The Murders of Richard III by Elizabeth Peters Page A

eyes were still damp; two tendrils of hair had come loose and curled wickedly over her ears.
    â€œNo,” she said, fending Thomas off as he reached for her again. “That’s enough of that.”
    â€œIs that all I get for being knocked on the head and stuck into a barrel upside down?” Thomas inquired plaintively. “If I lost an arm and a leg, I suppose you might—”
    â€œYou’re drunk,” Jacqueline said coldly. “Thomas, be serious. I got something of a shock, that’s why I acted so silly; but this is no joke. And I’m afraid your male ego is going to suffer, although I was the only one to see you in situ. We’ll have to tell the others.”
    Jacqueline’s therapy had been amazingly successful. Except for a slight headache, Thomas felt fine. He reached for the champagne bottle, which was sitting on the floor beside him. After a long drink, he nodded.
    â€œYes, I see what you’ve got in mind. Oh, well. At least I won’t have to hear Lady Isobel recite her poem about gallant King Richard.”
IV
    The emergency meeting was in full swing, and it was getting absolutely nowhere. Thomas’s head was aching. He no longer felt like a kindly adult watching the antics of cute children; he felt like a lion tamer with a cageful of feline schizophrenics. People were pacing around the room shouting questions at each other. At the head of the table Weldon pounded his gavel. No one paid the slightest attention. The pounding only increased Thomas’s headache.
    As he had feared, the first reaction to the news of his misadventure had been hilarity. Outrage soon replaced the laughter, but this emotion was just as noisy and just as ineffectual. Frank was the most indignant; he kept insisting that he had not written the note that had lured Thomas to his doom. Thomas kept reassuring him, but Frank demanded paper and pencil and produced a specimen that was certainly quite unlike the handwriting Thomas remembered. He had to depend on his memory, for the note was no longer in his pocket.
    Jacqueline was curled up in one of the bigchairs. She was wearing her glasses. Her green eyes flickered as she glanced from one gesticulating speaker to the next.
    Finally she rose. Conversation gradually died as she walked slowly to the head of the table. She smiled at Weldon, who stepped back and, with a wordless gesture, invited her to take his place. When she faced the group, the silence was almost complete.
    â€œI’d like to say a few words,” she began in a soft voice. “May I please have your attention? No comments, no questions—and no bloody interruptions!”
    A mouse’s squeak would have been distinctly audible.
    â€œVery well,” Jacqueline went on, glaring at them over her glasses. “I’ll begin at the beginning. Last night Frank was attacked by a figure that was in essence that of a masked man. Or perhaps I should say masked person….
    â€œIn your Ricardian charades, Frank is taking the part of the Lancastrian Prince Edward, the son of Henry the Sixth. The Tudor propaganda accuses your hero, Richard, of being responsible for the death of this young prince. Edward was killed in battle, and the earliest commentators simply state that fact. Later historians imply that he was killed after he had surrendered, by the attendantsof the victorious Edward the Fourth. One of the Tudor propagandists says Richard stabbed him as he knelt and begged for mercy.
    â€œI apologize for repeating what you all know. I do so in order to set the record straight and clarify my thoughts as well as your own.”
    It was admirably done, Thomas thought. A professor of English history couldn’t have sounded more pompous.
    â€œThe death of this prince,” Jacqueline continued, “may be considered the first of Richard’s murders, if one follows the Tudor line. Edward’s injuries are not specified, but we might suppose that a man killed in