The Seven of Calvary Page 4

  Mona Morales looked up from the piano with a smile as Martin entered. “Buenas tardes,” she said.

  “Don’t let me bother you,” Martin answered in Spanish. “Just go on singing. I like to listen.”

  “Gracias, señor. Es muy amable.” Mona wandered from one folksong to another, in a clear and sweet, if untrained voice, while Martin smoked even more persistently than usual. Mona was as pleasant to look at as she was to hear. The light of the floor lamp gleamed on her black hair as softly as on the deep polish of the piano. Her simple white dress was a charming contrast to her dark skin. But try though he might to enjoy her voice and her appearance, Martin’s mind kept returning to her remarks at lunch.

  “You will forgive me if I pause?” she said at last. “I am tired and I think that I would sooner talk for a while. May I have a cigarette?”

  “You know,” Martin began, offering her a light, “I was wondering … that is … something you said at lunch today …”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to ask you a frank question, Mona.”

  “But of course.”

  “Why—”

  And the omnipresent Boritsin wandered into the room. To find a piano not in use was joy enough, but to find a ready-made audience beside it was bliss overflowing. For ten minutes Martin listened to a disquisition on the musical superiority of the ancien régime in Russia. Lush Tschaikovsky was contrasted with badly played Shostakovich to make a point—Martin was not quite sure what.

  Finally he leaned over and whispered to Mona, “I have to go now. I hate to leave you at Boritsin’s mercy, but Dr. Ashwin’s expecting me. When can I see you again?”

  “Am I not always here?”

  “I know, but … There’s a Mexican film playing at a little house down on Broadway. It might be rather fun. Could you go?”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Remigio and I are going to San Francisco. There is a ball at the Bolivian embassy. I must go over early because—” She paused abruptly. “Monday?”

  “Fine.”

  “I am through at two. Shall we meet at Sather Gate?”

  “Good.” And Martin slipped out unnoticed by Boritsin, who was at the moment explaining the musical degeneration of the Russian ballet.

  Martin walked down Channing Way in a state of suspense—a suspense that must last for two more days at least. Mona was Lupe Sanchez’s best friend; she, if anyone, would know definitely. And suppose it did turn out to be a genuine illness? There went motive. And Martin knew that he would feel much better.

  He climbed the twisting steps of the rooming house and knocked on Dr. Ashwin’s door. In a few moments he was comfortably settled in a chair by the desk while Ashwin produced a fifth of Teacher’s Highland Cream and excused himself to rinse a pair of glasses. Martin looked about the single room in which John Ashwin lived. In one corner stood a small bed, obviously made by male hands. Aside from a few chairs and a heater, the only other article of furniture was the huge roll-top desk with its swivel-chair, the throne from which Ashwin launched his best dicta. And the books—book-cases ran around two sides of the room, crammed with volumes, mostly old and well-worn. The very richness of Ashwin’s tastes resembled poverty in its quality of making strange bedfellows. The best available edition of Valmiki’s great epic, the Ramayana, leaned topheavily upon a cheap copy of Conan Doyle. The historical romances of the elder Dumas were scattered among bulky dictionaries of the classical languages. And Ashwin’s own translations from the Sanskrit rubbed figurative elbows with Rider Haggard’s epics of the Zulu dynasty. As the little round button on top of this heap of miscellany, Martin noticed an authoritative work on military tactics set beside Alice in Wonderland.

  When the Scotch had been poured, tasted, and found good, Martin opened the conversation with his conventional gambit. “How is Elizabeth?” he asked.

  Ashwin’s general aversion to women did not extend to those below the age of six. For many years he had been in the habit of selecting some female child of around three or four to whom he would act as unofficial godfather, abandoning her with the ruthlessness of a Schnitzler lieutenant when she reached the critical age of six. Elizabeth, however, seemed to possess some secret charm lacking in her predecessors; she was by now almost eight years old, and Ashwin was still devoted to her.

  “She is well, thank you,” Dr. Ashwin replied. “I spent last night and this morning with her family in San Rafael. She thanks you very much for the toy which you sent her.”

