Deadfall(23)

“I am Mrs. Summerhayes,” she said. She had a faint accent—Scandinavian, I thought, maybe Norwegian. “My husband is busy at the moment. Is there something I can do?”

“Well, yes and no. I’d prefer to talk to both of you at the same time, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s about the Purcell family tragedies.”

Her nostrils pinched a little and the smile went away. She said, “Are you a policeman?”

“Not exactly. A private investigator.”

“I see. For whom are you investigating?”

“Tom Washburn.”

“I’m afraid I don’t … oh. Leonard’s friend.”

“Yes.”

“But why do you come to us?”

“You were at Kenneth’s party the night of the accident,” I said. “Mr. Washburn believes there’s some sort of connection between Kenneth’s death and Leonard’s murder.”

She sighed the way she walked: so softly you could barely hear her. “I’ll speak to my husband,” she said. “Please wait here.”

I watched her move off toward the inner door and disappear through it. When nothing happened after about thirty seconds I took another look at the bronze incense burner. Definitely trying to goose himself, I thought. But the hump was what really intrigued me. Why would an elephant have a hump? What artist in his right mind would give an elephant a hump? Well, I thought then, there’s your answer. The artist wasn’t in his right mind; like most artists in one way or another, he was screwy. But the hump still bothered me. It was one of life’s little mysteries, and I don’t like unsolved mysteries, little or otherwise.

I was looking over at the inner door when it opened again, after a good three minutes. Mrs. Summerhayes appeared and gestured to me, not without some evident reluctance. I went over there, and she backed up and let me walk into a smallish office with two desks set facing each other in its center. The office would have been larger except that a good-sized vault took up most of one wall—a Mosler, one of the best and most expensive.

The man standing behind the far desk, between it and the vault, was somewhere between fifty-five and sixty, ruddy-faced and white-maned. The ambassadorial type. He wore a pin-striped suit, a bow tie, and a scarab ring on his right hand that was so oversized it caught my attention immediately. He looked sleek and well-fed and self-assured and on the snooty side. I thought that I was not going to like him very much.

He said as the woman closed the door, “I am Eldon Summerhayes.” He waited until I had introduced myself and then said, “May I see your identification, please,” making it sound like an order rather than a request.

Uh-huh, I thought. She’d forgot to ask for an ID, and he’d let her hear about it, too. I got my wallet out, opened it to the photostat of my investigator’s license, and handed it to him. He studied it carefully for about thirty seconds, as if he were examining one of the Dead Sea scrolls for authenticity. Then, with a vaguely martyred expression, he shut the wallet and gave it back to me.

“Very well,” he said. “I would ask you to sit down but as you can see, there are only two chairs.”

“I don’t mind standing.”

“Elisabeth tells me you’re working for Leonard’s … friend, Washburn.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m afraid you’re wasting your time. Leonard’s murder was unfortunate, but I don’t see how it could possibly have anything to do with poor Kenneth’s accident.”

A man is murdered, a man dies in agony crawling through his own blood, and it’s “unfortunate.” I was not going to like Summerhayes one damned bit, I decided.

I said, “So you’re convinced that Kenneth couldn’t have met with foul play.”

“Of course we’re convinced. We have told everything we know to the authorities—several times, I might add.”

“I understand he wasn’t very well liked. Are you one of those who disliked him, Mr. Summerhayes?”

He scowled at me. “I find that question impertinent.”

Impertinent, yet. I said, “Were you a personal friend of his? Or was your relationship business-oriented?”

“He was a very good customer of ours.”

“Antique snuff containers?”

“Among other items, yes.”

“Did you sell him the one he was showing off at the party?”

“The Hainelin? No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No. He wouldn’t say.”

“Did he say how much he paid for it?”

“Twenty-five thousand,” Summerhayes said. His voice had a pinched quality to it that might have come from jealousy or resentment.