The Investigation (23 page)

Gregory got in, slammed the door, and quickly pulled away from the parking spot.

Leaving the empty car in the courtyard, Gregory returned to the lobby. Sciss was leaning on the bannister of the staircase with his eyes half-closed, a vague, pained smile playing about his lips. Gregory waited without saying good night. Breathing deeply—it sounded like a sigh—Sciss suddenly opened his eyes. The two men stared at each other.

“I don’t know,” Sciss said at last. “Do you have … time?”

Gregory nodded his head and quietly followed him up the stairs. Neither spoke. Outside his apartment Sciss stopped with his hand on the doorknob as if he wanted to say something; finally he swung the door open.

“It’s dark inside, let me go first,” he said.

There was a light on in the foyer. The kitchen door was open but there was no one there, only a tea kettle whistling quietly on a low flame. They hung up their coats.

The living room, bathed in light from a white globe on the ceiling, had a neat, festive look. The wall behind the desk was lined with bookshelves; pens and pencils were arranged symmetrically on the desk; a glass table stood just below the bookshelves, with two low green club chairs, their bluish cushions decorated in a geometric pattern, pushed next to it. The table was set with cups, whiskey glasses, trays of fruit and pastries. Spoons, forks—everything was arranged for two people. Sciss rubbed his bony, arthritic hands.

“Why don’t you sit down next to the shelves where it’s more comfortable,” he said with perhaps a little too much liveliness. “I had a guest this afternoon—let me offer you some of the leftovers.”

Gregory wanted to say something lighthearted to help Sciss out, but nothing came to mind. He moved one of the chairs and sat down on the arm, turning toward the books.

He found himself facing an impressive multilingual collection of scientific literature—one shelf was filled with works on anthropology, a plastic card attached to the next shelf had the word “Mathematics” written on it. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed some photographs in an open drawer of the desk, but when he turned in their direction, Sciss moved—or, rather, practically hurled himself across the room on his long legs—hitting the drawer with his knee and noisily slamming it.

“A mess, it’s a mess,” he explained with a tense look. He rubbed his hands again and seated himself on the radiator next to the window.

“Your new attempt to find me guilty is just as half-baked as your last one,” he said. “You try too hard…”

“You’ve had several bad experiences,” Gregory commented. He picked a thick volume at random and flipped the pages; algebraic formulas leaped past his eyes.

“Quite true. Do you prefer coffee or tea?” Sciss remembered his responsibilities as a host.

“I’ll take whatever you’re having.”

“Good.”

Sciss went into the kitchen. Gregory put back the book, which was entitled
Principia Mathematica,
and stared at the closed desk drawer for a moment. He was tempted to take a look inside but didn’t dare. The sound of Sciss bustling about in the kitchen could be heard through the open door. After a few minutes the scientist came back with the tea, poured it into the cups in a high, narrow stream, and sat down opposite Gregory.

“Be careful, it’s hot,” he cautioned. “Are you saying that I’m no longer under suspicion?” he asked Gregory after a moment. “You know something? I could have had motives you never even considered. Let’s say I was trying to get rid of a body—someone I killed, just for the sake of argument. In order to bring about a situation in which it was easy to dispose of it, I got hold of a whole batch of bodies, began moving them around, and created a general confusion in which my victim was lost completely. What do you say to that?”

“Too literary,” Gregory replied. He was browsing through a thick, glossy-paged volume on psychometrics. “One of Chesterton’s stories has the same plot.”

“I never read it. I don’t like Chesterton. In your opinion, then, what made me do all this?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think of any possible motive. That’s why I don’t suspect you anymore.”

“Did you dig into my past? Did you draw up a chronology and a map showing all my movements? Did you look for clues and fingerprints? With only one exception, I wasn’t at all inconvenienced by your investigation—I didn’t even notice it.”

“The overall picture didn’t fall into place so I skipped the usual routine. Besides, I’m not a very systematic investigator. I improvise, or, you might say, I tend to be disorderly,” Gregory admitted. There was something stiff in among the pages of the book; he began turning them carefully. “I even have a theory to justify my careless work habits: until you have a specific theoretical structure to fit the facts into, there’s no point in collecting evidence.”

“Are you an intuitionist? Have you ever read Bergson?”

“Yes.”

