Werewolf Murders

by William L. DeAndrea

  Janet, for instance, had filled half a notebook, but she’d be damned if she knew if it would do the investigation the slightest bit of good.

  She looked at her watch. Still several hours before she had to meet Ron and get picked up to go back to the château. As long as she was here, she decided, she might as well go up and see the poor boy who’d been hit on the head last night.

  She’d picked a good time. Prefect Diderot and several of his men were rushing down the hallway toward the room as Janet got off the coffinlike, doorless European elevator.

  Diderot stopped and glared at her. “Did the Professor send you? How did he know?”

  “How did he know what?” Janet demanded.

  “That young Martin had awakened. I was down the hall, and I just heard it myself.”

  “Coincidence,” she said. “Honestly. I just thought I’d come up and visit.”

  Captain Marx caught up with them. “And we are simply supposed to believe that?” he sneered.

  All her life, Janet had been shy. She’d had to train herself not to defer automatically to anyone who acted sure of himself. She used to tell herself it probably would have been easier to train herself to climb Mount Everest naked.

  Even now, in the face of Marx’s attack, part of her cringed, didn’t want to offend, didn’t want to make trouble. That was the part that had to be suppressed.

  “I don’t really care, Captain,” she said, “what you believe.” She pulled up out of her habitual slouch and glared down at him from her full five-foot-eleven-inch height.

  She turned a milder version of the glare on Diderot. “The fact is, this has happened, and I am here. I’ll be there while you question him, as Professor Benedetti’s representative.”

  Marx snorted. “Think again, Mademoiselle.”

  “Maybe it would be better for you, Captain, to begin to think. The Professor was promised, as a condition of joining this investigation, the full cooperation of the authorities.”

  “Provided he did not interfere.”

  “I won’t interfere.”

  “Your very presence in that room would be interference.”

  Janet adjusted her glasses and raised one eyebrow. “Then there’s nothing more to say,” she said.

  “At last one of you Americans shows some sense.”

  “Nothing more to say to you, that is. I’m sure the hundreds of reporters who have been badgering the Professor would love a statement saying Niccolo Benedetti has withdrawn from the case because Captain Samuel Marx of the Sûreté in Paris has broken his word about cooperating with him.”

  “He wouldn’t dare.”

  Diderot chuckled. “Why would he not, you fool? What harm would it do to have Dr. Higgins there? She is, after all, a psychologist. Perhaps she can offer insights into young Martin’s answers.”

  Marx blew out air. “Very well,” he said. “Come if you must.” The captain was trying to maintain his air of sophisticated disgust, but Janet could see that the man was immensely relieved to have been offered a way out.

  In any case, the whole argument had been a waste of effort, because young Martin had nothing to say except that he’d found the body, received a dangerous shock, then had been waylaid by two guns-wielding lunatics (against whom he intended to press charges), and had defended himself the best way he could, until a third cowardly attacker left him open for the blow that even now made his head feel like the inside of his father’s hottest oven.

  Janet learned from further questions that Martin wasn’t even a serious suspect—there was no blood on his knife, or on him, and nothing else outside the fence that could have inflicted Spaak’s wound. The policemen filled the air with routine questions until the doctor called a halt. “A fractured skull is a serious thing, you must remember,” he said.

  “Well,” Marx said once they were back in the hallway. “Long live cooperation. Do you have any insights for us?”

  “Nothing except that he’s angry and scared and almost certainly innocent.”

  “I envy him,” Marx said. “To be certainly innocent of anything in this day and age is a remarkable achievement.”

  He lit a cigarette. “The prefect and I are now going to discuss what to make of the testimony of this young man who saw or heard nothing except the corpse, and who thought of nothing but the corpse. Would it please you to join us?”

  “Why are you so offensive? Is it natural, or do you try to cultivate it for some reason?”

  “Offensive? I said please, did I not?”

  “Never mind,” Janet said, tired of the bickering and very tired of Captain Marx. “Go have your meeting. I’ll skip it.”

