“Oh? Did you eat dinner with her?”
“No,” Marta said. There was no reason to tell him that Edith had barely been speaking to her, or that not much of anybody else had been either. “She was sitting with Cherie Wardrop and Melissa, Cherie’s partner. We’re very tolerant at Windsor Academy. When Cherie and Melissa came, they got their pictures in the school magazine and a whole story about how they met.”
“That’s not a bad thing, surely?”
“Oh no,” Marta said. “No, it’s not a bad tiling at all. It’s just one of the things that surprised me when I first came here. I went to an ordinary public high school, you know. I didn’t know much about schools like this. I thought they were much more conservative.”
“Did you know if Edith looked odd in any way during dinner? Did you pay that much attention to her?”
“She looked normal enough,” Marta said. “But then Edith always looked very stern in a way. Very disapproving. She wasn’t like that, really, but that was how she looked. Anyway, she had dinner with Cherie and Melissa, and then when she was leaving James Hallwood was coming in, and she had a talk with him at the door, and then, of course, there was Alice.”
“Of course?”
“Well, Alice is everywhere. It’s as if she can clone herself. She came into dinner late and she didn’t look happy, so I was hoping she wouldn’t notice me for once and she didn’t. They had words, Alice and Edith did. I didn’t hear what they were.”
“How did you know they ’had words,’ then?”
“Because of the way they looked, talking to each other,” Marta said. “Edith was definitely not part of Alice’s fan club, not that too many people are around here. Alice is a force of nature, and they all do what she tells them to do, butthey don’t like it. Maybe that’s why I’ve always had so much trouble. I haven’t always done what she’s told me to do.”
“What kind of things does she tell people to do?”
“Oh, nothing outrageous,” Marta said. “She organizes things. We had a Winter Solstice party, for instance, because Alice fancies herself as a pagan, and she thinks pagan rituals are more environmentally sound than Christian or Jewish ones. Things like that.”
“And you had objections to a Winter Solstice party?”
“No,” Marta said. “It’s not that I’ve ever objected to anything in particular; it’s more that I’ve not been very happy with the whole tone of the place. I didn’t even realize that until today. I mean, I probably did realize it. I just hadn’t realized it consciously. And now of course I’ve killed any chance I ever had of staying on next year. They’re very big on loyalty around here. They won’t forget that performance I put on in the library last night.”
“It was a very informative performance,” Gregor said.
Marta shrugged. “I’ve been scared to death all night. I feel like I’ve set myself up to be the next victim. I’m the perfect target, the Woman Who Knows Too Much.”
“I doubt it,” Gregor said. “It’s not common in real life, you know. Outside of organized crime, it’s very unusual for murderers to run around killing people just because they think those people will say something inconvenient to the police. It’s different, of course, if the witness actually knows. You didn’t give the impression last night that you do actually know. Or do you?”
“Do you mean, know who murdered Edith?”
“Know that, yes, or know who might have murdered Michael Feyre, or who poisoned Mark DeAvecca. Actually know, actually have evidence. Not just speculate.”
“Of course I don’t know,” Marta said. “I’d be surprised if anybody did.”
“Could Edith Braxner have known, and not have told the police about it or a neutral person?”
“I don’t know who a neutral person would be,” Martasaid. “The Board of Trustees, maybe. But not even them. They wouldn’t be neutral. They’d want to protect the school. Everybody does around here. The institution comes first. They like to say it doesn’t, but it does.”
“I think that’s normal, too, for institutions.”
“Maybe,” Marta said. “This is the first school I’ve ever been at where I wasn’t a student. This is the first time I’ve ever not been a student. You can’t count summer jobs, or jobs in the term, can you, because you’re still a student even though you’re temporarily doing something else. Do you know what I was thinking? Half the people in this place have never been out of school. Not ever. They’ve been students and they’ve been teachers, but they’ve never been anything else. Their whole lives have been caught up in grading and being graded and in semesters and in years that start in September. For most people, the year starts in January. You should hear us all talk. Cherie Wardrop said the other day that she really hoped that next year would be better than this one because she’d had so much trouble as a houseparent this year, and she wasn’t talking about the things that have happened since Christmas. She was talking about the things that have happened since September. James Hallwood said the same thing. And Philip.” Marta shrugged. “Cherie probably hated it the worst, what with Michael in her house, but everybody’s been complaining. They were complaining before Michael Feyre ever died.”