Kaleidoscope (4 page)

Swope said quietly, “There's someone coming up the stairs now.”

“But why? And who?”

Pruden led her away from the door to a corner of the room, where he said quietly, sternly, “This is for Darlene.”

“Darlene?”

He nodded. “Swope and I—” He pointed to the bedroom. “Swope, carry the violin in there and hide it. That's where we'll be, too. And this is what you must do,” he told her, and he spoke to her in a low voice until, hearing the knock on the door, he said, “You think you can do it?”

She said shakily, but with spirit, “I—I think so, I played Ophelia in
Hamlet
in high school. If it's for Darlene—”

“Good girl.”

Leaving the bedroom door ajar Pruden and Swope waited. Ginny Voorhees, answering the knock, said with proper astonishment, “Professor Blake, it's
you
?”

An amused voice said, “When I came to pick up Darlene you always called me Robert.”

Ginny gave a small laugh. “Okay—Robert. Sorry, it's been such a sad time, such a shock. I saw you at the funeral. You must miss her terribly.”

“Terribly,” said the man. “That's why I came, hoping she left something I can cherish as a part of her. Something to remember her by always.”

Ginny Voorhees said, “I've already sent her personal belongings to her parents. She didn't have any jewelry, except of course for her engagement ring, and she was . . . well, buried wearing it, so really there's nothing.”

“I meant something of hers that she valued and used every day. Her violin, perhaps.”

There was silence and then Ginny Voorhees said, “But you don't play the violin, it's piano you teach.”

The man's voice softened seductively. “But the violin's still here, isn't it? and I'd dearly love to have it. You know the duets we played together, what could be more personal?”

Pruden hoped like hell that Ginny Voorhees wouldn't ask how he knew the violin was still here; he brought his gun out of its holster, and waited.

But Ginny Voorhees had refused that trap, and he had to admire her as she said firmly, “Yes it's here, but I really feel strongly that her parents should have it. After all, they loved her for twenty-four years, but you knew her only—”

The man's voice hardened. “Nevertheless I'd like that violin very much, Ginny.”

“It's just a violin she bought at the flea market for seventy-five dollars, Robert.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Now go and get it.
Now
.”

“No,” she told him firmly.

There was silence, and Pruden had no idea as to what was happening until Ginny Voorhees said in a steady voice, “Surely that can't be a
real
gun you just pulled out of your pocket, Robert.”

“It's a real gun, and it shoots bullets,” he said in a hard voice, “and I'm ready to use it. I warn you, I'll pull this trigger if you don't get her violin for me now, this minute.”

“Robert, what's happened to you? You're mad, you have to be crazy.”

“Crazy?” he shouted. “You think I want to go on teaching stupid kids with no talent for the rest of my life? Damn you, it's one of Stradivari's Habeneck violins and worth a fortune, and I'll kill if I have to. Where is it?”

“I won't tell you, it's Darlene's.”

“Mine now,” he told her. “If you don't get it I'll find it myself.”

“You'll never get away with this, Professor Blake. The police—”

“Police?” he said scornfully. “Never. You won't be alive to tell them, I'll see to that, and after all, it was just a violin bought at a flea market for seventy-five dollars. The police will never know.”

It was at this moment that Pruden, who had his own flair for the dramatic, walked out of the bedroom, gun firmly in hand, to say smoothly, “But the police already know, Blake,” and he had time to admire the dumbfounded look on the man's face as Swope deprived him of his pistol.

“And that,” Pruden told Madame Karitska later, “is why Darlene's fiancé made no move to prevent the girl from rushing out into the street to be killed, on what pretext we'll never know. It certainly wasn't a dog . . . He knew the car was waiting up the street for that moment, and he timed it perfectly.”

“And the driver of the car that hit her?”

“An ex-student of his, just out of jail and promised a very handsome sum of money to do it.”

Madame Karitska, having known her share of evil, shivered. “It still remains very strange to me, my receiving no impressions of Darlene when I held her gold cross. I can only assume that her professor had recently bought it for her and had carried it around in his pocket for several days, and it was his obsession over the violin that came through to me. An obsessed mind blocks out personality. . . . Would he have killed Ginny Voorhees, too?”

