Too Many Murders Read online

  Mrs. Barbara Norton was sitting with Corey and Sergeant Dave O’Brien. Her calm was unimpaired, and it was only as her story unfolded that the layers of insanity peeled away to ever deeper ones. She seemed to have no idea that her son was dead, though she had known it when she spoke on the phone to Dave O’Brien, had told him that Tommy was black in the face and not breathing; but more, she had said she killed him.

  “Now that Peter is gone,” she told the men, “I can do what I want at last.” She leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “Peter was a glutton. He insisted we had to eat whatever he ate—the children swelled up like balloons! I never tried to argue, it wasn’t worth it. I just bided my time. I bided my time.” She nodded seriously, then sat back and smiled.

  “No one really likes fat people, you know,” she began once more, “so after Peter died, I put us on a diet. Marlene and Tommy drink water. I drink black coffee. We can eat all the raw vegetables we like, but no bread, no cookies, no cake, nothing with sugar in it. No milk, no cream, no desserts. I let Tommy and Marlene have crackers at breakfast and lunch. We eat broiled skinless chicken or fish, and steamed vegetables. Rice. The weight just falls off! By the time Tommy goes to school this September, he’ll be as trim as our hedge!”

  When a silence fell, Carmine decided to risk a question. “How did you stay so trim, Barbara?”

  “Stuck my finger down my throat.”

  It’s clear why the poor little guy choked trying to eat an eraser, Carmine thought, but how long has the madness been there? What brought it out? Peter Norton’s death? Or did he die as a consequence of it? Tommy’s death has tipped her right over the edge, but I have to try to get some answers.

  “What did you do with the strychnine, Barbara?”

  “Threw the bottle in the Pequot.”

  “Did you take the cap off first?”

  She looked indignant. “Sure I did! I’m not stupid!”

  “Why did you pick April third as the day to put strychnine in Peter’s orange juice?”

  “Oh, silly, you know that!” she said, eyes widening.

  “I forget. Tell me again.”

  “Because it only worked on April third! Any other day, and the potion lost its magic. He was very firm about that.”

  “Who was?”

  “Silly, you know who!”

  “It’s my memory again. I forget his name.”

  “Reuben.”

  “I’ve forgotten his last name too, Barbara.”

  “How can you forget what he didn’t have?”

  “Where did you meet Reuben?”

  “At the bowling alley, silly!”

  “What magic worked the potion on April third?”

  She was getting bored and tired, or perhaps it was both; her eyelids drooped, then she made an effort and lifted them. “Magic only lives for a single day, Reuben told me.” She began to stir in her chair, agitation growing. “He lied! He lied! He told me that Peter would just go to sleep! I did not get it wrong! April third was the day!”

  “Yes, Barbara, you got it right,” Carmine said. “He was the liar. Sit a while and think of happy things.”

  The four men endured the silence, too afraid to catch any other pair of eyes, trying not to look at her.

  She spoke. “Where’s Tommy?”

  Not Marlene, the girl. Just Tommy.

  “He’s asleep,” Carmine said.

  “I don’t imagine she’ll ever come to trial,” he said later to Commissioner Silvestri, “and the poor little boy solved the case. Can you credit it, John? A starvation diet inflicted overnight on a fat five-year-old who’s been eating nonstop since he started to walk. The girl is three years older, and cunning. She stole from Mommy’s purse to buy food, but she couldn’t steal enough to feed her own appetite, let alone her kid brother’s as well. She was scared stiff of the day Mommy counted her change, but she would have gone on stealing until Mommy did find out.”

  Silvestri shook his sleek dark head, blinked rapidly. “Is the girl okay? Are there any relatives willing to take her? The system would turn her into another master criminal.”

  “Norton’s parents are taking her—they live in Cleveland. She’s sole heir to his estate, which I imagine will go into a trust until she’s of age.” Carmine found a smile. “Maybe she stands a better chance this way. At least, I have to hope so.”

  “A rubber strawberry!” Silvestri exclaimed. “Was it that lifelike?”

  “Only to a ravenously hungry little boy,” Carmine said, “though I didn’t see it before he tried to eat it. It wasn’t his, it belonged to the little girl, old enough to know it for what it was. He’d combed the house looking for edibles.”

