“You’re out of toilet paper in the bathroom,” she said.
“The students never replace the rolls,” I said. “There should be some under the sink.”
She shook her head.
“Then check the linen closet.” I led the way, and pulled open the door. “There should be plenty of—oh!”
Our linen closet was larger than usual, but still a tight fit for the body curled up on its floor. Batman and Robin began wriggling, apparently reacting to my shock. Then the body shook slightly, and I realized it—she—was sobbing.
“Alice?” Kathy said. “Is that you?”
The body made a strangled noise that I couldn’t decipher. Apparently Kathy could.
“What are you doing in there, anyway?” Kathy said. “Come out this instant!”
The body uncurled and crawled out of the closet, revealing the redheaded Alice.
“I’m sorry,” Alice said. “It’s just that I need to be alone when I’m upset, and there’s just nowhere else to be alone in this house.”
“You’re telling me,” I said. “Why are you so upset?”
She sniffled slightly for a few moments, as if trying to decide whether to confide in us or not. Then she burst into tears again.
“They’re going to arrest me,” she said. As well as crying, she was quite literally wringing her hands. I stared at them in fascination, since I couldn’t recall ever seeing anyone actually do that in real life before.
“Why should they?” I asked as I stared at her writhing fingers. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” she exclaimed. “But they’re going to find my fingerprints on the statue. The one of the lady hippo goddess.”
“Tawaret,” I said.
“You mean the murder weapon?” Kathy asked.
Alice nodded. I suppressed the urge to tell her to relax, that Tawaret wasn’t the murder weapon after all.
“Why will your fingerprints be on it?” I asked instead.
“I took it to the library,” she said. “Remember? You came downstairs carrying it and handed to me and told me to put it on a shelf in the library. You do remember, don’t you?”
She’d stopped wringing her hands and was now torturing one long, trailing lock of her red hair. If she kept on like that she’d be bald by morning.
“That’s right,” I said. “I remember.” Actually, I didn’t specifically remember her—I’d been relieved that Kathy had used her name so I didn’t have to think of it. But I did remember handing off Tawaret to a student. I had a vague recollection of the hippo goddess floating off beneath a cloud of red hair, so it probably was her. “Okay, your fingerprints will be on it, but so will mine, and Rose Noire’s, and who knows how many other curious people who picked it up to look at it.”
“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to pick it up,” she said, with a shudder. “And—”
She broke off and jammed the end of the hair lock in her mouth.
“Stop that,” I said, slapping her hand slightly. She looked startled and pulled the hair out.
“Yeah, ease off on the hair, Alice,” Kathy said. “Bronwyn doesn’t need a bald understudy.”
“Oh, you’re Bronwyn’s understudy?” I asked.
“That’s right,” she said. “Of course, you wouldn’t know that since Bron hasn’t missed a single damned rehearsal yet. If she broke a leg, she’d talk Ramon into letting her do the play in a wheelchair.”
“You never know,” I said. If Bronwyn turned out to be the killer, Ramon would need Alice. Then again, if Ramon also got arrested . . .
“So your fingerprints are on the statue,” I said aloud. “That’s easily explained. Why would the chief jump to the conclusion that you killed her?”
“Because everyone knew how much I hated her,” the girl said, burying her face in her hands. “I got the part of Ophelia in the studio production of Hamlet last fall, and she took it away from me.”
“Took it away from you? I didn’t realize she had any influence over casting department shows.”
“She doesn’t,” Kathy said. “But you can’t appear in a show if you’re on academic probation.”
“And she flunked me,” Alice said. “The witch. Claimed I didn’t turn in a paper on time, and it’s a lie. She lost it—maybe deliberately. But of course, I can’t prove that.”
“How sure are you that you turned in the paper?” I asked.
“Positive,” she said. “I even turned it in a week early. As soon as the cast list went up on Friday and I knew I’d be doing Ophelia, I wanted to clear out everything else so I could just concentrate on the play.”