The Cairvoyant Countess (1.1)

by Dorothy Gilman

  "I'd still vote for insanity if this turns out to be premeditated murder."

  "Insanity," she said, "is only a word."

  Pruden nodded. "Okay, I'll accept that." He glanced at the clock on the wall. "School should be ending about now and in half an hour the neighborhood will be humming. I'll begin by questioning those three young people and then I'll-"

  Madame Karitska gently interrupted him. "If I might make a suggestion, there is, I think, a little experiment you might perform, a little drama you might play out that could get to the heart of the matter without any waste of time . . ."

  The three sat on up-ended wooden crates just outside the rear door to the garage and regarded Pruden with varying emotions. Kathy Dunlap's eyes were eager; Birch Dunlap looked sulky but undeniably curious; and Joe Lister junior suspicious. Pruden had caught them as they descended from the school bus; their schoolbooks lay beside them.

  "I asked for a few minutes of your time because I wanted to make an appeal to you three, as leaders in the neighborhood," began Pruden, and turning over an empty barrel he sat down facing them. "I've just told you what happened to Mrs. Larkin. We have no idea how she came to be poisoned, or with what she was poisoned; we only know she stood in this doorway trying to frame the word Help, and she had pretty much the same reactions as you did, Kathy."

  "Wow," said Kathy, her eyes wide.

  "So we have to conclude that the poison's somewhere in this neighborhood and we need your help."

  "How, sir?" asked Birch. "You know we'll do anything we can."

  "Count me in too," said Joe junior, nodding.

  "And me," added Kathy.

  "We need-the Coke machine's empty?" he said to Madame Karitska in surprise.

  "Yes, what a pity after you gave me all those quarters," she told him. "But the water's boiling for coffee, I'll pour everyone some coffee instead. Three coffees coming up."

  "Good, because we have to get down to brass tacks on this. We have to figure out a plan."

  Young Joe Listen said uneasily, "Look here, you make it sound as if somebody could be going around doing this deliberately. I mean, that maybe it's not an accident?"

  "Could be," said Pruden judiciously. "Could be. That's what I wanted to talk to you about." He accepted a cup of coffee from Madame Karitska's tray, added a spoonful of sugar and thanked her.

  "I don't really like coffee," Kathy Dunlap said, "but if you have lots of milk it tastes like coffee ice cream."

  "There's lots of milk," Madame Karitska told her, handing her the milk pitcher, and moved on to Joe Listen junior.

  Joe hesitated, then reached for a cup and rejected sugar and milk.

  "Birch?" said Madame Karitska.

  He took a cup absently, his eyes on Pruden. "Is what Joe says possible?" he asked. "I mean, that it's murder?"

  "You have here a pattern of random incidents," said Pruden, "that add up to-" He paused to watch Kathy Dunlap lift the cup to her lips and drink. "Add up to more than coincidences, maybe. First you have illnesses, and then the tragic death of- Too hot for you, Joe?" he asked.

  Joe looked down at his coffee and said, "No, I was just listening to you."

  "Have some."

  "Sure. You mean Julie's death."

  "Julie's death was rotten," Birch said angrily. "If it turns out to be a murder then I'd sure like to get my hands on-"

  Pruden was staring incredulously at Joe Listen junior, who had just lifted his cup and was drinking down his coffee without hesitation. He said to Birch, "What did you say?"

  "I said, if you think it's murder I'd sure like to get my hands on-"

  Pruden turned to him, glanced at the cup still in his his hands and said gently, "Drink your coffee, Birch."

  Birch, too, looked down at his cup and then at Pruden. "I really don't care for any, sir, I just took it to be polite."

  "Drink it."

  Birch looked startled. "I don't want to."

  "Drink it."

  Birch whitened. He said curtly, "I told you, I don't want to. I'm not going to."

  Pruden moved swiftly: he took the cup from Birch's hand and lifted it to the boy's lips, pushing his head back with one arm and holding him with the other. "I said drink it."

  "No!" shouted Birch, trying to squirm beyond Pruden's reach.

  Pruden held him resolutely while the others stared in astonishment. "Then tell me why you won't drink it, Birch, or I'll force it down your throat."

