Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death (16 page)

Cynthia raised one skeptical eyebrow. “Okay, how are we supposed to get that without asking people dumb questions like, Where were you standing at eight fifty-three the night Professor Gilbert died? That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?”

“I’m still working on it,” I admitted.

Cynthia said suddenly, “Back up a minute. You said someone could make a knockout potion or whatever you want to call it easily using those poppies, right?”

“Yes, or so I understand. So the supply of poppies was right there. What are you asking?”

“Two points. One, someone would have to know something about toxins to realize how easy this would be to make, although obviously you can find everything online these days. I’m assuming it’s not some long, complex chemical procedure using fancy glassware, but something more like brewing tea, involving hot water?”

I nodded. “I think so, and we can check. What else?”

Cynthia took a sip of her wine. “If that’s the case, then the second point is, someone needed access to cooking facilities in Capitignano. There are only so many rooms that had stoves at the villa. We didn’t. And I can’t see anyone hauling an electric kettle around—can’t you see the way the people at customs would look at that? But the building next to the dining hall had a full kitchen, and there was another one in the villa over us. Maybe someone could have sneaked into the dining room in the middle of the night to brew something up, but they’d run the risk of being noticed there, and they would have needed some light, which would have been obvious to a lot of people.”

“Good thinking. And we don’t know that everyone knew about the stoves scattered around, unless they did a lot of visiting among the rooms. So you’re suggesting that narrows the pool of suspects down to maybe ten or fifteen of us who were in those rooms?”

“Exactly. When we compare that with the list of Gilbert’s students, that should narrow it further. Within a margin of error, of course.”

I smiled into the dark. It felt good having Cynthia’s help, and her willingness went a long way toward relieving my guilt at having started this whole thing. “This is great, Cyn. So to go back to my earlier point, the next hurdle is to figure out who was physically near enough to the professor to introduce this substance into something he was drinking.”

Cynthia leaned back in her chair and contemplated the sky, now rich with stars. “As far as I recall, not that I was paying a lot of attention, he was drinking most of the night. I don’t think I ever saw him without a glass in his hand.”

“What was he drinking? Wine? Cocktails?”

Cynthia shut her eyes. “Highball glass, I think, but mostly that aperitif my friend the cook kept whipping up. What was it called? An Aperol spritz?”

“Sounds about right. Anyway, the drink was dark enough that it would hide anything that was added. Of course, we don’t know what poppy flower tea would taste like, but it had a pretty distinct flavor of its own. I wonder if Professor Gilbert had had it before?”

“Could be,” Cynthia said. “The recipe is on the Aperol bottle, so it must be popular. But that doesn’t mean he’s had it before, or knew what it should taste like. And don’t forget the bottle of wine waiting for him in his room. With the two glasses.”

“I wonder if that had been opened or if your guy left a corkscrew? Seems like all the physical evidence was conveniently destroyed,” I said absently. “So what do we look for now? A chemist? An MD? No shortage of those in this group. Almost as many medicos as art historians.”

“Or an herbalist with an interest in natural remedies,” Cynthia suggested. “In low doses this poppy tea is a good sleep aid.”

“And you know this why?”

“I looked it up online.”

“Ah. Well, one other point the lab report provided was that it wasn’t a strong enough dose to kill him. He would have to have drunk gallons of the stuff or had some preexisting medical condition that made him sensitive to it. But say someone slipped him this homemade Mickey, enough to make him clumsy, how’d he fall down the hill? After all, the fall happened not far from our window, and it was very quiet there, if you recall. I can’t believe I could have slept through something like that. Wouldn’t he have cried out? Isn’t that the typical reaction if you’re conscious and falling to your death? By the way, what time did you get back?”

“About two. So you’re saying he had to have gone over the edge before two, because we couldn’t both have slept through it? I mean, it might have awakened you, but if you didn’t hear anything else you might have assumed that you’d dreamed it. But we couldn’t both have done that.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. Which means what? He was so out of it that he didn’t notice he was falling down a hill? Or there was something else going on. I wish I could see the full autopsy report to see if there were any other injuries that didn’t fit a fall. But it’s probably in Italian so I wouldn’t understand it anyway.”

