Free The Clairvoyant Countess by Dorothy Gilman

mother he had secured a ring and a silver necklace. He placed them on the carved wooden table in the center of the room and then noticed a neatly clipped newspaper item already there. He picked it up.
    “ MYSTERY FIGURE APPARENT SUICIDE ,” he read aloud. “I thought you didn’t read newspapers, Madame Karitska.”
    “I don’t usually,” she admitted, “but you said the story would be carried in the newspapers today and I was most curious to read a second version of her trial and the murders. For instance,” she said, “you did not tell me how Mazda ‘babbled,’ as the paper expresses it, of knowing influential people in very high places, and of doing important intelligence work.”
    Pruden shrugged. “That’s one of the reasons she was judged insane. I told you she grew incoherent at the trial. An uneducated, simple woman ranting and raving—”
    “Exactly,” said Madame Karitska, and sat down and picked up Dr. Bugov’s watch and held it in her hand. She sat bemused for some length of time, nodded severaltimes, removed the watch and picked up the ring and necklace. After several minutes she removed them and restored the watch to her hand.
    At last, looking somber, she put down the watch and walked into the kitchen to return with a pot of Turkish coffee. Abruptly she said, “I will tell you now. Your Mazda Lorvale was innocent.”
    “Oh God,” said Pruden.
    “She was not insane either,” said Madame Karitska, pouring coffee into two cups.
    Pruden stared at her blankly. “Now you’ve surely gone too far; you’ve got to be kidding.”
    “I do not, as you say, ‘kid,’ ” she told him distastefully. “You described this woman to me yourself only a few moments ago. You called her an uneducated, simple woman, and this is precisely what her suicide note has told me. She lived in much agony, poor woman, and probably never fully understood what happened to her. Her intelligence, you see, was below average. She was not stupid, you understand, or retarded in the physical sense, but her intelligence was limited—stunted, probably, by overwhelming emotional deprivation in her childhood. She was, in a word, the perfect dupe.”
    “Dupe?” echoed Pruden incredulously.
    “It astonishes me that no one paid any attention to her so-called babblings about doing important work. She believed it, didn’t anyone realize this? She was not insane and she believed it, but why did she believe it?”
    Pruden looked astonished and then interested. “I don’t understand.”
    Madame Karitska picked up Dr. Bugov’s gold watch and held it lightly in her hand. “The man to whomthis belonged was not born in this country. From his watch I gain the impression of a man of ice, a man callous and devious and brilliant of intellect. I do not think you will ever find the body of Dr. Bugov, Lieutenant. I believe he is still very much alive.”
    “Alive!”
    “Yes, under a new name, no doubt, but alive.
He
is the man who poisoned your Mrs. Biggs and Mr. Windham.”
    “Biggs and Windham! But why?” protested Pruden.
    “To rid himself of Mazda Lorvale,” she said. “She babbled about doing important intelligence work at her trial but no one wondered why.
He
is the man who was doing the important intelligence work, Lieutenant, although I doubt seriously that it was for this country. You have here a love-starved woman of modest good looks, submissive disposition, and low intelligence. It is just the sort of woman this man can use, even confide in for he could never risk intimacy with a peer. Mazda becomes his mistress, his slave, you might say. With her he can let down a little, relax, brag a little, and to her he is the sun, the moon, and the stars. She gives herself heart, body, and soul, you understand? It is very sad.”
    Pruden stared at her, dazed. “But the others—Biggs and Windham?”
    She nodded. “He is very clever, do you not think so, your Dr. Bugov? The time comes for him to break up this constricting