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

It was not that he accepted guilt (he told the morning gulls on the reef, among sharded timbers). It was that he was damned, without a God or a Devil to judge him: it was merely in the nature of things that he did nothing well. Morna should drown and Margery should drown—the human body held that much blood—because—no, said the seed of survival within him, not because it was his fault.

And was there anything more irrelevant than the question of his guilt or innocence? The sole fact that mattered was:

Morna, thirteen years old, hauled down under the sea and rolled across a barnacled reef. He had found her washed up the next morning, before the boat came out to rescue him. A strand of hair still clung in place, darkened by water but more bright than the coral. He saw some of the bones; a tiny crab ran out of her eye socket.

Kintyre hung onto the couch through a whiteness that hummed.

Ages afterward he remembered Margery. She had never spoken of it, but he had an impression that she feared death. It ended future and past alike, nothing would be, nothing had ever been. She must have told herself often enough that maybe science would find a way to make her immortal, before she died. But death was a long way off, fifty years or more were a distance which dwindled the shape, only a small black blot on the edge of her world.

She lay blind and bound, a towel choking her mouth. She could hear her heart, how it leaped, she feared it would crack itself open. And then the hand under her jaw, the nearly painless bite of the knife, and the minutes it took for her blood to run out, while she lay there and felt it!

"No," said Kintyre. "No, no, no. Please."

He reached hazily for another cigarette. He couldn't find the pack. Suddenly he was afraid to look for it. He lay back on the couch. The sunlight on the wall seemed unreal.

He didn't hear Yamamura come in. He needed a while to understand that the detective was looking at him.

"What is it?" he got out somehow.

"Let's work some of that stiffness out," said Yamamura.

Kintyre didn't move. He wasn't sure he could. At least it didn't seem worth while. Yamamura swore, hauled him to a sitting position, peeled off his tee shirt and dumped him on the rug.

The Japanese massage, thumbs, elbows, and bare feet, was hard, cracking muscles loose from their tension. Kintyre heard joints pop when Yamamura straightened his arms. Once anguish got an oath from him.

"Sorry," said Yamamura. "I gauged wrong."

"Like hell! You did that on purpose!"

"Trade secrets. Now, over on your side."

In half an hour Kintyre was sitting on the couch, drawing ragged gulps of smoke down his lungs. "All right," he said. "So you relaxed me physically."

"Helps, doesn't it?" Yamamura leaned against the wall and mopped his sweating face.

"Some. But no cure." Kintyre looked bleakly toward the afternoon and the night.

"Didn't claim it was. Got any tranquilizers on hand?"

"Uh-huh. Only helps a little bit. I might as well ride these things out."

"Same symptoms?"

"Yes. Futility. Loss. Destruction. Grief? No, that's too healthy a word. I'm only talking to you with the top of my brain now, you realize. It feels the same as ever, down below."

"Basically, you feel guilt," said Yamamura.

"Perhaps. I saw my sister drown. I was hanging onto a spar when the ship broke up. She was swept past me. I reached out, our fingers touched, then she was gone again. I didn't let go of the spar."

"If you had, both of you would have drowned. I know the Pacific surf. With a typhoon behind it—You're guilty of nothing except better luck than she had."

"Sure," said Kintyre. "I've told myself the same thing for twenty years."

"You've told me this story three times so far," said Yamamura. "I don't like parlor Freudianism, but it would seem obvious that something deeper is involved than the mere fact that you survived and she didn't."

Kintyre half rose. He felt the lift of rage within himself. "Be careful!" he shouted.

Yamamura's face went totally blank. "Ah-ha. Sit back, son. I'm still the black belt man here. You'd only succeed in tearing up this nice room."

Kintyre spat: "There was nothing!"

"I never said that. Of course there was nothing improper. I am not implying you had any conscious thoughts whatsoever that you can't safely remember. Or if you did now and then—and as for your subconscious wishes—were they really so evil? She was the only girl of your generation whom you'd see for weeks and months at a time. So you loved her. Is love ever a sin?"

Kintyre slumped. Yamamura laid a hand on his shoulder. "There's a story about two Zen Buddhist monks who were walking somewhere," he said. "They came to a river. A woman stood by the bank, afraid to cross. One of them carried her over. Then the two monks continued on their way. The gallant one was singing cheerfully, the other got gloomier and gloomier. Finally the second one exclaimed: 'How could you, a monk, take up a woman in your arms?' The first one answered: 'Oh, are you still carrying her? I set her down back at the ford.'"

Kintyre didn't move. "Forgive my amateur psychoanalysis," said Yamamura. "It's none of my business." He paused. "I would only suggest that it's no service to anyone we've cared for, not to let them rest."

He sat down beside Kintyre and took out his pipe. They smoked together for a wordless while.

"Well," said Kintyre at last. "Have you figured out who's behind the murders?"

"No. Think you can tell us? Feel free to wait."

"Oh, I can. M-m-m-m-margery—"

Yamamura worked powerful fingers along Kintyre's shoulders and the base of his neck. "Go on," he said.

"Margery's death—brought back Morna's, I suppose—I failed them both. I didn't need O'Hearn's story to determine who instigated all this. I could have told you yesterday afternoon, if I'd used my head—Ouch!"

