Confess, Fletch Read online

  “You’ve got to understand, Inspector. I had been travelling. Jet lag. The shock of the murder. Realizing I was a suspect. I guess I just can’t account for myself.”

  “Indeed?” Before the curtains and the leaden sky, the green eyes could have been cosmic lights. “You’re engaged to be married to Angela de Grassi.”

  “You’re good at names.”

  “I’ve lived many places. Now who is she?”

  “She’s a girl. An Italian girl. Daughter of Count de Grassi.”

  “Count de Grassi?”

  “Count Clementi Arbogastes de Grassi.”

  “Is that the gentleman who died last week?”

  “We think so.”

  “‘We think so!” What sort of an answer is that?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “You said you attended a ‘sort of funeral’.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did.”

  “I guess I did.”

  “Fletch, why don’t you tell me the truth, straight out, instead of making me work like a dentist pulling teeth. It’s my day off, you know.”

  “And you paid for the whisky yourself?”

  “I did. And you might start by telling me why you’re really here in Boston.”

  “Okay. I’m here looking for some paintings.”

  “Ah! That’s the boy. Flynn finally gets to hear the story. Don’t stint yourself, now. Be as expansive as you like.”

  “Andy de Grassi and I are engaged to be married.”

  “A blissful state. Does the young lady speak English?”

  “Perfectly. She went to school in Switzerland and for a while here in this country.”

  “Very important to have a common language between a husband and wife, when it comes to arguing.”

  “A collection of paintings was stolen from her father’s house, outside Livorno, a couple of years ago. Very valuable paintings.”

  “How many?”

  “Nineteen objects, including one Degas horse.”

  “A Degas horse, you say? Bless my nose. And what would you say these nineteen objects are worth, taken all in all?”

  “Hard to say. Possibly ten million, twelve million.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “By God, I knew I shouldn’t have taken up the viola. Is it a rich family, the de Grassis?”

  “No,”

  “Of course, you’d say that, being rich yourself.”

  “Andy was up in the villa with me, at Cagna.”

  “Enjoying premarital bliss.”

  “You love a story, don’t you, Flynn?”

  “Show me an Irishman who doesn’t!”

  “Your years in the Hitler Youth did you no harm that way.”

  “Made me hungrier for a good story.”

  “I get catalogues from around the world,” Fletch said. “You know what catalogues are, in the art world? They’re published by museums of their collections, or of special shows. Dealers put them out as a means of offering what they have to sell, or, frequently, as it works out, what they have sold.”

  “I see. I think I knew that.”

  “One day Andy is going through a particular catalogue issued by a gallery here in Boston, the Horan Gallery.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s on Newbury Street.”

  “It would be.”

  “She recognizes one of the de Grassi paintings—a Bellini—sold.”

  “This is two years after the robbery?”

  “About that.”

  “She shows me, and together we go through earlier Horan catalogues. Two issues back, there’s another de Grassi painting—a Perugino—also sold.”

  “And this is the first you’d heard of the paintings since the robbery?”

  “Yes.”

  “They show up for sale in Boston.”

  “It might be more accurate to say, they show up sold through Boston.”

  “I’ve got you.”

  “Andy’s very excited. We pack our bags, jump into the car, and head for Livorno.”

  “Where the Count is. Is there a Countess?”

  “I’m afraid so. But she’s not Andy’s mother.”

  “You’re not too keen on her.”

  “Oh, she’s all right, I suppose. Andy’s not too high on her.”

  “Understandable.”

  “We were going to show the Count the two catalogues from the Horan Gallery.”

  “You didn’t call ahead?”

  “We were too excited, I guess. We came off the beach, changed, packed, jumped into the car. I don’t think we even showered.”

  “Must have been an itchy ride.”

  “It was.”

  “You said you were ‘going to show’ the catalogues to the Count?”

  “On the way down to Livorno, we hear on the car radio that Count Clementi Arbogastes de Grassi has been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped? My God. That’s gotten to be altogether too popular a crime.”

  “Andy begins screaming. I drive even faster. We stop for cognac. I go like hell again. She stops to phone ahead. It was quite a ride.”

  “You got there.”

  “Usual kidnap story. Except that the ransom demand was for something over four million dollars.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “And the de Grassis are broke. After the paintings were gone, they had nothing. They had not been insured. The de Grassi palazzo outside Livorno is just a weedy, run-down old place. No land. Two old servants who are virtually retired.”

  “You said she had an apartment in Rome. How did they live?”

  “The three of them, the Count, the Countess and Andy, had been living off an annuity which comes to about fifty thousand dollars a year.”

  “Not precisely broke.”

  “Not up to paying a four million dollar ransom.”

  “And you couldn’t pay it yourself? I mean, from what your uncle left you.”

  “No way.”

  “I mean, this being your prospective father-in-law and all.”

  “Absolutely not. I couldn’t do it. The de Grassi family has been inactive for decades now. They had no credit.”

  “So?”