  "Damn you," sobbed Birch. "Damn you, let me go!"

  "Why, Birch, why? Drink it or tell me why."

  "Because it's poison!" Birch screamed at him. "It'll kill me, that's why. Let me go, I want to go home!"

  "I'll let you go," said Pruden, and turning to the others said sadly, "It isn't poisoned, of course, but he's the only one who knew it could be. Yes it was murder, Joe, and I owe you an apology; I thought if it was any of you three it would be you. Kathy, you'd better run home and get your mother now . . . in a hurry, Kathy."

  On Saturday morning the Dunlop house was shuttered and silent except for Kathy Dunlop sitting on the front steps talking earnestly and tearfully with Joe Lister junior. There were no bicycle riders on Mulberry Street this weekend, or children playing hopscotch. At quarter past ten a somewhat pale Mrs. Larkin carried a tray of sandwiches through the gate of Mrs. Trumbull's house and joined a substantial number of people already inside the yard: children with grass clippers, a teenager with a power mower, and two men on ladders pruning vines away from the boarded-up windows. In the living room, from which a great number of boxes had been removed, Madame Karitska lay curled up on the couch asleep. She opened her eyes at Mrs. Larkin's arrival and sat up. "It's ten o'clock?"

  "Fifteen minutes past," said Mrs. Larkin, offering her a sandwich. "Mrs. Trumbull ought to be here any minute. Lieutenant Pruden insisted we let you sleep."

  "I appreciate that."

  "And Lieutenant Pruden asked me to tell you that he hung a sign on your apartment door saying you'd be back at one o'clock."

  "Now that really is kind," said Madame Karitska, smoothing her hair. "I'm afraid I've lost rather a lot of business these last few days."

  Mrs. Larkin grinned. "Well, I'll be one of your first clients when you go back," she said. "After watching you at work yesterday and most of last night-"

  "My record, alas, was very poor," sighed Madame Karitska. "It took so long-hours! I must have been very tired."

  "We're all tired," said Mrs. Larkin, and abruptly sat down and put her head between her hands. "To think it was Birch, Birch Dunlop, of all people. Once in a while, Madame Karitska, once in a while I used to wish my two boys could be a little more like Birch. He was so self-contained, so polite. He never climbed trees so he could fall out of them, his clothes were always clean and tidy and his grades at school so marvelous. I used to wonder sometimes what I was doing wrong," she said, and lifted a troubled face to Madame Karitska. "He was such a good boy."

  "Yes," said Madame Karitska.

  "Is it true-did he really scream at everyone when they took him away that he wasn't sorry, that it was the first fun he'd ever had?"

  "Yes," said Madame Karitska.

  "My God!"

  "But it would be wise to forget what he said," Madame Karitska pointed out gently. "He's very young, you know, and it's to be hoped that he'll become healed in time, and that someone may be able to teach him how to enjoy life. It can be taught," she said, and then, getting up, she added, "Do I hear a car?"

  They hurried out to the porch in time to see Pruden help Mrs. Trumbull out of his car. Her hat fell off and he rescued it. She straightened, stared at the scene in front of her and gasped, "People?"

  Pruden grinned. "You've just discovered you're sane, which is something not all of us know, and you're going to have the best-groomed yard on the block. Come and meet some of your neighbors now."

  Very quietly Mrs. Trumbull began to cry. "It's just-just that it's so terribly kind," she explained, wiping her eyes. "but I won't be able to
stay in my house."

  Madame Karitska said, "You haven't told her?"

  "No, I saved the big surprise until we got here." He led her through the gate and up to the steps and suggested she sit down. Pulling a sheet of paper out of his wallet he handed it to her. "Exhibit A, Mrs. Trumbull: a photostat of what Madame Karitska found among your junk early this morning. We were here all night looking. Her good old ESP singled out the right carton in the living room, but the problem was that what turned out to be of value was a stamp. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack but at four o'clock this morning we found it."

  "A stamp?" repeated Mrs. Trumbull, looking bewildered.

  "I took the liberty of showing it to a dealer this morning and then I rented a safe-deposit box for it in your name. The dealer said it's one of the rarest regular-issue United States postage stamps, only two of its kind in existence, and the other one sold at auction last year for twenty-seven thousand dollars."

