“I made a mental note to get better acquainted with her at the first possible opportunity,” Levesque said. “It will give you some indication of what a failure I am as a stereotypical Frenchman that in the almost four months since OSI began, that opportunity has not presented itself. First there was the organization of the event, then the first days of special problems and chaos, then, just when things were going smoothly, this cursed Werewolf or whatever he is has come along to fill my days. And nights. To say nothing of my regular work.
“Still, I have found, and still do frequently find myself thinking of the woman, and feeling a little better about the world in general. When the murders started, and she was the one who discovered the first body, I made it a point to use my local network to keep myself informed of her activities.
“There,” Gentry said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“I feared you wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand better than you know.”
Benedetti interrupted. “You say she spent last evening with Captain Marx?”
“Till about midnight, yes. Then she took the funicular and went to work, believe it or not. She must be one of the few scientists who are still bothering to do that.”
“Spaak was killed long after midnight. I heard the medical examiner telling Diderot.”
Levesque heard Benedetti lean back against the leather seat. “But you see, Monsieur Levesque,” the old man said, “Your interest in the young lady has had a very positive result. She should be grateful to you.”
“She doesn’t know. What do you mean, she should be grateful to me?”
“Well, pending confirmation, of course, from the police reports and from your informants, you have provided the young lady with an alibi, something she lacked for the first two murders.”
“You don’t suspect—”
“Let me simply say that it is a pleasure in a case of this kind to be able to declare even one person absolutely innocent. In this instance our joy is doubled—we have taken the first step toward establishing the alibi of Captain Marx as well.”
“He wasn’t even in Mont-St.-Denis when the first attack took place!” Levesque protested.
“So far as anyone now knows,” the Professor conceded. “Still, it is nice to make extra sure. And it is gallant of you to spring so rapidly to the defense of your rival.”
Levesque was about to reply to that when he saw they had reached the hotel. He stifled his comment—it would have been something foolishly angry in any case—and pulled up to the curb. As he let his passengers out, he realized that leaving the office to avoid his troubles had been a failure.
19
IT OCCURRED TO RON that while he had heard countless encomiums to the late Herr Professor Doctor Hans Goetz’s warmth and wonderfulness, he had heard nothing about his wife past the bare fact of her existence.
Now, as he sat in the parlor of the suite Levesque or a member of his staff had managed to clear for her, watching her talk to Niccolo Benedetti, he was learning about her firsthand.
Gisele Goetz was a lovely woman. Medium height and thin, she had straight blond hair, ice blue eyes, and the bone structure of a fashion model. She wore a severe gray suit over a white blouse, and she had her still-trim legs directly in front of her, tight together, feet planted firmly on the floor. There were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and cords visible in her neck and hands, but she didn’t give a damn, and in reality, it wouldn’t make much difference. She might have been anything from fifty-five to seventy-five, and she looked great.
Janet, he thought, would be this kind of old lady—not fighting the years, not even giving the years the satisfaction of conceding there was anything to fight about. She’d just go on being herself. It would be a pleasure to grow old with her.
That is, it would be if Janet kept her current attitude. Frau Goetz had the right approach to her appearance, but her demeanor was another matter.
This was a woman on the verge of...Ron couldn’t say. Breakdown? Hysteria? Violence?
She was perched on the edge of her chair, poised as if to jump up and run away. She was holding her body so tight, her shoulders quivered with the effort. Her voice, which spoke precise, nearly unaccented English, seemed to be coming from outside her, like a spirit voice at a séance.
Benedetti had been introduced by Levesque, who retired from the scene and went to put the car somewhere. The Professor in turn introduced Ron and Janet, but the woman was interested only in the Professor.
Benedetti had his own rules of etiquette. Or rather, he had the usual ones, but he had his own set of rules about when and to whom they applied. He could be so brutal to the feelings of a witness as to make Ron, no shrinking violet himself, cringe. And he could so obsequious Ron would be forced to leave the room to keep from kicking his mentor in the ass.
He was very gentle with Frau Goetz, perhaps because of her recent bereavement, perhaps because he could see that one harsh word might send her screaming down the Boulevard de Ville, perhaps because she was exactly the kind of woman (externally, at least) the old sinner inevitably went for. Ron had long ago given up trying to figure out this part of the old man’s technique, and Benedetti had never shown the inclination to teach it.
“It is so good of you to come back to the site of such painful memories,” Benedetti said.
“It has been painful,” the spirit voice said. “More painful in the time since my husband was...killed.”
“I want to ask you some questions the police might not have asked you when you were here before. I realize, of course, that I could have had the German authorities ask you the questions at home, but—”
It turned out to be violence.
Gisele Goetz screamed, and her elegant form leaped for the Professor, claws out, raking and tearing like an owl after a mouse. There was blood before Ron could get to her. He was lucky that she didn’t try to claw him. But she had eyes (and long red nails) only for Niccolo Benedetti.
Ron got around behind her, grabbed her around the waist, and dragged her backward. She was screaming in German now. Ron reflected that he’d better invest in some Berlitz courses if they were going to take any more of these international cases.
