"I have an unbreakable alibi for the Siddon murder."
"Well, no you don't, not if you're counting on Mallory. I'm sure you noticed her staking out Gramercy Park and following you on campus. Her tragic flaw is beauty, or rather, the fact that she's unaware of it. She actually believes she can blend into her surroundings. So you were aware of her, and you made her your alibi."
"I was never out of her sight for more than twenty minutes."
"Nineteen minutes. She's obsessive about her notes. Do you know, she even has a note about the change in your physical characteristics during "the play? You do have a distinctively awkward body language, but you can lose it when you want to. On stage, you were even graceful."
"Nineteen minutes isn't enough time to go to Gramercy Park, kill the old woman and get back to the theater again."
"Oh, I don't believe any of them were killed in Gramercy Park. The university borders a seedy area with lots of places to do a murder unobserved."
"The police have no reason to believe she wasn't killed in the park."
"You mean because of the blood at the supposed crime sites? I liked the detail of the beads spread out all over creation. You arranged the bodies as they were when you killed the women. Once the bodies stiffened, it would have been easy to leave them in the same positions at another site, even working in the dark. Originally, the police believed the plastic bag was used to prevent the blood from splattering the killer. But the bags were used to retain all the blood necessary for a convincing crime scene. Excellent idea. The bag would keep it nice and moist so it would saturate the surroundings instead of lying caked on the surface. The bloody palm prints were another nice touch."
"They'll never prove it."
"No? But you've made so many errors. Shall I tell you what I believe tipped off Edith Candle? You mentioned the slashed breast from the seance. Blood and gore are not the mainstays of a medium's routine. Edith knew you'd filled the gaps in that performance from memory. You couldn't have seen it."
The knife had dropped away from his eye by a bare inch, and then another.
"It was more than money, wasn't it? I always thought that was a flaw in the police logic. You took an unnecessary risk planting the first body in the park. You craved the excitement, didn't you? How did it start?"
The lamp on the floor created the illusion of footlights and the drama of contrast. Gaynor's grin had a ghoulish aspect.
"It started with Anne Cathery's dog. He got away from her and led her out of the park. We were looking for him in the dustbins when I saw the monkey puzzle worked out for me."
"The monkey puzzle. That sounds familiar."
"When you were a schoolboy, did you have the paradigm of the monkey, the chair, the pole and the banana?"
"I think so. The banana is suspended from the ceiling by a thread?"
"Right," said Gaynor. "Just out of reach. And this very hungry monkey is given the tools to retrieve the banana – a chair and a pole. But the monkey doesn't know how to use them. So he paces back and forth until he gives up and sits in the corner, beaten. Suddenly, everything falls into line. From where he sits, he can see the pole leaning on the chair and pointing up to the banana. He grabs up the pole, leaps on the chair and swats the banana down."
"So it was spontaneous?"
"Yes. She was looking for the dog by a row of trash cans. Some building super had left half a box of large plastic bags by the cans. The garbage was bagged, just waiting to be put out on the street in the morning. There was a kitchen knife on the ground, someone had discarded it for a broken handle. The hilt of the knife was touching the box of trash bags and the blade was pointing at Anne Cathery. Beyond that silly woman, on the next street, was Henry Cathery, sitting in the park, playing chess with himself. I picked up one of the bags and punctured it with the knife. That gave me cover from the blood. I used another bag to put over her as soon as I'd put the knife in her throat. They were all small women. It wasn't difficult to bag her, so to speak. With the cover of a plastic bag around the body, I had all the leisure to make it look like the work of a lunatic."
"As if it wasn't."
"A profit of hundreds of millions of dollars is not the goal of the average lunatic."
"But you did like it, didn't you?"
Gaynor ignored this.
"Later, I came back for her. She was stiff by then. You were right, it was easy to arrange the body in the park so no one would know she'd been moved. Then I broke her beads and sent them flying everywhere."
Gaynor was smiling, and it was hardly an engaging smile. The man was enjoying his exposition. Of course, the downside of the perfect murder would be the lack of an appreciative audience.
"That was risky, even in the small hours of the morning," said Charles, hoping for the ring of appreciation in his own voice.
"I admit that part was exciting. But what were the odds of anyone watching at four in the morning? No one's very alert at that hour. I wore jeans and a baseball cap to pass as a maintenance man. I threw a bow-legged gait into the role. I was only carrying a large garbage bag. Nothing too sinister in that. Maintenance drones are invisible in that neighborhood. If it hadn't worked, if anyone had come forward with a description of a maintenance man with a garbage bag, it would never have come back on me. No motive. This was Henry's grandmother not mine."
"It never occurred to you that Henry would report his grandmother missing during the night?"
"The police won't take a missing-person report until forty-eight hours go by. I was hardly worried about Henry getting a posse together to beat the bushes for her. You've met him. I saw you in the park with him. It wasn't much of a risk. The worst thing that could have happened was that she'd be found somewhere else."
"Where did you kill your aunt?"
"I invited her to lunch and met her on a side street near the campus. She never mentioned the appointment to anyone. I had to volunteer the information to the police so they could verify my alibi for either side of the half-hour when I didn't have one. I told them she stood me up."
"I suppose that was quite understandable to them, since she was being murdered at that time. And Pearl Whitman? How did you get her into that East Village neighborhood?"
"I told her I was a broker with information to give the US Attorney's office about the cartel. She offered me a bribe. I told her she'd have to meet with me to work out the details. By public telephones, I led her from block to block, sort of eased her into the neighborhood by degrees."
"So, the fear of notoriety, prison and poverty overcame her fear of a bad neighborhood."
"Exactly. Samantha Siddon was only a little different. I had the impression she was looking forward to our meeting. I used a series of public phones to bring her to the theater by three different cabs. I had her walk the last few blocks and met her at the back of the building. I killed her behind a trash bin. That only took a few minutes. It took me longer to dress for the play rehearsal."
"How did you transport the body to Gramercy?"
"I usually go everywhere by cab. That day I hired a rental car for the occasion. I had to leave early, before Mallory's usual arrival time. I didn't want her to see the car."
The knife backed away another inch. He braced his arm on the arm of the chair. "But you still haven't delivered, Charles. You don't have anything that would stick, unless there's something else you've left out."
"Only this." Charles pushed the knife away and blinded Gaynor with Edith's unfurled shawl. He pulled the gun from the chair cushion and leveled it at Gaynor's head as the man ripped the shawl away from his face.
"Put down the knife. The police should be here any minute now. I expect they're on the way up in the elevator."
Gaynor smiled, and it was Charles's turn to play "What's going on here?" A child's game flashed through his brain.