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The Prodigal Son
Colleen McCullough


Potent poisons and deadly rivalries in this glamorous thriller.Jim and Millie Hunter have it all: good looks, brilliant minds, and a meteoric rise to fame.Dr Jim Hunter is a genius biochemist, and author of a smash-hit science book that is propelling him to the top. His wife Millie, is a blonde bombshell and fellow scientist, researching rare poisons derived from puffer fish.They seem to have it all, but others in their academic circle have got the knives out, jealous of their success – and their inter-racial relationship arouses prejudice.So when a double murder is perpetrated, using poison stolen from Millie’s research lab, Captain Carmine Delmonico of Holloman Police must race to find the killer before they can claim their next victim.The pool of suspects is small, but nobody is talking.Have two men died to safeguard the publication of Jim’s book – or do rivalries and betrayals run deeper than that?


















For CAROLYN REIDY

the best editor I’ve ever had

a loyal and unflagging publisher

and my very dear friend

with love and thanks


Table of Contents

Title Page (#u33a02ccd-99f8-55ea-8cd6-d48558e1b4be)

Dedication (#u73d20588-6bed-5722-92af-4106d9edd088)

Prologue (#uc74b41c6-ce12-527f-bae1-884b4aaada23)

Part One (#uc4f29d6f-9df3-5828-bed8-077ccdf65ce8)

Thursday, January 2, 1969 (#u0e900272-4c7e-5488-9f6c-2b168abe921b)

Friday, January 3, 1969 (#u52d0a8e3-5651-5a92-8cbe-ae1048e40f88)

Saturday, January 4, 1969 (#u2fd78271-77e1-59a3-8260-8bc19a0acfab)

Sunday, January 5, 1969 (#u91a62291-c846-50b9-961e-6b416dead72f)

Monday, January 6, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Wednesday, January 8, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Thursday, January 9, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Friday, January 10, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Saturday, January 11, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Monday, January 13, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Tuesday, January 14, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Wednesday, January 15, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Thursday, January 16, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Friday, January 17, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Tuesday, March 4, until Friday, March 7, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Wednesday, March 12, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Friday, March 14, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Monday, March 31, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Tuesday, April 1, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Wednesday, April 2, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

Thursday, April 3, 1969 (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Colleen McCullough (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Prologue


Friday, January 3, 1969from

7:30 P.M. until 11:30 P.M.



Breath surrounding him in puffed clouds, John Hall put one not-quite-steady finger on the door buzzer and pushed. The opening chords of Beethoven’s fifth symphony answered, an unexpected shock; the last thing he had associated in his mind’s eye with this unknown father and family was kitsch. Then the door was opening, a tiny little maid was divesting him of coat and gloves, and dancing at her heels came a young and beautiful woman, pushing the maid aside to attack him with outflung arms, lush lips puckered in a kiss.

“Dearest, darlingest John!” she cried, the lips squashed against his cheek because he had turned his head. “I am your stepmother, Davina.” She seized his right arm. “Come and meet us, please. Is Connecticut cold after Oregon?” she cooed.

He didn’t answer, too overwhelmed by the greeting, the young woman’s almost feverish chatter (his stepmother? But she was years younger than he was!)—and the noticeably foreign accent she owned. Davina … Yes, of course his father had spoken of her on the phone during their several conversations, but he hadn’t anticipated a bimbo, and that was how she presented. A brunette bimbo, clad in the height of fashion: a tie-dyed chiffon pantsuit in all shades of red, very dark hair loose down her back, a flawless ivory skin, full and pouting red lips, vividly blue eyes.

“It was my idea to introduce you to the family at Max’s birthday party,” she was saying, in no hurry to commence the introductions. A very few people were scattered around an ugly, hideously modern room. “Sixty!” she went gushing on in well structured English, “Isn’t that wonderful? The father of a newborn son, and the father of a long lost son! I couldn’t bear for you and Max to meet in a less significant way than tonight, everybody looking their best.”

“So this black tie is your idea?” he asked, just a trifle ungraciously.

His displeasure didn’t impinge; she laughed, her rather ropelike hair swinging as she tossed her head complacently. “Of course, John dearest. I adore men in black tie, and it gives us women an excuse to dress up.”

At least her prattle—there was more of it—had enabled him to assimilate those present, even come to some conclusions. Three tall, robustly built men stood together, and were very obviously related; John could say with certainty that they were his father, his uncle and his first cousin: Max, Val and Ivan Tunbull. Their broad Slavic faces were set in lines speaking of undoubted success, their well opened yellowish eyes held confidence and competence, and their thick, waving thatches of brassy hair said that baldness did not run in the family. The Tunbull family … His family, whom he wouldn’t have known before tonight had they chanced to encounter each other at a different black tie dinner party …

A briskly professional looking man of about forty was standing with them, his very pregnant wife of around his own age beaming up at him fatuously: not a bimbo!

Where were Jim and Millie Hunter? They’d said they would be here! Surely no one could be later than he? It had taken almost an hour for him to get up the courage to ring that bell, striding up and down, smoking cigarettes, shrinking back into the shadows when the professional guy and his pregnant wife came across the street, engaged in what sounded like married couple banter. No, maybe not an hour, but a half hour, sure.

Came another dose of Beethoven in tinny bells; the tiny servant moved to the front door, and in they came, Millie and Jim Hunter. Oh, thank all the gods! Now he could meet his father with a confidence bolstered by knowing that Jim Hunter had his back. How much he had yearned for this reunion!

Max Tunbull was advancing toward him, hands outstretched. “John!” said Max in a gravelly voice, taking John’s right hand in both his, smiling on a wall of huge white teeth, then leaning in to embrace him, kiss his cheeks. “John!” The yellow eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Jesus, you’re so like Martita!”

When the fuss died down, when all the introductions were safely in the past, when John felt that he could make some choices of his own without his stepmother foiling him, he sought out Jim and Millie, havens in a stormy, unknown sea.

“I was about to head for the hills when you came in,” he confessed, more to Jim than to Millie. “Isn’t this weird?”

“Three women, six men, and black tie. You’re right, it is weird,” Jim said, but not sounding puzzled. “Typical for Davina, though. She loves to be surrounded by men.”

“Why am I not surprised?” John put his martini glass down with a grimace.

“You no like?” asked a voice at his elbow.

He turned to look, found the midget maid. “I’d much rather have a Budweiser,” he said.

“I get.”

“One for me as well!” called Jim to her back. “Have you managed to talk to your dad yet?”

“Nope. Maybe at the dinner table. It’s as if his bimbo wife doesn’t want to give me any opportunity.”

“Well, she can’t keep that up forever, especially now you’re in Holloman,” Millie comforted. “Vina has to be the center of attention, from the little I’ve seen of her. Jim knows her far better.”

“Thanks for being home last night when I blew in from Portland,” John said. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

“I can’t believe Max let you stay in a hotel,” Jim said.

“No, that’s my fault. I figured I’d better have some place of my own to retreat to if I needed, and right about now I’m glad. California or Oregon this ain’t.”

“Hey, California was a long time ago,” Jim said gruffly.

“It lives in my heart like yesterday.”

“This is more important, John,” Millie said. “Family is all-important.”

“With an ugly stepmother in control? All that’s missing are the ugly stepsisters. Or should that be stepbrothers?”

Millie giggled. “I see the analogy as far as Davina goes, John, but you’d make a lousy Cinderella. Anyway, it’s a role reversal. You’re not an impoverished kitchen slave, you’re a millionaire forestry tycoon.”

When Davina drove them to the dinner table, a wide one as well as long, John found that he and Max were seated together at the head of the table; Davina occupied the foot alone. Down the left side she put, from Max to her, Ivan Tunbull, Millie Hunter and Dr. Al Markoff. On the right side she seated, from John to her, Val Tunbull, Muse Markoff the pregnant wife, and Jim Hunter.

And at last John had a chance to talk to Max Tunbull, who turned a little side on and asked, “Do you remember your mother at all, John?”

“Sometimes I think I do, sir, at other times I’m convinced that what I think I remember is an illusion,” John said, his eyes suddenly more grey than blue. “I see a thin, sad woman who used to spend her time typing. According to Wendover Hall, who adopted me, she was very poor, made a living from typing manuscript for a dollar a page, no errors. That’s how he met her. Someone recommended her to type a book he’d written on forestry. It wasn’t long before he put her and me in a beautiful house at Gold Beach in Oregon. She died six months later. That I do remember! I must have been with her when she died, and I wouldn’t leave the body. Kinda like a dog, I guess. She’d been dead for two days when Wendover found us.”

Max blinked his own tears away. “My poor boy!”

“My turn to ask a question,” John said, voice hard, curt. “What was my mother like?”

Closing his eyes, Max leaned back in his chair slightly, as if speaking of his first wife didn’t come easily—as if, indeed, he endeavored never to think of her. “Martita was what these days we’d call a depressive, son. Back in the 1930s, the doctors said she was neurasthenic. Quiet and withdrawn, but as lovely on the inside as she was on the outside. My family didn’t like her, especially Emily—Val’s wife, in case you’re not keeping the names straight yet. I never realized how badly Em got under Martita’s skin until after she left, taking you with her. That was June of 1937, and you were barely a year old. Of course it all came out afterward, while I was scouring the country looking for you and your mom. Em worked on your mom’s insecurities every chance she had to be alone with her—relentless, unbelievably cruel! Convinced her she wasn’t loved or wanted.” The reddish-tan lips thinned. “Emily was punished, but too late for Martita.”

“She’s not here tonight—was she expelled from the family?” John asked uncomfortably.

Max gave a short, harsh laugh. “No! That’s not how most families work, John. Em just got the cold shoulder from the rest of us, including Val. Even Ivan wasn’t encouraged to take her side in anything—and he didn’t, either.”

“So that’s why Emily’s not here tonight?”

“Not really,” said Max nonchalantly. “Em’s grown in her own direction, which suits the rest of us just fine.”

“She won’t like my advent. It must look to her as if I’m going to reduce her son’s share of the family business.”

Max looked into this long lost son’s face with what seemed genuine love. “On that head, John, I can’t thank you enough. It came hard to Ivan to lose half his inheritance to my son Alexis, so to know you’re making no claim on me is wonderful.”

“I have so much money I’ll never be able to spend it,” John said, searching his father’s face. “Ivan can rest easy. I hope you’ve told him that?”

“No chance yet, but I will.”

Someone was banging a spoon against an empty crystal wine glass: Davina.

“Family and friends,” Davina began, each word carefully articulated, “we are gathered here tonight to kill the fatted calf for my darling husband’s prodigal son, lost to him for over thirty years. However, we also kill the fatted calf to honor my beloved Max, who turned sixty three days ago.”

She paused, eyes roaming the attentive faces. “We know why Emily isn’t here, but, dearest John, the absence of Ivan’s wife is equally habitual—Lily says she’s just too shy to face a room that might contain a stranger. Silly girl!”

Startled, John’s gaze flew to Ivan, who was glaring at his step-aunt in furious dislike, and John for one couldn’t blame him. What an awful thing to say! Max must really be under the thumb of this—no, not bimbo. Davina was a harpy, she ate people tooth and claw, slavering.

“On October thirteenth of last year,” the high voice went on, “I gave birth to Alexis. A son for Max at last, an heir to replace his beloved John.” She smiled at Max brilliantly. “And then, a month ago, John phoned from Oregon. He had found out who his family were, and he wanted to return to the fold.”

She emitted a histrionic sigh. “Naturally Max doubted John’s identity, but as the calls went on and the documents were produced in various lawyers’ offices, Max began to hope. And after the ring arrived, who could continue to doubt? Not my beloved Max! John the prodigal son had returned from the dead. So now we gather to celebrate the reunion of Max and John Tunbull. Lift your glasses and be upstanding!”

My name is John Hall, Davina, thought John to himself at the end of this disingenuous, mischievous speech. Not John Tunbull! Now I have to sit here while these people toast us. Prodigal son, for God’s sake! She never quite gets the story right, this eastern European harpy.

Embarrassed to look at any of those faces, his eyes went to the diminutive woman who appeared to be some kind of superior servant, moving among the hired help in smooth command. Clad in a shapeless grey dress with a shapeless body underneath, it was hard to arrive at her status in this menagerie. Her face was flat and suggested a cretin, as did the flat-backed skull, but the black, currantlike eyes were intelligent and the tiny, short-fingered hands deft as she wiped a dribbled speck of food from one plate and rejected another as unfit to be served. He had heard various people call her Uda; from what little he had seen thus far, John decided that she was Davina’s personal servant owning no allegiance to the Tunbulls. Just who was Davina Tunbull?

The meal was fantastic. Iranian caviar and trimmings was followed by the closest Davina could get to a fatted calf, she explained: roast milk-fed veal, lean, pink and juicy, with perfectly cooked vegetables, and an amazing cake for dessert. John ate well—he couldn’t resist such delicious fare.

As they rose from the table Davina sprang another surprise with another crystalline tattoo on a glass.

“Gentlemen, to Max’s study for coffee, after-dinner drinks and cigars!” she cried. “Ladies, to the drawing room!”

And finally, in a kind of foyer that ran between the dining room and Max’s study, John managed to waylay Jim Hunter.

“Do you believe this?” he asked, moving to one side of the traffic flow, six men fleeing from that awful woman.

Jim rolled his eyes, an almost scary expanse of stark white in such a black face. “It’s typical Davina,” he said. “I know the Tunbulls well after this past year and more putting A Helical God to press. But we’ll have plenty of time for me to tell you about that now that you’re in Holloman.”

“It was terrific to reminisce last night when I found you at home,” John said. His eyes, returned to blue, rested fondly on Jim’s face. “You look great, Jim. No one would ever recognize you for the old Gorilla Hunter.”

“For which I have you to thank. I can pay you back for my operation at last, old friend.”

“Don’t even try!” John frowned. “Millie’s still too thin.”

“That’s her nature, she’s an ectomorph.” The big, luminous green eyes, so strange in Jim Hunter’s darkness, swam with tears. “God, it is good to see you! Over six years!”

John hugged him hard, a strong yet manly embrace that Jim returned, then, emerging, saw Dr. Al Markoff glancing at his watch.

“Another hour, and I’ll be able to grab my wife and split. Davina’s hard to take tonight,” Markoff said, leading the way. “Long lost sons crawling out of the woodwork aren’t in her line, no offense, John, but the forestry background makes it an ideal metaphor.” He glanced at his watch again. “Not bad, not bad. It’s just ten-thirty. Muse and I will be sawing wood in less than an hour, ha ha ha. Punsters can’t help themselves, John.”

