The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [67]
“Albert’s death was murder,” Jacqueline went on. “I wonder how many of you were really deluded into thinking it anything else? The police were not. The scene was skillfully set, and at first the pattern seemed plain. But Lieutenant di Cavallo is far too good a policeman to be fooled. His intuition told him the truth, but there seemed no way of proving it, nor any way of finding the killer. It could be any one of a number of people. Yet the lieutenant was convinced that it was indeed one of that number. He supported the theory of suicide only because it seemed advantageous to let the killer think he had succeeded in that aspect of his crime.”
She looked at Jean, and now there was a hint of apology in her voice.
“I went to the police, Jean, as soon as I realized you were in danger. It would have been inexcusable to do anything else. I expected to be laughed at, but that didn’t bother me; ridicule, as a weapon, is only effective against the young. I was astounded to find the lieutenant was ready to believe me. Since then we have been working together. It has been a genuine collaboration; without the facts I was able to supply he could not have proceeded, but without him I would have been helpless to act.”
She transferred her glance back to the tabletop, and her voice became impersonal again.
“We speculated about motive. The police were able to investigate the backgrounds of the suspects much more efficiently than I could, and they came up with some surprising facts.” There was another uncomfortable stir around the table; Jacqueline disregarded it and went on. “Though several of your case histories provided possible motives, no single suspicious fact emerged. It became clear to us that an inquiry into motive was a dead end. We had to go at the problem from another angle.
“Let us look, then, at the simple physical facts. Albert’s death was carefully planned. Nothing contradicted an assumption of suicide. Even if one assumed it was a case of murder, no clue indicated one suspect over another. It might be argued that a woman could not commit such a crime. By its very nature it would seem to demand physical strength and a certain degree of ruthlessness. But the modern female is not the fragile vessel her ancestress was. For all his bulk, Albert was not particularly muscular. And it wasn’t difficult to imagine circumstances in which a woman might have found it easier than a man to get Albert into a vulnerable position. On his knees, perhaps, her hand twining in his hair as she bent over him…. It isn’t a pleasant picture, I agree; but very little about this case was pleasant.
“The question of alibis is inconclusive. At least three of you were in the lowest level, not far from the scene of the crime, within minutes of its discovery. I include Jean, of course. To the police she was as prominent a suspect as anyone else. And she mentioned having spoken to Michael and to Dana just before she found Albert. None of the others has verifiable alibis, except for Ted and Ann. According to the priest on duty, they were talking to him at the time the murder was discovered. The only flaw in this alibi is that we are not sure how long Albert lay there before being found. I thought, then, that it was unlikely he could have lingered for very long, but I am told by the police surgeon that there are some amazing examples of survival. So, although I was inclined to eliminate Ted and Ann, I could not do so completely.”
So far none of this was new to Jean; but she was sickly amused to note that the tactful first person plural with which Jacqueline had begun had now become an unequivocal “I.”
“Thanks to your restless habits,” Jacqueline continued, “I couldn’t give anyone an alibi for the other suspicious events. Jean had two so-called “accidents” before the incident in the pool, when she nearly