The Clairvoyant Countess (5 page)

“The rent?” he said in astonishment.

“The rent.”

He counted it and tucked it away in his wallet. “Oh by the way, there’s a Lieutenant Pruden waiting for you downstairs. I hope it’s all right, but seeing he’s a policeman I let him into your apartment.”

Madame Karitska thanked him, avoided any second glance at his latest painting, which appeared to be a tangle of snakes placed on a bilious green background, and went downstairs. Opening the door to her apartment she found Pruden looking through the books in her bookcase. “So—we meet again,” she said pleasantly.

He turned. “You certainly have a great many books on the occult here.”

“As well as the Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads, the Dhammapada, and others,” she pointed out lightly. “You look tired, Lieutenant.”

He looked at her and she felt no hostility in his gaze today. He said simply, “I’ve been up all night reading books on ESP. I think we’ve found Alison Bartlett’s murderer.”

“Oh?”

“I know you don’t read newspapers but—” He drew a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

She unfolded it gingerly, as if it was distasteful to her, and read the leaping black headline:
ARREST MADE IN ALISON
’
S MURDER
; Stepfather arraigned. “Perhaps you will sit down and tell me about this,” she said quietly.

“It was her stepfather. It took us days to prove that he’d ever left Massachusetts on April 2. Neighbors insisted his lights were on in the house all evening until midnight, but of course there are gadgets that turn lights on and off.” At her puzzled frown he said, “His name is Carl Madison and he married Alison’s mother seven years ago. Alison adored him.”

“Ah,” said Madame Karitska, comprehending.

“We had only a photograph—a blown-up photo—to work with. We figured that if he really was our chap he would have had to drive to New York, since buses or trains or planes would have been too conspicuous. He would have had to leave Massachusetts no later than 8
P.M.
to reach Alison’s apartment by midnight, knock on her door, enter, glance over escape possibilities, and then kill her. He would have been back in Massachusetts no later than 5
A.M.
, well in advance of any telephone call about her murder.

“We sneaked a look at the speedometer on his car and checked it out with the garage where his car was last serviced. Nothing there, but a knowledgeable amateur can set back a speedometer. We showed his photo to every tollbooth attendant outside of New York and batted zero. But two days ago we found an attendant in a Trafton parking lot who recognized Madison’s face. One of those rare people who literally never forget a face. What’s more, he remembered that Madison’s license plates were daubed with mud, which was strange
because it’s been a dry season, and he had to do some scrubbing before he could note down the number for his records. The parking lot was about ten blocks from Alison’s apartment. Apparently Madison was so terrified of his car being noticed by the police, or of getting ticketed for being parked on a street at that hour, that he made this one mistake. And so we were able to prove that he was in Trafton the night Alison was murdered.”

Madame Karitska nodded. “Was that enough?”

“No,” went on Pruden, “but it was enough to open things up.” With a faint smile he added, “We then applied for permission to exhume the body of Alison’s mother.”

“Interesno,”
murmured Madame Karitska, with a lift of her brows.

“It made Madison nervous,” said Pruden. “That man’s a superb actor but it began the slow process of breaking down his confidence, and before the results of the lab tests were back we hit pay dirt on Madison’s real identity. It turns out that he was born Norman Palos, and was an old hand at being a widower: he’d married twice before, each time to a young widow with money, and each time his wife had died of a heart attack in her sleep.”

“Poison?” suggested Madame Karitska.

“It certainly was in Francine Bartlett’s case. She’d inhaled it consistently for some months by way of a nose spray she used for asthma attacks. Madison had been a chemist; he doctored the vials. She may very well have died of a heart attack—it would weaken any heart to cope with increasing doses of arsenic—but there was enough poison still in her body to change the whole
picture. At that point Madison cracked and confessed to murdering the two of them, which saved us a good bit of time.”

“Yes,” said Madame Karitska, and then, very simply, “I am glad he will not be allowed to do this again. He was a very evil man.”

“You realize,” Pruden said, looking at her squarely, “how much I’m indebted to you for this.”

“I realize,” she said imperturbably, “what you thought of my words when I spoke them several weeks ago to you in this room. You are more flexible than I supposed, Lieutenant.”

“And very curious at this point,” he admitted.

“I believe we were intended to meet,” she told him with a faint smile, “and I am a little curious myself. Have you something on your person that you wear every day and have worn for some years?”

“You mean a reading?” he asked, and looked a little alarmed. “Well, I suppose—here, I’ll give you my watch. A high-school graduation present worn for fifteen straight years.”

“Very good,” she murmured, and gave him a reassuring smile as he handed it to her. Closing her eyes she concentrated while Pruden watched her, half skeptical, half apprehensive. “Ah yes,” she said at last, “I see how it is. My instincts were sound, we are not strangers to one another at all. I get an impression of a very fine brain, a most intelligent man.”

“Of course,” Pruden said flippantly.

“But,” continued Madame Karitska, paying him no attention, “a rather inhibited man, a little narrow and literal. You have been too busy for love—a pity—but inside of fifteen months you will be married.”

“That I refuse to believe,” Pruden said, flushing.

“Believe it,” Madame Karitska told him firmly. “She will have long pale hair—really
very
pale, so light in color it is very near to white, and she is—how interesting!” Madame Karitska opened her eyes and smiled at him. “She will have considerable clairvoyant ability, Lieutenant.”

“Good Lord,” he said mildly.