A little to John’s surprise (though his ego wasn’t bruised), Max put Jim Hunter in what was clearly the place of honor in his den: a big, padded, crimson leather wing chair. The whole room was crimson leather, gilt-adorned books, walnut furniture and leaded windows. Artificial. Davina, he would have been prepared to bet.

He drew up a straight chair in front of but to one side of Jim’s wing chair, hardly curious about Jim’s significance: it would all come out in time, and he had loads of time. Max had gone into a huddle with Val and Ivan, each flourishing a large cigar and a snifter of X-O cognac; the Tunbulls don’t skimp on life’s little niceties, he thought, and they love to huddle. Dr. Al drew up another straight chair on Jim’s other side, and the den settled into two separate conversations.

“Are you the Tunbull family physician, Al?” John asked.

“Lord, no! I’m a pathologist specializing in hematology,” Markoff said affably, “which won’t mean any more to you than Douglas fir does to me. Now Jim’s RNA I find fascinating.”

“Is this yours and Muse’s first child?” he pressed.

Markoff guffawed. “I wish! This, my bachelor friend, is the forties accident. We have two boys in their teens, but Muse is too scatty to throw geniuses, so they’re horribly ordinary.”

“I think you’d be a pretty cool father,” John said, enjoying the man’s easygoing humor as he expanded on the theme of the accidental forties pregnancy; while he talked, John almost forgot what he suspected was going on between Max, Val and Ivan: the non-depletion of Ivan’s share of the family business and estate.

He felt suddenly very tired. The meal had been long and his wine glass refilled too often, something he disliked. To gird up his loins for this meeting had taken courage, for there was much of his mother in John Hall, who shrank from confrontations. After Jim and Dr. Al moved on to nucleic acids, John managed a surreptitious peek at his watch: 11 p.m. They had been in the den for a half hour, which meant, according to Dr. Al, another half hour to go before he stood any chance of escaping. Max was gazing across at him with real love and concern, but how could he get to first base with a father shackled to a harpy like Davina? She would be rooting for baby Alexis, and why not?

Sweat was stinging his eyes; funny, he hadn’t noticed until now how hot the room was. Rather clumsily he groped in his trousers side pocket for his handkerchief, found it, yet couldn’t seem to pull it out.

“Hot,” he mumbled, running a finger around the inside of his collar. The handkerchief finally came free; he held it to his brow and mopped. “Anyone else hot?” he asked.

“Some,” said Jim, taking John’s brandy snifter from him. “It’s the end of the evening, why not take off your tie? No one will mind, I’m sure.”

“Of course take it off, John,” said Max, moving to the dial of the thermostat; the response of cooler air was immediate.

His lips felt numb; he licked at them. “Numb,” he said.

Jim had taken the tie off, loosened the collar. “Better?”

“Not—really,” he managed.

He couldn’t seem to draw air into his lungs properly, and gasped. Sweet cool air flooded in; he gasped again, but this time it was harder to suck in a breath. He swayed on the chair.

“Get him on the floor, guys,” he heard Dr. Al say, then felt himself laid supine, a loosely rolled coat behind his head. Markoff was ripping open the buttons on his shirt and barking at someone: “Call an ambulance—resuscitation emergency. Max, tell Muse to give you my bag.”

Nauseated, he retched, tried to vomit, but nothing came up, and now he just felt sick, didn’t have the strength to retch. His teeth chattered, he was appalled to find his whole body invaded by a fine tremor. Then came an almighty, convulsive jerk, as if it were happening to someone else—why was he so aware of everything that was going on? Not in a disembodied way—that he could have borne, to hover looking down on himself. But still to be inside himself going through it was awful!

All that became as nothing compared to his struggle to breathe, an ever-increasing impossibility that flung him into a terror he had no way to show beyond the look in his eyes. I am dying, but I can’t tell them! They don’t know, they’ll let me die! I need air, I need air! Air! Air!

“Heartbeat’s weak rather than suspiciously irregular, it isn’t a primary cardiac catastrophe,” Dr. Al was saying, “but his airway is still patent. Shouldn’t have this gear with me, except that I borrowed it for a refresher course in emergency medicine … Gotta keep up with the times … I’ll intubate and bag breathe.”

And while he talked he worked, one of those odd people who like to do both simultaneously. With the first puff of oxygen into his lungs, John knew through his mania that he could not have had a better man treating him if it had gone down in the ER itself. For perhaps six or seven blissful breaths he thought he’d beaten whatever it was, but then the gas bag and the strong pressure on it couldn’t force his air passages to inflate, even passively.

Inside his head he was screaming, screaming, screaming a blind, utter panic. No thoughts of the life he had lived or any life to come intruded for as long as the width of a photon; no heaven, no hell, just the horrifying presence of imminent death, and he so alive, awake, forced to endure to the last, bitterest … In his eyes an electrified terror, in his mind a scream.

John Hall died eleven minutes after he started feeling hot. Dr. Al Markoff knelt to one side of him fighting to keep him alive, Dr. Jim Hunter knelt to his other side holding his hand for comfort. But life was gone, and of comfort there was none.




PART ONE


From

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1969

until

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 1969




THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1969


“Daddy, what’s the procedure when I’m missing a toxin?”

Patrick O’Donnell’s startled blue eyes flew to his daughter’s face, expecting to see it laughing at having successfully pulled Daddy’s leg. But it was frowning, troubled. He gave her a mug of coffee. “It depends, honey,” he said calmly. “What toxin?”

“A really nasty one—tetrodotoxin.”

Holloman County’s Medical Examiner looked blank. “You’ll have to be more specific, Millie. I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s a neurotoxin that blocks nerve transmission by acting on the pores of the voltage-gated, fast sodium channels of the cell membrane—or, in simpler words, it shuts the nervous system down. Very nasty! That’s what makes it so interesting experimentally, though I’m not interested in it per se. I use it as a tool.” Her blue eyes, so like his, gazed at him imploringly.

“Where did you get it from, Millie?”

“I isolated it myself from its source—the blowfish. Such a cute little critter! Looks like a puppy you’d just love to hug to death. But don’t eat it, especially its liver.” She was perking up, sipping the coffee with enjoyment now. “How do you manage to make a good brew in this godawful building? Carmine’s coffee sucks.”

“I pay for it myself and severely limit those invited to drink it. Okay, you’ve jogged my memory cells. I have heard of tetrodotoxin, but only in papers, and in passing. So you actually isolated it yourself?”

“Yes.” She stopped again.

“I’ll do a Carmine: expatiate.”

“Well, I had a tank of blowfish, and it seemed a shame to waste all those livers and other rich bits, so I kept on going and wound up with about a gram of it. If taken by mouth, enough to kill ten heavyweight boxers. When I finished my experimental run I sealed the six hundred milligrams I had left over in glass ampoules, one hundred milligrams to each, slapped a poison sticker on the beaker holding the six ampoules, and put it in the back of my refrigerator with the three-molar KC1 and stuff,” said Millie.

“Don’t you lock the refrigerator?”

“Why? It’s mine, and my little lab. My grant doesn’t run to a technician—I’m not Jim, surrounded by acolytes.” She held out her mug for more coffee. “I lock my lab door when I’m not in it. I’m as paranoid as any other researcher, I don’t advertise my work. And I’m post-doctoral, so there’s no thesis adviser looking over my shoulder. I would have thought that no one even knew I had any tetrodotoxin.” Her face cleared, grew soft. “Except for Jim, that is. I mentioned it in passing to him, but he’s not into neurotoxins. His idea of soup is E. coli.”

“Any idea when it disappeared, sweetheart?”

“During the last week. I did a stocktake of my refrigerator on Christmas Eve, and the beaker was there. When I did another stocktake this morning, no beaker anywhere—and believe me, Dad, I looked high and low. The thing is, I don’t know what to do about losing it. It didn’t seem like something Dean Werther is equipped to deal with. I thought of you.”

“Reporting to me is fine, Millie. I’ll notify Carmine, but only as a courtesy. It can’t be equated with someone’s stealing a jar of potassium cyanide—that would galvanize everybody.” Patrick gave a rueful grin. “However, my girl, it’s time to shut the stable door. Put a lock on your refrigerator and make sure you have the only key.”

He leaned to take her hand, long and graceful, but marred by bitten nails and general lack of care. “Honey, where you did go wrong was in keeping what you didn’t use up. You should have disposed of it as a toxic substance.”

She flushed. “No, I don’t agree,” she said, looking mulish. “The extraction process is difficult, painstaking and extremely slow—a lesser biochemist would have botched it. I’m no Jim, but in my lab techniques I’m way above your run-of-the-mill researcher. At some time in the future I might need the leftover tetrodotoxin, and if I don’t, I can legitimately sell it to get my investment in the blowfish back. My grant committee would love that. I’ve stored it under vacuum in sealed glass ampoules, then slowed its molecules down by refrigerating it. I want it potent and ready to use at any time.”

She got to her feet, revealing that she was tall, slender, and attractive enough to turn most men’s heads. “Is that all?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ll talk to Carmine, but if I were you I wouldn’t go to Dean Werther. That would start the gossip ball rolling. Are you sure of the amount in each ampoule? A hundred milligrams in—liquid? Powder?”

“Powder. Snap the neck of the ampoule and add one milligram of pure, distilled water for use. It goes into solution very easily. Ingested, one heavyweight boxer. Injection is a very different matter. Half of one milligram is fatal, even for a heavyweight boxer. If injected into a vein, death would be rapid enough to call nearly instantaneous. If injected into muscle, death in about ten to fifteen minutes from the onset of symptoms.” Such was her relief at sharing her burden that she sounded quite blithe.

“Shit! Do you know the symptoms, Millie?”

“As with any substance shutting down the nervous system, Dad. If injected, respiratory failure due to paralysis of the chest wall and the diaphragm. If swallowed, nausea, vomiting, purging and then respiratory failure. The duration of the symptoms would depend on dosage and how fast respiratory failure set in. Oh, I forgot. If swallowed, there would be terrible convulsions too.” She had reached the door, dying to be gone. “Will I see you on Saturday night?”

“Mom and I wouldn’t miss it, kiddo. How’s Jim holding up?”

Her voice floated back. “Okay! And thanks, Dad!”

Snow and ice meant that Holloman was fairly quiet; Patrick made his way through the warren of the County Services building sure he would find Carmine in his office—no weather to be out in, even black activists knew that.

Six daughters, he reflected as he plodded, did not mean fewer headaches than boys, though Patrick Junior was doing his solo best to prove boys were worse. Nothing in the world could force him to take a shower; two years from now he’d be a prune from showers, but that shimmered on a faraway horizon.

Millie had always been his biggest feminine headache, he had thought because she was also his most intelligent daughter. Like all of them, she had been sent to St. Mary’s Girls’ School, which for masculine company tapped the resources of St. Bernard’s Boys. Including, over eighteen years ago—September 1950, so long ago!—a special case boarder from South Carolina, a boy whose intelligence was in the genius range. On the advice of their priest, an old St. Bernard’s boy, his parents had sent him to Holloman for his high schooling. With good reason. They were African Americans in a southern state who wanted a northern education for their precious only child. Their Catholicism was rare, and Father Gaspari prized them. So Jim Hunter, almost fifteen, arrived to live with the Brothers at St. Bernard’s: James Keith Hunter, a genius.

He and Millie met at a school dance that happened to coincide with her fifteenth birthday; Jim was a few days older. The first Patrick and Nessie knew of him came from Millie, who asked if she could invite the boarder at St. Bernard’s for a home cooked meal. His blackness stunned them, but they were enormously proud of their daughter’s liberalism, taking her interest in the boy as evidence that Millie was going to grow up to make a difference in how America regarded race and creed.

It had been an extraordinary dinner, with the guest talking almost exclusively to Patrick about his work—not the gruesome side, but the underlying science, and with more knowledge of that science than most who worked in the field. Patrick was still groping his way into forensic pathology at that time, and freely admitted that conversing with Jim Hunter had administered a definite onward push.

A shocking dinner too. Both Patrick and Nessie saw it at once: the look in Millie’s eyes when they rested on Jim, which was almost all the time. Not burgeoning love. Blind adoration. No, no, no, no! That couldn’t be let happen! Not because of a nonexistent racial prejudice, but because of sheer terror at what such a relationship would do to this beloved child, the brightest of the bunch. It couldn’t be let happen, it mustn’t happen! While every look Millie gave Jim said it had already happened.

Within a week Jim and Millie were the talk of East Holloman; Patrick and Nessie were inundated with protests and advice from countless relatives. Millie and Jim were an item! A hot item! But how could that be, when each child went to a different school, and their teachers disapproved as much as everyone else? Not from racial prejudice! From fear at potentially ruined young lives. For their own good, they had to be broken up.

The fees were a burden, but had to be found; Millie was taken out of St. Mary’s and sent to the Dormer Day School, where most of the students were the offspring of Chubb professors or wealthy Holloman residents. Not the kind of place parents with five children and a sixth on the way even dreamed of. But for Millie’s sake, the sacrifices had to be made.

An instinct in Patrick said it would not answer, and the instinct was right. No matter how many obstacles were thrown in their way, Millie O’Donnell and Jim Hunter continued to be an item.

Even looking back on it now as he tramped through County Services was enough to bring back the indescribable pain of those terrible years. The misery! The guilt! The knowledge of a conscious social crime committed! How could any father and mother sleep, knowing their ethics and principles were colliding head on with their love for a child? For what Patrick and Nessie foresaw was the suffering inflicted on Millie for her choice in boyfriends. Worse because she was prom queen material, the most gorgeous girl in her class. The Dormer Day School seethed with just as much resentment as St. Bernard’s and St. Mary’s—Millie O’Donnell was living proof that a black man’s penile size and sexual prowess could seduce even the cream of the crop. Girls hated her. Boys hated her. Teachers hated her. She had a black boyfriend with a sixteen-inch dick, who could possibly compete?

The trouble was that their teachers couldn’t protest that the friendship caused a drop in grades or a lack of interest in sport; Jim and Millie were straight A-plus students; Jim was a champion boxer and wrestler, and Millie a track star. They graduated at the head of their respective classes, with a virtual carte blanche in choice of a college. Harvard, Chubb, or any of the many great universities.

