Murder Most Conventional

by Verena Rose (ed)

  “I guess I did. I used lots of deodorizer. It didn’t seem to bother them all that much. They just kept on partying while I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing the carpet.” Cora yanked the pantyhose on.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Spilling drinks all over. There was some white powder and razor blades on one of the tables. I just left that.”

  “Did you get the smell out of the carpet?”

  “I think so. By the time I got done, all I could smell was the disinfectant, anyhow. But the guy who rented the suite, that TV guy Detwilder, he sat right down on the couch next to the worst spot, and he seemed okay with it.”

  “Then what did he do?” I asked.

  Cora reached into her locker and pulled out a bottle of clear nail polish. She dabbed some on the hole in the pantyhose. “He poured himself a glass of Irish cream whiskey—one of those big water glasses. Then he turned on the TV. And pulled out his cellphone.”

  * * * *

  We were shorthanded, and I hurried from one room to another, skipping lunch break in favor of a quick granola bar from the vending machine in the staff lounge.

  I could only hope the tips would be decent.

  As I pushed my cart through the hallways near the end of my shift, the public areas of the hotel were surprisingly empty.

  All the guests were gathered in the banquet room. First hors d’oeuvres and an open bar, followed by filet mignon and Yorkshire pudding. Cases of wine were stacked in the service hallway. Harrison Detwilder was the keynote speaker, scheduled to give his presentation during the dessert and coffee.

  When the end of the shift rolled around, I went to the staff lounge and tried to stretch my shoulders. My knees were stiff and my back was locking up. I debated taking another capsule.

  We’d all worked extra, and most people were in a hurry to get home. Cora was so tired, she stumbled trying to put on her blue jeans. She yawned and said, “I’m gonna go home and get some sleep.”

  Instead of changing, I put my coat on over my uniform and went into the garage to find Rico.

  I handed him the three hundred dollars. He gave me my change and seven capsules, which I put into my bottle.

  “Now, you be careful,” he warned. “It’s easy to OD on them things.”

  I nodded and thanked him.

  When I got back to the staff lounge, it was deserted. I put my coat back in the locker and straightened my uniform, taking off my apron and hanging it up next to the coat. I put my white scarf around my neck and over my head, like a hijab. Then I went to the linen storage closet, where I took a stack of bath towels.

  Using my housekeeping key card, I called the service elevator. When it came, I got on and punched the “penthouse” button. The trip took about a minute, and as the elevator doors opened, I realized I hadn’t been up here since my introductory tour when I was first hired.

  Two doors opened off the small lobby. One said Utilities. The other said Service Entrance.

  Two security cameras winked in the corners. I kept my head down.

  When I swiped my key card on the service entrance, the little green light came on. I turned the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped into a dark hallway with a tiled floor. I felt my way along the wall and shoved open the unlocked door at the end of the hall.

  It opened into a kitchenette. Beyond that was the reception room of the Presidential Suite. Through the tall windows, I could see the lowering sun outlining the skyline of the city.

  I stepped out into the suite.

  Fresh flower arrangements perfumed the air. Delicate white figurines touched with gold accents graced the tables. Plush cushions lay scattered over sofas and easy chairs.

  I closed my eyes for a moment. Peter’s barren room would fit in a corner of the dining room.

  The bar stood against the far wall. I went over and scanned the bottles. Most were on shelves on the wall, but a few sat on the bar.

  One was a bottle of Irish cream whiskey, about a third full.

  A marble board held several kinds of cheese.

  I moved the cheese onto the wooden bar surface. Then I got out my pharmacy bottle and emptied the contents onto the hard marble.

  Using a sturdy spoon from the kitchenette and the cheese knife, I crushed all but one of the capsules. I swept the now-powdery contents into the spoon and emptied it into the whiskey bottle, screwed the top on tight, and shook it, hard.

