too the news of Erica’s guardianship had spread party-wide, and no one wanted to be the inadvertent destroyer of a pact. It certainly seemed as if negotiations were going on, and it solved the riddle of why Philomena Skeps had come to the party at all. Neutral ground. Where else could she plead her case without the specter of Cornucopia looming? At Orleans? Erica would never come.
Anthony Bera watched the two women with painful intensity, absently answering the questions Wallace Grierson was throwing at him. Then Phil Smith and the brown pancake came up, blocking Bera’s view of Philomena’s chair, and he gave up.
Treaty negotiations must have lasted a good half hour, at the end of which Erica Davenport looked very tired and Philomena Skeps more beautiful than ever. Then Erica slapped her hands on her knees and got up from her perch. She leaned down to drop a kiss on Philomena’s brow, and walked off toward Myron.
“I’m pooped,” Desdemona said, kicking off her sandals as soon as she was in the car.
“Me too, my lovely lady. You looked fantastic tonight.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did. Your figure is as good as any Hollywood movie star’s, and that dress set it off just fine.”
“Isn’t it funny? Women are always moaning that babies ruin their figures, but Julian did mine the world of good.”
“How do you think Myron is feeling right now?”
She frowned. “Good question. He’s fathoms deep in love-did you notice the diamond bracelet?-but it must be dawning on him by now that his darling Erica doesn’t relish a party. Sandra would have suited him better, I imagine.”
“I did find out that he hasn’t filed divorce papers yet.”
Desdemona sat up as the Fairlane eased out onto a deserted South Green Street. “Oho! He hasn’t removed his last defense.”
“That’s how I read it.”
She slid across the wide seat and snuggled into his side. “Did you notice the woman in that terrible brown hat?”
Judge Douglas Wilfred Thwaites presided over the Holloman District Court, and was an institution. He had taken both his undergraduate and law degrees from Chubb, and was a Chubber to his bootstraps. Imbued with no ambition to move on to greater jurisdictions, he was a Connecticut Yankee who couldn’t conceive of living or practicing anywhere else. He had a delightful house on Busquash Point from which he could mess around in boats, a devoted wife who thought him deliriously funny, and two children in their early twenties who had escaped his tyranny by seeking higher education on the West Coast, a place he equated with the planet Mercury.
It was probably a fanciful childhood memory of Ichabod Crane that had prompted Special Agent Ted Kelly of the FBI to call him an eccentric, a term that wasn’t fair either to Washington Irving or to Doug Thwaites. His Honor prided himself upon his detachment, which was real enough-provided, that is, that he hadn’t previously formed his own conclusions about a person. Though Carmine knew all this-and a great deal more besides-about the Judge, he was prepared to do fierce battle when he appeared in chambers at ten on Monday morning, April tenth. He needed a warrant to search the premises of Dr. Pauline Denbigh before Dante College politely asked her to vacate the Dean’s apartment, and he was sure he was going to be opposed.
“Granted!” barked Judge Thwaites halfway through Carmine’s preamble. “That woman is capable of anything!”
Oh! Myron’s party! Of course Judge and Mrs. Thwaites were there, and so was Dr. Pauline Denbigh. Their paths must have crossed. How was she to know that Doug loathed all women’s libbers with a passion? He believed ardently in righting their wrongs, but not in the antics of the visible, vociferous segment of the movement. Bra burnings and the invasion of hallowed male portals, not to mention psychic emasculation, were anathema. To him, it was a legislative struggle, and such shenanigans degraded it.
Carmine went away with his head spinning, and kicking himself that he hadn’t been witness to the clash of that particular pair of titans. He’d have to phone Dorothy Thwaites and ask her for the gory details. In the meantime, he had his warrant.
He took four uniformed cops to keep the rubberneckers at bay, and knocked on Dr. Denbigh’s study door.
“Come,” said her languid voice.
“Dr. Pauline Denbigh?” he asked, paper in hand.
“Well, you know that!” she said tartly.
“Please vacate these premises and the Dean’s apartment at once. I have a warrant to search both,” he said.
The color drained out of her face instantaneously, leaving it as yellow as old parchment. She rocked on her feet, then righted herself and stood straight. “This is an outrage,” she said in a whisper. “I challenge your warrant.”
“You are at liberty to do so, but it will be after the fact. Have you someplace you can go, Dr. Denbigh?”
“The small common room. I want my cigarettes, my lighter, my papers, book and pen.”
“Provided you permit us to examine them first, of course.”
“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