“I think he was just desperate enough to do it,” said Pruden. “He never expected resistance, and he'd dreamed of what that Stradivarius would bring to him as soon as he recognized it.” Pruden added wryly, “It's a pity that Ginny Voorhees teaches art or I'd have nominated her for an Academy Award for the performance she gave. Brave girl! Incidentally, the Cahns would like to meet you sometime. Naturally I told them about you.”

“But I did so little,” she protested.

Pruden laughed. “Then tell me how anyone else would ever have guessed that a violin was involved in her murder. If not for that, Ginny Voorhees would probably have given him what she assumed was an old flea market violin—why not? Or if it had reached the Cahns he would have made the same approach to them: something to remember her by, and then I'm sure he would have resigned from the university and moved to a distant city—California, perhaps—where he could safely sell the Stradivarius and live that life of ease he craved.”

“And where is the violin now?” she asked.

“The Cahns are presenting it to the music department of the university, to be loaned out upon request. As a gift from their daughter. In her name—Darlene Cahn.”

Madame Karitska nodded. “Something to remember her by.”

Pruden said dryly, “Which, ironically, was just what Professor Blake wanted, too, something to remember her by which he'll have, now, for a good many years.”

3

There was still no news of Georges Verlag, which troubled Madame Karitska. She had given Pruden a description of him to quietly circulate at police headquarters in case he was seen on the street, but to list him as an official missing person could only endanger him. On this morning, a mist clouding the sky after a night of rain, Pruden stopped in to tell her it would soon be time they returned the jewels, with or without Verlag. They had contacted the Manhattan police, asking them to make inquiries in the Diamond District on Forty-seventh Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, where—among the dealers, diamond cutters, polishers, brokers, and importers—they hoped to extract information as to the European dealer for whom Georges Verlag would have been delivering his attaché case of uncut diamonds.

“I'm sorry,” he told her, “sorriest for you that he's not turned up.”

“I understand,” she said, nodding. “It's scarcely legal for you to hold a small fortune in your safe for long.”

“From New York we've learned that just such a salesman was recently murdered at one of their airports, but not, fortunately, Georges Verlag. Diamonds are obviously
too
valuable and rare.”

Madame Karitska said dryly, “Not so rare as people think. De Beers very cleverly holds back an enormous number of diamonds lest they flood the market and lower their price, but that's another story. . . . You look tired, you've been working too hard?”

He sank to the couch with a sigh. “Yes, damn it. What began as a case for Swope to handle has everyone in the department involved now, and yes, it adds considerably to my work. If you read the newspapers—”

She smiled faintly. “You know I don't.”

He nodded. “The murder has been in the headlines for most of this week.” With a glance at his watch he said, “If you still have some of your Turkish coffee handy—it's as good as a shot of brandy—maybe talking it out will stop its haunting me.”

“Coffee it will be,” she said, and leaving him slumped on the couch, obviously exhausted, she presently returned with carafe and a cup. “Talk,” she told him, smiling, and seated herself on the couch opposite him, the low square table between them.

“Good,” he said, taking a sip. “I'll make it brief; I've not much time. One of Trafton's well-known citizens—John Epworth—has been murdered under the most bizarre circumstances. Retired and wealthy, lives in a posh apartment in that high-rise on Sixty-fifth Street. Wife's name Joanna. Since retirement Epworth had been devoting his time exclusively to charitable work at the Trafton Home for Disabled Children.”

“And you say he's been
murdered
?”

He sighed. “Unfortunately and tragically, yes. The Epworths would bring one of the disabled children home to their apartment quite frequently. . . . This particular weekend it was a nine-year-old girl named Jenny. Mrs. Epworth walks into the living room on Saturday night and finds her husband lying on the floor stabbed to death with an especially lethal dagger plunged into his back—he had a collection of them mounted on his wall. Blood all over the place, the child Jenny gone, her bloody fingerprints on both dagger and doorknob. A few drops of blood in hallways. The girl had obviously fled, the bed prepared for her never slept in. Time of death, half past nine.”