  "Hey, now," said Mrs. Larkin.

  "Well, now," whispered Mrs. Trumbull.

  "I think," said Madame Karitska gravely, "it's time to start the party . . . Welcome home, Mrs. Trumbull."

  Chapter 14

  She had seen them on Eighth Street from time to time, sometimes just the woman carrying a shopping bag and looking like a cheerful little bird, and sometimes the man too, with his hand on her arm. They were a pleasing sight, for they gave every evidence of still enjoying each other's company. Their clothes were ordinary, their faces worn, but they had somehow remained uncorrupted and wholesome. They had great simplicity.

  They were in fact the last two people Madame Karitska had ever expected to find at her door but-on this Thursday morning in November-here they were. They stood and looked at her and then the woman nervously cleared her throat and said, "We heard about you."

  Her husband nodded and Madame Karitska noticed that his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.

  "But of course-do come in," she said. "I was about to have a cup of coffee, won't you join me?" She drew them in and closed the door.

  As if he'd not heard her the man said in a harsh voice, "We wondered-we wondered, Ellen and I, if you know how to contact the dead."

  "Like the seances we've seen in movies," the woman put in eagerly.

  Madame Karitska's brows lifted. "I don't really approve of seances," she told them, and meeting the terrible appeal in their eyes she added, "Suppose we have some coffee and you tell me about it."

  "If we could only persuade you!" cried the woman. "It's all been so sudden, it's such a shock."

  "Now Ellen," said her husband.

  "Please," Madame Karitska told them firmly. "Just sit down, won't you?" Walking into the kitchen she added two cups to the tray and carried it in to the low table. "You live in this neighborhood, I think, don't you?"

  Each of them nodded. "Our name is Heyer, Mr. and Mrs. Fritz Heyer." The woman's hands trembled as she accepted the cup of coffee.

  "We've just come from the burial," Mr. Heyer added in a broken voice.

  "Try to drink a little, Fritz," his wife begged. "It's good hot coffee, just what you need."

  "Our granddaughter's burial," he said.

  "She's lived with us for the last ten years," explained the woman, pressing a cup of coffee into her husband's hands. "Ever since her parents died. It was like living with a songbird in the house. For ten years she was like a daughter to us-"

  "She was killed in a car crash Tuesday morning on the way to the airport," broke in Mr. Heyer. "Our only son's daughter, our only grandchild. And so beautiful."

  "A psychologist," put in the woman with astonishment.

  "Yes, and she was on her way to the airport for her first vacation in Paris."

  "I see," murmured Madame Karitska, blinking.

  "It was a very bad accident. They say death must have been instantaneous, for which we're thankful-"

  "-but it's frightening," said the woman, "that if it wasn't for the car's license-and the passport they found-they wouldn't even have known she was Jan. Or notified us. They might have buried her in a-in a-"

  "Now, Mother," he said, patting her hand.

  Madame Karitska was accustomed to being plunged into other people's worlds and she had been listening with sympathy. Now she said, "But a seance?"

  "It's my wife," explained Mr. Heyer. "She can't accept it, she can't sleep, what's worst of all she can't cry. So we thought- You see, Jan had the gift of second sight-"

  "Jan?"

  "Our granddaughter. We never talked about it-it always alarmed us-but we thought with Jan having this second sight, as they call it, she might-well, give us a message."

  "She must be waiting to give us one," put in his wife pleadingly. "Even with her own apartment now and her own friends she came to dinner with us every Sunday, and for every opera there were tickets. Always she was so thoughtful."

  "But sometimes," said Madame Karitska softly, "it's better not to trouble the dead, to bind them to us. It's kinder to let them go free."

  "Just one word," begged the woman. "You must understand how it was, there was only the telephone call-so abrupt, so sudden-and nothing but her effects to identify. Effects . . . such a strange word, isn't it? Because of the fire. It was so unreal."

  "The fire?"

  "The car began burning. She was only twenty-four, Madame Karitska, she was the light of our lives."

  "Yes," said Madame Karitska and sighed. She disapproved of their request, but no matter how she personally felt she was confronted by two elderly people in need of comfort and reassurance. "I can try," she said, nodding.