  “I guess it means that if you don’t want fat kids, you have to start ’em off right,” Silvestri said. “That stupid diet turned one child into a thief and killed the other.” His black eyes gleamed at the godless Carmine. “I hope you’re going to have some masses said for little Tommy’s soul—St. Bernard’s can do with a new roof. Otherwise Mrs. Tesoriero will see Our Lady’s face wet next time it rains, and claim a miracle.”

  “We’ve all had wet faces today, John. Yes, I’ll see you ten masses and raise you one.”

  * * *

  “I don’t suppose I have any choice,” said Desdemona that evening as they shared their before-dinner drink.

  “Choice?”

  “I’ve married into a Catholic family, so my children will be raised Catholics.”

  Carmine stared at her in surprise. “I didn’t think you minded, Desdemona. You’ve never mentioned it.”

  “I suppose that’s because until Julian’s advent I hadn’t thought it important to you. You’re not at all religious.”

  “True. That’s my work, it gets God out of the system. But I want a Catholic education for my kids—my old school for the boys, St. Mary’s for the girls,” said Carmine, preparing to do battle. “They should be exposed to a Christian God, and what better one than the original?”

  “If we were in England,” said his wife thoughtfully, “I’d plump for Church of England, but there’s really no equivalent here. I like the close-knit East Holloman family network, and I don’t want our children on an outer orbit because their parents failed to agree. I’m the one married into the circle, and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. But I refuse to convert or go to mass, and I won’t make our children go to mass.”

  “Sounds fair,” he said, enormously relieved that there would be no battle. “I only go to mass at Christmas and Easter, though I will go for Tommy Norton. I made a pact with Silvestri.”

  “That man is brilliant,” she said, smiling.

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “Roast loin of pork with crackling.”

  “I am putty in your hands, lovely lady.” He looked at her over the rim of his glass. “Why didn’t you fight harder? I expected you to. You did insist on a civil wedding.”

  “I was pregnant at the time, and in no mood to fiddle with the bride business. I just wanted to be Mrs. Carmine Delmonico as quickly as I could.”

  “It doesn’t answer your attitude tonight,” he persisted.

  “Very simple,” she said, draining her glass. “I abominate coeducation, and East Holloman’s Catholic schools are not coeducational. The last thing teenaged children need as they suffer the onslaught of hormones is the presence of the opposite sex in a classroom. Oh, most children survive it, but the cost is dearer. Look at Sophia, tarting herself up every day just to go to school. A dose of uniforms would do her good.”

  “There are no limits to your surprises,” he said, following her into the kitchen. “Did you wear a uniform?”

  “We mostly all do. I went to a Church of England day school and wore a hideous navy blue tunic over a shirt and tie. My hat was held on by elastic under my chin to keep it from blowing off in a wind—hats were expensive. And I think,” she went on reflectively, bending to lift the roasting pan out of the oven, “that of all the indignities a uniform meant, that elastic unde
r the chin was the worst.” Out came the roast onto a board. “Now it has to rest.” She rapped the beautifully bubbled skin. “Ah! Perfect! All-male schooling is very important for Julian,” she went on without pausing.

  “Why him in particular?”

  “Because he’s going to be tall, dark, and terribly handsome. If there were girls in the classroom and schoolyard, he’d never have any peace. It would also swell his ego. The St. Mary’s girls can worship from afar.”

  “The St. Mary’s girls will find a way.”

  Desdemona looked curious. “Is that the voice of experience?”

  “What else?”

  “You mean I married a high school heartthrob?”

  “No, you married a man in his forties with arthritis.”

  “Peter Norton’s death proves the existence of a mastermind,” Carmine said to the Commissioner, Danny Marciano, Patrick O’Donnell and his own men. Delia, pleading work, had declined to come.

  “We now have four cases closed—Jimmy Cartwright, John Denbigh, Bianca Tolano and Peter Norton—with the three shootings a given. Though we suspected the existence of a mastermind, he hadn’t shown his hand directly until Barbara Norton explained why she chose April third to kill her husband. We’ll never get a description out of her, and the name Reuben is a fiction. My guess is that Pauline Denbigh was conned with some highly sophisticated ploy; again, we may never get anywhere by questioning her. She’s aiming for an acquittal. Barbara Norton needed to be reassured that her husband would just go to sleep, whereas Pauline Denbigh didn’t care what her husband suffered as long as she didn’t have to watch. The cyanide evidence ceases with the murder of the Dean—we have the bottle. If there are to be more cyanide deaths, then the salts have already been taken out of the bottle. How much do you think is gone, Patsy?”