“A nine-year-old child!” exclaimed Madame Karitska. “Did she hate him so much? Was he unkind?”

He shook his head. “That's what's so baffling. Epworth was particularly kind to her because she resembled the daughter from his first marriage, killed with her mother in an auto accident. From all reports the child adored the Epworths, not being accustomed to such kindness, according to the people at the home. The Epworths—both of them—went out of their way to befriend Jenny . . . not the first time they'd had her for a weekend. Treats, that sort of thing.”

“They've searched the building for the girl?”

He nodded. “What's difficult to understand is why nobody has seen her; she must have been splattered with blood. There's a doorman—he could have been talking to someone, or dozing on his feet, but he insists he saw no child leaving.”

“And Mrs. Epworth?”

“Distraught. Hysterical and furious. At once cut off future contributions to the Home for Disabled Children. Recklessly threatening to kill the child once found.”

Madame Karitska frowned. “But how far could a physically disabled child
go
?”

“That is a problem in itself,” said Pruden wearily. “She's not physically disabled, she's what I believe is called a mute. The girl can neither hear nor speak.”

“Good heavens, how tragic,” said Madame Karitska, startled. “Yet strong enough to kill with a dagger? What can have possessed her?”

Pruden nodded grimly. “How can one possibly guess what a child like that would feel or know if she can't talk? There's no way of knowing, not really, what hatred or resentment was seething inside of her.”

“Yet she must have been likable for them to be so partial to her. How does Mrs. Epworth describe her?”

“Too grief-stricken to be coherent, but according to the people at the Home for Disabled Children, it was Mrs. Epworth who chose Jenny for the weekend. Two weekends ago it was a child in a wheelchair, this weekend Jenny. All Mrs. Epworth screams over and over is, ‘To think, after all we did for her, and she
killed
him!' ”

“If they were alone he wouldn't have—I hate to say this—tried to molest her?”

Pruden sighed. “Since there were no witnesses, one can't say no to that, but there's been no history of it. Swope's interviewed every child who's spent a weekend with them; he comes off fatherly, thoughtful, full of jokes with them; they've taken children to the circus, movies, beach trips in summer. . . .”

“And you can't find the child . . . but if unable to speak or hear, surely she's learned sign language?”

Pruden sighed. “No, Epworth was arranging for just such a teacher—the home is so
very
underfunded—but he'd not found anyone yet.” He shook his head. “And with her fingerprints everywhere—on dagger and doorknob—”

“She has to be found,” Madame Karitska said. “Has to be.”

He nodded. “It's been six days—no, this morning begins seven—and if in hiding, by now she could be dead, too, if she's had nothing to eat. We've circulated one old ID photo the home had of her.” He pulled a copy out of his pocket and said wryly, “Just in case you see her, but it's two years old, the photo.”

It was a picture of a small, round face encircled by tight black curls. A sweet face, thought Madame Karitska, with huge, anxious eyes. As the eyes
would
be, she reflected, if the child could neither hear voices, nor voice her own thoughts and needs. “Taken two years ago,” she repeated. “She must, surely, be in that building, Pruden. It's a high-rise, you said?”

He glanced at his watch and stood up. “Fifteen floors and basement, yes. Time for me to go, because there's another search pending this morning, with more men, including me, fanning out, and the chief's secured permission now from all the absent tenants to let us search their apartments too. People on vacation or business trips. This will be the most thorough search yet.”

“Then good luck and Godspeed,” she told him, “and do try for a good sleep tonight or you'll wear yourself out and I shall have to worry about you. As will Jan.”

Pruden grinned. “Oh, Jan already worries, but working with children at the Settlement House she especially worries about a child in hiding, cold and hungry, whatever she may have done.”

Madame Karitska glanced again at the circular he'd left on the table. “Please—let me know if you find her, will you?”

“I promise,” he said, and with a last sip of coffee and a vague salute he opened the door and was gone.

It was late evening when the phone rang, and Madame Karitska knew at once that it would be Pruden. She said, “You've found Jenny?”

