The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [69]
“I was forced, then, to the conclusion that Jean’s story was true. But what a confusing story it was! Not only did Albert’s message make no sense, but Jean had told it to everyone in the group, including the police. I kept coming up against that, like a brick wall; there seemed to be no point in trying to silence her after she had spoken.
“But was that single symbol the full extent of Albert’s message? Perhaps Jean had not told all she knew.”
“I did,” Jean interrupted. “I keep telling you—”
“So you did. And I believed it. Let us suppose, however, that he wrote something other than what you say he wrote. The only possible reason you might have for concealing the truth was if Albert had written something which betrayed the identity of the killer. You might lie if he had accused you—or someone you cared for deeply enough to lie for him.
“That was feasible—before I started examining it. For, then, all you had to do was keep silent. Albert was dead when I arrived; you had time to obliterate his scrawl and claim you had found him dead. No one would have questioned such a statement; the police surgeon was astounded that he had lived so long. Every hypothesis seemed to lead me back to the same conclusion: that you had told the literal truth. The very meaninglessness of the statement made it more believable. For why should you invent a message that made no sense?
“I thought,” said Jacqueline wryly, “I was going to burst a blood vessel in my brain over that crazy seven. I went through every wild theory I could think of. I pursued saints, because I was haunted by Albert’s idée fixe. He had been obsessed by his saints, and I became obsessed too. Nothing came of it; not, at least, in the way I expected.
“The revelation finally came that day in the catacombs. Looking at the numbers over the lintel of the tomb, it hit me like a thunderbolt. Jean had never written the number, she had only named it. I scared her to death, and made the rest of you think I was losing my wits, by demanding she write it out. And, as I had come to expect, it was the Roman numeral instead of our familiar, Arabic seven.
“Up to that point, my confusion had been open, and openly expressed. After that…” Jacqueline’s voice changed, and Jean felt her muscles tighten. This was it. They were getting to it now.
“I acted,” Jacqueline admitted. Her pallor was more pronounced. “I still didn’t have any proof, and I was afraid of what the killer might do next. I was no longer concerned for Jean, for I felt sure she had now expressed the knowledge the killer had tried to keep her from telling. It must have been a hideous shock to him when he learned Albert had lived long enough to leave an abortive but damning message. He saw its significance at once; but he was clever enough to realize that the significance might be obscured forever if he could keep Jean from repairing her inadvertent blunder.”
Jacqueline took a sip of wine, and put the glass down. The wine, or some more subtle intoxicant, had stiffened her resolve. There were bright spots of color in her cheeks, and her eyes were angry.
“Sevens,” she said. “Sevens all over the scene—scattered, like chaff, to confuse the picture. I said once, remember, that you were all overeducated. Didn’t any of you see the truth, even after reading the inscription on the tomb? Was it too obvious for the subtle academic brain, or was the killer too successful in obscuring the issue? Yet he wasn’t the only one; we all did it. I did it myself. And all the while the simple, obvious explanation was staring us in the face.”
She looked around the circle, and the others looked back, unspeaking, almost unbreathing. Jacqueline banged her hand down on the table, and they all jumped; the wine glass tipped, spilling a small puddle of red onto the smooth mahogany.
“What would a dying man choose for his last message?” Jacqueline demanded. “Forget the subtleties and the ingenious theories. I’ve read the classic