Leopold's Way (47 page)

Judge considered that. He stood up and began to pace. “I don't think he'd go for that. What would he get in return?”

“Fletcher might forget what happened in that hallway.”

“And the Tenyon thing?”

Leopold shook his head. “No, he'd have to be charged with that.”

“No deal.”

“Why not ask him? The gun charge is more serious. That could put him away for life, with his record.”

Judge shrugged and went back to speak with his client. Leopold had gone through this sort of thing before and he knew it would be a long session. It was.

Two hours later Samuel Judge took a folded piece of paper from his vest pocket and slid it across the table to Leopold. “That's all you get,” he said. “I didn't even look at it myself. If you bring it into court I'll deny my client ever wrote it.”

Leopold unfolded the paper and read the name that was neatly written on it.

Jules Dermain,
with a New York City address.

“All right.” Leopold turned to Fletcher. “Is this deal agreeable with you?”

“Sure. What the hell, the gun didn't fire.”

“Good. Book Forsyth for the Tenyon thing and we'll forget the other.” He turned back to the lawyer. “You'll plead him guilty to our charges?”

“I'll plead him guilty to something. That's for me to work out with the D.A.”

“Still the plea bargainer! You amaze me, Judge.”

“Just looking after my client's interests. Whose interests do you look after, Captain?”

“The victim's.”

It took Leopold and Fletcher the better part of two weeks to assemble a file on Mr. Jules Dermain of New York City. When they'd completed their task, Leopold looked over the typewritten sheets and wondered just what it was they had.

Jules Dermain was 63 years old, a native of France who'd come to America after World War II and achieved a somewhat surprising success as a creator and manufacturer of games and puzzles. One of them,
Melrose,
had captured the public fancy in the mid-1960s and made Dermain a millionaire. As far as could be determined the man had no link with organized crime, and he certainly didn't need the money.

Had Forsyth lied to them?

That was what Leopold intended to find out.

New York was familiar territory to him. He'd spent his first years as a police officer and detective there, before returning home. He knew Manhattan especially well, and the little East Side neighborhoods like Gramercy Park brought back fond memories of younger days. Stuyvesant Park was one of these, a few blocks south of Gramercy. It was surrounded by brownstone townhouses dating back to the mid-19th century, and it was in one of these that Jules Dermain resided.

Dermain saw Leopold in an upstairs office lined with books and samples of the games he'd manufactured. There were a dozen different versions of
Melrose
alone, including foreign language and Braille editions and even a magnetized game to play while traveling. Dermain was slender and white-haired, with the appearance of a professor. A tiny smile played about his lips as he spoke, but his eyes seemed always alert and serious.

“What can I do for you, Captain Leopold? As I understand it, you're not connected with the New York Police Department?”

“That's correct. I spent some years in New York, but at present I'm up in Connecticut. I'm head of our Violent Crimes Squad, and I'm down here investigating a recent crime.” Briefly he outlined the circumstances of Abby Tenyon's mysterious beating, omitting the fact that Carl Forsyth was in custody and had supplied Jules Dermain's name.

The Frenchman listened to all this with the slight smile still on his lips, as if awaiting the punch line of a lengthy shaggy-dog story. When Leopold finished he asked, “But how could this possibly concern me? I have never heard of Mr. Ron Tenyon or his wife Abby.”

“You must understand that I'm here unofficially, Mr. Dermain. But your name has been mentioned in the course of the investigation. I felt a personal interview with you might be the best way to clear the air.”

“So? My name has been mentioned. By whom, may I ask?”

“I'm not at liberty to say.”

Dermain leaned back in his chair, unconcerned. “Oh, I suppose it was that fool who was hired to do the job.”

Leopold sat as if stunned by an ax. He would have been less startled if the Frenchman had drawn a pistol from his desk drawer and started shooting. “You're admitting it?”

