The Cairvoyant Countess (1.1) Page 6

  "Swope had been checking out Mazda Lorvale, as he had all the neighbors. Now we discovered that someone in that neighborhood had pawned Dr. Bugov's gold watch. The pawnbroker gave us a very precise description of the woman who had pawned it, and it exactly matched that of Mazda Lorvale. Next the bank produced several checks made out to Mazda and signed by Dr. Bugov several days after his disappearance. These checks proved to be forgeries, and Mazda had forged them."

  "So she was arrested," said Madame Karitska.

  "Not then. We first had a warrant issued and searched her house. We hit pay dirt all right. We found Dr. Bugov's attache case under her bed, his checkbook in her bureau drawer, and a quantity of cyanide hidden away in her pantry. That's when she was arrested on suspicion of murdering Charles Windham and Polly Biggs, but of course we felt pretty sure by that time that she must have murdered Dr. Bugov too."

  "But you say she has just died in a mental hospital?"

  Pruden nodded. "She was put on trial for the two poison murders while we continued searching for Dr. Bugov's body. We even dug up the basement of her house. We had men searching the grounds of every nearby park, looking under culverts, and checking every piece of empty ground in the Dell section. The professor," he said with finality, "was never found, dead or alive."

  "Extraordinary," said Madame Karitska with interest. "And in this trial, was she found guilty?"

  He shook his head. "It was a long trial, a rather sensational one at the time, but if it had been concluded, I seriously doubt that a verdict of guilty would have been brought in. There just wasn't enough evidence, certainly nothing conclusive. She'd forged his name to those checks, yes, and she'd pawned his gold watch but there was no binding evidence of murder. She'd known Dr. Bugov for two years, we established that, but we never discovered how they met. There was the possibility that they'd been lovers-he was forty, she was thirty-five and quite attractive in a candy-box way. But when it came time for her to testify-they put her on the stand-she was rambling and incoherent, and made wild, extreme statements. She had to be removed from the stand. Ultimately the jury found her legally insane and she was ordered confined."

  "So the truth was never unearthed," said Madame Karitska thoughtfully. "A strange story. She denied the murders?"

  "Oh yes, and denies them even in her suicide note." He removed a brown manila envelope from his pocket and carefully extracted a note written in pencil on lined notebook paper. "The note was written to the lawyer who defended her three years ago and it reads, 'It doesn't matter really but I will say this. I didn't kill Uli or Polly or Charlie. I went wild with grief from losing them. Nothing has been worth anything since.' " He handed the slip of paper to Madame Karitska and sat back.

  Madame Karitska placed the letter on the table and gently inserted her fingers under it until the letter rested across the palms of her hands. After a moment she closed her eyes and Pruden sat in silence, watching her. The candles flickered and wavered; in the dim light he thought Madame Karitska's face looked infinitely sad. When she opened her eyes her expression was thoughtful.

  "Well?" asked Pruden.

  "Tell me," she said, putting down the note, "would there be any possible way to bring me-at this late date-any objects handled by Dr. Bugov or by this Polly Biggs or Charles Windham?"

  Pruden was startled. "That's a rather tall order after three years. It's possible, though, I suppose. Dr. Bugov's papers are still somewhere at headquarters-we sifted through them all for leads but found nothing. And Mrs. Biggs's mother carried away Polly's jewelry and is in a nursing home not far off my route. As for Mr. Windham-"

  "That would be quite enough," Madame Karitska told him.

  Pruden smiled. "You're not going to tell me any impressions you received, as you put it?"

  "No," said Madame Karitska. "Not tonight."

  "But you did catch something?" he asked eagerly.

  "Oh yes," she said, "a great deal, and I am most curious. If you will bring me objects belonging to two of the three persons I think I may be able to tie certain threads together for you. Your case," she added with a faint smile, "is not yet over."

