The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [31]
“I’m sorry, Jean, I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t take my meanness personally; I really like all of you mutts, even if you do exasperate me. It’s just a personal foible…. Let’s have a sandwich, and then you can go home. I’ll wash my hands of the lot of you, with pleasure.”
Her voice was light, and Jean knew her mood had improved. They brought their impromptu meal out onto the balcony; it was almost too beautiful to be real, with the sky slowly darkening to the precise, gleaming blue that appears in the starry vaults of the medieval church mosaics, and the perfumed breeze blowing through the heavy flower clusters. Jean found she was ravenous. Unashamedly she polished off every scrap of food on the table, and accepted a second helping.
“Every time I come here I eat like a glutton,” she said apologetically. “You’ve been awfully nice. I really do appreciate it.”
Jacqueline made a face.
“For God’s sake don’t use that word. Damning with faint praise…Nice, indeed.”
“No, really,” Jean persisted. “You’re nice to put up with us. I suppose we seem pretty juvenile to you. What do you really think of us?”
Jacqueline considered the question.
“The Seven Sinners,” she said, with a faint smile. “I guess the thing that strikes me is your mixture of erudition and naiveté. You’re a bright lot, you know—collectively and individually. But you are very…young. I have to say that,” she added, her smile widening. “If I praised your wisdom, the inner council of the over-thirty crowd might hear about it and I might mysteriously disappear some dark night. No remains would ever be found; only a terrified peasant would babble of flaring torches in a remote grove, where white-robed figures met in judgment over a traitor.”
Jean laughed.
“Not bad. You ought to write thrillers.”
“I’ve read too many of them,” Jacqueline admitted. “When I started out, I worked in a small-town library where business was slow. Detective stories are among the few types of literature you can pick up and put down a dozen times per day.” She took a sip of her wine—a beverage that, in Rome, accompanies the smallest snack. “And, in the last few hours, this has become a thriller. This life of yours.”
“How true. Jacqueline…Do you honestly think Albert was the suicidal type?”
Silence followed the question. It was dark now; Jean saw her companion only as a featureless outline in the shadows. Finally Jacqueline said,
“Is there a suicidal type?”
“Don’t quibble,” Jean said. “Of course there isn’t; I’ve had some experience along those lines myself; who hasn’t? But I’ve never known any suicide, successful or unsuccessful, who acted like Albert.”
“I keep forgetting what it was like to be twenty,” Jacqueline said musingly. “And I gather it’s worse these days…. How many suicides have you known?”
“Only one. And it turned out she was on acid. But I’ve heard a lot of people talk.”
“God, yes. Of course you have…. All right, Jean, if you really want to go into this. Do you think Albert was taking any kind of drug?”
“No. No, I don’t. You can tell.”
“I know. Do I know…. You find me a parent who can’t recite the symptoms of everything from hash to speed and I’ll show you a stupid parent…. The autopsy will answer that question finally, but I think you’re correct. Albert wasn’t on anything. So?”
Jean made a despairing gesture.
“So…It’s hard to express it. Albert was crazy, sure. But one thing he had, he had a very high opinion of Albert. Whether he was crazy or not…whether his theories were weird or not…he didn’t know they were weird. He thought he was God’s gift to the heathen world. All right, maybe I don’t know enough about mental illness. Maybe he flipped. Maybe he went from a manic state to a depressive state, and realized that his pretensions were all lies, that he was an ugly, repulsive—”
Her voice broke. For a few seconds the silence was complete. Then Jacqueline’s disembodied voice said,
“Epitaph for Albert…You have a rather nice mind yourself, child. Also you have had too much wine after