he is unwilling to speak of his treatment in detail—then, with his freedom still fresh, he comes to Mont-St.-Denis, where Etienne Diderot is in charge of public safety, and this is what happens to him.”
Diderot changed slides. This photograph was in color, and had been taken under bright lights. It showed the same man in left profile. Three dark red scabs marred a pale pink cheek. Silvery whiskers dotted the face, since the scabs would have made it impossible to shave. The scabs were curved narrow triangles, one above the other, like pennants flying from the mast of a ship, with the pointed ends toward the ear, and the wider, blunt ends ending below the eye.
“Nasty,” said Gentry.
“This was not the worst thing to have happened that night.”
“Go on, please,” Benedetti said.
“Romanescu described his assailant as tall, strong, and remarkably fleet of foot. He also moved in absolute silence. Romanescu swears that he heard nothing until his assailant was upon him. He thought he was going to be killed, but for some reason, the attack was broken off. Romanescu was hurled to the pavement and the assailant sped away.”
“Did you get a description?” Gentry asked.
Diderot shook his head, then realized that was useless when he was in a darkened room and behind everyone. “Not a good One. It was dark, and Romanescu saw the assailant only briefly and only from behind.”
“Did he see anything at all?” Gentry asked.
“Just a few impressions. That the assailant perhaps had long brown hair. That he wore gloves.”
“How do you give someone scratches like that while wearing gloves?” Dr. Higgins demanded.
“That is the dilemma, madame,” Diderot said. “Romanescu’s spectacles were knocked from his face when he fell. So the long brown hair could be a scarf, and the gloves could be mere shadows.”
“That could be true,” Gentry said, “but sometimes witnesses do recognize what they see. Other times they’re making complete fantasies, and sometimes it’s a combination.”
Benedetti had been ignoring the byplay, sitting silently staring at the screen. If he hadn’t taken an occasional puff on the foul-smelling cigar whose blue smoke danced in the beam of the projector, Diderot might have thought he was asleep.
Now, the Professor stirred himself and turned to his colleague. “Do you have a theory, amico?”
“Just a notion, Maestro. Something that might be worth checking.”
“Yes?”
“A black man. I don’t suppose there are many people of African descent in Romania; to a Romanian who’s been attacked, shaken up, and stripped of his glasses, dark-skinned hands might suggest gloves.”
“And the long, flowing hair?”
“Any number of things. A scarf. A wig, for disguise. Do you have any Sikh scientists here? They have dark skin, and they’re not allowed to cut their hair.”
“They’re not allowed to commit murder, either,” Gentry’s wife said.
“Nobody is.”
“Of course. My point is that if a Sikh is sufficiently twisted to attack someone unprovoked, he might be twisted enough to cut his hair so as not to be so easily recognized.”
Gentry nodded. “Point taken. It’s still something to check.”
“It might be a woman,” Marx said. “If a nongenius might be allowed to play. And the gloves might be gloves, after all, with clawlike attachments on them.”
“Like Freddy Krueger,” Gentry suggested.
“Who?”
“Nothing,” Gentry said. “A character in a movie.”
Marx scowled. “I have made,” he declared, “a serious suggestion.”
Diderot’s head was beginning to swim with all these outrageous suggestions. Did Benedetti actually obtain results in the middle of such unrestrained fantasizing? Diderot’s own fantasies on the topic were bad enough.
The prefect was glad, at least, to have the knowledge to stifle one of these flights of fancy.
“I think we may discount the idea of a glove weapon,” Diderot said. “The medical experts who accompanied de Blois when he first came to Mont-St.-Denis examined Dr.
Romanescu’s wounds and concluded they were made by human fingernails, and rather short and blunt ones at that. I would think someone making a glove weapon would equip it with more efficient blades.”
Diderot looked at silhouettes in the dark and waited for an argument. He got none. With a little grunt of satisfaction, he pushed the button to change the slide.
This was another identity-card picture. It showed a man about the same age as Romanescu, but similar to him in no other way. This man was plump and ruddy, and a broad smile crinkled his eyes and stretched a lusty moustache. The bald head had gleamed under the camera lights.