  “Are you sure? I would hate to show a lack of cooperation.”

  It was too good an opportunity for Janet to pass up. “You’ve shown a lot of improvement. I’ll make it a point to tell the Professor.”

  Marx stared for a long moment, then walked away. He wasn’t quite snarling.

  As Janet was handing in her visitor’s badge at the main desk of the hospital, someone grabbed her arm. Anger drowned out shyness, and she whirled around, ready to give Captain Marx or one of his minions a piece of her mind.

  Instead, she found herself looking at the freckled face of Dr. Karin Tebner.

  “Dr. Higgins?” the astronomer said. “May I talk to you for a moment?”

  “Of course,” Janet said. “Here?”

  Dr. Tebner took a quick glance at the elevator. “No. Not here. Let’s take a walk.”

  “Good idea,” Janet said. “Let’s do that.”

  They strolled out of the lobby and down the Boulevard de Ville.

  “Dr. Higgins—” Dr. Tebner began.

  It wasn’t like Janet to interrupt (it wasn’t very good tactics for a shrink, come to that), but there was something about the other woman that she liked.

  “Look,” Janet said. “If we go back and forth with ‘Dr. Higgins’ and ‘Dr. Tebner,’ we’re going to sound like a symposium. If you’ll be Karin, I’ll be Janet, okay?”

  “If I’ll be Karin,” Karin echoed. “God, I’d like to do that for a weekend or two. Sam calls me Karin because I’ve told him to, but he stumbles over it every time.”

  “Sam? Oh, Captain Marx. You came to the hospital with him?”

  “We were having lunch.”

  “Won’t he be mad that you’ve walked out on him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He’s been spending a lot of time with you, from what I’ve heard.”

  Karin rolled her eyes. “My God,” she said.

  “Do you mean, ‘My God, people have heard,’ or ‘My God, a lot of time?’”

  “Both. You mean people think I’m having a romance with him or something?”

  “Well, he seems devoted to you. Don’t you like him?”

  “Oh, I like him all right. He’s polite and attentive. He can even be charming when he wants to be. Are you all right?”

  Janet had choked on the thought that she was talking about the same Captain Marx. “Yes,” she coughed. “Yes, I’m fine. Just swallowed wrong.”

  “But there’s nothing personal in it,” Karin went on. “I think I’m just as glad to have it that way.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he can be scary, too. He says he’s spending all this time with me because he thinks I know something I don’t realize I know and that I might be in danger.”

  “Hardly romantic.”

  Karin was emphatic. “Like I said, there’s nothing romantic about it. I hang around with him for the same reasons. I mean, he’s a cop on this case, he must know something.”

  A few blocks from the hospital, they paused at the corner to let the slow Sunday traffic go by, then crossed to the stretch of the boulevard down which Karin had run the morning she’d found the body. The astronomer froze in her tracks for a few seconds, then shook herself and walked on.

  “Sorry,” Karin said, “I always shudder when I think about it.”

  “Don’t thin
k about it right now. There’s something you wanted to ask me, isn’t there? I mean, you didn’t approach me just to tell me about your relationship with Captain Marx, did you?”

  Karin laughed. “Such as it is. No, I didn’t. I wanted to ask you—well, no offense—”

  “It’s okay. It’s impossible to offend a psychologist.”

  “It is?”

  Now Janet laughed. “No, it’s only supposed to be. But you’re not a patient, anyway. Don’t let me treat you like one. It’s a bad habit we can get into.”

  “Astronomers get stiff necks.” Karin was suddenly serious. “Janet, what happened to Dr. Spaak?”

  Janet took a deep breath. “About the same thing that happened to the others.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “No. But for my sins, I’ll have to look at the pictures later.”

  “Uhhh. Why?”

  “Actually, I’ll have to look at all the pictures. I have to see if these things match the pathology of lycanthropism.”

  “You mean people who think they’re werewolves?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been at the hospital, boning up.”