“You can’t ask one of your contacts?”

“I could, I guess, but I’d rather keep them in reserve in case this gets a whole lot worse. Like if we all end up in a holding cell somewhere. I don’t even know where the nearest police administrative center would be. And I’d rather not find out.”

“I agree,” Cynthia said emphatically. “Your contact is our ace in the hole if we all get arrested. So forensically we’re on our own. Somebody—presumably a woman—slips him the poppy tea, gets him drunk on top of that, and pushes him down the hill. Maybe she didn’t mean to kill him, but either way he died. Okay, if we put the late-night tête-a-tête on hold, as I asked before, how do we determine who spent any time close enough to him to slip him the stuff? Did your expert tell you how long it took to work?”

“And as I said earlier, more or less, we can’t go around asking people,
Did you talk to the professor? When? Before, during or after dinner?
” I protested.

“Probably before, actually. Wouldn’t it be more potent on an empty stomach? And why
can’t
we just ask?” I wondered if Cynthia was playing devil’s advocate.

“I think you’re right, about the timing,” I said. “It would take a little while to affect him, but if he was seated at dinner and talking, he might not have noticed. As for the other, because asking questions would tip off the killer, or the accidental one. The death could still have been unintentional. Not that I’ve noticed any one of us going around looking particularly guilt-ridden.”

“Who sat at the head table with him?” Cynthia asked.

“I wouldn’t want to swear to it. Barbara and Gerry, because it was their show and they’d invited him. Jean and Jane? After that it’s kind of blurry, although I know there were other women there. I was at the other end of the room.”

Cynthia refilled her glass and stared into the darkness. Then she said, “Photos.”

“What?”

“Everybody was snapping pictures, formally or informally. Cameras, cell phones, and Xianling with her ever-present iPad. Surely we could put together an array of pictures that will show who stood or sat near him during the evening?”

“That is an excellent idea, Watson. But how would we get them all quickly?”

“We need an ally, like Xianling. She could claim she’s putting together a memory book or whatever and could she please have all the pictures. Like, right away, while everyone still remembers.”

“What if people say no?”

“She’ll just have to wheedle. We need a
good
ally. I think she could pull it off.”

“Which means we have to eliminate that person—Xianling—from suspicion before we ask her to do this.”

“Or we’ll just have to go with our gut and trust someone.”

“Or two someones, if we need some medical advice.”

“Yup. Who do you think are in the clear?” Cynthia asked.

“Well, I can’t imagine Jean and Jane sabotaging something they’d worked so long and hard to make happen. If we decide they’re in the clear, they could help to clear this up ASAP so we can go on playing tourists without it hanging over us.”

“But they don’t have the right expertise. Expertises. Whatever.”

How much had Cynthia had to drink? “Right. Who knew the professor would be making a special appearance, and when did they know it? And the arrogance of that guy, thinking he’d be welcome after what he did to so many women.”

Cynthia held up a finger. “
Allegedly
did. No one ever accused him openly. He was never tried for anything. He didn’t lose his job. So he had reason to believe that his behavior was acceptable, or not unacceptable.”

“Do we blame the college for that?” I asked.

“I don’t know if we can. You remember those days, don’t you? Nobody knew of terms like
bullying
or
sexual harassment
. We were mostly good little girls who were raised to believe that if a guy got out of hand, it was somehow our fault because we’d led him on. Now, raise the ante and make the guy a good-looking, smart professor. Any girl would have been flattered to be noticed by him. And when he kicked them to the curb, well, guess what—it was their fault again. They just didn’t measure up. Throw in a dash of third-wave feminism—we were breaking out of the old restrictions. And the college didn’t have in place any mechanism to address this kind of problem then.”

I sat back and looked at her admiringly. “That, lady, is quite a speech. You sure you don’t have a stake in this?”