  “I’m glad she liked it. I do want to meet her some time.”

  “She seemed impressed by your gift in the manner usual to womankind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was asking after all the Berkeley people of whom she has heard me speak. ‘How is Dr. McIntyre?’ she asked. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘How are the Revkins?’ and so forth. At last she asked, ‘How is Mr. Lamb?’ And when I said ‘Fine,’ she added ‘Give him my love.’”

  Martin smiled. “I must remember. A wooden penguin is a simple means of conquest.”

  “And Elizabeth is learning Sanskrit.”

  “At the age of eight?”

  “Yes. She asked me to say something Sanskrit for her. It is a confusing request, as I take it you know from similar experiences.”

  Martin nodded. “There’s something tongue-tying about it. I imagine we’d be equally speechless if a man from Mars calmly asked us to ‘say something English.’ What did you do?”

  “After some puzzling, I decided to recite that ingenious tongue-twister which consists entirely of n’s and vowels. You remember?—

  na nonanunno nunnono

  na nā nānānanā nanu

  nunno ’nunno nununneno

  nānenā nunnanunnanut.1

  She was so delighted with it that nothing would do but I must spend hours reciting it. At last she knew it almost as well as I, and will probably amaze her playmates with her classical knowledge.”

  Thus the conversation passed from Elizabeth to the extraordinary ingenuities of the Sanskrit language, its amazing tongue-twisters, and especially the incredible feat of Dandin in the twelfth chapter of The Ten Princes, wherein Mantragupta relates a sizable narrative without employing any labial sounds because his lips “twitched with the soreness left by a charming mistress’ kisses.” “I lacked character for this achievement in my translation,” Ashwin confessed ruefully, “and was forced to adopt the shabby substitute of a somewhat more highfalutin style.”

  After that came a discussion of the perfections and imperfections of Haggard’s Finished, and a gradual divergence to the topic of Conan Doyle, which brought Martin, around the end of the third glass of Scotch, to the subject which had been on his mind all evening. He finished his glass and poured another—Ashwin being the ideal host who allows his guest to serve himself. Then, settling down comfortably with a fresh cigarette, he began, “We’re both very much interested in murder—that is, from an historical or fictional viewpoint. How do you feel about our sudden contact with it here on campus?”

  “I know almost nothing of it,” Ashwin admitted. “As you know, I was in San Rafael, and I barely glanced at the morning paper save to read the comics to Elizabeth.”

  Martin smiled at the picture of the translator of Kalidasa reading out the exploits of Buck Rogers. “You should have read the newspaper accounts,” he said. “But I thought you mightn’t have, so I brought them along.” He fished from his pocket the articles in the morning paper and handed them over.

  Ashwin winced slightly at SAVANT SLAIN WITH STILETTO, and glanced at Martin as though to say, “Must I?” Instead he asked, “Have you any especial reason to be interested in this murder?”

  “Yes. I met Dr. Schaedel shortly before his death and liked him very much. Besides, I think I know the murderer.”

  Martin was pleased with the effect of this melodramatic sentence. Ashwin said nothing, but began to read the clipping carefully. He reread it, then turned to the photographs and
the biography. “Did not this young lady join us at lunch a week or two ago?” he asked.

  Martin nodded.

  “Yes,” Ashwin thought back, “I remember it was a Friday, and she took a peculiar relish in eating meat—a silly gesture of defiance against her home life. And she swore stupidly.” He frowned. Enough of Dr. Ashwin’s New England upbringing persisted to make him disapprove strongly of girls who swore even when they were as attractive as Cynthia Wood. “The picture almost does her justice,” he resumed. “I begin to see the reason for your unusual interest.”

  He went over the group of clippings again and laid them on the table. “Now,” he said, “is there anything more? That is this morning’s paper. Was there anything in this evening’s news?”

  “Only one thing of importance. They’ve found the weapon.”

  “Was it a stiletto?”

  “No. An ice pick.”

  “How unfortunate for the alliterative caption writer. Where was it found?”

  “A few yards up Panoramic Way away from Cynthia’s toward the hills. Which doesn’t mean that the murderer went that way. It could have been thrown from where the body was found. It was caked with blood and regrettably free from fingerprints.”

