Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death

by Sheila Connolly

  Dinner, once we finally got around to it, was a rollicking delight. The menu was set so we had no decisions to make, and the bottles of wine didn’t stop coming. I decided that I had misjudged Italian wine as weak and watery, but here in its home it was light and pleasant. Maybe it was the air, or the soil—or the company. I pitied any hapless tourist who happened to wander into our space: the members of our group were in rare form, and not exactly quiet.

  I chose a seat next to yet more people I hadn’t talked to, and Cynthia did the same, at the second table. Leaving Tuscany had somehow relieved us of focusing on art history and culture, and I kept finding myself involved in conversations about unlikely topics and was impressed by the unexpected breadth of knowledge of my companions. Then I chided myself: they had all been officially “smart” women forty-something years ago; why should I assume their lives were narrow and dull now? These women were anything but dull. What’s more, most of them seemed relaxed and comfortable in their own skin. There was no jockeying for leadership, no deliberate effort to impress anyone else. Nobody tried to dominate the conversation, and there was no “me, me, me!” Some people were quieter than others, but nobody looked unhappy. Jean and Jane had created something really special when they put this trip together.

  The light faded slowly and the prodigious quantities of food gradually disappeared. Finally a few women started to stand, preparing to leave. Jane quickly stood up.

  “Attenzione, per favore! Tomorrow is what Jean and I are calling a day of leisure. That means you’re free to explore all or any of the Cinque Terre at your own speed. You have two options for getting around: ferry or train. Or, well, maybe three, if you count the hiking trails, but I’ve heard they’re in bad shape this year—some parts are washed out. Anyway, I’ll explain how the public transportation works and help you get tickets if you want. I should warn you, though: the boats are small, and if you’re at all prone to seasickness, you might do better to take the train. The villages are only about ten minutes apart by train, and the trains run every half hour or so, so it’s easy to get back and forth. Or if you prefer, you can stay here and sleep or read or wander around Monterosso, your choice.”

  Jean interrupted her to say something in her ear, then Jane resumed. “When you all return, we’ll be eating at another restaurant in town here, closer to the church. The day after, we’ll be dining in a castle! And on our last night there will be a dinner for all of us up the hill at the vineyard, and I’m sure the lucky few who are staying up there will tell you how beautiful it is. By the way, you’ll be drinking the vineyard’s award-winning wines, so we hope this will be really special. I’ll go into details about the rest of the week later, but tomorrow, just relax and enjoy yourselves!”

  People started drifting off in twos or threes. Cynthia and I found each other again and followed the majority of the group toward the hotel. If I recalled correctly—having seen it exactly once, by daylight—the path to our vineyard aerie took off, uphill, from there. We bid good night to several people and then started the trek upward. Once we’d passed the last building—the office for the carabinieri, I noted—I stopped to look up the hill. And up, and up. It looked endless.

  “Are you going to tell Jane?” Cynthia asked in a low voice.

  I glanced quickly around but didn’t see anyone nearby. “About the professor? Maybe I’m chicken, but I’d rather not. Let her remain in blissful ignorance a little longer. If the police come calling, we can tell her what we know and then let her negotiate from there. After all, she’s the only one among us who can even talk to the authorities. And she can decide what to tell the rest of our group.”

  “You are a chicken, Laura, but I think I agree with you. I’d hate to spoil things for the rest of the group unless it’s really necessary.” She looked up the hill. “I guess we’d better start climbing.”

  “Can we take it slowly?” I asked, stopping just short of whining.

  “What, you aren’t in shape?”

  “I live in a flat city. I couldn’t tell you the last time I climbed a real hill, or one this long. Besides, we need to talk.”

  “Why does that always sound ominous?” Cynthia said, leading off at a reasonable pace. At least it was still light enough to see where we were putting our feet and we didn’t yet need flashlights.

  “God, I hate to think what it would be like if the police decided to keep us beyond our original departure date. That could be a real mess.” I was beginning to wonder if I had thought through all the possible outcomes of my impetuous phone call. Sure, maybe somebody had killed the professor, but why did I have the right to shake up the plans for forty people, who had no doubt been looking forward to this vacation for a while?

  “Aren’t you borrowing trouble? Anyway, all the more reason we should wrap this up quickly, don’t you think? I’m sure we can figure it out more quickly than the Italian police, right?” Cynthia said. “So where do we start?”

  I checked her face—as much as I could see of it in the dusk—to see if she was being sarcastic. “As soon as we get up the hill,” I said, panting.

  “We may not be alone up there, you know.”

  “There is that, although it’s better than it would be in the hotel. I think the first thing that has to happen is that you and I go over the list of our classmates and figure out who we feel safe sharing this with.”

  “Or who has an alibi,” Cynthia added.

  I hadn’t even thought that far, but she was right. But how on earth were we supposed to collect alibis from forty people? “Good point. We start with our friends sharing the vineyard rooms. If we suspect them, it’s going to be hard to find any private time to talk.”

  Cynthia didn’t say anything for a bit, although her breath was coming evenly. “So you trust me?”

