Alice Makepeace was not without emotion, and she was still not afraid or intimidated. If there had been any truth to the things Marta Coelho had said—and Gregor knew that there had been, with some of those things—Alice did not expect to be affected by them.
Alice moved first after Marta rushed out. “That little ass,” she said. “I can’t stand people with no sense of self-control.”
Brian Sheehy moved away from the body just a bit. The crime-scene personnel were coming through to do their jobs, and from now on what would happen to Edith Braxner would be technical, mechanical, and cold.
“Mr. Makepeace, Mrs. Makepeace, we really do need to have a word if we could.”
“I don’t want him there.” Alice pointed to Gregor. “He’s not a police officer. I don’t have to talk to him, and I don’t intend to.”
“You don’t have to talk to the police officers if you don’t want to,” Brian said mildly. “I’m sure you’ve got enough lawyers to secure your constitutional rights. Mr. Demarkian, however, although he is not a police officer, is a consultant who has been hired by the town of Windsor to serve in an official capacity in the investigation into the poisoning of Mark DeAvecca, and since this case is being treated as part of that one—”
“Why should it be?” Alice demanded.
“Because it isn’t common to find two poisoners operating totally independently and from unconnected motives in the same place at the same time,” Brian said. “In fact if that’s what we have here, it will be the first case I’ve ever heard of. The detectives assigned to Mark’s case are here. We don’t need to talk to all of you this evening. It’s enough that we get names and contact information for most of you. But we will talk to all of you eventually.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Alice said. “As soon as this gets out, there’s going to be a stampede. Families will be coming in from all over the country to get their little darlings out of here. There’s a mad poisoner on the loose—or so you say.”
Danny Kelly came back in from the foyer. “Okay,” hesaid, “I’ve got a statement. I’m going to treat it as preliminary; she’s a little upset.”
“She was hysterical,” Gregor said.
“Maybe we could find some place reasonably private and have a talk with Mr. Makepeace here,” Brian said. “There are a few things we need to know immediately.”
Alice Makepeace looked as if she wanted to protest yet again, but she didn’t. She turned away from all of them and marched out the way she had marched in, with that inner sense of her own importance that could not have been shaken by the appearance on the scene of God Himself. Danny Kelly started to go after her, but Brian Sheehy stopped him.
“Don’t bother,” he said, “we know where to find Alice Makepeace if we want her.”
Peter Makepeace looked relieved to have something to do. “There’s a seminar room in the faculty wing,” he said. “It’s just through the foyer and then through the side door. We can go there.”
“Fine,” Brian said.
Peter gave a last look at Edith Braxner’s body—they were taking fingerprints now; somebody was using a sterile vacuum to suck up fibers from the carpet where she had fallen—and then led the way out of the main reading room, into the foyer, and around the side to the wing. Back in the main reading room, the police had begun to take the names and contact information of all the witnesses and then clear them out of the immediate area. They’d take short statements from each of them before allowing them to go home. Gregor thought that the statements wouldn’t amount to much.
The seminar room wasn’t very far along the corridor. Peter opened the third door on the left after they came through from the foyer, and then he ushered Gregor, Danny, and Brian inside. It was an elegant room, high-ceilinged and studiously Gothic, the very image of what education was supposed to be. Gregor wondered where so many Americans, who lived in a country that had been virtually uninhabitedwhen Gothic was the reigning style of architecture in Europe, came by that impression.
Peter motioned them all to chairs and, closing the door behind them, sat down in one himself. “This should do,” he said. “This should be comfortable.”
“It will be very comfortable,” Danny Kelly said.
Gregor made himself sit down next to Peter Makepeace. They all seemed to be having one of those moments when nobody was sure what the etiquette was; and although Gregor did not underestimate the importance of etiquette, it had to be secondary here.