The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(939)

                             Maybe Jose Antonio strangled her, a crime of thwarted passion, but he was a slight, short man, while Jonken was tall and strong. Regretfully, I’m betting on Uncle Petrus with his cold, bright, questioning glance. I think he’s asking if she’s leaving—and taking her funds with her—or if she’s fallen in love with his handsome archeological apprentice. I think maybe Fuentes’ grandfather gave him an edited version of their story. There’s something else, too, that would never stand up, but which gives me the chills every time I look at the enlargements. I think the camera caught Ernesto, as well.

                You need to get the image up to the highest magnification possible and then the clever technician has to manipulate Photoshop like the wizard he is, tinting, sharpening, adding pixels like fairy dust: and presto! there’s an old man, crouching out of sight, huddling, I believe, from the lens. He’s visible there in the deep shadows and he’s holding something. I see a line of reflected light, and, though the graphics maven is uncertain, I’m sure it’s a knife.

                So there they all are, all the actors in place and the only question is how they got themselves arranged. Who was guilty of her killing, I do not know, but from that one cri de coeur in the diaries, Uncle Petrus must have discovered and been horrified at her mutilation. I am convinced that he stowed the bones years later in one of the crates destined for the Jonken Bequest.

                Why did he do that? Guilt or remorse or a slyness almost beyond imagining? Maybe like Ernesto, he had a sense of ceremony, a concept of what was due to old ways. In any case, sure the skeleton was Alice, who had funded Jonken’s glory and darkened his life, I had the provost promise they would read the burial service for the bones. It was the least I could do for her.

                Someone will find out eventually, I’m sure of that. Someone like me, who trolls the storerooms and pokes into old papers, will come up with the right questions. But the evidence lies safe in the ancient cemetery next to the Green, just a stone’s throw from where my famous relative came to rest. I’m not exactly proud of what I’ve done, but I owe Uncle Petrus such a lot, and concealing evidence does not seem so very bad in this case. But that is the most I’ll do for him. After this, he and his papers and his bones are on their own.