Too Many Murders

She snorted, unabashed. “I look like a terminal cirrhosis in black, Captain, so no. Besides, I was dying to meet the new head of Cornucopia. What a victory for women!”

“Yes, it is, particularly as the decision was made purely on merit. Why don’t you try for Dean of Dante? That would be just as great a victory.”

“Chubb would give the job to someone from Mars first-if he had a penis and was a Chubb alumnus. I’m trying for Lysistrata when it’s built.”

“Isn’t it weird to build a college exclusively for women when all-male colleges are being held discriminatory?”

“Of course. We’ll have our share of men students, I’m sure. The real victory will be a woman-dominated administration. Chubb owes us that at least,” said Dr. Denbigh.

“What if your husband hadn’t been murdered? Or perhaps I should say, what would happen if your husband were alive at the time Lysistrata is finished?” Carmine asked.

“I would still have applied for the deanship. If John had refused to go with me, I would have divorced him. Lysistrata, I am assured, will not be hidebound in the matter of a married couple. Such rubbish!”

“How do you feel about the crumbling of time-honored customs and practices, Dr. Ceruski?”

He flushed, looked confused. “Ah-it’s really none of my business, Captain. Especially given that it’s hypothetical.”

Bestowing a smile on them, Carmine moved on. Could she have done it? An idea was stirring in his head, but it would have to wait until Monday… And this isn’t bad fun, his unruly mind was telling him as his eyes fed it information. Thank God my wife can look after herself and knows exactly why I’m here. Good Lord, a woman in a hat!

The next fish he caught in his net were actually two fish, according to M.M.’s astrologically inclined wife: joined at the hip, one swimming upstream, the other down. Dean Robert and Mrs. Nancy Highman. She was charming and in the Dean’s own age group. Their children were grown and gone from the nest, which made living in college at Paracelsus ideal.

“I hope you find out who killed that poor, unfortunate young man,” Mrs. Highman said, sipping a glass of white wine. “I had his parents to lunch-such lovely people! What can one do to ease their pain? Try to give them back the body soon, Captain! As for Bob-he just isn’t himself. Well, how can he be? I don’t know how word gets around, but every parent of every student in college knows about the bear trap. Trying to persuade people that none of the other young men is in danger takes up so much of Bob’s time! I don’t suppose you’d let us tell the parents about Evan’s blackmail?”

Who the hell told the Highmans about that? The Pughs? “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Highman,” he said gently. “That’s what we call sequestered evidence. If it became general knowledge, it would muddy the waters.”

She sighed. “Yes, I see.” Then she brightened. “Well, I do have some information that might help,” she said.

“What?” he asked warily, not sure how far she was prepared to go to ease the weight off Dean Highman’s shoulders.

“I was in that afternoon. Usually I’m not-I have a life class in drawing at the Taft Institute. But our instructor got sick, and it was canceled. I came down late for lunch, about a quarter after one. The foyer was deserted, but there was a fellow in a brown uniform going up the sophomore stairs. I only remembered him tonight after I got here because of that woman over there in the brown tabard with the glittery tapestry tunic underneath it-see? See her? It’s that huge pancake of a brown hat! The fellow was carrying something on his head, brown and circular-the brown cloth made me think of the cover on an instrument. It was bigger than the hat by far, but the hat jogged my memory. Isn’t she a fright? Why’s she wearing a hat to a formal affair? The fellow in brown had a tool belt and pouch like a carpenter, which is why I never thought to notice him.”

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.”