“He means well, but he should butt out of what he doesn’t understand. His trouble is that he tends to see life as a movie-everything happens at the speed of light and no one pauses to think. An odyssey to London won’t help me find a killer or a spy, but it might let him get away.” Carmine groaned.
“I know, I know.”
“Did Hartford lay down any conditions? Like, how long I have to stay away?”
“Considering strains on the budget, I’d think the quicker you’re back, the better. The anonymous benefactor can’t bankroll a public servant.”
“Any bets?”
“How can I help?” Silvestri asked.
“Run interference with Hartford for me. It’s Desdemona and Julian preying on Myron’s mind, so if I come back in a couple of days, I’ll have to leave them in London for a few days more. If I can find the name of someone who can tell me about Erica’s time there before I leave Holloman, it will help. I can fly back as soon as I’ve milked the thing dry,” Carmine said.
“Delia! Put her on finding that name, Carmine.”
“She’s the one should be going to England.”
“Yeah, yeah, I agree, but Myron wouldn’t. However,” said the Commissioner, looking conspiratorial, “we might be able to throw some dust in everybody’s eyes. Don’t tell a soul where you’re going, just give it out that you’re moving your family out of Holloman for a while, and drive off to JFK as if you’re going to L.A. I’ll talk to Myron and put the fear of a Catholic Hell in his Jewish soul. He’s to tell everyone that Desdemona and Julian are going to stay with him. It makes sense, so I doubt you’ll be tailed to the airport, at least as far as the departure gates. That way, if you can finish London in two or three days, no one will get too cocky at your absence.”
In the end only Delia and John Silvestri knew where Carmine took his wife and son two days later. After some thought he also decided to confide in Ted Kelly, who could bumble around Cornucopia telling all and sundry that Carmine had gone to L.A. and could arrive back on the next plane if things got out of hand.
Desdemona was relieved and excited, explaining to the women of Carmine’s family that she was looking forward to revisiting the place where she had honeymooned: Myron’s Hampton Court Palace. That gentleman’s lavish hand was everywhere, Carmine discovered; they were picked up at their house by a limousine that had enough space in its nether regions to hold a small party, and whisked onto their 707 aircraft without joining the crush of people waiting to board. Though Carmine objected that his own ticket was economy even if his wife and son were traveling first class, he was put next to them in first class because, the chief hostess said smoothly, he had been upgraded. It didn’t escape his notice that the rest of the first-class passengers shuddered to see an infant and popped extra pills to ensure that they slept through a wailing baby. They needn’t have bothered, he thought with an inward grin; Julian enjoyed the experience, wincing as ascent and descent altered the pressure on his eardrums, but not howling. To him it must be small potatoes after Holloman Harbor.
“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
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.”
“Erica Davenport is dead. She was murdered in a particularly brutal way, after a torture that consisted of breaking all the bones in her arms and legs,” Carmine said steadily. “I’m not a capitalist tool, I’m simply the homicide detective assigned to investigate her death. Her political views are not my concern. Her murder is.”
Lefevre wept a little in the easy way of the old; too many cracks develop in the emotional dam wall as the years go by, Carmine thought. And the old man had felt something for her.
“Just tell me what she was like twenty years ago, sir.”
“Like?” The faded blue eyes widened. “Like the sun, the stars! Ablaze with life and enthusiasm, champing at the bit to change the world. We were all very left at the L.S.E.-in fact, we were famous for it. She arrived already indoctrinated to some extent, so to finish the process was easy. When I discovered that she spoke fluent Russian, I