They went to Columbia together, enrolled in Science with a biochemistry major. Perhaps they hoped that New York City’s teeming, hugely diverse student population would grant them some peace from their perpetual torments. If so, their hopes were dashed at once. They endured four more years of persecution, but showed the world they couldn’t be crushed by graduating summa cum laude. Patrick and Nessie had tried to keep in contact, go down to see them when they wouldn’t come home, but were always rebuffed. It was as if, Patrick had thought at that time, they were growing a carapace thick enough and hard enough to render them invulnerable, and that included shutting out parents. He and Nessie had gone to their graduation, but Jim’s parents had not. Apparently they had given up the fight, just as strenuous on their side to sever their son from his white girlfriend—and who could blame them either? It takes maturity to know the pain …

The day after they graduated, Jim and Millie married in a registry office with no one there to wish them well. It was near Penn Station; they walked, carrying their suitcases, to board a crowded, smelly train to Chicago, traveling on student passes. In Chicago they changed to another crowded, smelly train that ambled on a poorly maintained railbed all the way to L.A. For most of the two and a half days they sat on the floor, but at least at Caltech they’d be warm in winter.

At the end of the two-year Master’s program Jim was starting to be known, his color beginning to be an advantage north of the Mason-Dixon Line—until people learned he had a beautiful white biochemist wife. However, the University of Chicago was willing to take Mr. and Mrs. Hunter as doctoral fellows—back to cold winters and cheerless summers.

When they received their Ph.D.s they seemed to meet a solid wall of opposition. No matter how much a school wanted Dr. Jim Hunter, it wasn’t prepared to offer employment to his wife, Dr. Millicent Hunter. He was one of the biggest whales in the vast protean ocean, whereas she was a sprat. As post-doctoral fellows or as faculty, the financial outlay for two Hunters was considered excessive. If this was complicated by the inter-racial nature of their union, no one was prepared to say.

After six years in Chicago they were poorer than ever, never having actually held a job. Their grants contained a subsistence-style living allowance, and on that they subsisted, dressing from K-mart and eating supermarket bargains. A Chinese meal to go was a luxury they indulged in once a month.

Then their luck turned.

In 1966 the President of Chubb University, Mawson MacIntosh, was actively looking for racial misfits—and also for potential Nobel Prize winners. Jim Hunter looked good on both counts; M.M. was determined that Chubb would stay in the forefront of academic integration at all levels. Without any idea that Dr. Millicent Hunter was the Holloman Medical Examiner’s daughter, M.M. sent a quiet directive to Dean Hugo Werther of Chemistry that the Doctors Hunter be given two faculty positions. They were not in the same lab, and her post involved some teaching, but they were both in the Burke Biology Tower and would be seen together. Dr. Millie pleased M.M.; biochemistry was a discipline that visibly changed while you looked at it, so teachers were rare. Whereas Dr. Jim Hunter was a breaker of new ground, his mind that of a true genius. Only his having a beautiful white highly educated wife told against him, and that could not be seen to matter. The couple had been married for years, so probably had nothing left to learn about racial discrimination.

Thus it had been that over two years ago Millie had phoned out of the blue and asked if she and Jim could beg a bed for a couple of nights. Admittedly four of the O’Donnell daughters were gone, but of spare bedrooms there were none; Carmine had come to their rescue by giving them use of his apartment in the Nutmeg Insurance building before he sold it upon his marriage.

Overjoyed though they were at the return of Millie and Jim, Patrick and Nessie discovered very quickly that whatever they could offer was too little, too late. The Doctors Hunter were armored against the world so strongly that even parents couldn’t find a weakness in the rivets. And what could they have done differently? Fear for a child leads to all sorts of hideously wrong decisions, Patrick reflected as he tramped up a set of cold stone stairs. If only Jim had looked like Harry Belafonte or at least been an ordinary brown! But he didn’t, and he wasn’t.

If the relationship between the Doctor’s Hunter and her parents was a rather distant one, it was also genuinely friendly. What Patrick and Nessie continued to fear was simple: how could a fifteen-year-old possibly own the wisdom to choose the right life’s partner? One day either Millie or Jim was going to wake up and discover that the childhood bond was gone, that a cruel world had finally managed to separate them. So far it had not happened, but it would. It would! They had no children, but that was probably deliberate. Until now, they plain couldn’t afford a family. The steel in them! It amazed Patrick, who had to wonder if his own comfortable marriage to Nessie could have taken one-tenth of the blows Millie and Jim took every day.

Over two years last September since they came to Holloman!

Carmine was in. As he came through the door, Patrick had to smile. His first cousin was napping in the extremely efficient way he had perfected over hundreds of hours waiting to be called as a trial witness. What had happened last night?

“Did you and Desdemona toast the New Year too lavishly, cuz?” he asked.

Carmine didn’t jump or twitch; he opened one clear eye. “Nope. Alex is teething and Julian is like his daddy—a very light sleeper.”

“You would have them so close together.”

“Don’t look at me. It was Desdemona’s idea.” Carmine swung his feet off the kitchen table he used as a desk and opened both eyes. “Why are you slumming, Patsy?”

“Have you heard of tetrodotoxin?”

“Vaguely. It’s been suggested in a sensational Australian case some years ago—the symptoms fit, but they couldn’t isolate a poison of any kind. The Japanese flirt with it, I found out during my years in the occupation forces as a Tokyo M.P. Blowfish, blue-ringed octopus and some other marine nasties. According to my sources, it’s fully metabolized and out of the system before autopsy can detect it,” Carmine said.

Patrick blinked. “You perpetually amaze me, cuz. I presume it has to be logged in a poisons register if it’s anywhere near the general public, but what happens if it’s nowhere around the general public, yet goes missing?”

“That depends on whether you’re ethical, or the type who covers his ass. Ethical, and you report its loss to someone. If inclined to cover your own ass, you write ‘accidentally destroyed’ or ‘out of date and discarded as per regulations’ in a register. But I presume this victim is ethical, right?”

“Right. My problem daughter, Millie. She’s been working with the stuff, had enough left over to kill ten heavyweight boxers, divided into six glass ampoules of a hundred milligrams each—yes, yes, I’ll slow down! She put the six ampoules into a beaker, stuck the skull-and-crossbones on it, then shoved it in the back of her lab refrigerator.” Patrick frowned. “She didn’t tell anyone it was gone until she came to see me. I advised her to remain silent, to tell no one further.”

“Who else knew it was there?”

“Only Jim. She told him, in passing. Not his field.”

“Was it labeled, apart from the poison sticker?”

“She didn’t say. But while she may be too honest to forge an entry in her register, she is highly organized, Carmine. It would have been coded rather than named. Anyone poking through her refrigerator wouldn’t have known what he was looking at,” Patrick said. “My girl’s worst fault is that she’s too trusting. An untidy worker she’s not. The trust baffles me, I confess. How can you trust a world that shits on you the way Millie’s world shits on her?”

“It’s her nature,” Carmine said gently. “Millie is an honest-to-goodness saint.” He caught sight of the railroad clock on his wall. “Lunch at Malvolio’s?”

“Sounds good to me.”

As soon as Merele cleared the dishes away Carmine returned to his cousin’s problem.

“You’d better look up tetrodotoxin’s clinical symptoms,” he said. “If anyone took it with nefarious intentions, a gurney holding a victim is going to roll through your morgue doors, and the faster you can screen for tetrodotoxin, the better your chances of finding it. In fact, why don’t you tell Paul you’re running a little unofficial test to keep your technicians on their toes? Tell him they’re to look for abstruse neurotoxins like tetrodotoxin. It won’t fool Paul, but your technicians are used to your—er—unofficial exams. Let Paul in on it, he’s no gossip, Patsy.”

“Well, I have to keep my technicians on their toes now my lab is the major one in the state. I’ll look, Carmine—and look hard.” His face puckered; he fought for control and found it. “This isn’t fair! Millie doesn’t need extra grief.”

“She did exactly the right thing in reporting her loss,” Carmine said, voice level. “Had she concealed the theft, you might easily have missed a tetrodotoxin death at P.M. If the thief’s motive was nefarious, he was looking for a rare and undetectable poison. And that means he’s knowledgeable. A biochemist or biologist, or maybe a doctor.” Carmine frowned, toyed with his spoon. “Given Jim’s relationship to Millie, he’s out of the picture, and that means someone else knew about the tetrodotoxin.”

Patrick shivered. “Carmine, don’t! You’re talking as if the thief really does have murder in mind. I mean, this is all pure hypothesis! A bottle washer does her glassware once a week, there are electricians and plumbers—Millie doesn’t work in a vacuum.”

“Calm down, cuz, of course it’s hypothesis. We’ll cross the bridges as we come to them, but it never hurts to be fully prepared. I can already note that Dr. Millicent Hunter informed the Medical Examiner and the police that she found six hundred milligrams of tetrodotoxin missing from her laboratory refrigerator—what else could she have done? The substance wasn’t named, though it bore a generic poisons sticker—that really is suspicious, Patsy. She’s sure nothing else went missing—hang on.” Carmine slid out of the booth. “I’ll be back in a minute—and lunch is on me.”

Patrick watched his cousin say something to Luigi, who pushed a phone across the counter. Carmine made a couple of calls, the second one the longer of the two, then returned.

“Nothing else is missing, even sterile water. The substance in question was coded—no indication of its real identity.”

“So she can’t be blamed? Ought it to have been locked up?”

“Given that she locked her lab door even if she was only going to the bathroom, Judge Thwaites would probably rule that the circumstances of Millie’s research routine made locking it up unnecessary, given its anonymity. A white powder in a glass ampoule—it could be anything from cocaine to flour. Honest, Patsy, Millie’s okay.”

Carmine gave his cousin a look that held as much love as exasperation; one’s children caused torments and apprehensions just not possible in any lesser beings. Patrick was caught in the web of his fear for this most worrisome daughter.

“You know, I don’t label my stuff poison,” Patrick said.

“You don’t have to. Your lab is off limits to those who don’t have clearance, especially now there’s a viewing room two floors up for identification,” Carmine said comfortably. “All it took was the installation of an elevator shaft between your floor and ours.”

“I keep all the known poisons in a safe, of course,” Patrick went on, grappling the problem like a dog an old and meatless bone. “Trouble is, there are so many toxic ways to die, from Drano to household bleach. It used to be much easier when people just used rat or wasp poison—Carmine, don’t let life hurt my Millie yet again!”

“I’ll give it my best shot, I promise. How long have they been together now?”

“Eighteen years last September. They’re thirty-two.”

“What drew them together, Patsy?”

“I asked Millie that a long time ago, before they went to Columbia. All she said was that their eyes met.”

“Doesn’t happen that way for many.”

“Never did for me.” Patrick sounded desolate.

“Nor me, though I did love the color of Desdemona’s eyes. Like pack ice, that eerie blue.”

“I deemed them cold. That was why I disliked her.”

“We do go on the eyes, Patsy, no argument there.”

Patrick put his hand over Carmine’s on the table. “But not for a long time now, cuz. She’s a great woman, your wife.”

Carmine changed the subject. “M.M. whispered to me that the Chubb University Press expects Jim Hunter’s new book to be a popular bestseller. It’s about the hand of God in our design for life—I didn’t really get it, but M.M. says that anyone who reads the book will. He read it in manuscript and he’s wild about it. Lucky for Jim that Don Carter lasted as Head Scholar of C.U.P. through to the end of the publication process. Tom Tinkerman, the new Head Scholar, is not a Jim Hunter fan—too Christian in the orthodox sense, brands Jim an atheist.”

A look of horror flashed into Patrick’s eyes. “Carmine, no! Tell me things are going to continue to go well for Jim! He and Millie need to start a family soon, and they’re counting on extra income from book royalties—Don Carter gave him a generous contract, from what Jim said to me.”

“And Tinkerman can’t tinker with that, Patsy. I think M.M. is more concerned with making sure C.U.P. throws its weight behind Jim’s book,” Carmine said, wondering if there was anything that wouldn’t alarm Patsy when it came to Millie.

“Tinkerman is a sanctimonious pedant!” Patrick snapped. “Why the hell did the Chubb Board of Governors give him the Head Scholar’s job? He’s not equipped for it, Jim says.”

“From what M.M. told me, blame the Parsons. Man, that crew! I well remember them from the Hug case.”

“And I,” Patrick said, sounding grim.

“They have this collection of European art, reputedly the biggest and best in America,” said Carmine. “The head of the family bequeathed the collection to Chubb along with many millions in endowments, but he didn’t put a delivery date on the art collection. The surviving Parsons decided to keep the art. M.M. didn’t push, hoping that when they did deliver, they’d donate a gallery to hold the collection. Until the banker guy with the wrong last name had one drink too many at the last Parson meeting with M.M., and told him they figured they could hang on to the paintings for another fifty years.” The broad, handsome face broke into smiles; Carmine’s amber eyes glowed. “M.M. got his dander up—a very dangerous state of affairs.”

“Jesus!” Patrick’s breath escaped in a hiss. “Did the banker guy fancy suicide, or something?”

“Must have. M.M. announced that he’d sue very publicly unless the entire collection down to the last Leonardo cartoon was delivered to Chubb’s Curator of Art within a month. The Parsons were fucked, and knew it. Their revenge on M.M.? A new Head Scholar named Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman.”

“And here was I thinking federal politics were dirty!” said Patrick, grinning. “Still, not a victory for the Chubb University Press. Or Jim.”

“Care to bet how long Tinkerman lasts as Head Scholar? Not many moons beyond the receipt of the last Parson painting.”

“But too long for Jim,” Patrick said gloomily, “unless he can hold off on publishing.”

“I don’t pretend to be an expert on C.U.P., cuz, but I do not think that’s possible,” Carmine said, voice gentle. “Once a book’s in print, it takes up a lot of space. They ship it out.”

“I don’t think I’ll go on Saturday night.”

“Patsy, you have to go! Desdemona and I can’t wave all the flags for Jim,” Carmine said sternly. “What would Millie say if you and her mom weren’t there?”

“Pah!” The fresh, fair face screwed up in disgust. “Millie and Jim are the only reason I will be there, that’s for sure. It seems wrong to give a banquet in honor of someone whom not a soul wanted in the position—even, now you tell me, M.M. Though I guess the Parsons will be there to cheer for Tinkerman.”

“Bound to be.”

“At least it’s the relative comfort of black tie,” Patrick said, looking evil. “You won’t have to wear your dress uniform, just your academic robes.”

“You’ll be in the same boat, Patsy—academic robes.”




FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1969


“Think of this as good practice,” Millie soothed. “By the time the banquet rolls around tomorrow night, you’ll be a true veteran.” She made an adjustment to Jim’s tie and stepped back. “Perfect! So handsome! There won’t be anyone in your league.”

