The Prodigal Son. Colleen McCullough

I don’t care about the Rembrandt or the Leonardo—well, I do, but you know what I mean—I wanted the Velasquez, the wartime Goyas, the Vermeer, the Giotto and the el Grecos! Who ever sees them? The Parsons! I want them hung where all of Chubb and however many visitors can see them!”

      “I understand,” said Carmine, biting into a pastry.

      “When that idiot Richard Spaight said they were going to hang on to Chubb’s paintings for another fifty years at least, I—I snapped! Hand ’em over within a month, or I sue! And I meant it,” said M.M.

      “And they knew they couldn’t buy the court,” Carmine said.

      “I am not without influence,” M.M. said smugly. “That’s their trouble, of course. They have billions, but they don’t cultivate the right people, whereas we MacIntoshes do—and we’re not short of a dollar either.”

      “A pity the Hug folded. The Parsons were happy funding such important research, but it was fatal to hand administration over to a psychiatrist.”

      “Why is that, Carmine?” M.M. asked, his famous apricot hair now faded to a pallid peach.

      “Desdemona says psychiatrists with business heads are in private practice. The ones in research tend to be enthusiastic about loony projects or stuff so far out in left field you can’t see it. So the Hug folded. It’s better as it is, a simple part of the medical school rather than full of weirdos.”

      “The Parsons hold me responsible, as far as I can gather just because I’m President of Chubb. The paintings? Sheer spite.”

      “No, I disagree,” said Carmine, remembering a lunch with the Parsons in a blizzard-bound New York City. “They really do enjoy looking at the paintings, Mr. President. Especially the el Greco at the end of the hall. Greed tempted them to keep the lot—greed of the eyes. As for spite—it’s a part of the Parson persona.”

      “Hence Tom Tinkerman. Nothing of interest would have been published during his tenure at C.U.P.,” said M.M. flatly. “I am really, really glad that he’s dead.”

      Carmine grinned. “Did you kill him, M.M.?”

      The determined mouth opened, shut with a snap. “I refuse to rise to that bait, Captain. You know I didn’t kill him, but—” A beautiful smile lit up M.M.’s face. “What a relief! The Board of Governors can’t be blackmailed a second time because there’s no Tinkerman left among the candidates. So soon after Tinkerman’s appointment, we’ll just slip in the one we wanted all along. I don’t think you know him—Geoffrey Chaucer Millstone.”

      “Auspicious name,” said Carmine gravely. “Who is he?”

      “An associate professor in the Department of English—a dead end academically, but he’s not professorial material. Too brisk and pragmatic. Hard on the undergrads and harder still on fellows of all kinds. Ideal for C.U.P.—no leisurely publication of abstruse treatises on the gerundive in modern English usage.”

      “Darn! I’ve been hanging out for that. Is he good for things like science and Dr. Jim’s book?”

      “Perfect,” said M.M. with satisfaction. “There’s no denying either that C.U.P. can do with the funds a huge best seller would bring in. The Head Scholar will have money to publish books he couldn’t have otherwise. C.U.P. is well endowed, but the dollar is not what it used to be, and these days alumni with millions to give think of medicine or science. The days when the liberal arts received mega-buck endowments are over.”

      “Yes, that’s inevitable. A pity too,” said Carmine; he was a liberal arts man. “Last name Millstone? As in the Yankee Millstones, or the ordinary old Jewish immigrant Millstones?”

      “The ordinary old Jewish immigrants, thank God. Chauce, as he’s known, is worth a whole clan of Parsons.”

      Carmine rose. “I’ll have to see people I’m bound to offend, sir. Be prepared.”

      “Do what has to be done.” The good-looking face was at its blandest. “Just get Dr. Jim out from under, please. It has not escaped me that he’s bound to be the main suspect.”

      Her tiger bonnet on her head to keep her ears warm, her short arms encumbered by folds of fake fur, Delia drove her cop unmarked out to Route 133 and found Hampton Street. An odd neighborhood for relatively affluent people, but her preliminary research had revealed that Max and Val Tunbull had each built on Hampton Street in 1934, just as America was recovering from the Great Depression, on land that had cost them virtually nothing, and using building contractors grateful for the work. Probably they had believed that Hampton Street would become fairly ritzy, but it had not. People wishing to be ritzy had preferred the coast or the five-acre zone, farther out.