Quoth the Raven(72)

“Will you please stop that? I think there’s some kind of time limit. It’s not that our murderer wants to stop any search for Donegal Steele permanently. It couldn’t be done. It’s that he, or she, wants to stop it for a certain period of time—”

“What period of time?”

“I don’t know. But something is going to happen. Something our murderer can’t make happen by himself—”

“Or herself.”

“Right. The trick was to take our minds off Donegal Steele until the time came. And what happened to Maryanne Veer was perfect.”

“Except that it wasn’t,” Markham pointed out. “Here you are, talking about the death of Donegal Steele and wanting me to pull men off a major investigation to go look for him, when I haven’t got that many men to begin with—and when you still haven’t given me one good reason—”

Gregor held up a finger. “I’ll give you several. One, Donegal Steele has been missing since sometime on the evening of the twenty-eighth. He missed both his classes and his office hours on the twenty-ninth, without notifying anybody of his intent to be absent, which, according to what we’ve been hearing, was not like him. The last person to see him as far as we know was Jack Carroll, who told me Steele was on his way to pop beers. That’s—”

“I know what popping beers is, Demarkian. I’ve done enough of it in my time. That’s a reason to assume the man’s been hung over someplace or involved in a traffic accident.”

“Have you had any reports of a traffic accident?”

“Demarkian—”

“Two”—Gregor held another finger up—“there is no other reason for anyone to have attacked Miss Veer in the way and at the time she was attacked.” Markham started to protest. Gregor held up another finger. “Three, half the people on this campus hated the man with a passion. Four, Steele’s just the type to get himself murdered—and don’t snort, Markham, there are types—from all reports, he’s abrasive, arrogant, aggressive, and psychologically ugly. Five, that bird has been circling over Constitution House, acting entirely out of character since Steele disappeared.”

“Fine,” Markham said, “now you want me to take into account the psychological functioning of a bird.”

“Ravens are carnivores, Markham. And they’ll spot carrion.”

“If Donegal Steele had been dead and stashed for over two days in Constitution House, somebody would have noticed the stink by now.”

“I didn’t say he’d been dead for two days. You know how hard it is to kill somebody with lye. It’s practically impossible to get them to ingest enough under any circumstances. Lye burns.”

“You think somebody spiked his food with lye—”

“Beer,” Gregor corrected. “Beer would be a good thing to spike with lye, especially if the victim was going to drink it from a can, because it fizzes anyway.”

“Except that when you pop beers, you start with an unopened can. Then you punch a hole in the bottom, hold the can over your mouth, and pull the tab. How’s the lye supposed to have gotten into the can?”

“I don’t know.”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know,” Markham said.

Gregor sighed. “I realize that. I realize a lot of things. I know this is going to be impossible to prove until we find not only a body, but the way the lye was delivered. I know it’s going to be impossible to prosecute even after we find all of that unless we come up with a motive that fits in with the rest of this. I can think of three possible people with motive, opportunity, and the interior disposition to kill Steele and maim Miss Maryanne Veer. The problem is—”

On the other side of the table, Markham’s eyes were widening. Amusement seemed to be passing over entirely into shock. “Three people,” he said. “You’ve got suspects for this crazy idea of yours?”

“Of course I do. Jack Carroll. Ken Crockett. Alice Elkinson.”

“Why those three? Why not Katherine Branch? She’s the one who was just here trying to implicate a man you think is dead, which seems to me a very good ploy for somebody who’s just—”

“Katherine Branch couldn’t have Both poisoned Maryanne Veer and picked up the evidence afterward. She wasn’t in the dining room when Miss Veer fell. Later, after she did get to the dining room, she spent all her time lying on the floor in a corner all the way on the other side from where Miss Veer’s tray fell, dressed up as a witch.”

Markham pounded his fist against the table, scattering his papers again. “All right then, what about Chessey Flint? She was right where she’d have to be. According to what you say Jack Carroll told you, Steele’s been telling lies on her for two months.”