Missing Susan

“Well,” said Susan, “I’m still going to drink some of it.”

Alice looked at her with a glint in her eye. “You do that, Susan.”

After he had seen to Emma and her mother, Rowan gulped down his own breakfast, and arrived in the hotel lobby just at ten o’clock to lead the tour of the Roman baths and museum.

“This will take just over an hour,” he told the group, looking particularly at Elizabeth. “After that you may have the rest of the day to sack the city. I’m sure you will make the locals forget the Romans.”

“I’m going to the library,” said Elizabeth, the picture of virtue.

“Before or after you shop?”

“Both.”

As they were leaving the hotel, Elizabeth posted the letters she had written the night before. The one to Cameron was an unfortunate exercise in newlywed purple prose, followed by a cheerful and chatty account of her travels, mentioning the places she’d like to visit again (“Perhaps you ought to check out Dozmary Pool for seals…”). The letter Elizabeth wrote to her brother Bill was also a travelogue, but considerably funnier, mostly at Susan’s expense. She discovered, though, that it was difficult on paper to convey just how annoying Susan really was. Quoted singly, any of Susan’s remarks might seem merely dull, or at best, a trifle eccentric. It was the cumulative effect of the running commentary hour after hour that wore down one’s nerves. Elizabeth felt that she could pass any test devised on the history and geography of Minnesota, or write a Cohen cat genealogy, and she could hear Susan’s voice droning mystery plot summaries in her sleep. All this aggravation would be impossible to impart without a fifty-page transcript of Susan’s endless monologue. She wondered at Rowan’s boundless tact and patience. Susan didn’t seem to annoy him at all. Perhaps he sees all of us that way, she thought with sudden humility.

Rowan Rover, leading the party in the direction of the baths, was lecturing wittily on the eighteenth-century antics of Beau Nash and the transformation of provincial Bath into the St. Tropez of Georgian England. Of all the group, only he himself was not listening. While he talked, his mind raced back and forth across a number of topics, including: contemplating an anonymous telephone call to Emma Smith’s physician to disclose the probable nature of her illness; entertaining a hopeful thought that perhaps the poison hadn’t worked at all, and she really did have a stomach virus; and considering the possibility of issuing a refund to an assassin-employer. He pictured the interchange at the bank when he attempted to explain that he needed a loan to pay back said assassin-employer. This unpleasant scenario dissolved into a vision of a melodrama called The Custody Battle for Sebastian Melmoth Rover, Upon the Conviction of His Father for Murder Most Foul, a farce in many exhausting acts, featuring all his ex-wives as the Avenging Furies.

No, it was all impossible. Not to be thought of. Every possible way out was worse than going ahead with the plan. He couldn’t tip the wink to Emma’s doctor, because doing so would land him on a charge of attempted murder. He couldn’t give Mr. Kosminski back his money, because he had already spent it. And he couldn’t persuade himself to abstain from murder for aesthetic reasons, because he had begun to view the killing of Susan Cohen as a pleasure, an intellectual duty, and an early Christmas present to the rest of the tour group.

How unfortunate that she had managed to live through their stay in Cornwall, where he was best prepared to contrive a successful murder. He was still smarting over the group’s arbitrary and irrational rejection of his smugglers’ caves excursion. It would have been a perfectly splendid accident, disposing of Susan neatly without a hint of murder. Besides, it would have left the group an entire week of the mystery tour which they could have enjoyed in blissful harmony, without so much as hearing the word Minneapolis uttered in their presence. As it was, Susan was alive and well. Even now he heard her saying:

“Oh, look! A bakery! In Minneapolis I buy my fresh-baked bread at…”

He saw the others cringe and edge away from her relentless nattering. Let them get an earful, he thought brutally. God knows I’ve tried to eliminate her.

The unpleasant implications of this last figure of speech forced all further reverie from his mind and concentrated his mind wonderfully on the exhibit at hand: one two-thousand-year-old swimming pool filled with water so murky and foul-tasting that one corpse more could hardly matter.

