This too had been prearranged, just in case the guilty party tried to make a run for it. Lucy and Ben walked quickly to the doors on either side of the room and closed them. They then took up positions in front of them, their arms crossed and frightful scowls on their faces. Lucy had suggested they wear sunglasses so as to look more like Secret Service agents, but Jane had dismissed the idea as too gimmicky.
“You’re locking us in?” said Chumsley. He looked at Walter, who shrugged.
“If you look around you,” Jane said, “you will notice that one member of our party is not here.”
Everyone looked about, taking inventory.
“Miriam isn’t here,” Sam said.
“She’s not feeling well,” Walter told her. “A bad oyster.”
“There was no bad oyster,” Jane informed him. “And I wasn’t referring to Miriam, as she isn’t technically a member of the party.”
“What do you mean there was no bad oyster?” Walter asked. “I thought you said—”
“It’s Bergen,” said Genevieve, interrupting. “Bergen isn’t here.” The tone in her voice suggested that she expected some kind of reward for having guessed correctly, like perhaps a gold star or a piece of candy.
“Is Bergen the murderer?” Orsino said.
“I knew it!” Brodie declared, banging his hand on the table so that the coffee cups rattled. “It’s always a German!”
“Strong words coming from an Australian,” Enid said. “Your country was founded by criminals, as I recall.”
“Like the Scots are any better,” said Chumsley, snorting. “Woad-faced skirt-wearers.”
“Just because Ryan was a better lover than you ever were—” Enid began.
Chumsley stood up. “Let me tell you something about how good a lover he was—”
“Shut up!” Jane yelled. “You’re ruining everything!”
All eyes turned to her.
“Sit down!” she ordered. “Now!” she added when Chumsley didn’t move quickly enough.
When everyone was seated she took a breath. “Now then, let’s start over, shall we? And please, no more interruptions until I’m finished.”
Walter raised his hand.
“Yes, darling?” Jane said.
“I was wondering if, before you begin, you could tell me what’s happened to my mother?”
“Of course,” Jane replied. “I’m fairly certain that she’s been kidnapped by Bergen.”
A chorus of voices erupted as everyone began to speak at once. Jane picked up a teaspoon and banged it against the side of a chafing dish filled with sausages. The cacophony ceased.
“I’m afraid that’s all I know at present,” Jane told Walter. “But I have every reason to believe that she’s safe. At least for the moment.”
“Then Bergen is the murderer?” Sam asked.
Jane shook her head. “No,” she said. “Bergen is the murderer’s assistant.”
“Then who is the murderer?” said Genevieve.
“A very good question,” Jane answered. “As everyone is aware, initially I was considered by some to be the most likely suspect.”
“And you’re not now?” Enid said.
“Perhaps in the minds of some,” said Jane. “But that will soon be cleared up, as I intend to unmask the murderer in a few moments.”
She looked around, waiting for someone to leap up. She half hoped someone would, as it would confirm her suspicion. But she was also rather pleased that no one did, as she was enjoying herself.
“Almost everyone in this room had a reason to despise Ryan McGuinness,” she began. “Except you, Walter. Of course you’re not the murderer.”
“But I didn’t like him,” Walter said. “I thought he was a jerk.”
“That’s not generally a strong enough reason for wanting to fling someone from the top of a tower,” Jane said. “However, there are people here who do have very good reasons for wishing ill will on Ryan McGuinness.”
She turned to Enid.
“Let’s begin with you,” she said. “We all know that you and Ryan were lovers.”
Enid nodded. “Which makes it highly unlikely that I would want him dead,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Any child should be able to see that.”
“Except that you had reason to believe he might be seeing someone else,” Jane said. “Isn’t that right?”
Enid shrugged. “I might have heard some things,” she admitted.
“But what you didn’t know was that the other object of Ryan’s affections was”—she swung around and pointed at Chumsley—“your ex-husband.”
