Naked Cruelty (30 page)

Someone pressed the button: movement resumed.

“An extraordinary job,” said Josef, dark eyes admiring. “I think you left it, yes?”

“Yes, to train as a detective in Holloman, my home town.”

“Such unfeminine work,” said the Baroness, looking itchy to leave even though the fish was just coming in.

“Work is work,” said Helen in a flat voice, staring at the glaucous eye of a sole above its pursed little rubbery lips. “People give work a sex, when it shouldn't have one. Detection of crime is eminently suited to the talents of women.”

“Why?” asked Kurt, smiling.

“Because women are naturally nosey, Kurt, love.”

“It cannot pay much,” said the Baron, scraping one side of his sole down to its skeleton and eating with relish.

“I don't need to worry about money, Baron. I have an income of a million dollars a year from a trust fund.”

Stop-motion again.

“You are enormously rich!” said Josef on a squawk.

“Not for my family,” said Helen, laying knife and fork down together to indicate that she found the fish inedible. “The thing is, we made our money several generations ago, and thanks to good management, we've been able to do useful things with it. My father is a famous educator, my parents have brought my brother and me up to regard philanthropy as necessary, and we work to benefit our family reputation, our home state, and our country.”

“Didn't I tell you Helen was wonderful?” Kurt demanded.

The Baron flipped his fish over to enjoy the more buttery, lemony underside. “What we do not know,” he said, scraping away, “is who kidnapped Kurt. Your getting him back unharmed and saving our money were laudable, Helen, but the crime is not solved.”

“Actually,” said Helen, waving at a footman to take her plate, “it is solved. I know who kidnapped Kurt and tried to steal your ten million, Baron.”

“Nonsense! How could you?” Josef asked sharply .

“Not nonsense, Josef, as you well know. She must be a most expensive mistress, the woman who lives with the young man in that big house. Is he your son too?”

The silence was palpable; the four genuine von Fahlendorfs were staring now at Josef, trying to seem unaffected.

“A joke, Helen?” Kurt asked, face the color of ashes.

“Unfortunately, Kurt, no. It's the truth. Josef masterminded your kidnapping, which was carried out by a cruel and ruthless woman who is either Josef's mistress or his real wife. Her assistant—a rather unwilling one, I think—was the young man who looks too much like Josef not to be his son,” said Helen.

Josef broke into a stream of German that dried up when the Baron smacked the table with the palm of his open hand.

“
Halte die Klappe!
” he roared. “Speak in English, or not at all! Since the day you married my daughter, you have been a leech! I have tolerated you because of Martin, Klaus-Maria, Annelise and Ursel—” Suddenly he floundered, eyes rolling wildly.

Dagmar was howling noisily and Kurt fully occupied in trying to calm her, but the Baroness was behaving most strangely of all, scratching at her chin and throat. The brilliant light of the overhead chandelier showed the beads of sweat breaking through her careful make-up; Helen saw the light. The Baroness was a junkie. Morphine, probably.

It was Macken and Helen who took charge. Kurt was ordered to take his sister away and help her in her own rooms, and the Baroness's maid summoned to deal with her mistress and her habit.

“Brunhilde knows what to do,” said Macken, revealing that at least the senior staff knew the family secrets. “My lady had a back operation several years ago, and cannot deal with the pain,” he said smoothly.

In a pig's eye, thought Helen. “Josef can't be allowed to communicate with his woman,” she said to Macken, “and that means locked in guest quarters like mine, with all the phone jacks unplugged and no one in contact with him who might be susceptible to a bribe. It's up to the family what they do with him and his accomplices, I'm butting out—going home, I mean.”

“This is all nonsense, Helen,” Josef said as two footmen prepared to march him away. “You spied on me and discovered my sister and her son.”

“Sister?” Helen laughed. “I saw the lip-locker you and Frau Richter—shall I call her that?—exchanged this afternoon.”

Kurt walked in, looking grim. A swift conversation passed between him and Macken; Kurt looked relieved. “You are a woman in a million, Helen,” he said to her. “I must take Papa to his room. He will recover in a moment, then we will decide what to do with Josef. Poor Dagmar!”

“I'm going home tomorrow,” she said.

“I will be coming with you,” said Kurt, and led his father away: a curious business. The old man shrank, muttering about bombs—that much Helen got, even in German—then seemed to cave in and allowed Kurt to assist his faltering attempt to walk.

“You're a treasure, Macken,” she said to the butler when they were the only people left in the room.

“Thank you, Miss Helen.”

“What did your father do to make a living?”

Macken looked surprised. “He was butler to the Graf.”

Old retainers! “And your son or sons, Macken?”

“One son. He is the head of a government department in Bonn.”

Dagmar begged for admittance as Helen was packing the next morning. “I must thank you,” she said stiffly.

“It's not necessary. You realize, I hope, that I'm not going to marry Kurt? I came to see if I could solve the kidnapping.”

“That relieves me. You would drive my Kurtchen insane.” She sat on a chair out of the way and watched the jeans-clad Helen work, smoothly and swiftly. “We will save the family name, that is all-important.”

“I figured as much,” said Helen dryly.

“Josef asked me to split two of the ten million off and give it to him,” said Dagmar. “I took it as selfishness, but of course he wanted it for his natural son. His request was denied.”

“May I offer you a word of advice?” Helen asked, stopping to look at Dagmar very seriously

“No doubt I will resent it, but offer it anyway.”

“Josef's mistress dresses like the Duchess of Windsor—both very expensively and in very good taste. You dress like old Queen Mary, with whose appearance I'm acquainted thanks to an English colleague. You're a frump, Dagmar, but you needn't be. Put yourself in the hands of one of those faggy guys always hanging around rich women and let him work a Pygmalion. The best revenge is to live well, so while the Richter woman rots in a German prison, you can flaunt it. You'll be a happier woman, betcha.”

