[Mark Twain Mysteries 05] - The Mysterious Strangler

by Peter J. Heck

  Mr. Clemens sighed. ‘Too bad. I thought you’d want to salvage some dignity instead of letting me expose you in front of all your friends. All right, this is how I figure it happened. After dinner, but before most people had left the party, your confederate left the room on some excuse, took the painting off the wall and went down to your study to take it out of the frame. But Virginia Fleetwood was still in the library, where she’d been talking to Cabot. She saw your confederate go by, carrying the painting. That aroused her curiosity. She followed him and watched him remove it from the frame, and then she asked him what he was doing.”

  “Nonsense.” said Stephens. He’d sat back down and was fidgeting with his wineglass. “There was a house full of people there to notice the painting was gone. Why would he do it then?”

  “That didn’t make sense until I realized what you were doing.” said my employer. He pointed the pipe stem at Stephens and said, “The reason for having it disappear while there were people still there was to have witnesses to the so-called theft. Everybody saw it before dinner, now it’s gone—it must have been stolen! And you’ve got a dozen people ready to blab about the theft, to get the word out to those collectors who’d consider buying something they knew was stolen. That way there’d be a ready market when the crooked dealers came around offering a Raphael for sale.”

  “What a wonderful scheme!” said Stephens, his voice oozing sarcasm. “It's a shame to have to point out that, even if the plot had taken place, it could all have been done without my knowledge. Who was this confederate Virginia saw taking the painting? I suppose you’re going to tell us that he was the one who strangled her—and Luigi Battista, as well.”

  “Yes. there’s the real question.” said Penelope Atwater. “Who is the mysterious killer?”

  “Not so mysterious.” said Mr. Clemens. “In fact he’s sitting here right now. Right there!” He pointed and every head turned to look.

  Every head except one. that is. That person scratched his head and said. “I thought you’d gone off the tracks before, but this is just plain crazy. I’ve got the same question Frank’s been asking. Where’s your evidence?”

  “Waiting in the other room.” said Mr. Clemens. He turned to me. “Wentworth. I reckon it’s time to bring in the clincher.”

  “Clincher? What do you mean?” asked Frank Stephens, but I was already on my way out of the room.

  27

  When I returned to the terrace, every eye turned to look at me. To most of them, the stout little man I was escorting would have been a total stranger. But to one of them, his face was quite well known. “Why. that’s Emilio, my driver!” said Jonathan Wilson.

  “Ciao, Signore Wilson,” said Emilio. He shot a crooked grin at his employer; then, perhaps remembering for what serious purpose he had been summoned, his face turned grave again.

  “What is this fellow supposed to know about art?” said Wilson, puzzlement plain on his face. “I doubt he could tell a Raphael from an El Greco—the fellow can barely read and write.”

  “Emilio didn’t come to talk about the painting,” said Mr. Clemens. “I wouldn't give a rap about it myself, if that poor girl hadn't been murdered on account of it. That’s what Emilio is here to tell us about—the murder.”

  “You don’t mean to tell us that he witnessed it,” said Stephens. He was toying with his empty glass, looking as if he wanted it refilled; but the bottle was empty, and there was no waiter in sight. “If he did, why has he waited so long to come forward?”

  “Let’s just let the fellow tell his story” said Mr. Clemens. “You’ll get your chance to pick holes in it when he’s done.” He turned to the driver and said. “Emilio, can you tell us what you did last Saturday night?”

  “Si, signore.” said the driver, his eyes gleaming. “I drive Signore Wilson to the banquet of Signore Ste-fans, at his house in the Oltramo.”

  “What did you do after you left Wilson at the banquet?”

  “Is a place not far away where all the cocchieri gather, to talk and smoke, drink the vino, maybe play the cards,” said Emilio. “I go there to wait.”

  “Did you know the other drivers who were there that night?” Mr. Clemens asked.

  “No, is not the part of town I go to before.” said Emilio. “I come to Firenze from Fiesole just a little while ago, get good job with Signore Wilson.”

