Too Many Murders(57)

Suppressing what he felt was an excusable exasperation, Carmine leaned a little into Nancy Highman’s face. “Madam, you have been questioned twice. Each time you swore you’d seen no one—in fact, you didn’t even tell my men that you were in college last Monday!”

“Oh, dear! Please don’t be annoyed, Captain! I’m just not a remembering kind of person unless something jogs me, truly! Like that hat over there. It’s so ugly! And then—bang! There was the workman in brown, with the brown pancake on his head. He— he rose to the surface!”

“Was he a big man?”

“No, he was very small, like a child. Thin … And he had a limp, though which was the bad leg I can’t remember. If his boots had made a black mark on the marble floor I would have called him down and rebuked him, but they didn’t have those icky rubber soles that drive Bob crazy. So I went on into the dining room and forgot him.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No, I was looking at his back.”

“His hair?”

“Hidden by the brown pancake.”

“What about his hands? Was he a white man or a black man?”

“I think he wore workmen’s gloves.”

Jesus, the guy had balls! Here we’ve been assuming he picked an hour when the college was deserted, when all the time he was there while the dining room was serving lunch. At any moment a sophomore student might have taken it into his head to visit his upstairs room, and run into this limping, diminutive murderer. Who would have—done what? Nothing beyond what was expected of a carpenter, even if the youth who encountered him was Evan Pugh. But it hadn’t happened. The killer had a sublime faith in his luck, apparently substantiated. How many more surprises would Myron’s reception yield? And, wondered Carmine, who is the woman in the brown pancake hat?

Gus Purvey, Wallace Grierson and Fred Collins had circled their wagons, but Carmine had no trouble breaking their formation. Now he had Desdemona with him, and they were awed into submission. Purvey, deprived of Erica, had come alone. Collins was squiring his twenty-year-old wife, Candy. Grierson’s wife, Margaret, another tall woman, was looking indescribably bored when the Delmonicos arrived, and seized upon Desdemona with glee. They moved away a little and commenced animated talk.

“Your wife’s loaded with class,” said Grierson to Carmine. “Was she—or is she still, maybe—a detective?”

“No, she was a hospital administrator, one of the new kind that couldn’t castrate a tomcat,” said Carmine. “Hospitals are run as businesses now, more concerned about ledgers than the quality of nursing.”

“Pity, that. Health isn’t a commodity, it’s a state of being.”

“We’ll have to get you on the Chubb-Holloman Hospital board.”

“I wouldn’t mind that.”

“I envy any woman with a career,” said Candy with a sigh.

“Then go get a career, Candy,” Grierson said, not unkindly.

“You’ve got your career!” Collins snapped. “Wife and mother.”

Purvey laughed. “You’re just sour at being pipped at the post by the old grey mare,” he said through the guffaws. “It’s a good color for our Erica, grey. But cheer up, Fred! Maybe the race isn’t over yet.”

“It is for me. And for you. And for Phil. Not for good old Wallace here, of course. He’ll survive,” said Collins.

“You mean you could find yourselves out in the cold, cold snow?” Carmine asked.

“Bound to be,” Purvey answered.

“I guess it was a big shock” was Carmine’s next comment.

“What?” Collins asked.

“The will.”

“It was an insult! Disgusting!” Collins hissed.

“Did any of you expect it?”

Grierson chose to answer. “Not even Phil Smith, and he was closest to Desmond. I’d say it was a forgery, except that Tombs, Hillyard, Spender and Hunter drafted it, kept it, saw Desmond sign it, and then put it in their vault. It came up to Holloman in a top-secrets briefcase chained to the courier’s arm, and Bernard Spender opened it in our presence. It’s the genuine article, for sure. I’d hoped that somewhere it would say why Desmond decided on Erica, but it doesn’t. There’s not one personal reference in it, even as a footnote. Just pages and pages designed to foil Anthony Bera if he sues on Philomena’s behalf.”

“Don’t you think Dr. Davenport will make a good chief, sir?”

“I think she’ll run Cornucopia into the ground. That’s why I’m going to get an agreement out of her that I get first refusal of Dormus when the crash happens,” Grierson said.