The sheer insolence deprived Dagmar of a retort.

Helen packed on tranquilly until she finished.

Dagmar spoke again. “Did you mark the woman's house on your map?” Dagmar asked then.

“Yes,” said Helen, surprised.

“May I have the map? I will need it for the police.”

Helen reached into her enormous shoulder bag and withdrew it. “Here it is, complete with the wrong folds.” She opened it and pointed. “There you are.”

“Well, at least I know what Josef did with his salary.”

“Speaking of houses, this one—” Helen began.

“Will be sold,” Dagmar said with finality, and got up. “I will not see you again—ever, I hope. But thank you.”

***

Helen and Kurt flew home together on Sunday, and parted in the foyer of Talisman Towers undemonstrably.

“I am tired,” said Kurt, brushing her chin with one hand.

“Worse than being kidnapped?”

“Infinitely. My poor sister! She is heart-broken.”

“Give her my compliments when you talk.”

“I will.”

And, thought Helen, gazing around her attractive but austere bathroom, it may not look like mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, but I like it all the more for that. Something in between would be nice.

“Bigamy!” said Carmine on Monday morning. “It fits. Yeah, it fits like Frau Richter's hand in her French kid glove. The brother-in-law did it to provide for his legitimate son, since his bastards had so much—and were getting more.”

“Bigamy can happen when a once-whole nation has been split ideologically, and the two parts don't talk to each other. I daresay the von Fahlendorfs didn't ask, and Josef sure as hell didn't say,” Helen said to Carmine, Nick and Delia.

“They won't prosecute,” Nick said.

“Definitely not,” Delia said.

“They have to do something,” Helen said. “Honor has been insulted, and the Baron's not the man to suffer that without lashing back. Nor is the Baroness. And Dagmar's even worse.”

“Well,” said Carmine, leaning back in his chair, “thank God whatever they do is German business, not American. Note, however, that the family pushed Kurt back to our side of the Atlantic with indecent haste.”

“Protecting him from whatever they do,” said Nick.

***

“Have you seen the evening papers?” Desdemona asked on Tuesday night when Carmine got home.

He was on edge; there was a faint possibility that the Dodo would strike today. “No,” he said, taking his drink.

Prunella came in and sat down with a breathless sigh. “I wish Julian had less imagination, now that he's found it,” she said, smiling. “Captain Nemo is rather wearing. Did you know that a race of fish men live in the deep ocean right at its bottom? I could bear that if they hadn't invented this whizz-bang, super-duper death ray.”

Desdemona handed her a glass of red wine, and gave Carmine the New York evening papers; Holloman's was a morning one.

“It's in both papers,” said Desdemona, sitting. “The
Post
has the bigger article.”

It was front page, and headlines: Josef von Fahlendorf, brother-in-law of kidnap victim Professor Kurt von Fahlendorf, had been shot dead outside the von Fahlendorf factory in Munich on this Tuesday at dawn. “Holy shits!” Carmine exclaimed, still reading. What Josef was doing there at that hour no one in authority at Fahlendorf Farben seemed to know, including its managing director, Dagmar, who hadn't even been aware that Josef was gone from their bed. According to the sole witness, a Volkswagen car eased up behind Josef and the two men in it cut him down with automatic pistols. Heinrich Müller was a factory worker on his way in to Fahlendorf Farben to fire up some new equipment, and he behaved heroically. Instead of seeking shelter, he tried vainly to help Josef, who died in his arms a few minutes later. “Kurt!” he said several times, quite clearly. Müller said the men looked like Turks, had spoken a few words in Turkish. Enjoying this news item immensely, the by-lining journalist said it was evident that Josef thought he had been mistaken for Kurt.

“What do you think?” Desdemona asked.

“That it's as fishy as Julian's fish men.” He got up.

“Off to Helen's minus your drink?”

“Hell, no! She can wait until tomorrow. I'm going to see Delia. Give her a call for me, please? With this news humming on the aether, every hammer and teamster in creation will be tuned to the cop band, so let's keep my movements secret.”

“Dinner?”

“I should be home in time. Otherwise, save mine.”

“Luckily it's steak, so we'll wait. Prunella, looks as if this might be a night for the girls to get blotto.”

“That's a good chambertin—don't guzzle.”

Since she didn't mind the half-hour commute, Delia lived in Millstone, where she could afford a spacious apartment on the waterfront of Busquash Bay. Having chosen a divine color scheme of rust, blue and pink, Delia had stuffed every room with furniture imported from Oxford, where it had graced her grandmother's home. The walls were a permanently open photograph album of Carstairses, Silvestris, Ceruttis and Cunninghams, the occasional tables boasted lava lamps next to Dresden china lamps, and there were lace-edged, daisy-embroidered doilies everywhere. It was
home
.

By the time that Carmine got there she had read the newspapers and listened to the local news radio station, WRHN. She also had his drink ready.

“So who did it?” Carmine asked.

“I'm not quite sure, Carmine dear. Whoever, it's carefully orchestrated. Heinrich Müller was there accidentally on purpose, of that I'm positive. They had to have a witness to point out that the culprits were Turks.”

“Why Turks?” he asked, sipping.

“Because Germany's filling up with them,” Delia explained. “Turks find German much easier to learn than other European languages, and penniless Turks gravitate there in search of work. I predict that in the future the trend will escalate, but it's already marked enough to have created a degree of resentment in working class Germans. Turks make convenient whipping boys.”