The Prodigal Son(28)

“An associate professor in the Department of English — a dead end academically, but he’s not professorial material. Too brisk and pragmatic. Hard on the undergrads and harder still on fellows of all kinds. Ideal for C.U.P. — no leisurely publication of abstruse treatises on the gerundive in modern English usage.”

“Darn! I’ve been hanging out for that. Is he good for things like science and Dr. Jim’s book?”

“Perfect,” said M.M. with satisfaction. “There’s no denying either that C.U.P. can do with the funds a huge bestseller would bring in. The Head Scholar will have money to publish books he couldn’t have otherwise. C.U.P. is well endowed, but the dollar is not what it used to be, and these days alumni with millions to give think of medicine or science. The days when the liberal arts received megabuck endowments are over.”

“Yes, that’s inevitable. A pity too,” said Carmine; he was a liberal arts man. “Last name Millstone? As in the Yankee Millstones, or the ordinary old Jewish immigrant Millstones?”

“The ordinary old Jewish immigrants, thank God. Chauce, as he’s known, is worth a whole clan of Parsons.”



Carmine rose. “I’ll have to see people I’m bound to offend, sir. Be prepared.”

“Do what has to be done.” The good-looking face was at its blandest. “Just get Dr. Jim out from under, please. It has not escaped me that he’s bound to be the main suspect.”



Her tiger bonnet on her head to keep her ears warm, her short arms encumbered by folds of fake fur, Delia drove her cop unmarked out to Route 133 and found Hampton Street. An odd neighborhood for relatively affluent people, but her preliminary research had revealed that Max and Val Tunbull had each built on Hampton Street in 1934, just as America was recovering from the Great Depression, on land that had cost them virtually nothing, and using building contractors grateful for the work. Probably they had believed that Hampton Street would become fairly ritzy, but it had not. People wishing to be ritzy had preferred the coast or the five-acre zone, farther out.

Max Tunbull’s house was imposing. Delia parked her Ford in the driveway so that other cars could get around it, and rang the doorbell: it chimed the first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony, a choice she abominated.

In spring, summer and fall there would be a pleasant garden around the knoll upon which the house stood, though whoever selected the plants seemed indifferent to what ice did to Mediterranean things. Someone homesick for the Dalmatian coast, perhaps? wondered Delia as she waited.



One of the tiniest women she had ever seen opened the door. Four feet six, no more, and shapeless, clad in a shapeless grey uniform dress. She looked what Delia’s father would have called “wrong” — the skull structure of a cretin, yellow, speckled skin too. But the very dark little eyes were full of intelligence as they surveyed Delia, no giant herself.

“What you want?” she demanded, her accent thick and Balkan.

Delia flashed her gold detective’s badge. “I am Delia Carstairs, a sergeant in the Holloman police, and I have an appointment to see Mrs. Davina Tunbull.”

“She sick, no see.”

“Then she has ten minutes in which to get well, and she will see me,” said Delia, stepping adroitly around the gnome. “I’ll wait in the living room. Kindly show me the way.”

Rage and fear fought for domination; the fear won, so the gnome conducted Delia to a large room furnished in an unconventional way: mismatched chairs and coffee tables, shelves of mementos and art pieces, a wall of leather-bound, gilded books, a large thick rug that bore a pattern reminiscent of a Paul Klee painting. The colors went together well, the chairs were comfortable but the fabric very modern — the decorator loved Paul Klee. There were several paintings on the walls that Delia fancied were genuine Klees. An interesting choice, to feature a post-impressionist master not well known outside art circles. This Davina Tunbull might have as many layers as flaky pastry.

“What is your name?” she asked the gnome.



“Uda.”

“You’re the housekeeper?”

“No. I belong Miss Vina.”

“Belong?”

“Yes.”

“Then please go and inform your mistress, Uda, that she cannot avoid this interview. If she is ill, I will accompany her to the Holloman Hospital and question her there. Or, if she thinks not to grant me an interview at all, I will arrest her for obstruction of justice and see her at the Holloman Police Department in a proper interrogation cell.”

Extraordinary, the effect the word “interrogation” had on eastern Europeans! Uda vanished as if conjured out of existence while Delia divested herself of her outer garb; the room was well heated. Someone was a smoker, but no odor of cigarettes lingered in the air, so the ventilation must be excellent. Odd cigarettes that Delia knew well, having smoked them herself in days gone by. Sobranie Cocktails, made of Virginia tobacco with gold paper tips and several pastel colors of paper — pink, blue, green, yellow and lilac. At night the Cocktails smoker apparently switched to black Sobranies — gold paper tips, black paper encapsulating pure Turkish tobacco. There were no butts in any of the immaculate modern glass ashtrays, but there were six boxes of Sobranie Cocktails and three boxes of black Sobranies scattered around the coffee tables.