A collective gasp went up from the table. Chumsley threw down his napkin. “Who told you that?” he said.
“I saw you coming out of Ryan’s compartment on the train to Pembroke,” Jane said. “At first I thought you were telling him to stay away from Enid.” She glanced at Enid. “But the notion that you were still in love with her made no sense. Then Orsino mentioned having had an affair with Ryan before Ryan took up with Enid.”
Orsino looked deeply into his coffee cup as everyone turned their attention in his direction.
“That’s when it made sense,” Jane continued. “You weren’t warning him away from Enid because you wanted her, you were telling him to stay away from her because you wanted him all to yourself. Isn’t that right?”
Chumsley reddened. “I didn’t kill him!” he said.
“No,” Jane said, nodding. “You didn’t. And neither did Enid.”
“So it was Orsino, the jilted lover!” Genevieve cried. She was sitting next to Orsino, and now she leaned away from him, her eyes wide.
“It was not!” said Orsino.
“Was it?” Brodie asked Jane.
Jane didn’t answer. Instead she moved on, standing behind Sam.
“Love is only one avenue to murder,” she said. “There are many others. Revenge, for instance. Sam, it must have made you very angry to learn that Ryan was the reason you didn’t get that teaching job.”
Before Sam could respond, Jane continued. “And Genevieve, you think he unfairly won a prize that you deserved to have.”
Genevieve tore a croissant in half but said nothing.
“Brodie, he stole your design idea when you were in school,” Jane said. “And then there’s the small matter of his having stolen Bergen’s commission for the shoe museum.”
“And now we’re back to Bergen,” said Enid. “I think it’s clear to everyone here that of all of us he’s the most likely suspect, particularly if, as you claim, he’s absconded with Walter’s mother.”
“I agree that that would be the most likely explanation,” Jane said. “But then I asked myself, what would Agatha Christie do?”
“Agatha Christie?” said Orsino. “What has she got to do with this?”
“Oh, nothing directly,” Jane answered. “But I assume you’ve all read her at some point, yes?”
All around the table heads nodded.
“And what’s the most maddening thing about an Agatha Christie novel?” she asked.
There was a long silence. Finally Enid said, “She always withholds key bits of information.”
“Exactly!” Jane said. “In every Agatha Christie novel there’s always a scene in which the murderer is revealed, and it always involves the person who has solved the murder informing everyone that Mrs. So-and-so is really the daughter of the maid whom the victim treated unkindly thirty years before, resulting in her family’s descent into poverty, or that the young man who spends every day reading by the pool isn’t a nice young man at all but an alcoholic gambler with designs on the victim’s diamond brooch.”
“That always annoyed me,” said Sam. “You could never figure out who the murderer was because it could be any of them, and Christie never gave you all the clues you needed to figure out which one it was.”
Murmurs of agreement rippled around the table.
Jane cleared her throat. “I’m not done yet,” she said. “There’s something else about Chr
istie’s novels that is a bit predictable, and that is the character who is largely invisible throughout the book but who then becomes enormously important at the end. In fact, you can often identify the murderer simply by looking at who gets the least amount of time in the story.”
“In our case that would be Genevieve,” Orsino said.
“I beg your pardon?” said Genevieve.
“I’m sorry, but it’s true,” said Orsino. “I’ve barely seen you at all this trip.”
“You’re just trying to get back at me because you think I called you a murderer!” Genevieve said.
She started speaking in rapid-fire French. Orsino responded in equally rapid and equally loud Italian. Jane put her fingers in her mouth and gave an ear-piercing whistle. This stopped their bickering.
“Although Genevieve has indeed contributed little in the way of conversation during our excursions, it is not she to whom I am referring.”
As she spoke she moved quietly around the table, until she was standing just behind the chair of her prime suspect. She smiled triumphantly. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our murderess.”
“Suzu?” Sam said as they all stared at the diminutive professor.
“I’d forgotten all about her,” said Brodie.
