Too Many Murders(61)
“Pigs!” she snapped, her color returning in a rush.
Her goods vetted, she was escorted to the common room and settled there under the eye of a cop, while Carmine, Corey and Abe tackled her own study.
Every book had to be opened and its leaves shaken, a huge task in itself. The walls backing the bookshelves were tapped, while Abe, who had an instinct for concealed doors, went over every inch of the dark paneling and knocked on the floorboards listening for a drummy one. The room yielded nothing; two hours later Carmine declared it clean.
“But she’s hiding something,” he said as they moved to the Dean’s apartment, “so it must be in here.”
A storage closet in the bedroom produced a small electric sewing machine. “We’re getting warmer,” said Carmine, smiling. “Where’s the workbasket?”
Handy to have an embroidering wife!
But the workbasket when found was innocuous: the cut-out pieces of a blouse, a skirt with darts. Dr. Denbigh liked to sew, and made some of her own clothes.
Abe found the cupboard in a vacant section of kitchen wall. It opened on a spring mechanism that responded to pressure from a hand laid flat on the door. Inside was a thick pipe with a U-bend and a grease trap outlet at its base.
“Dante’s old enough to have been replumbed,” Abe said. “I don’t think this pipe’s connected.”
Corey got the camera out and started taking photographs while Carmine found Dr. Marcus Ceruski.
“You’re our witness, sir,” Carmine said.
“I know nothing about this!” Ceruski protested.
“That’s the whole idea. You’re here to watch us remove whatever is in that secret cupboard, okay?”
Resting in the elbow of the pipe was a black drawstring bag, now well photographed. Gloved, Carmine lifted it out and put it on the counter, where the camera recorded its angular bulk before Carmine loosened its mouth and with a rapid movement turned the bag inside out. Abe and Corey fielded in case any item rolled, but nothing did; even the spool of thread that fit the sewing machine lay where it fell. The blue flashes went on for some time as Carmine moved the contents around.
“If her prints are on any of this, she’s a done dinner,” Corey said, grinning.
“They will be,” said Carmine tranquilly. “Go get the evidence bags, Corey.”
There was a box of Dean Denbigh’s jasmine tea from his special shop, a roll of glossy pink paper printed in black with Art Nouveau lettering and detail, a roll of filmy gauze of the kind used to make tea bags, lengths of thin twine each ending in a jasmine tea label, the spool of thread, and a glass jar of potassium cyanide bearing a commercial label.
“Not a word, Dr. Ceruski,” said Carmine, ushering him out. “If the defense alleges this evidence was planted by the Holloman Police, you will be called to the stand, not otherwise.”
“She made her own tea bags and the paper jackets wrapping the tea bags,” Corey said in tones of wonder. “Where the hell did she get the pink printed paper and the gauze? The strings with the labels on the end?”
“From the supplier,” said Abe. “Label says, in Queens.”
“Where else? Abe, find out from the supplier if she got her bits and pieces openly or by stealth. I’m picking she stole them. It wouldn’t be hard, just a trip to Queens late at night. Security wouldn’t consist of more than a night watchman. The cyanide would have been more difficult.”
“She’s a resourceful woman,” Abe said. “A chem lab?”
“No way! Cyanide’s on any lab’s poison register, it has to be kept in a safe, you know that,” said Carmine.
“Huh!” Corey grunted. “Nerds are nerds, Carmine. They go round in a daze, leave the safe open, probably use it to keep their lucky rabbit’s foot from sticky fingers.”
“That’s bigotry! I know nerds as sharp as tacks!” said Abe.
They were happy, thought Carmine, only half listening. We just solved another one, we’re down to ten unsolved.
And, he admitted to himself, he was happy too. Won’t Doug Thwaites be pleased? What a nose for a villain!
* * *
He didn’t see her again until he walked into an interview room late that afternoon.
“You are aware of your constitutional rights?” he asked.
“Yes, perfectly.” She looked composed and better groomed; one of their three woman cops had found the clothes she wanted, and brought them to her together with a full selection of makeup. So the glorious red-gold hair puffed softer around her face, and the yellow lion’s eyes had been emphasized with mascara and pencil. Her dress was severely cut, but its flattering tawny shade needed no embellishments. Carmine knew she was frigid because she had told him, but no man would have believed that, looking at her.