Ron kept backing up until he backed into the chair Frau Goetz had been sitting on. Now he fell into it with the woman on his lap. She was still swinging her arms around, clawing madly at the air. Ron couldn’t see much except the fabric in the back of her suit jacket. Carefully (this was one strong old lady), Ron let his grip on her waist go, one arm at a time, and regripped her outside her elbows, so that the claws were pinned.
Then she started kicking him in the shins with her heels.
“Mrfmrf,” Ron said. He pulled his face away from Frau Goetz’s back and tried again. “Janet?”
“What, Ron? The Professor’s face is a mess!”
“He’ll live. Will you for God’s sake do something to help me with this woman? Like call the concierge for manacles or something? I won’t be able to walk when she gets through with me.”
He heard Janet say, “Hmm, I see what you mean,” followed by rapid footsteps away. In between shouted curses in German, which seemed to be a very satisfying language to curse in, Ron heard the Professor’s muttered curses in Italian, which wasn’t bad either. The latter he understood, and Ron was surprised that they were all directed by Niccolo Benedetti at himself. “A clumsy fool” was the mildest thing he called himself.
Ron kept his mouth shut except for the occasional “Ow” when the still-hysterical Frau Goetz connected with a particularly good one against his shin.
Janet was probably not gone longer than fifteen seconds, but it seemed like decades before he heard the returning footsteps.
Ron said, “Well?” just a split second before waves of water crashed down on top of his head and rolled down his arms from his shoulders. It shocked him so much that, for a second, he relaxed his grip on Frau Goetz.
He grabbed her tight again, but he could
tell he didn’t have to. The woman’s body was relaxed now, and he could hear her sputtering as badly as he was.
“Will you be good?” Ron asked. He could see the back of her head move as she nodded.
“You’d better,” Janet said. “I’ve got more water left.”
Ron let go. Frau Goetz stood up, and Ron got out from underneath her. Janet handed the widow a towel, and Ron led her to a dry seat.
“I’m sorry I had to do that, Mrs. Goetz,” Janet said, “but it’s still the best-known practical treatment for hysteria known to science. And there is no doubt you were hysterical.”
Gisele Goetz had already sounded like a spirit at a séance and like a Teutonic banshee. Now she unveiled voice number three, soft and pleasant, but achingly sad.
“I suppose now,” she said, “you will have me arrested.”
Ron and Janet looked at Benedetti. The Professor was holding a red-streaked towel to his cheek. He snorted.
“I am not entirely sure that will be necessary,” he said. “But I would like to know the reason for your attack. Are you a madwoman?”
“If I am, it’s because of you,” she said.
“Madam, I only met you ten minutes ago!”
“Please,” she said. Now she sounded disgusted. “I would rather be handed over to the police than listen to such hypocrisy. I returned here to get my claws into whoever was responsible, and now I’ve done it.”
“And so you are satisfied?” I am.
“Well, Niccolo Benedetti is not! I have flown six thousand miles to find your husband’s killer, and you attack me like an animal! I will know the reason!”
Frau Goetz looked at her hands, clasped demurely in her lap. She ignored the water dripping from her hair.
“Are you truly intent then on going to jail?” Benedetti demanded. For the first time Ron could remember, the old man seemed really angry. Ron wondered whether it was the physical injury (even while he reamed the woman out, he kept taking the towel away from his cheek and examining the spreading bloodstain), the injustice of the accusation, or the “If-you-don’t-know-I’m-certainly-not-going-to-tell-you” attitude women developed in the Stone Age as revenge for being dragged around by the hair.
More silence.
“It can be arranged, you know. My patience is great, but it is not infinite. Is there a reason for your actions here today? Or was it sheer whim?”
Frau Goetz was still looking at her hands.
“Maledizioni,” the Professor muttered. “You behaved like an animal here today; one might almost say a she-wolf. Must I add you to my investigations? Travel between Common Market partners is easy and cheap, and a woman who can attack a stranger as you just did might be capable of anything.”
Now Gisele Goetz looked up, and the blue eyes were burning. “How dare you?” she said. “Have you no shame at all?”
“I have nothing, madam,” Benedetti told her, “except curiosity. I will see it satisfied.”
“You,” she said. She invested it with all the emotion of one of her German cuss words. “You travel the world exploiting tragedy, until you are God and the victims are forgotten.”
Benedetti spoke very quietly. “That is not my intention, madam. Ever. It is because I have my own memories of victims that I do what I do.”
Ron shot him a sharp look. Whatever the old man was talking about, it was a story Ron had never heard before.
“Besides,” the old man went on, “I believe that what the victims would want most is justice. And I do not boast when I say I have never failed to deliver it.”
“Justice!” the woman said. She leaned forward and gripped the cushions of the couch. Ron tensed, thinking that the old man had goaded her back into hysteria. Maybe Benedetti believed in turning the other cheek, but Ron wasn’t going to get caught by surprise again. Ron could see that Janet had taken a new grip on her carafe of water.
Whether Gisele Goetz had seen them or not, she subsided a little, and eased back a few inches in her chair.