  "Oh bless you," cried the woman.

  Madame Karitska arose and drew the curtains across the window, then asked them to move so that she could arrange three chairs in the approximation of a circle. "What was your granddaughter's full name?" she asked, sitting down.

  "Jan Cooper Heyer."

  She nodded, asked that they hold hands, and closed her eyes. "We are asking," she said in a low voice, "for a message from Jan Cooper Heyer, killed Tuesday in an auto accident."

  There was a long silence and Madame Karitska, feeling her eyes grow heavy, knew she was slipping into a light trance. She could feel presences, she could sense disapproval, mute communications, and an uncomfortable prickling of her nerves, and then someone sneezed loudly and she opened her eyes.

  It was Mr. Heyer. "I'm terribly sorry," he said. "I sneezed."

  She glanced at her watch and saw that she had been in trance for nearly fifteen minutes. "Did I say anything?"

  Mrs. Heyer shook her head. "Nothing."

  Madame Karitska nodded. "That is the impression I gained, too. Nothing."

  "You'll try again?" pleaded Mrs. Heyer.

  Madame Karitska tactfully skirted this by saying, "Perhaps if I had something belonging to your granddaughter it might be of some help before making another effort."

  "Well-there's her passport," said Mr. Heyer doubtfully. "They gave it to me at the morgue Tuesday night and I have it with me."

  "The passport that was on her when she died?"

  Mr. Heyer brought it from the inside pocket of his jacket, handling it carefully, as if it were a priceless treasure. "Here," he said, pressing it into her hand.

  Madame Karitska accepted it none too happily and closed her eyes over the thin blue book. The Heyers were silent, a little awed as they watched her, not understanding what this cost her, for Madame Karitska was at once plunged into the final moments of the girl's life: all other impressions faded before anything so powerful as death. The car . . . it was really quite horrible, she could feel its insane and reckless speed, she could feel the defiance and the excitement of the girl at the wheel, see her dark head bent forward, eyes narrowed, face intent, her lips moving to the beat of the music blasting from the car radio. And then came the unexpected curve in the road and the utility post leaping up in front of the windshield. She could feel the quick intake of breath, and in the split second before impact Madame Karitska experi
enced with Jan Heyer a glimpse into the girl's life. Then, "Tommy!" she screamed, and there was nothing.

  Madame Karitska opened her eyes and looked at the old couple. How could she tell them that their granddaughter was not at all what they had believed her to be, that in that last moment when Jan Heyer looked into what she was and had been, Madame Karitska, too, had looked and seen her as neither kind nor good but deeply troubled and destructive.

  "Yes?" asked Mr. Heyer.

  "She died with the name of Tommy on her lips."

  "Tommy?" They looked at each other wonderingly.

  "She was too busy to go out often with men," said Mr. Heyer. "Perhaps it was one of her patients."

  "Patients?"

  "Yes, she was a psychologist. For a year now she's been in private practice. Two days a week she gave to the Harlow Settlement House."

  "Was she a fast driver? Have you ever driven with her?"

  "Many times," said Mrs. Heyer. "No, she never speeded. She was careful even about stop signs. When she was driving she wouldn't even turn on the little radio that came with the car, she said it was too distracting."

  Madame Karitska said sharply, "She was darkhaired, wasn't she?"

  "Dark!" exclaimed Mr. Heyer. "No, no, she was fair, you can see that by the passport."

  Madame Karitska opened the passport and looked at the attractive, high-cheekboned face and then she looked at them. "But this is not the young woman who was killed in the car."

  "What do you mean?" faltered Mrs. Heyer.

  "I mean-" Madame Karitska stopped and frowned. "I do not wish to lift your hopes, but the young woman who died in the car was dark, very restless, with much confusion in her."

  "But what can you mean?" asked Mrs. Heyer in astonishment.

  "I don't know," said Madame Karitska simply. "The body-the remains-were unidentifiable?"

  Mrs. Heyer turned white. "Yes."

  "But the passport survived?"

  Mr. Heyer looked a little sick. "Yes. It was outside the car when they found her. You understand there was a fire-"