  “If the bottle was full, about sixty grams—two rounded tablespoons,” Patrick said.

  “You were right, Carmine,” Silvestri said. “One killer.”

  “An adroit and ingenious killer. He used whatever tools were available to him—usually frustrated people. Barbara Norton and Pauline Denbigh both wanted to be free of domineering men without messy divorces and visualized persecution. Joshua Butler wanted to live his fantasies in the real world, but needed to be shown how.”

  “What about the rest, Carmine?” Corey asked.

  “More direct, if by ‘rest’ you mean Evan Pugh and Desmond Skeps. We can forget solving Beatrice Egmont, Cathy Cartwright, and the three shootings. An insurance company would call them collateral damage.”

  “You don’t think that of Dee-Dee Hall?” Marciano asked.

  “No, I think he killed her in person—why, I don’t know.”

  “Okay, next phase?” Silvestri asked, parking his ashtray and its cigar under Danny’s nose.

  “A general regrouping,” Carmine said, and sighed. “Oh, how I hate Cornucopia! But it’s back into the fray, guys.”

  “Erica Davenport?” Corey asked hopefully.

  “She’s involved, but she’s not the mastermind. I put her down as—” He broke off, frowning. No, he couldn’t mention Ulysses. “I put her down as a red herring.”

  “That wasn’t what you were going to say,” Silvestri said as everyone filed out of his office.

  “Well, I couldn’t say it! That’s why I hate Cornucopia—too many secrets.”

  Myron was waiting in his office, eyeing it appreciatively.

  “You could do with a coat of paint and some new furniture” was his opening remark. “But it sure beats the previous premises.”

  His friend was turning into an old man almost overnight; the eyes were red-rimmed, the cheeks sunken, the mouth slack, and his perky, straight-backed posture had sagged.

  “No one touches it until I’m on vacation,” Carmine said, seating himself behind his desk. “A mug of cop coffee?”

  “No, thanks! I’d like to live to see a lunch menu.”

  “What can I do you for, Myron?”

  “I’m flying west this afternoon.”

  “Not before due time, I would have said in the old days. Now”—Carmine shrugged—“that’s debatable. Does Erica know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you proposed to her yet?”

  “No,” Myron said unhappily.

  “Why not, if you love her?”

  “That’s just it—I do love her! But I don’t think she loves me. At least, not the way Desdemona loves you.”

  Carmine sighed. “Myron, you have to remember that Desdemona and I are a special case. We shared a common danger, and that tends to forge a special bond. We started out disliking each other—Jesus, you can’t look at us and wish for the same relationship! That’s sophomoric.”

  Myron went scarlet, compressed his lips. “Well, okay, I admit that. But how do I get inside the defenses of a woman I know isn’t the cold WASP princess she pretends to be?”

  “I can’t help you,” said Carmine, bewildered. “What makes you think I could?”

  “Because when she speaks of you, she has strong feelings! If it weren’t for you, I’d genuinely believe she doesn’t own any.” He waved his hands about wildly. “No, she doesn’t have the hots for you, so don’t start looking for the fire escape! I thought that maybe you had a cop technique…” He trailed off miserably.

  “And that wasn’t what you meant,” Carmine comforted. “All you really mean is that something about me gets under her defenses, and you’re hoping I know what it is. But I don’t, Myron. Even if I did, I wouldn’t pass it on. You can pull women effortlessly. You pulled her. And actually you’ve gotten under her defenses enough for her to have confided in you. No one at Cornucopia knows she’s not a cold WASP princess, whereas you do. I’d call that major progress.”

  “It’s chickenfeed,” Myron said despondently. “She lets me make love to her—she initiated our first time, I didn’t—but she goes away somewhere, Carmine. ‘Lie on your back and think of England’ might have been written just for her, except it’s not England she thinks of.”

  “That’s not you, Myron. That’s her,” said Carmine, dying for the conversation to be over. “If I were you, I’d go talk to Desdemona.”