  It was two days before Pruden reappeared, looking triumphant, which was not surprising because it had taken a certain amount of resourcefulness and digging to produce the objects he presented to her. He gave her the gold watch belonging to Dr. Bugov that had been pawned by Mazda Lorvale, and which was still marked "Exhibit B" from the trial, and a leather checkbook of his as well. From Polly Biggs's mother he had secured a ring and a silver necklace. He placed them on the carved wooden table in the center of the room and then noticed a neatly clipped newspaper item already there. He picked it up.

  "MYSTERY FIGURE APPARENT SUICIDE," he read aloud. "I thought you didn't read newspapers, Madame Karitska."

  "I don't usually," she admitted, "but you said the story would be carried in the newspapers today and I was most curious to read a second version of her trial and the murders. For instance," she said, "you did not tell me how Mazda 'babbled,' as the paper expresses it, of knowing influential people in very high places, and of doing important intelligence work."

  Pruden shrugged. "That's one of the reasons she was judged insane. I told you she grew incoherent at the trial. An uneducated, simple woman ranting and raving-"

  "Exactly," said Madame Karitska, and sat down and picked up Dr. Bugov's watch and held it in her hand. She sat bemused for some length of time, nodded several times, removed the watch and picked up the ring and necklace. After several minutes she removed them and restored the watch to her hand.

  At last, looking somber, she put down the watch and walked into the kitchen to return with a pot of Turkish coffee. Abruptly she said, "I will tell you now. Your Mazda Lorvale was innocent."

  "Oh God," said Pruden.

  "She was not insane either," said Madame Karitska, pouring coffee into two cups.

  Pruden stared at her blankly. "Now you've surely gone too far; you've got to be kidding."

  "I do not, as you say, 'kid,' " she told him distastefully. "You described this woman to me yourself only a few moments ago. You called her an uneducated, simple woman, and this is precisely what her suicide note has told me. She lived in much agony, poor woman, and probably never fully understood what happened to her. Her intelligence, you see, was below average. She was not stupid, you understand, or retarded in the physical sense, but her intelligence was limited-stunted, probably, by overwhelming emotional deprivation in her childhood. She was, in a word, the perfect dupe."

  "Dupe?" echoed Pruden incredulously.

  "It astonishes me that no one paid any attention to her so-called babblings about doing important work. She believed it, didn't anyone realize this? She was not insane and she believed it, but why did she believe it?"

  Pruden looked astonished and then interested. "I don't understand."

  Madame Karitska picked up Dr. Bugov's gold watch and held it lightly in her hand. "The man to whom this belonged was not born in this country. From his watch I gain the impression of a man of ice, a man callous and devious and brilliant of intellect. I do not think you will ever find the body of Dr. Bugov, Lieutenant. I believe he is still very much alive."

  "Alive!"

  "Yes, under a new name, no doubt, but alive. He is the man who poisoned your Mrs. Biggs and Mr. Windham."

  "Biggs and Windham! But why?" protested Pruden.

  "To rid himself of Mazda Lorvale," she said. "She babbled about doing important intelligence work at her trial but no one wondered why. He is the man who was doing the important intelligence work, Lieutenant, although I doubt seriously that it was for this country. You have here a love-starved woman of modest good looks, submissive disposition, and low intelligence. It is just the sort of woman this man can use, even confide in for he could never risk intimacy with a peer. Mazda becomes his mistress, his slave, you might say. With her he can let down a little, relax, brag a little, and to her he is the sun, the moon, and the stars. She gives herself heart, body,
and soul, you understand? It is very sad."

  Pruden stared at her, dazed. "But the others-Biggs and Windham?"

  She nodded. "He is very clever, do you not think so, your Dr. Bugov? The time comes for him to break up this constricting alliance. He has grown bored, perhaps, or the liaison has become dangerous, but it is more likely that he has received orders to go elsewhere. How then is he to dispose of this poor creature who would be an embarrassment and a danger to him when he has left?"

  She shrugged before continuing. "To kill her directly I think would be too risky. He has been perhaps a little too open; he has become known to her friends and the trail would lead straight to him. So instead he poisons first one and then another of Mazda's neighbors and thus he disposes of two witnesses to their relationship and throws suspicion squarely on Mazda."

  "And the watch, the checks?"