“No, I don’t—not personally. I’m just reminding you that those were the times, and the times changed. I hope and believe that this would not happen today.”

“Amen. Anyway, Gilbert felt free to join us, confident that he would be welcomed warmly. Jerk.”

“Well, he paid the price in the end.” She drained her glass. “So, now what?”

“You find out what you can about our classmates. Let me think about who else we can bring into this—my head’s a little muddled tonight. You planning to tour the Cinque Terre tomorrow?”

“I thought I might. We should split up and talk to different people again. You never know what they might let slip.”

“Like a convenient confession?” I joked.

“You wish. But we can verify if they ever knew the professor. And then we can compare that with the real history, when I get it. If someone lies, then we know we’ve got a problem.”

“I can tell you the ones I know knew the professor, so your list just got shorter. You know, you’re pretty good at this. Your data collection company—you’ve worked with law enforcement before, haven’t you?”

“My lips are sealed. Confidentiality agreements and so on. And you haven’t been exactly up front with your activities either.”

“Fair point. But between us we can handle this, right?”

“Of course.
Ministrare, non ministrari.”
The old college motto: Not to be ministered unto, but to minister. All right, then. We were going to take charge of this problem before the police got involved, and we would take care of it.

Chapter 15

Cynthia went inside, and soon I could hear the sound of running water in the bathroom behind me, but I didn’t feel like going inside to get ready for bed—it was too nice out here. I tipped the last of the bottle of wine into my glass and sat listening to the night. No sounds floated up from the town, but my fleeting impression had been that it shut down fairly early—no raucous beach parties or people spilling out of bars.

Was it arrogant for Cynthia and me to think we could figure out who had killed the professor? Why not just let the police handle it? Well, for one thing, I felt responsible for starting the whole mess. If I’d kept my nose out of it, most likely it would have gone away quietly. Two, I had my doubts that the local police, or even the national police, would get it right, although I had to admit that my disdain was based more on years of movies and television shows rather than any direct experience with them. But our group of classmates was on a tight schedule, and nobody had planned on sitting around being interviewed by the cops—in Italian, no less. Would the investigators want to talk to us here in Liguria? Or would they want to drag us back to Tuscany and the scene of the crime? Where would we stay? For how long? Nobody would be happy with Cynthia and me.

It didn’t take much of this thinking to convince me that if Cyn and I could expedite the process, we should,
pronto
. And we did bring special skills to the table, skills that our classmates most likely weren’t aware of. We could use them, quietly, without revealing too much about what we did, how we worked. We could fix things without anybody knowing. At least, that was what I hoped. I had to admit that Cynthia and I were both behind-the-scenes kind of people in our fields, not experienced or subtle interviewers.

Did I feel a need to make things right for these women, whom I wasn’t exactly close to? I was surprised that the answer was yes. We had a bond because of our shared past, no matter what had happened since. And so many people, myself included, had been looking forward to this trip; had probably made sacrifices for it, financially or otherwise. To have it compromised by one person’s cruel and thoughtless act was not fair.

Had it in fact been thoughtless? A crime of opportunity? Or had someone planned this carefully, maybe for a long time? Who had known that Professor Gilbert lived in Tuscany? Who might have suggested that it would be interesting to invite him to speak at our gathering? That was a question that should be directed to Barbara and Gerry, but they weren’t here, and I wasn’t even sure how to get in touch with them. Maybe we could ask Jean and Jane if they knew any additional details. But even if the professor had been lured to the villa, who had known what the topography there was, and that it provided so many steep hills and slippery paths?

Too many questions, and not enough time to ask them all.

I heard footsteps crunching on the path below, and then a voice called out quietly, “Hello?”

“Up here,” I said, also quietly—I was pretty sure voices carried in the still night air.

A shadowy figure slid up the last set of steps to my patio. It resolved itself into Xianling, who dropped into a chair. Not a hair out of place, and she wasn’t even panting. Not fair.