“But before you meet her you will have a very near brush with death,” she went on, and her voice quickened. “Yes, yes, I see it, and it is very bad, you could be gravely harmed. There will be a Buddha-like figure, I cannot tell whether this is a living man or a statue. He wears reds and blues and he sits, and when you meet him you will be in terrible danger
from something unseen behind you.
”

“Buddha?” he repeated skeptically. “It sounds rather exotic for my line of work.”

She opened her eyes. “Then perhaps having been warned you will notice it more acutely,” she said in a stern voice. “It looms like a shadow over your whole future, over the girl, over your becoming Commissar of Police.”

“Over my becoming
what?
”

“Oh yes, you will go far,” she assured him. “But you must take care, you understand?” She smiled. “One hopes so, for I look forward to getting further acquainted with you, Lieutenant. And now if you will forgive me,” she said with a glance at her wrist watch, “I have an appointment in ten minutes.”

Pruden rose and moved toward the door. As he reached it he heard a knock and, after a questioning glance at Madame Karitska, opened the door. A small
boy stood there with a dirty, tear-stained face. “
This
is your appointment?” he asked, amused.

“He has lost his kitten,” she told him calmly. “You must not think, Lieutenant, that the loss of a kitten is not also a cosmic event. We hope, between us, to discover where he may find it.”

Madame Karitska opened her door to Lieutenant Pruden one early morning several weeks later. “I came on impulse, without calling,” he said. “Are you alone?” When she hesitated he rephrased this. “Can you be interrupted?”

She nodded. “Of course, Lieutenant.”

He came in, looking around him. “I met your young landlord on the curb putting out the garbage, and he said you always act as if someone’s with you, or shouldn’t I mention the impression you’ve given him?”

“Consider it a small idiosyncrasy,” said Madame Karitska with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“As an opener you could tell me how in hell you look so cheerful mornings, and,” he added with a grin, “if you’re offering coffee I’ll take Turkish.”

“Marvelous, you will soon begin to appreciate it!”
Lighting a match under the carafe on the table she said, “I have the advantage over you of spending many years in the Far East and in eastern Europe as well. The reason for my sanguinity in the morning is both simple and complex: I have experienced much in the way of wise men and prophets.” Carefully she poured Turkish brew into tiny cups. “If psychologists and sociologists claim that we went from the Age of Anxiety into the Age of Alienation, then the next era—for survival, I assure you—must be the Age of Consciousness.”

He laughed. “If you’re implying that none of us is conscious, Madame Karitska, I shall resent that very much.”

She smiled at him. “Ah but actually, Lieutenant Pruden, almost every human being is totally sound asleep. We are sleep-walkers … Now what can I do for you, please?”

He removed a small plastic bag from his jacket, turned it upside down over the coffee table, and delivered a cascade of silver rings to its surface. There were perhaps a dozen of them, all alike. Madame Karitska picked up one and examined it: its design was one of a black enamel seal encircled by crimson with a motto in Latin. Inside the ring were the initials D.H.L. ’78. She picked up another: its initials were G.A.M. ’78.

“St. Bonaventure’s School,” contributed Lieutenant Pruden. “I’ve made half a dozen trips there and gotten nowhere. Let’s see what a clairvoyant can do.”

She gave him a sharp glance. “I’m not so sure I’m delighted to have met you! What precisely is the problem?”

“Petty thefts, but they add up and the school has a famous old reputation to preserve. These rings have
been worn—presumably with pride—every day since January, when they were distributed among the freshman class upon their return from the holidays. You said you picked up—well, vibrations,” he growled. “These rings belong to the students and one of them has to be the thief.”

“A schoolboy thief,” she mused. “But surely the police are well-equipped to uncover the culprit, and isn’t there a school psychologist?”

“Yes to both,” he said grimly. “But officially the police aren’t in on it. My superior in the police department graduated from St. Bonaventure’s and they’ve asked his help in avoiding any publicity. We’ve done what we could. We know it’s one of these fourteen boys because the thefts occur only in Beecham Cottage, and always at night, when the dorm is locked securely.

“As for the school’s psychologist,” he continued, “he’s examined the records of each of these fourteen boys and he can find none of them with any striking emotional problem or pattern that could lead to this sort of thing. The tests essential for admission are pretty thorough—Rorschach, Achievement, etcetera—and since these boys are freshmen the tests were all done within the last year. Running fresh tests on these boys would run into money and consume valuable school time. In the meanwhile the thefts continue—the ninth last night.”

“What exactly has been stolen?” asked Madame Karitska curiously.

He handed her a small typed list. “It’s getting to be a very bad business for St. Bonaventure’s, this. The boys write home, the atmosphere’s uneasy, the rumors growing.
A number of parents have already called in, inquiring.”

Madame Karitska was looking at the list.

“An interesting list,” said Madame Karitska thoughtfully.

“A damn puzzling one. After every theft we’ve searched the dormitory—the last three times while the students were still there behind locked doors—and we found only two items.”

“The tennis racquets,” said Madame Karitska, nodding.

He gave her a sharp glance. “What made you guess that?”

“For one thing, they’re the largest items. Have you searched the boys?”

Pruden shook his head. “This headmaster refuses—so far. I can’t say I blame him. Parents of St. Bonaventure’s boys don’t shell out nearly four thousand dollars a year to see their sons stripped and searched like common criminals. On the other hand I’ve told Father Tuttle he may have to see it done if he wants this cleared up.”

“And so you bring me the rings,” said Madame Karitska musingly.

“Yes.” He added wryly, “You know my skepticism. You understand my hopes.”

She said with humor, “You are moving from disbelief to ambivalence. That is progress, no? I will call you. This will take a day at least.”