Murder in Black Letter by Poul William Anderson (classic novels to read txt) 📕

calm and—I don't know—so right. Even for him." She pulled herself away, picked up a handkerchief and blew her nose. "Excuse me. I can't help it. That was the only sane part of the day. His parents were there, of course, that decent old couple. I didn't have the nerve to talk to them. And now they'll see! They'll know that every moron in town knows their son they were so proud of was, was, with me!"

She fell into a chair, coughing. The phone stopped its petulance.

Kintyre said: "After all, pony, it's no crime in this state. Nor is it a very black sin in the Church. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Lombardis got in touch with you in the friendliest way. If you loved Bruce too—"

"Did I?" She didn't look at him. "I liked him, yes, but love? Not in the usual sense of the word."

"Which is a pretty neurotic sense anyway, if you're past adolescence," said Kintyre in his driest voice.

She had regained her balance. She reached for a compact and began repairing her makeup. "Bob," she said, "for an intelligent man you can make some of the stupidest remarks on record."

Kintyre smiled. "At least I riled you out of a tailspin." He wandered across the room to the coffee table. An empty cup and an ashtray overflowing with lipsticked butts rested by the long cardboard boxes where Bruce had kept his letters. They were open, and one of the sheets lay out.

Margery came over and took his arm. "I was going through it," she said, suddenly anxious for the everyday. "Mostly it was business correspondence, official papers, that sort of thing. But there's one file in Italian. Maybe you can tell me what it means." The phone buzzed. "Shut up, God damn it!"

Kintyre sat down, taking out a cigarette for himself. He did not quite like reading a dead man's mail. But doubtless it had to be done. "I'll make some more coffee," said Margery. She went out to the kitchen; his eyes shifted in her direction and he felt the animal pleasure of watching her walk. It was possible—once more, after a decent interval?

Then he realized that the lilt within him was because he would be seeing Corinna.

He bent his attention to the file. Sloppy in many other respects, Bruce had been meticulous here. If it was likely to have any future value at all, he typed his own letter, making a carbon for himself, and kept the reply, folded. The section indexed Luigi Lombardi held at least a year's worth of mail.

Luigi. Oh, yes, the uncle in the secret service, amateur scholar—hoy, there! L. L., of course. Kintyre felt chagrined. So much for that mystery. Bruce had only been noting those sections where he would be making an acknowledgment of his uncle's help.

Kintyre began leafing through. No point in reading every word about Aunt Sofia's arthritis or Cousin Giovanni's marriage. But there were pages, where Luigi described exactly what he had looked into for Bruce, that had not yet been transcribed. Those should be preserved, they were essential to the completion of the thesis.

Nothing else had occurred to Kintyre than that it would be finished and published, under Bruce's name.

Yes. Here was that reference to the Milanese archives. It concluded: "... would like to look through the libraries and store-rooms of the older aristocratic homes in this neighborhood. Quite possibly a contemporary reference exists, in a letter or diary. But the time and the introductions are not available to a poor policeman. Why do you not ask your rich American friend Clayton to have it done?"

Bruce's reply was grateful, but forebore to answer that faintly sarcastic question. Uncle Luigi took it up next time. Kintyre remembered the man, how he tried hard to be fair but was unable to refrain from cracks about Americans. It was only natural, if you were the patriot of a poor country: a form of self-defense.

"... Not another Medici. Do you seriously believe he cares about these old books? It is his particular camouflage, to get him among people of breeding who can be useful. His real friends are a coarser sort, if indeed he has any friends except his bank accounts."

Bruce protested: "... He had to make his own way in a world of fists. I think he has done very well, not only as a financier but as a human being. You cannot safely compare him with your own postwar newly-rich. From what I hear, many of them are crasser than any American parvenu ever dared to be. But let us not exchange ritual insults."

Uncle Luigi answered a query about the Sicilian terrain and twisted it around to his particular obsession: "... if you believe his standardized success story. Use your reason, my nephew. Clayton was an Army officer in this country during the last two years of the war. After his discharge, he came right back here. It is uncertain what he did in the next couple of years. Out of a slightly malicious curiosity I checked with the appropriate bureau, and he was registered only as a visitor, who went in and out of our borders. Then suddenly, in 1949, he applied for his business permits. He had obtained the American agency for that new line of motor scooters. Since then, his rise has been somewhat swifter than can be accounted for merely by pyramiding profits. What follows from this, Bruce? (And again I ask why your father had to become so American that he visited that name upon you.) Why, since he had only his military pay during the war, and on his civilian return had no source of income within Italy for two years—he must have been drawing on a considerable capital in America! Our records show him obtaining most of his lire for Swiss francs. Evidently he deposits his dollars in Switzerland, which you know has a free money market, converts them to other currencies as needed, buys goods, and ships those to America to earn more dollars. Therefore all this story he has told you (what is your phrase, from rags to Algernon?) is so much pretentious hokum. Clayton started as a rich man."