“Well, the poor thing almost never speaks,” added Genevieve.
“What makes you think it’s her?” Enid asked. “What motive does she have?”
“None that I know of,” said Jane. “Which according to the rules of every Agatha Christie novel I’ve ever read means that she must be the guilty party.”
Suzu remained motionless as they discussed her. She said nothing, sitting with her hands folded in her lap.
“We really don’t know anything about her,” Orsino said.
“Now that you mention it, Bergen was the one who suggested I invite her,” said Enid. “I’d never heard of her before.”
“Exactly,” Jane said. “She masterminded this from the beginning.”
“Wait a minute,” Genevieve said. “Suzu was standing with us at the bottom of the tower when Ryan fell. How do you explain that?”
“Oh, that,” said Jane. “Well, she’s a vam …”
Unfortunately, she hadn’t quite gotten this far when imagining how the big reveal would go. Now that she was there, she realized that there was one big question she wasn’t going to be able to answer.
“Yes, Jane,” Suzu said in a calm, even voice. “How do you explain that?”
Jane looked down. Suzu was looking up at her, not smiling. Her dark eyes flashed anger, and Jane could sense that more than anything Suzu wanted to destroy her.
At least I know I’m right, she thought as she searched frantically for words—any words at all.
“And she’s hardly big enough to fling a cat,” said Brodie. “How could she hurl a great big thing like McGuinness over a four-foot-high wall?”
Then Jane heard a sound that made her heart shrink to the size of a pea. It was laughter. It started at one end of the table, where Enid was grinning and pointing at Jane, and then it seemed to roll like a great, sweeping wave toward the chair in which Suzu sat with Jane behind her.
“Stop it!” Jane shouted.
But they didn’t. They only laughed harder and louder. All except Walter, who sat looking at Jane with a perplexed look on his face.
Jane wanted to die. She couldn’t even muster the energy to try again. Then, beneath the laughter, she heard Suzu speaking to her. Only it was more like the way Lilith spoke to her, the words forming in her mind instead of reaching her ears.
“It took you long enough to figure me out,” Suzu said. “But of course, as you now realize, you can’t make them believe you. They think you’re insane.”
“Where has Bergen taken Miriam?” Jane asked.
“Don’t worry,” Suzu said. “She’s not dead. Yet. I’ll return her when you give me the Needle.”
“I don’t have the Needle,” Jane said. “I don’t think it even exists.”
“Nice try,” said Suzu. “I’ve seen the doll. Just give the Needle to me.”
“I just told you, I don’t have it,” Jane said. “There was nothing inside the doll.”
“Then you’d better find it,” Suzu told her.
The laughter had died down now, and the people around the table were looking at Jane, waiting for her to say something. Before she could speak there was a knocking at the door. Lucy looked at Jane, who shrugged. There was no reason to keep it locked now.
Lucy opened the door and a girl wearing the shirt of a hotel employee came in. She walked over to Walter and handed him an envelope.
“Your mother asked us to deliver this to you at nine-thirty this morning,” she said.
Walter took the envelope. “When did she leave it at the desk?”
“Last night, I believe,” the girl said.
“Thank you,” Walter said as he opened the envelope and removed a single piece of paper. He scanned it, then cleared his throat and began reading.
Dear Walter:
Since your father and I divorced I’ve been looking for a man who understands me and loves me for who I am. I’ve found that man in Bergen Faust. I know this will come as a surprise, but I want you to know that we are very much in love.
Bergen and I are going away to spend some time together alone. We don’t even know where we’re going. We’re just getting a car and driving where our hearts take us. But don’t worry, we won’t do anything foolish. I’ll let you know in a few days where we are.
Love,
Mom
“Well, that explains that,” Enid said.
“It does not!” said Jane. “It’s obviously a forgery!”
Walter held the letter up. “It’s her handwriting,” he said.
“They made her write it,” Jane insisted.