  Janet stopped herself just in time from sharing all the interesting stuff she’d found out.

  “But, Karin, I don’t think you’ve asked me the question you want to ask yet.”

  “No, I haven’t,” she said, and they walked on for awhile until they came to the Place du Science, with its now-extinguished torch covered in black cloth.

  “It was so horrible!” Karin said. “I haven’t been able to convey to anybody how awful it was. The smell, and the feel, and the realization that someone had held him up there until he—until he’d burned enough to—to stick.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Janet said. “Next walk I’ll take with you will be along the back streets. This question of yours must be really something, if you’d rather talk about this stuff.”

  “It’s not all that bad,” Karin said. Still, she hesitated.

  Janet made her voice mock-gruff. “Out with it, Dr. Tebner!”

  “All right. Do you think Dr. Spaak was killed because he talked to you?”

  “Actually, he talked to my husband.”

  Karin waved a flat palm across the air, as though erasing a slate.

  “No,” she said, “I mean, do you think he was killed for trying to organize the scientists in an effort to find the Werewolf?”

  Janet noted with greater than academic interest that there were no audible quotes around the name of the killer any more.

  She answered the question. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “Do you think it’s possible?”

  Such were the dynamics of the team she formed with the Professor and Ron that Janet Higgins was rarely the one who got asked that question. She didn’t quite know what to do with it.

  “Me?” she said. “Personally? Yes, I do. Serial killers have enormous, unbridled egos. They can come to resent anyone getting as much publicity from their crimes as they do themselves. Sometimes—”

  “Well, don’t stop now.”

  Janet saw the smile of exaggerated exasperation on Karin’s face, and it occurred to her that the two of them had begun acting as if they’d been friends for years. Should she be suspicious of that kind of instinct, or should she run with it?

  She decided to run with it.

  “Sometimes—frequently—a serial killer will go out of his way to involve himself with the case. Get close to the investigators somehow, or turn up as a ‘key witness.’”

  There was a moment’s silence. At last Karin said, “Like me, you mean?”

  “What?” Janet felt herself blushing. “Nonono,” she said, “I didn’t mean you.” A voice somewhere inside her asked why not? but she forced it to go away.

  “Listen,” she said, “what you need is a change of scene.”

  “Right,” Karin said. “Back to New Mexico. It’s boring and empty, but at least nobody gets killed. I can be packed in half an hour.”

  “Maybe what I should have said is a change of company. Why don’t you come back to the château with me and join us for dinner tonight?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not? The baron told us specifically to use any and all of his resources if it will help the investigation. Keeping you sane will help.”

  “Will I have to see where Dr. Spaak—”

  Janet shook her head. “No, not even close. Come on, Ron and I will be lonely. The Professor is going out, and the baron, from what I understand, is going into seclusion. Dr. Romanescu announced at breakfast he would eat in his room. That leaves it up to us, and we’re planning to keep it informal. You won’t even have to change.”

  “Well...”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Janet said. “We haven’t had much satisfaction out of this trip so far, but the food the baron’s chef whips up is great. Besides, you’ll give Marx something to worry about for a change.”

  Karin laughed. “Okay,” she said. “You talked me into it. But I would like to go back to my place and change, anyway. I brought a dress with me; this looks like the best excuse I’ll have to wear it.”

  23

  THE DRIVER GOT OUT of the car and opened the front door of the château for them. Karin saw Janet nod her thanks as she walked in.

  “Did you grow up rich or something?” Karin asked.

  “Nothing special. My dad’s a dentist. Why?”

  “You handled all that so well. I always feel weird around servants.”

  “Me, too,” Janet said. “Or, I used to. The Good Life is remarkably easy to get used to.”

  A young man Karin recognized as Janet’s husband was bent over a telephone on a small table in the middle of the vast room that must be the Great Hall. He held a list in his hand.

  “...No, Paul, I mean it. The Professor would appreciate it if you had the baron dressed and down here ready to go in—” He looked at his watch. “My God, in seven minutes. No, I am not presuming to tell my host what to do. I am presuming to tell my host that the man he sent across the ocean for is about to deliver the goods, and that my host might want to be there when the truck pulls up.”

