The Prodigal Son(33)
“I reminded her of the Miranda decision, boss, but she ignored me. I think you should see her yourself, Carmine. Something’s going on — all this rubbish about the deceased trying to rape her! Only don’t see her without witnesses. Her cretinous servant will back up any lie Davina tells.”
“If there is myxedema there, Delia, then Uda can’t possibly be intelligent. Mental retardation is a part of the syndrome,” Carmine objected. “You can’t be half a cretin.”
“I disagree!” Delia said vigorously. “I have seen it before in other cretinous-looking individuals, and I stand by the evidence of my eyes. Cretins can sometimes preserve their brains, and Uda is one such. Perhaps the syndrome is only partially established, I don’t know, but Uda has as good a brain as Davina.”
Carmine stood upright. “Go home, Delia. It’s still Sunday, and Ivy Hall won’t be ready for your attentions until tomorrow. Davina Tunbull can wait, so can the rest.”
“Gus Fennell likened Davina and John Hall to Phaedra.”
“The young wife of Theseus’s old age, who fell in love with his son by the Amazon queen,” Carmine said, smiling.
Home for Delia was a beachfront apartment in Millstone, on the easternmost edge of Holloman County; Millstone Bay was a scallop in the coastline beyond the Busquash peninsula, and was one of the more expensive places to live. That Delia had recently been able to buy her condo was thanks to a tidy bequest from her father’s sister; it had made all the difference to her financially.
Not everyone’s idea of beauty, perhaps, but it was Delia to the enth degree, between its theme of rust, yellow and bright sky blue, its dozens of daisy-embroidered doilies, knick-knacks and very comfortable furniture; she even had an easy chair and a dining chair designed for Desdemona.
Divested of her outer wear, she took her glass of sherry to the plate glass window that formed most of the front wall of her living room, and stood looking with pleasure at a winter world. The stony beach was littered with eerily beautiful chunks of ice washed up from some shattered berg drifting down in the Arctic current — the water was below air freezing, still liquid because of its salt content — and the trees showed forth in the splendor of their lacy grey skeletons. Not much snow, considerable ice; it could happen that way, and Holloman had had a true ice storm two days before Christmas that left pendulous icicles on eaves and branches still. Long Island was visible, but only just; more bad weather coming, given that black snow sky. Glorious! Delia loved her beachfront view in all its seasonal moods, and prayed, along with everyone else in Millstone, that this year they’d have the big storm that put the sand back on the beach. It had been snatched away eleven years ago as part of some cycle; the local Yankees swore it was due to reappear soon.
She had made a big pot of pea-and-ham soup, one of the happier aspects of being a spinster, she reflected as she pigged out on it and buttery fingers of toast. She could fart all night and offend no nose save her own.
That awful Davina Tunbull! popped into her mind as she put her plate, cup and bowl into the dishwasher. Lose thirty pounds, indeed! Live on lettuce leaves and black coffee instead of pea-and-ham soup and buttery toast? I could run her down inside a hundred yards, the smug bitch! They may not look good on a Times Square billboard, but my legs are made for using, not looking at.
Carmine was staring at the same wintry, watery landscape, but his was a busier view, encompassing the harbor and its shipping. The ice was crusted around the East Holloman shore, but it wasn’t going to be the sort of winter saw the ice breakers working to clear a channel to the hydrocarbons farm. The black sky said lots of snow, but the absence of mackerel said it wouldn’t blow a gale to pile up snowdrifts.
He had ignored his front door, halfway down the sloping two-acre property he called home, in need of some salt in the air and a sense of a wider world than the one at present occupying him in its worst manifestation: close blood relatives were implicated in the crimes he and his detectives had sworn an oath to pursue to a successful conclusion. What he had to do was banish the specters of Jim and Millie Hunter, assemble them with the rest of the suspects, and admit that, as things stood at the moment, they were the most likely suspects.
The worst of it was that as yet he hadn’t encountered many of the participants — nor would, unless he usurped Abe Goldberg’s position as chief investigator of the Tunbull dinner party. And that he would not do. Under ordinary circumstances it would not matter, but these two cases were inextricably linked through the mechanism of the two deaths — Dr. Millie Hunter’s esoteric neurotoxin. Luckily he could see anyone involved in the Tunbull death from the aspect of Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman’s death, save for Uda, whom he was dying to meet. Whatever Davina was, Uda had a hand in it. If Davina was a poisoner, then Uda had a hand in that too.