The pages opened. Between them there was a large photographic negative. It was transparent, but by pressing it against the white paper Gregory was able to make out the silhouette of a human figure bent backward. Very slowly he raised the book closer to his eyes, peeping over it at Sciss. With one finger he moved the negative along the blank area between two columns of print, continuing the conversation at the same time:

“Sheppard told me you were at his place when the body in Lewes disappeared. So you have an alibi. I was acting like a dog looking for a buried bone—running from tree to tree and digging, even though there was nothing there. I was fooling myself. There was nothing for me to dig in, no grounds, nothing…”

Gregory systematically moved the photo along the white strip between the columns until he could make out the image on the negative. It was a picture of a naked woman leaning back against a table. One arm, resting against a stack of black bricks that reached almost to her nipple, was partly covered by her dark, flowing hair—light-colored, in reality. Her long legs stretched down from the table, entwined in a string of white beads. In her other hand she was holding a blurred object of some kind, pressing it against her black, tightly closed thighs. Her lips were open in an indescribable grimace that exposed her dark pointed teeth.

“I think I’ve already made myself enough of a fool in front of you,” Gregory continued.

He glanced suddenly at Sciss. The latter, smiling faintly, nodded his head.

“I don’t know. You present another point of view. If we were living at the time of the Inquisition you might have gotten what you wanted.”

“What does that mean?” Gregory asked. He took another quick look at the negative and suddenly realized that the beads were really a small chain. The girl’s ankles were shackled. Frowning, he slammed the book shut, put it back in its place, and eased himself gently from the arm into the chair.

“I have very little resistance to pain, you know,” Sciss continued. “Torture would squeeze every bit of evidence out of me. You would probably have broken every bone in my body to save your peace of mind—or, I should say, to maintain your mental equilibrium.”

“I understand Sheppard about as much as I do this case,” Gregory said slowly. “He assigned me to a hopeless job, and at the same time, right from the beginning, he didn’t give me a chance. But you’re probably not interested in any of this.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m not.” Sciss put his empty cup down on the table. “I did what I could.”

Gregory stood up and began to walk around the room. On the opposite wall there was a framed photograph, a large-sized picture of a work of sculpture, a good amateur study of light and shadow effects.

“Did you do this?”

“Yes.”

Sciss didn’t turn his head.

“It’s very good.”

Sweeping his eyes around the room, Gregory recognized the desk as the table in the negative. Those bricks—they were books, he thought. He checked the windows; quite ordinary, except that they were provided with black shades, now raised and tightly rolled.

“I didn’t think you had any artistic interests,” he said, returning to the small table. Sciss blinked and got to his feet with a certain amount of difficulty.

“I used to amuse myself with that kind of thing a long time ago. I have quite a few pictures like that one; would you like to see some of them?”

“Very much so.”

“Just a minute.” He looked through his pockets. “What did I do with my keys? Probably still in my coat.”

He went out, leaving the door open, and turned on the light in the foyer. He was gone for the longest time. In his absence Gregory was tempted to look at the volume on psychometrics again, but he decided not to take the risk. All of a sudden, he heard a scuffling noise—it sounded like something ripping, a piece of material being tom; Sciss appeared in the doorway. He was completely transformed. Straightened up, taking unnaturally long steps, he rushed toward Gregory as if he wanted to attack him. He was breathing noisily. Two steps before he reached Gregory he opened his hand. Something white fell out of it—a crumpled scrap of paper. Gregory recognized the napkin. Floating gently downward, it fell onto the floor. The corners of Sciss’s narrow lips were contracted in an expression of unspeakable loathing. Gregory’s cheeks and face began to burn as if they had been scalded.

“What do you want from me, you worm?” Sciss screamed in a falsetto voice, almost choking on the words. “A confession? Here’s your confession: it was me. Do you hear? It was me! All me! I planned it, set it up, and got rid of the bodies. I played with the corpses as if they were dolls—I felt like doing it, do you understand? Only don’t come near me, you worm, because I might vomit!!!” His face was livid. Backing up to the desk and supporting himself on it, he fell into a chair; with trembling hands he plucked a glass vial out of his watch pocket, pulled the cork out with his teeth, panting, and sucked in a few drops of the oily liquid. His breathing slowly eased and became deeper. Propping his head against a row of books on the shelf and spreading his legs apart, he forced himself to breathe more regularly. His eyes were closed. Finally he came to himself and sat up. Gregory’s face was burning; he watched without moving from his place.

“Go away. Please go away,” Sciss said in a hoarse voice, not opening his eyes. Gregory couldn’t move—it was as if he had taken root in the floor. He stood silently, waiting for God knows what.

