Colin’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline. He glanced at Emily, who returned a baffled look. She had certainly not expected this development.
‘We’ll have to move to an interview room,’ Colin said.
Svetlana hesitated. ‘May I have Emily with me?’
Colin exchanged glances with Emily again, and she nodded her agreement. ‘I guess we could call her your appropriate adult. But you do need to keep quiet unless I ask you something, Emily.’
‘Of course.’
He led the way to an interview room – windowless, sterile, devoid of any comfort. Emily felt cold to her core. She could only imagine what Svetlana must be feeling in this oppressive place.
Colin made the necessary introduction for the sake of the recording, then said, ‘You said you want to make a confession.’
‘Yes.’ Svetlana sat rigidly erect, her hands clenched in her lap, her gaze directed straight ahead – not at Colin but at the opposite wall. Her face looked completely drained of blood. ‘I killed Taylor Curzon.’
‘Right.’ Colin cleared his throat. ‘Did you plan this ahead of time?’
Svetlana’s eyes went wide. ‘No! Of course not. I just wanted to reason with her. I went to her office to try to persuade her to let Daniel off the hook. I didn’t care what she did to me if she would only leave him alone.’
‘You went to her office. I take it you mean on Monday night? What time was this?’
Svetlana swallowed. ‘Yes, Monday. I think … around eleven?’ She cast a telltale glance at Emily as if unsure of the time the police had determined for the murder. A tiny knot of doubt in Emily’s mind relaxed at that moment. She was now completely certain Svetlana’s confession would be false.
‘Did you see anyone else in the building?’
‘N–no. Not that I remember.’
‘Did you go straight to Curzon’s office?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then what happened?’
‘I knocked on her door.’
‘Was it shut?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she come to the door?’
‘No. She called out “Come in”, so I went in.’
Colin raised an eyebrow toward Emily. He and she knew that Curzon’s office door did not stay fully closed unless it was locked, but Svetlana evidently did not.
‘And then?’
‘She was sitting at her desk. I went up to the desk and said … well, I don’t remember my exact words, but I asked her to leave Daniel alone. I said I didn’t care what happened to me, but Daniel couldn’t work with her pestering him, and he absolutely had to finish his degree this year.’
‘And how did she respond?’
‘She laughed at me. She … called me names. Then she stood up and came around the desk. She got right up in my face and said terrible things about Daniel, too. That his career didn’t matter, he’d never amount to anything academically because he was ill. I don’t know how she found out about that, but I just saw red.’
Svetlana took in a breath and finished her recital in a rush. ‘Daniel’s statue was there on the desk, right by my hand – I have no idea how it got there – and I picked it up and swung at her. I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted to shut her up. Then when I saw what I’d done, I was horrified. I panicked and ran.’
Colin was silent a moment, giving her time to finish. But she said no more.
‘I see. You hit her once and then you ran?’
‘Yes. She crumpled right away.’
He nodded sagely. ‘And you didn’t get any blood on your clothes?’
Svetlana blinked rapidly, and Emily could almost hear the gears of her brain turning over. She knew about the blood on Daniel’s jacket; her story would have to account for that somehow.
‘I … uh … I had borrowed Daniel’s jacket earlier. I ran into him after dinner and I was cold, so he gave me his jacket. All the blood got on that.’
‘And then you took the jacket back to Daniel’s room and left it there for us to find. For us to assume he’d been wearing it himself when he killed her.’
Svetlana’s eyes went wide. ‘No! I never wanted anyone to think that! I … I wasn’t thinking, I guess. When I saw she was dead, all I knew was I wanted Daniel to comfort me. I ran to his room, and I guess I just took the jacket off while I was there and didn’t think about anybody finding the blood.’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘Why didn’t I wash it? Or burn it? Then he’d be free …’
Colin spoke gently. ‘No, he wouldn’t, because we have more on him than just the blood. And I’m afraid this sorry attempt at a confession isn’t going to help Daniel either. You seem to know a fair bit about this murder’ – he cast a severe glance at Emily, who grimaced an apology – ‘but there’s one thing you apparently weren’t told. Taylor Curzon was not killed by a single blow to the head.’
