The Cairvoyant Countess (1.1)

by Dorothy Gilman

  "Of course she would die," protested Faber-Jones.

  Madame Karitska closed her eyes again, and for a long time was silent. "No," she said, "not then. I feel much horror about this. There is a coffin, people looking inside and closing the coffin, and then much later she opens her eyes and she is free." Madame Karitska smiled radiantly. "I understand now . . . The man she loved is beside her. It is he who smuggled the poison into the camp to her. It is presumably a dead body that has been shipped out of the camp but she is alive. She opens her eyes in a dark basement room and there are people there. She is safe."

  "But how?" asked Dr. Tennison.

  "An antidote prepared and waiting," she said. "I can feel the risk, the suspense, the terrible, agonizing suspense of whether she will be saved in time."

  "Good God," said Faber-Jones.

  Madame Karitska opened her eyes and smiled. "Since then, for many years, it has been worn by that man who so miraculously saved his wife. And there is sadness," she added, "for I do not think she is alive now."

  Lucas Johns opened his mouth to speak and then was silent.

  "But who," said Dr. Tennison. "Which of us"

  "We pledged not to tell," Faber-Jones reminded her.

  "Then how do we know that what Madame Karitska saw is right?" protested Dr. Tennison. "A story so bizarre-"

  "I will take a watch next," said Madame Karitska, interrupting her, and she placed the stone carefully to one side of her coffee cup and selected a plain gold watch set into a wide, dark-brown leather band. She held it silently for a few moments in the palm of her hand and then she put it down and with a glance at Faber-Jones said, "I wonder if I might excuse myself for a moment. There is a lavatory, I believe, adjoining the bedroom where I left my coat?"

  Faber-Jones, startled, said, "Yes, but there's a much nearer one just off the hall to your right."

  Madame Karitska nodded and left. She went, however, to the bedroom, which she had seen before, and was absent for nearly ten minutes. When she returned she picked up a silver watch with a black band.

  "You were holding a gold watch before," pointed out Lucas Johns.

  "Oh? Well, I will return to that one later," she said lightly. "Let us see what this one tells us-except I am afraid that in this case there can be no secret about whom I describe, because the impression I immediately receive is that of a very strong woman who works inside the earth, who opens tombs and collects artifacts." She was silent for a few moments before speaking again. "I will not inject any personal notes into this reading but I will say this: of major importance right now in this person's life is a project to-I see the state of South Dakota, am I right? And Indians . . . an Indian burial ground?"

  "Actually," began Dr. Tennison, and then flushed. "Yes," she admitted. "Yes, I have to say that you're right. I leave next week."

  Madame Karitska said sharply, "Then I would beg of you not to, for I foresee danger for you. Not physical danger but grave psychic danger. This is a sacred burial ground."

  Dr. Tennison smiled. "My dear Madame Karitska, all places that we archaeologists investigate have customarily been sacred in their time."

  Madame Karitska eyed her disapprovingly. "And you do not believe that interference can bring-shall we say a response?"

  "You mean," Lucas Johns said with a smile, "that spirits of the dead may be hanging about?"

  Dr. Tennison laughed. "Yes, I think that's exactly what she means. Rubbish, of course."

  Madame Karitska smiled gently. "Whatever I may mean or not mean, I foresee trouble. This I can tell you. You are skeptical, I see, and I am sorry but I must tell you that this experience will be bad for you. You will be-changed."

  Dr. Tennison shrugged and brought out a cigarette and lighted it. "You've not convinced me, although I admit you guessed where I go next. You could, of course, have read about it in the newspapers."

  "I do not read newspapers," Madame Karitska said somewhat coldly, and picked up a second watch, this one a square silver one with an alligator strap.

  Holding this second watch and closing her eyes she said, "Ah, this one is most interesting. We have here a person who has lived two different lives, very distinct and separate . . . I see the state of California, yes, and very definitely from the look of the flat roofs and the blue water I would say San Francisco. A beautiful city, is it not? There is great success there, and happiness, but for this person there comes grave trouble, very bad associates. There is-" She broke off suddenly. "I do not believe I should go on with this," she said. "I do not wish to give away this person's secret, I feel it could be dangerous."