He said grimly, “In the basement of the building, living on garbage and sleeping in an empty garbage container, her dress stained with dried blood. I told you she was mute?”

“Yes,” said Madame Karitska.

He added angrily, “And now we find we had no idea what being mute
really
meant. Swope asks questions; she can't hear them. More questions, she can't answer them. Somehow I thought she would be able to read lips, manage
something
, shake her head yes or no, but impossible when she can't
hear
.”

“What about Mrs. Epworth? There must have been some way she and her husband communicated with her.”

She could hear his sigh over the phone. “Under her doctor's care, heavily sedated—tranquilizers and sleeping pills . . . we have to wait. In the meantime we've got this terrified child and—”

“Still terrified?” asked Madame Karitska.

“As well as dehydrated and undernourished. She's with a children's agency for the night, but how we're ever going to learn what possessed her to turn violent and kill I don't know. Mrs. Epworth might have a clue but we can't see her yet, doctor's orders.”

“Pruden,” said Madame Karitska thoughtfully.

“Yes?”

She was silent and then, “I
might
be able to help. If, for instance, there is the bloodstained dress available.”

“Help,” he repeated, and then, “My God, yes, do you think, really think, a
dress
?”

“There could—
might
—still be a way,” she told him.

He whistled through his teeth. “I should have thought of that. Whether the chief would allow . . . the dress is under lock and key, but if he'd allow . . . you might have to come to headquarters?”

“I'd be glad to,” she told him.

“Great. I'll see what I can arrange, and get back to you in the morning. But I thought you'd sleep better, knowing she's been found.”

“Indeed I shall,” she said. “Until tomorrow, then.”

The next day, at fifteen minutes before one o'clock, Swope called for her in a police car and drove her across town to headquarters.

“The chief's in a foul mood,” he warned her. “Of course he knows about you now, but he doesn't
want
to know about you. Too embarrassing.”

“Quite understandable,” said Madame Karitska.

Headquarters was a monolithic brick building in the center of town, next to City Hall, and they discreetly entered from the rear parking lot. Swope led her down a maze of halls to an elevator, passing numerous offices, and at last to the chief. He, too, seemed rather monolithic to Madame Karitska: a large man, ruddy-faced, who had risen to his position through the ranks.

Pruden was already there, and drew up a chair for her facing the chief, while he and Swope took nearby chairs and sat down, waiting.

The child's dress lay on the desk between her and the chief. “All right,” he growled, “how's this done? She talks to herself, this mute child?”

Being only too accustomed to skepticism, and to antagonism, Madame Karitska explained, “I can only pick up what she was
feeling
. Since she has her sight she would have seen words, but never knowing what they mean. Yet she's worn this smock for six days and nights, and it's possible it may tell me something. Reactions. Anger. But not in words, although it's possible she's created some sort of primitive vocabulary of her own.”

He shrugged. “Sorry. I know what you all did when Pruden's fiancée was taken hostage.” He sighed. “Go ahead,” and to the stenographer, “Take this down, will you?” He handed Madame Karitska the unadorned smock that was brown with dried blood. “See what you can do.”

“Thank you.”

Pruden gave her an understanding smile, and she sat back and fingered the dress lightly, then placed it across her cupped hands and closed her eyes. In a distant room a telephone rang, followed by silence.

Pruden was surprised to see tears in Madame Karitska's eyes. She said in a shaken voice, “Dear God, this poor child.”

Impatiently the chief said, “Scarcely a poor child when she kills her benefactor.”

Madame Karitska held up her hand to silence him. “Please, I'm getting some very strong impressions. . . . she sits comfortably next to a ‘he-person,' she calls him, a flood of happiness, feeling his warmth. I have the impression they look at pictures in a book. . . . I feel—
she
feels his kindness.”

She stopped, frowning. “Then someone enters the room, scarcely noticed—”

Madame Karitska shuddered and Pruden looked at her inquiringly.

“A she-person to her,” she said. “This she-person has entered the room and the child looks up. The she-person stands behind the seated man and is holding ‘one of the sharp things from the wall—' ”