Margery came in with coffee. "What are you finding out?" she asked.

"Mostly gossip," said Kintyre. He repeated the gist to her.

"Oh, I remember that. It was several months ago." She sat down on the couch beside him. "Bruce was furious. He thought the world of Clayton. He wrote to Indianapolis and Des Moines and so on. It took him weeks to check everything, through local newspaper offices, old friends, that kind of reference. It's perfectly true, though. I doubt if Clayton had a thousand dollars left to his name when he joined the Army.

"Bruce hadn't gotten around to it yet, but he was going to assemble the facts, with clippings and personal correspondence, and send it all to Luigi in one devastating package. Especially after the last couple of letters he got. Luigi said there was no evidence Clayton had floated a loan to get his start, and wondered if he mightn't have done some currency black marketing. Bruce really blew his top at that."

"Oh?" said Kintyre. He should be on his way soon, he thought, and use the short time until then to be good to Margery. But a certain sense of the chase was on him. Trained to scan reading matter, he found the passage he wanted in a few minutes. Bruce's anger spoke through a cage of civilized words:

"... I am not one of our radical rightists, but I too resent this eternal meddling which is the modern idea of government. It would not surprise me if Clayton profited originally on the free exchange, when the postwar official rates were so ludicrously unreal. Who didn't, in those days? But if so, I say he did you all a service! I swear you could double your production over there simply by abolishing those medieval frontiers and restrictions, and putting the customs men to useful jobs!"

Luigi, after the inevitable reference to American tariffs, wrote: "The problem is more serious and urgent than you understand. One hears less about it than about your similar troubles, but we in the old countries are having our own postwar crime wave. And some of these syndicates are—not mere black markets, not mere smugglers of an occasional perfume bottle—but dealers in narcotics, prostitution, gun-running, extortion, blackmail, counterfeiting, corruption, and murder.

"Yes, I blame your government in part. We watch the criminals they deport to us, but we cannot forbid everyone to come talk to them. There is influence, there is advice. From the Communists these syndicates have also learned much, including the cell type of organization. We can arrest a man here and a man there, but he can only lead us to a few others. Sometimes we think we have identified an organizing brain, but it does not always follow that he can be seized. Not even in this country, where the police have a latitude that I am sure your Anglo-Saxon mind would be shocked by. I name no names, but now and again something rises to the surface, a scandal, the corpse of a young woman who belonged to a proud family, a member of the parliament seen in dubious places—and nothing comes of it. The newspapers are forbidden to follow the story to its end; everywhere protecting hands are reached out.

"Give us time, we will settle with these latter-day condottieri. Meanwhile, I could wish your Clayton were more circumspect in his choice of friends. He associates somewhat (not very much, to be sure, and there are business reasons) with a dealer named Dolce. And Dolce is a hard man from the slums of Naples. One of his associates is the deported Italian-American criminal chief named—"

Bruce's reply to this was a single explosive line: "And you used to wring your hands at me about Senator McCarthy!"

Kintyre put the box aside. He had been translating as he read, in a rapid mutter. "That's the end," he said. "Bruce wrote that two weeks ago, and I guess the uncle hasn't replied yet."

"Clayton," said Margery on a note of horror. "Do you think maybe—?"

"That he's a crook? No. I don't know much about it, but I should certainly imagine that anybody who wanted to keep an import license would have to keep his nose pretty clean. If Clayton started hanging around with, oh, say Chicago gunmen, the FBI would be on his tail in a matter of weeks."

"But couldn't he—"

"Forget Clayton. He's alibied for every minute of that weekend. As for hiring professionals, look, pony, suppose you wanted such a job done. How would you find the pros?"

"Why—" She hesitated, lifting a small hand to her chin. "I don't know."

"You're a law-abiding citizen, so you don't know. Clayton is also reasonably law-abiding. He's got to be. The Italian police might conceivably not be aware of it if Clayton were doing something illicit. Over there, he could operate internationally. But the United States is another proposition. We talk about our free enterprise, but the plain fact is that an American businessman is required to operate in a goldfish bowl, under innumerable petti-fogging regulations. So, I repeat, Clayton must be more or less straight. Even if the US government was unable to indict him for anything, they could rescind his various licenses, virtually by fiat.

"How, then, would he get in touch with an assassin? Walk into a tough bar and ask? Large laugh." Kintyre threw away his cigarette stub. "Oh, sure, given enough time, you or I or anyone could locate a murderer. But this job must have been done on short notice. There was nothing in Bruce's previous life to bring it on. You know how burblesome he was; could he have kept from you, for weeks, the fact that he knew something big? Of course not. Nor from me, or any of his associates. Ergo, it was something he blundered onto