  But Myron shook his head emphatically. “No, it was hard enough talking to you.” He got to his feet. “Give my undying love to our daughter.”

  “You should do that yourself.”

  “I can’t. I need to get away from here as fast as I can.”

  And he was gone. Carmine stood listening to the sound of his footsteps retreating down the hall, and prayed that his most beloved friend would chance upon a greener feminine field in his own purlieu.

  “But I think you can rest easy about your mother,” he said to Sophia that evening. “Divorce is not in the cards.”

  “Then I forgive him for going,” Sophia said magnanimously. “That icy bitch would kill him.”

  When Carmine came in on that Friday, April twenty-first, at eight in the morning, Delia was waiting for him. It was clearly some kind of red-letter day for her; she had dressed in her smartest outfit, a combination of purple and orange that hurt the eyes unless, like Carmine’s, they were inured to her palette.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said, sitting on a chair across from his at the desk, “I would rather speak to you privately in the first instance. Is that permissible?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  A rolled-up sheet of paper was laid reverently on the desk, together with several sheets of ordinary size. Carmine looked at them and then back at her, brows raised.

  “I have found a function at which all eleven of the dead people were present,” she said, carefully excluding triumph from her voice. “It was held on Saturday, December third of last year, in the Holloman City Hall, and was given by the Maxwell Foundation in aid of research funding for long-term children’s disorders.” She stopped, beaming.

  “Wow!” Carmine breathed, a better vocabulary knocked out of him. “And they were all present? Including the three black victims?”


  “Yes. It was a dinner-dance for five hundred people, who were seated at round tables for ten people or five couples. Most of the tables were ‘bought’ by a company or institution of some kind—undoubtedly you and Desdemona would have been there at Uncle John’s table if you hadn’t been new parents. It cost a hundred dollars a plate, which brought in a thousand per table. Most of the sponsoring companies and institutions donated a matched thousand per table. Cornucopia and its subsidiaries sponsored twenty of the fifty tables. Chubb sponsored ten tables, the Mayor had one, Police and Fire ended up sharing one, and so forth.” She paused again, eyes bright.

  “Amazing,” said Carmine slowly, feeling some comment was called for, but having no idea what, beyond marveling.

  “I am floored, Carmine, at how much planning goes into a function of this sort,” she said in tones of awe. “It’s worked out like a battle, though I strongly suspect that if most battles were worked out so scrupulously, the results would be different. Where a table sponsored by an organization should go, its relationship to other tables belonging to that organization, placement of tables to left, right, up, down, and sideways—I doubt Lord Kitchener ever devoted the same time to planning his bloodbaths! When the table master plan was finished, each table was given a number. Then came the business of seating the guests! Due attention had to be paid to those who came as a group of five couples, or wanted to sit at X or Y table, or asked to be seated with anything from one to three other couples. There were also guests who came alone or with a companion, who did not have any preferences, such as Beatrice Egmont. A small group of Maxwell volunteers dealt with all these logistics, and they did it truly magnificently. They even abolished that dreadful crush in the foyer when hundreds of people simultaneously try to see their names listed on a board. Six volunteers with lists sat at a reception desk to give each enquirer his or her table number.” She stopped.

  “I get your drift, Delia. Don’t tease, just go on!”

  “One of the many Cornucopia tables was sponsored by the Fourth National Bank under the aegis of Mr. Peter Norton. Due to the vagaries of fate, it was far thinner of company than Mr. Norton could have expected. His wife, for instance, had the gastric flu that was going around at the time—I had it myself—and was too ill to attend. Dean Denbigh’s wife also had this flu and didn’t come. Beatrice Egmont came on a single ticket, no companion. Mrs. Cathy Cartwright’s husband was in Beechmont with the temperamental chef. Bianca Tolano came on one of the tickets given to her by her boss, Mr. Dorley, when he and his wife couldn’t go. It seems Bianca made no effort to find an escort; she was on her own. But she must have been a sensible girl, because she handed in her second ticket at the reception desk. How do I know? It had a number, and was sold at the door to a young man who had none—Evan Pugh. So in one sense he and Bianca substituted for the Dorleys, who one presumes had a lucky escape.” She shivered, switched into high drama. “But why,” she asked rhetorically, “didn’t Mr. Norton fill his table with his own friends? None of them even attended!”