  Lucas Johns said with a grin at his host, "Some dinner party, Jonesy."

  As he spoke the buzzer sounded in the hall, and they could hear Faber-Jones' valet open the door, followed by the murmur of voices. Madame Karitska said with apology, "To give an incomplete reading, this happens sometimes. You will forgive me? I will read this last watch now," she said, "and then I daresay Mr. Faber-Jones will want us to move to more comfortable chairs."

  She picked up the fourth and last watch, the gold one with a dark-brown leather strap, and held it lightly in the palm of one hand. "Yes," she said, closing her eyes, and said slowly, "Yes, we have here a man of great brilliance and great-yes, great shrewdness, a man who is not what he seems to be, in fact he has been many things. He has had many names as well, I believe, and also many occupations. He was born in another country but although he has lived in this country for a long time his allegiances are still to that other country."

  There was something in her voice that struck the others silent. There was an atmosphere suddenly of uneasiness.

  "I feel," continued Madame Karitska, "that the name Mazda has been important in this man's life. It rests there like a shadow. This man has been a professor or teacher at one time, for I get the impression of a classroom and of students, and it was during this period that he knew this woman named Mazda. He is responsible for her death. Not only that, but I get the very strong impression that he has arranged the death of at least two other people. This has something to do with Mazda . . . Two people, a man and a woman . . ."

  "Surely this is going too far?" broke in Dr. Tennison indignantly. "First Indian burial grounds and now a murderer among us?"

  "This man is now working in-I see the city of New York, and one particular building in New York . . . I believe," said Madame Karitska, opening her eyes and looking directly at Peter Zoehfeld, "it's the United Nations building."

  "I beg your pardon!" snapped Zoehfeld, and looking highly incensed he rose from his chair. "Look here, I didn't come to your dinner party to be insulted," he told Faber-Jones. "I daresay you didn't expect it either but I don't intend to listen to any more of this claptrap. No, no, I'll accept no apology. If you'll ask your man to bring me my coat I'll leave."

  "I don't wonder," sniffed Dr. Tennison.

  Faber-Jones, looking puzzled, said, "I really don't understand-I mean, actually, you know . . . I mean, I'm dreadfully sorry." He gave Madame Karitska a quick, helpless glance. "I feel responsible, of course-a parlor game, you know, I didn't dream-"

  Tight-upped, Zoehfeld said, "Never mind, I'll just go."

  He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.

  Dr. Tennison turned and gave Madame Karitska an indignant stare. "You do a great deal of harm with your crystal-ball reading, my dear woman. I hope you realize that."

  But Madame Karitska chose instead to answer Faber-Jones' questioning gaze. "There are policemen outside in your hall waiting for him," she said quietly. "When I asked about your lavatory I actually wanted to use the telephone in the bedroom. I called Lieutenant Pruden at the hospital and he understood at once what to do."

  "Good God," said Lucas Johns, "you mean the man actually is a murderer?"

  Looking appalled, Faber-Jones said, "But how would Pruden know what to do? How could you be that sure?"

  She smiled. "Because some weeks ago Lieutenant Pruden brought to me the watch of a man named Dr. B
ugov who disappeared three years ago here in Trafton. The impressions I received when I picked up Mr. Zoehfeld's watch were identical to the impressions I received from Dr. Bugov's watch. They are the same man."

  "I think," said Dr. Tennison with a shudder, "that I too choose to leave now, but not because I am a murderess, I just think we've all had enough, don't you? I'm very tired."

  "Yes," said Dr. Berkowitz with a start, "I think you're quite right."

  "No offense meant, Jonesy," said Lucas Johns, "but I think I'll go too. Really the most dramatic dinner party I've attended in years."

  They arose and exchanged the usual murmurs of thank-yous as Faber-Jones' valet brought out hats, scarfs, and coats. Dr. Tennison was the first to leave, kissing Faber-Jones good-by and shaking Madame Karitska's hand. Lucas Johns left next, with a long look into Madame Karitska's eyes and an inexplicable "Thank you."