“Why not? You're here unofficially, out of your jurisdiction. You have not advised me of my rights or given me a chance to call a lawyer. Nothing I tell you could be used against me.”

Leopold began to think it had been a mistake to visit this man. But now that he was here he had to make the best of it. “You admit you hired Carl Forsyth to drug Abby Tenyon and her husband, enter their hotel room and beat her up?”

“Of course! You wouldn't be here if you didn't know that much already. You must realize that I offer a service, Captain Leopold. Just as you are employed to solve crimes, I am sometimes employed to invent them. We are two sides of the same coin—the puzzle maker and the puzzle solver. As a matter of fact I take some pleasure in meeting you like this. Just as an author sometimes enjoys meeting his readers, I enjoy meeting one of those who is called upon to solve my little plots. You are the first, I must tell you, who has ever come this far.”

“Who hired you to construct this particular puzzle?”

He shrugged. “The casino interests in your state. Their names are unimportant. I was presented with a challenge—to be certain that Ron Tenyon lost the election. Anything short of murder was allowed. Of course I considered the usual blind items planted in the newspapers, but the voting public becomes more sophisticated each year. The little game I devised was designed for indirection. The press would report the facts, and I would leave it to the public to draw a conclusion. I learned their schedule in advance and found that there was a man available who was employed at one of the hotels. In the kitchen, no less! And he was also an expert on locks.

“The pieces almost came together by themselves. He drugged their food, obtained a passkey, tampered with the night bolt in advance, and entered while they slept. Tenyon's wife was beaten enough to mark her face, but not to do permanent injury. I assumed, correctly I think, that a certain number of people reading that story on the weekend before the special election would be skeptical enough to believe the man beat his wife. It was a close election. I didn't need to change many minds.”

Leopold had sat in the company of thieves and murderers on many occasions, but nothing had prepared him for this. The man across the desk was bragging of his crime, spreading the details for Leopold's admiration. “I'm speechless at your audacity,” he admitted. “We'll see what you have to say in court when Carl Forsyth testifies against you.”

The amused smile remained. “Oh, he wouldn't do that.”

“Why not?”

“I have a certain reputation in underworld circles. Even in prison Mr. Forsyth would not feel entirely safe. The reputation is unearned, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Still, the plotting of a perfect murder is even more of a challenge than a game like the Tenyon affair. Many years ago, when I first came to this country, I was offered an assignment which might amuse you. There was a certain wealthy man, hunted by many nations, who took refuge in Ireland, buying a large country manor house and surrounding it with an exasperating maze made of brick walls overgrown with dense hedges.” As he spoke he took down a maze game from the bookshelf behind him and opened it on the desk. “The incident inspired me to create this puzzle.”

“You were hired to kill the man?” Leopold asked.

“I was hired to remove him, by one means or another. The house had been reinforced to make it virtually bombproof, you see, and the maze itself was guarded with electric-eye beams to warn if anyone entered it. He kept a staff of armed servants to guard against siege, and he never left the place except to walk the grounds each day safely inside the maze. A service road at the back of the house was kept sealed by iron gates. How, Captain Leopold, would you have gone about killing such a man?”

“I solve murder cases, I don't plan them.”

“Still, as an exercise in tactics you might consider this one.”

“Land a helicopter inside the grounds.”

“There was no room for one, since the maze came up almost to the walls of the house.”

“Bribe a servant.”

“They were loyal to him unto death. They had served together during the war.”

“Shoot him from a plane while he's out for his daily walk.”

“He quickly retreated at the sound of approaching aircraft. And the house, as I have said, was quite resistant to most bombs.”

“Poison his food supply before it reaches the house.”

“The servants would eat it first, as tasters did for kings of old.”

Leopold walked to the window and looked out at the park across the street. Seeing the children playing there, watching them run along the paths to the center fountain, brought him back to the reality of the world. He had not come here to play games with Jules Dermain, and this book-lined study with its boxed puzzles was a long way from the hotel room where Abby Tenyon had suffered her torment.