  “So we published statements, saying such a ransom was impossible. We received more messages, saying, essentially, pay up in full, or we murder him. I talked the ladies into publishing an audited accounting of the family’s worth. The annuity, incidentally, is absolutely frozen. There was no way even that capital could be turned to cash. In Italian law, you see, the family is still more important than any individual in the family, including the head of the family.”

  “The Italians are famous for sticking together,” said Flynn, “even at the sacrifice of one of them.”

  “Just more messages. Pay up or we murder. In five days. A week went by. Silence. Two weeks. Three weeks. We heard nothing more.”

  “So he was murdered?”

  “Soi the Italian police believe.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “More than a month now. The authorities advised the de Grassis to put the matter out of their minds. To accept the fact the Count was dead. ‘He could be buried anywhere in Italy, or off its shores’, was their exact phrase. We had a memorial service for him last Monday.”

  “The ‘sort of funeral’.”

  “The sort of funeral. It seemed real enough.”

  “So you, an ex-investigative reporter of some repute, decide to take matters into your own hands and come here to Boston to see what you can find out.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Have you talked with this man Horan?”

  “Yes, Wednesday.”

  “That’s where you were Wednesday.”

  “Yes,”

  “Then, of course, you went in one door of the Ritz-Carlton and out the Newbury Street door. The gallery is on Newbury Street!”

  “Yes.”

  “By God, the man is relentlessly innocent. And does the ma
n Horan have the rest of the paintings?”

  “A dealer doesn’t have paintings, Frank. He deals in them. The trick was to find out the source of the two de Grassi paintings he had already sold. His reputation checks out as clean as a whistle.”

  “I suppose you went about it in your usual direct manner.”

  “Difficult being direct with an art dealer, Frank. I asked him to find another painting for me. Another painting on the de Grassi list. A Picasso named ‘Vino, Viola, Mademoiselle’.”

  “Did he turn it up?”

  “After a few days, yesterday, he told me it belongs to a man in Dallas, Texas. He also says he has bought a couple of other paintings from this same man, within the last year or two. I mean, he has sold them for him, through his gallery.”

  “You have the Texan’s name?”

  “I have.”

  “And tell me, Fletch, to whom do these paintings belong, if you do find them?”

  “That’s the question. Menti’s estate can’t be settled for years.”

  “‘Menti’?”

  “The Count’s. The will can’t be read until the body is found. Or enough years to pass for him to be declared dead.”

  “So, after you find the paintings, you have to find the body.”

  “No way I can do that. If the Italian police can’t.”

  “No one knows whether the paintings belong to the daughter, or the widow?”

  “No. What makes it worse is that until Menti’s body is found, they don’t even have an income.”

  “I daresay both ladies have eyes only for you at the moment.”

  “One would think so.”

  “Ach! And I thought your biggest problem at the moment was being a murder suspect.”

  “I suppose that’s why I reacted so slowly at first to the idea I was a murder suspect.”

  “I knew you had a more-than-natural view of the murder, what with your calling the Police Business phone and all. If you had told me you once had been a reporter, I would have understood your professional reaction to a body in the living room a little better.” Flynn shook the pot and poured himself a third cup of tea. “It’s not every man who bounces blissfully from a kidnapping to a murder to another murder.”

  “Inured I think is the word.”

  “A good one, that.”

  “Do I understand, Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn, that you think there might be some connection between what went on in Italy—I mean, Menti’s kidnapping and murder—and the murder of Ruth Fryer here?”

  “I might.”

  “You had me check the airline’s passenger list.”

  “There might be a connection, Irwin Maurice Fletcher, but at the moment I don’t know what it is.”

  “There is a connection,” said Fletch. “Someone did come from Rome with me.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “The Countess. She flew through New York. She arrived in Boston Tuesday about an hour after I did.”

  “And did she know you were coming to this apartment?”

  “She had my address and telephone number.”

  “She’s hot after the paintings, is she?”

  “Boiling after them.”

  “And how did she know you were looking for them?”

  “I guess she read some notes I left Andy—my itinerary, that sort of thing. She knew I had a list of the paintings with me.”

  “But why would she kill Ruth Fryer?”

  “Ruth may have been here in the apartment, naked, waiting to surprise Bart, not knowing he was in Italy. She opened the door to the Countess.”

  “The irate step-mother-in-law?”

  “Well, damned angry and suspicious.”

  “Naturally, she thinks you’re grabbing the paintings for Andy.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Are you?”

  “Naturally.”

  “It’s no good,” said Flynn. “The bodice was torn.”

  “That could have happened any number of different ways. She could have done it herself, taking it off.”

  “Ruth Fryer didn’t have a key to the apartment.”

  “But Joan Winslow does.”

  “The woman next door? She has a key? We forgot to ask that. Terrible thing, being an inspector of police inexperienced at the job. I should have asked. But why would she let Ruth Fryer in?”

  “She probably wouldn’t—if Joan were sober. She let me in.”