"That," said Yamamura, "was to halt an incipient tailspin. I felt it coming. You are not to blame for one damn item except being human and therefore limited, fallible, and unable to do everything simultaneously on roller skates. If you forget that again, I shall punch you in a more sensitive spot. Now why don't you go swallow one of those chemical consolations?"

"I told you they don't help much."

"I've no high opinion of 'em myself, but do so anyway."

When Kintyre had returned and sat down again, Yamamura said: "Okay, carry on. Who is our man?"

"Clayton," said Kintyre.

"Huh?" The pipe almost dropped from Yamamura's hand. "What the hell! Why, for God's sake?"

"Bruce got too much information about Clayton's rackets."

"What rackets? Clayton's straight! I never heard a hint—"

"Oh, yes. He's straight enough on this side of the Atlantic."

Yamamura muttered something profane. "How do you know?" he added.

"It fits the facts. Bruce was corresponding with his uncle Luigi, the secret service man. Some discussion of highly organized postwar crime syndicates in the Mediterranean countries came up. Now Clayton was a go-getter type who'd lost everything he had three times in a row: the Depression, his first wife's death, divorce from his second wife. It must have embittered him, so that he determined he would never again be poor and defenseless. He came to Italy as a Quartermaster officer in the war. Perfect chance for black marketing, if a man didn't mind taking a few risks. The miracle is not that a few QM people went bad but that most stayed honest. Clayton probably started in a very small way with cigarettes and K rations. But by the end of the war he was in touch with some pretty big figures in the Italian underworld, and saw the opportunities. He came right back after his discharge and went to work at it full time.

"Obviously, he's a hell of a good organizer. He got in on the postwar reconstruction of crime, along lines borrowed from gangland and Communism. He probably set out as a currency black marketeer, working through Switzerland. He soon expanded into other things, smuggling, dope, prostitution, gambling, the works. He became rich."

"Have you any proof of all this?" interrupted Yamamura.

"Chiefly, that it and only it will fit the facts. Let me go on, I'll fill in evidence as I proceed. The trouble with Clayton's riches was, they were mostly in lire, French francs, and other soft valuta. Also, governments all get nosy about resident aliens; he couldn't hope to avoid suspicion forever, without a good cover. He solved both his problems by becoming an importer. He bought European goods with his European money, shipped them over here, and sold them for dollars. On this side he's lily white, and familiar with prominent Americans of unquestionable integrity. Knowing this, Europeans don't think he might be something else on their continent. You can imagine the details."

"Yes," said Yamamura. "I can."

"Now for some facts as well as theories. Let's go back to Uncle Luigi. He's trying to break these syndicates, one of which is headed by the eminent Signor Clayton. Of course, because of its cell organization, Luigi and his colleagues don't know that. If they did, they could crack a lot of rackets open. All they have against Clayton is that a few of his business associates have bad associates of their own, notably some of the deported Italian-American gangsters. But what of it? Everybody outside a monastery must know some dubious characters.

"Well, because Clayton came here to work at opening a San Francisco branch, and because he brought the Liber Veneficarum along, he got to know Bruce. In fact, they came to be on very friendly terms. Clayton is genial enough, if you don't get in his way. Uncle Luigi, being somewhat anti-American, insisted that Signor Clayton had an unfair advantage, having started as a wealthy man with lots of dollars. That didn't fit with Clayton's own rags-to-riches story. Bruce got indignant, checked up, and established that Clayton had indeed been almost penniless when he came to Italy. And Luigi, as I mentioned before, had also happened to give Bruce some facts regarding crime, corruption, and the syndicates.

"I don't know just when Clayton learned about all this discussion. Perhaps a week ago last Sunday, when he saw Bruce over in the City and refused to give Guido a job. Clayton admits Bruce got mad; perhaps he said things then. Clayton smoothed his feathers and agreed to interview Guido next day. Maybe Clayton was already spinning a plan.

"Or it may have been amicable. Bruce had no reason to suspect Clayton of anything. We'd have known it otherwise; Bruce was constitutionally incapable of keeping a secret. Maybe in the love feast following his explosion, he blurted out how he had triumphantly refuted Uncle Luigi's sneers at the Horatio Alger rise of Gerald Clayton, and planned to send Uncle Luigi all the facts and demand an apology. At the same time, Bruce could have spoken about the syndicates. He was just naïve enough to have warned Clayton, who spent half his time overseas, to look out for the mobs! Well, one way or another, Clayton drew him out, doubtless in that conference they had after Guido was dismissed. Clayton was alerted."

It was peculiar, thought Kintyre, that he could talk so coolly while the horror was on him. But he had the horror locked away for this short time, he heard it speaking but did not really feel it.

"He could have pumped both brothers on Monday," nodded Yamamura. "Bruce in particular, but he would have seen how Guido might be made into a decoy—uh-huh. So he called a Chicago mob. But—"

"But why? Isn't it obvious, Trig? Bruce and Luigi were corresponding on two subjects which would explode if they were ever fitted together: Clayton and the Old World rackets. When Bruce revealed that Clayton had not, after all, started by depositing American dollars in Swiss banks, Luigi would