  "And you I'll see again on Tuesday," Faber-Jones told Dr. Berkowitz, shaking his hand. Seeing the doctor look blank he added, "My annual check-up day, you know."

  "Oh-oh yes," said Dr. Berkowitz, and put on his coat, which was nearly as wrinkled as his suit. He looked extraordinarily tired.

  "I think you are forgetting something, Dr. Berkowitz," Madame Karitska told him as he moved toward the door.

  He turned and looked at her blankly, his thoughts obviously elsewhere.

  "Your wife's amulet," she said, holding it out to him in the palm of her hand. "The stone she wore in Buchenwald."

  He stared at the object in her hand and then he lifted his eyes to hers and nodded. "Thank you," he said quietly. "You-brought it all back, you know. She was very dear to me, and still is. Thank you."

  When the door had closed behind him Faber-Jones said incredulously, "Dr. Berkowitz? I thought surely Lucas Johns-"

  She shook her head. "Lucas Johns was in the recording business in San Francisco and ran into great trouble. When he gave evidence against the criminals who'd broken his life the authorities gave him a new name and new identity. No, not Lucas Johns. His was the reading I shortened, to spare his feelings."

  "But kind, mousy, little Dr. Berkowitz?"

  Madame Karitska reached out and affectionately touched his cheek with her hand. "Oh my dear Mr. Faber-Jones," she said, "do you really think heroes are six feet tall and swash-buckling? That man is probably the most heroic man you will ever meet."

  "And he'll give me a check-up on Tuesday and talk about the weather and gall bladders," groaned FaberJones.

  Chapter 12

  "It's really distressed me a great deal," Faber-Jones said, sitting on Madame Karitska's couch and staring into his cup of coffee. "The man seemed absolutely charming during those two hours we spent trapped in the subway, and now-"

  "He was charming," pointed out Madame Karitska. "Always. But charm is artificially acquired, it has nothing to do with essence."

  "I feel-I know it's irrational but I feel somewhat responsible for his death."

  Madame Karitska regarded him with impatience. "My dear Faber-Jones, how could you possibly know that Peter Zoehfeld was going to swallow a capsule of cyanide at the first opportunity after his arrest? Four days ago you felt dazed but really quite triumphant that a foreign agent had been uncloaked at your dinner party. Today-"

  "Today Zoehfeld's dead, which makes a difference."

  "On the contrary, my dear friend, death was by his own choice. What was not choice for either of you, I think, was meeting on a subway train in New York City."

  "You really think that? You really believe these things are-arranged?" His voice was skeptical.

  "The large events, yes. We earn them, we attract them by what we are and what we have been. For the large events of our lives I believe we're moved about like pieces on a chessboard. We assume with the utmost vanity that our thoughts and our plans for the future are entirely our own, but the mind is vacant until thoughts are placed there, is it not, and can any of us trace our thoughts to their source? A person will assume it is he alone who suddenly decides to accept a job a thousand miles away in a strange city, thereby meeting the one person important for him to know-for good or evil-at that point in his life and in his development. Or two strangers meet on a subway train, and one is brought back to Trafton where three years ago he killed two people." She shrugged. "I believe Jung called these juxtapositions of fate 'meaningful coincidences.' They deeply interested him, as they should everyone. But we live in a whole network-a universe-of meaningful coincidences."

  "I don't see exactly how that would apply-"

  "One can sometimes see this when one looks back, through hindsight.

  "You mean taking a major event in one's life, I suppose, and examining all the threads that went into producing it. But that implies that the people we meet-"

  "Must be treated with infinite respect," she said firmly, "for few of them arrive casually in our lives. Some, yes, but others-" She broke off at the sound of a knock at her door.

  Faber-Jones put down his cup and reached for his attaché case. "You have an appointment?"

  "No, but people still arrive without them." She rose and walked to the door with him. "I'm glad you stopped in," she said, opening the door, and then in surprise, "Lieutenant Pruden!"

  "Well, well," cried Faber-Jones, wringing his hand. "Your first day back at work, isn't it? I must say you're looking fit."