  “Did she, indeed? How very interesting. And where is the Countess now?”

  “She moved in last night.”

  “Moved in here?”

  “Yes. The Ritz-Carlton was too expensive.”

  “Ah! The Countess is the dish you had drinks with at the Ritz the other night. Ah, yes. The boyos were rather taken with her. And they said you didn’t even pay the check!”

  “I didn’t.”

  “The Countess is rather cramping your style?”

  “She’d like to.”

  “Well, well, now.” Flynn gazed at the bottom of his empty teacup. “Haven’t we learned a lot about each other?”

  Fletch said nothing. His second drink was gone.

  Flynn said, “I guess I should be shovin’ home to my family.”

  The rain was still audible.

  In the hall, Fletch asked, “How’s the chubby City Council-person’s murder coming?”

  “It’s not coming at all. Not at all. You’d think with such a murder, someone would step forward and take the credit, wouldn’t you?”

  “Thanks for the Scotch, Inspector.”

  Fletch, pushed the elevator button.

  Then he said, “Get me off the hook soon, will you, Frank?”

  “I know. You want to go to Texas, trailing your entourage of women.”

  He went through the clunky elevator doors.

  Descending the shaft, he said, his voice as quiet as always, “You’re the best suspect I’ve got yet, Fletcher, no matter how you dance on the head of a pin. You might save me the bother by confessin’.”

  XXV

  I T W A S just past five o’clock in the afternoon, and Fletch was sleepy. The drinks with Flynn had unwound him.

  He said good-night to Mrs. Sawyer, had a bowl of her stew, and, despite the hour, crawled into bed.

  It was midnight, Rome time.

  “Flesh, darling.”

  Someone was nibbling his ear.

  A long, cool body pressed against his. A nipple grazed his forearm.

  It was a fuller body than Angela’s. Much.

  A leg stroked the back of his own legs. Up and down.

  “Sylvia!”

  Even in the dark room, there was no mistaking the tousled hair of his step-mother-in-law-to-be against the pillow.

  “Jesus Christ, Sylvia!”

  “It’s too late, darling.”

  She slipped her right hip under his.

  “You read in the Bible, ‘They knew each other in his sleep?’”

  “This is incest!”

  “So was that, darling.”

  She was fully under him, her hips moving.

  Her breasts were back-breaking.

  “God!”

  It was too late.

  There was only one thing he could do to prevent either one part of his body, or another, from breaking.

  “It was not incest, darling.”

  Flat on his back, finally, Fletch read the luminous dial of his wristwatch. It was only eight o’clock at night.

  “Did you have something to eat?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “You expect me to put up with your tricks forever?”

  “You’ve got some pretty good tricks of your own, Countess del Gassey.”

  “Where did you go last night? One, two hours I wait for my dinner.”

  “I went out.”

  “I know that. Son of a bitch.” She sat up. “That’s what you do! You tell me some crazy story and then you leave me with nothing! You’re no grand chef! You’re son of a bitch! You’ll do the same t
hing with the paintings—tell me lies, lies! Leave me with nothing!”

  He put his hand on her back.

  “I left the front door unlocked for you. Did you get a nice man to let you in downstairs?”

  “I had to wait, and wait. You didn’t answer the buzzer.”

  “I was asleep.”

  Sitting up in the bed, in the dark, the Countess de Grassi began to cry.

  “Oh, Flesh! You will help me.”

  “I will?”

  “You have to help me!”

  “I do?”

  “Menti’s dead. I’m an early widow. With nothing. Nothing!”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have nothing, Flesh.”

  “Actually, you have a few things going for you.”

  “Angela’s young, and she’s pretty. Clever. She has her whole life ahead of her. Me? I have nothing.”

  “She’s a de Grassi, Sylvia.”

  “Me? I’m the Countess de Grassi!”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “I married Menti.”

  “And his paintings.”

  “They are my paintings. Menti would want me to have them. I know this. Many times he spoke of ‘our paintings’.”

  “Sylvia, will you listen? Whose paintings they are is not for me to say. Either Menti mentioned them in his will, or he didn’t. If he did mention them, they go to you, Andy, both of you, neither of you—whatever he directed in his will. If he didn’t mention them, then it is for the Italian courts to decide—if we ever recover the paintings, that is.”

  She crawled inside his arm, snuggled next to him.

  Fletch remembered seeing, on the beach at Cagna, her toes, with the nails polished.

  She said, “If the paintings are in this country, then, how do you say, possession is the first law of nature.”

  “Self-preservation is the first law of nature, Sylvia—an instinct you have fully developed.”

  “I mean, possession.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Flesh, tell me the truth. You know where the paintings are.”

  “Sylvia, I am in Boston working on a biography of Edgar Arthur Tharp, Junior.”

  She slapped him lightly on the chest.

  “You lie. All the time you lie to me.”

  “I am.”

  “You writing on such a big book, then where the typewriter? Where the papers? I looked all over the apartment last night. Nobody’s writing a book here.”