“The next step was to obtain the fingerprints of the scientists themselves. To do this, we had to overcome the objections of the baron. Have you met the baron?”
“Not yet,” Ron said.
Diderot grunted. “The baron was afraid his guests might be offended. Only by continual repetition did it become apparent to him that his guests, if they were reasonable human beings, would find the murder of one of their number and an attack on another to be more offensive than to have their fingers stained with ink.
“And so it proved to be. As soon as de Blois or I or one of our men explained the reason for the fingerprinting, they were more than happy to cooperate.”
Ron couldn’t resist. “Even the Americans?”
Diderot missed the sarcasm. “Even the Americans,” he said. “One hundred percent compliance.”
This, the prefect told them, had been completed three nights ago, on the first night of the full moon. At first, they were going to take the two sets of fingerprints—the international faxes and the prints taken in Mont-St.-Denis—and lock them in the prefect’s safe. At the last minute, though, de Blois had decided he couldn’t wait. He would stay in the prefect’s office, if Diderot didn’t mind, and go over the prints tonight.
Hearing this, Diderot said he too would stay, but de Blois wasn’t having any of that. Not only was Diderot not an expert in fingerprints, he hadn’t seen his wife in three days. Furthermore, Diderot was obviously the more fatigued, having borne the brunt of persuading the baron to let them at his guests.
“I did not argue with him,” the prefect said. “De Blois was difficult to argue with in any case, and in this case, all his points were true. I made him promise to ring me if he found anything, left him the keys to my office, and went home to my wife.”
“I slept very late the next morning, almost until nine o’clock. There had been no word from de Blois, so I assumed he had found nothing. When I arrived at the prefecture, I found the door to my office locked, as in fact it should have been. I opened it with my spare key and found...this.”
He pulled an eight-by-ten photo out of a folder and handed it to Benedetti. He turned on the room lights. “I chose not to have a slide made of this one.”
The Professor looked at the picture without expression, then handed it to Marx. The new Sûreté man regarded the picture with narrowed eyes before passing it along to Ron.
The photograph showed a man in a suit lying across the long dimension of a big, square, wooden desk like a sacrifice on an altar. His face was fully visible, turned toward the camera. The eyes were closed. The face might have been handsome, but it was hard to decide, because Ron’s eyes kept going to the great red gash that took up the space where a throat should have been.
“Knocked him out first,” Ron thought. Because of the eyes, and because of the way the blood was distributed in the room—it all flowed down the front of the desk, right from that throat wound. You could hardly get a tough cop, as de Blois had apparently been, to lie across a desk and let you rip out his throat.
“There was a blow on the back of his head,” Diderot said, and for a second, Ron was afraid he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. “The experts say he was hit with a glass sphere I used as a paperweight, draped across the desk and then...killed.”
“Any sign of a weapon?”
“None,” Diderot said. “All the experts could tell me is that it was not a smooth blade.”
Janet was looking at the picture now, trying not to gulp. Ron had coughed it right up when she’d stuck out her hand for it. It was useless to try to keep anything from her, anyway.
Now she looked up and said, “Even I can see that.”
“There is still doubt as to what the actual weapon was—some of the experts suggested a loading hook. They were able to rule out the teeth of an animal only because of the lack of saliva in the wounds. Whatever the weapon was, it was something that pierced and then tore, rather than cut.”
Benedetti frowned. “Was there not a constable on duty that night? How did de Blois come to be alone?”
Diderot shrugged. “There was a constable on duty, but he was out of the station responding to a burglar alarm from a jeweller’s shop along the Boulevard de Ville. What the Americans call a ‘smash and grab’ job. In such a case, he is supposed to activate the device on our switchboard that rings through to my home before leaving the prefecture, but Captain de Blois told him not to, that he would cover any additional calls that came in. He said,” Diderot added wearily, “that I needed my rest. The constable, by the way, is alibied by the jeweller, and by the contents of de Blois’s stomach. The times don’t match. In case you were wondering.