  “That’s right.” said Wilson. “Emilio’s been with me less than a month. My old driver. Mario, quit me right after the start of the year. It took me a good while to replace him.” Mr. Clemens nodded. “Did you stay with the other drivers all night?” he asked, turning to Emilio again.

  Emilio shrugged, spreading his hands apart. “I stay most of the night, but I don’t know nobody, and I don’t got money to play cards. So late at night, a message come that somebody wants a ride from Signore Ste-fan's place out to Piazza Donatello. I think that isn’t so far—I can go there and be back before Signore Wilson needs me. I already know when he goes to visit friends, he stays very late— always the last to leave. So I decide to take the person who wants a ride. Is extra money, capisce?”

  “Yes, of course.” said Mr. Clemens. “And who was the person who needed the ride?”

  “Was two people.” said Emilio. “An English signore and signorina…”

  “English or American?” asked Penelope Atwater sharply. “It’s important that we know exactly.”

  “Who can tell?” The driver’s expression was pure bafflement. “The signorina speaks the good Italian, but the man, he speaks only the English. He gives me the orders, and if I don’t understand right away, he talks louder.”

  “Well, sometimes it works,” said Mr. Clemens, undoubtedly aware of his own inadequacies with that language. “But tell me—do you see either the man or the woman here?”

  Emilio looked around the group, then said, “I don’t see the signorina. But that is the man, sitting right there.” And he pointed straight at Eddie Freeman.

  “That’s a damned lie,” said Eddie Freeman. “I mean, he must be mistaken. Why would I be going out to that part of town at midnight, anyhow?”

  Mr. Clemens walked over to Freeman and stood next to him. He leaned down to look him in the eyes and said. “You were leaving a picture frame—the frame you’d taken off the Raphael forgery—in the graveyard to make us think it had been stolen and fenced to one of the art dealers at Piazza Donatello. Of course you didn’t go out there with the actual painting in that weather—you couldn’t risk damaging it, since Stephens needed it to fetch the same price as a real Raphael.”

  “That’s absurd.” said Freeman. “If I was doing what you say, why would I haul Ginny along to be a witness? What even makes you think it was her that was with me? It could have been anyone from the party.”

  Mr. Clemens spread out the fingers of his left hand and began to touch them with his right index finger, as if counting. “It couldn’t have been my wife, because she’d come home with me. It couldn't have been Mrs. Stephens, because she stayed home with her husband. It couldn’t have been Penelope Atwater or Sarah Woods, because they’re sitting right here and Emilio didn’t identify them as the woman who went with you. Besides, they had their own driver. The only other English or American woman at the party was Virginia Fleetwood.”

  Freeman’s jaw worked for a moment, then he repeated. “The driver’s lying, then. I’ve already told you I didn’t go out there that night. I don’t even know anybody in that part of town.”

  “If he says that, he lies,” said Angela, who’d been staring more and more intently at Eddie Freeman ever since the driver pointed him out. “I see him plenty in Luigi's shop, bringing paintings to sell. Luigi helps him—tells him where to get old canvas, gives him special paint that makes a painting look old—new paints, they look too bright. Luigi hires many painters who can copy old things, and this man is one of them.”

  “You were making copies of that phony Raphael, weren’t you?” Mr. Clemens put his finger under Freeman's nose and raised
his voice. “When Virginia Fleetwood caught you taking the painting out of its frame, you were afraid she was going to expose your scheme. You'd lose all the money you expected to get for painting fakes, and you were desperate for the money. So you lied to her, maybe told her you were playing some kind of prank on Stephens, and lured her out to that graveyard. Then you sent the driver away and killed her to keep her from talking. When you heard Wentworth say that I was going to consult Battista about forgeries, you killed him. too—because his word could put you behind bars. You're the murderer, Eddie Freeman.”

  “That's another lie!” shouted Bob Danvers, leaping to his feet. I'd been watching for this, and I quickly stepped forward to intercept him. His face was distorted with rage, and I had no doubt that he meant to harm my employer.