  I returned the remaining capsule to my pharmacy bottle, put the cheese back on the board, and scanned the bar. As far as I could tell, it looked just like it had when I’d first seen it.

  Picking up the towels, I carried them to one of the bathrooms and arranged them on the sink counter. The marble floor gleamed underfoot. I stepped back into the reception room. No luxury or comfort had been overlooked.

  What had Harrison Detwilder ever done to deserve living like this?

  Three years ago, he’d been Peter’s psychiatrist.

  A month into the school year, on a slew of new meds, Peter started acting weird. Weird even for Peter. I talked to the counselor at school, who assured me that the psychiatrist would look into it and give me a call. The meds could take a while to work, and I needed to be patient.

  By the time I got in touch with Dr. Detwilder, it was too late.

  Peter had left me a suicide note and jumped from the top of our apartment building.

  He didn’t die, but he might have been better off if he had.

  I certainly would have been better off. Then I could have made a decision on whether I wanted to go on with my sorry life or join him in death.

  But now he needed me.

  When I called from the hospital, Dr. Detwilder didn’t return my calls. When I finally managed to get him on the phone, he made some sympathetic sounds, but he didn’t seem very upset.

  “Peter almost killed himself,” I said, trying to choke back the tears.

  “But he didn’t, did he?”

  “No. He’s in the hospital. There’s permanent brain damage. They can’t tell me exactly how much.”

  “I’m afraid this can be an uncommon side effect of the medication,” Dr. Detwilder said. “Suicide ideation in the first few weeks after beginning to take it. It’s rare for someone to follow through with suicide attempts, though.”

  “Peter did.”

  “Yes. Well, I’m sorry. But at least he wasn’t successful at it.”

  Dr. Detwilder made a few more vapid statements and hung up.

  He just didn’t care.

  I took one last glance to make sure everything in the suite looked all right.

  They’d throw out the opened bottle if Dr. Detwilder didn’t finish it or take it with him. So I could be pretty sure no one else would drink any of it.

  I left through the service entrance and used my key card to call the elevator. Once again, I kept my head down.

  The white scarf would have to go. I’d throw it in a dumpster on my way to the nursing home. And buy a new scarf. Not a flamboyant one, maybe beige. With some kind of pattern on it, so it would look different from the one on the surveillance video.

  The elevator came and I got on it.

  Dr. Detwilder hadn’t cared what happened to Peter. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t care what happened to Dr. Detwilder. But this was the closest I could come to replicating what he’d done to Peter.

  Would Dr. Detwilder drink the Irish whiskey tonight? I had no way of knowing.

  If he did drink it, maybe the overdose would make him sick. Or maybe it would kill him.

  Or maybe, just maybe, he’d end up sitting in a wheelchair in a nursing home, staring vacantly at nothing while someone deposited tiny spoonfuls of applesauce into his slack mouth.

  I could always hope.

  NOT FORGOTTEN, by L.C. Tyler

  So, what’s it to be? Comedy or tr
agedy? I can write both—comedy or tragedy as you please, my lords and ladies—but mainly I write historical crime novels. So does Jeremy Stone, with whom I am now talking, in a casual way, him leaning against a door frame, me drinking coffee from a paper cup, while the crowd mills round us, as one does and as they do at conventions.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” I ask.

  “Dear lady,” Jeremy says, because that is how he clearly believes women like to be addressed and it saves him the considerable effort of remembering our names. “Dear lady, how could I not know who you are? You are one of this year’s highlighted authors. It was in the publicity materials: the organizers were delighted to inform us that Emma Littlewood will be present and that she will be interviewed by Barry Forshaw, no less. How could I not know you?”