Ron had a couple of points he wanted to take up, but he saw the professor beginning to rub the end of his nose, a sure sign that he was getting antsy. Ron cut it down to one point.
“What about the fingerprints? Did the comparison ever get done?”
“It did indeed,” the prefect said. “It was my strong suspicion that the captain might have been killed to prevent completion of the test. I did not trust myself; I did not even trust the constable who has been trained in such matters. I rang the Sûreté in Paris, and they sent me Reggiani. Captain Marx will tell you who he is, if you do not know.”
Captain Marx, who reminded Ron of a French actor who’d seen one too many Humphrey Bogart movies, took the cigarette out of his mouth long enough to oblige.
“Reggiani,” he said, “is the finest fingerprint man in Europe. A prima donna and a terrible, obnoxious man, but a genius at what he does.”
“Reggiani,” the prefect said, “was here long enough to perform the test and to anger everyone with whom he came in contact almost to the point of violence.”
“And?” Ron said.
“They all matched. There was some of de Blois’s blood on a few of the papers, but not enough to get in Reggiani’s way. There are no imposters at the OSI, gentlemen, and lady.”
“I don’t suppose anything was missing, was it? The object of the attack might have been to take something away.”
“Nothing is missing,” Diderot said. “I checked and checked again. Of course, you are welcome to inspect the crime scene for yourselves.”
Benedetti got to his feet. “Perhaps another time, Monsieur le Préfect. I congratulate you on doing a disagreeable job as well as a man could.”
“A good man died because of my ridiculous theory,” Diderot said.
Benedetti closed his eyes and shook his head. He put a hand on the prefect’s shoulder. “You are wrong, amico mio,” the old man said. “On both counts. Your theory was not ridiculous. And Captain de Blois did not die because of it. He died because someone has chosen to do evil, to kill. De Blois was fighting it the best way he could think of when he was taken. You must not blame yourself. Together, we must stop it from happening again, and bring the killer to justice. Hai capito?”
“I have understood,” the prefect said, but Ron didn’t think he looked any happier.
“Good, good,” Benedetti said. “It has been a long and wearing day for all of us. I would like to see just one witness now, then repair to the château, sleep off this damnable jet lag, and start fresh tomorrow morning.”
“Very well,” the prefect said. “Whom would you like to see?”
“Dr. Romanescu,” he said. “I would like to hear his fascinating story at first hand.”
The second-shift clerk at the Hotel Etoile didn’t look up from his magazine—the French equivalent of a supermarket tabloid—until the prefect cleared his throat.
“Monsieur le Préfect,” the clerk said in some surprise. “How may I help you?”
“We wish to speak to Dr. Romanescu. I know the way—do not bother to ring his room.”
“Monsieur, you have just missed him.”
Diderot turned to Benedetti. The Professor said in French, “No matter, I will speak to him tomorrow.”
Diderot was glad the world-famous Professor Benedetti was proving so undemanding. He turn
ed to the clerk. “You will please tell him to ring me at the prefecture when he returns, to make an appointment to be questioned by Professor Benedetti.”
The clerk’s eyes and mouth turned to circles. “Professor Benedetti? The world’s greatest detective?”
“I am not—”
“I have scrapbooks of all your cases! The Ghost of Capetown! The Sydney Bridge Ripper! The HOG Murders! All of them. I almost pity our local killer, with you after him.”
“That is most gratifying, but—”
The young man’s face fell. “That is why I am desolated I cannot be of service to you.”
“What do you mean?” Diderot demanded.
“Dr. Romanescu has left. He checked out of the hotel, taking his bag with him. I personally arranged a car and driver for him to take him down the mountain.”
Benedetti was grim. “How long ago was this?”
The clerk shrugged. “Perhaps twenty-five minutes.”
Benedetti turned from the clerk, and it was as if the young man no longer existed. For the first time, Diderot felt the full force of the Professor’s personality. It was like standing simultaneously in blazing sunlight and a howling wind.
