The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [74]
Ted nodded.
“Our feelings for one another ran deeper than I had realized. But you must admit there is a difference between those feelings and the one José is talking about.”
“Yes. For a while I thought…Hey, look! Isn’t that Jacqueline?”
“Jacqueline and Michael,” José corroborated.
Michael was looking almost spruce this morning; not only had he shaved, he had combed his hair and he wore his “good” shirt—the one without holes. Jacqueline was faultlessly attired in a blue linen suit. Her purse and gloves were of the same pale ivory as her shoes, and her hair was coiled into a knot at the back of her neck.
The two men rose to honor this sartorial elegance, and José pulled out a chair.
“I expected you,” he said.
“I had to come.” Pulling off her gloves, Jacqueline looked at each of them in turn. “I’m leaving Rome today, and I may not see you again.
“But I knew you’d all be bursting with questions. I owe you that much, to know the truth before it comes out in the newspapers.”
Now that the invitation had been given, none of them could think of anything to say. After a moment Jacqueline said, with a faint smile,
“I wasn’t sure any of you would be speaking to me.”
“Why not?” Ted asked in astonishment. “Oh! Oh, I see. You are thinking of the stool-pigeon syndrome, perhaps. We are not a street gang, to place loyalty to the mob above all other virtues.”
“You yourself said it,” José added. “In all cultures there is one ultimate crime.”
“Not to mention the minor detail of Jean’s skin being kept intact,” Michael contributed. “We like it in the shape it’s in.”
“Sorry,” Jacqueline said ruefully. “I guess I’ve been dealing with the less logical segment of your age group for too long.”
“Before we start asking questions,” Ted said, “maybe we should wait to see if Dana is coming.”
“She’s coming,” Jacqueline said. An odd little smile curved her mouth. “But we needn’t wait…. Ah, here she is.”
A car came down the street. It was not until it pulled over to the curb and parked, in bland disregard of the sign forbidding such activity, that they recognized the occupants. The vehicle was an open sports car, silver in color, and di Cavallo was at the wheel. Beside him, Dana looked as smug as a Persian cat.
The two got out of the car and joined the others. After greetings had been exchanged, di Cavallo said briskly,
“Have you finished your lecture, then?”
“I haven’t even begun. Really, I think we covered most everything last night, didn’t we?”
“One thing I did not understand,” José said. “The reference to an earlier suicide—a friend of Andy’s. Was that really as it sounded to me?”
“It was one of the facts that turned up in the police investigation of your backgrounds,” Jacqueline said, after waiting for a moment to see whether di Cavallo would answer. “However, there had been references to it more than once. Nothing can be proved now; there is no need, it would only cause needless pain for the boy’s parents. But I think—I am almost sure—it was Andy’s first venture into murder. His much-admired thesis was written after his friend died.”
“I don’t see how Andy could get away with it,” Jean said. “What about the boy’s adviser, his other friends? Wasn’t anyone suspicious?”
“How much do you know of the details of anyone else’s work? It’s amazing how seldom people really listen to one another. The boy’s adviser? Well, believe it or not, I wrote a thesis once myself in the prehistoric past. I met my adviser once a month, and he told me the latest cute stories about his dog. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but the amount of genuine communication between us was very limited. At least he was willing to meet with me. Not all advisers are.”
“Master’s or doctor’s dissertation?” José asked.
“What’s your field?” Ted demanded.
“That’s beside the point,” Jacqueline said demurely. “I am merely trying to demonstrate that Andy was fairly safe in stealing someone else’s ideas. Assume the unlikely did occur and someone noted a resemblance between his work and the tentative theories of another man. The conclusion would be that the other man