  Jeremy does not mention, because I cannot be unaware of the fact, that he is the Guest of Honor at this year’s convention. He has been a guest of honor at almost every crime writing conference in Britain and America, and even India, though for some reason not France. I have no idea why not France. Now he is the Guest of Honor here. Conference organizers all over the English-speaking world, when searching for a guest of honor, must ask each other, “Have we ever invited Jeremy to do it?” And the reply comes back, “Of course. He was Guest of Honor ten years ago.” Or “God, no. We really must invite him this year. Does anyone have his e-mail?” Nobody ever asks, “Who is Jeremy?” or “What’s Jeremy’s last name?” Jeremy has reached the stage where a second name is superfluous. He is Jeremy.

  I, by the way, have never been Guest of Honor anywhere. “Highlighted Guest Author” is actually punching above my weight. I’m a bit midlist, if you see what I mean. I’ve written quite a few books and the dedicated mystery fans know me, but I don’t trouble the best-seller charts. Maybe one day. And in the meantime...

  “But do you remember me?” I ask.

  Jeremy looks at me oddly. Hasn’t he just answered that question?

  I take pity on him. “What are you writing now?” I say.

  “Ah,” he says with a smile. “That, dear lady, is a very good question. A very good question indeed.”

  So, he does not remember me. But I remember Jeremy.

  * * * *

  I was twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? Some years ago, anyway. Many gallons of literary water have passed under the bridge in the meantime. I had just published my first novel. Jeremy was then in the first flush of his fame, being midway through his original and, to be brutally honest, only really successful crime series. He was a Featured Guest Author (only one down from Guest of Honor) at this very convention. I had never attended a convention of any sort before. I was excited and nervous in equal measure when contemplating my first public appearance as a published author. And I was pleased to discover that Jeremy Stone (he still needed a surname then) was to chair the panel I was on. Having no idea what to expect, I e-mailed him, enquiring what questions he would ask. He replied that he never revealed such things in advance—it was better, he thought, to keep authors on their toes—but we would have a chance to discuss topics in the Green Room beforehand. I really shouldn’t fret too much—it was just a matter of him asking questions and us recounting our usual anecdotes.

  I had no anecdotes, usual or otherwise. Nobody had ever assumed I might have anecdotes. In the months leading up to the convention, I tried to come up with a few—things that were illustrative of the theme of our panel: Plackets and Periwigs—Getting the Historical Detail Right. I thought maybe I had produced some good ones. Jeremy was a known raconteur. The standard would be high.

  In the Green Room, just before the panel, Jeremy chatted with the other three panelists, who were old mates and had appeared with him before. Two had been at Cambridge with him—he’d rowed in the same boat at something they referred to as the May Bumps. I never found out exactly what the May Bumps were. My requests for more information about what the panel was to be about were met with gracious promises that he would come to that in a bit. He never did. Jeremy carried on with a story about how Fitzwilliam had bumped Lady Margaret in the Long Reach, whoever she was and whatever they were all doing there in the first place. It all sounded a bit sordid, and I honestly didn’t like to ask.

  Later, with my heart pounding, he led us to the panel room, up onto the platform, and sat us down, me at the far end of the table, farthest from him. I sometimes write about people who are about to be guillotined or burned at the stake—it happened a lot during the periods that I specialize in. You pretty much can’t avoid pain of one sort or another if you do Early Modern. I try to convey how the characters must have felt in the run-up to that sort of event. Did they hope they would die bravely? Or did they just hope it would be quick? It’s not always easy to get into their sixteenth- or eighteenth-century minds, but after that panel I knew much better what they had been through, tied to the stake with the flames licking round them. After that panel, I knew first hand that there was a point at which death comes as a blessed relief.

  Jeremy started by announcing that this was the least distinguished panel he’d ever chaired. That drew both laughter and applause. Everyone knew Jeremy, even then; whatever would he say next? Never a dull moment with Jeremy Stone in the chair. He proceeded to introduce the panelists one by one, inviting them to say a few words about their work. I say “them” because he never quite got to me. I’d prepared carefully for this question, but my heart rate still increased noticeably as he worked his way along the table. He finished with my right-hand neighbor and I took a deep breath, my first carefully crafted anecdote on my lips, but Jeremy had become fascinated with a story of his own that he was telling, and then with something that the story reminded him of. In the end I went wholly unintroduced.