“He must be found,” Benedetti said. “He must be found and brought back here, immediately.”
Etienne Diderot was out of the lobby and reaching for the door handle of his police car before it even occurred to him to ask what the urgency was.
Ron had been sufficiently exposed to the ways of Niccolo Benedetti to temper any awe he might feel for him, but when the old man gave an order in a certain tone of voice, Ron didn’t question, he just moved. When Diderot and Marx sprinted for the door, the Professor switched to English and said, “Go with them. Be prepared to report to me anything you hear and see.”
Ron was glad to. He just wished he knew what was going on.
Ron caught up with the Frenchman just as Diderot was losing a fight about who should drive. Ron hopped into the back seat while Marx jumped in behind the wheel and the prefect huffed around to the passenger side. The doors were barely closed before the car rocketed off. Ron saw Diderot reach under the dash and turn on the siren, but by the end of the second block, Marx had them going so fast it was no longer audible inside the car.
By the time they left town and headed down the mountain road, Ron was beginning to wish Diderot had won the argument.
Captain Marx was a supremely confident driver. Either that, or he just didn’t give a damn about dying in a flaming wreck. Ron could have sworn that at least half the time, the police car had one of its wheels dangling over the edge of the mountain. The realization that this was impossible was surprisingly little comfort.
Ron could see cords sticking out in the back of the prefect’s neck. Captain Marx kept muttering what must have been Alsatian curses around his cigarette.
Finally, Marx said, “There they are.” He took his right hand off the wheel to point.
“I see them,” Ron said hastily. Actually, what he saw was a black Jaguar sedan with a driver in the front seat and a passenger in the back. With one more insane burst of speed, and one more flirtation with the empty space and gravity that waited off the side of the road, Marx passed the Jaguar, then cut the wheels in toward the mountainside and blocked it off.
Brakes squealed. The cars stopped.
The three men sprang from the police car and sprinted back up the road to the Jaguar. This, Ron thought, is going to be very embarrassing if Romanescu isn’t in that car.
The driver had his window down, and was filling the cool sunset air with curses. Ron didn’t understand them, but he knew they were curses. Nothing else would have gone with the expression on the man’s face.
A couple of badges shut the driver up. Diderot opened the back door.
Ron found himself looking into the frightened face of Dr. Ion Romanescu. There was a large white bandage on his left cheek.
“No,” he said as the prefect pulled him from the Jaguar. “Please. Don’t take me back there. Monsieur Diderot, please, let me go. Please. I must not be taken back.”
He was speaking English. Ron was grateful for that much. “Why not?” he asked.
“Because it will happen again. Someone will die. Tonight the moon is full, and another person will die!”
8
THE PREFECT TRIED TO comfort him, but Etienne Diderot’s French seemed to have no effect at all—Romanescu never even paused in his jabbering. Diderot switched to English, since that was what the Romanian was babbling. “No one will be hurt tonight,” Diderot said. “I promise you.” Even as he said it, he knew he lacked the slightest justification for making such a promise. Lies seemed so much more naked when one made them in a foreign tongue.
Still, Diderot continued to make them. “And in any event, I swear that you will not be in danger. If the President of the Republic should come here tonight, he would not be better protected that you will be.”
That, at least, was not a lie. Romanescu was the only witness in the case; Diderot would rather eat nothing but boiled cabbage for the rest of his life rather than lose the man.
“You cannot protect me!” Romanescu screamed. “You don’t know what you are dealing with! Evening is coming, and the dark, and with it, death!”
Diderot said, “Monsieur Professor, you are a man of science. What can the moon and the dark have to do with anything?”
The Romanian’s eyes had been wild and unfocused. Now they fixed the prefect with a wicked gleam for a scant split second. Then Romanescu began to laugh in jagged hysterical shouts. He raised his hands to his face and sank to his knees.
