The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [44]
Jean was silent. Jacqueline went on, in a more kindly tone,
“I know you don’t want to admit it. You’re fond of all your friends—even Dana, in a fashion. But the facts are inescapable.”
“I know. And I appreciate your effort to make this seem like an intellectual game. But it isn’t a game.”
“It’s a dangerous game. As soon as it’s morning I’m going to call our friend the lieutenant.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not, for heaven’s sake?”
“They won’t believe you. The lieutenant has already decided Albert’s death was suicide, and that suits him fine. He isn’t going to reopen the case on the basis of what has happened to me. We may be sure that these accidents weren’t accidents, but he’ll just laugh. Anyhow, what could he do about it?”
“The police could check alibis,” Jacqueline said stubbornly. “There have been three separate attacks on you; surely they could weed out some of our suspects by finding out where they were at the time—”
“At what time? You were on the spot tonight; can you eliminate anyone? The stair incident is the vaguest of all; it might even have been coincidence. We don’t know when the light was turned off, and when the toy was left on the stair. The car incident—we already know that Michael was in the neighborhood at the right time. Dana and Ted were both downtown that day; she planned to do some shopping, and Ted was having lunch with a man who lives near the Spanish Steps. That’s only a couple of blocks from the Piazza Barberini. I’ll bet the others will be just as hard to pin down.”
“It’s interesting,” Jacqueline said. “My generation automatically turns to the police when anything goes wrong; yours has an instinctive mistrust. Still, you have a point.”
“They can’t do anything we can’t do,” Jean argued. She pulled herself up in bed, fired with new energy. “Jake, this must go back to Albert’s death. If we could prove that wasn’t suicide—”
“How?”
“Let’s think! There must be something.”
Jacqueline settled herself more comfortably.
“There is nothing in the physical circumstances of his death,” she said thoughtfully. “The weapon was found nearby, where it could have fallen from his hand. The nature of the wound was such that it could have been self-inflicted. Di Cavallo asked whether he was right- or left-handed, and nodded in that smug way of his; so clearly that part of it made sense.”
“He was right-handed,” Jean said. “Which means that he could have been killed by a right-handed person standing behind him. If you were planning to cut someone’s throat, that’s where you would stand. To avoid being covered with blood.”
Jacqueline gave a look of mingled admiration and surprise.
“You’re a cold-blooded little creature, aren’t you?”
“I can be girlish and squeamish when I want to be,” Jean said grimly. “But, as we agreed, this isn’t a game…. Obviously the murderer stood behind him. You don’t advance on a victim waving a knife; you come up behind his back. You gain the element of surprise, you avoid incriminating bloodstains, and you produce the kind of wound that looks like suicide. If I can think of these things, a clever murderer surely would.”
“There would have to be some blood. On the killer’s hands and arms.”
“It was a hot day, everyone wore short sleeves, or none. And there is a stream of running water in that room. The overflow from the conduit in the wall.”
“Good Lord,” Jacqueline muttered. “I’d forgotten that…. I thought perhaps the murderer had chosen that room because of its remote location, but maybe there was another reason. What about fingerprints?”
“I don’t think much of the fuzz, but I’m sure they would have looked for fingerprints.”
“And found only Albert’s. But the murderer couldn’t have worn gloves without being rather conspicuous.”
“He could have stuffed them in his pocket and gotten rid of them later. Nobody searched us.”
“We don’t seem to be making much