A Moment On the Edge : 100 Years of Crime Stories By Women

again. It’ll be someone else who will be doing the dirty work next time. On you. You’ll never be able to trust her, will you? Once a murderess, always a murderess.

You may wish one day you’d finished her off.”

The tall man looked down at her. Then he looked across at Tina Archer with one quick savagely doubting look. Tina Archer Harrison, his only wife.

“Why, you—” For a moment, Jemima thought Greg Harrison would actually strike her down there at the graveside, as he had struck down old Miss Izzy and — if only on pretense — struck down Tina herself.

“Greg darling.” It was Coralie Harrison’s pathetic, protesting murmur. “What are you saying to him?” she demanded of Jemima in a voice as low as Jemima’s own. But the explanations — for Coralie and the rest of Bow Island — of the conspiracy of Tina Archer and Greg Harrison were only just beginning.

The rest was up to the police, who with their patient work of investigation would first amplify, then press, finally concluding the case.

And in the course of the investigations; the conspirators would fall apart, this time for real. To the police fell the unpleasant duty of disentangling the new lies of Tina Archer, who now swore that her memory had just returned, that it had been Greg who had half killed her that night, that she had had absolutely nothing to do with it.

And Greg Harrison denounced Tina in return, this time with genuine ferocity. “It was her plan, her plan all along. She managed everything. I should never have listened to her!”

Before she left Bow Island, Jemima went to say goodbye to Joseph Archer in his Bowtown office. There were many casualties of the Archer tragedy beyond Miss Izzy herself. Poor Coralie was one: she had been convinced that her brother, for all his notorious temper, would never batter down Miss Izzy to benefit his ex-wife. Like the rest of Bow Island, she was unaware of the deep plot by which Greg and Tina would publicly display their hostility, advertise their divorce, and all along plan to kill Miss Izzy once the new will was signed. Greg, ostentatiously hating his ex-wife, would not be suspected, and Tina, suffering such obvious injuries, could only arouse sympathy.

Another small casualty, much less important, was the romance which just might have developed between Joseph Archer and Jemima Shore. Now, in his steamingly hot office with its perpetually moving fan, they talked of quite other things than the new moon and new wishes.

“You must be happy you’ll get your museum,” said Jemima.

“But that’s not at all the way I wanted it to happen,” he replied.

Then Joseph added: “But you know, Jemima, there has been justice done. And in her heart of hearts Miss Izzy did really want us to have this National Museum. I’d have talked her round to good sense again if she had lived.”

“That’s why they acted when they did. They didn’t dare wait given Miss Izzy’s respect for you,” suggested Jemima. She stopped but her curiosity got the better of her. There was one thing she had to know before she left. “The Archer Tomb and all that. Tina being descended from Sir Valentine’s lawful second marriage. Is that true?”

“Yes, it’s true. Maybe. But it’s not important to most of us here.

You know something, Jemima? I, too, am descended from that well-known second marriage. Maybe. And a few others maybe. Lucie Anne had two children, don’t forget, and Bo’landers have large families. It was important to Tina Archer, not to me. That’s not what I want. That’s all past. Miss Izzy was the last of the Archers, so far as I’m concerned. Let her lie in her tomb.”

“What do you want for yourself? Or for Bow Island, if you prefer.”

Joseph smiled and there was a glimmer there of the handsome fisherman who had welcomed her to Bow Island, the cheerful dancing partner. “Come back to Bow Island one day, Jemima. Make another program about us, our history and all that, and I’ll tell you then.”

“I might just do that,” said Jemima Shore.

The Case of the Pietro Andromache SARA PARETSKY

Sara Paretsky (b. 1947) was born in Ames, Iowa, and educated at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and the University of Chicago, where she attained a Ph.D. in history. After working as a business writer and direct-mail marketing manager for an insurance company, she turned to fiction writing with Indemnity Only, which introduced Chicago private detective V. I. Warshawski, one of two renowned female p.i.’s to debut in the watershed year of 1982. As fictional sleuths go, Warshawski is a specialist. Paretsky writes in St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers (4th edition, 1996), “Like Lew Archer before her she looks beyond the surface to ‘the far side of the dollar,’ the side where power and money corrupt people into making criminal decisions to preserve their positions. All of her cases explore some aspect of white- collar crime where senior executives preserve position or bolster their companies without regard for the ordinary people who work for them.” These guidelines provide scope for plenty of variety of background from medicine to politics to religion to law enforcement.

Along with producing her own fiction, Paretsky has done much to advance the cause of women crime writers generally, editing anthologies of their work and founding the highly successful Sisters in Crime.

Paretsky’s name is invariably bracketed with that of Sue Grafton, who also introduced her female private eye Kinsey Millhone in 1982.

The two writers are about equally capable, though V. I. Warshawski is a bit harder-edged and certainly more overtly political in her point of view than Millhone. One result of the continual comparison, Paretsky admits in a recent interview in Crime Time magazine, is that she is no longer able to read Grafton, whom she previously enjoyed, for fear of being unconsciously influenced.

Like many of the female private eyes, V. I. Warshawski has an extended family of friends that recur from book to book. Two of them, Lotty Herschel and Max Loewenthal, appear in “The Case of the Pietro Andromache,” a story that has achieved the status of a modern classic judging by the number of times it has been antholo- gized.

I

You only agreed to hire him because of his art collection. Of that I’m sure.” Lotty Herschel bent down to adjust her stockings.

“And don’t waggle your eyebrows like that — it makes you look like an adolescent Groucho Marx.”

Max Loewenthal obediently smoothed his eyebrows, but said,

“It’s your legs, Lotty; they remind me of my youth. You know, going into the Underground to wait out the air raids, looking at the ladies as they came down the escalators. The updraft always made their skirts billow.”

“You’re making this up, Max. I was in those Underground stations, too, and as I remember the ladies were always bundled in coats and children.”

Max moved from the doorway to put an arm around Lotty. “That’s what keeps us together, Lottchen: I am a romantic and you are severely logical. And you know we didn’t hire Caudwell because of his collection. Although I admit I am eager to see it. The board wants Beth Israel to develop a transplant program. It’s the only way we’re going to become competitive—”

“Don’t deliver your publicity lecture to me,” Lotty snapped. Her thick brows contracted to a solid black line across her forehead. “As far as I am concerned he is a cretin with the hands of a Caliban and the personality of Attila.”

Lotty’s intense commitment to medicine left no room for the mundane consideration of money. But as the hospital’s executive director, Max was on the spot with the trustees to see that Beth Israel ran at a profit. Or at least at a smaller loss than they’d achieved in recent years. They’d brought Caudwell in part to attract more paying patients — and to help screen out some of the indigent who made up 12 percent of Beth Israel’s patient load.

Max wondered how long the hospital could afford to support personalities as divergent as Lotty and Caudwell with their radically differing approaches to medicine.