Too Many Murders(98)

“I prefer a train,” said Desdemona, thoroughly bored.

Myron had put them in the Hilton, clever enough to know that London’s luxury hotels were not well endowed with big elevators, level floors, high doorways and vast beds; Desdemona needed room, especially in an elevator with a baby buggy. Thus, the Hilton.

It wasn’t his first visit to London by any means, and Delia had given Carmine a name: Professor Hugh Lefevre. She had even arranged an appointment for him: eleven the next morning, at the professor’s residence in St. John’s Wood. Apparently Dr. Lefevre didn’t care to eat out at a restaurant, even an expensive one; Carmine could have a cup of tea, he told Delia.

Expecting some degree of affluence, Carmine trod a street of conjoined houses, rather dilapidated, faintly Georgian, each with a flight of dirty steps leading up to a front door alongside which was a panel of handwritten names. He found his house, went up its steps and discovered that H. Lefevre lived in 105, up a dingy staircase in a dingy hall. There was no bell connection, and 105 of course was not the ground floor. A glance at his watch informed him that he was on time, so he bounded up the dark stairs onto a landing with five doors. His was the back one, would look down on whatever passed for a yard behind the house. He knocked.

“Enter!” said a voice.

Sure enough, the knob turned and the door opened. Carmine stepped into a large room lit only by two windows and the grace of a heavily overcast day. Like the whole house, it was dingy. The wallpaper had faded and peeled, the thick velvet curtains were stained, and the furniture, a mixture of styles, was chipped and battered if wooden or oozing stuffing if upholstered. Books lay everywhere, including a wall of shelves. The desk was piled with papers, and a small manual typewriter sat on a low table to one side of the desk chair, which rotated to face it or the desk.

A man standing by one window turned to face Carmine as he advanced with hand extended to his host, who shook it.

“Professor Lefevre?”

“That is I. Be seated, Captain Delmonico.”

“Whereabouts, sir?”

“There will do. Where the light falls on your face. Hmm! Women must make utter fools of themselves over you. It’s a New World look—America, Australia, South Africa—makes no difference. The Old World look is softer, less blatantly masculine.”

“I haven’t noticed any women making utter fools of themselves over me,” Carmine said, smiling easily. It was a good technique, flattering him yet making him uncomfortable. Well, two can play at that game, Professor. He gazed about, seeming puzzled. “Is this the best England can do for a full professor?” he asked.

“I am a Communist, Captain. It is not a part of my ethic to submerge myself in comfort when so many people know none.”

“But your private way of life can’t benefit them, sir.”

“That is not the point! The point is that I choose to live in a spartan fashion to display my ethic to people like you, who do live in comfort. I imagine your house has every luxury.”

Carmine laughed. “I wouldn’t say every luxury, just those that mean my wife doesn’t have to drudge nor my child know the horror of monotony.”

Ah, a hit! Professor Hugh Lefevre stiffened in his chair, no easy feat for one being devoured by arthritis. Twenty years ago when Erica Davenport had been his student, he must have had a certain attraction for women, been tall, probably moved with languid grace and enjoyed his handsomeness, a thing of straight thin nose, black brows and lashes, a wealth of black hair worn long, and cornflower blue eyes. The remnants of it still showed, but pain and an unnecessary degree of hardship had chewed away at him, outside as well as inside. Warm air, decent food and some help keeping house would have held his diseases at bay. But no, Carmine thought, he had an ethic, and now, when I said “the horror of monotony” to him, he reacted like a steer to a goad.

“What do you do with your money?” Carmine asked, curious.

“Donate it to the Communist Party.”

“Where, in all likelihood, some lip-service member uses it to live in comfort.”

“It is not so! We are all believers.”

Time to stop annoying him. Carmine leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Professor, I don’t mean to denigrate you or your ideals. My secretary told you—I’m glad you have a phone, by the way—that I need some background on Dr. Erica Davenport, who was one of your students, as I understand it.”

“Ah, Erica!” the old man said, smiling to reveal bad teeth. “Why should I answer your questions? Is there a new McCarthy in the Senate? Is she being persecuted by your capitalist government? You’ve had a wasted trip, Captain.”