by Helen Smith
“Ladies and gentlemen,” called Morgana from the table at the front. “I think we might begin, don’t you?”
There was a shushing and settling in their seats as everyone got ready to listen to what she had to say. The shushing was more for the enjoyment of doing it than for any need to quiet a rowdy crowd. Attendance at the press conference was sparse. Four rows of chairs had been set up facing a table at the front, but there were plenty of places available—apparently there were hotter tickets on a Saturday night in Central London.
Morgana Blakely stood behind the table, looking nervous but brave, like a shy celebrity who has been asked to take part in a game show in aid of charity. She had accessorized a flouncy, knee-length black dress with a pale-pink cashmere shrug and a jaunty pink fez. She caught Emily’s eye and smiled, but there was no sunshine in the smile—it was more of a wince. Emily and Dr. Muriel sat in the second row. Zena sat next to Cerys in the first row. Trevor was there, but Zena had taken care to place herself some distance from him, as if there was impropriety in sitting next to a reporter at a press conference.
Emily leaned back in her seat to see who else was there. Nik Kovacevic was standing by the door at the back of the room, with his hands folded in front of him. Maggie was sitting in the fourth row at the back, handbag on her lap. There was no sign of Teena, Polly or Archie.
Members of the public were not supposed to have been admitted, but the people who were here for the vigil had been allowed in. They were being indulged. Their “grief” was their trump card, even though it was a manufactured grief for someone they hadn’t known.
“These are the sort of people,” whispered Dr. Muriel, a little too loudly, “for whom TV talent shows and celebrity Twitter feeds have more meaning than events in their own lives. They have forgotten how to live for themselves. They have forgotten how to interact with others.”
Emily agreed. There were several middle-aged people in the audience who reminded her of women she had met in temp jobs over the years, of whom colleagues had whispered without irony or censure, “She’s never been the same since Diana died.” In Emily’s experience, people like this overlooked the small sputtering victories and disappointments that weaved in and out of their daily lives, which were apparently meaningless to them. Though they were ordinary themselves, they rejected anything around them that was ordinary. There had to be a divorce, a death, a rags-to-riches story with a narrative arc, to deserve their attention and empathy. If it hadn’t been written by a storyliner on a soap opera or a reality TV show, they didn’t understand its relevance to their lives.
She whispered to Dr. Muriel, “I think they’re expecting to listen to Morgana’s speech and make simple choices—yes/no; good/bad; naughty/nice; winner/loser; forgiven/condemned.”
“Ah! Like a live studio audience for the press conference?”
“Shush!” someone said from the front row.
Morgana began, “I would like to welcome you to the Coram Hotel on behalf of the Romance Writers of Great Britain. I should begin by explaining to newcomers and members of the press that we are in no way affiliated to the Romance Authors of America, the Romance Writers of the United Kingdom, the Romance Novelists’ Association…”
Emily looked around, trying to identify the members of the press among the audience. There were two people with notebooks open on their laps. One was Trevor, who looked over at Zena every now and then, leading Emily to deduce correctly that he was her contact from the Ham & High. The other was a middle-aged white man wearing heavy-rimmed glasses with thick lenses. Neither man wrote anything down as Morgana droned on about the RWGB and the purpose of the annual conference: “For a few wonderful days, we bring romance writers together from all over the country to celebrate our art, our passion: writing. For a few days, we are not alone at our computers: we can laugh and share with one another the joy we get from writing stories that make the heart sing.”
Dr. Muriel nudged Emily and whispered, “Those people from the blogathon room? What would you call them?”
“Vigilants?” suggested Emily.
“Looking at the expressions on their faces, the vigilants seem to have certain strong feelings: Winnie did not deserve to die, and You are the bad people who brought her here.”
“So long as Morgana keeps her speech simple and easy to follow, some of them might change their minds.”