  “That is all, then, from the newspapers. And have you any news of your own? How many of these people do you know, aside from Miss Wood?”

  “I know Mary Roberts fairly well, and Kurt Ross.”

  “That is the nephew?”

  “Yes.”

  Ashwin leaned back in the swivel-chair. “Now just what is it you want me to do? Play detective with you?”

  “I simply thought that if we discussed all the points of the case we might make it clear in our own minds and possibly discover something so obvious that it had been overlooked.”

  This reference to his own pet contention pleased Dr. Ashwin. “It should at least be an interesting mental exercise,” he said. “So tell me all that you have heard from your friends.”

  Martin began with his minor binge of the preceding evening, so that he might be able to include the surprising entrance of Kurt Ross. He then told of the luncheon-table remarks of Mary and of Mona, and closed, by way of comedy relief, with the theories of Boritsin, Worthing, and Morales, at which Ashwin smiled.

  “That is all your information?” he asked.

  Martin assented.

  “And you have already satisfied yourself as to the murderer? In that case you should hardly have any need of my observations. But let us begin, in the conventional manner of detective fiction, with that immortal trinity: Motive, Means, and Opportunity.” Dr. Ashwin filled his glass and opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, which he offered to Martin. After the business of lighting, he resumed. “I think we may begin by discarding Means as unlikely to be of any aid to us. An ice pick is a decidedly uncharacteristic and unidentifiable weapon, if nonetheless deadly. Even the organized forces of Scotland Yard could hardly hope to capture a murderer by enquiring into all suspicious purchases of ice picks during the last fortnight. Holmes, of course, would begin by deducing from the ice pick that the murderer was a cuckold; but I think that a bit far-fetched.”

  “A cuckold? Just how—?”

  “Because his household still employs an icebox in these days of electric refrigeration, a fact most probably occasioned by his wife’s intrigue with the proverbial iceman. Elementary, my dear Lamb; but we file this hint away, thinking it more likely that the ice pick was bought with its deadly nature in mind. One might, with somewhat more justice, observe that the murderer probably possesses an elementary knowledge of surgery, since a slight error in locating the heart would make the wound merely dangerous and not fatal. This is not, however, too helpful a point; the requisite knowledge could have been acquired for the occasion by a layman. Now since, as you say, the handle reveals no fingerprints—M. Bertillon’s refinement of the science of fingerprinting must have been a great boon to the glove industry—we have, I believe, exhausted the possibilities of Means. Next we come to—”

  “Motive?”

  “Let us save that for the last. Next, I say, we come to Opportunity, to ill-annexèd Opportunity, that foul abettor, that notorious bawd. There is much justice, if little poetry, in Lucrece’s famous rant against Opportunity, but in this case, I fear, it does not apply. This crime is not one in which a sudden opportunity presented itself for a murder which might not otherwise have occurred. People do not wander innocently about Panoramic Way carrying a handy ice pick. By the way, Mr. Lamb, and how did Dr. Schaedel himself happen to be wandering about there?”

  “Kurt mentioned to me,” Martin replied, “that his uncle was fond of walking at night. He probably had been strolling about the hills, and lost his way coming home.”

  “Then how did the murderer know where he would be—unless, of course, the murderer were following him? There is a point under Opportunity. But it is not a limiting point. The scene of the crime is one to which anyone in Berkeley could have ready access. A perfect—or, perhaps preferably, not quite perfect—alibi for eleven-thirty would be the only possible elimination under Opportunity. What can you tell me about that?”

  “Well, I am suspect myself then. I have no alibi for that hour. I was simply drinking and reading The Boat Train Murders. Of the people I know, Mary Roberts and Cynthia provide each other with alibis. Kurt Ross, so far as I know, has none. It was around a quarter or ten minutes of twelve when he came to my room.”

  “Mr. Lamb,” said Dr. Ashwin reproachfully, “please do not indulge in the smartalecky ingenuity of proving yourself a likely suspect. For your other information, I thank you. I believe that we have extracted most of the juice from Opportunity.”

