“Sam, of course. He can send a couple of officers to hide in the shadows and arrest anyone, if that becomes necessary.”
“Not a good idea,” Louise Jane said. “More people will disrupt the atmosphere I need. We have to enact events as closely as possible as they happened on Friday night, and we didn’t have a bunch of cops tramping around in their big boots, frightening the birds and yelling at each other. I checked the weather forecast for tonight, and the conditions will be much the same as they were on Friday. Weather exerts a powerful influence over the spirt world.”
“Do they not like going out in the rain?” I asked. Louise Jane ignored me.
“We can’t—” Bertie began, but she stopped when I gave her a jerk of my head. Louise Jane’s back was to me, as she faced Bertie, feet apart, hands on hips, ready to argue her point to the death. I nodded at Bertie and lightly tapped the side of my head, indicating that I had an idea.
“I guess,” Bertie continued, “it can’t do any harm. Except to the reputation of this library. As library director, I suppose I’ll have to assume responsibility for that.”
“I knew you’d agree, Bertie. You can always be counted on to see reason.” Louise Jane turned and beamed at me. “You’re always so negative, Lucy. You need to get some control over that.”
“Me?”
“I’m off. We don’t have much time. I’ll call Shelia now and fill her in on the plan. Bertie, you speak to Ronald.”
“He might have plans for after work,” Bertie said.
“He can change them. Tell him to be here at nine thirty. We left at quarter of ten on Friday, and we’ll do the same tonight.”
“You’re filling Sheila in on your plan?” Bertie said. “What if she’s the killer? Won’t you have tipped her off?”
“Sheila’s not the killer,” Louise Jane said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“She’s as eager as I am to contact the spirits and ask what really happened that night. She wouldn’t be, would she, if she’d killed Helena? Try to dress in the same clothes you were wearing that night. That will help with the accuracy of the re-creation.”
Louise Jane left.
Charles lifted his head and looked from Bertie to me. I decided not to point out to Bertie that the document on her computer screen was filled with rows of “e’s”.
“What,” Bertie said, “have I agreed to?”
I tiptoed to the door, listened, and then quickly stuck my head out. I looked up and down the hallway. Neither Louise Jane nor anyone else was lurking in the shadows, listening.
Nevertheless, I closed the door, approached Bertie’s desk, and spoke in a low voice. “Louise Jane’s invisible friends aren’t going to reveal themselves to us tonight or any other night. And they’re certainly not going to point skeletal fingers at the guilty party. And that guilty party, whoever it might be, is hardly going to reenact her steps up to the point of attempting to kill the fake Helena, also known as Louise Jane’s chubby cousin.”
“Agreed. So why are we doing this?”
“Because I have an idea. It might not be much of an idea, but, as Louise Jane said, if it doesn’t work, we can all go to the hotel and have a laugh about it over a drink.”
Charles leaned closer in order to hear better.
Chapter Twenty
I never did get to the Elizabethan Gardens. Instead, I took my phone into the marsh, where I could be sure of not being overheard, and made a call.
I then put my head down and charged through the library, determined not to get trapped into making polite conversion or answering questions, and ran upstairs to my apartment. Once safely locked inside, I took out a pad of paper, a pen, and several different-colored highlighters, made a pot of coffee, got my iPad, and sat at the small table in the kitchen. I wrote down everything I knew about the four women: Lucinda, Sheila, Ruth, Mary-Sue. Unlike Louise Jane, I wasn’t ready to remove Sheila from the suspect list. People outside of the reunion friends, Rachel and Tina among them, might have had reason to kill Helena, but they had not been inside the library during the party, and thus they had not stolen the letter opener. It was possible, as Watson had said, that the opener the police divers dredged up from the bottom of the marsh was not the one taken from the library and not the weapon that had killed Helena, but I decided to apply Occam’s Razor.
The theory of Occam’s Razor maintains that the simplest explanation is most often the right one, meaning: don’t complicate things unnecessarily.
I was good with not complicating things. I set to making notes.
Facts—things I knew for sure because I’d seen or learned them for myself, or someone I trusted completely had told me—were highlighted in blue.
Probable facts—what more than one person had told me—were marked green.
Speculation—what I guessed—was colored pink.
False or probably false, including what I’d been told but didn’t believe, was underlined in black ink.
The landline in my apartment rang once. I answered, listened, thanked the caller, and recolored a line from pink to blue, giving it a nice purple shade.
I checked a few details on the internet.
At last, I drew a circle around one name. I leaned back in my chair with a sigh.
I knew who’d killed Helena. I could guess why.
I had nothing I could take to Sam Watson, and absolutely no idea how I was going to prove it.
I got up to answer a scratch and whine at my door. I opened the door and looked down. Charles’s little face peered up at me. All was quiet below, and I checked my watch.
It was after seven o’clock. I’d been working for hours.
Charles sauntered into the kitchen area and checked his bowl. Empty. He turned and gave me a glare of disapproval.
“Sorry.” I shut the door. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. Did you have a nice day?”
He didn’t