But Emily was worried for Morgana. She was going to try and charm everyone. She would use rhetorical devices to appeal for sympathy. She would be subtle and low-key. She would be self-deprecating and apologetic. Any confession of guilt would be taken at face value, as a confession of guilt rather than a polite shouldering of the burden of responsibility as host of this conference. Emily watched a lot of television, and she enjoyed reality programs. She knew that Morgana needed to break down and cry—a really wailing, mucusy cry would be best—and allow herself to be built up again by the intervention of a third party if she wanted the sympathy of the bystanders in the audience. Morgana might be able to appeal to the members of the press with her fancy speech but, so far as Emily could see, there were only two of them, and Trevor would be looking for a local story, and the other chap…he might not even be a member of the press. He could be sitting there waiting for inspiration to write a haiku in his notebook for all Emily knew.
Morgana said, “I’d like to read an excerpt from a piece of Winnie’s writing that will give an insight into what a special woman she was.” Everyone looked disappointed. Not knowing that they’d have preferred it if she’d tossed aside the paper she was reading from and started to cry, Morgana looked perplexed but carried on. This was about Winnie, right? This was a tribute?
Emily knew Morgana wanted to say the right thing. She still hadn’t understood that it wasn’t about Winnie. She was on trial. Nobody cared what she said, they cared how she said it. Dignity and composure shown by a woman in the aftermath of a tragedy was usually interpreted as a sign of guilt. If they had been furnished with a piece of apparatus with voting buttons, Emily thought that several of the vigilants would have pressed the guilty button by now.
“Dear Winnie was a member of our family…” This was better. The vigilants perked up. Families were dysfunctional and prone to shouting. They harbored secrets. Or they did on TV, anyway. This might not be too dull, after all.
The heavy wooden door at the back of the room opened and closed with a bang. Morgana paled, as if she had seen a ghost. Emily turned to see whether Nik Kovacevic would try to bar the newcomer’s way. But he was no longer at the door. Perhaps he’d decided he had better things to do than listen to platitudes.
At first Emily couldn’t place the man who came in, though she felt she recognized him from somewhere. He had a brick-shaped face, short, graying hair, and a neat mustache. And he had the shocked look of a man who has just encountered a moderately dangerous wild animal, though the most dangerous wild animal in Britain was a badger, and there were precious few of them in Bloomsbury.
Then Emily realized where she knew the man from: she had seen his photo on Winnie’s tribute page. Though Winnie herself, like many women, was thinner in some photos, plumper in others, and had experimented with a variety of hairstyles, Des Kraster looked almost exactly the same in real life as he did in his wedding photo, though his hair was now slightly grayer.
Emily looked at Morgana and saw that she recognized him, too. As Des found a seat in the fourth row, blinking and breathing unevenly, Emily saw that the poor man was trying not to cry. This had the effect of making her eyes fill up with tears. Looking around, she could see that others were similarly affected. Tears are even more infectious than yawns or smiles when a man is trying not to cry in a room full of women.
Standing behind the table at the front of the room, Morgana made her hand into a fist and brought it in front of her mouth, but she was unable to stifle the mewling sound that came from it. Her nose ran, and tears ran from her eyes.
The strangers in the room saw it, and they forgave her.
Chapter Twelve
PANDEMONIUM
Des looked around at the rather lovely meeting room and wondered about the people who had gathered—so he understood—to say something about his wife’s death. It was weird to think of all these famous novelists sitting here ready to speak up for Winnie (Des had no reason to think that the audience comprised anyone else, and had been somewhat misled about the purpose of the press conference by the Reception staff at the hotel, in good faith, since they had little enough idea why it had been arranged themselves).
Des wouldn’t have been able to say with any truthfulness that he had dreamed of visiting London with Winnie—he’d rather have gone to Las Vegas any day of the week. And it was no man’s dream to travel anywhere at short notice to make arrangements to repatriate his wife’s body. But Des had been touched to learn, as he checked in to the hotel around half an hour ago, that the room he would be staying in had been paid for by the committee of RWGB. He felt kindly toward this classy-sounding lady in her pink furry outfit standing at the front of the Captain Thomas Coram room with snot dripping out of her nose, not realizing that he was simply benefitting from the Coram Hotel’s rather draconian cancellation policy, having been shown to the bedroom that had been reserved for Winnie’s stay.
