A Voss and Pike Casefile
Section 9: The Daughter
"I was on the stage at the interval," said Imogen, "hosting the raffle. Forty people watched me draw the tickets. My assistant photographed every minute of it. Ask anyone; ask the cameras." She said it flatly, like a woman who had already planned her own alibi and was sick of it.
You took a mental note: photographed, filmed, timestamped. A modern alibi is a surveillance artefact.
"What did you think he'd say at 9.30?"
"I thought he'd name me chair of the Foundation." She laughed without warmth. "Twenty years of being told the business needed a son. I thought tonight he'd finally say I was enough."
Jonah, softly: "Sorry."
"Don't be. He also taught me never to say 'settee' or 'pardon', and to keep my vowels 'correct'. He said the world was listening, and the world was very picky." She looked at her hands. "He was so careful. About everything. As if one wrong word would bring the whole house down."
You'd met plenty of people in your line of work who played a role. Few had taught it to their children so faithfully without knowing it was a role at all.
Imogen was on stage in front of forty witnesses and cameras when the water was tampered with. She did not know what her father planned to say, and hoped he would finally make her chair of the Foundation.