While Rowan was reflecting on his ominous intentions, the other members of the party were admiring the architecture of Bath, with its graceful Georgian buildings and its arcades of elegant boutiques. When they reached the stone building that housed the baths and museum, they found that it was in the square adjoining the cathedral. Since medieval times the English city of Bath had been built atop the ruins of the Roman city of Aquae Sulis, so that the ancient baths themselves had lain intact but undiscovered below street level for many centuries, until excavations in the eighteenth century led to the discovery of Roman ruins and the restoration of the baths.

“Is there some sort of spring here, like Old Faithful?” asked Frances Coles.

Rowan, who had no idea what Old Faithful was, replied with his stock answer. “The guidebook explains that the main spring, under the city center here, sends up a quarter of a million gallons a day, and maintains a constant temperature of 46.5 degrees centigrade. Apparently the spring water is the rain of ten thousand years ago, which penetrated deep into the earth and was warmed by geothermal heat.”

“Can we bathe in the springs?” asked Maud Marsh. “Not that I’d want to.”

“No bathing. But at the end of the tour in the pump room you can buy a glassful. Now come this way. First we will look at the exhibits of Roman artifacts and then we will walk through the complex containing the baths.”

The dimly lit display rooms featured exhibits of objects found over the course of several centuries of construction and excavation. Simple tombstones inscribed in Latin, intricate mosaics, and fragments of statuary were on display, each in its own little circle of light. Farther along they saw the array of objects that had been removed from the baths themselves. The placard explained that to the Romans, the springs were not only heated pools for cleanliness and recreation, but also sacred waters dedicated to the goddess Minerva Sulis. Worshipers threw coins, jewelry, and other offerings into the pools as a tribute to the deity.

“Emma would have loved seeing this,” murmured Elizabeth. “It’s too bad she had to miss it.”

“Look at this!” cried Alice MacKenzie, pointing to the next display. “Curses!”

“Yes,” said Rowen, motioning for the group. “The Sacred Spring was considered a way to bring divine retribution on one’s enemies. Disgruntled Romans would write their grievance on a piece of pewter. May he who stole my ring become covered with sores and die in agony. That sort of thing. Then the complainant would throw the pewter message into the spring, and wait for the goddess to smite down the guilty party. Today, I suppose, we’d write a letter to the Times.”

“I’d be tempted to try that one,” said Alice, casting a baleful glance in Susan’s direction.

“Look out,” said Rowan lightly. “You might get what you wish for at the shrine of the goddess.”

As they proceeded into the series of rooms containing the various bathing pools, the guide took care to be close to Susan Cohen, so that he could make the most of any chance that might arise. The Great Bath was now restored and open to the outdoors, some two stories above it, but the other rooms in the complex were enclosed and lit only by the faint strains of sunlight from without. Another group of tourists had proceeded into the baths just ahead of them, but they were farther along in the tour. A dark-haired young man, probably a college student, introduced himself as Nigel, their guide. Apparently, the mystery tourists would be taken round by themselves.

It must look like an accident, Rowan reminded himself. She tripped, hit her head on the stone, and she fell unconscious into the pool and drowned. Alas, none of us missed her until it was too late. Of course he could not maintain his running commentary during the tour, but fortunately this was not necessary. Nigel was nattering away nineteen to the dozen about the plumbing, the drains, the bathing rituals, and all sorts of other diverting things that Rowan might otherwise have listened to. He contrived to fall behind the rest of the party, who obligingly crowded around Nigel, enthralled by his command of water trivia.

Rowan bided his time through the dry east baths, the splendid open air Great Bath, and at last to the dark and inviting west bath, where he was determined to make his move. He let the others go in ahead of him, and then slipped in quietly to the back of the group, discerning a shadowy figure of the right size and shape to be Susan. Mustn’t do it now, he thought. She’d cry out. He leaned over and whispered, “Wait here a moment.”

He could just make out the nod of her head in the gloom. He held his breath for what seemed like hours until Nigel finished his spiel and the rest of the party turned a corner and disappeared from view. Then with a great sigh of determination, the would-be murderer put his hands on his victim’s shoulders, ready to push her into the pool and hold her head under the murky water.

She spun round at once, and he found himself looking into the shining Bambi-lashed eyes of Kate Conway. “Oh,