  "He leaves them with her, of course, or, as you police say, plants them upon her? Perhaps he has even encouraged her to sign his checks for him. He then disappears, thus in every way tightening the noose about her neck."

  "Good God," he said faintly.

  She nodded. "Yes, I feel for this bewildered woman. Her suicide note struck you as sincere? It is a very sad note. And this man-"

  "This man," said Lieutenant Pruden grimly.

  "I would hope," she said gently, "that among the many things you have of his, there may be a fingerprint or two remaining that belong to him. This checkbook, for instance, or something untouched among the possessions you hold. It would be wise to present these prints to a much higher government agency to see if there are any records, any prints that match. A simple professor at a university who disappears does not merit such research but the man behind this façade-"

  "I get your point," Pruden said grimly, and then, with a shake of his head, "You make it sound so simple."

  "Simple?" She looked at him in surprise. "It is like a kaleidoscope, that is all. A small shift of focus and one sees beyond illusion to reality. You look at things one way, I another, but you need only shift your attention and you too will see."

  "Well, if it should be true-" He put down his napkin. "I think you will forgive me if I leave now, Madame Karitska, I think there is a little unfinished business I should look into tonight."

  "I think so too," she said with a twinkle. "And we will see, shall we not?"

  They did not meet again until the weekend, but when Pruden arrived he still had not lost the slightly dazed look that he had worn five nights earlier. He stood in the doorway and said, "I've just visited Mazda's grave. I think I went to-no, I don't know why I went."

  "No?" she said smiling.

  "Interpol finally identified his fingerprints," he said harshly. "He was never Ulanov Bugov. They don't know who he is, except they have his fingerprints and about half a dozen aliases. I thought you'd want to know."

  "Yes."

  He nodded and turned away. "There were flowers on her grave today," he said, suddenly turning back. "Nobody attended her funeral, they tell me, and yet there were flowers on her grave today."

  "As I believe I said before," Madame Karitska told him gravely, "it continues to astonish me what things of value are thrown away on Walnut Street."

  Chapter 8

  "What's this?" asked Pruden, stopping in at Madame Karitska's one evening on his way home after a long day on the street. He had just discovered that Madame Karitska had two guests, one of them Gavin O'Connell, the other a very Establishment-type middle-aged man in a well-cut business suit.

  Madame Karitska put a finger to her lips and gestured him to follow her to the center of the room. Lieutenant Pruden could make no sense of what he saw. Neither Gavin nor the stranger appeared even aware of his arrival: in front of each lay a book, and they were staring with enormous concentration at their respective half-open volumes.

  And suddenly as he watched a strange thing happened: a page of Gavin's book slowly lifted and turned. There were no windows open: there were no hands touching the pages and yet the page had turned.

  "I did it," crowed Gavin gleefully. "Hey, Jonesy, I did it!"

  "Mr. Faber-Jones, this is Lieutenant Pruden," broke in Madame Karitska. "Yes, you did it, Gavin. Capital! But Mr. Faber-Jones also had some success, I notice."

  "Kind of you," said Faber-Jones, getting to his feet. "Only pushed the page halfway, though, and frankly I'm exhausted."

  "Me too," admitted Gavin. "Hi, Lieutenant Pruden!"

  "What have I interrupted?" asked Pruden curiously.

  "A practice session," Gavin told him eagerly. "It's great meeting Mr. Faber-Jones, you know, he has the gift too."

  "Oh? But what have you been practicing?"

  "Concentration," said Madame Karitska. "The moving of mountains by the use of the mind. In this case, the lifting of a page in a book by sheer concentration of psychic energies. The pages can turn-you saw it yourself."

  "Incredible," said Pruden.

  "You can't just say 'Move!' to the pages either," put in Gavin. "You have to lift them with concentrated thought, and boy it's rough. It's fun too, though. You ought to try it."

  Pruden's laugh was short and doubting.

  "You find it unbelievable?" inquired Madame Karitska.

  "I don't know," said Pruden, frowning. "I might have six days ago but-"

  "But what?" asked Faber-Jones, sinking into the couch, obviously tired and ready for diversion.

