Chasing Venus by Diana Dempsey Read Free Book Online

  I
only heard about it the next morning on TV.   Then a detective called me that
afternoon.”
    Higuchi and Simpson
glanced at one another, then Simpson spoke.   “Can you explain, Ms. Rowell, how your
fingerprints came to be on the blowgun that was found at the crime scene?”
    “My fingerprints were
on the blowgun?”   For a moment she
was puzzled.   Then her synapses
began to fire and her heart picked up its pace, as if she were running uphill.   The
blowgun we were looking at was the same one used to kill Maggie.   It was the murder weapon .   This is what Simpson thought he had on
her.   “I’d forgotten all about
that,” she said, thinking fast.   “I
mean, I knew she was poisoned by a dart fired by a blowgun but I never put two
and two together.”
    Simpson frowned.   “What do you mean?”
    “Well, before this it
never occurred to me that it was the blowgun we were all looking at.   Though now that I think about it, it’s
so obvious.”
    She rose to stare out
the window.   Her eyes focused on the
white clapboard house across the street, the resident cocker spaniel leashed to
the oak tree in the front yard as it was every sunny afternoon.   In her mind she saw not the dog, but the
scene at the signing party.
    “Maggie Boswell has
what you might call a prop room off the study in her home.   It’s like a library with bookshelves and
glass cases filled with items she’s collected over the years as she’s
researched her books.   She wrote
historical mysteries so there was a lot of interesting stuff.   People were filing through there all
night.”
    She spun around, faced
them.   Four pairs of eyes were on
her.   Pincus set down his mug.
    “The cases were open
and people were taking things out and looking at them.   At the time I was surprised because I
figured some of those items had to be fairly valuable.   But people were having drinks and hors
d’oeuvres and handling them.   And
one of the items was a blowgun.   I’d
never seen one before.   It was a
long hollow tube made of some kind of metal.   Michael and I were looking at it.”
    “Michael?” Higuchi
prompted.
    “Michael
Ellsworth.   You must know the name.”
    Higuchi nodded.
    “In one of Maggie’s
novels, a character was murdered with a dart dipped in poison.   Delivered by a blowgun.”   Annie shivered as if a winter draft were
blowing through the old Victorian in late April.   She met Simpson’s stare.   “Was it curare that killed Maggie?   It had to have been.”
    He didn’t blink.   “Why do you say that?”
    “Because it was used in
the novel.   Plus, few other poisons
work so fast.”
    “How do you know so
much about curare?”
    “We all do.   You can’t be a mystery writer for long
and not know about poisons.   I’ve
used them myself.   Strychnine in my
case, in my third book.”   She
returned to her chair, aware how strange that sounded but how typical it was
for authors who wrote crime fiction.   “And from what people described who were there and saw what happened,
it’s pretty obvious it was curare.   How Maggie froze in place, she couldn’t breathe, she turned blue …”
    Not that there were
many good ways, but that was a horrendous way to die.   Within seconds of injection, the muscles
begin to paralyze.   The pulse drops;
the diaphragm and lungs seize.   And
most appalling, the victim is completely conscious throughout.   They’re excruciatingly aware they’re
about to suffocate but can do nothing to avoid their fate.   They cannot call out; they cannot
gesture.   Death is the only gruesome
relief.
    For a time no one
spoke, as if they were giving Maggie Boswell a moment of silence for the
petrifying ordeal she had endured.   Then a new thought wormed its way into Annie’s brain.   “No one took my fingerprints.”   She looked at Simpson.   “How do you know they’re on the
blowgun?”
    Higuchi spoke.   “Your prints are on file.”
    “You’ve been