Svetlana looked up. ‘But – I told you—’
‘In cases like these, it’s what the pathologist tells us that counts. She was struck multiple times. It’s possible the first blow was actually fatal, but the killer didn’t stop there. He beat her head to a bloody pulp.’
Svetlana turned green and put her hand to her mouth.
‘Interview terminated for a comfort break.’ Colin stood and opened the door. ‘The restroom is right over there.’
Svetlana sped out.
‘You’d better go with her,’ Colin said to Emily. She needed no urging on that point.
When Svetlana had finished vomiting, Emily helped her clean up and then held her as she sobbed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? If I’d had more facts I could have made it convincing. I could have made them take me and let Daniel go.’
Emily rubbed the girl’s back. ‘I doubt that, Svetlana. Even if your facts had been convincing, your manner would never have been. You simply don’t have the bearing, the attitude, the anything of a killer.’
She put her hands on Svetlana’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length so she could look her in the eye. ‘What you did today was very brave, if also incredibly foolish. But the situation is not as desperate as you think. You didn’t give me a chance to tell you – we do have a glimmer of hope. Colin let me look at the initials in Curzon’s appointment book, and they were almost certainly forged. If that can be proved, it’s a strong indication that someone was trying to frame Daniel.’
Hope dawned in Svetlana’s eyes for the first time since Daniel had been taken in for questioning. ‘Oh, Emily! Thank you! That’s the best news I’ve had in – well, ever. Oh, thank God! Thank God!’
Emily didn’t want to prick Svetlana’s balloon of confidence, but she knew these grounds for hope were still fairly flimsy. It was one thing to prove evidence suggesting Daniel was framed, but quite another to discover who had done the framing. They still had a long way to go.
Colin called Emily back late that afternoon. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘The handwriting guy says there’s a ninety percent chance those initials were forged. I’ve never heard him commit himself to that extent before.’ He paused. ‘Kind of makes me feel stupid for not noticing sooner.’
‘You had no particular reason to look closely. The point is, we know now.’
‘Yes. And Wharton says we can go back to campus for a more thorough search and door to door first thing Monday morning.’
Emily crossed herself gratefully. ‘Thank God for that.’
She allowed herself a true day of rest on Sunday with church, a movie, and cuddle time with the cats. In the evening she called Luke and gave him the news.
‘Well, well, well. So you caught Colin out on physical evidence. I’m going to have to rib him about that next holiday gathering.’
‘Don’t be too hard on him. He feels badly enough about it already.’
‘Nah, I’ll go easy. He’s a good kid. But like all kids, he’s got a lot to learn.’
She told Luke about breaking Douglas’s and Richard’s alibis as well. His reaction was like Colin’s on steroids.
‘Em, how many times have I told you not to put yourself in a dangerous situation like that? You do not let yourself be alone with a viable murder suspect. You especially don’t let him know what you’ve got on him. Leave that to the police.’
‘The police weren’t doing anything. Colin would have, left to himself, but Sergeant Wharton dug his fat toes in and wouldn’t let him budge. Besides, I wasn’t alone with Douglas – Marguerite was there – and I’ve known Richard for years. Much as I dislike the man, he’s too much of a wimp to lash out in cold blood. A crime of passion might be just barely within his scope, but not cold-blooded murder. And in broad daylight, too.’
‘I don’t care how much you think you’ve got him figured, you never know what somebody will do under stress. Especially if he’s killed before. Promise me you won’t do anything that stupid again.’
Emily gave in. Luke might be a little overprotective, but at least it was out of love. ‘All right. I promise.’
As for the rest of their conversation, if it had been written in a letter by Anne Shirley to Gilbert Blythe, it would have required a new pen.