  "Do not say a word," said Madame Karitska, "until I bring out the Turkish coffee I've brewed, with a glass of milk for Gavin." When she had returned and distributed refreshments she sat down and inserted a cigarette into a long holder. "Now tell us what has placed a crack in your imperviousness."

  Pruden said, "I'd really like to know: you believe the mind has such intensity, such power?"

  "But of course," she said, amused. "We use only a fraction of its power, we use only a tiny amount of ourselves."

  "But for instance," Pruden said, picking his words carefully, "do you believe a man can simply announce that he's going to die, be in perfect health and-just die?"

  Madame Karitska smiled faintly. "So many diseases are psychosomatic, it happens oftener than you think. I have seen people turn their faces from life, their will to live gone. It may take months or years but they die."

  He shook his head. "I mean something much faster than that-death in a matter of days."

  "Ah," said Madame Karitska, "now that is very interesting. You have met such a situation? You must have met such a situation or you would not be speaking of this?"

  He said ruefully, "I'm still not accustomed to having my mind browsed through but yes, I've met such a situation. Heard about it, at least. The patrolman on the block, Bill Kane, has been puzzling over it for days. It seems a man named Arturo Mendez died about two weeks ago. On a Wednesday he told his brother Luis that he would die before the week was out, and on the following Tuesday night he died."

  "Did they not call a doctor?"

  "On Monday they called an ambulance and he was taken to the hospital. The doctors found nothing organically wrong with him, but the following night he was dead."

  "Did they perform an autopsy?"

  Pruden nodded. "He died quite literally of a heart stoppage but there was nothing wrong with his heart either."

  "Then it was precognition," put in Gavin eagerly. "He knew something was going to happen ahead of time."

  "No-no, I think not," Madame Karitska said, and with an intent glance at Pruden, "There is more?"

  He nodded. "Yesterday Bill Kane told me that Arturo's brother Luis won't get out of bed now. He's settled his debts, paid his landlady a week's rent in advance, and told her that he'll be dead by Monday morning."

  "And this is Friday night," mused Madame Karitska. "I wonder . . . where do they live, Lieutenant?"

  "Three blocks away on Fifth Street, in the Puerto Rican section."

  She nodded. "I will go there tomorrow, I would like to see this."

  Pruden shook his head. "It
's not a good section for gringos, as they call us. Very few speak English, and Luis only a little. Do you speak Spanish?"

  "No," said Madame Karitska, "but there is communication without speech." She added thoughtfully, "This is very interesting to me. There are yogis in the East, of course, who can stop breathing at will, but neither of your two men is a yogi; there must be very powerful forces involved here. It is the invisible at work, and I am a student of the invisible." She glanced abruptly at her watch and said, "It's time, Gavin." To Pruden she explained, "Mr. Faber-Jones has brought over a portable television so that we can see John Painter make his debut on the 'Tommy Tompkins Show.' "

  "Someone you know?" asked Pruden as Gavin jumped up to turn on the set.

  "A protégé of Mr. Faber-Jones."

  Faber-Jones looked at her reproachfully. "We both know whose protégé he really is, Madame Karitska."

  "Nonsense," she told him, "you're growing quite fond of him and you know it, especially since he stopped wearing tennis sneakers."

  "He only exchanged them for calfskin boots and a sequin jump suit," put in Faber-Jones dryly. "A very expensive sequin jump suit too, I might add."

  "Hey, that sounds cool," broke in Gavin. "You think I could meet him sometime?"

  "Sssh," said Madame Karitska, touching his shoulder and pointing to the television screen on which a glowing sequinned figure had appeared, guitar in hand, to sit on a stool in front of the cameras. Faber-Jones turned up the volume just as the song began:

  "Once in old Atlantis

  I loved a lady pure . . .

  And then the waters rose . . ."

  "It's already number two on the charts," FaberJones told Pruden in an aside. "My Pisces company cut the platter."

  "Oh?" said Pruden, blinking, and gave Faber-Jones a startled second glance.