Sentiments that were, he knew after listening to them for eighteen years, utterly mistaken. His looks had improved out of sight, but he’d never be Harry Belafonte. The only reason he turned heads was the ravishing white woman on his arm.

Old enough now to be settling into his ultimate physique, Jim Hunter was several inches over six feet in height, had a neck so thick and strong that it tended to dwarf his head, massive shoulders and upper arms, and a barrel of a chest. When he walked he waddled thanks to bulging thighs, but the right knee injury that had put paid to any hopes of a football scholarship made him favor the right leg in a noticeable limp.

The face, to those seeking it atop so much raw power, used to be no disappointment, for it had been brutish. Jim Hunter’s skin was nigh impossibly black, as black as the blackest native African’s; when he was photographed, even in color, his face was so dark it lost whole layers of definition. To see what he really looked like necessitated seeing the living man. His bones were unobtrusive, the cheekbones flat, and his nose in the old days had splayed outward with hugely gaping nostrils. At St. Bernard’s he had instantly been nicknamed Gorilla, a huge insult compounded by his uprooted bewilderment, this all-white environment so far from home: the days of black immigration from the South were still to come, so he was a true novelty in Italian-American East Holloman. Adolescents are cruel; to find the Gorilla could ace them all in a classroom without even extending himself didn’t go down well. Nor, when almost immediately he took up with the St. Mary’s belle Millie O’Donnell, did that go down well. Add Jim Hunter’s temper plus his tendency to harbor grudges, and the pattern was set. He fought. Dozens of fights against ever-increasing numbers of opponents had eventually destroyed his superficial, even some of his deepest, sinuses as well as afflicted him with agonizing pain in his facial nerves. While the gorilla look grew worse.

Only John Hall’s loan of ten thousand dollars for surgical repair had saved Jim’s life, and in more ways than one. After the surgery the gorilla look had vanished; his nose was straight and quite narrow, its nostrils small and unobtrusive, he had bones in his cheeks and a good jawline. Finally his one great natural endowment, a pair of large, astonishingly green eyes, could come into their own and dominate his face beneath a high, broad brow.

But the psychic scars persisted down to this moment when his beautiful white wife tied his black tie and told him he looked so handsome. These were the great years of the Black Revolution, of last-ditch stands by fanatical whites against the inevitable opening up of all horizons to the black man, and Jim Hunter knew it, acknowledged it, even understood it. What he couldn’t shake off was his deep conviction that much of his own ordeal was due to his marrying a white prom queen. She had been with him since his fifteenth birthday, so much a part of him that she was a cause. A cause? No! The cause.

A sensible streak had whispered to Jim that, appearing so very African, he must not go the Afro route; his hair was close-cropped and he wore the apparel of a post-doctoral fellow—chinos, white cotton shirt, loafers, a beat-up tweed jacket.

Except when, as now, he was being squeezed into the biggest tuxedo the formal-wear shop hired out.

“Don’t flex your muscles,” Millie was warning.

He hardly heard her, thinking how he’d gotten there. The years at Chubb had been a landslide of discoveries and seminal papers, or maybe a roller-coaster was a better analogy. Most of those who talked excitedly about Professor Jim Hunter had no idea he was a black ex-gorilla married to a dishy white chick. His reputation was made; now all he had to do was hang in there over this coming twelve months, during which he would enjoy fame of a different kind: a celebrity author. Though when Don Carter had started to describe some of the things he would be called upon to do, he shrank away in horror. Most of all, he was not ready to face the whole of a vast nation as the blackest of black men with a beauty queen white wife.

Millie was standing there, gazing at him with the eyes of love. Her sister Kate, a clothes horse, had lent her a dress, kind of wispy over a plain lining of lavender blue, the wisps the same shade, but varied in intensity. She looked out of this world. Her legs were on display because miniskirts were in for evening parties, Kate said. And Kate had good taste, down to the loose cord of sparkling rhinestones around Millie’s hips.

She didn’t look happy, despite the love. Poor little girl! The guy who pinched her tetrodotoxin ought to be shot for the major crime of worrying her. And then there was John Hall …

He took her face between his huge hands, holding it like a single rose. “You are so beautiful,” he said in the back of his throat. “How did I ever get this lucky?”

“No, how did I?” she whispered back, stroking his hands. “One look, and I was done for. I will love you until I die, James Keith Hunter.”

His laugh was almost too quiet to hear. “Oh, c’mon, honey! Death is just a transition. D’you think that our molecules won’t shift heaven and earth to be together as long as time endures? We may die, but our molecules won’t.”

Her laugh was silent. “Just taking the mickey, my love, my joy—my dear, dear love.”

“This time next year we’ll be comfortable, I promise.”

“A promise I’ll hold you to.” She twisted a scarf around her neck and shrugged into a sweater before he helped her into her down coat, old and weeping, but Chicago-warm. “Oh, winter! I can’t wait for spring this year—1969 is going to be ours, Jim.”

His own Chicago down coat was a better fit than the tux, creaking at its seams. “At least it’s not snowing.”

“I dislike these people,” she said as she watched him lock the front door. “Fancy John turning up their relative.”

“You know what they say—you can choose your friends, but not your relatives. Though the Tunbulls aren’t too bad once you get to know them.”

“Poor John! I wonder how he’ll feel when he meets his stepmother. From what he said last night, most of his contact with his father concerned proving that he was the long lost son,” said Millie.

“That’s logical,” Jim answered. “Don’t worry, Millie, it will all come out in the wash sooner or later.” He looked suddenly hopeful. “Just think! I’ll soon be able to pay John back for that sinus operation if my book does what they say it will. Ten thousand dollars! Yet one more debt. A hundred big ones in student loans …”

“Stop it, Jim!” she snapped, looking fierce. “We’re Chubb faculty now, you’re about to be famous, and our income will pay back every last debt.”

“If Tinkerman doesn’t suppress A Helical God. Oh, Millie, it’s been such a long, hard road! I don’t think I could bear another disappointment.” Jim removed the stick from the old Chevy’s gas pedal. “The car’s good and warm. Get in.”

Davina and Max Tunbull lived in a big white clapboard house on Hampton Street, just off Route 133 in the Valley, and not more than half a mile from the invisible boundary beyond which the Valley became a less salubrious neighborhood. There were actually three Tunbull houses on this longish, rambling street of mostly vacant lots, but Max and Davina lived in the dominant one on the knoll, by far the most imposing. A house on the far side of the street had some pretensions to affluence, but there could be no doubt whose residence kinged it over all others.

When Millie and Jim arrived they found themselves the last, dismaying—had it really taken so long to squeeze Jim into his hired tux? What an idiocy! Black tie!

It wasn’t the first time she had met Davina, but the woman still jarred and disturbed her. Millie’s life to date had been spent in traditionally unfeminine pursuits and with mostly male peers, a pattern set very early on thanks to her liaison with Jim. So the Davinas of this world were more foreign even than this Davina really was; they chattered of things Millie knew nothing about, nor hungered to know about.

John Hall was almost pathetically glad to see them, which made it all worthwhile; despite Jim’s importance to Max, they probably would have declined this invitation had John not visited last night and implored them. The poor guy was terrified, but that was typical John, a loner, shy, unsure of himself until he settled into the kind of friendship he had enjoyed with the Hunters back in California.

But of course Davina wouldn’t leave them alone. Not surprising to Millie, who knew of Davina’s reputation: see an attractive man and go for him, then, when he became too ardent or amorous, run screeching to husband Max for protection. John, with genuine good looks skating on the verge of female, was a logical Davina target. The weird servant, Uda, had obviously assessed John to the same conclusion, and plied the poor man with martinis he had the sense not to drink. What was Uda’s stake in it? wondered Millie, eyes busy.

It was the only way to make the time go, especially in this almost all male assembly. Under ordinary circumstances Millie would simply have barged into the middle of the men and demanded to be included in conversation whereof she knew she could hold her end up. But with Davina present, no luck! Not to mention the pregnant Mrs. Markoff, the only other woman, and not, from the look on her face, a Davina admirer.

Mentally Millie ran through what she knew about Davina from Jim, the source of all her information on the big team who were responsible for putting his book into print, from the Head Scholar of the Chubb University Press to Tunbull Printing and Imaginexa Design. Oh, pray that A Helical God did what everyone said it was bound to!

A Yugoslavian refugee who had been in the country for ten years and was now twenty-six: that was the first item. She had been lucky enough to be “discovered” by a big agency and became a top model, especially famous for taking a bubble bath on TV—an ad, she was quick to point out, that still paid her good royalties. But her heart was in visual design, and she was, so the Chubb University Press people insisted, a superb exponent of the art of making a book irresistibly attractive to browsers. Her chief market lay with trade publishers, but because Max was sole printer to the Chubb University Press, she had deigned to take over their output as well.

Millie didn’t think, somehow, that dear old Don Carter, who had been Jim’s mentor through the writing and editing of the book, would have had the steel to deny Davina entry to a rather peculiar world, that of the minor academic publishing house. So whether C.U.P. wanted it or not, Davina took over their “book look” as she put it.

Could she honestly be just twenty-six years old? No, Millie decided, she’s thirty at least, has to be. Tall, stick-thin yet graceful, and lucky enough, thought Millie, eyeing her clinically, to have a narrow skeleton; a big, wide pelvis would have put a huge gap between those arm-sized thighs. Good, B-cup breasts, not much of a waist—that fit with the skeleton—and a long torso above shortish legs. She dressed extremely well, and her brown-black hair was thick enough to take the loose-down-the-back fashion, though it tended to clump in ropes. Beautiful clear white skin, carefully plucked and arched brows, long lashes, and startlingly vivid blue eyes. Yet, Millie’s thoughts rambled on, her lips were too large and her nose, though straight, was broad. Good cheekbones saved her face, together with those weird eyes. An enlightenment burst on Millie: Davina looked as Medusa the Gorgon must have looked before the gods stripped her of her beauty!

“I haven’t got my waistline back enough for miniskirts,” Davina was saying to Millie, the foreign accent lending her high, fluting voice some much needed character.

“I didn’t think dresses with miniskirts emphasized waists,” Millie said. “How old is Alexis?”

“Three months.” She gave an airy laugh. “I thought I was giving Max a much needed heir, and now—John turns up! So now I kill the fatted calf for the return of the prodigal son.”

“But John isn’t a prodigal son,” said Millie. “That son was banished for loose living or some such thing, I thought, whereas John is just a victim of circumstances beyond his control.”

The derisive eyes clouded, became uncertain; Davina gave a shrug and flounced off.

The room was very modern, but Millie quite liked it and found a comfortable chair to people-watch in peace while she could. Except that there were too few people. Her gaze rested upon Jim, talking to John, and her thoughts slipped backward in time; his advent out of the blue last night had shocked her, though Jim—no, not expected it, seemed to have sensed it was coming.

They had met in California when all three enrolled in the biochemistry Master’s program at Caltech; that they had clicked was probably due to John’s solitary habits, which fitted well into their own isolation. For reasons he never elaborated upon to them, John Hall too was armored against a cruel and inquisitive world. He wasn’t short of money, but learned not to intrude his wealth into their friendship. With John as third wheel, those two years in California had held many pleasant moments; they did a lot of sitting on public beaches, counting their nickels and dimes for a boardwalk lunch somewhere, listening to Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers and the Coasters, all very new and exciting at the time. Women found John immensely attractive and threw lures, but he ignored every overture. Whatever chewed at his core was shattering, subtle, sorrowful. That it had all to do with John’s dead mother they had gathered, but he never told them his whole story, and—at least while Millie was present—they never asked. Jim, she suspected, knew more.

The glowingly bright corner John Hall occupied in Millie’s mind went back to his astonishing and totally unsought generosity. When Jim’s facial sinuses literally threatened his life, John Hall went out and commissioned the finest sinus surgeon in L.A., and, without telling them, threw in a plastic surgeon for good measure. Ten thousand dollars of surgery later, Jim Hunter emerged a changed man. Not only could he breathe easily, not only was all threat of brain infection removed, but he had also lost all resemblance to a gorilla. He was pleasantly negroid, no longer even remotely apelike. And Jim had actually stomached the gift! Jim, who would accept charity from no one! Millie knew exactly why: easy breathing and safety from cerebral abscess were wonderful, but not even in the same league as losing the gorilla look.

When they went to the University of Chicago, John returned to Oregon. But he kept in touch, and when Jim sent him the postcard saying they were now faculty in the Chubb Department of Biochemistry, he sent a huge card he’d made himself, delighted that good fortune had smiled on them at last.

Then, out of the blue, he’d called them from the airport to say he was on his way to Holloman, and would they be up for a cup of coffee if he came around? Only last night! With all this torment on his mind, he’d talked of the old times, nothing but the old times, and feeling his eyes rest on her, Millie had given a shudder of fear. Not that too!

Millie jumped, so deep in her reverie that Davina’s voice came as a shock.

“To the table, everyone!”

With so few women, no surprise to find she occupied the middle slot on one side of the table with the pregnant doctor’s wife opposite her. Ivan was on Max’s side of her, Dr. Al Markoff on Davina’s side; Jim sat opposite her down one next to Davina, and Val sat on Muse Markoff’s other side. Not a remote table of several conversations; everyone was within good hearing distance. Millie winked at Jim, whom Davina was already monopolizing.

They had to go through that awful speech about the fatted calf, the pointed references to the absentee Tunbull wives—she was a monster! Some of the tendrils of her hair, thought a fascinated Millie, were stirring to form snakes—wasn’t that a head and a forked tongue in there? This woman speaks with a forked tongue!

The first course was Iranian caviar.

“Of course Russian would have been better,” said Davina, demonstrating how to eat it, “but this is still Caspian sturgeon of malossol variety. What silly rules a cold war causes! No Russian caviar. No Cuban cigars. Silly!”

Iranian caviar is good enough for me, thought Millie as she piled a toast finger high and tamped everything down with sour cream; minced egg and minced onion had an annoying habit of tumbling off, and she wasn’t about to waste one of those tiny, heavenly black blobs.

“I’ve died of sheer bliss,” she said to Muse Markoff.

“Isn’t she amazing?” Muse asked as the plates were whisked away. “Even to having Uda, the perfect housekeeper. Things sure have changed in the Tunbull zoo since Max married Davina.”

“Muse! How did you get that name?” Millie asked.

“A father steeped in the Classics. He was an associate professor at Chubb, poor baby. Sideways promotion. Once an associate, never a full.”

“And how have things changed for the Tunbulls, Muse?”

“This passion for Max’s Russian roots. I always thought they were Polish roots, but Davina says they’re Russian.”