  Help came from an unexpected quarter. “Sit down. Mr. Danvers.” snapped Penelope Atwater. “You really are becoming tiresome. I’m afraid Mr. Clemens is tiresome, as well, but I'm beginning to wonder if he might not have truth on his side.” Openmouthed. Danvers took a step back, then shook his head and slumped back into his seat. Relieved. I turned my attention back to Mr. Clemens.

  “I do have truth on my side, ma'am.” said my employer, bowing to her. “I don’t accuse people of murder without some good evidence to back up what I say.”

  “Your allegations are disturbing.” said Mrs. Atwater, lifting her chin to look at him. “I am not yet convinced that Mr. Freeman is a murderer, although you have given us rather damning evidence of his part in the art fraud—which I think may be as you say it is. But it is a long step from there to cold-blooded murder.”

  “Yes, it is,” said my employer. “But it’s a short step from copying old masters to selling the copies as originals. And another short one to pretending to steal one and then selling five or six copies of it. Every step is short, but one step leads to another—until you’ve got so much at stake, the next step doesn’t seem so terrible. But it's still murder.”

  “I didn’t do it, Clemens.” said Eddie Freeman, holding up his hands as if to protect himself. “I didn’t do a single one of the things you’re talking about.”

  “You’re forgetting the proof, Eddie,” said Mr. Clemens. “It looks pretty bad for you—you've got the motive, you had the opportunity, and the method is no stretch of the imagination—you must outweigh both the victims by fifty pounds or more. Poor Battista never had a chance once you got your hands around his neck…”

  What Eddie Freeman would have answered to this, we never found out. For Angela, who had been following the exchange with a deepening frown, suddenly cried out, “You! You murder Luigi! I kill you!”

  Big as he was—I suspect any football coach in America would have been glad to have him show up at practice—Eddie was not prepared to have a large, fierce-looking Italian woman scream at him, then lunge at him with mayhem in her eyes and her hands held out to grab him. He stood up and backed away from her, but the terrace wall was in his way. At that precise moment. Angela snatched up a knife from the table. “I kill you!” she screamed again.

  That was too much for Freeman. He turned and leapt over the wall and began to run away.

  Mr. Clemens shouted, “Get him, Wentworth!” but I was already in pursuit. I dodged around Bob Danvers, who stood openmouthed by his chair, to vault over the wall like a hurdler. Half a dozen running strides and I was breathing down Freeman’s neck. He must have heard my footsteps, for he turned his head to look back, and I saw his face, a mask of sheer panic. That glance backward was his undoing; his foot landed wrong on a cobble, and he fell heavily.

  I pounced on him like a cat, with my knee across his chest, to make sure he didn’t get up. From behind I heard another scream from Angela. That must have unnerved him at last. “Don’t let her kill me.” he babbled. “I didn’t have any choice—I would have gone to the gallows if Luigi talked. I didn’t have any choice.”

  I put my hand on his throat, and leaned closer. “They don’t hang murderers in Italy,” I growled. “But if they did, by God, I’d spring the trap myself.”

  “That’s enough. Wentworth.” I heard Mr. Clemens say behind me. There were others standing around me. too—I was vaguely aware that some of them were in police uniform, as they gathered around the fallen fugitive.

  But I was only interested in the face in front of me. “You don’t deserve to live, Freeman,” I said again, my fist poised over his face.

  “He didn’t give me any choice.” he whined again. Then a hand fell on my shoulder and someone pulled me away from him. It is just as well—I have no idea what I might have done.

  28

  “Freeman has confessed, and Stephens has begun to admit to his part of things.” said Capitano Rosalia.

  It was a much bigger plan than what we first saw.” The captain and Agente Maggio were sitting with us in my employer’s office, with coffee, brandy, and sweet cakes. Rosalia had granted us this final meeting to let us know the outcome of the murder case my employer had done so much to solve. Now Freeman and Stephens, Heinrich Muller, Lorenzo—who was Angela’s brother, as he had told us—and two or three others I knew only as names, were in police custody. Bob Danvers, surprisingly, was still free. Stephens had considered him too unreliable to include in the plot. The arrested men would be charged with fraud and as accessories to the two murders Freeman had committed.

