The guests were filing out, Channel 6 busy. In the aftermath of such a very public murder it wasn’t necessary to do more than take down names and addresses.
Back at County Services he held a short meeting with his team. Just Delia, Buzz and Donny. He hadn’t called out Abe and his men because uniforms were adequate help in this situation.
“Is Millie in the women’s cell?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Delia, whose puffy billows had deflated.
“Suicide watch, absolutely intensive.”
“Already instituted, Captain. A woman cop is in the room with her. She didn’t need an all-over shower — no bloodstains — and there is a toilet and wash basin in the cell.”
“The cop is not to leave for one second unless a replacement is already in the cell,” Carmine said, iron in his voice. “I want no stupid mistakes, is that understood? Do the uniformed personnel understand?”
“Yes,” said Delia.
“Did she have any tetrodotoxin on her or in her bag?”
“No.”
“Did you do a cavity search?”
“Yes, thoroughly. She had nothing concealed.”
Carmine sighed, rubbed his hand around his face. “Then we leave questioning her until tomorrow at nine. Does she need a doctor, by any chance? Did anyone think to offer one?”
“She declined a doctor, even after the body search.”
“Goodnight, guys, and thank you.”
Never having seen Carmine in this mood, Buzz and Donny left quickly. Delia lingered, wishing she knew of some magic formula could banish his — what? No use speculating, and he was in not of a mind to say.
Desdemona had gotten home an hour earlier, and changed into an athlete’s sweat suit because she vowed it was the most comfortable clothing she knew.
“Thank God you’re home,” she said to Carmine when he came in. “The sitter’s complaining at the lateness, but I wasn’t about to leave the kids here to run her home.”
“Hang in there, I won’t be long.”
In actual fact it wasn’t very late; when Carmine returned at ten o’clock he found that Desdemona had made sandwiches and a pot of tea; most of the launch nibbles had gone back to the caterers uneaten.
“I have never been so shocked in all my life,” Desdemona said, pushing another curried egg salad sandwich at Carmine.
“Nor I,” said Carmine. “Not four years of a world war and all the horrors soldiers can perpetrate could prepare me for that. Millie’s my blood. What exactly did Jim do to make her snap? Because that’s what this evening was — Millie so taut on the end of her tether that she snapped it.”
“You know, Carmine, as well as I do. It was Davina’s baby combined with the loss of her own. Go to bed, you’re whacked.”
“But did Jim father Alexis?” Carmine asked, ignorning her instructions. “Davina doesn’t behave as if he did, and I gather she’s been telling all and sundry about the black blood in her family for years — certainly well before the advent of Jim Hunter. It sounds to me as if she was preparing for the chance of a black baby in advance, which argues that her story of black blood is true. On the other hand, the black antecedents may be there, and she had an affair with Jim as well. This is a woman who plans.”
“And we will never know the truth,” said Desdemona, “since the Savovich family history is behind the Iron Curtain.”
Carmine tidied the kitchen. “One day,” he said, drying his hands on a towel, “there will be a foolproof test for a child’s paternity. Something irrefutable. It’s just a pity we don’t have it now.”
“No, a mercy,” Desdemona countered. “If Alexis isn’t Jim’s, think how Millie would feel. Best she doesn’t know. The milk, in the form of Jim’s blood, is already spilled, and the luck of it is that he’s a multiple murderer.”
“Implying that it’s a lesser form of murder to kill a man or woman who is by nature a killer.”
“Well, isn’t it? Millie snapped, Carmine! She killed while of unsound mind.”
THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 1969
The atmosphere in Detectives was peculiar: awkward and strained as well as satisfied. A multiple murderer of remarkable kind had been cut short, would never kill again, but his killer was family of some degree to at least half of the Holloman PD, and universally loved.
Nessie O’Donnell had been asked to bring her daughter fresh apparel, indicating to the experienced Nessie that the police would oppose bail, and that Doug Thwaites would probably go along. Patrick was laid flat with a rare migraine and those of Millie’s sisters still at home were, in Nessie’s words, “basket cases”. In the end, Patrick’s mother, Maria, and Carmine’s mother, Emilia, helped her cull Millie’s wardrobe for items containing no laces, sashes, belts, scarves, ribbons or sharp-edged ornamentation. This told her that the police feared suicide, as indeed she did herself. The worst of it was that she wasn’t allowed to see her daughter, just informed that she was fine.