“Just as well the McCarthy era is over.”

Muse winced, patted her huge tummy. “That was rich for a first course. I hope I last—my liver doesn’t like rich food. D’you think the roast veal will be terribly fatty? The way Davina spoke, I see it kind of swimming in fat.”

“No, no fat,” said Millie, smiling. “‘Fatted calf’ is a stock phrase, like—um—‘lean pickings.’ Roast veal isn’t at all fatty, I promise.”

Nor was it. The veal was plain but perfectly cooked, very thin slices of pinkish meat with a gravy rather than a sauce, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, thin and stringless green beans. Muse, Millie noted, ate with enjoyment, and made no complaints about her sensitive liver.

When Millie overheard Max and John talking about Martita, more of the puzzle fell into place. From her own little speech, Davina must have worked feverishly to disprove John’s story—what was the ring reference all about? So even through their phone conversations, Max must have kept to legal matters, Davina probably literally breathing down his neck. Those two poor men are not going to have an easy time of it …

A glance at Davina revealed a head of living snakes. If she caught their eyes, she’d turn them to stone.

What was with this Emily, the persecutor of John’s mother? Absent because she’d grown off in her own direction rather than because she had offended. Though so many years would soften anything, and she was Val’s wife, Ivan’s mother. Ivan … How did he feel, seeing his share of the family business steadily depleting? Though John had said last night that he had no wish or intention to be a part of the Tunbull business. Maybe the Tunbulls had no idea as yet how rich John was, how little he need depend on anyone after Wendover Hall dowered him. It seemed one of Davina’s ways of amusing herself was to snipe at Ivan—look at her crack about his wife.

Oh, John, John, I feel so sorry for you! Millie cried to herself as the cake came in.

“Uda made this with her own hands!” Davina fluted, the snakes writhing. “Each layer of cake is no more than five millimetres thick, and the butter cream is also five millimetres thick, flavored by Grand Marnier. The top is sugar-and-water boiled to crisp, transparent amber glass. And the entire cake is for the many years John has been away, while the glassy top, which must be broken before the past can be eaten, is tonight. Eat up, my friends, eat up!”

“A minute, Vina, give me a minute first!” Max shouted, surging to his feet. “First of all, I want you to lift your glasses to Dr. Jim Hunter, whose book on nucleic acids and their possible philosophical meaning is shortly to be published by the Chubb University Press, whose printers we have been for over twenty years. Head Scholar Carter assures me that it’s going to be a popular best seller. To Dr. Jim Hunter and his amazing, thought-provoking book, A Helical God!”

Good old Max, thought Millie, letting the most divine cake she had ever tasted dissolve gradually on her tongue. He could not resist showing Jim off for John’s benefit, always assuming that he had no idea we knew each other in the old days. And why would he know that? John’s advent is a shock.

Then the worst fate of all struck Millie; she was herded to the drawing room with Muse Markoff and expected to have coffee apart from the men, all gone to Max’s den. Not fair! What can I talk about, for God’s sake? They wouldn’t know a benzene ring from a curtain ring or an hydroxyl ion from a steam iron!

Luckily Davina and Muse, living across the street from each other, had plenty to talk about; Millie sat back and sipped much better coffee than she was used to, stomach pleasantly full and most of her spare blood supply more concerned with digestion than deep thoughts. Her eyelids drooped; no one noticed.

The door flew open upon a white-faced Max.

“Muse, Al needs his medical bag urgently,” he said.

Good wife, she was gone in under a second for the front door, the tiny maid Uda running at her elbow to steady her.

“What is it?” Davina faltered, all resemblance to Medusa vanished. “Let me see!”

“No!” he barked.

To Millie’s astonishment, Davina sank back into her chair at once. “What is it?” she repeated.

“John’s having some kind of attack. Ambulance!” And he rushed to the phone, gabbled into it that Dr. Al Markoff needed a resuscitation ambulance immediately—uh, yeah, address …

By this time Muse had returned, Uda carrying a seemingly heavy black leather doctor’s bag. Max snatched it.

“Stay here, all of you,” he said.

The minutes ticked by, marked out on a gigantic, fanciful clock sculpted into a wall; the women sat frozen, mute.

An ambulance came very quickly; the vigilant Uda let in two equipment encumbered physician’s assistants and ran them to the den, then returned to take up her station beside Davina, who looked wilted and terrified.

Jim appeared, went straight to Millie.

“John is dead,” he said abruptly, “and Dr. Markoff says it’s suspicious.” The green eyes were stern, level. “I thought of the missing tetrodotoxin.”

Her skin lost all its color. “Jesus, no! How could it have gotten here, for God’s sake?”

“I don’t know, but if you can help, Millie, then help. Call your father and tell him what’s happened. The symptoms sound as if it was injected. If the pathologist acts quickly enough, there may be a chance he can find tetrodotoxin in the form of its last metabolites. There’s blood drawn, so get a motorcycle cop here to siren it into town. Then your dad’s got a fighting chance. Call Patrick, please.”

She obeyed, pushing Max away from the phone.

“By the time the road cop picks the sample up, Dad, I’ll have drawn a schematic of tetrodotoxin’s molecular structure,” Millie said to Patrick a moment later. “I think Jim’s crazy to suspect it, but what if he’s right? What if whoever stole the stuff is selling it as the undetectable poison? That’s why you have to assay the victim’s blood a.s.a.p.—more chance of a last metabolite or two. Gas chromatography first, then the mass spectrometer. Humor Jim, Dad, please! I mean, it can’t possibly be tetrodotoxin, these people have no connection to me.”

“I’ll send Gus Fennell. I have to recuse myself, Millie,” said her father’s voice, “and I’m guessing Carmine will too. It will probably be Abe Goldberg. Oh, shit!”

“Tell me about it.” She hung up.

Max Tunbull and Al Markoff were arguing.

“You’ve got it all wrong, Al! John’s mom died at about the same age, and John’s her spitting image—it runs in that family!” Max said.

“Crap!” said the doughty doctor. “Bitch all you like, Max, I’m not convinced John died from natural causes. The time span between onset of symptoms and death was nearly lightning. Pity I was too busy to time it.”

“I timed it,” Jim Hunter said. “From his saying the word ‘hot’ to his death, eleven minutes. You’re absolutely right, Al, it’s suspicious. John was a healthy guy.”

Whereupon Davina, eyes distended, uttered a shriek, went rigid, and fell to the floor. Uda knelt beside her.

“I put Miss Vina bed,” she said. “Mr. Max, you phone her doctor now. She get needle.”

“No way,” said Muse Markoff. “The cops will want to see her, Uda—unsedated.”

“Thiss not Iron Curtain!” Uda snarled on yellow teeth. “Big function tomorrow night for Miss Davina, she be ready!”

And, thought Millie, remembering tomorrow night, Davina would go through hell to be ready for it. No matter what the cops might want, Davina’s doctor was going to knock her out until late tomorrow afternoon. “Or,” said Millie to Jim, “I’m a monkey’s uncle.”

He grinned, brushed her cheek with one finger. “That, my love, you are not.” His eyes followed the servant, supporting her mistress to the stairs. “To get to Davina, first get past Uda. If I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that.”

Lieutenant Abe Goldberg appeared a few minutes after the motorcycle cop picked up the test tubes of blood for the M.E.; with him came Dr. Gus Fennell, Deputy Medical Examiner, and his own pair of detectives, Sergeants Liam Connor and Tony Cerutti.

“What do you really think, Millie?” Abe asked, his fair and freckled countenance looking unusually grim. Millie Hunter’s marital history was well known, and she was loved.

“John’s symptoms sound very supicious, but the rapidity of his death suggests injection rather than ingestion. If he’d eaten it, especially given the good meal he consumed, I would have expected considerable vomiting and fecal purging. And it wouldn’t have come on so fast. Tell whoever does the autopsy to look for a puncture mark, and tell Paul the dose might have been as small as a half of one milligram. John was about six feet, but he wouldn’t have weighed more than one-sixty.” Millie kept her voice low, glad Davina Tunbull wasn’t watching. Hysterics, my eye!

“Now’s not the time or place, Dr. Hunter, but I gather you were aware your wife had tetrodotoxin at her laboratory?” Abe asked Jim, his voice courteous.

“Yes, she mentioned it.”

“Were you aware how dangerous it is?”

“In all honesty, no. I’m not a neurochemist, and I would not have recognized it as a toxin if I’d encountered it, at least before I determined its molecular structure. That always gives a lot of things away. But it’s only tonight, after watching John Tunbull die, that I understand how lethal it is, particularly for such a tiny dose. I mean, it’s lethal at the kind of dose you might give yourself by sheer accident!”

“Who suspected the death, Dr. Jim?”

“Dr. Markoff. Said flatly it was a coroner’s case and the police had to be called in. He’s impressive.”

“Did you think the death suspicious?”

Jim considered that carefully, then shook his head. “No, I guess I just thought it was a heart attack, or maybe a pulmonary embolus—I’m not totally medically ignorant, but I’m not a physician either. Except for his age, John’s death looked pretty routine to me. Millie wasn’t so sure because someone stole her tetrodotoxin—it’s absolutely lethal stuff, Lieutenant.”

“Did you know about the theft, Doctor?”

“Sure I did—Millie and I tell each other everything. But I never thought of connecting it to John—I have no idea what the symptoms are, except I guess I thought they’d be the usual symptoms of poisoning—vomiting, purging, convulsions. None of which he displayed. The only poisons I know behave the way John behaved are all gases, and since no one else felt a sign of what John went through, it can’t have been a gas. Tetrodotoxin isn’t a gas either. It’s a liquid that can be reduced to a powder, or vice versa.” Jim gave a half-hearted grin. “By which, Lieutenant, you know that Millie and I do discuss things.”

Abe’s large grey eyes had narrowed; so this was the black half of a famous alliance! Wherever he might have met Jim Hunter, under what circumstances, his eyes betrayed enormous intelligence, innate gentleness, a huge capacity to ponder. Carmine liked him: now Abe saw why.

“May my wife and I find a quiet, out of the way corner, Lieutenant?” Jim asked.

“Sure, Doctors. Just don’t leave the house.”

Abe kept his questions to the dinner guests brief and to the point: just events at the dinner, in the den, trips to the toilets, John’s sudden illness. The only one he suspected of real duplicity was Mrs. Davina Tunbull, who had retreated into hysterics Millie whispered were fake. They were always bad news, those women, even though mostly they had nothing to do with the commission of the crime. They muddied the waters simply to be noticed, treated specially, fussed over. And there was no way he was going to get to see her or the servant, Uda, tonight.

With their details written down in his notebook and John Tunbull’s body gone to the morgue an hour since, Abe wound up his investigation shortly after midnight and let people go home.

“Though that’s really only us,” said Millie, wrapped against the cold as she and Abe stood on the crunchy doorstep. “The rest are close enough to walk home. Oh, dear, there’s Muse vomiting in the garden. I daresay she does have a sensitive liver after all. Her husband’s very kind to her, I see.”

“Where do you live, Millie?”

“On State Street. Caterby is the next intersection.”

Jim drove up in their old Chevy clunker; Abe opened the passenger door to let Millie slide in, then watched them drive away, the white fog issuing from their tail pipe telling him that the temperature had dropped below 28°F. This was a cold winter.

Those two unfortunate people, Abe thought, mind on the Doctors Hunter. Still dirt-poor, to be living out there on State. Paying back the last of their student loans, no doubt. Just as well Dr. Jim is the size of a small mountain. If he were a ninety-pound weakling, that neighborhood would be hell for a mixed-race couple, full of poor whites and an occasional neo-Nazi.




SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1969


Desdemona took the tuxedo by its shoulders and shook it out.

“There, Millie! It will not only hold throughout tonight’s boring festivities, it will actually feel reasonably comfy.”

Beaming in pleasure, Millie hugged as much of Desdemona as she could reach. “Thank you, thank you!” she cried. “Aunt Emilia said you could do anything with a needle, but I hated invading your privacy, the busy mother. However, unless Jim’s book is a big seller, we can’t possibly afford a tailor-made dinner suit for him.”

“Looks to me as if he’s going to need one in the years to come. When you can afford it, ask Abe Goldberg where to go. His family has more tailors than detectives. Carmine can’t buy his suits off the rack either—clothing manufacturers don’t cater for men who are massive in the shoulders and chest, but narrow in the waist.” Desdemona turned her sewing machine upside down and watched it disappear into its cradle. “There! Come and have a cuppa with me—tea or coffee, your choice.” A hand reached down to scoop Alex out of his daytime crib. “Yes, sweet bugger-lugs, you’ve been very patient,” she said, balancing him on her left hip.

“You manage so effortlessly,” Millie said, watching Desdemona make a pot of tea and shake chocolate chip cookies on to a plate, all holding Alex.

“Oh, Alex is easy. It’s the first one causes the headaches,” Desdemona said, settling into the breakfast booth—a new addition to the kitchen—with Alex on her knee. She dunked the edge of a cookie in her rather milky tea and gave it to Alex to suck. “I would have been horrified at the thought of giving a sugary cookie to a nine-month-old baby when I had Julian, but now? Anything that shuts them up or keeps them happy is my motto.”

Such a beautiful child! Millie was thinking as she watched enviously. I want to be her—I’m sick of laboratory experiments! I want a delicious little baby Hunter, some shade of brown, with weirdly colored eyes and a brain as big as his or her Daddy’s …

“Where are you?” Desdemona asked, snapping her fingers.

“Putting myself in your place. Wanting to be a mother.”

“It’s not always beer and skittles, Millie,” Desdemona said wryly. “I’m still recovering from a post-partum depression.”

“But you’re okay, right?”

“Yes, thanks to an understanding husband.”

In came Julian, toting a huge orange cat that was giving him all its considerable weight. Desdemona handed a cookie down.

“Ta, Mommy.”

“Julian, you’re developing your muscles splendidly, but how is Winston going to get any exercise when you carry him everywhere? Put him down and make him walk.”

Down went the cat, which began to wash itself.

“See? That’s why I carry him, Mommy. Every time I put him down, he washes himself.”

“To get rid of your smell, Julian. If he is to sniff out rats and mice, he can’t have Julian all over him.”

“Okay, I see that.” Julian wriggled up beside his mother and looked at Millie with topaz eyes. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi. I’m Millie.”

Out of the corner of her eye Millie saw an ugly pit bull dog join the cat; they ambled together toward the back foyer.

“You can be nice to Julian,” Desdemona said gravely. “He’s through his most annoying phase, at least for the time being.”

