Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(18)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“I had several glasses of absinthe and smoked a small amount of opium. I fell asleep shortly after arriving at eight p.m. When I awoke it was dark and I thought Anne was sleeping, since I could see she was on the bed, her arm lying by her side. I decided to sketch her and began to do so, after a few moments moving closer to see the expression on her face. I slipped in her blood on the floor and, glancing up, saw what had been done to her. She was obviously dead, horrifically so, so I went for Madame Conti. First though, I disgraced myself by vomiting on the floor, so shocked I was by the sight before me of what had been done to a woman I cared a great deal for.”

If no one else entered the house, if there was no struggle or resistance from Miss Donovan, which witnesses verify, the sad conclusion I must draw is that Mr. Thiroux, under the influence of inebriants, entered into a violent rage and murdered his lover, with no premeditation, or memory of the incident. It is a horrific testament to the rage drink can bring out in a man, and Miss Donovan paid the ultimate price of liquor.

Chapter Five

ARREST IMMINENT!

October 10, 1849—The police in three days have gone from being prepared to dismiss the murder of Miss Donovan as unsolvable, to having Mr. John Thiroux virtually TRIED and CONVICTED of the crime even prior to his arrest. No attempts have been made to investigate alternative suspects, and official police reports read by this reporter indicate sights are firmly set on the prosecution of the artist, philanthropist, and quiet scholar.Temperance advocates, gather your arguments, as this case will prove to be a testing ground for the tolerance of the citizens of New Orleans to excessive drinking and pharmaceutical use. Choose your side and line up accordingly, as the impact on our local businesses, residences, and the very tenor of our city could be drastically altered by conclusions drawn regarding the crime of murder and its correlation to alcohol consumption.

“So just like that, they arrested John Thiroux?” Sara asked Gabriel, seated across the table from her at Brennan’s restaurant on Royal Street. “With no evidence?” She ran her finger around the rim of her wineglass and turned the facts around in her head. It was interesting to sit and talk through the case logically, detached, removed by more than a century from the grim reality. For the first time, she could see the appeal of what Gabriel did for a living. Playing Hercule Poirot, but with no one to let down if you couldn’t actually reach any conclusions. Much easier than thinking about her mom.

The sudden change of tenor in the original Anne Donovan investigation struck her as odd. Was Thiroux’s arrest really media driven? The police were afraid of negative press? It seemed too broad a leap to make so early in her reading and research, but there had been a clear shift in the four days from murder to arrest.

“Well, there was evidence. He was in the room, he had blood on his hands. No one heard a struggle. No sign of any forced entry. Circumstantially, it would appear that John Thiroux was the logical suspect. As for motive, well, that’s dicier, but he certainly had the opportunity.” Gabriel spread a thick glob of butter on a piece of crusty French bread and bit it.

He’d already had three equally burdened slices and Sara was eyeing the butter with longing. It wasn’t fair that Gabriel was tall and lean, yet he could eat half a stick of butter without batting an eye or seeming to gain a pound. If she ate that, she would sprout love handles spontaneously by the time the check for dinner arrived.

“If you think about it, under the exact same circumstances today, they would definitely take the person present at the scene in for questioning. You have to admit, he looks guilty.” Gabriel bit the second half of the slice of bread, finishing it off.

“But you don’t think he is, do you?” Otherwise she didn’t think he would be investigating and writing about the case.

“I think it’s all oddly inconsistent. We have a man, with no history of violence, under the influence of opium, which is a passive drug, and intoxicated from absinthe, which is non-hallucinogenic.”

“You think. You said at the time they thought absinthe was a hallucinogenic. And can you really know what it was he took that night?”

“No, I guess not. We just have his words. And I’m sure quality of the product varied.” After sipping his water, Gabriel added, “But he stayed in the room. He sketched her. Why would he do that?”

“Because he had no clue what he was doing, what he had just done, out of it on drugs. Or because he took a sick pleasure in it? So he wouldn’t get caught leaving the house with blood on him?” Sara shrugged. “I don’t know. Why do criminals do anything? Crimes are random and weird.” She glanced over at the restaurant’s courtyard, its lush trees swaying in the night breeze, the fountain lit with a soft spotlight. There were tables out there, but none were being used, and it looked lonely, hidden, secretive.

“Not as random as you think. The reasons for murder are usually fairly simple. Greed. Rage. Curiosity. Greed is calculating, rage is messy, and curiosity kills are staged. It’s the psychopath who curiosity kills, and psychopaths all have two things in common—they feel no remorse and they don’t want to be caught.”

“Was John Thiroux a psychopath?”

Gabriel’s dark eyes stared steadily at her. “I don’t think in this case anyone at the time ever considered it could be a premeditated crime. They seemed to assume it was a crime of passion, and I would have to agree, given the frenzy of the kill. Mutilating the face is considered a personal crime by modern profilers. If he did it, he probably wasn’t a psychopath, because it would be odd for him to stay at the scene of the crime. Psychopaths don’t want to be caught, and you would think he would have planned an escape if he had intended to kill her. But the police and the prosecutor never approached the murder as intentional. The entire court case revolved around Thiroux’s culpability, his state of mind at the time of murder . . . Was he conscious of his actions? Strong enough in his stupor to kill violently? The coroner thought only a person of great strength could have committed the crime. The prosecutor contended that in a drunken rage, anyone can wield a knife to that fatal effect.”

Unfortunately, Sara figured the prosecutor probably had the right of it. Adrenaline and rage could allow almost anyone to kill when the victim was in a vulnerable position like Anne had been—in bed, possibly asleep already. “But if it wasn’t him, who was it? Could someone have come in and murdered her while he was just sitting there drugged out?” Sara had a hard time picturing that. It seemed like he would have heard something. Had a sense of danger. But then again, she knew what two sedatives at bedtime could do. Her house could have burned down around her some nights and she wouldn’t have known. That had been the point.