The Murders of Richard III - Elizabeth Peters [82]
She looked as smug as a copper-furred cat, curled up in a leather armchair and smoking like a chimney. For once Thomas didn’t resent her arrogance. It occurred to him that perhaps Jacqueline sometimes sounded overconfident and autocratic because that was what people wanted from her. Certainty can be reassuring.
Liz’s face relaxed visibly; and Thomas, unable to resist a small dig, remarked, “Is that how you raise your children, Jacqueline? By God! That’s how you learned karate! From David.”
“He lets me practice on him,” admitted Jacqueline.
Thomas hadn’t seen Jacqueline’s son for five years. He had been a dirty, freckled urchin then; he was about eighteen now, and if he was Jacqueline’s son he would be a match for her in everything but experience—neatly built and mentally agile. He had a vision of Jacqueline heaving her tall son over her shoulder in her cool pastel living room. It was a delightful thought.
The rector was still struggling with the incredible truth.
“Then it was King Richard’s death the—the criminal was attempting to reproduce—as he had reproduced the deaths of the others?”
“Only this was to be a fatal accident,” Jacqueline said. “Sir Richard’s death was the point of the whole bag of worms. The list of the people who died violent deaths during the reign of Richard the Third is incomplete unless you add Richard himself. If you follow the pro-Richard line, Richard was not a murderer; rather, he was a victim of the treachery and self-interest that doomed the other victims. The real villains were kings like Edward the Fourth and Henry the Seventh—your favorite candidate for the murderer of the princes. Henry was also responsible for Richard’s death, although he didn’t strike a blow himself. ‘He led his regiment from behind….’ ”
Thomas looked sharply at her. After a moment of silence Strangways spoke.
“And that is how you deduced what was going to happen?” he inquired skeptically. “Because the logical victim of the series was Richard himself?”
Jacqueline raised cool green eyes to his face and he threw his arm up in a mock gesture of defense.
“I’m not arguing. You lucked out—I mean, you were right and apparently I was wrong. I’m just asking.”
“Ah,” said Jacqueline, with satisfaction. “In that case, I will explain.
“The idea that the comedian’s ultimate victim might be Sir Richard wasn’t deduction; it was a crazy hunch. Thomas, do you remember our discussion in the conservatory? We were both groggy with wine and lack of sleep and we talked a lot of nonsense; and yet everything we discussed, from grammar to detective fiction, had bearing on the problem of the final victim. We debated about pronouns and adverbs; but when I spoke of ‘the murders of Richard the Third’ I realized that two other grammatical points were pertinent—the plural and the possessive preposition. If I say ‘the murder of Henry the Sixth’ you understand that I am describing Henry the Sixth’s violent death. But if I say ‘the murders—plural—of Richard’ you assume I am accusing Richard of committing the murders, not of being killed more than once. ‘Of’ has two different meanings. In the first case, the possessor has suffered violence; in the second, he has committed it. There is a classic detective story called The Murder of My Aunt…. Think about it.
“Of course in ordinary speech the plural word ‘murders’ restricts the meaning of the possessive to the active form. Ordinarily people aren’t murdered several times. But here in this house, Clarence, Henry the Sixth, and the others were ‘murdered’ a second time. So, I thought to myself, what about King Richard the Third? According to the York records, he was ‘piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city….’ An unusual epitaph for a tyrant, and a better one than Henry Tudor ever got….
“In the view of the pro-Richard school, Richard was a victim, not a villain; a murderee, not a murderer. What if he, like the others, was due to be ‘murdered’ again? Sir Richard Weldon was King Richard. I had already figured out that the comedian was Frank—”
“Wait a minute here. You