“Très bien,” Diderot said. “I continue. This is Professor Hans Goetz, chosen by the ballot of his peers as leader of the optical astronomy section of OSI. It is he who has discovered the supernova in the distant galaxy. He was married and had three grown children. His wife, Gisele, which the Germans pronounce GEEZ-a-luh, poor woman, has promised to return to Mont-St.-Denis in order to be on hand should our investigation need her.
“She tells us that her husband was universally loved and respected, that he was so fair about sharing credit he sometimes embarrassed his colleagues, and that there was no one in the world who could conceivably wish him harm. Neither I nor de Blois, nor any of our men, in three weeks of investigation, were able to contradict a word the woman said.”
It was true. Diderot had not been raised to love the Germans—no Frenchman ever had or ever would be—but the more people he questioned, the more he wished he had known Hans Goetz.
The prefect cleared his throat and went on.
“This was the man,” he said, “whose burned and burning body was found draped across the baron’s eternal flame later on during the morning of the second of June. He was found by this woman.”
The slide projector clicked again, and the identification photo of Dr. Karin Tebner of the United States smiled apologetically down on them. Diderot announced her name and added, “She, too, is an astronomer.”
Benedetti grunted, or perhaps mumbled to himself.
“Yes, Professor?” Diderot asked.
“Nothing. Please go on.”
“Dr. Tebner is in the habit of running in the mornings. For her health. The habit is well established, as testified to by the clerk at her hotel, and several shopkeepers along the Boulevard de Ville, who see her frequently. The Place de Science, where the torch is erected, is along her normal route. It is logical that she should have been the one to find the body. Her screams brought the constable; she was in a state of near shock. When told at the hospital the identity of the man whose soot had soiled her body, she fainted dead away and had to be resuscitated.”
Diderot worked his mouth. He hated the taste of what he was to say next, and wanted to spit it out as forcefully as possible.
“Nevertheless,” he said, “Dr. Karin Tebner of the United States, solely by virtue of being at the scene of the crime, remains the closest thing we have to a suspect.”
“After three weeks?”
Diderot switched off the slide projector and turned on the lights. He walked to the front of the room, nodding sadly.
“Things are worse than that,” he said. “She is suspect in the matter of the murder only, not the attack on Romanescu.”
“Not tall enough?” Gentry asked.
Diderot regarded the young American once again. There was more to him than met the eye. “Yes,” the prefect said. “The curves of the marks on Romanescu’s cheek do not necessarily indicate the assailant was taller than the Romanian, but the experts of the Sûreté have said that their curvature indicates someone much taller than Dr. Tebner, who is a woman of average height. That is, if Romanescu’s story is to be believed, and I don’t see why not.
“But even simpler than that, Dr. Karin Tebner had none of Romanescu’s flesh beneath her fingernails, traces of which would have survived the most thorough washing, even if she’d had a chance to perform one.”
“The experts have been most helpful,” Benedetti said. “Were they able to ascertain the cause of death? I am assuming he was not held alive in the fire.”
Diderot suppressed a shudder. To be burned alive must be the very worst way to die. Goetz at least had been spared that. As the prefect informed the Professor that the condition of the lungs indicated the victim had been either strangled or suffocated before being placed in the flame, he reflected that that was hardly a better fate. Strangled, then roasted like a canard rouennais. Humiliating.
The prefect went on to say that, assuming a constant heat for the eternal flame, they were able to be more accurate than usual regarding the time of death in the case of a burned body. In this instance, they estimated that Goetz had been put into the fire at approximately four A.M.
“Just about the same time Romanescu was attacked,” Marx said.
“And long before Karin Tebner was seen leaving her hotel, isn’t that right?”
Diderot smiled ruefully. “I have said she is our only suspect. I did not say she is a good one. It is theoretically possible for her to have gone down the back stairs and out the service entrance of her hotel, committed the murder—and only the murder, please remember—and to have stolen back to her room.”
“But you don’t believe it,” Gentry said.
“Do you?” Diderot asked sharply.
