waver. “I know Horace’s betrayal has come as a painful shock. But you cannot let it dull your thinking. Isabella needs you too much right now.”
I bent down and began to sort through the contents of Horace’s medicine cabinet. “Now help me think.”
Alistair began stacking different medicine bottles onto Horace’s nightstand. “In retrospect, I suppose his behavior these past few weeks should have made me suspicious. He’s been restless. And despite the cool weather, he sweated constantly.”
“But you never noticed anything that suggested a criminal tendency?”
His response was dry. “You may not believe it, Ziele, but I don’t sit around and speculate about my associates and their propensity for crime.”
I picked up the jagged remains of two medicine bottles. Their names were still visible. “He has a number of opium products here.” I passed Alistair the glass fragment that represented the remains of Greene’s Syrup of Tar. “He also has Soothing Syrup, Gray’s Cordial, and some laudanum—liquid opium.”
Alistair shrugged. “Ordinary stuff, typical of most people’s medicine chests. If he is addicted to opium to the extent his debt would suggest, then he needed far more than this. He needed the sort of fix you can find only in an opium den.”
“Let’s move on and search the other rooms,” I said. We worked in silence for several moments until Alistair shouted out that he had found something.
“What is it?” I asked, rushing into the kitchen.
“His appointment book,” Alistair said. “Look—he had four meetings with Sarah Wingate in the weeks leading up to her death.” He shook his head. “If she knew he had stolen the money, why didn’t she report him and be done with it?”
“I don’t know. They were negotiating something, perhaps.” I studied the appointment book carefully another moment. There were other meetings, as well, in the weeks before her death, but they were coded with initials. F.A.E. was each Tuesday. And each Friday night was marked H.R.E. I put the book in my pocket to examine later. Any evidence that did not point us to Isabella would have to wait—even the evidence that would certainly seal Horace’s fate in front of a judge and jury. We found a shoe box by his desk, containing deposit slips for the checks embezzled from the dean’s fund.
“I see why he had little trouble depositing them,” I said. “Although they’re made out to Alistair Sinclair/Center for Criminological Research, look how he signed and deposited them: ‘Make payable to Theodore Sinclair.’ The alias made it easier for him to manage your money. As though you had given it to your son.”
Alistair seemed to ignore me, but there was a greenish cast to his complexion that concerned me.
“You all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, brushing off my concern.
In the same shoe box, we also found copies of IOUs he had signed for amounts in the hundreds of dollars. There was no formal name to show to whom he was indebted, but each paper had an odd symbol on its back. The Bottler’s mark, I supposed.
“We now have plenty of evidence of wrongdoing,” I said, placing the papers back in the shoe box. “But we’ve still no idea where he’s taken Isabella.”
I sat on the sofa in Horace’s front living room. Resting my chin on my hands, I gazed at Alistair. “You know the criminal mind better than anyone, Alistair. And you know Horace Wood. Help me. Where would he have taken her?”
“He’s comfortable in this neighborhood, where he lives and works,” Alistair said, thinking aloud. He sat in a drab floral armchair next to the sofa.
I caught his train of thought. “Yes. So he’s taken her someplace nearby. Someplace private—where it will be quiet and deserted on a Sunday.”
Alistair got up to pace the length of the room. “Yes, and someplace he can feel in control. He will not want to be interrupted.”
“What about the administrative building?” I asked. “No classrooms in it—only offices. And closed all weekend.”
Alistair shook his head no. “Not likely. The administrative building is quite secure; they even have their own key system, designed to protect the academic and financial records kept there.”
“What about a classroom building, like the science or humanities buildings? Many students choose empty classrooms to study in the evenings.”
“Good idea, but it doesn’t offer certain privacy. Where else?”
“The chapel,” I said. “It’s always open for anyone who needs it.”
“That sounds more promising. It fits what I know—what I think I know—of Horace,” Alistair said. “Is there any other place?”
We thought a moment. The setting sun cast