Des was exhausted. He noticed the weepy eyes of some of the audience members turned toward him and guessed they recognized him from the wedding photograph on the tribute site, which he had seen. He shrank from the attention. He had no way of knowing that the glamour these people associated with the recently bereaved made it impossible for them to resist staring at him. He hoped that something might happen to get them all to look elsewhere. He got his wish.
It happened like this. First of all, from somewhere outside, there was a prolonged squawking sort of a sound. No one noticed it above the honking of traffic until it drew nearer and got louder: the thick brick walls of the hotel had been built to keep the outside out. But then the windows briefly darkened as a flying object passed by on its downward trajectory. Screams and shouts of horror came from three smokers standing by the railings outside the Captain Thomas Coram room. Passersby stopped in the street to look. The members of the audience at the press conference stood and made for the door or the window. Pandemonium ensued.
Chapter Thirteen
PRINCESS HOITY-TOITY
There are some people who run from trouble and some who run toward it. Though it wasn’t yet clear what had happened, many people instinctively tried to run from the room, to get away from danger as quickly as possible. They feared some kind of terrorist attack. Then someone near the window shouted “Teena! It’s Teena!” and people started to gather there to look. There was no way to get to the window to see for herself, so Emily realized she had to get outside and see what was going on.
It seemed melodramatic to run—whatever had happened, had happened, and running outside wasn’t going to help. But Emily wanted to get there quickly. She couldn’t walk at a normal pace. So she scuttled. She bustled. As she walked down the steps that led up to the hotel, and saw the street outside that she had left only that morning, it seemed as if a year must have passed. The light had altered because it was now evening, and the rain had stopped, so the quality of the air was lighter and fresher, and it seemed a different place. The most different thing about it, though, was that there was a woman’s body impaled on the spikes of the ornate black railings outside the hotel. The woman was dead. The woman was Teena.
Det. Rory James was there. An ambulance arrived, siren squealing, and parked up next to the hotel with blue lights flashing. The paramedics went to work on Teena, still lying face-up on the railings. Two uniformed policemen drew up in a squad car and immediately set about trying to keep onlookers away.
Emily tried to get close to Det. James. “Polly!” she said. “Is Polly all right? Where’s Polly?”
He said, “I need you to leave now. If you recognize anyone here, take them with you.”
“What happened to Teena? Did she fall?”
“Emily, I can’t tell you anything. You need to clear the area.”
“She thought Winnie fell from the roof terrace. She went up to see.”
“Ms. Durani shouldn’t have been up there. I’ll need to talk to you later. We don’t want any more accidents. You see what happens when members of the public take it upon themselves to get involved in police investigations?”
There was no sign of Polly. Emily went back inside the hotel and dialed Polly’s mobile phone, but it went straight to voice mail. She went to the elevator and stood there waiting, feeling slightly panicky. What if something had happened to Polly?
Emily thought to herself (as she sometimes thought in moments of stress), What would Jessie do? Jessie was her golden retriever who had died of old age a few months before. The answer, of course, was that if Jessie were alive she would go and sniff round by the bins in the hope of finding a bit of leftover sausage to eat. Emily had no intention of doing that. Still, thinking about Jessie calmed her. The elevator was taking forever! She had to do something. She had to go somewhere. She went to the bins.
The stinky courtyard was so repellent to her, and yet now so familiar, that Emily was like a newly married princess in a cautionary fairy tale—the hoity-toity kind of princess who returns one day to her humble childhood home and gets her comeuppance after complaining about the smell in the pigsty. She would have found it funny to think of her visit to the bins as her “homecoming” if she wasn’t agitated and slightly in shock. Two deaths and an attempted poisoning—what next? She had a horrible image of Polly and Teena tussling, of the two of them falling, one in one direction, one in the other. She hardly dared imagine what she might find here. Would M. Loman and Henri the porter be heaving Polly’s body, in a black plastic sack, out of a yellow or red bin and putting it over the wall?
