Murder Among the Angels (26 page)

“Sebastian’s,” he said. “I’ve used it a dozen times to chop the vegetables for stir-frying. It’s a Sabatier,” he added, naming the well-known brand. “It’s also my favorite chopping implement. I love the heft of it.” Picking it up again, he tested its weight.

Charlotte looked up. If the cleaver was from Sebastian’s, that meant that the killer might have been Sebastian himself. “Do you know for sure that it’s from Sebastian’s? I mean, does it have some identifying feature? Or are you saying that it’s similar to a cleaver that you’ve used at Sebastian’s?”

“No,” he snapped. “I don’t know
for sure
that it’s from Sebastian’s. The name of the restaurant is not engraved on the blade. But I can check to see if their cleaver is missing. If it is, I believe it to be a reasonable conclusion that they are one and the same.”

Charlotte ignored the tone of his voice. “Did you know that Peter was a frequent visitor to the restaurant?” she asked, and proceeded to tell him about seeing him there.

“I’ve seen him there too,” he said.

“Jerry!” she said. “I’ve just thought of something else.”

“What?” he asked.

“The key to the undercroft. Peter would have had access to the key cabinet. He also would have known where the diagram was. But why wouldn’t he have used his own keys?” she asked, remembering the ring of keys that had hung from his belt loop.

Jerry shrugged. “To divert suspicion from himself.” He gave her one of his disarming smiles. “We might have been led to suspect him if the door to the undercroft was unlocked and he was the only one with access to the keys. Don’t you think?” he asked.

“Touché,” she said, and returned her attention to the photograph. The bouquet looked to contain about two dozen lilies of the valley, which was the number that had been ordered in Dr. Louria’s name. “Have the fingerprint results come back?” she asked.

He nodded. “The only fingerprints on the key cabinet were Peter’s,” he said. “Which is exactly what you would expect: he was the only one with legitimate access to it. The same goes for the door to the undercroft. There were no fingerprints on the votive candles, or on the skull.”

Charlotte was now looking at the photograph of the first victim’s skull. Something about the gravestone on which the skull rested looked familiar, and she strained to read the inscription. Then she realized that it was the gravestone on the cover of the pastor’s pamphlet.

Getting up, she passed the photograph across the desk to Jerry. “Take a look at this,” she said. “Do you know whose gravestone that is?”

Jerry looked at the photograph and shook his head.

“It’s the grave of Jules Bourglay, the Leatherman.”

Jerry held the photograph up to the light in order to read the inscription: “‘Final Resting Place of Jules Bourglay of Lyons, France. The Leatherman.’” A big smile broke out on his face. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said as he passed the photograph back to Charlotte.

“Who was it who recently said that a criminal never deliberately leaves any clues at the scene of the crime?” she asked.

As he had predicted, Jerry’s summons of the county crime scene unit to the country club had alerted the press to a new development, and the dispatcher informed them that several reporters were now waiting downstairs to talk with Jerry. At Charlotte’s suggestion (she was an old hand at diversionary techniques), Jerry asked one of his sergeants to turn on the siren and the lights of his police car. While the reporters were thus distracted, Charlotte and Jerry slipped out the back. After picking up some sandwiches, they headed out to the Octagon House to pick up the “before” and “after” reconstructions of Doreen Mileski’s face, which Lister had finished a day sooner than he had said he would. They drove in silence, eating their sandwiches and enjoying the ride. It was a beautiful afternoon, and the sun glistened like gold dust on the river. After hovering tentatively over the Hudson River Valley for so long, spring had finally arrived in full force, and the air was warm and sweet with the smell of the damp earth. In her youth, Charlotte had preferred autumn to the other seasons, but as she had grown older, spring had replaced autumn in her affections. She supposed it was because the waning of the year had come to be linked in her mind with the waning of her life, and she always preferred to think in terms of new beginnings.

As they came to the end of River Road, Jerry finally spoke: “There’s still one aspect of the Peter theory I find puzzling,” he said.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The skull business. I can understand why he would kill his victims. I can understand why he would dismember them. I can even understand why he would want to keep the skulls as a kind of trophy. I mean, I don’t understand, really. But if I were a murderer …”

“Which we understand that you’re not,” Charlotte said. “So what don’t you understand?” she asked.

