“The well is bottomless and the pump chugs out three horses,” said the chief county engineer, thwarted and angry. “Since there’s a twenty-acre deer park as well as five-acre house lots, the water table is high and local consumption low. You haven’t gotten any organic matter because the bastard must have put thousands and thousands of gallons down after every killing. The residue is on the bottom of Long Island Sound. And shit, what does it matter? He’s dead. Close the case, Lieutenant, before that nasty bitch starts suing you personally.”
“It’s a total mystery, Patsy,” Carmine said to his cousin.
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“Obviously Chuck was wiry and strong, but he never struck me as an athlete, and his Hug colleagues were convinced he couldn’t change the washer on a tap. Yet what we found is marvelously constructed out of expensive materials. Who the hell put in a terrazzo floor and isn’t owning up to it now that the secret’s out? Ditto the plumbing? No one’s reported a missing plumber or terrazzo worker since the war!” Carmine ground his teeth. “The family has no money, we know that. Claire and Chuck lived so well that they must have spent every cent he earned. And yet there’s two hundred grand’s worth of labor and material down in the ground. Damnit, no one admits to having sold them the linen or the plastic liquid for the heads!”
“To quote the county engineer, what does it matter, Carmine? Ponsonby is dead and it’s time to close the case,” Patrick said, patting Carmine’s shoulder. “Why give yourself a coronary over a dead man? Think of Desdemona instead. When’s the wedding?”
“You don’t like her, Patsy, do you?”
The blue eyes dimmed but refused to look away. “Past tense might be more accurate. I didn’t like her in the beginning – too strange, too foreign, too aloof. But she’s different these days. I hope to come to love her as well as like her.”
“You’re not alone. Your mom and mine are shivering in their shoes. Oh, they gush enthusiastically, but I’m not a detective for no reason. It’s a façade to mask apprehension.”
“Made worse because she’s noticeably taller than you are,” said Patrick, laughing. “Moms and aunts and sisters hate that. You see, they were hoping that the second Mrs. Delmonico would be a nice Italian girl from East Holloman. But you’re not attracted to nice girls, Italian or otherwise. And I much prefer Desdemona to Sandra. Desdemona has brains.”
“They last longer than faces or figures.”
The case was officially closed that afternoon. Once the Medical Examiner’s report was filed the Holloman Police Department was obliged to admit that it could find no evidence to implicate Claire Ponsonby in the murders. If Carmine had had the time he might have gone to Silvestri and asked to reopen the murder of Leonard Ponsonby and the woman and child in 1930, but crime waits for no man, especially a detective. Two weeks after Charles Ponsonby was shot dead, a drug case was occupying all of Carmine’s attention. Back on familiar ground! Criminals he knew were guilty, his wits engaged in gathering the evidence to bring them to justice.
Chapter 30
Monday, March 28th, 1966
The axe fell on the Hughlings Jackson Center for Neurological Research at the end of March.
When the Board of Governors convened in the Hug boardroom at 10 A.M., all the Governors were present except Professor Robert Mordent Smith, who had been discharged from Marsh Manor two weeks before, but wouldn’t emerge from his basement and its trains. An embarrassment for Roger Parson Junior, who hated to think that his judgement of Bob Smith had been so erroneous.
“As the business director, Miss Dupre, please take a seat,” Parson said briskly, then looked at Tamara quizzically. “Miss Vilich, are you up to taking minutes?”
A legitimate question, as this Miss Vilich didn’t resemble the woman whom the Parson Governors had known before today. Her light had gone out, so Richard Spaight fancied.
“Yes, Mr. Parson,” Tamara said tonelessly.
President Mawson MacIntosh already knew what Dean Wilbur Dowling only suspected; however, the one’s certain knowledge and the other’s strong suspicion produced contented faces and relaxed bodies. Chubb University was going to inherit the Hug, so much was certain, together with a huge amount of money that wouldn’t be devoted to neurological research.
Half glasses perched on his thin blade of a nose, Roger Parson Junior proceeded to read out the legal opinion that had rendered his late lamented uncle’s last will and testament null and void in respect of the trust fund that financed the Hug. It took forty-five minutes to read something drier than dust in the Sahara, but those forced to listen did so with expressions of alert and eager interest save for Richard Spaight, upon whom the most wearisome aspects of the affair would devolve. He swung his chair to face the window and watched two tugs escort a large oil tanker to its berth at the new hydrocarbons reservoir complex at the foot of Oak Street.
“We could, of course, simply absorb the hundred-fifty million capital of the fund plus its accrued interest into our holdings,” Parson said at the conclusion of his peroration, “but such would not have been William Parson’s wish – of that we, his nephews and great-nephews, are very sure.”
Ha ha ha, thought M.M., like hell you didn’t want to absorb the lot! But you dropped the idea after I said Chubb would sue. The best you can do is snaffle the accrued interest, which in itself will make a nice, plump addition to Parson Products.
“We therefore propose that half of the capital be deeded to the Chubb Medical School in order to fund the ongoing career of the Hughlings Jackson Center in whatever guise it will assume. The building and its land will be deeded to Chubb University. And the other half of the capital will go to Chubb University to fund major infrastructure of whatever kind the university’s board of governors decides. Provided that each infrastructural item bears William Parson’s name.”
Oh, yummy! was written all over Dean Dowling’s face, whereasM.M.’s face remained complacently impassive. Dean Dowling was contemplating the Hug’s transformation into a center for research on the organic psychoses. He had tried to persuade Miss Claire Ponsonby to donate her deceased brother’s brain for research, and had been politely refused. Now there was a psychotic brain! Not that he had expected to see any gross anatomical changes, but he had hoped for localized atrophy in the prefrontal cortex or some aberration in the corpus striatum. Even a little astrocytoma.
Mawson MacIntosh’s thoughts revolved around the nature of the buildings that would bear William Parson’s name. One of them had to be an art gallery, even if it remained empty until the last of the Parsons was dead. May that day come soon!
“Miss Dupre,” Roger Parson Junior was saying, “it will be your duty to circulate this official letter” – he pushed it across the table – “among all members of the Hughlings Jackson Center, staff and faculty. Closure will be Friday, April twenty-ninth. All the equipment and furniture will be disposed of as the Dean of Medicine desires. Except, that is, for selected items that will be donated to the Holloman County Medical Examiner’s laboratories as a token of our appreciation. One of the selected items will be the new electron microscope. I had a chat, you see, with the Governor of Connecticut, who told me how important – and underfunded – the science of forensic medicine has become.”
No, no, no! thought Dean Dowling. That microscope is mine!
“I am assured by President MacIntosh,” Roger Parson Junior droned on, “that all members who wish to stay may stay. However, salaries and wages will be reassessed commensurate with standard medical school fiscal policy. Faculty members wishing to stay will be put under Professor Frank Watson. For those who do not wish to stay, Miss Dupre, you will arrange redundancy packages incorporating one year’s salary or wages plus all pension contributions.”