But no, there she was, alive and well, holding the long stub of a menthol cigarette and looking reasonably cheerful, which suggested she had no idea what had happened. “I know, I know! I shouldn’t be smoking. Don’t judge me. I’ve been waiting here for ages for Teena.”
“Teena…” said Emily. She cleared her throat unnecessarily. “Teena…”
“She’s gone up to the roof in one of those slow, old elevators.”
“And she’s come down again, a great deal faster.”
“Emily?” Polly could see there was something wrong; that Emily was being a bit peculiar. “Are you OK?”
“Teena’s dead!”
Polly looked up toward the roof terrace as if she doubted Emily’s word, and expected to be able to point out Teena to her. Emily looked as well. They saw a uniformed police officer come to the fence and look down.
“But how?” said Polly. “What on earth—someone’s gone up there? They attacked her? Or…no, you said she’d come back down again.”
“She fell. She fell onto the railings at the front. I saw her. It was horrible.”
“Ugh, you look as though you’re going to faint. Let’s go inside.” Polly put the stub of her cigarette carefully into her handbag. “I can’t believe…God, it’s terrible. Teena was with me just a little while ago, right as rain.”
Emily thought, maybe it wasn’t Teena! Maybe there had been a mistake and everything was OK? And then she knew she was being irrational, and she was in shock. She had seen Teena’s dead body right there in front of her, only five minutes ago.
“What about the press conference?” asked Polly as they reached the bar. Morgana, Dr. Muriel, Cerys and Zena were already in there, drinking white wine as if it was going out of fashion. Archie was at the mirrored bar, watching himself trying to order a cranberry juice.
“What?” said Emily.
“The press conference. Did they have to call it off?”
“Everyone pretty much lost interest when Teena’s body sailed past the window and impaled on the railings outside. I don’t think we’ll be getting a write-up in the Ham & High.”
“Darlings,” Mor
gana called. “Come and have some wine. Were you up there with her, Polly? Did you see what happened?”
“She went up to the roof terrace. I went to the loo, had a bit of a tidy-up.” Polly had indeed scrubbed the purple and pink off her face and lips. “Then I was supposed to wait for her by the bins—you know that courtyard near the kitchen? She had this theory that Winnie’s body had landed there, and it had been moved. She was going to call down, I was supposed to look up. It was all nonsense, really, or so I supposed. I mean, no one knows what happened to Winnie except the person who killed her.” Polly paused then. The other members of the committee were nodding, taking it all in. “I couldn’t understand why Teena was suddenly the expert investigator. It’s my fault, isn’t it? For getting her to try and imagine some event in her life and see it from another side. I didn’t think she’d choose to write about Winnie’s death. Anyway, I went outside. I kept looking up, I didn’t see her. And then Emily came and found me.”
“It’s a blessed relief you didn’t see her fall, love,” said Cerys.
“I must have just missed it. It took rather a long time to scrub that lot off my face.”
“I think a vision like that would stay with me for the rest of my life. Haunt my nightmares.” Cerys shook her head sadly.
“Aye, it would.” Archie had a blurry look in his eyes, as if he couldn’t shake off his nightmares even when he was awake…
“Babes.” Zena’s imagination had taken flight, she could feel it fluttering in her head. “You’re not saying Teena killed Winnie?”
“No, why would she do that?”
“What if she pushed her off, yeah, and then she was going to lure you up there and push you off?”
“Darling, you have such a wonderful imagination. It’s what makes you such a fine novelist. But Teena didn’t strike me as flamboyant enough to commit murder. Or strong enough.” Morgana glugged her wine. “And anyway why would anyone want to kill Polly? That’s just absurd.”
