locked into a life without hope. Made into a drudge. The poor child is the nearest target. She can't hold her husband's hand over a flame, as she'd like to, so she takes out all her misery and frustration on her child.'
He made a snorting sound. 'A very facile explanation, but hardly a justification for maiming an infant. But forget about motives for a minute. Right now I'm not interested in motives. All I'm trying to do is convince you that women are capable of mindless, bloody violence, just like men.'
She was silent, hands gripping the needles and wool on her lap. Her lips were pressed to thinness, her face stretched tight. Delaney knew that taut look well, but he plunged ahead.
'You know your history,' he said. 'Women haven't always been the subdued, demure, gentle, feminine creatures that art and literature make them out to be. They've been soldiers, hard fighters, cruel and bitter foes in many tribes and nations. Still are, in a lot of places on the globe. It used to be that the worst thing that could happen to a captured warrior was to be turned over to the women of the conquering army. I won't go into the details of his fate.'
'What's your point?' she snapped.
'Just that there's nothing inherent in women, nothing in their genes or instincts that would prevent them from becoming vicious killers of strangers if they were driven to it, if they were victims of desires and lusts they couldn't control. As a matter of fact, I would guess they'd be more prone to violence of that kind than men.'
'That's the most sexist remark I've ever heard you make.'
'Sexist,' he said with a short laugh. 'I was wondering how long it would take you to get around to that. The knee-jerk reaction. Any opinion that even suggests women might be less than perfect gets the 'sexist' label. Are you saying that women really are the mild, ladylike, ineffectual Galateas that you always claimed men had created by prejudice and discrimination?'
'I'm not saying anything of the kind. Women haven't developed their full potential because of male attitudes. But that potential doesn't include becoming mass killers. Women could have done that anytime, but they didn't. You said yourself that was the reason the police are looking for a male Hotel Ripper. Because there's no precedent for women being guilty of such crimes.'
He looked at her thoughtfully, putting a fingertip to his lips.
'I just had a wild thought,' he said. 'It's got nothing to do with what we've been talking about, but maybe men did their best to keep women subjugated because they were afraid of them. Physically afraid. Maybe it was a matter of self-preservation.'
'You're impossible!' she cried.
'Could be,' he said, shrugging. 'But to get back to what I was saying, will you agree women have the emotional and physical capabilities of being mass killers? That there is nothing in the female psyche that would rule against it? There have been women who killed many times, usually from greed, and they have always been acquainted with their victims. Now I'm asking you to make one small step from that and admit that women would be capable of killing strangers for no apparent reason.'
'No,' she said definitely, 'I don't believe they could do that. You said yourself there are no prior cases. No Daughters of Sam.'
'Right,' he agreed. 'The percentages are against it. That's why, right now, Slavin and Boone and all their men are looking for a male Hotel Ripper. But I think they're wrong.'
'Just because you believe women are capable of murder?'
'That, plus the woman's weapon used in the murders, plus the absence of any signs of a fight, plus the fact that apparently heterosexual victims were found naked, plus the wig hairs, plus the estimated height of the killer. And plus something else.'
'What's that?' she said suspiciously.
'One of the things I checked when Boone told me about the first two murders was the day of the month they had been committed. I thought there might be a connection with the full moon. You know how crime rates soar when the moon is full.'
'Was there a connection?'
'No. And the third killing had no connection either. Then I looked at the intervals between the three murders. Twenty-six days between the first and second, and between the second and the third. Does that suggest anything to you?'
She didn't answer.
'Sure it does,' he said gently. 'Twenty-six days is a fair average for a woman's menstrual period. I checked it in your guide to gynecology.'
'My God, Edward, you call that evidence?'
'By itself? Not much, I admit. But added to all the other things, it begins to make a pattern: a psychopathic female whose crimes are triggered by her monthly periods.'
'But killing strangers? I still don't believe it. And you keep saying the percentages are against it.'
'Wait,' he said, 'there's more.'
He leaned down, picked up a stack of papers from the floor. He held them on his lap. He donned his reading glasses, began to flip through the pages.
'This may take a little time,' he said, looking up at her. 'Would you like a drink of anything?'
'Thank you, no,' she said stiffly.
He nodded, went back to his shuffling until he found the page he wanted. Then he sat back.
'The probabilities are against it,' he agreed. 'I admit that. Going by experience, Slavin is doing exactly right in looking for a male killer. But it occurred to me that maybe the percentages are wrong. Not wrong so much as outdated. Obsolete.'
'Oh?'
If she was curious, he thought mournfully, she was hiding it exceedingly well.
He looked at her reflectively. He knew her sharp intelligence and mordant wit. He quailed before the task of trying to elicit her approval of what he was about to propose. At worst, she would react with scorn and contempt; at best, with amused condescension for his dabblings in disciplines beyond his ken.
'I've heard you speak many times of the 'new woman,'' he started. 'I suppose you mean by that a woman free, or striving to be free, of the restraints imposed by the oppression of men.'
'And society,' she added.
'All right,' he said. 'The oppression by individual men and a male-oriented society. The new woman seeks to control and be responsible for her own destiny. Correct? Isn't that more or less what the women's liberation movement is all about?'
'More or less.'
'Feminism is a revolution,' he went on, speaking slowly, almost cautiously. 'A social revolution perhaps, but all the more significant for that. Revolutions have their excesses. No,' he said hastily, 'not excesses; that was a poor choice of words. But revolutions sometimes, usually, have results its leaders and followers did not anticipate. In any upheaval-social, political, artistic, whatever-sometimes the fallout is totally unexpected, and sometimes inimical to the original aims of the revolutionaries.
'When I was puzzling over the possibility of the Hotel Ripper being female, and trying to reconcile that possibility with the absence of a record of women committing similar crimes, it occurred to me that the new woman we were speaking about might be 'new' in ways of which we weren't aware.
'In other words, she might be more independent, assertive, ambitious, courageous, determined, and so forth. But in breaking free from the repression of centuries, she may also have developed other, less desirable traits. And if so, those traits could conceivably make obsolete all our statistics and percentages of what a woman is capable of.'
'I presume,' Monica said haughtily, 'you're talking about crime statistics and crime percentages.'
'Some,' he said, 'but not all. I wanted to learn if modern women had changed, were changing, in any ways that might make them predisposed to, uh, self-destructive or antisocial behavior.'
'And what did you find out?'
'Well…' he said, 'I won't claim the evidence is conclusive. I'm not even sure you can call it evidence. But I think it's persuasive enough to confirm-in my own mind at least-that I'm on the right track. I asked Thomas Handry-he's the reporter; you've met him-to dig out the numbers for me in several areas. I took the past fifteen years as the time period in which to determine if the changes I suspected in women had actually taken place.'