  We both stopped next to a high stone wall with a niche holding a comically small statue of the Virgin Mary. “Yes, I do. Your ridiculous alibi aside, I’ve known you forever, and I can’t imagine you being cowed by the lecherous professor, back in college or since. You would have told him where to get off, in no uncertain terms.”

  Cynthia smiled. “I would indeed. I never had the chance, since I never took a class from him. You know, I think I blew off any rumors I heard about him because I figured the girls—women—he was hitting on were weak and didn’t know how to handle the situation. I’ll admit that I was wrong to be so judgmental then—I was an arrogant bitch, wasn’t I? But I had no personal animus against Professor Gilbert. Besides, you need me—I’m your Watson, remember?”

  “You can be whoever you want as long as it helps us figure this out.”

  Chapter 14

  We’d reached the level but the vines were shrouded in dusk. The sky was a deep blue, and a few stars had appeared. I caught my breath and said, “Let’s go up to our patio. That’s as private a place as we’re going to find and we can see, and hear, anybody coming.”

  We made the final climb and dropped into chairs at the table. Cynthia rummaged in her bag and pulled out a half-filled bottle of wine. “It seemed a shame to let it go to waste. There are glasses inside.” She disappeared into our rooms to look for the glasses, and I took a moment to listen. I heard no human sounds. Maybe our colleagues were still down the hill exploring the town, or putting off the climb.

  Cynthia came out with two glasses, filled them, and handed one to me. “Salute!” she said. We clinked glasses. “Okay, where do we start?”

  “I’ve been trying to think of ways to narrow the list down. Look, you said you found out about me and what I do, right?”

  “Yes. That’s what I do, or my company does. Discreetly, of course, and usually for a nice large fee.”

  So we were on a level playing field, because I had known what she did for a living too: she was a cyber-snoop for hire, a sometime data miner, with a company of computer nerds to back her up. “I won’t ask how much of what you do is legal. You told me earlier that you have profiles of the rest of the group, right?”

  �
�I do. Basic ones, anyway, and I could flesh them out if it would help. What do you want me to look for?”

  “I think you may need to dig a little deeper. For a start, can you get college transcripts or class enrollments or whatever covers the ground for the people here and determine who did take one of Professor Gilbert’s classes? Then we can see who’s admitted it and who’s kept silent.”

  “Sure, no problem. Listen, I’m going to have to involve some of my staff. I have complete faith in all of them, and they have no connection to what has gone on here. Is that okay with you?”

  “It’ll have to be if we want to wrap this up quickly. Okay, so we’ll have an idea about who might have a direct reason to hate the guy—and you’ll get grades, right? See who he gave a C or worse to? That could be a blot on an otherwise impressive record and could have had ramifications.”

  “Sure. And my crew can work around the clock. Of course, some of the women here may have had encounters with the professor outside of the classroom, and that won’t show up in any official record. We’ve been talking pretty much in terms of what we now call sexual harassment, but there were other ways Gilbert messed with people.”

  “Such as?” I asked. I’d heard a few suggestions and I wanted to see if she’d heard anything new.

  “Humiliating them in class, just because he could. Withholding letters of recommendation for grad schools or jobs. That kind of thing is more about power and his ego than about sex.”

  “Point taken. I know the transcripts won’t tell the whole story, but we have to start somewhere. Let’s assume that the information can eliminate, say, half the group. That still leaves twenty, in round numbers. For the next step, we need to match up the list with who was physically close enough to Gilbert to slip him something that night.”

  Cynthia raised one skeptical eyebrow. “Okay, how are we supposed to get that without asking people dumb questions like, Where were you standing at eight fifty-three the night Professor Gilbert died? That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?”

  “I’m still working on it,” I admitted.

  Cynthia said suddenly, “Back up a minute. You said someone could make a knockout potion or whatever you want to call it easily using those poppies, right?”

  “Yes, or so I understand. So the supply of poppies was right there. What are you asking?”

  “Two points. One, someone would have to know something about toxins to realize how easy this would be to make, although obviously you can find everything online these days. I’m assuming it’s not some long, complex chemical procedure using fancy glassware, but something more like brewing tea, involving hot water?”

  I nodded. “I think so, and we can check. What else?”

  Cynthia took a sip of her wine. “If that’s the case, then the second point is, someone needed access to cooking facilities in Capitignano. There are only so many rooms that had stoves at the villa. We didn’t. And I can’t see anyone hauling an electric kettle around—can’t you see the way the people at customs would look at that? But the building next to the dining hall had a full kitchen, and there was another one in the villa over us. Maybe someone could have sneaked into the dining room in the middle of the night to brew something up, but they’d run the risk of being noticed there, and they would have needed some light, which would have been obvious to a lot of people.”

  “Good thinking. And we don’t know that everyone knew about the stoves scattered around, unless they did a lot of visiting among the rooms. So you’re suggesting that narrows the pool of suspects down to maybe ten or fifteen of us who were in those rooms?”

  “Exactly. When we compare that with the list of Gilbert’s students, that should narrow it further. Within a margin of error, of course.”

  I smiled into the dark. It felt good having Cynthia’s help, and her willingness went a long way toward relieving my guilt at having started this whole thing. “This is great, Cyn. So to go back to my earlier point, the next hurdle is to figure out who was physically near enough to the professor to introduce this substance into something he was drinking.”