“Jane, you know as well as I do that nobody makes my mother do anything she doesn’t want to do,” Walter said.
“I think you should apologize to Suzu,” said Genevieve.
Suzu stood up. “There’s no need,” she said. “Jane meant no offense, I’m sure.”
“She accused you of being a murderer,” said Enid.
“Jane is a writer,” Suzu said, her voice still soft and light. “Perhaps her imagination simply ran away with her.”
Everyone looked at Jane. She felt the weight of their stares. Suzu was lying. She was a murderer. But there was no way anybody was going to believe her. No one except Lucy, anyway, and that wasn’t enough.
She was beaten.
“Yes,” she said. “Perhaps it did. I’m very sorry.”
Suzu touched her arm gently. “We won’t speak of it again.”
She left the room. Jane, not knowing what else to do, went and sat down beside Walter. “I feel like such a fool,” she said.
“Can hardly blame you for that,” said Brodie, who was seated across from her. “But it was very entertaining.”
“And you weren’t wrong about all of us having reasons for wanting Ryan dead,” Sam added kindly.
“Especially you, eh, Chumsley?” Brodie called out. He chuckled. “Who knew you had it in you, you old dog?”
“Yes,” Chumsley said. “Well.” He glanced at Enid, who glared at him and stomped out of the room.
“At least we know where my mother is,” said Walter. “Well, sort of.”
“But Bergen?” Sam said. “No offense, but ick.”
“I’m just happy she’s found someone,” said Walter.
Jane wanted to shake him and ask him if he really thought Miriam would run off with someone like Bergen. But she didn’t. She’d caused enough trouble for one morning. She was surprised any of them were speaking to her at all, especially after she’d aired their dirty laundry. Walter looked at his watch. “We’re supposed to meet in front of the hotel in fifteen minutes to go to today’s house,” he said.
“I don’t think anyone wants me to come,” Jane said.
Walter smiled. “I do,” he said. “But
you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Jane didn’t want to. In fact, it was the last thing she wanted to do. Not only would she have to be around all of the people in front of whom she’d embarrassed herself, she would have to be around Suzu. Now that her suspicions about the woman were confirmed, she was determined to find out who she was and why she was so anxious to get her hands on Crispin’s Needle. She couldn’t do that if Suzu was watching her.
On the other hand, she can’t do anything while you’re watching her, she thought.
She smiled at Walter. “I can’t imagine anything better than spending the day with you,” she said. “I’ll go get my coat.”
Thursday: Geneva
THE PEUGEOT HUGGED THE CURVE OF THE ROAD AS WALTER ACCELERATED, causing the car to shoot forward when it came to the straightaway. Jane, looking out the window, watched as the mountains opened up and the car descended into the Val d’Aosta. The late afternoon sun had burned away most of the fog, and the glacier-fed waters of the Dora Baltea turned it into a silvery ribbon that wound back and forth across the landscape.
A bus had been arranged to take the group from Venice to Geneva, but Walter had suggested to Jane that they rent a car and drive on their own. That way they would be able to stop if they wanted to. Also, it would give them some time alone.
It was the time alone that worried Jane. Following the debacle of her unmasking of Ryan McGuinness’s murderer, she might be expected to relish being away from those she had offended, amused, or both. But being alone with Walter was also problematic, as it meant she couldn’t avoid discussing either her seemingly erratic behavior or his mother’s disappearance.
They had discussed the latter subject during the first two hours of the trip. Walter accepted the explanation—provided by the letter allegedly written by Miriam and left for him at the desk of the Byron Hotel—that his mother had run off with Bergen Faust, and Jane chose not to disabuse him of this notion. Things were actually made easier for her by Walter’s belief that his mother was simply off on a romantic adventure, as it gave Jane more time to figure out her next move.
The second two hours of the journey had been spent talking about the scenery, the various buildings they’d seen, and the charms of European cities in general. Now, as the final third of the trip began, Jane felt it was time to address the topic they had both been avoiding.