But he doesn’t dare do anything about it until there’s a night off, and for the eyeball astronomers, nights off come once a month, in bunches.
When the time comes, it’s almost too late. The replies are in; de Blois is going to go over them that very night.
“De Blois must be stopped,” the Professor said, paralleling Ron’s thoughts. “Romanescu watches the police station, sees that de Blois is there with one other officer. That makes it simple. He goes a block or two away, and breaks the window of a jewelry store. Perhaps he retrieves a chunk of broken glass; perhaps he has a weapon of his own.
“He returns to the police station, waits for the officer to leave to investigate the break-in, then enters. Captain de Blois fears nothing from this man. Too bad for him. Romanescu stuns him with a blow, finds the report from Romania among the stack of papers, and replaces it with a counterfeit he has prepared, with his own, matching fingerprints on it. He then places de Blois across the desk, and butchers him.
“Notice, please. Who but a policeman would be able to counterfeit a fingerprint form? Of course, he knew the form itself would get no intense scrutiny—everyone would be concentrating on the prints themselves. Another brilliant move under pressure. I congratulate you.”
“I say nothing,” the prisoner said. “I admit nothing.” Ron was about ready to go up and smack him.
If he weren’t such a bastard, Ron could have almost sympathized with him. After he’d killed de Blois, Romanescu found that he’d made the place much, much too hot. The baron was going to fly this hotshot Benedetti in from the States, and they’d heard of him even beyond the Iron Curtain.
Romanescu had three priorities. One, not to have to be a “scientist” anymore. Two, to confuse things so badly no one would ever uncover the truth. Three, to get the hell out of Mont-St.-Denis.
“He went to work the day I arrived,” the Professor said, “with that clumsy flight—in a taxicab!—down the mountain, his feigning of insanity, the talk of werewolves, and a death coming with the next full moon.
“A few days in the hospital, and he was a new man. But he was a new man who was no longer expected to go to the observatory. Better yet, he was ensconced in the baron’s château, where he could learn if we were getting close to anything.
“But this brilliant move gave rise to another complication. The notion of the Werewolf took hold, however subtly, among the scientists. They began to neglect their work and turn their minds to murder, led, of course, by Jacky Spaak, who was killed by his own romantic nature.”
“Why was Spaak killed?” Levesque wanted to know. “It all seemed so unnecessary.”
“It wasn’t necessary,” the Professor said. “It was convenient. When faced with evil, one must imagine the values of the evil one. Remember, Romanescu wanted nothing in the world as much as he wanted OSI to break up and its participants to scatter. It was, by then, on the brink. One more murder would do it, he reasoned. The question was, could he commit one safely?
“Yes, he could. He couldn’t leave the château, or rather, it wouldn’t be prudent to do so. But his assessment of the would-be private eye Jacky Spaak told him that Spaak could be induced to come to him.”
Benedetti looked at the Romanian. “What did you promise him? What you ‘really’ saw the night Goetz was killed? Did you tell him you felt you could trust him because he was a fellow scientist?”
“I say nothing.”
“Yes, and admit nothing, I know. It doesn’t matter. I can see it as plainly as if I were there. You arranged a midnight rendezvous near the château fence, nearest the guest wing. You slid down a sheet from your first-floor window, after letting us all think how brave you were to leave it open and forfeit the internal alarm. You went to the gardener’s shed and ‘borrowed’ a three-pronged cultivator and a rake handle and taped the one to the other until you had what in effect was a five-foot pole with a claw.
“Then you crouched in the darkness and waited for him to come. When he arrived, you had him bend close to the fence, then raked up at him between the bars with your weapon. You tore his throat and left him for dead. You headed back for the house.
“I assume you were rather proud of yourself. You’d brought the Werewolf to the baron’s doorstep, and hadn’t gotten a drop of blood on you. A little past the full moon, but that couldn’t be helped.
“But you may have congratulated yourself too soon. Because before you could get back to the house, the baker came along, found the body, stumbled into the fence and set off the alarm. You had time only to take your weapon apart and clamber back into your room before my assistant arrived and pounded on your door. You put on another of your award-winning performances in delaying him outside the door while you put the sheet back on the bed.
“You put on another act the next day, when I discovered you retrieving the parts of your weapon (Mr. Gentry had actually stepped on one the night before), and washing the blood off them before my very eyes. You were feeling confident, then—you had the audacity to ask me if I would arrange for you to come to the United States!
“But you made another mistake. In the semidarkness of the gardener’s shed, you put the cultivator and the handle back precisely where they belonged without a moment’s hesitation. You knew where they went because you had taken them.
“And that, I believe, explains everything. M. Diderot, take him away. I will spend my hour alone with him at the jail. For now, the sight of him makes me—”
Romanescu’s voice was loud and strong. No one had heard anything like it from him before. It was the voice of a man much younger than the seventy Ion Romanescu had claimed. They stopped and listened.
“I say nothing,” he began, “except this: How long do you expect me to be in jail? You have told a story, Professor Benedetti, but if you had been listening carefully, you would have heard yourself describe how all the evidence has been destroyed or washed clean or never existed in the first place. In the West, there is no truncheon; there is only this precious evidence. I do not think a French court will convict me.”
