as everyone had described it. Eva was coming up in the Reine bubble lift. Carl had fallen over at the bottom, trying to get on, and Ani was helping him. Everyone else was standing at the top of the blue run, Blanche-Neige, huddled in the screaming wind, waiting for Eva, Carl, and Ani to arrive.
Then came Liz’s refusal to ski, and Topher’s bullying attempt to force her to do it.
Everyone agreed what happened next—Liz tore off her skis and walked back up the slope to the lift, to get on the bubble back down to the chalet.
But what if she hadn’t? What if she had gone through the little shack housing the lift and straight out the other side, towards the black run, La Sorcière. Then, at the top of the run, right by the steepest part of the piste, she stood and waited.
I try to imagine how Liz could have lured Eva across. Maybe she pretended she had slid helplessly down the black run, towards the sheer drop. Maybe she faked a problem with her boot or her ski. Either way, she must have called to Eva, and then, when Eva was very close to her, and off guard, she pushed her off the precipice.
That would have been the riskiest part. Not the risk of being seen—the visibility was too bad for that, and the lift building would have been between them and the skiers standing on Blanche-Neige. But the risk of failing to push Eva over the edge. If Eva had managed to save herself, or worse, if she had grabbed hold of her attacker and taken her over the edge as well, everything would have been finished. But it worked. It must have done. And now Liz just had to give herself an alibi—by ensuring that Eva was seen to be safe and well after Liz was supposed to have gone back down in the lift.
I remember that huge, bulky ski suit, the way Liz was sweating, just standing around at the base of the lift. I even remember thinking that she was clearly wearing far too many layers, and wondering why, on such a nice day. Now I know why. It wasn’t inexperience at all. It was planned.
It would not have been very hard to have a second ski jacket on underneath the first. It would have taken seconds to unzip the baggy blue jumpsuit, take off the scarlet ski jacket beneath, and put it on over the top. With her helmet, goggles, and dark-colored ski pants, anyone seeing her at a distance would take it for granted that she was Eva.
And so she set off to ski La Sorcière, stopping just to make sure that one person at least—faithful little Ani, far above her in the bubble lift—would be able to back up her story.
I think of Ani’s last words to Tiger, her puzzled I didn’t see her.
We all thought she was talking about Eva.
But what if… what if she were talking about Liz. Liz, who was supposed to be on the bubble going down the mountain, at the same time Ani was coming up. What if that was what Ani realized, that Liz never passed them going back down? That she never took the lift at all?
It is plausible. It is all horribly plausible. And it would very likely have worked if it weren’t for one thing. Elliot’s geosnooping app, covertly gathering data on everyone in the party.
Because Elliot wasn’t stupid. As soon as he figured out that Eva had died, he would have looked at the movements of everyone else on the mountain that day. He would have known that the person who skied La Sorcière was not Eva but Anon101. Only even with all the info at his disposal, he could not be certain who Anon101 was.
So he followed Anon on Snoop. And he set about figuring it out by process of elimination. But he was killed before he could share his suspicions with Topher.
This theory explains almost everything. It explains why Elliot had to die, why his computer, with all the geosnooping data, was smashed up. It explains why Ani was killed.
There’s only one thing it doesn’t explain. Why.
Why Eva was killed in the first place.
Because Liz still doesn’t have a motive.
Still, I remember Danny’s words. I dunno. We could probably give them all motives if we needed to.
He’s right. Alibi is the key, not motive. And I have just smashed Liz’s alibi to pieces. There is one problem—if I’m right,