“You won’t go? All right then!” Sciss stood up, coughing and gasping violently. He stretched himself, touched his shirt collar, which he had unbuttoned just a moment before, smoothed out his suit, and walked into the foyer. A moment later the outside door slammed.

Gregory was alone in the apartment, free to look through the drawers, the whole desk; he walked over to it, but even as he did so he knew he wasn’t going to search it. Lighting a cigarette he paced from wall to wall, trying unsuccessfully to think. He crushed the cigarette, looked around, shook his head, and went into the foyer. His coat was lying on the floor; when he picked it up he saw that it had been tom almost in half by a strong pull along the back; the loop and a small fragment of material were still on the hanger. He was standing with the coat in his hand when the telephone began to ring. He listened intently. The telephone kept ringing. He went back into the room and waited for it to stop, but the ringing continued. “Too few scruples and not enough results,” he thought. “I’m a snake. No, what was it? A worm.” He picked up the receiver.

“Hello.”

“You? How is it that…” He recognized Sheppard’s voice.

“Yes, it’s me. How … how did you know I was here?” Gregory asked. He suddenly became aware that his knees felt like rubber.

“Where else would you be in the middle of the night if you weren’t at home,” Sheppard answered. “Will you be there long? Is Sciss around?”

“No, Sciss isn’t here. He’s not in the apartment at all.”

“Well, who is? His sister?” Sheppard’s tone was severe.

“No, no one at all…”

“What did you say? You’re there alone? How did you get in?” Suspicion and distaste were evident in the Chief Inspector’s voice.

“We came here together, but he … walked out. We had … there was an argument,” Gregory said with great difficulty. “I … then, that is, tomorrow, I’ll be able … oh, the hell with it. What’s wrong? Why did you call?”

“Well, it happened. Williams is dead. You know who I mean.”

“I know.”

“He regained consciousness before he died and wanted to make a statement. I tried everything to get hold of you—I even sent out a radio call.”

“I… I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”

“There’s nothing to apologize for. We taped the statement. I want you to hear it.”

“Today?”

“Why not? Are you waiting for Sciss?”

“No, no … I was just going to leave…”

“Good. If you feel up to it, I want you to come over to my house right now. I’d rather not put this off until tomorrow.”

“I’ll be right over,” said Gregory in a dull voice. Then, remembering his coat, he added quickly:

“I have to stop at my place first. It’ll only take half an hour.”

Sheppard hung up. Gregory returned to the foyer, picked up his coat, threw it over his arm, and ran down the stairs. A quick look into the courtyard showed that the gray Chrysler was gone. He caught a taxi around the corner and went to the Savoy, where he transferred to the Buick. The motor was cold; listening intently to its rumbling while trying to get it started, he could only think about one thing: what would Sheppard say.

There was a no-parking sign on the street outside the Fenshawe house, but he ignored it, running up to the front door along a wet sidewalk that glistened like a mirror in the reflected light of the street lamps. He tried unsuccessfully to unlock the front door with his key, realizing with surprise that it was open. That had never happened before. The big entrance hall, usually completely dark, was faintly lit by a slow-moving, flickering reflection that rhythmically dimmed and intensified on the vaulted ceiling high above the stairs. Walking on tiptoe, Gregory went upstairs, coming to a stop at the door to the mirrored drawing room.

Where there had been a table before, now there was a platform covered with rugs, a row of lit candles along each side of it. In the corner mirrors, the reflected glow of the candles was heightened by the glimmering of the street lights outside. The air was filled with the odor of melted tallow; blue and yellow flames fluttered restlessly. The whole sight was so unexpected that Gregory stood immobilized for a long while, staring at the empty, oblong space between the double row of candles. He looked up slowly, seemingly counting the rainbow-colored sparks flaring up and waning in the low-hanging chandelier, then looked around—the room was deserted. He had to pass through it; sneaking along the wall, he moved on tiptoe like a burglar, his foot brushing against an indistinct, coiled, thin, twisted, whitish-colored wood shaving. Just as he reached the open door he heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Quickening his pace in the hope of reaching his room without a meeting, he saw some yellow sparks flickering in the dimness in front of him; an instant later Mrs. Fenshawe appeared in the room. She was walking slowly, a purple shawl embroidered with shimmering gold sequins flung over her black dress. Gregory didn’t know what to do; he wanted to avoid her but there was no way to get past. She seemed to be in a trance; he backed up to get out of her way and kept walking backward, with Mrs. Fenshawe striding along beside him, apparently unaware of his presence. Stumbling against the edge of a rug, Gregory came to a stop. They were back among the mirrors.