Benedetti walked up to the man and laughed out loud, something he rarely did. He laughed for a long time. Finally he said, “You may never see the inside of a French court.”
“Now see here,” Diderot began.
Benedetti ignored him. “It is a matter of utter indifference to me; it rests entirely in your hands.”
“What does that mean?” Diderot demanded.
Marx smiled. He smiled so wide he had to take the cigarette from his mouth. “Très bien, Professor. I see. You simply have the prefect send another wire to Bucharest...”
“...and this time have them send the fingerprints of Romanescu’s brother, the secret policeman. Precisely,” Benedetti said. He looked the prisoner in the eye. “Then, you are simply repatriated to the new government of Romania, who, I am sure, will have a warm welcome for you, and you need not trouble yourself at all about French justice.”
Romanescu’s face fell like a balloon with a slow leak. His eyes fell from Benedetti’s. He tried to raise them again to meet the Professor’s gaze, but failed.
“Take him to headquarters, Monsieur Diderot,” the Professor said. “And call ahead for a stenographer. I believe you’ll be taking a confession.”
30
“MY FAVORITE PART OF the whole thing, Maestro, was after it was all over, when Frau Goetz gave Marx that rap across the mouth, then came over and hung a big kiss on you.”
Professor Benedetti rubbed his mouth, as though to wipe off the memory of the kiss. Or to rub it in, Karin thought.
They were on an Air France 747 heading back to New York. When Karin had run into the Professor’s party in the gate lounge, they had arranged to sit together. First class, and the baron was paying.
“At least he has a fighting chance to save his empire now,” Janet said.
“You think so?” her husband asked.
Janet nodded. “The Professor delivered the goods, and the baron is a hero, now.”
“And lov
ing it,” Ron said. “I guess the secret to being a billionaire is not letting catastrophes get you down. When he said good-bye, he was getting all moony-eyed—sorry, bad choice of words—he expressed enthusiasm over the idea of an international convocation of master detectives. He was just asking the Professor if he was acquainted with this Armenian guy who works out of Philadelphia when we took off. It was the first time I’ve ever seen the Professor run.”
“I did not run. And, Ronald, do I have to tell you, of all people, that I am a philosopher and not a detective?”
“You haven’t mentioned your hour with Romanescu,” Janet said.
“Bah. Love of power and contempt for others. Quite banal. It’s amazing the horrible results one can cause with such basic and uncomplicated evil impulses.” The Professor pursed his lips for a moment. “Va bène. And perhaps that is not such a trivial insight. We shall see.”
“You can read a paper on it at the baron’s convocation,” Ron suggested.
“I am going to no convocations. I did nothing great on this case.”
“I think it was pretty wonderful,” Karin said.
Benedetti leaned over to talk to her. “Young lady, I had not the slightest inkling of the truth until a chance event rubbed my nose—or at least my cheek—in it. And by then, it was nearly too late. I have come as close to failure as I ever hope to come.”
“Does this mean I have to give the money back?” Ron asked. Janet slapped his arm.
“But you did work it out, in time, Professor,” Karin said. “Isn’t that what counts?”
“Your subconscious had it pegged, Maestro. That last painting. The three faces; a double imposture. The secret policeman pretending to be the astronomer pretending to be a werewolf. Brilliant. Where did the baron say he was going to hang it?”
Benedetti just grunted. Janet decided to change the subject. “Karin, I didn’t expect to see you heading to the States so soon. You and Paul looked as if you were starting something.”
“I’m going back,” she said, and she could feel herself blush as she said it. “In a month. Paul said he has to plunge into saving the baron’s business holdings, and won’t be able to come up for air for a month. It will give me a chance to clean things up in New Mexico.”
“Are you going to get married?”
“That,” Karin said firmly, “has not yet come up. But there is a beautiful new observatory up there, and somebody has to run it....”
“The way to a woman’s heart,” Ron said, “is through her career.”
But Karin didn’t want to talk about herself. Instead, she turned and looked out the window, and there it was, lopsided-round and yellow, with parallax making it look as though it was following them home.
“The moon,” she said. Then she turned back to face her companions. “Professor! The moon!”
“What about it?” the old man said.
“That’s what I want to know. What about it? The whole idea of the Werewolf was Romanescu’s attempt to break up OSI. But that wouldn’t have worked unless the murders, at least the first two, had been committed during the full moon.”
“That is a reasonable assumption.”
“Was it just a coincidence, then?”
“Oh, no. Cause and effect.”
“Cause and effect? You mean, somehow, the moon made Romanescu commit these murders?”
“Of course not. I’m sure that in a long life of evil he has killed people under any condition imaginable. But the moon dictated the timing of his murders. Dictated to Dr. Goetz in the first instance, and to Romanescu in the second. You, my dear, should understand this better than anyone. Too much light? Bad seeing conditions?”
And Benedetti smiled for the first time in a long time. “You see, this was perhaps the first werewolf in history to strike during the full moon simply because it was his night off.”
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Copyright © 1992 by William L. DeAndrea
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