“I don’t know why he would put the skulls in the cemeteries. According to what I know of criminal psychology, he would have hoarded them. A murderer likes to keep something like that around as a souvenir.”

“Like the beachcomber keeps a piece of driftwood.”

“More like the hunter who looks at the head of a moose hanging on the wall, and takes pleasure in reliving the memory of having killed it.”

“He probably wanted to show off,” she speculated. “Wasn’t that the point of leaving the skull on the Leatherman’s grave?”

“A point that we would have missed if it wasn’t for you.”

“You wouldn’t have missed it,” said Charlotte. “You probably would have noticed it eventually—like after the case was closed.” She loved to tease Jerry. “I see it as almost a taunt.”

After passing Archfield Hall with its gloomy-looking tower, they headed up the access road to the Octagon House. A few minutes later, they were comfortably settled in Lister’s living room, which was high Victorian in style, with heavy, ornate furniture upholstered in tufted velvet, dark red velvet draperies dripping gold fringe, and layer upon layer of Persian rugs—everything, in fact, but the doilies and antimacassars.

Unlike the galleries below, which had been squared off by locating closets in the angles of the octagon, this room had oddly angled walls that were pierced by tall windows. The feeling was rather like a room in a fun house: all the angles seemed a little bit off. Charlotte reflected on what Jerry had said about one virtue of an octagon house being that the space in the corners wasn’t wasted. This was true, but there were no right angles either.

The feeling of the room being a little bit off was exacerbated by the paintings hanging on the walls, which were reproductions of famous paintings that featured skulls. A huge reproduction of a Rembrandt hung over the fireplace. There was also a Bellini and a Holbein—even a Dali.

Once they were seated, Lister brought out the reconstructed face of Doreen Mileski, and set it down in a cork collar on the marble-topped parlor table around which their chairs were grouped.

“I finished her just last night,” he said. “I’ve been sitting in the library, looking at her—staring at this face being one of my favorite occupations. Which is why she’s not down in my studio.” He looked up at Jerry. “By the way, did you make your arrest yet?”

Jerry shook his head.

“You were going to arrest Dr. Louria?” he asked.

Jerry nodded. “His alibi checked out,” he explained. “Which leaves us back at square one. This is the ‘after,’ I presume,” Jerry said, nodding at the reconstruction, which was identical to the other two look-alikes.

Lister nodded. “As you can see, she has that same jutting chin. Lily and her mother were both women who led with their chins. Strong chins are an indicator of stubbornness.”

“Were they stubborn?” Charlotte asked.

“As mules—both mother and daughter—though the mother was stubborn in a different way.” He looked at Charlotte, and then said: “If I read you correctly, you’re wondering at the coincidence of the fact that a facial characteristic that is linked with stubbornness—a prominent chin—turns out to belong to people who do in fact have stubborn temperaments.”

“Something like that, yes,” she said.

“I maintain that it’s not a coincidence,” Lister said. “More often than not the popular wisdom proves true: nine times out of ten, you’ll find that the redhead has a temper, that the shifty-eyed person is not to be trusted, that the person with a high forehead—what the Victorians called the ‘dome of thought’—is a thinker, and so on.”

“So the phrenologists were more accurate than we think,” Charlotte said.

Lister nodded his bald head. “The idea that physical characteristics are a sign of character is not a popular notion nowadays. There are too many ways in which such ideas can be misused—we have the Nazis to thank for that. But there’s a lot of truth in the notion, nonetheless.”

“And the idea that physical beauty is an expression of goodness?” asked Charlotte, thinking of the contrast between Lily’s sluttish reputation and her angelic appearance.

“Such an idea is why, of course, we’re drawn to beautiful people—be they in the movies”—he nodded deferentially at Charlotte—“in art, or in person. We subconsciously feel that a beautifully formed face ought to be accompanied by beautiful thoughts and feelings. That’s why two generations of Listers have nourished their creative imaginations on the same remarkable face.”

Their attention shifted to the face on the coffee table.

