The Prodigal Son. Colleen McCullough

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      “Easy. Everyone does. Dr. O’Donnell hasn’t been silent about Tinkerman’s attitude to Jim Hunter’s book,” said Nick Jefferson. “Gossip around County Services says Tinkerman hates Jim Hunter.” His handsome black face grew stern. “I believe someone stole the poison—and used it!—to implicate Dr. Jim.”

      “Too many speculations on too little evidence,” said Carmine with a sigh. “We know murder was done on two different occasions using an instrument the killer thought undetectable. It’s surely logical to assume that the same hand is responsible for both the deaths. But motive? We have no idea. Is the thief of the toxin also the killer? We have no idea.”

      “It’s dig time,” said Donny Costello.

      He was the last of the sergeants, moved up from the pool a few months earlier, and he was eager, thorough, a trifle sideways in his thinking. A husky, chunky man just turned thirty-one, he had recently married, and existed in that happy haze of the newly wed husband: home cooked breakfasts, plenty of sex, a wife who never let him see her hair in curlers or her temper in tatters.

      “Right on, Donny!” Abe cried. “Dig, dig, and dig again.”

      “Who stands to benefit or profit?” Carmine asked. “What kind of link can there possibly be between a West Coast timber tycoon and an East Coast divinity scholar? Did they die because they knew each other, or because they couldn’t be let to know each other?” He frowned. “Candidly, Jim and Millie Hunter look suspicious in more ways than the rest put together.”

      “It’s not Millie!” said Tony pugnaciously.

      “Jim Hunter’s book is involved,” Carmine went on as if no one had interrupted.

      Abe interrupted. “Max Tunbull told me that he and Val, his brother, made an executive decision just before Christmas and ran a twenty thousand first printing, though C.U.P. hadn’t authorized it. And Davina Tunbull printed twenty thousand dust jackets.”

      “Delia, you interview Davina,” Carmine said.

      “And what are you going to do, chief?” Delia asked.

      Alone among them she called him “chief” or “boss”; recently Carmine had come to think this was part of her assumption of extra, entirely unofficial, power. If he didn’t adore her—but he did, with all his heart. His ICBM.

      “I’m seeing M.M.,” he said. “Abe will decide who interviews whom apart from Davina. And don’t forget for one moment that Donny’s the new broom—you’ll have to dig hard to go deeper.”

      M.M. was impenitent about one aspect of the Tinkerman murder. “It got the Parsons off my back,” he said, pushing the plate of fresh apple Danish at Carmine.

      “Did they really blackmail you into Tinkerman, sir?”

      “My fault. I should have kept the iron fist sheathed in velvet a little longer. But oh, Carmine,” said the President of Chubb, blue eyes fiery, “I was fed up with waiting for those holier-than-thou bastards to hand over Chubb’s collection of paintings! I don’t care about the Rembrandt or the Leonardo—well, I do, but you know what I mean—I wanted the Velasquez, the wartime Goyas, the Vermeer, the Giotto and the el Grecos! Who ever sees them? The Parsons! I want them hung where all of Chubb and however many visitors can see them!”

      “I understand,” said Carmine, biting into a pastry.

      “When that idiot Richard Spaight said they were going to hang on to Chubb’s paintings for another fifty years at least, I—I snapped! Hand ’em over within a month, or I sue! And I meant it,” said M.M.

      “And they knew they couldn’t buy the court,” Carmine said.

      “I am not without influence,” M.M. said smugly. “That’s their trouble, of course. They have billions, but they don’t cultivate the right people, whereas we MacIntoshes do—and we’re not short of a dollar either.”

      “A pity the Hug folded. The Parsons were happy funding such important research, but it was fatal to hand administration over to a psychiatrist.”

      “Why is that, Carmine?” M.M. asked, his famous apricot hair now faded to a pallid peach.

      “Desdemona says psychiatrists with business heads are in private practice. The ones in research tend to be enthusiastic about loony projects or stuff so far out in left field you can’t see it. So the Hug folded. It’s better as it is, a simple part of the medical school rather than full of weirdos.”

      “The Parsons hold me responsible, as far as I can gather just because I’m President of Chubb. The paintings? Sheer spite.”

      “No, I disagree,” said Carmine, remembering a lunch with the Parsons in a blizzard-bound New York City. “They really do enjoy looking at the paintings, Mr. President. Especially the el Greco at the end of the hall. Greed tempted them to keep the lot—greed of the eyes. As for spite—it’s a part of the Parson persona.”

      “Hence Tom Tinkerman. Nothing of interest would have been published during his tenure at C.U.P.,” said M.M. flatly. “I am really, really glad that he’s dead.”

      Carmine grinned. “Did you kill him, M.M.?”

      The determined mouth opened, shut with a snap. “I refuse to rise to that bait, Captain. You know I didn’t kill him, but—” A beautiful smile lit up M.M.’s face. “What a relief! The Board of Governors can’t be blackmailed a second time because there’s no Tinkerman left among the candidates. So soon after Tinkerman’s appointment, we’ll just slip in the one we wanted all along. I don’t think you know him—Geoffrey Chaucer Millstone.”

      “Auspicious name,” said Carmine gravely. “Who is he?”

      “An associate professor in the Department of English—a dead end academically, but he’s not professorial material. Too brisk and pragmatic. Hard on the undergrads and harder still on fellows of all kinds. Ideal for C.U.P.—no leisurely publication of abstruse treatises on the gerundive in modern English usage.”

      “Darn! I’ve been hanging out for that. Is he good for things like science and Dr. Jim’s book?”

      “Perfect,” said M.M. with satisfaction. “There’s no denying either that C.U.P. can do with the funds a huge best seller would bring in. The Head Scholar will have money to publish books he couldn’t have otherwise. C.U.P. is well endowed, but the dollar is not what it used to be, and these days alumni with millions to give think of medicine or science. The days when the liberal arts received mega-buck endowments are over.”

      “Yes, that’s inevitable. A pity too,” said Carmine; he was a liberal arts man. “Last name Millstone? As in the Yankee Millstones, or the ordinary old Jewish immigrant Millstones?”

      “The ordinary old Jewish immigrants, thank God. Chauce, as he’s known, is worth a whole clan of Parsons.”

      Carmine rose. “I’ll have to see people I’m bound to offend, sir. Be prepared.”

      “Do what has to be done.” The good-looking face was at its blandest. “Just get Dr. Jim out from under, please. It has not escaped me that he’s bound to be the main suspect.”

      Her tiger bonnet on СКАЧАТЬ