“What was your most annoying phase, Julian?” Millie asked.

“Daddy said, I was a defense attorney.” Julian reached for his mother’s tea cup and drank its entire contents thirstily.

“You let him drink tea?” Millie asked, appalled.

“Well, drinking gallons of it from infancy didn’t stop us Brits from ruling most of the world,” said Desdemona, laughing. “I put extra milk in it if Julian drinks it, but tea’s good value.” She gazed at Millie sternly. “Come! Talk to me about you and Jim.”

“That does it!” said Julian loudly, sliding down from the seat with a flick at Alex’s cheek that Millie supposed was love. “I have to supervise Private Frankie and Corporal Winston. See ya!” And off he went.

“His speech is dreadful,” his mother said. “Try though I do to limit them, he’s full of Americanisms.”

“He lives in America, Desdemona.”

She sighed. “The quintessential gun culture. But let’s not talk about my sons. Who interviewed you last night?”

“Abe. Thank God for a friendly face.”

“Don’t say that too loudly. Carmine doesn’t want an outside agency invited in to investigate because of propinquity.” She chuckled. “Such a peculiar word to use!”

“Not much chance of that,” said Millie. “I called Abe Lieutenant Goldberg and was as stiff as a poker. It was dreadful, Desdemona! Jim was right next to John when he took ill.”

“Someone had to be next to him,” Desdemona comforted, and poured more tea around the encumbrance of Alex, still sucking at his cookie. “I gather that further questioning is to wait until tomorrow—maybe Monday for you and Jim.”

“I must say that Abe took Davina’s absence calmly. Even after her doctor told him she’d have to wait until Sunday for questions, he just looked long-suffering.”

Desdemona grinned. “They encounter women like her all the time, Millie. All she’s doing is postponing what will be a nastier interview because she did postpone it. And enough of all that! Have you a nice frock for tonight?”

Millie’s face clouded. “Unfortunately, no. Kate let me pick through her enormous wardrobe, but tonight is a long dress that has to hold up academic robes, so I’m back to my graduation black dress. Men have their ties to hook robes and hoods around, but women don’t. You and Carmine are coming tonight, I hope?”

“We’ll be there, Millie,” said Desdemona, smiling.

“You said tonight was an annoying inconvenience, Mommy,” said Julian, stomping in like a soldier back from the wars.

“He’s turned into a parrot,” his mother said. “I absolutely despair of sensible conversation with him.”

“Why do you absolutely despair of sensible conversation with me, Mommy? I know lots of big words.”

“You know them like a parrot.”

“Pooh, nonsense!” said Julian.

“Oh, lord, I said that weeks ago, and he won’t forget it!”

Alex opened his mouth and grinned, revealing teeth.

Ivy Hall was one of the oldest buildings at Chubb University, itself nearly three hundred years old, and Ivy Hall had been preserved with loving care. Built of red brick in 1725, it had been the original classroom, though for the last hundred years it had been used only for important banquets. Until Mawson MacIntosh, fondly known as M.M., had taken over as President of Chubb, its accommodation had been on the spartan side—scarred wooden benches and refectory tables. With his unparalleled genius for fund raising, M.M. had persuaded the Wicken family to donate a large sum to refurnish Ivy Hall; it now had proper dining tables of the finest mahogany, with upholstered mahogany chairs.

Its walls were hung with priceless Flemish tapestries between floor-to-ceiling Georgian windows, with space for long paintings of landscapes here and there. The oak floor had been treated, and the dais designed to take a high table given a much needed spit and polish.

The official reason for giving this particular banquet was to mark the retirement of the present Head Scholar of the Chubb University Press, and the assumption of the title Head Scholar by his successor. How the man responsible for the administration of C.U.P. had come to be known as its Head Scholar was lost in the mists of time for most: in actual fact it went back to the founding of C.U.P. in 1819, and was supposed to reflect Chubb University’s charter principles. This night, however, also marked another fact about C.U.P.: it was 150 years old, and celebrating its sesquicentenary. For that reason, the heavy place mats bore a beautifully chased design based on the number 150, dreamed up by C.U.P.’s associated design firm, Imaginexa; it was therefore the brain child of Davina Tunbull, who had gone further and put a few festive gold-and-silver touches on the hall that not the most conservative of academics could have damned as in bad taste.

Four tables had been laid, decorated with gold-and-silver 150s cunningly wrought out of metal to form something like epergnes. One, the high table, sat upon the raised dais at the end of the hall, and because of its orientation, the three tables down on the floor of the hall were also laid from side to side of the room, which gave the whole assemblage a discriminatory feel, as it went high table for the major dignitaries, then the Chubb University table, followed by the Chubb University Press table, and, farthest from the high table and closest to the food ingress and egress, the table of Town dignitaries.

Each of the four tables held nine couples, which meant that a total of seventy-two people would sit down to what would be a function most didn’t want to attend but couldn’t not; the speeches and the involuntary exposure of many to people they tried to avoid summed up the negative side of being there, while the quality of the food, the fairly comfortable chairs and the chance to catch up with old friends represented the positive side. Tradition demanded that academic robes be worn by all the men but only by those women holding Chubb faculty positions, which added to the torments; police captains like Carmine Delmonico and Fernando Vasquez voted it an utterly wasted evening.

“Whoever planned this setup made a boo-boo,” Commissioner John Silvestri said as he ensconced his still beautiful wife in her chair and sat down next to her. “They put Nate Winthrop on the high table and Doug Thwaites down on the floor—man, they will rue that!”

Carmine, to whom this remark was made, gave his boss a grin. “They need Delia,” he said.

“We could rent her out, a thousand bucks an hour.”

“No, we won’t. M.M. might grab her.”

“M.M. won’t be pleased when he sees he’s gotten Nate but no Doug,” said the District Attorney, Horace Pinnerton. “Yes, Marcia, I’ll see if I can get you an extra cushion. They never cater for shorties,” he said to Fernando Vasquez.

“Or long drinks of water,” Fernando said, nodding at the two metres-plus of Manfred Mayhew, Holloman’s Town Clerk, once a famous basketballer. His wife, of course, was barely five feet tall. Another cushion coming up!

“And for this, Ginny and I have to miss our free night,” said the Fire Chief, Bede Murphy, who didn’t wear a robe.

His wife was giving Liza Mayhew the look of a martyr. “Bede doesn’t fit his tux anymore,” she said, low-voiced, “and my long dresses went out with Norma Shearer. Sometimes I hate Chubb! Academic gowns, tuxes, long dresses—pah!”

“The place mats and decorations are superb,” said Desdemona pacifically. “Millie told me that Davina Tunbull designed them. Is that her on the next table up?”

About to sit down, Carmine turned to tally the C.U.P. table. “Your instincts are amazing,” he said. “From Abe’s description of a woman who’d gone to bed in hysterics and wasn’t even on display, that’s her in silver and gold.”

“Well, she’s so beautifully dressed, and matches the decor,” said Desdemona, and gazed down at the table with a sigh. “My back will be giving me gyp at the end of this. Why are dining tables so low, or chairs so high?”

Carmine seated himself, pleased that he was on the correct side of the table to look up the hall. Davina Tunbull was a looker, but what took his eye was the dramatic difference in age between her and her husband. Max looked his sixty years—why hadn’t they begged to be excused tonight? Everybody would have understood. No, she had wanted to come, no matter how Max felt. Dressed in slinky gold and silver panels that left her knobby back bare, she was queening it over the rest of the women at her table—or in the hall, for that matter. Why did women starve themselves to look good in clothes? They resembled greyhounds.

All the Tunbulls had come—Max and Davina, Val and Emily, Ivan and Lily. After Abe’s perceptive reportage, Carmine had the men in his memory now. They represented the printing side of C.U.P., so presumably the others at the table belonged to C.U.P. itself. Interesting! Several of the executives were women; no mistaking who was the professional boss in a relationship, and these women were towing escorts or tame husbands. No equal partnerships here. Three women executives, three men executives.

His eye went to the high table, farthest away, but also the easiest to see, up in the air six feet. Jim and Millie Hunter were seated on it; so were the two senior Parsons, Roger Junior and Henry Junior. Hmm … That was right, then, the Parsons had bludgeoned Chubb into appointing Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman the new C.U.P. Head Scholar. Easy to pick him: his facial expression was reminiscent of Martin Luther having a bad day with his hemorrhoids. Jesus, were they the Parson wives? They could have been sisters to their husbands—the same austere, bony faces—and the same watery blue eyes, he’d be willing to bet if he got close enough to check.

“You’re enjoying this, you ruthless blighter,” Desdemona was whispering. “Grist to your copper’s mill.”

“Yep,” he said amiably, lifted her hand and kissed it, eyes glowing. “None of them can hold a candle to you.”

She blushed. “Flattery will get you permission to massage my back later tonight, otherwise I’ll be a cot case tomorrow.”

“Deal,” he said, and grinned at Patrick and Nessie, down between Horrie Pinnerton and Dave Zuckerman, the head of Social Services. Derek Daiman and his wife, Annabelle, had just come in too; he had gone from Principal of Travis High to Director of Education. It felt good to have a black couple on the Town table—more than Chubb could boast.

“Generous width of seating,” Derek said, sitting opposite Carmine. “If the meat’s tough, I can fly my elbows.”

“Don’t hesitate to put them on the table when they’re not flying,” Carmine said. “This is your first banquet, you and Fernando, but it’s my skeedy-eighth.”

“Will the meat be tough?” Fernando asked anxiously.

“Put it this way, guys: If the meat is tough, then the next banquet will serve roast caterer for the main course. M.M. is a stickler for good food at these functions.” He raised his glass of amontillado. “Cheers! Here’s to many more Chubb banquets.”

“Speaking as a cop, may they all be boring,” Fernando said, and sipped. “Hey, this is good sherry!”

“Chubb is well endowed, gentlemen.”

“Who’s at the first table below the high one?” Derek asked.

“Chubb U. dignitaries. The rest of the Governors—Dean Bob Highman as senior dean—three specimens of Parson in Roger III, Henry III, and he of the loose mouth, Richard Spaight. But don’t feel sorry for Doug Thwaites, he’ll make mincemeat of them all.”

Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman, now Head Scholar of the Chubb University Press, was holding forth to the Parson Brothers while the entire high table listened, some politely, some happily, some incredulously.

“C.U.P. will return to the spirit of its charter,” he was saying, “and leave scientific publishing to those academic institutions with the interest and resources to do it properly. C.U.P.’s niche under my care of the imprimatur will be in those neglected fields whose students may be few, but whose ideas are so vital to Western philosophy that they have shaped it. In our present climate of worship for the technocrat and the machine, no one publishes them anymore. But I will, gentlemen, I will!”

“I’m not sure how the technocrat and the machine fit in, but I take it you dismiss twentieth century philosophy?” Hank Howard asked, wondering if he could be baited.

The haughty face sneered. “Pah! One may as well call Darwin and Copernicus philosophers! The kind medical students read!”

“I think it’s great that medical students read anything not connected to medicine,” Jim Hunter said mildly.

Tinkerman’s face said “You would!” but his mouth said “Not so, Dr. Hunter. Better they should confine themselves to medicine than read metaphysics for monkeys!”

A small, startled silence fell: Tinkerman had sounded too personal, and several of his auditors resolved to deflect him.

“I’ve known medical students who read Augustine, Machiavelli and Federico Garcia Lorca,” said M.M., smiling easily.

“Perhaps they’re a little off the track of this discussion, Tom, but if novelists like Norman Mailer and Philip Roth were offered to you, surely you’d publish them?” Bursar Townsend asked.

“No, I would not! Never!” Tinkerman snapped. “Disgusting, filthy, pornographic trash! The only philosophy they can offer is in the gutter!” His chest heaved, his eyes flashed.

“Ah!” M.M. exclaimed. “Food! Tom, your blood sugar seems a trifle low. We are shamefully neglecting Roger and Henry, not to mention the ladies. My apologies.”

“The man’s a Dominican in modern academic robes,” said the outgoing Head Scholar to Secretary Hank Howard, not bothering to keep his voice down.

Academic robes were also absorbing Solidad Vasquez, Annabelle Daiman and Desdemona. The two first-timers were overawed at the fantastic array.

“Is there anyone not in academic robes?” Solidad asked.

“By tradition, the only ladies have Chubb posts, like Dr. Millie Hunter. The Town men wear theirs not to be entirely outclassed,” said Desdemona, looking at her generous plate of smoked salmon with brown bread-and-butter enthusiastically. “Carmine has a Master’s from Chubb, and I see Fernando is in Master’s robes from—where?”

“University of Florida.” Solidad giggled. “It isn’t fair, but I notice that it’s a Holloman joke that any Florida school is a place that awards degrees in ballroom dancing and underwater basket weaving. Well, Fernando’s degree is in sociology, and it’s a respected one.”

Annabelle looked insufferably smug. “Derek’s doctorate is from Chubb,” she said.

“The hall does look as if it’s populated by peacocks,” said Desdemona. “The gold detail on some of the robes is truly astonishing. And ermine! Head Scholar Tinkerman’s purple-and-gold is the Chubb School of Divinity.”

“So that’s what’s wrong with him!” Nessie O’Donnell called.

“It’s so pretty,” said Annabelle, gazing around. “What’s the scarlet and ermine?”

But that, no one knew, though all agreed that its wearer stood out brilliantly.

Fernando was quizzing Carmine. “Is that really black guy on the high table Dr. Jim Hunter?”

“Yes. His wife’s the only woman wearing academic robes.”

“I noticed them coming in, each wearing the same gown. A handsome couple. Man, he’s huge!”

“Champion boxer and wrestler ten years ago. Came in handy.”

“I bet.”

Fernando’s remark about the Hunters as a handsome couple had intrigued Carmine; people usually didn’t see them that way, and he applauded Fernando’s perception.

But inevitably his attention went back to Dr. Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman, looking magnificent in his doctor of Divinity robes. Well, Carmine amended, he was the kind of man who would manage to make sackcloth and ashes look great. Tall and ramrod straight, he gave an impression of considerable physical strength—no nerdy weakling, he. More like a West Point graduate full bird colonel who divided his mental energies between stretching for the next promotion and coping with a new attack of hemorrhoids. Tonight was definitely a hemorrhoid night: maybe not Martin Luther, but Napoleon Bonaparte?

Handsome in a Mel Ferrer way, chiseled features that said he had the asceticism of a monk. Grey hair went well with light eyes. The corners of his mouth turned down as if he despaired of human frailty in the full knowledge that he himself had none. Conceited! That was the word for Tinkerman.