The young American raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, I just got here. At first blush, no, I don’t.”
Diderot grunted. “Neither do I,” he said. “Nor did Captain de Blois.”
“Which brings us,” Benedetti said, “to the captain’s murder.”
The prefect tightened his lips and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I will tell you all about it.”
7
RON GENTRY WAS INCLINED to like Diderot.
For one thing, despite having to deal with the Beautiful People, or the jet set, or whatever they happened to be called at the moment, the guy was basically a small-town cop who’d been handed one of the nastier cases Ron had ever heard of, and he was handling himself with class. Too many guys in the situation Diderot found himself in would complain that this wasn’t in their job description, and go back to handing out traffic tickets. An equal number would start to feel their badges weighing them down like manhole covers, and have sudden attacks of threatened machismo. They wouldn’t work with anybody, they wouldn’t take help from anybody. Most of the time, they wouldn’t catch anybody, either.
Diderot stood up to the mess like a good cop. All of it, even the embarrassment of having a colleague murdered across his desk. He’d taken a while to chew it before he’d managed to spit it out, but it had come, solid, professional, and unemotional. Diderot was a good cop and a smart cop, smart enough to know where he lacked expertise.
The other reason Ron liked him was that the prefect was so obviously smitten with Janet.
Ron divided the men in the world into two classes: 1) Those who could appreciate his wife’s unique beauty, brains, and charm, and 2) jerks. It was Ron’s good fortune that Janet had apparently endured a continual parade of jerks until he had come along, but it had given her an insecurity and a shyness that she’d never been able to shake. Ron was no psychologist, but it stood to reason that being sincerely admired had to be good for your ego. So he was happy whenever he and Janet ran across someone like Diderot.
He’d already had it out with himself about the possibility that one of these class 1 types might admire his wife so much he’d try to do something about it. He wasn’t worried; Janet wouldn’t be interested. Ron had no trouble with his own ego.
Diderot took a deep breath and began by telling of his working arrangements with Captain de Blois. Diderot had concentrated on interrogating the townspeople, the man from the Sûreté on the scientists. After preliminary investigations, they compared notes, then switched for the next round of talks. Finally, they had pursued everything promising together.
“This,” the prefect said, “was not a long process, since there was so little promising.
There was the possible motive of professional jealousy, since Dr. Goetz was the one who discovered this exploding star, and we pressed all the astronomers diligently on that topic. As I have said, however, there was nothing.”
Diderot sighed. “It was I, perhaps, who was the catalyst for de Blois’s murder.”
“How could that be?” Janet asked.
“Since the probable did not yield anything, de Blois and I got together to imagine the improbable. I suggested that despite precautions, perhaps someone here might be an impostor, perhaps a criminal on the run or an international terrorist, who had murdered one of the scientists and taken his place. Or hers. Perhaps Goetz had recognized someone as an impostor, and was killed before he could make his suspicions known.”
“That does not account,” Benedetti said with the irksome good nature Ron had never been able to break him of, “for the attack on Dr. Romanescu.”
Diderot looked at the Professor for a long moment with his lips tight. “No,” he said sharply. “It does not. But it was something else to do, rather than to wait in the office until the murderer’s conscience brought him to us, hein?”
“Quite so,” Benedetti said. The old man was completely unaware of the reason for Diderot’s sudden bad temper. For someone newspapers and magazines around the world routinely called “a true genius” and “one of the world’s great brains,” Benedetti could be amazingly dense at times.
“De Blois handled the details,” the prefect continued. “He got in contact with the governments of all the nations represented by the scientists, and asked for copies of their fingerprints from their identity registration. This was a simple matter, except in the case of the United States—” Diderot looked balefully at Ron, as though blaming him, personally, “—which apparently has so little regard for the safety of its citizens that it keeps no identity files on the general populace whatever. No wonder you must all go about with revolvers on your hips.”
Ron was a hero. He kept his mouth shut.
“But that is beside the point. Since the Americans had all worked on a government project, or under government financing at one point or another, we were able to obtain fingerprints at last for the American scientists.
Werewolf Murders Page 4
