And on the few times that he had seen Frank Watson, Carmine was always reminded of Boris out of The Adventures of Rocky and Bull-winkle. Watson dressed in black and had a long, thin face whose upper lip bore a lounge-lizard’s black mustache; sleek black hair and a permanent sneer completed the Boris similarity. Yes, Frank Watson was definitely the kind of person who drank regularly from a cup of vitriol. But surely he wasn’t on the Hug’s Board of Governors?
No, he wasn’t. Watson ended his conversation with the Dean and slithered away with a metaphorical flourish of a black cape he wasn’t wearing. Interesting guy, thought Carmine. I will have to see him.
The five Parson Governors trooped in as a group, and knew better than to query Carmine’s presence when M.M. made a subtly effusive introduction.
“If anyone can get to the bottom of this unspeakable affair, Carmine Delmonico can,” M.M. ended.
“Then I suggest,” said Roger Parson Junior, taking the chair at the end of the table, “that we put ourselves at Lieutenant Delmonico’s disposal. After, that is, he has told us precisely what has happened and what he intends to do in the future.”
The Parson contingent looked so alike that anyone would have picked them as closely related; even the thirty years’ difference in age between the three elderly and two youthful members of the clan made little difference. They were a trifle over medium height, thinly stooped, with long necks, beaky noses, prominent cheekbones, downturned mouths and scant heads of lank, indeterminately brown hair. Their eyes, to a man, were grey-blue. Now, M.M. looked like a regal tycoon, whereas the Parsons looked like academic paupers.
Carmine had spent some of his weekend in researching them and the Parson group of companies. William Parson, the founder (and uncle of the present Governor-in-Chief) had started with machine parts and parlayed his holdings until they stretched from motors to turbines, and surgical instruments through typewriters to artillery. The Parson Bank had come into being at exactly the right time to go from strength to strength. William Parson had left it rather late to marry. His wife produced one child, William Junior, who turned out to be mentally retarded and epileptic. The son died in 1945, aged seventeen, and the mother followed in 1946, leaving William Parson alone. His sister, Eugenia, had married and also produced only one child, Richard Spaight, now head of the Parson Bank and a Hug Governor.
William Parson’s brother, Roger, was a drunkard from an early age and absconded in 1943 to California with a sizeable slice of the company profits, abandoning his wife and two sons. The affair was hushed up, the loss absorbed, and both Roger’s boys had proven loyal, devoted and extremely capable heirs for William; their sons came out of the same mold, with the result that in this year of 1965 Parson Products stock had been blue chip for decades. Depressions? Chicken feed! People still drove cars that needed motors, Parson Turbines made diesel turbines and generators long before jet planes flew, girls went on pounding typewriters, surgical operations kept increasing, and countries were always blazing away at each other with Parson guns, howitzers and mortars, big, medium and small.
In an interesting aside, Carmine had discovered that the family black sheep, Roger, having sobered up in California, had founded the Roger’s Ribs chain, married a movie starlet, done very nicely for himself, and died on top of a whore in a seedy motel.
The Hug had come out of William Parson’s desire to do something in memory of his dead son, but its birth pangs had not been easy. Naturally Chubb University expected to head it and manage it, but such was not Parson’s intention. He wanted affiliation with Chubb, but refused to yield up its governance to Chubb. In the end Chubb had crumbled after being presented with an ultimatum of horrific proportions. His research center, said William Parson, would, if necessary, be attached to some sordid, non-Ivied, tin-pot institution of learning out of the state. When a Chubber like William Parson said that, Chubb knew itself beaten. Not that Chubb hadn’t come in for a slice of the pie; 25 percent of the annual budget was paid to the university for affiliation rights.
Carmine also knew that the Board of Governors met every three months. The four Parsons and Cousin Spaight came up from their New York City apartments by limousine and stayed in suites at the Cleveland Hotel opposite the Schumann Theater for the night after the meeting. This was necessary because M.M. always gave them a dinner, hoping that he would be able to coax the Parsons into endowing a building that would one day house the William Parson art collection. This most important collection in American hands had been bequeathed to Chubb in William Parson’s will, but its delivery date was left to the discretion of his heirs, who thus far had preferred to hang on to even the tiniest Leonardo cartoon.
When the Prof’s hand went out to start the reel-to-reel tape recorder, Carmine held up his own.
“Sorry, Professor, this meeting is absolutely confidential.”
“But – but – the minutes! I thought that if Miss Vilich was excluded, she could type up the minutes from tape.”
“No minutes,” said Carmine firmly. “I intend to be frank and detailed, which means nothing I say goes out of this room.”
“Understood,” said Roger Parson Junior abruptly. “Proceed, Lieutenant Delmonico.”
When he finished, the silence was so complete that a sudden sough of wind outside sounded like a roar; to a man they were ashen, trembling, open-mouthed. In all the times he had met M.M., Carmine had never seen the man thrown off balance, but in the wake of this report even his hair seemed to have lost its luster. Though perhaps only Dean Dowling, a psychiatrist famous for his interest in organic psychoses, fully understood the implications.
“It can’t be anyone at the Hug,” said Roger Parson Junior, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.
“That has yet to be established,” Carmine said. “We have no particular suspects, which means that all the members of the Hug are under suspicion. For that matter, we can’t rule out any persons in the Medical School.”
“Carmine, do you genuinely believe that at least ten of these missing girls have been incinerated?” asked M.M.
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“But you haven’t offered any real evidence of it.”
“No, I haven’t. It’s purely circumstantial, but it fits what we do know – that were it not for the vagaries of chance, Mercedes Alvarez would have been completely incinerated by last Wednesday.”
“It’s disgusting,” whispered Richard Spaight.
“It’s Schiller!” cried Roger Parson III. “He’s old enough to have been a Nazi.” He rounded on the Professor fiercely. “I told you not to hire Germans!”
Roger Parson Junior rapped the table sharply. “Young Roger, that is enough! Dr. Schiller is not old enough to have been a Nazi, and it is not the business of this Board to speculate. I insist that Professor Smith be supported, not upbraided.” His annoyance at his son’s outburst still in his eyes, he looked at Carmine. “Lieutenant Delmonico, I thank you very much for your candor, however unwelcome it may be, and I direct all of you to maintain silence on every aspect of this tragedy. Though,” he added rather pathetically, “I suppose we must expect that some of it at least will leak to the press?”
“That’s inevitable, Mr. Parson, sooner or later. This has become a statewide investigation. Those in the know are on the increase every day.”
“The FBI?” Henry Parson Junior asked.
“Not so far, sir. The line between a missing person and a kidnap victim is thin, but none of the families of these girls has ever received a ransom demand, and the matter remains at the moment confined to Connecticut. But rest assured, we will consult any agency that might be able to help,” said Carmine.