The whole of C.U.P. knew that he didn’t want to publish A Helical God. It was written for ignoramuses by an ape, not a scholar, and it cast doubt not so much on the Christian God as it did on His ministers, their reluctance to accept science as a part of God’s grand design. How Tinkerman must be writhing at the thought that he dared not use his most powerful tool—racial prejudice. No, he wouldn’t run the risk of being accused of that. His tactics would be oblique and subtle.

How expressive was a feminine back? Surprisingly so, Carmine concluded, going down the row of the high table’s ladies’ backs, all he could see. Angela M.M. bobbed up and down like a sleek yet busy bird, the two Parson wives sat haughtily straight thanks to old-fashioned corsets, and poor little Mrs. Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman looked like a plucked fowl, her shoulder blades vestigial wings, her backbone knobby beads. It was more difficult to catalogue Millie, in a University of Chicago Ph.D. gown, but certainly she wasn’t hunched over in defeat; just, it was plain, ignored by all the other women save wafty Angela. How she must be missing Dr. Jim, almost the distance of the table away from her—and who had placed her between the Parson wives?

Neither Millie nor Jim had gone to the expense of buying doctoral robes; theirs were hired, which meant a generic robe mixed-and-matched. It showed as what it was—shabby, much used by many, and not the right size.

Heart feeling twinges for the Hunters, Carmine’s attention returned to his own table to join in a merry discussion with Derek Daimon and Manny Mayhew about the merits of teaching Shakespeare to hoods.

Once Mrs. Maude Parson ascertained that the rather common girl next to her had a doctorate in biochemistry, she dried up defensively, while Mrs. Eunice Parson on Millie’s other side didn’t seem to speak to anybody. Only Angela M.M. knew that the billionaire ladies were abysmally educated, and utterly intimidated at being in this kind of company. Had Millie only known, she would have made an effort to talk to them, but what happened in reality was a Mexican stand-off: one potential conversationalist was terrified by so much money, the other two by so many brains. Poor M.M. was carrying the major burden of conversation, Angela helping valiantly, but it was not, the President of Chubb said to himself, one of the better banquets. That was what happened when you let someone like Hester Grey of C.U.P. do the seating arrangements. And Nate Winthrop instead of Doug Thwaites—was the woman mad, to demote Doug to the floor? If anyone he hated wound up in his court within the next six months, he’d throw the book at them—and his chief target would be M.M., innocent.

Millie did have a memorable exchange of words with the new Head Scholar, seated almost opposite her. It commenced when he looked her up and down as if he felt she would be more appropriately situated peddling ass on a street corner.

“I believe your father is the Holloman County Medical Examiner, Dr. Hunter?” Tinkerman asked, inspecting his chicken breast to see what the filling was—ugh!—garlic, apricot chunks, nuts for pity’s sake! Whatever happened to good old sage and onion stuffing and giblet gravy?

“Yes,” said Millie, demolishing her broiled scrod with unfeigned relish; expensive foods were rare on the Hunter table. “Dad has turned an old-fashioned coroner’s morgue into a forensics department without parallel in the state. It can perform the most difficult assays and analyses, and the autopsy techniques have changed almost out of recognition.”

“Oh, science!” said Tinkerman, screwing up his mouth. “It is the cause of all our human woes.”

Millie couldn’t help herself. “What an asinine thing to say!” she snapped, having no idea she was thrilling the Parson wives, who would have given their billions to say that to a man in doctor’s robes. “I would have said God was the cause of human woes—look at the wars fought in God’s name,” she said.

If she had thrown him into a vat of cement, he could not have grown any stiffer. “You blaspheme!” he accused.

She lifted her lip. “That answer is like trotting out a block of wood as a remedy for plague! This is 1969, not 1328. It’s permissible to question defects in the nature of God.”

“Nothing permits anyone to question anything about God!”

“That’s like saying our Constitution would be improved if it forbade freedom of speech. Science too comes from God! What we discover are more revelations about the complexity of God’s design. You should come down out of your heavenly clouds and stare through a microscope occasionally, Doctor. You might be amazed, even awestruck,” said Millie, very angry.

“I am amazed at your blindness,” he said, floundering.

“Not I, Doctor, not I! Look in a mirror.”

“Speaking of which, Tom,” said M.M. affably, “are you all set for your speech? The main course is here.”

Im answer Tinkerman got to his feet and rushed off on a bathroom run; when he finally came back he seemed to have gotten over his flash of frustrated temper, for he sat down, smiling. Millie too had had time to let her anger cool; feeling someone edge behind her, she looked beyond Mrs. Eunice Parson to see Mrs. Tinkerman settling. Their eyes met—was that sympathy?

“Do you have a degree, Mrs. Tinkerman?” she asked, sure of affirmation; Doctors of Divinity must have highly educated wives!

“Dear me, no,” said Mrs. Tinkerman. Her brown eyes blazed a moment, then went out. “I was a secretary.”

“Do you have children?”

“Yes, two girls. They went to the Kirk Secretarial College and have very good jobs. I believe that there are so many Ph.D.s in sociology that they have to work as cashiers in supermarkets, whereas good secretaries are as scarce as hen’s teeth.”

“They are indeed,” said Millie warmly. “Lucky for your husband too—no university fees to pay.”

“Yes, that was a consideration,” Mrs. Tinkerman said, her voice devoid of expression.

The peach pie arrived—yum! Poor woman, Millie thought as she smoothed her melting ice cream all over the still hot pie. She doesn’t even hate her husband, she just dislikes him. It must be hell to have to lie in the same bed. Or perhaps she doesn’t. If I were her, I would have taught myself to snore very, very loudly.

Time for the speeches, thought Carmine, shifting restlessly.

“M.M. ought to dispense with that fool high table,” said Fire Chief Bede Murphy.

“I agree,” Carmine said, “but why, Bede?”

“Fire hazard, for starters. Too narrow for a table seating people down both sides. I’ve been noticing it all evening. On a bathroom run they have to squeeze past, and some of the guys put their palms on the shoulders of those sitting down. Must be annoying. I mean, would you want to palm M.M.’s acres of gold detail? Or that snooty bastard who’s the incoming Head Scholar? And tell me why Chubb thinks the Town would be offended if it weren’t invited to these bean feasts? The whole Town and Gown rigmarole gives Ginny and me the shits. Our Saturday nights are ours! We went to a lot of trouble to make sure no babysitting the grandkids on a Saturday, and then what? We’re here! The food’s good, but Ginny can broil scrod too.”

“A brilliant summation,” said Fernando, grinning.

“I mean, the bathroom run palming is unnecessary,” Bede went on. “There’s plenty of room down here on the floor to put a fourth and even a fifth table. Then they could put marble busts of Tom Paine and Elmer Fudd up on the dais, surrounded by orchids and lilies.”

“The one who really dislikes being palmed on a bathroom run is our new Head Scholar,” said Carmine, winking at Desdemona, whose eyelids were beginning to droop. Come on, M.M., turn down the thermostats!

“According to Jim and Millie, Tinkerman despises the whole world,” said Patrick. He sipped, grimaced. “Oh, why do they always fall down on the coffee?”

“C.U.P. doesn’t like its new Head Scholar,” said Manfred Mayhew, contributing his mite. “It’s all over County Services that he’s a Joe McCarthy kind of fella—witch hunts, though not for commies. Non-believers.”

“I fail to see how the head of an academic publishing house can conduct witch hunts,” said Commissioner Silvestri.

“That’s as may be, John, but they’re still saying it.”

“Then why haven’t I heard the slightest whisper?” the Commissioner demanded.

“Because, John,” said Manfred, taking the plunge, “you are an eagle in an eyrie right up in a literal tower, and if it’s built of brick instead of ivory, that’s only an architectural reality. To those of us who live below you, John, it is a genuine ivory tower. If Carmine and Fernando don’t tell you, you don’t know—and don’t say Jean Tasco! She’s got a titanium zipper on her mouth.”

Gloria Silvestri’s coffee had gone down the wrong way: Carmine and Fernando were too busy fussing around her to make any comments—or let their eyes meet. Masterly, Manfred!

Mawson MacIntosh had slipped the cord holding his reading half glasses around his neck and had gathered his notes together; he was a wonderful speaker and as extemporaneous as he wished to be—tonight, judging from his notes, only partially. Not before time, thought Carmine, feeling the cool air on the back of his neck. M.M. had turned the thermostats down, which meant no naps in a warm hall. Desdemona would wake up in a hurry, as would all the women, more scantily clad than the enrobed men.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” M.M. said, on his feet and using the most democratic form of address, “we meet tonight to celebrate in honor of two men and one institution …”

What else M.M. said Carmine never remembered afterward; his attention was riveted on Dr. Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman, still seated, and looking very distressed. His crisp white handkerchief was out, fluttering at his face, beaded in sweat, and he was gasping a little. The cloth billowed down to the table as he put his hands up to his neck, wrenching at his tie, more constricting than usual because it held his hood on and kept his gown in perfect position.

“Patsy!” Carmine rapped. “Up there, up there!” Over his shoulder he said to Desdemona as he followed his cousin, “Call an ambulance, stat! Resuscitation gear on board. Do it, do it!”

Desdemona was up and running toward the banquet supervisor as Carmine and Patrick mounted the dais, scattering its occupants before them. M.M. had had the good sense to be gone already, his chair thrust at a startled waiter.

“Down, everybody, off the dais!” M.M. was shouting, “and get your chairs out of the way! Women too, please. Now!”

“Nessie will have sent someone young and fast for my bag, but we’re parked over on North Green,” said Patrick, kneeling. The new Head Scholar’s gown, hood and coat were removed and the coat rolled into a pillow; Patrick ripped open Tinkerman’s dress shirt to reveal a well muscled, laboring chest; he was fighting desperately to breathe. Came a very few weak retches, some generalized small jerks and tremors, then Tinkerman lay staring up at Patrick and Carmine wide-eyed, in complete knowledge that he was dying. Unable to speak, unable to summon up any kind of muscular responses. Eyes horrified.

Millie hovered in the background: Patrick turned his head. “Is there any antidote? Anything we can at least try?”

“No. Absolutely nothing.” She sounded desolate.

The ambulance arrived three minutes from Desdemona’s call, bearing resuscitation equipment and a physician’s associate.

“His airway’s still patent,” Patrick said, slipping a bent, hard plastic tube into Tinkerman’s mouth. “Everything’s paralyzed, but I was lucky. I’m in the trachea. I can bag breathe him and keep oxygen flowing into his lungs, but he can’t expand them himself, not one millimetre. The chest wall and the diaphragm are totally nerveless.” Again Patrick turned to Millie. “Is he conscious? He seems to be.”

“Higher cerebral fuction isn’t affected, so—yes, he’s conscious. He’ll remain conscious. Watch what you say.” She pushed in beside him and took one hand. “Dr. Tinkerman, don’t be afraid. We’re getting lots of air to your lungs, and we’re taking you to the hospital by ambulance right now. You just hang on and pray—we’ll get you through.” She got up. “Like that, Dad. He’s terrified.”

By the time the ambulance screamed into the Holloman Hospital E.R., Head Scholar Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman was dead. The tiny muscles that fed vital substances to his internal organs and pumped the waste products out had succumbed to the poison. Fully conscious and in complete awareness of his imminent death, not able to speak or even move his eyelids, Tinkerman was pronounced dead when awareness left his gaze: to Carmine, who had seen many men die, it always looked like literal lights out. One moment something was there in the eyes; the next moment, it was gone.

The body was expedited to the morgue at the express command of the Medical Examiner, but the syringe containing a blood sample beat the corpse by an hour and a half. Paul Bachman had sent a technician on a motor cycle to Ivy Hall to collect it. On analysis it revealed the dwindling metabolites of tetrodotoxin. No one knew its half life, so the dosage was at best a guess.

“It would seem to me,” said Patrick, “that Dr. Tinkerman received more of the toxin than John Hall. There’s a fresh puncture wound on the back of his neck to the left side of the spinal column, so I’m assuming it was injected. Not enough gastric symptoms for ingestion, and death was too swift. About ten minutes from the onset of noticeable symptoms. Had the blood been examined for toxins at the usual pace, it would have metabolized to nothing before any screen for neurotoxins was suggested. The cause of death, while highly suspect, would have been a mystery. The same can be said for John Hall, though we were slower, the traces fewer.”

Carmine sighed. “So Abe gets John Hall and I get Dr. Tinkerman. Thomas Tarleton Tinkerman—a poseur, hence the fancy middle name, Tarleton. Tinkerman wouldn’t have suited the ideas our Head Scholar had about himself. He was a conceited man.” He had removed his bow tie and opened the collar of his shirt, and looked more comfortable.

They were sitting in Patrick’s office with a pot of his excellent coffee; Delia, Nick, Buzz, Donny and four uniforms were at Ivy Hall taking down names, addresses, phone numbers and brief statements, and Delia had already confiscated the table plans. There was no point in asking Judge Thwaites for a warrant to search any persons present; he was as cross as only he could be when things did not go to plan—and especially when he’d been kicked off the head table to make room for that kiss-ass mediocrity, Mayor Nathan Winthrop. It would be many weeks before the Judge forgave anyone present at the banquet, even if for no greater crime than witnessing his humiliation. If John Silvestri refused to beard him, no one could.

“So someone is going to waltz out of Ivy Hall with a home-made injection apparatus in his pocket,” mourned Patrick.

“Not necessarily,” Carmine said. “How many people know Doug Thwaites as well as we do, huh? Depending who the guilty party is, the gear might be in a trash can. Delia’s got it under full control, the trash cans are sequestered under guard along with the rest of Ivy Hall. For this kind of case, we’re limited in manpower, so the forensic search of Ivy Hall may be postponed a little.”

“Delia is going to wind up Commissioner,” Patrick said.

Carmine flashed him a grin, but refrained from taking the bait. “I’m hoping the injection apparatus has been abandoned,” he said. “There won’t be any more injection murders, I’d be willing to bet on that. Or any more murders at all. So why keep the device? It’s not a hypodermic and syringe in the formal sense, is it? Couldn’t have been done in either case—too public, and you can’t make giving an injection look like anything else. I see something no bigger than one of Desdemona’s thimbles, though what can replace a piston-plunger is beyond me. A very short, fine gauge hypodermic he had to have, but attached to something other than a syringe. A man would hardly feel the prick, especially if it were accompanied by a comradely slap. Look at snakes and spiders. They have a reservoir for the venom and a channel down the back of a tooth or a tube through the middle of a fang.”