  Pruden grinned at Madame Karitska. "Yes, and the first assignment I've been handed is to investigate a witch so I'm here for a little expertise."

  "A witch!" said Madame Karitska, laughing.

  "Not really-I don't think-but she may end up getting burned at the stake if I don't find the answer to what's happening."

  "Then I'll leave you both to your consultation on witches," said Faber-Jones. "By the way, John Painter's cutting his third record this afternoon," he called over his shoulder to Madame Karitska.

  When he had gone she said, "Tell me about your witch."

  "Do you have any appointments for the next hour?"

  Madame Karitska shook her head.

  "Then I'm hoping you'll come with me. You see, I can't even get in, there are four dogs roaming the yard and-"

  "Four dogs! You wish me to protect you from four dogs, to-how do you say it?-run interference for you?"

  "Now you're laughing at me," Pruden told her accusingly. "I'm a convalescent hero and you're laughing at me. Actually I thought if she saw a woman with me at the gate-I'm sure I saw her face at the window; she must have seen me tangling with the dogs, which she could easily have called off if she had felt like it. She's a recluse, you see. I might have asked for a policewoman but could a policewoman tell me, once I get inside-if I can-whether the woman's a witch or not?"

  "You believe, then, in witches," Madame Karitska said, her eyes dancing at him humorously.

  "I keep reading about them in the newspapers. Covens and all that. Are there such things?"

  "No comment," she said, and picked up her purse. "Shall we go?"

  "Good. It's not far away, it's on Mulberry Street, off First Avenue near the river. I hope it won't take long," he added as he helped her into his car outside.

  "Tell me why the police have been called in," she suggested.

  He climbed in beside her and they drove off. "Nothing's too clear to me yet. It seems that some very odd things have been happening in the neighborhood lately. First a young boy became ill-turned wild, someone said-and then a sixteen-year-old girl came close to having convulsions on the street and rumor started that they were each under a spell. The cop on the beat picked up some of the gossip over a period of several weeks, so I began by interviewing him this morning. But the police were officially called in last night when a third person-another sixteen-year-old girl-went beserk, found her father's pistol, and began taking pot shots at windows. She had to be placed in a strait jacket. The weird thing is that she's quite normal this morning, they tell me, and remembers nothing about it except feeling terrible."

  "LSD?" suggested Madame Karit
ska.

  "Possibly, but the man sent over last night said the girl has no history of drug-taking-none of them do-and this morning she violently denied taking any drugs."

  "And the witch?"

  He sighed. "I'm not sure we've made much progress in the last two hundred years. Nobody knows who this woman is, but she lives on the street and a few of the neighbors have decided that she's responsible for it, and that she's bewitching the children. If it weren't for those dogs of hers," he said grimly, "they'd probably have stormed the house last night and lynched her. I hope not, but some investigations are overdue."

  "Obviously," said Madame Karitska.

  They turned off Broad Street into an area near the river. It was a neighborhood that had once been elegant until, around the turn of the century, it had slipped into the worst kind of slum, and then during Trafton's renaissance era ten years ago the neighborhood had become the target of a renewal project and was now a street of middle-class homes, all of them brownstones, some detached and some attached. They were set back from the street with small grassy plots in front of them and handsome, old-fashioned wrought-iron fences. There were only two buildings on the street that did not match the well-groomed exteriors: one was an autobody shop in the middle of the block, a rambling frame building badly in need of paint and surrounded by weeds and skeletons of cars rusting in the yard; the other was a boarded-over brownstone almost suffocated by trees and shrubbery that grew up all around it and isolated it from the others. It was at this seemingly abandoned house that Pruden stopped.

  "According to the city tax office-I've had a busy morning-her name is Mrs. Eva Trumbull."

  "But there's no glass in any of the windows, only boards," protested Madame Karitska. "Are you sure there's someone living inside?"

  "People see her come out at night. Apparently to ride on her broomstick," he said grimly.

  As they climbed out of the car a small boy rode up on his tricycle and stared at them. "You're not going in there, are you?" he demanded incredulously. "She'll give you the evil eye, she'll turn you into a gingerbread boy."