The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [129]
The list of suspects was shorter.
Not Derek Davis. He was in the county jail when Bledsoe died.
Who did that leave?
Annie sat down at the desk. She looked at her notebook and Max’s, at the stack of biographical sheets, at Bledsoe’s crumpled flyer promising the “truth” about Christie, at the copy of the autopsy on Honeycutt (Saulter was treading on dangerous ground to make it available), at the puzzling missive from Lady Gwendolyn, “What did the murderer achieve …” Lying atop the bio stack was the key to Meeting Room D where Ingrid had stored all the odd bits and pieces turned in by the conference “detective teams” in their search for clues.
Annie picked up a pen and found a clean sheet. She wrote swiftly:
Nathan Hillman
Margo Wright
Victoria Shaw
A short list. A very short list.
After a moment’s hesitation, she added:
Natalie Marlow
And, in a moment:
Emma Clyde
Fleur Calloway
Some problems with the last three. Natalie, so far as anyone knew, was thoroughly caught up in Neil’s spell until the evening of the Agatha Christie Trivia Quiz, which was long after the shooting at Death on Demand, the dumping of the vase, and Stone’s murder. So, Natalie was very unlikely. Annie thought a moment, scratched through her name.
And, of course, Fleur had been in full view of Annie and Saulter when the shots rang out that night at Death on Demand. Annie’s pen hovered over her name. But did anyone on this island have more reason to hate Bledsoe than Fleur? Annie left the name untouched.
Emma Clyde. Emma was tough, smart, and crafty. Her name stayed on the list.
All right, all right. Look at the more likelies.
Margo Wright. One imposing woman. Clever. Strong. But strength had nothing to do with Bledsoe’s death. Still, on the night Kathryn was killed and Neil shot, the murderer had to move quickly, decisively. That fitted Margo, certainly. But was the loss of respect and affection from Margo’s boss and mentor reason enough to kill? Of course, Bledsoe had compounded her injury by maliciously destroying two of her clients, Bryan Shaw and Pamela Gerrard. Had that moved Margo to murder? Annie added a string of question marks after the agent’s name.
Nathan Hillman. He’d loved Pamela. Reason enough for him to hate the man who had driven her to death. Bledsoe said Hillman didn’t have enough guts. Had Hillman proved him wrong?
Victoria Shaw. Oh, surely not. Yet Annie remembered the look in her eyes Friday afternoon in the meeting called by Posey. Hatred. Unforgiving, implacable hatred. Bledsoe had taken from her life all the joy, all the meaning. And weren’t the somewhat ineffectual attacks almost a parody of murderous intent, the use of a .22 pistol and a vase and fireworks and smoke bombs? Weren’t those attacks the kind that a desperately unhappy, sheltered woman might mount?
Annie threw down her pen. Dammit, how was she ever going to figure it all out? The pen clinked against the key atop the stacks of paper—all the information they’d gathered. Annie looked at the stack without enthusiasm. Maybe if she read it all, one more time, maybe she would see something wrong, something odd, something to set her on the trail.
The first pink slivers of dawn streaked the sky as Annie put down the last sheet.
She stared down at her scratch pad on the desk. She’d written one single word: VALIUM.
Because that was wrong, all wrong.
It was in the autopsy report on Kathryn Honeycutt. Not mentioned as important, merely a part of a thorough report. Kathryn Honeycutt had taken a Valium, probably at bedtime, no more than the commonly prescribed five milligrams. No evidence, of course, of drug abuse. Nothing of that sort. Saulter had seen nothing peculiar in it. Kathryn’d had a difficult week, an unpleasant evening. Why not take a tranquilizer at bedtime?
But it was a false note, the one really peculiar fact Annie had found. Kathryn Honeycutt was a Christian Scientist, one so committed to her principles that she was losing her eyesight because of cataracts,