“Is it justice to blacken the reputation of one of the finest men who ever lived? With an ‘investigation’ that can do nothing but start false rumors? Isn’t it bad enough my husband had his life stolen from him? Must his good name be taken away, too?”
“How was his good name taken away?” Benedetti asked.
Frau Goetz took a deep breath. “I see you will not be satisfied until my humiliation is complete. Very well. Men from the government have been seeing Hans’s colleagues. Some of them two, even three times. They have been asking questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
The blue eyes narrowed. “Hateful questions. Embarrassing questions. Questions that leave nasty suspicions in the minds of those who hear them.”
“Can you be more specific?”
She shook her head, not saying no, just unable to comprehend what Benedetti could possibly want.
“Questions about Hans. About his ties to the East, to the old regime there. Simply because he was born in Dresden! He made his way to the West with his family, as a teenager.”
Hell, Ron thought, even I know that. It had been in the background files Levesque and his staff had put together for them on their arrival. He was pretty sure it had been in the police reports, too.
“...kept asking, and asking,” Frau Goetz went on. “All his colleagues. Who did he know there? Had he left any relatives in the East? When the wall fell, and the border opened, but before official reunification, was he seen with anyone suspicious? Was he seen with anyone unfamiliar at all?”
“In other words,” the Professor said, “was he hiding criminals from the East?”
Frau Goetz gave him a look that could melt lead.
“But that is nonsense,” Benedetti said. “East Germany fell quietly. The Communist officials were simply told to go and sin no more. There were no fugitives. No one to aid. Besides, your husband was an astronomer. Of what use could he be?”
“Nonsense,” Frau Goetz echoed. This was voice number four, the I’m-about-to-go-nuts voice. “Of course they were nonsense!” she said. “But that won’t stop all the people who heard them from wondering if my wonderful husband, who wanted nothing other than to study God’s handiwork in the heavens, and help deserving people on earth, was some kind of dirty spy after all. And if you knew they were nonsense, why did you ask them?”
“Madam, Niccolo Benedetti endeavors to avoid nonsense at all times. I would scorn to ask such questions.”
“You had them asked.”
Benedetti looked again at the towel. Ron could see that the bleeding had pretty much stopped, but the old man’s cheek was pretty grisly underneath.
The Professor put the towel back in place, took a deep breath, and said, “Aha. Now we come once more to a question that is not nonsense, and I beg you to answer it, dear lady. The question is simply this: Why do you think I had those questions asked of your husband’s colleagues and friends?”
“Because your so-called investigation is a failure, and you can think of nothing better to do than to blacken the name of a man who was—”
Benedetti had a hand up. “No, madam. Nonononono. I am sorry. I phrased my question badly. I will try again. Why do you think I am the one who caused those questions to be asked?”
“Because they told me so. I—my husband—we had friends in the Ministry of Science. I asked one of them to find out what was going on, soon after I first heard about the questioning. He said the government had nothing to do with it; the investigators were simply doing a favor requested by those in charge of the investigation in France. Then when I was asked to return—”
“You saw your opportunity, and took it,” Benedetti said. “I, as an Italian, am perfectly capable of understanding la vendetta. When I said I was in charge of the investigation, you struck.”
Benedetti tried his famous grin, winced, then grinned anyway. “Frau Goetz, I swear to you by all that I hold sacred that I had nothing to do with the blackening of your husband’s reputation, and I
will devote myself exclusively to clearing it as soon as this investigation is over.”
The blue eyes opened wide.
“I further assure you that although your physical vengeance went awry, your actions today have made the ultimate vengeance against whoever is responsible for those ridiculous questions inevitable.”
Now Ron’s eyes opened wide. “You’ve got it, Maestro?”
Benedetti shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. I have simply cleared away some underbrush. I regret to say I am no closer to the killer than ever.”
Then the Professor did the grin-wince-grin number again. “But perhaps Frau Goetz can help in that regard as well. Madam, we should end this session now. I should have a doctor look at my face, and you, if you’ll pardon me, should dry off.”
Was that a smile on Gisele Goetz’s lips?
“However,” Benedetti went on, “if you will be my guest for dinner, I will endeavor to remove any remaining doubts about my innocence, and to ask you the questions I wanted to ask before this unfortunate misunderstanding.”
That was when they heard voice number five, a nice, clear woman’s voice, with just a twinge of curiosity in it.
“If you like, Professor. Nineteen hours? Seven o’clock?”
Benedetti said that would be fine. Ron shook his head in wonder. The old man was incredible.
20
AS PAUL LEVESQUE HAD expected, the international press had been slavering over the latest kill. He was able to return Benedetti safely to the château only because carbine-armed gendarmes held the men with the notebooks and microphones and cameras at bay some half a mile down the road from the château.
This did not prevent, of course, the low-level flyovers by helicopters taking still photos or videos of the “spot where the latest atrocity occurred.” He could almost hear them saying it already, then following it with hypocritically sad comments about the fate of OSI and of the baron himself.
Werewolf Murders Page 13