  Cynthia leaned back in her chair and contemplated the sky, now rich with stars. “As far as I recall, not that I was paying a lot of attention, he was drinking most of the night. I don’t think I ever saw him without a glass in his hand.”

  “What was he drinking? Wine? Cocktails?”

  Cynthia shut her eyes. “Highball glass, I think, but mostly that aperitif my friend the cook kept whipping up. What was it called? An Aperol spritz?”

  “Sounds about right. Anyway, the drink was dark enough that it would hide anything that was added. Of course, we don’t know what poppy flower tea would taste like, but it had a pretty distinct flavor of its own. I wonder if Professor Gilbert had had it before?”

  “Could be,” Cynthia said. “The recipe is on the Aperol bottle, so it must be popular. But that doesn’t mean he’s had it before, or knew what it should taste like. And don’t forget the bottle of wine waiting for him in his room. With the two glasses.”

  “I wonder if that had been opened or if your guy left a corkscrew? Seems like all the physical evidence was conveniently destroyed,” I said absently. “So what do we look for now? A chemist? An MD? No shortage of those in this group. Almost as many medicos as art historians.”

  “Or an herbalist with an interest in natural remedies,” Cynthia suggested. “In low doses this poppy tea is a good sleep aid.”

  “And you know this why?”

  “I looked it up online.”

  “Ah. Well, one other point the lab report provided was that it wasn’t a strong enough dose to kill him. He would have to have drunk gallons of the stuff or had some preexisting medical condition that made him sensitive to it. But say someone slipped him this homemade Mickey, enough to make him clumsy, how’d he fall down the hill? After all, the fall happened not far from our window, and it was very quiet there, if you recall. I can’t believe I could have slept through something like that. Wouldn’t he have cried out? Isn’t that the typical reaction if you’re conscious and falling to your death? By the way, what time did you get back?”

  “About two. So you’re saying he had to have gone over the edge before two, because we couldn’t both have slept through it? I mean, it might have awakened you, but if you didn’t hear anything else you might have assumed that you’d dreamed it. But we couldn’t both have done that.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Which means what? He was so out of it that he didn’t notice he was falling down a hill? Or there was something else going on. I wish I could see the full autopsy report to see if there were any other injuries that didn’t fit a fall. But it’s probably in Italian so I wouldn’t understand it anyway.”

  “You can’t ask one of your contacts?”

  “I could, I guess, but I’d rather keep them in reserve in case this gets a whole lot worse. Like if we all end up in a holding cell somewhere. I don’t even know where the nearest police administrative center would be. And I’d rather not find out.”

  “I agree,” Cynthia said emphatically. “Your contact is our ace in the hole if we all get arrested. So forensically we’re on our own. Somebody—presumably a woman—slips him the poppy tea, gets him drunk on top of that, and pushes him down the hill. Maybe she didn’t mean to kill him, but either way he died. Okay, if we put the late-night tête-a-tête on hold, as I asked before, how do we determine who spent any time close enough to him to slip him the stuff? Did your expert tell you how long it took to work?”

  “And as I said earlier, more or less, we can’t go around asking people, Did you talk to the professor? When? Before, during or after dinner?” I protested.

  “Probably before, actually. Wouldn’t it be more potent on an empty stomach? And why can’t we just ask?” I wondered if Cynthia was playing devil’s advocate.

  “I think you’re right, about the timing,” I said. “It would take a little while to affect him, but if he was seated at dinner and talking, he might not have notic
ed. As for the other, because asking questions would tip off the killer, or the accidental one. The death could still have been unintentional. Not that I’ve noticed any one of us going around looking particularly guilt-ridden.”

  “Who sat at the head table with him?” Cynthia asked.

  “I wouldn’t want to swear to it. Barbara and Gerry, because it was their show and they’d invited him. Jean and Jane? After that it’s kind of blurry, although I know there were other women there. I was at the other end of the room.”

  Cynthia refilled her glass and stared into the darkness. Then she said, “Photos.”

  “What?”

  “Everybody was snapping pictures, formally or informally. Cameras, cell phones, and Xianling with her ever-present iPad. Surely we could put together an array of pictures that will show who stood or sat near him during the evening?”

  “That is an excellent idea, Watson. But how would we get them all quickly?”

  “We need an ally, like Xianling. She could claim she’s putting together a memory book or whatever and could she please have all the pictures. Like, right away, while everyone still remembers.”

  “What if people say no?”

  “She’ll just have to wheedle. We need a good ally. I think she could pull it off.”

  “Which means we have to eliminate that person—Xianling—from suspicion before we ask her to do this.”

  “Or we’ll just have to go with our gut and trust someone.”

  “Or two someones, if we need some medical advice.”

  “Yup. Who do you think are in the clear?” Cynthia asked.

  “Well, I can’t imagine Jean and Jane sabotaging something they’d worked so long and hard to make happen. If we decide they’re in the clear, they could help to clear this up ASAP so we can go on playing tourists without it hanging over us.”

  “But they don’t have the right expertise. Expertises. Whatever.”