“But does a beautiful face reflect goodness?” Lister asked. “I would have to say yes, but only in middle age and beyond. The virtuous beauty can preserve her looks through her virtuous thoughts, but the base-minded beauty will find that a sulk distorts the lower lip, suspicion narrows the eyes, distrust creases the brow.”

“‘The very book indeed, Where all my sins are writ,’” said Charlotte. “And that’s myself.”

“Aha,” Lister said with a smile of recognition. “
Richard the Third
. Yes,” he continued, “Lillian Archibald was a stubborn woman, but, had she lived, she would have remained beautiful because she had a beautiful soul.”

“And Lily?” asked Charlotte.

Leaning over, Lister carefully picked up the “after” sculpture and held it out at arm’s length. “Yes, quite a beauty you were, my dear. Or, I should say, the woman after whom you were modeled. But virtuous?” He looked up at them and shook his head “No. I doubt that Lily Louria would have been beautiful in old age. Too many sins to write on that beautiful face.”

“What about the ‘before’ reconstruction?” Jerry asked.

“She’s still downstairs,” Lister said. “I’ll go get her.” He excused himself and headed down the spiral staircase to his basement studio.

As they awaited his return, Charlotte became aware of a sweet fragrance in the room: it was the fragrance of lilies of the valley. Turning, she noticed a small silver vase of lilies of the valley on the table at her elbow, and then several other bouquets in vases around the room. Skulls and lilies of the valley seemed to be a popular combination in Zion Hill, she thought.

Lister was back momentarily with the “before” sculpture, which he set down on the table next to the “after” sculpture.

Charlotte marveled at the difference. It was amazing how the implants on the eyebrow ridges had set poor Doreen Mileski’s protruding eyes back, and the implants on the posterior mandibles had increased the definition between her neck and her jaw, as well as widening her jaw to give her that square-jawed look of the Archibald women.

“Now this young lady wasn’t stubborn,” Lister said. “I imagine that she was quite sweet, in fact. But wishy-washy. Look at that jaw; or rather, that lack of jaw. A young woman with no direction in life.”

“It’s hard to believe this is the same young woman whom Lothian Archibald saw in the drugstore and mistook for her niece,” Jerry commented.

“Dr. Louria did an amazing job,” Lister said.

“As did you, once again,” said Jerry. Their business concluded, they packed up the sculptures and headed toward the door that led to the spiral staircase. At the door, they paused to say goodbye in front of a table that held yet another bouquet of lilies of the valley.

“I see you have lilies of the valley,” Charlotte said. She leaned over to smell the nodding, bell-shaped flowers. “The fragrance is lovely.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “They were Lillian Archibald’s favorite flower,” he said. “For that matter, they were Lily’s favorite flower too.”

“Where did you ever find so many?” she asked.

“I picked them along the railroad embankment.” He nodded in the direction of the river. “There’s a colony of them growing over by Archfield Hall. I imagine Lillian Archibald must have planted them. Unfortunately, this is the last of them. I went this morning for more, but they were all dried up.”

He must have been referring to the same colony she had seen growing next to the path leading down to the summer house, Charlotte thought. “It’s a shame that their blooming period is so short,” she lamented. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could get them all year round?”

“You can,” Lister said. “At least, you can in this area. There’s a florist in Corinth that specializes in growing lilies of the valley out of season for the New York florist trade. They’re used in bridal bouquets. Winter Garden Florist,” he said. “I order them sometimes from there.”

Charlotte took out a notebook and jotted down the name. “That will be nice to keep in mind for a dreary January day,” she said.

“But they’re very expensive,” he added.

After thanking Lister, they descended the spiral staircase and made their way back out through the Phrenological Cabinet to the police car.

“That was interesting about the lilies of the valley,” Jerry said as they headed back along River Road.

“I just wanted to find out how common the knowledge is that Winter Garden Florist supplies out-of-season lilies of the valley,” she said. “If Lister knows, I guess it’s pretty common knowledge.”

“You did it very well,” said Jerry. “Much better than I would have. See? It pays to have a woman working with you. I couldn’t have feigned an interest in lilies of the valley if my life depended on it. It appears to be common knowledge that they were Lily’s favorite flower too,” he added.