The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [75]
“Except for the detective talents of Mrs. Kirby,” said Ted. “To what do you attribute your success?”
“To a unique combination of circumstances that could never possibly recur,” Jacqueline said, rather too forcefully. “A librarian is a hanger-on around the fringes of the scholarly world. I knew enough about that world to comprehend the motive, but not enough to get bogged down in the irrelevant details that confused the rest of you. And if there’s one thing we learn in my job, it’s research. We deal with many fields; we don’t know much about any one of them, but we do know where to go to get the facts. I know, there are some librarians who regard books as little boxes to be arranged and classified and rebound from time to time; but you’d be surprised how many of us actually read the darned things! I started out in a small-town library, where I covered a little of everything from children’s books to archaeology and mystery stories. I’ve read hundreds of thrillers, and I’ve always been skeptical of those complicated dying messages.”
“Me, too,” Michael said. He was doodling again; he didn’t even look up from his sketch pad.
Jacqueline stared at him.
“Are you trying to tell me—”
“Oh, sure, I saw that part of it right away.” Michael looked up and smiled angelically. “I don’t think in Roman numerals either.”
“After all my pompous remarks…Why didn’t you say something?”
“What, for instance? People think I’m crazy anyhow, especially the fuzz—er, police. I didn’t know about Albert’s work, or any of that jazz, remember. I just thought maybe he cornered Annie and she flipped. I always liked Annie.”
There was a baffled silence. Then di Cavallo said, in a muted roar, “Young man. Am I to understand—”
“I couldn’t fit Jean’s accidents into it, though,” Michael went on calmly. “I didn’t think Annie would hurt Jean, but…I didn’t know what to think.”
“You thought about Andy,” Jacqueline said.
“Yeah, sure. After Albert accused him of stealing his precious. Shades of Tolkien…Albert was definitely a Gollum type, you know.” The silence got to him after a while. He looked up, saw the circle of fascinated faces, and blushed slightly. “Well, why else would Albert come straight to the Scovilles’ apartment after he found his treasure was missing? Nobody told him about the party; we didn’t want him horning in. It had to be Ann or Andy he was looking for. I don’t know much French, but that was a masculine noun he used—”
“‘Voleur!’” Jean exclaimed. “How could we have been so dumb?”
“And,” Michael went on, “the way Andy moved in on him, to shut him up before he could say too much, was very cool. Andy can—could—talk the leg off a table; I suppose he told Albert some story, promised to help him track down the thief, or said he’d borrowed the material, or something…. Andy ducked out, then, into the john, and not long afterwards Albert passed out. It was too quick and neat to be coincidental. Ann mentioned once they had sleeping pills. Even so, I couldn’t be sure about Andy. I thought of Albert’s treasure as some family jewel or other, couldn’t dig why Andy would want a thing like that.”
Jacqueline opened her purse and took out a sheet of paper.
“Michael says I can keep this, Jean. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure,” Jean said, recognizing the line of saints. The sketch of Andy, debonair as Saint George, made her feel a little sick.
“This,” said Jacqueline, spreading it out, “was a graphic statement of the truth. It hit me with quite a shock when I saw it.”
They studied it in absorbed silence; most of them had not seen it before,
“Who the hell…oh,” Dana said. “Mary Magdalene. Michael, I don’t think I like that look….”
“Nor do I,” José said. “One of these days, Michael, someone is going to send you a bomb through the mail.”
“It may be me,” Ted said. “Saint Stephen indeed. I admit that it may have a certain appropriateness—perhaps more than you realize.”
“Oh, I realize,” Michael said. “I know who