“Tell me,” he said at last. “Tell me your secret of the maze.”

“Ah, you are giving up so easily?”

“Tell me this one, so I might be better prepared to outwit you on the next.”

“Spoken like a true puzzle fan! You delight me, Captain Leopold! The Irish matter is simply told. I happened to read that snakes can be trained to negotiate mazes. I photographed this maze from the air and built a duplicate out of boards. I trained three deadly black mambas to travel through the maze and strike at the first person they saw. The mamba was chosen because it is both fast and deadly. Of course the serpents could slither in beneath the electric-eye alarms, and since there are no snakes in Ireland as a rule, the victim had prepared no defense against such an attack. They were loosed at the hour of his daily walk. They sought him out within the maze and he died ten minutes later.”

Leopold thought about that. “I don't believe a word of it,” he said finally. “If I did, I'd consider you the most dangerous man alive.”

Jules Dermain laughed heartily, shaking his small body. “You shouldn't believe it—of course not! Any more than you should believe I employed that man to beat Mrs. Tenyon! They're all games, played out in my mind. Go away now, Captain Leopold. It has been a pleasant hour, but I have other business.”

Leopold nodded. There was nothing more for him here. But at the door he paused to ask, “How would someone go about killing
you,
Mr. Dermain?”

Another laugh. There was a television set at one side of the room, and Dermain stood against it as he answered. “You're not the first to ask that question, Captain. Of course I guard against it. My telephone and this office are constantly checked for listening devices. And I'm careful where I go. Still, it could be done. This video tape recorder on my television can be set to turn on up to a week in advance. If the tape cartridge contained a bomb instead of tape, it could destroy this entire building.”

“Ever use that idea somewhere else?”

“Perhaps.”

“We'll talk again,” Leopold said.

“Come any time. I will tell you of an elderly corporate executive whose salary was such a drain on the company that we hastened his departure from this earth. And a United States Senator whose assassination was not quite what it seemed.”

All the way back home Leopold was uneasy. The day had been a waste of time. Even if Dermain had conspired with Forsyth in the Tenyon affair, surely the rest of it was a myth. The man was a puzzle maker, not a master criminal who plotted assassinations halfway around the world. He'd spun a good yarn for Leopold and that was all.

But the memory of Jules Dermain still made him uneasy, and he wondered what he would do if he discovered it was all true.

As casually as possible he asked Connie Trent to run a check with the Dublin police. Had there ever been a case of murder by snakebite in Ireland, especially involving a man on a large country estate during the postwar years?

“There aren't supposed to be any snakes in Ireland,” Connie protested. “St. Patrick drove them out.”

“It was more likely due to the Ice Age and the fact that Ireland is surrounded by water. I'm sure you won't find anything, but check on it anyway.”

“Is this connected with the Tenyon case?” She knew he'd gone to New York about that.

“In a way, yes.”

He plunged into the other cases that called for his attention and he'd managed to put Jules Dermain almost out of his mind when Connie reported back two days later. “Here's that report from the Dublin police, Captain. You asked me to check with them.”

“They didn't have anything, right?”

“On the contrary. A German named Von Buff, suspected of being a former Nazi, was killed by black mamba snakes at his country estate in Cork in 1958. No one ever explained how the snakes got there. The house was surrounded by a maze of hedges.”

“Yes, I know,” Leopold said, feeling suddenly light-headed. It couldn't be, but it was.

“The guards killed the snakes.”

“I'm sure they did.”

“Are you all right, Captain?”

“Fine. I'm fine.”

When he was alone Leopold thought about a course of action. He considered phoning the New York police, but he really didn't know what he could tell them. Jules Dermain had committed no crime in New York that Leopold was aware of—unless perhaps it was conspiracy.

In the end he did nothing.

It was about a week later when Ron Tenyon came to see him. He sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair opposite Leopold's desk and said, “I want to know about the investigation into Abby's beating.”