Rich, Radiant Slaughter by Jane Haddam

Author:Jane Haddam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2020-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

By the time we were all in the hall on our way to Tempesta’s room, I had begun to sympathize with her feeling that I must be crazy. I have always loved puzzles. Both my bedroom and my office, back in New York, were littered with collections of crosswords and Double-Crostics. I’ve had a subscription to Games magazine since the day it first appeared. I get a little package from Will Weng’s Crossword Club in the mail every month. In recent years, I’ve even begun to develop a passion for murder mysteries of the classic 1930s type: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ellery Queen. Sometimes my life and the situation I’m in begin to seem like scenes from those. Whenever that happens, I am good at figuring things out, just the way I’m good at doing logic puzzles. (I haven’t won the Games national crossword competition yet, but I’m working on it.) It’s a matter of believing that there are no consequences. Sitting in my room with Tempesta and Nick, going through the elements that had been perking through my brain as I slept, putting it all together, I had felt less anxiety—less pressure— than I did when I had just delivered a manuscript.

Going down that hall was something else again. I kept thinking I must have slept very well, because the particulars had arranged themselves very neatly in my brain. I’d only needed an organizing principle. Her note, and my own, gave me that. I couldn’t have explained it the night before, but I’d known from the beginning that Margaret Keeley’s murderer had to be one of us—a member of the tour, or someone (like Gail Larson) connected to it. Part of that was an assumption I’d only recently had verified—that Gail had not given Mrs. Keeley a key to the store—but it had been an assumption based on sound knowledge. Without a key, Mrs. Keeley would have had to be let into the store. Gail could have done it if she were there. Evelyn could have done it if she and Margaret met somewhere, even just on the street in front of the store. At that point, anyone who wanted to murder Margaret Keeley and leave her body in The Butler Did It had a problem. Someone who had nothing to do with the signing party would have looked conspicuous hanging around North Charles Street. The store was closed. There was also the body itself. At least part of the reason for sticking it under that table and covering it with the cloth had to be to delay discovery. Anyone but Evelyn would have had to worry about both Evelyn and Gail messing around that table, setting up. The only way to avoid that was to set it up the way it was supposed to be. I thought whoever had killed Margaret Keeley had probably been a little nervous about time. Or else …

I stopped at Tempesta’s door and stared at the knob as if it were a piece of nonrepresentational art.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.