“You really do believe he expected to get away with it!” Patrick said, astonished.

“What poisoner doesn’t? This is one cocksure bastard, Patsy. I had a funny feeling tonight, so I watched Tinkerman closely, but I can’t remember anyone’s acting suspiciously. Bede and his bathroom runs! He had the right of it.”

Suddenly Patrick looked his full fifty-eight years. “Oh, cuz, I give up!” he cried. “I’m going home to Nessie and a sleeping pill. Otherwise I won’t be worth a hill of beans in the morning. I am to recuse myself completely?”

“Yes, Patsy,” Carmine said gently.

“Keep me in the loop?”

“I can’t. Think what ammunition we’d be handing to a defense attorney. You have to stay right out and right away.”

Desdemona had despaired of a back massage and gone to bed, from which Carmine hauled her out and subjected her to fifteen minutes of pain from sheer guilt.

“Feel any better?” he asked at the end of it.

“Not at the moment, you sadist,” she said grumpily, then relented. “But I will tomorrow, dear love, and that’s the most important thing. If caterers have extra cushions for the shorties, why don’t they have a couple of chairs with the legs sawn off for the giants like me and Manny Mayhew?”

“Because people are allowed to be five-foot-nothing, but not way over six feet,” said Carmine, smiling. He pushed a stray wisp of hair behind her ear, then leaned forward and kissed her. “Come on, my divine giantess, I’ll get you into bed with the pillows packed how you like them.”

“Is it Millie’s poison?” she asked, settling with a sigh of bliss; only Carmine knew how to get the pillows right.

“I’m afraid so.”

“It isn’t fair, Carmine. After all the years of struggle, she and Jim have to go through this?”

“Looks that way, but it’s early days. Close your eyes.”

He wasn’t long out of bed himself, thankful that Patrick had folded and his sergeants had gone home at Delia’s command—how exactly had she assumed command?




SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 1969


They met in Carmine’s office at ten in the morning; no need yet to annoy wives with early Sunday starts, and the singles liked a sleep-in quite as much as the marrieds.

Abe, Carmine reflected as he gazed at his oldest and loyalest colleague, was settling into his lieutenant’s authority as quietly as he did everything, but there was a new smoothness and placidity in his face, caused by an extraordinary piece of good fortune. The German chemicals giant Fahlendorf Farben had awarded his two sons full scholarships to the colleges of their choice when they reached college age, to be ongoing as far as doctoral programs. For the father of two very bright boys, a huge relief; saving college fees kept parents poor. The grant had arisen out of Abe’s own police work; forbidden to accept a posted reward, Abe had declined it. So Fahlendorf Farben had given scholarships to his boys, signed, sealed, the money already invested.

Abe always worked with Liam Connor and Tony Cerutti, his personal team.

Liam was in his middle thirties and had been Larry Pisano’s man, but much preferred working for Abe now Larry was gone. Married and the father of one girl, he kept his private life well apart from his police career, which indicated, Carmine thought, a proud man in a moderate domestic situation, neither heaven nor hell. He was barely regulation height but kept himself fit, and had a pleasant face: grey-blue eyes, a lot of sandy hair, good bones. His reputation in the Holloman PD was of a man who did nothing to excess—probably why he and Abe clicked. Rational men.

Tony Cerutti was of that East Holloman Italian American family that bred many cops, his degree of blood relationship sufficiently removed from the Commissioner and Carmine, both half Cerutti. Thirty years old and a bachelor, he was dark, handsome and charming in a slightly street-rat way; Abe always sent him after women suspects of a certain class. He was still learning to damp down the wilder side of his enthusiasm, but he was a good man, and absolutely attached to Abe, who awed him.

Carmine spoke first, outlining the disappearance of Dr. Millie Hunter’s tetrodotoxin.

“Because Paul acted so fast, both victims still had traces in their systems,” he said. “Each had a puncture wound in the left side of the back of the neck, into muscle and fat, not near bone. The injection would have been absorbed at an intramuscular rate. The dose was almost microscopic—about one half of one milligram. That makes it a hundred times more potent than cyanide. There’s no antidote and no treatment. Worst is that the victim is fully conscious until death.”

“Holy shit!” Donny exclaimed, face white. “That’s awful!”

“Very cold-blooded,” Carmine said. “Though it’s out of sequence, I’d like to continue for a moment about the poison. There must be at least five hundred milligrams left—a lot of death, though this doesn’t feel like a killer at the start of a spree, so the leftovers are more likely to go into storage. It seems that neither victim felt any pain on injection, yet we also know the killer didn’t use an ordinary hypodermic and syringe. So what’s the method of delivery, and how long before the first symptoms appeared?”

“I’ve seen Gus Fennell and Paul Bachman again this morning,” Abe said, “and they’ve been doing a lot of reading as well as done a better time line of the physical course of John Hall’s symptoms. An intramuscular injection had to have been administered inside Max Tunbull’s den, it couldn’t have been given before they went in. No one left the room, even on a bathroom call. Gus and Paul both insist no more than twenty minutes passed between the injection and death, and all six men were in Max’s den for thirty minutes. That means you’re right about the method of delivery, Carmine. No hypodermic and syringe.”

“The real stumbling block in our murderer’s plans was Millie Hunter,” said the pear-shaped voice of Delia Carstairs. “If she hadn’t reported the theft of her tetrodotoxin to her father, both these deaths would have been impossible to prove as murder.”

Carmine’s eyes rested on Delia with a smile in them. It was way below freezing outside and the wind was up, contributing a chill factor; Delia had dressed for it in outer wear of fake fur striped like a red-and-black tiger. The outfit underneath was also striped tiger fashion, but in pink-and-black, and it bore touches of bright blue because her heart craved color, color, and more color. She was way below regulation height and built like a barrel on grand piano legs, had no neck, and a huge head adorned with frizzy, brassy hair; there was so much mascara around her twinkling brown eyes that they always looked marooned in tar. Her bright red lipstick had a tendency to daub her slightly buck teeth as well as sneak into the pucker-wrinkles around her mouth, but no one’s smile was more genuine than Delia’s. Her nature was perfect for police work, since she was meticulous to the point of obsessiveness and she never gave up; no one could see more in a sheet of numbers or a floor plan, which made white-collar crime her most relished pleasure.

The blood niece of Commissioner John Silvestri on the Silvestri side, she was English, the child of a prestigious Oxford don, and despite her sartorial eccentricities she enjoyed a relatively high social position within the city of Holloman’s hierarchy (her posh accent assured it). Those who didn’t know her well tended to dismiss her as something of a fool. Wrong! thought Carmine. Having Sergeant Delia Carstairs was like being a closet dictator owning a secret ICBM.

“Expound,” said Carmine.

“I think I’ve already hit the nail on the head, chief. Our awareness of his murder method has ruined everything for him,” Delia said. “Not one, but two murders, both at banquets, yet of utterly opposite kinds. Nine suspects for the death of John Hall, seventy-two for Dr. Tinkerman. If one presumes that the only viable suspects attended both banquets, we have Max and Davina Tunbull, Val Tunbull, Ivan Tunbull, and Jim and Millie Hunter.”

“Not Millie!” said Tony Cerutti instantly.

“Why not?”

Carmine stepped into the breach with a glance at Tony. “I guess Millie’s a part of the clan,” he said calmly, “and I for one would be confounded were she to turn out the guilty one. We—we know her. But you’re right of course, Deels. She has to go on the list of suspects.”

“As far as I’m concerned, she and Jim head the list of suspects,” said Abe. “Who else could have brought that particular poison to the Tunbull dinner? The thief? How would any Tunbull have known about tetrodotoxin?” Abe looked grim. “My instincts say it isn’t Millie. That leaves Jim.”

“Who has good reason to want to kill Tinkerman, but why John Hall?” Liam asked.

“How do you know that?” Carmine asked.

“Easy. Everyone does. Dr. O’Donnell hasn’t been silent about Tinkerman’s attitude to Jim Hunter’s book,” said Nick Jefferson. “Gossip around County Services says Tinkerman hates Jim Hunter.” His handsome black face grew stern. “I believe someone stole the poison—and used it!—to implicate Dr. Jim.”

“Too many speculations on too little evidence,” said Carmine with a sigh. “We know murder was done on two different occasions using an instrument the killer thought undetectable. It’s surely logical to assume that the same hand is responsible for both the deaths. But motive? We have no idea. Is the thief of the toxin also the killer? We have no idea.”

“It’s dig time,” said Donny Costello.

He was the last of the sergeants, moved up from the pool a few months earlier, and he was eager, thorough, a trifle sideways in his thinking. A husky, chunky man just turned thirty-one, he had recently married, and existed in that happy haze of the newly wed husband: home cooked breakfasts, plenty of sex, a wife who never let him see her hair in curlers or her temper in tatters.

“Right on, Donny!” Abe cried. “Dig, dig, and dig again.”

“Who stands to benefit or profit?” Carmine asked. “What kind of link can there possibly be between a West Coast timber tycoon and an East Coast divinity scholar? Did they die because they knew each other, or because they couldn’t be let to know each other?” He frowned. “Candidly, Jim and Millie Hunter look suspicious in more ways than the rest put together.”

“It’s not Millie!” said Tony pugnaciously.

“Jim Hunter’s book is involved,” Carmine went on as if no one had interrupted.

Abe interrupted. “Max Tunbull told me that he and Val, his brother, made an executive decision just before Christmas and ran a twenty thousand first printing, though C.U.P. hadn’t authorized it. And Davina Tunbull printed twenty thousand dust jackets.”

“Delia, you interview Davina,” Carmine said.

“And what are you going to do, chief?” Delia asked.

Alone among them she called him “chief” or “boss”; recently Carmine had come to think this was part of her assumption of extra, entirely unofficial, power. If he didn’t adore her—but he did, with all his heart. His ICBM.

“I’m seeing M.M.,” he said. “Abe will decide who interviews whom apart from Davina. And don’t forget for one moment that Donny’s the new broom—you’ll have to dig hard to go deeper.”

M.M. was impenitent about one aspect of the Tinkerman murder. “It got the Parsons off my back,” he said, pushing the plate of fresh apple Danish at Carmine.

“Did they really blackmail you into Tinkerman, sir?”

“My fault. I should have kept the iron fist sheathed in velvet a little longer. But oh, Carmine,” said the President of Chubb, blue eyes fiery, “I was fed up with waiting for those holier-than-thou bastards to hand over Chubb’s collection of paintings! I don’t care about the Rembrandt or the Leonardo—well, I do, but you know what I mean—I wanted the Velasquez, the wartime Goyas, the Vermeer, the Giotto and the el Grecos! Who ever sees them? The Parsons! I want them hung where all of Chubb and however many visitors can see them!”

“I understand,” said Carmine, biting into a pastry.

“When that idiot Richard Spaight said they were going to hang on to Chubb’s paintings for another fifty years at least, I—I snapped! Hand ’em over within a month, or I sue! And I meant it,” said M.M.

“And they knew they couldn’t buy the court,” Carmine said.

“I am not without influence,” M.M. said smugly. “That’s their trouble, of course. They have billions, but they don’t cultivate the right people, whereas we MacIntoshes do—and we’re not short of a dollar either.”

“A pity the Hug folded. The Parsons were happy funding such important research, but it was fatal to hand administration over to a psychiatrist.”

“Why is that, Carmine?” M.M. asked, his famous apricot hair now faded to a pallid peach.

“Desdemona says psychiatrists with business heads are in private practice. The ones in research tend to be enthusiastic about loony projects or stuff so far out in left field you can’t see it. So the Hug folded. It’s better as it is, a simple part of the medical school rather than full of weirdos.”

“The Parsons hold me responsible, as far as I can gather just because I’m President of Chubb. The paintings? Sheer spite.”

“No, I disagree,” said Carmine, remembering a lunch with the Parsons in a blizzard-bound New York City. “They really do enjoy looking at the paintings, Mr. President. Especially the el Greco at the end of the hall. Greed tempted them to keep the lot—greed of the eyes. As for spite—it’s a part of the Parson persona.”

“Hence Tom Tinkerman. Nothing of interest would have been published during his tenure at C.U.P.,” said M.M. flatly. “I am really, really glad that he’s dead.”

Carmine grinned. “Did you kill him, M.M.?”

The determined mouth opened, shut with a snap. “I refuse to rise to that bait, Captain. You know I didn’t kill him, but—” A beautiful smile lit up M.M.’s face. “What a relief! The Board of Governors can’t be blackmailed a second time because there’s no Tinkerman left among the candidates. So soon after Tinkerman’s appointment, we’ll just slip in the one we wanted all along. I don’t think you know him—Geoffrey Chaucer Millstone.”

“Auspicious name,” said Carmine gravely. “Who is he?”

“An associate professor in the Department of English—a dead end academically, but he’s not professorial material. Too brisk and pragmatic. Hard on the undergrads and harder still on fellows of all kinds. Ideal for C.U.P.—no leisurely publication of abstruse treatises on the gerundive in modern English usage.”

“Darn! I’ve been hanging out for that. Is he good for things like science and Dr. Jim’s book?”

“Perfect,” said M.M. with satisfaction. “There’s no denying either that C.U.P. can do with the funds a huge best seller would bring in. The Head Scholar will have money to publish books he couldn’t have otherwise. C.U.P. is well endowed, but the dollar is not what it used to be, and these days alumni with millions to give think of medicine or science. The days when the liberal arts received mega-buck endowments are over.”

“Yes, that’s inevitable. A pity too,” said Carmine; he was a liberal arts man. “Last name Millstone? As in the Yankee Millstones, or the ordinary old Jewish immigrant Millstones?”

“The ordinary old Jewish immigrants, thank God. Chauce, as he’s known, is worth a whole clan of Parsons.”

Carmine rose. “I’ll have to see people I’m bound to offend, sir. Be prepared.”

“Do what has to be done.” The good-looking face was at its blandest. “Just get Dr. Jim out from under, please. It has not escaped me that he’s bound to be the main suspect.”

Her tiger bonnet on her head to keep her ears warm, her short arms encumbered by folds of fake fur, Delia drove her cop unmarked out to Route 133 and found Hampton Street. An odd neighborhood for relatively affluent people, but her preliminary research had revealed that Max and Val Tunbull had each built on Hampton Street in 1934, just as America was recovering from the Great Depression, on land that had cost them virtually nothing, and using building contractors grateful for the work. Probably they had believed that Hampton Street would become fairly ritzy, but it had not. People wishing to be ritzy had preferred the coast or the five-acre zone, farther out.




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