  When he asked the next question, the audience still had no idea who I was, and one or two of them looked at me curiously, as if I were some witless interloper who had strayed into the wrong room and whom Jeremy was too polite, too damned charming, to eject. As I sat there, I wasn’t sure that the audience wasn’t absolutely right. The invitation had been issued in error. My preparation had been utterly in vain. Then, halfway through somebody else’s response, Jeremy looked at me, held up his hand and said, “This is Emma, by the way. She hasn’t said a lot yet. Come on, Emma, these people have paid good money to listen to us. Say hello at least.”

  The audience laughed, as they did at most things Jeremy said.

  “Hi,” I said nervously, to nobody in particular. I may have waved. I prefer not to remember.

  “Hi?” Jeremy said. “You’ll have to do a bit better than that. Is there anything else you’d like to say, dear lady?”

  “Which question am I answering?” I mumbled. “The first or the second?”

  “Whichever you prefer,” Jeremy said. “We’re very informal here.”

  More laughter from the audience. I was suddenly the focus of attention. I must have looked like a startled deer.

  “So, what was the second question?” I asked hoarsely. I made a grab for my water bottle and sent it flying. I was relieved to see it land harmlessly just short of the front row. But I could have used some of that water.

  The audience was now ecstatic. Good old Jeremy. Never ever a dull moment.

  “We’ll come back to Emma when she’s a little more on the ball,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m greatly looking forward to that moment.”

  I think he did—ask me further questions, I mean. After that start, I never was on the ball. Every answer I gave seemed slow and trite. I stuttered, forgot where I was; my answers tailed off into a vast amorphous void that only I had access to. I seriously contemplated sliding under the table and out of view. I’m not sure why I didn’t. It would have got a laugh at least. Comedy and tragedy often go hand in hand.

  That night, in an obscure corner of the convention hotel bar, my agent said, “Jeremy Stone was totally out of order. Since you were a debut
panelist, he should have gone out of his way to make you feel at ease—not used you as a butt for his cheap jokes. Wait until your next panel, Emma—not all chairs are like that. Fortunately.”

  “I’m never doing a panel again,” I said, draining my fourth gin and tonic. “Never, ever. I would rather slit my own throat with this swizzle stick. I’m useless. I’ve probably just lost any fans I ever had in the audience. Just bury me over there under that stained bit of carpet.”

  “You’re not useless, Emma,” my agent said. “You’re actually very funny and have lots of interesting things to say. It’s simply that Jeremy Stone is a bastard. Thinking about it rationally, he deserves to die.”

  Thus it was we swore a solemn oath on one or two things that we held sacred that, at the first convenient opportunity, we would murder Jeremy Stone and then dance on his grave. After that we went off to our respective beds. I went to sleep, woke up, had a shower, had breakfast, and, in the months and years to come, I completely forgot that that was what we had agreed to do.

  * * * *

  “So,” I say to Jeremy, “what is the plot of this new novel of yours?”

  Jeremy smiles. “That, dear lady, is a very well-kept secret. It is, you might say, the novel that I shall be remembered for. It is innovative and springs such a surprise on the reader in the last chapter that they will never forget it. Think, if you will, of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Or perhaps of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The reader is persuaded that certain things are so, then, at the last moment, their little world is turned upside down. They gasp with amazement because it is not just that the denouement is possible—it is the only possible outcome. It is the simplicity of the twist that I am most pleased with—it is as though the reader had been looking at the plot in the mirror. Suddenly the image is reversed and things that make no sense before come sharply into focus.”

  “Looking at things in a mirror doesn’t make them come into focus,” I say. “It just turns them ‘round.”

  Jeremy smiles. “I spoke metaphorically, dear lady. It was simply a picturesque turn of phrase using a suitable analogy.”