Diderot was frankly at a loss. Marx, of the Sûreté, stood there like a window mannequin. Only the occasional glowing of the end of his cigarette when he inhaled showed he was alive. The man has seen too many Belmondo movies, the prefect reflected. The wailing laughter continued. Motorists on the mountain road slowed down as they passed to see what the fuss was about.
“May I try?” asked a voice in the prefect’s ear.
Diderot looked up. It was Gentry, the American. Should he let him? Diderot knew that if this young man made a mess of things, Diderot himself would continue to carry the responsibility. On the other hand, things were well on their way to being a mess already.
“Go ahead,” the prefect said.
Gentry nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “This is the kind of thing Benedetti keeps me around for.”
The young man walked up to the kneeling figure. Peeking between his fingers, Romanescu saw him coming and cowered. The young American squatted beside him. He began to talk earnestly, too low for Diderot to make out words. At one point, Romanescu’s head shot back as if he’d been jolted by electricity. A few seconds later, the old man allowed Gentry to help him to his feet. The American put his arm around him, and began to lead him to the police car.
“Dr. Romanescu will come with us now,” Gentry said.
Diderot felt like a man who had sneezed while the conjurer did his big trick. “Thank you,” was all he could think of to say. Whether he was thanking Romanescu or Gentry, he wasn’t sure.
Gentry got into the back seat with the Romanian. “Dr. Romanescu needs a place where he can rest and be cared for. Is there any place like that in Mont-St.-Denis?”
“We have a first-rate hospital, Monsieur Gentry,” the prefect said. “In a ski resort, wealthy people frequently injure themselves.”
Romanescu began to nod, like a judge weighing a well-made argument. “The hospital,” he said, again in English. “Yes, the hospital will do nicely. Please take me there now, please.”
Diderot’s French soul provided him with several dozen pointed remarks he might have made to the effect that witnesses who make policemen risk their lives in mountain car chases, then dissolve into embarrassing hysterics, should refrain from treating the police as taxicab drivers. He was busily repressing these comments in the interests of his case when there was a rap at the window.
Diderot started, then turned to
see the not-recently-shaven face of the driver who had been taking Romanescu away from Mont-St.-Denis.
The man wanted money. The agreed-on price for the trip to the airport was a hundred francs. Who was going to pay it?
“Who is going to pay it?” Diderot said. “Who is going to pay it? The fine for reckless driving is a thousand francs. To say nothing of fleeing from the police.”
“How was I to know you were the police? The man told me bandits were chasing him. I was going to the police at Bernardine, down the mountain, with him. Was I to let my charge be captured by robbers without at least trying to escape?”
“How much does he want?” Gentry’s voice again.
“A hundred francs,” Diderot said. “It is ridiculous.”
There was a rustle behind him. Diderot felt paper tickle his ear. He reached for it and found that Gentry was handing him money.
“Is that a hundred and fifty francs?” the American asked. “It’s supposed to be a hundred and fifty. No offense, but your money here drives me nuts.”
“It is not necessary—” the prefect began.
“It’s desirable to get Dr. Romanescu somewhere safely while he’s still calm, wouldn’t you say? Besides, I’m on an expense account. The baron’ll never miss it.”
Pleased at last to have arrived at something everyone could agree on, Diderot shrugged, handed the money to the grateful driver, then told a softly growling Marx to drive them back up the mountain.
9
THEY WERE TO DRESS for dinner; Ron was struggling with his tie; Janet had her own dressing room at the other end of the suite. There was a bedroom that looked like a set from a historical swashbuckler, an equally large sitting room, ditto, and a bathroom that (thank God) looked like the bathrooms Ron was used to—more or less. Everything that wasn’t expensive wood was blue and gold.
“I knew they’d cut corners somewhere,” Ron had told his wife after he’d been shown up to their room. Janet had been lying across the bed when he got there, having spent the hours he was tied up with the Flight of the Romanian getting over jet lag. Ron was still overstimulated and tense.
Werewolf Murders Page 5
