Free The Clairvoyant Countess by Dorothy Gilman Page A

alliance. He has grown bored, perhaps, or the liaison has become dangerous, but it is more likely that he has received orders to go elsewhere. How then is he to dispose of this poor creaturewho would be an embarrassment and a danger to him when he has left?”
    She shrugged before continuing. “To kill her directly I think would be too risky. He has been perhaps a little too open; he has become known to her friends and the trail would lead straight to him. So instead he poisons first one and then another of Mazda’s neighbors and thus he disposes of two witnesses to their relationship and throws suspicion squarely on Mazda.”
    “And the watch, the checks?”
    “He leaves them with her, of course, or, as you police say, plants them upon her? Perhaps he has even encouraged her to sign his checks for him. He then disappears, thus in every way tightening the noose about her neck.”
    “Good God,” he said faintly.
    She nodded. “Yes, I feel for this bewildered woman. Her suicide note struck you as sincere? It is a very sad note. And this man—”
    “This man,” said Lieutenant Pruden grimly.
    “I would hope,” she said gently, “that among the many things you have of his, there may be a fingerprint or two remaining that belong to him. This checkbook, for instance, or something untouched among the possessions you hold. It would be wise to present these prints to a much higher government agency to see if there are any records, any prints that match. A simple professor at a university who disappears does not merit such research but the man behind this façade—”
    “I get your point,” Pruden said grimly, and then, with a shake of his head, “You make it sound so simple.”
    “Simple?” She looked at him in surprise. “It is likea kaleidoscope, that is all. A small shift of focus and one sees beyond illusion to reality. You look at things one way, I another, but you need only shift your attention and you too will see.”
    “Well, if it should be true—” He put down his napkin. “I think you will forgive me if I leave now, Madame Karitska, I think there is a little unfinished business I should look into tonight.”
    “I think so too,” she said with a twinkle. “And we will see, shall we not?”
    They did not meet again until the weekend, but when Pruden arrived he still had not lost the slightly dazed look that he had worn five nights earlier. He stood in the doorway and said, “I’ve just visited Mazda’s grave. I think I went to—no, I don’t know why I went.”
    “No?” she said smiling.
    “Interpol finally identified his fingerprints,” he said harshly. “He was never Ulanov Bugov. They don’t know who he is, except they have his fingerprints and about half a dozen aliases. I thought you’d want to know.”
    “Yes.”
    He nodded and turned away. “There were flowers on her grave today,” he said, suddenly turning back. “Nobody attended her funeral, they tell me, and yet there were flowers on her grave today.”
    “As I believe I said before,” Madame Karitska told him gravely, “it continues to astonish me what things of value are thrown away on Walnut Street.”

Chapter 8
    “What’s this?” asked Pruden, stopping in at Madame Karitska’s one evening on his way home after a long day on the street. He had just discovered that Madame Karitska had two guests, one of them Gavin O’Connell, the other a very Establishment-type middle-aged man in a well-cut business suit.
    Madame Karitska put a finger to her lips and gestured him to follow her to the center of the room. Lieutenant Pruden could make no sense of what he saw. Neither Gavin nor the stranger appeared even aware of his arrival: in front of each lay a book, and they were staring with enormous concentration at their respective half-open volumes.
    And suddenly as he watched a strange thing happened: a page of Gavin’s book slowly lifted and turned. There were no windows open: there were no handstouching the pages and yet