  “And now we come to Motive?”

  “Yes.” Ashwin rose ponderously and moved about the room. “It is, I believe, Miss Tennyson Jesse who conveniently classified the motives for murder under six heads. I cannot remember her order, but the heads are these: Jealousy, Revenge, Elimination, Gain, Conviction, and Lust for Killing. Of these the last is of no use to the reasoning of a self-appointed detective. The most unlikely murderer may kill the most unlikely victim from sheer homicidal madness. The murderer may be, as it was insinuated that Jack the Ripper was, a respected individual completely normal in all other respects. If Dr. Schaedel was killed by a maniac, all our further reasoning is absurd and futile. Let us remember that possibility and continue.”

  “Jealousy,” Martin suggested, “is what I suppose Worthing meant to imply. But to judge, not only from my impression of Dr. Schaedel, but from all Kurt’s references to his uncle in the past, it is a ridiculous suggestion.”

  “Quite aside from that,” Ashwin added, “if it be sexual jealousy—Dr. Schaedel arrived in California yesterday for the first time in his life. Either the jealousy must date back to some remote Swiss affair, or the old gentleman must, with all due reverence, have been a very fast worker. Somewhat the same objection applies to revenge. A revenge which chases its victim across two continents and an ocean is a trifle too early Doyle for my taste. I admit that it is possible, but I prefer not to consider it as yet. What have we left now?”

  “Murder from conviction?”

  “In other words, assassination. Yes. But Dr. Schaedel’s political career seems to have been placid enough, and, as a matter of fact, he holds no official position at present. His assassination would seem to be a very empty gesture. There is obviously no need of considering seriously Mr. Boritsin’s theory, although one might, if one leaned leftward, evolve a very pretty counter-theory to the effect that Dr. Schaedel was murdered by a conspiracy between the House of Morgan and the sage of San Simeon.”

  Martin laughed.

  “Let us fill our glasses on that,” Dr. Ashwin suggested. The suggestion obeyed, he continued. “That leaves us, I believe, two motives, Elimination and Gain. The motive of elimination is generally the result of fear, as in the case of the murder of a blackmailer, the device to which all novelists resort when they wish their murderer to be sympat
hetic. From what you tell me, I can hardly imagine anyone fearing Dr. Schaedel. We now have left the motive which you have set your heart on—Gain.”

  Martin acquiesced.

  “You believe that Kurt Ross needed a sum of money for an urgent purpose whose existence, it seems to me, you have deduced from flimsy and largely hearsay evidence.”

  “I expect to find confirmation on Monday,” Martin added.

  “Very well. You think further that Kurt Ross approached his uncle for the money after the dinner—”

  “At nine-thirty,” Martin put in. “I heard the arrangement.”

  “—at nine-thirty, and that his uncle refused, possibly upon learning the cause of the need for money. Here is your first snag. Granting Dr. Schaedel the character which you give him, such a refusal seems to me most unlikely, unless occasioned by religious scruples. But let that go. Allow a half hour for this stormy scene. At ten Uncle Hugo sets off for a walk in the hills. Does Kurt then accompany him or shadow him? If the former, what has become of Kurt when Dr. Schaedel is lost and asks his way of Miss Wood? And in either case where does Kurt acquire the ice pick? And, if Kurt has just committed a cold-blooded murder—I say cold-blooded advisedly because of the careful wound in the back, something that could scarcely occur in an ordinary fight—why does he come dashing into your room to beg for whiskey? Why is he perfectly willing to let three men know that he has just been through some harrowing experience? The theory does not hold water, Mr. Lamb.”

  “I could add one more point against my own theory,” Martin admitted. “I can conceive of Kurt killing someone, even his own uncle, in the heat of a moment. But I cannot conceive of him lurking around dark corners with an ice pick. Still you cannot deny that his motive is obvious—the one obvious thing in this whole case.”

  Ashwin abruptly ceased his pacing and seated himself. There was a worried look in his eyes. “The more we discuss this affair, Mr. Lamb,” he said, “the more I realize that one thing, and only one, is obvious. And that one thing frightens me.”