The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [137]
“He is mad,” Daoud said. “A madman is not responsible for what he does.”
“You’re right there, Daoud,” said Bertie.
“Ha,” said Selim, scowling. He had not his cousin’s kind heart and was as skeptical about psychology as Emerson.
“Did he describe how he killed her and why?” I asked.
Ramses shook his head. “He said very little after he recovered consciousness. There’s no real motive, Mother. You can talk about ambivalence all you like, but postulated emotions aren’t evidence.”
“He didn’t do it,” Emerson said, fidgeting. “We know who did. Peabody, why don’t you get to Lidman’s confession?”
“First,” I began.
“Second, you mean. Or third?”
“If I am boring you, Emerson, you may be excused. Go play with the children.”
Emerson grinned. “I beg your pardon, Peabody. Proceed.”
“First,” said Ramses, “if you will allow me, Mother, I would like to know how you caught Lidman. It seems to have been a rather physical encounter.”
“That is precisely what I intended to do, dear boy. It all began when we learned that Lidman had broken into the drawer in Emerson’s desk and taken the statuette.”
By raising my voice at intervals I was able to keep comments and questions to a minimum. “And now,” I said, “we come to the heart of the matter. The identity of Mrs. Petherick’s murderer. First”—I quelled Emerson with a stern look—“first I want to read you the biographical notice her publishers put out.”
Having done so, I went on without pausing. “And now, my friends, I will read you the true story of her life.
“Magda Ormond—no ‘von’—was born in Leipzig to a respectable merchant family. From an early age she displayed considerable intelligence and her father, having no son, hired tutors for her. One of them was a young teacher of English, Morritz X. Daffinger. He too recognized the girl’s abilities. She had a taste for tales of the supernatural and made up stories which she told her indulgent tutor.
“He had fallen in love with her. She was at that time approximately sixteen years of age, and quite striking in appearance. She returned his love, and when her parents got wind of the situation they dismissed young Mr. Daffinger and arranged a marriage for her with the son of a prosperous butcher. The lovers eloped to Berlin, where they were married. To augment his paltry salary as a teacher, Daffinger got the idea of writing novels. At first it was a collaboration; she wrote the books, basing the plots on the tales of werewolves and vampires in which she reveled, and he rewrote them in proper English. The books were an immediate success. Realizing that they might appeal more strongly to a female audience if they were written by a woman, the lovers invented a romantic background for Magda. The publishers never questioned it because they too realized it would sell more books. To do them justice, they had no reason to question her biography, but I fear the mercantile instinct is strong in the industry.
“Then war broke out. Daffinger shouldered arms and went off to battle. Magda never heard from him again. I am forced to believe that she didn’t try very hard to find out what had become of him; she had begun to yearn for a more exciting life and here was her chance to achieve it. In the last months, when the German lines were crumbling and the populace was suffering from despair and privation, she made her way to England. Success, popularity, and a good marriage followed.”
I turned over a page. “Daffinger had suffered greatly during the War. He had served on the Russian front and been taken prisoner. Ill and impoverished, he made his way back to Berlin and searched for his loving wife. The search took months. No one knew what had become of her. He was forced to dubious expedients, including theft and assault, to stay alive. Not until two years ago did he come across a story in an English newspaper about her most recent book—and her forthcoming marriage to Pringle Petherick.”
I could tell by the looks of dawning comprehension on the faces of my listeners that they had anticipated my denouement, so I hastened on.
“You can