  “I think Battista would have confessed, if he’d lived to talk to us,” said Mr. Clemens. “After the girl died, I think he began to have second thoughts.”

  “Yes, Luigi Battista is a sad lesson,” said the captain, nodding. He stirred a lump of sugar into his coffee, sipped it, then continued: “He had the talent and the inspiration to be a fine painter, in my opinion—his original work, it is good. I have seen it. Yet nobody buys original art by an Italian who has the bad taste not to be dead for two or three hundred years. And so, to make some money, Luigi began to paint the false old masters, selling them honestly as copies in his shop.”

  “They looked pretty good to me, though I admit I’m no expert,” said Mr. Clemens. “But you say, when he started getting really good at copying, he stopped being so honest.”

  The captain nodded vigorously. “Yes, there were many paintings he sold through intermediaries, as genuine old masters, for much money. Still not quite enough for him. though. If it had been enough, he might not have entered into Stephens’s plot.”

  “Is always the mistake to become too greedy,” said Agente Maggio, leaning forward. “We see it always from the criminals—it is why we catch so many.”

  “I am glad they did not get to the next part of their plan.” said Capitano Rosalia. He made a motion as if counting on his fingers. “First they would make three or four very good copies of a masterpiece in a museum. Then they would steal the piece from the museum and sell the copies—and the buyers would ask no questions, thinking they were getting the stolen originals. If we had not found two identical ‘stolen’ Raphaels—and then more—they might have made a great deal of money “

  “I think they would have gotten away with it, too,” I said. “Except that Eddie Freeman was so nervous about the plan being exposed that he was ready to murder to keep it a secret.” I still found it hard to think of him without becoming angry.

  “Yes, he was the weak link in the chain,” said Rosalia. “Stephens was paying him only a tiny amount until they could sell the paintings, and he was heavily in debt. So he was dependent on the scheme succeeding. So when Signorina Fleetwood discovered him as he was removing the false Raphael from its frame, he thought all his work would be for nothing.”

  “And as a consequence, he threw three lives away,” said Mr. Clemens, shaking his head. He took a puff on his pipe and continued: “Better that he’d let the plot fail, done his stint in prison, and had the chance to go on to a career in art. Now he’s likely never to see anything but the inside of a dark cell.”

  “What penalty will Stephens pay?” I asked. “As the architect of the scheme, he ought to bear
the main responsibility for Eddie’s murders.”

  “It will depend on whether the judges hold him responsible for the death of the young woman.” said Capitano Rosalia. “It is plain to me that she and Battista would still be alive except for his plot—but a judge may not agree with me. I think it will count against him when he is judged for his other crimes, perhaps not heavily enough, but he will not soon be a free man, either.”

  “That’ll have to do.” said Mr. Clemens. “That, plus the weight of guilt for what he did—which ought to torture him the rest of his days. Beyond that, it’s out of our hands.”

  Maggio nodded soberly. “Yes. it is out of our hands.”

  I thought of the lively young woman whose remains now rested in a cemetery thousands of miles from her native land, years before she should have died—Virginia, a woman I had been ready to consider for my life’s companion. I remembered walking about Florence with her, excitedly pointing out the sights to one another, chattering and laughing—sometimes about nothing at all except our own enjoyment. She was gone forever, and I would be hard- pressed ever to see her like that again.

  A man had died, too—someone I had not known as well, one who had not been entirely without fault, but who among us is without fault? He left behind his mourners, as well.

  At that moment, I thought there was no punishment great enough for Frank Stephens, who had set in motion the train of events that left these two people dead. But Mr. Clemens and Agente Maggio were right. It was out of our hands, and no power on earth could bring back the dead.

  I sighed. “We must rely on the justice of another world, then.” I said. “What the law can do here is but a fraction of what these murderers deserve.”

  “God forbid that any of us get what we deserve,” said Mr. Clemens. I supposed there was some point to that, but for the moment I did not appreciate it. It would be a long time before I was ready to see past what I had lost.

  I sipped my coffee and stared out the window, into the cold, bright sunshine of a city that, to my injured senses, felt like nothing more than a lovely, inhumanly perfect tomb.