Murphy's Law by Lisa Marie Rice Page A

the dinner table?”
    “Well, except for the absence of Tim Gresham and the presence of Faith Murphy, the very same people we’ve been having dinner with on our first night in the Certosa for seven years. There was Roland, of course. And Griffin Ball, myself, Professor Gori—he’s the head of the mathematics department at the University of Siena—”
    Dante nodded noncommittally. He’d gone to school with Leonardo Gori’s daughter, Raffaella. They had even had an unmemorable night of sex together years ago. The last time he’d seen her she’d gained thirty pounds and had three kids. She’d looked happy, though. Dante shunted that thought aside the moment it popped into his head.
    “Oh, and we usually have Evan Myers from the University of Middlesex in England, but he’d emailed to say he’d be arriving only on the day of the conference itself. Roland was particularly upset at that—Evan does a lot of the administrative work leading up to the conference and that meant Roland was going to have to actually do something himself.”
    “So, if I’ve got this straight, Professor Kobbel, at dinner last night at the Certosa , there was you, Professor Kane, Griffin Ball, Faith Murphy and Professor Gori.”
    Madeleine Kobbel nodded.
    “And what was the atmosphere like at the dinner table?”
    She frowned. “Atmosphere?”
    “Yes. What did you talk about?”
    “The upcoming conference mostly. Professor Gori asked about our flight and we also discussed what remained to be done before the opening session. There is a great deal of hard work that goes into organizing a conference such as ours. And this year we have people coming from as far away as Japan. The Quantitative Methods Seminar is very well known in our field.”
    “Were there any disagreements amongst the diners?”
    “If you’re intimating that one of us stood up, screamed ‘I hate your guts!’ at Roland and then left the table, only to slip a knife in his heart later, well…no. There was nothing like that. Roland was his usual unpleasant self, but we’re all used to that. And he’d had so much to drink on the flight over and during dinner that he wasn’t too cogent anyway. I hardly noticed when he excused himself from the table and left.”
    “How soon after did you leave, Professor Kobbel?”
    Hello. Unexpectedly, she blushed. It was fascinating to watch a young girl’s blush steal over the features of a more than mature woman.
    “I—ah, actually, now that I come to think about it, I must have left soon after him. It was after 10:00 pm and I’d had a hard day. I was jet-lagged and we’d already made plans with Professor Gori to meet the next day. So when Roland left, I thought that could be my cue to leave, too.”
    “You left soon after him—or with him, Professor?”
    “After. I could hear his footsteps ahead of me. Are you familiar with the layout of the Certosa, Commissario ?”
    Dante nodded his head. He’d once come very close to losing his virginity at the Certosa before it had been restored. He still had fond memories of the abbot’s cell.
    “Well, as you know, there’s an arcade around the central courtyard. The rooms assigned to us are on the other side of the cloister from the refectory. I followed Roland around the cloister and up the stairs, but then our ways parted. My room was along the northern corridor and his was along the eastern side.”
    “So, the two of you didn’t talk on your way up to the cells?”
    “Why on earth should we? We’d spent almost twelve hours traveling together and we’d just had dinner together. And I repeat, he’d had so much to drink he wouldn’t have made much sense anyway.”
    Dante watched her for a moment. She hadn’t answered the question, but she didn’t have that cagey look of a witness who’d lied and got away with it.
    “So you retired…when, Professor Kobbel?”
    She raised her eyes to the ceiling, reflecting. “Well, I guess it must have been about a quarter past ten. I