mindlessness
It began, as all good old-fashioned murder stories do, with the sacrilege of the wooden cross that hung in the dining-room.
She had been told that she was a conveyer of lust, of the aristocratic love so common in nobles. She had been told that she was illustrious, mysterious, beautiful. And she would never forget the most important lesson the bastard had taught her - "Intelligence, Miss Chervin, is to be disregarded by males. Intellect, tact, wit, they are all to be disregarded by males. You are an object, an ornament, to stand and look pretty and nurture the house, raising it as your kin. You must be beautiful - poised - some would say, rather stupid."
And that, Katherine Chervin later came to realize, was what subconsciously prompted her to do what she did. To be the intelligent one in the crowd of bimbos, of idiots so filled with thoughts of fine wine and good food that they paid no attention to the pattern of deaths around them.
But, of course, she did.