The Murders of Richard III - Elizabeth Peters [85]
“No; I could not believe that the tricks were perpetrated by a criminal who wanted to steal the letter, for whatever reason. They were senseless. A thief would have a better chance of success without them.
“I felt from the first that the appearance of the letter was suspiciously fortuitous. Suppose the letter was a forgery. What did it accomplish? First, it brought the members of the committee here, into a setting appropriate for the staging of the jokes. Then letter and jokes might both be elements in a complex plot.
“What plot? What was its aim, and what was its planned culmination? One answer—to discredit Richard and Ricardians. A fake letter and a series of embarrassing incidents would certainly do that. But again we return to the fact that only a confirmed anti-Ricardian would plan such strategy, and that the joker had to be a member of the house party.”
Thomas cleared his throat. Jacqueline followed his glance. This time she gave the grinning Strangways a faint smile.
“You forget, Thomas, that by this time I was reasonably certain of the criminal’s identity. Moreover, Mr. Strangways is the only guest who had no control over the arrangements for the meeting. The complexity of the jokes meant that they had to be planned well in advance. It wouldn’t be hard for a member of the committee to unobtrusively manipulate his fellow members into accepting the idea of costumes and role playing; other amateur historical societies do it all the time. The comedian had to know, not only what roles you were playing, but your personal idiosyncracies. I couldn’t imagine an outsider managing the business.
“So,” Jacqueline continued, “I was left, finally, with a possibility that had haunted my low cynical mind from the first—that the jokes were misdirection, planned to distract witnesses from an act of violence against one of the persons here.
“I loved the idea,” Jacqueline said dreamily. “It was beautiful. You are all familiar with the classic mystery-novel ploy of a series of murders designed to conceal the motive for one particular killing. But really, it is not a very practical method of committing a crime. As soon as the first murder occurs…”
She indicated the constable at the door, who promptly blushed—and with reason, for he had forgotten official dignity as he got interested in her lecture, and was leaning over the back of the nearest chair.
“As soon as a murder is committed, the police are called in,” Jacqueline said. “The whole sophisticated apparatus of crime detection comes into play. Not even a madman would keep on committing murders when the house is swarming with police. If our criminal planned to kill, he couldn’t hope to conceal his crime among a series of killings; the first murder would be the last. But he could carry out a series of nonfatal jokes and be sure, knowing his fellow Ricardians as he did, that official interference would not be tolerated so long as no one was seriously hurt. When someone was hurt or killed, the police would be summoned and the jokes would end; but the fatality would seem to be only a joke gone wrong, one of a series of baffling incidents rather than a cold-blooded murder. I knew then that the crime would be the last of the jokes—”
“Wait a minute,” Strangways said. “Your theory, if I may say so, has so many holes, it leaks like a colander. To begin with, Philip was seriously hurt. If he had insisted on calling the police…”
Jacqueline inspected him coldly over the rims of her glasses. “But he wouldn’t do that,” she said. “Would you, Philip?”
“No,” the actor said wryly. “Apparently my little foibles are no secret.”
“Frank didn’t mean to hit you so hard,” Jacqueline said consolingly. “He got carried away. You must admit you had been irritating.”
“So you decided that the murder—if there was to be a murder—would be the last