Picture of Guilt by Keene Carolyn

Author:Keene, Carolyn [Keene, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Young Adult, Childrens
ISBN: 9781439121689
Amazon: 1439121680
Goodreads: 26521085
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 1994-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Nine

NANCY STARED AT THE street sweeper. “You were watching the woman at the very moment she stepped into the street?” she demanded. “You saw the whole thing?”

“Did I not just say that?” he replied, with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Was there anyone near her?” George asked, also in French. “Anyone who might have, uh, distracted her?”

He wagged his finger. “No, no, no. I told the police at the time, now I tell you. I was the closest, and I was three meters away, too far to help, hélas!”

Nancy mentally translated this as about ten feet. “Then you don’t have any doubt that it was an accident,” she said.

“No doubt at all,” he replied, bending down to pick up his broom again. “A tragic accident, c’est tout.”

Nancy thanked him for his help, then she and George went to a nearby café to talk about what this meant.

“Nancy, I feel really confused,” George admitted after they ordered a coffee and a tea with milk. “We’ve been basing our whole investigation on the premise that Solo was murdered. If she wasn’t—and that guy’s testimony was pretty convincing—then everything we’ve done so far was one big waste of time.”

Nancy put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her folded hands, and gazed out through the café window at the street. Was George right? Had they spent the last two days chasing a phantom?

“Not quite,” she said slowly. “Okay, Solo’s death was an accident. But what about Jules? At least one witness thought he was pushed under the truck. And somebody stole that briefcase of his.”

“But we haven’t even started investigating Jules’s death,” George protested. “We’ve been investigating Solo’s.”

“On the theory that the two were connected,” Nancy pointed out. She paused as the waiter set their drinks on the table, then continued. “I still think it’s a good theory. Jules was doing research on Solo’s last months and told Ellen he’d just made an amazing discovery. But before he could meet her to share his discovery, he was killed.”

George nodded. “And the briefcase he was carrying vanished—and it probably contained his notes on the discovery,” she added. “Okay, I get the point. Whatever Jules discovered, it must have been terribly incriminating for someone, someone who had had a connection to Josephine Solo. Maybe someone like Censier or that guy Leduc, who was apparently copying her ideas.”

“Don’t forget G.A., who may have been blackmailing her,” Nancy said. “And another thing—even if Solo’s death was an accident, it may have inspired the person who killed Jules to copy it. After all, if you shoot or poison somebody, everybody knows it’s murder. But if somebody stumbles in front of a truck, there’s a good chance people will think it was an accident, and you won’t have to face an investigation.”

“Unless you have bad luck and cross the path of Nancy Drew and Company,” George declared with a mock-fierce expression. “Okay, so where do we go from here?”

Nancy frowned. “Let’s go on assuming that the reason Jules died had something to do with his discovery about Solo,” she said.

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