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.Most telling of all, the abandoned saris were found wrapped round Chicken's score of Otello - a substantial mistake on Pussy's part but perhaps she had been unconsciously jealous of Chicken's paraded knowledge of the opera during its performance.What with Chicken's condescending remark concerning Zerfirelli and her score-book, she had certainly paid dearly for this knowledge.There were plenty of finger-prints there to identify Chicken with the score-reading Indian woman, even if one of Chicken's teaching associates to whom it had once belonged, had not recognized the score.Two questions in all this remained unanswered.The identity of the second 'Indian' woman, the masked 'cruel' woman who had guarded Princess Amy, assuming that they were one and the same person, remained officially unproved.Chicken resolutely refused to say anything on the subject; in fact she refused to make any statement at all, refused a lawyer (one was assigned), refused to consider her defence and merely announced her determination of pleading 'Guilty' and accepting her sentence whatever it might be.Chicken was confident in herself that she would never talk, never break, despising Monkey and Fox for their abject solutions.How like men! Women were so much stronger when it came to the point.Chicken gave no trouble on remand in prison, however; was pleasant, respectful, nice to the young girls who were her fellow inmates: even if they were not particularly nice back to her since she was held to have laid hands on Princess Amy, by now a genuinely popular folk heroine.It was a consolation that the problems with her diet gave her opportunity to administer well-turned little lectures on the cruel treatment of battery hens.Vegetarianism proving a far more sympathetic subject, Chicken somewhat redeemed herself.Even in Holloway, thought Chicken, once a teacher, always a teacher.The charges against Chicken were serious enough but she was not, so far as the police were concerned, on a charge of murder or even of conspiracy to murder since it was accepted that she had not been present at the incident in the Royal Box.So, one way and another, Chicken was confident of holding out, serving her sentence - for the cause.Setting herself up to be a model prisoner, one day she would emerge — and work for it again with equal determination, or perhaps even greater strength, forged by the iron years of martyrdom in prison.But she would not trust men - men like Fox with their ineradicable and fatal tendency to violence - next time.So the question of Chicken's accomplice, of the sixth conspirator, for want of definite proof remained officially open.That meant that Pussy — for the time being - went free.There was nothing specific to connect her with Chicken in the absence of the latter's hoped-for confession.The witness who remembered Chicken's disparaging comment on Zeffirelli's film had no recollection, and maddeningly was not even sure if Chicken had had a companion, although he admitted that the remark could hardly have been made to the blank wall of the staircase.Like Chicken, he had been in a hurry.Princess Amy never saw fit to mention the characteristic smell of lavender water which had linked Pussy to her hated governess; along with many other details of that horrendous time, she had suppressed it.In any case, such olfactory evidence would surely never have stood up in a court of law.And Pussy had been careful to keep her gloves on during her period guarding the Princess.No, the police wanted proper evidence to arrest Mrs Pussy Moscowitz and in their patient way they were convinced that with time they would get it.In the meantime they were watching Pussy.That left Pussy free, like the rest of the world, to watch the Royal Wedding.She could either watch it on television in the flat dominated by huge pictures of Caro-Otter or maybe, as Pussyput it to herself, with one of her malevolent smiles, she would take her place among the crowds: 'To see how the little Madam is getting on.'Another question which remained unanswered was the question of the killer of Jean-Pierre Schwarz-Albert a.k.a.Tom [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]