At that moment, a young woman burst into the dining room. “It’s Father Augustine,” she gasped. “He’s dead!”
7
“She couldn’t help it; she thought he was dead,” Sister Janet said.
It had been only about fifteen minutes since seemingly everyone in the building had heard the single shot. Almost simultaneously, the student facilitator assigned to Father Augustine had entered his classroom to find him slumped in a chair, mouth hanging open grotesquely, face ashen. It had all happened so quickly, she assumed he’d had a heart attack. She thought he was dead.
She ran to the dining room and blurted out her news before she realized that something catastrophic had happened here also.
Coming only moments after Krieg had been pronounced dead, the announcement brought a second wave of shock to the participants. Everyone followed the all-but-hysterical facilitator upstairs to the classroom to see if Augustine was beyond all possible aid.
They found Augustine just as the young woman had described him. They were as shocked as she had been.
Then Augustine snored. One outrageously loud snore.
They roused him. He became extremely sick at his stomach. They had no way of knowing that between the drinks in his room and the freewheeling mixture of drinks he’d had before and after dinner, he had ingested a significant amount of alcohol.
All they really knew was that, for one reason or another, he was not well.
Several students who appeared on the scene volunteered to mop up, get Father to his room, and summon a doctor.
Unsure what to do next and bewildered by all that had happened in so brief a time, the room’s other occupants moved, or, rather, were led by Sister Janet, into an adjoining classroom. None seemed eager to return to the scene in the dining room. Some sat, some stood; all were stunned.
Janet was first to speak. “We were together,” she said. “Father Koesler, Martha, and I were together when we heard the shot.”
Her statement hung in the ensuing silence. Evidently she intended to exclude the three of them from any possible suspicion of involvement in the death of Klaus Krieg.
Sister Marie was the first to grasp her implication. “What did you mean by that?” she demanded, obviously appalled.
“Nothing.” Janet was apologetic. “Only that the three of us were together when it happened.”
“So none of you could have done it!” Marie charged.
“Well, yes: None of us could have done it.”
“Meaning one of us did do it?” Clearly, Benbow was angered.
“Oh, David, I’m sure the Sister didn’t mean to imply-”
“On the contrary, Mrs. Benbow, I’m afraid Sister Janet meant precisely that,” interrupted Winer.
“Janet,” said Marie, “how could you!”
“Marie, I’m not accusing anyone,” Janet protested. “How could I? After all, we
“So you have an alibi. .” Benbow was becoming angrier.
“Just a minute, Father Benbow,” said Winer, “the Sister has a point.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Think,” said Winer. “We, the four of us-” He interrupted himself: “Make that the three of us; Augustine is out of this entirely since he was unconscious at the time of the shooting.” He returned to his premise, “-we were united by two things: We are writers and we hated Klaus Krieg.”
“Hate might be too strong a word,” Marie protested.
Winer shook his head. “I hesitated initially to use the word, Sister,” he said. “As Sister Janet noted, we are people given to religion and hatred should not be part of our makeup-”
“But it is,” Benbow cut in. “It just flat out is. Think back on our conversation earlier this evening. Think of what each of us had to say about Krieg. It wasn’t a case of ‘not a kind word was said’; we were. . taken in by an unscrupulous charlatan and we were angry about it. I can’t see that ‘hatred’ is too strong a word for how we felt about Klaus Krieg.”
“You actually think that one of
Benbow responded simply. “Somebody did.”
“Somebody who had a motive,” Janet added.
“I guess we all had that,” Benbow said.
“This is preposterous,” Martha Benbow cut in. “Perhaps-just perhaps-all of you had reason to dislike the man. But anger and murder are not the same. All of us are angry at people from time to time. That’s no more than human. We get angry all day long at checkout clerks, at other drivers, at parking, at bureaucracies, at government. We get angry at relatives, coworkers, spouses. Some of this anger comes and goes momentarily. Some of it lasts a lifetime. But just because we get angry with people doesn’t mean we’re going to kill them. Good heavens!”
“That’s all very true, Mrs. Benbow,” said Winer. “But there is one indisputable fact that must be faced: Klaus Krieg is dead. In all truth, I must confess I am not sorry. God forgive me, but I am almost relieved. I never thought I would be completely unmoved by another person’s death, but I am. I’ll say it, and I think in our hearts we will not deny it: The world is a better place without Klaus Krieg.”
“And somebody killed him,” Benbow said.
“And somebody killed him,” Winer repeated. “Not likely one of the student waitresses or one of the facilitators. Then, who?”
“An outsider,” Martha suggested. “Somebody who hated him and was physically and emotionally capable of killing him. That must be it! Surely not one of you. Someone none of us knows.”
“I think not,” Sister Janet said. “Since this is the only building on campus in use just now until the workshop students check in, we were able to pull in the security guards, sort of circle the wagons more closely. Actually, this building is quite secure now. I don’t think an outsider could have gotten through without being detected.”
“That pretty much-inevitably-brings us back to us, doesn’t it?” Benbow said.
“The three of us,” Marie said. She seemed almost in a trance. As if this were a stage production and she were in the audience instead of being one of the participants. “Father Augustine was unconscious-or so it seems.” She was unwilling to dismiss any possibility no matter how remote. “And Martha, Janet, and Father Koesler were together. None of them could have returned to the dining area without the others knowing it. That leaves Rabbi Winer, Father Benbow, and. . me.”
Silence.
Everyone knew what the next consideration must be, but no one wanted to consider it.
Finally, Benbow enunciated it. “Given we had motive, which of us had the opportunity?”
The three self-consciously considered each other.
Benbow sighed. “Okay, I’ll begin. I didn’t see either of you after we left the dining room until we returned after he’d been killed.”
“And,” Winer said, “I didn’t see either of you.”
“This is ridiculous,” Marie said, “but I did see Fathers Benbow and Augustine, though only briefly.”
“All right then,” Benbow said, “where were we? We were all headed for the same general location. How did we get separated? Why didn’t we, except for Sister here, see each other? As far as I’m concerned, I started up the front staircase to the second floor. Father Augustine was with me, but he was walking sort of unsteadily, weaving a bit. I asked him if he needed any help, but he just shook his head and mumbled something. I didn’t realize he was not well. So I walked ahead of him. Lost him at the turn of the staircase. Then I went to my classroom.”
“Was the facilitator there?” Winer asked.
