Too Many Murders(28)
Another big fat zero, thought Carmine, adding Bianca Tolano to the “seen” pile. If Corey hoped Bianca Tolano would make him shine for the selection panel, he was wrong. His case was as bare as Abe’s.
Abe had done his best with Beatrice Egmont: no stone was unturned, from the trash collectors to the sons to the neighbors. What stood up high above the level plain of her existence was her personality; everyone who knew Beatrice Egmont loved her. She didn’t intrude herself into other people’s lives or doings, but she was always there with some appropriate gesture, suggestion, gift. Nor did she live the life of a recluse just because she had been a widow for many years; she was invited to all the local parties, loved busing into Manhattan for dinner and a show, bought Girl Scout cookies and raffle tickets, was never missing from the guest list of Holloman charity affairs. She knew the Mayor well, which had led to enquiries from City Hall about her murder. As far as Abe could ascertain, nothing was missing from her house; her Ming vases and Flemish tapestries were untouched, and her Baume & Mercier watch was still on her wrist when she was found. She had not been drugged prior to retiring for the night, but her heart had given out too quickly for her to struggle. “I can find no reason whatsoever for her death,” wrote Abe.
Goodbye, Beatrice Egmont, you poor old thing. Carmine put her file on top of the growing heap he had tabled. There remained his own cases: Dean Denbigh, Peter Norton, Desmond Skeps, Cathy Cartwright and Evan Pugh.
Undoubtedly Dean Denbigh had courted disaster, but his wife was quite right: why a subtle death like cyanide administered in his study? He should have been shot, stabbed, beaten to death somewhere in the vicinity of Joey’s Pancake Diner—was the diner a link between him and Gerald Cartwright, who owned it? According to Patrick’s report, the packet enclosing the tea bag bore only one tear, that made by the Dean, and powerful microscopy hadn’t revealed oversewn stitch holes on the tea bag. The theft of two tea packets had forced the Dean to use the last one in his box; clearly he was destined to die on this day and no other, making his poisoning different from ordinary cases of poisoning. Some killers accepted a certain randomness, but not his killer. Thou shalt die today, the third day of April, and on no other day…. And why cyanide? To make absolutely sure that the Dean of Dante College would not survive.
Peter Charles Norton was different. Though Carmine had managed to visit the Norton house only once, what he found there disposed him to dismiss the wife as a suspect, despite the fact that she had squeezed the glass of orange juice. He’d left them alone because the only adult witness, the wife, had been madly hysterical. Tomorrow he’d send Abe or Corey back expecting answers to his questions. However, he had made deductions, the first being that Peter Norton was the sole drinker of orange juice; a jar of cranberry juice in the refrigerator suggested that the wife and children drank that. All she squeezed was one glass, for a man who gulped it down and ate his toast going through the door. Carmine had a private bet that Norton had a second breakfast at Joey’s Pancake Diner. The toast and juice were sops to Mrs. Norton.
On April third he had died, but only after long, excruciating agony. This said that the killer thought Norton should die with maximum visual effect. Was he punishing the husband, or the wife? That depended upon how soon into his dying Norton lost consciousness. There were no traces of any other substances in his blood, though his sugar was significantly elevated and his arteries were already showing signs of the burger-and-fries diet a cop on door-knock queries had noted he loved. Patsy had raced back and tested the sugar in a bowl and a larger container, since the blood evidence suggested Mrs. Norton sweetened the juice, and what if the kids put it on their cereal? But no poison of any kind was found in it. Good thinking, Patsy!
Delia had left bank statements with the Norton papers—what a gem she was! The manager of the Fourth National Bank, Norton clearly had no financial worries. He lived within his means and had made no large withdrawals over the past year, which was as far back as Delia had gone for the moment. His Ohio family was a wealthy one, whereas Mrs. Norton came from a bluecollar family in Waterbury.
He tossed the file in the direction of the rejects and stared down at Evan Pugh with a heavy frown. His instincts said this was the extraordinary murder, the one that differed from all the others. Who was Motor Mouth? And what had prompted such a bizarre method of killing? A bear trap! Not one of the dinky specimens designed to keep the bear in one spot until pleasure could be taken in shooting it; this was the man-trap kind, big enough to maim the bear, ensure it bled to death. A weapon of survival for man, extinction for the bear.