  Ron listened for a few moments, bouncing his head impatiently. “Not in so many words,” Ron said. “But I know the signs. They wouldn’t mean anything to you. Okay, he finished a painting, and he’s letting something interfere with a date.” More head-bobbing. “Just do the best you can, then.”

  Janet seemed to forget Karin was here. She sprinted across the hall to her husband and grabbed his arm just as he put down the phone. “Ron!” she said. “He finished a painting? An abstract?”

  “Hi, honey,” he said, and gave his wife a quick kiss. Karin saw that with long practice, they had managed to develop a way to do that without clicking glasses.

  “Yeah, he finished one. A great one. Why don’t you go take a look at it? I’ve still got people to track down.”

  Janet took the list from him and scanned it. “You can scratch Karin Tebner,” she said.

  “No, I can’t! The old man was emphatic. Said she had a right to be in on the close, too. Same with Romanescu. Right here under this roof, but he was the hardest of all. Still scared. I had to practically promise him American citizenship to get him to come along.”

  “Karin Tebner is here. I brought her with me.”

  Ron raised his brows. “I’m impressed. ESP?”

  “Dumb luck. I invited her for dinner.”

  “Maybe later. Right now, the Professor’s idea, as I understand it, is to drive around town and pick everybody up in one car, like the end of The Huckleberry Hound Show. Maybe two cars—he’s got a lot of people here.”

  A sudden thought lit up the detective’s face. “Dr. Tebner,” he called out. “Why don’t you come a little closer so we don’t have to shout.”

  Karin complied.

  “Hi,” he said. “Nice to meet you at last. I assume you’ve heard what we’ve been saying.”

  “Ye
s. Are you really saying Professor Benedetti has figured out who’s committed these murders?”

  “He sure thinks so. I’ve never seen him get like this and be wrong yet.”

  “I’ve never seen him get like this at all,” Janet put in. “What happened?”

  Ron shrugged. “I brought him the police reports. They clinch it that the baker boy is off the hook, by the way. Lab makes it certain. The rest of it is just so much scrap paper.”

  Janet interrupted to tell him that young Martin had awakened and looked as if he was going to be fine.

  For some reason, Janet’s husband looked relieved, as though he’d been the one who hit the boy on the head. There was a lot going on here Karin didn’t understand.

  “Anyway,” Ron Gentry went on, “I don’t know what happened. I brought him the pile from last night, he looked through it, then went off into the bathroom to shave.

  “He told me to wait for him, so I did. A few seconds later, I hear the water running, I hear a tearing noise, and I hear a scream.”

  “A scream?” Janet sounded incredulous. “From the Professor? I can’t believe it, either.”

  “Neither did I. I was afraid he’d pulled his bandage off too fast and set himself bleeding again, or that he’d slipped with that damn deadly cutthroat razor he insists on shaving with and sliced his scabs off.

  “It turned out not to be a scream; it turned out to be a high-volume ‘Aha!’ He rushed from the bathroom to the easel, whipped the cover off the current painting, said ‘Buon Iddìo, now I know what I was trying to tell myself!’ and signed the painting. Then he gave me this shopping list of people to get together and things to arrange. Which I am still trying to do. Dr. Tebner!”

  Karin jumped.

  “I’m delighted you’re here, not only because that Italian madman wants you to be, but because I want to ask you a question. From a few words the old man let slip, I suspect he may be intending for this particular fire drill to wind up at the observatory. Who’s the best person to contact to assure we can be let in?”

  “That’s no problem,” Karin said. “I’ve got a key. We’ve all got keys. Dr. Romanescu could have let you in, I suppose.”

  “I didn’t think to ask him. Thank you, that’s wonderful. Now I’ve got to get back to the phone. Why don’t you go along with my wife, and let her try to explain to you the way a genius’s mind works?”