by Mark McCrum
Contents
Cover
Titles by Mark McCrum
Praise
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Mold-On-Wold Literary Festival: In partnership with The Sentinel
Saturday 19th July
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Sunday 20th July
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Monday 21st July
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tuesday 22nd July
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Afterword: Wednesday 23rd July
The whole festival …
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Enjoy The Festival Murders? …
Titles by Mark McCrum
Non-fiction
HAPPY SAD LAND
NO WORRIES
THE CRAIC
CASTAWAY
ROBBIE WILLIAMS: SOMEBODY SOMEDAY
GOING DUTCH IN BEIJING
WALKING WITH THE WOUNDED
“A marvellous set of unsavoury suspects … good, nasty fun with a ring of truth”
Mail on Sunday ‘Thriller of the Week’
“A rollicking read”
London Evening Standard
“A wicked send-up of literary festivals … the eventual winding up of the mystery is ingenious”
Suzi Feay, Independent
“An old-fashioned murder mystery with neatly disguised clues … and a satisfyingly unexpected culprit”
Literary Review
“An informative and delightful gem for international travellers”
Library Journal on Going Dutch in Beijing
CHOSEN FOR INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY’S ‘ALTERNATIVE 2014 BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST’
THE FESTIVAL MURDERS
Mark McCrum
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Prospero Books
under the title FEST.
This eBook edition first published in 2018 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2014 & 2018 by Mark McCrum.
The right of Mark McCrum to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0153-9 (e-pub)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
For Jo,
with love
MOLD-ON-WOLD LITERARY FESTIVAL
In partnership with The Sentinel
Saturday 19th July
3 pm. Big Tent. £10
DAN DICKSON.
The iconic author of Dispatches from the E Zone and The Curious and the Damned reads from his new novel Otherworld and discusses the challenge of creating a convincing futuristic dystopia.
Sunday 20th July
3 pm. Big Tent. £10
The Sentinel Keynote Talk
BRYCE PEABODY.
CELEBRITY AND HYPOCRISY.
The legendary literary critic launches The Poisoned Pen, a new collection of his dazzling reviews. He reflects on our obsession with celebrity and considers how ill-founded these public myths often are.
3 pm. School Room. £10
VIRGINIA WESTCOTT
The author of Entente Cordiale, A Fine Imagined Thing and The Useless Boyfriends Club reads from her latest novel, Sickle Moon Rises, and discusses the role of romance in contemporary fiction.
3 pm. Small Tent. £10
FRANCIS MEADOWES.
THE AMATEUR SLEUTH.
The creator of the acclaimed George Braithwaite series of crime novels considers the history of the amateur detective in crime fiction, from early beginnings in The Thousand and One Nights to TV’s Jonathan Creek and Jackson Brodie.
Monday 21st July
2 pm. Big Tent. £10
FAMILY MAN
Everyone’s favourite countryman and smallholder, Jonty Smallbone, talks frankly about the ups and downs of life on Peewit Farm, the joys and challenges of bringing up three kids in a rural setting, and the problems he faced as he researched and wrote his latest book, Wild Stuff.
6 pm. Middle Tent. £10
TO HELMAND AND BACK
Ex-Royal Marines officer Marvin Blake discusses the experiences that lie behind his extraordinary memoir of a life in combat, culminating in his being seriously wounded in a firefight with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He is joined by ghostwriter Anna Copeland, in an unusually frank discussion of how his real-life adventures were brought to the page.
SATURDAY 19TH JULY
ONE
In the bathroom of Room 29, Bryce Peabody leant in close to the mirror above the sink. Through steamed-up glasses, he was working on the hairs in his nose and ears with the electric wand that his new girlfriend Priya Kaur had bought him for his birthday. It had been a shocking moment when he’d realised that he could no longer see to trim his nasal hair without his specs – if that wasn’t a definition of middle age, what was? But Priya, rather than pronounce him ‘past it’, as his ex Scarlett would have done, had gone onto the Net and found him this wonderful tool, which buzzed and whizzed around his nostrils and lobes and rendered him in a minute as clean-cut (almost!) as some far more appropriate squeeze of her own age.
There was a light double knock at the door of the main room.
‘I’ll get it!’ Priya called.
As a man who had passed the grim milestone of fifty, you came in for a lot of flak for dating a woman in her twenties. But it wasn’t all about physical attractiveness, as people endlessly implied. Part of it was the sheer energy and freshness of outlook. Could he imagine Scarlett – or Anna even – leaping out of bed to meet room service?
There was a loud crash from next door.
‘Oh no, sorry. Now I must clear …’
Glancing through, Bryce saw that the
skinny, dark-haired waitress who had brought in the breakfast tray had spilt the coffee.
‘It’s OK, love, we can mop it up.’
Bryce smiled as he heard Priya’s forgiving laughter mixed with apologetic Eastern European murmurs. Compare and contrast what Scarlett would have done to the poor creature. Minced her.
There were several reasons why Bryce had decided to eat in this morning. For one, this was a very nice room. The festival had done him proud, getting him, he reckoned, the best in the hotel – and where did you stay for Mold if not at the White Hart? Room 29 had its own staircase, a four-poster bed, and a view down the sloping garden to the woodland at the bottom; beyond that, the river glinted through the trees. For two, he loved the rare ritual of breakfast in bed, the decadence of munching bacon and sausage while lying back on soft pillows, the newspaper sections spread out before you. For three, when those pages contained a coruscating – and, one hoped, a defining – attack on one of the country’s most irritating writers, it was fun to be able to savour one’s prose in private. Having done so, to toss it across to one’s youthful paramour with a casual ‘This might amuse you.’
Of course it would amuse her! Bryce was under no illusions about that. Nor, really, about what Priya saw in him. He was the literary world’s number one hatchet man, the guy to whom all the others looked to set the agenda. Bryce knew full well the impact his attack on Dan Dickson would have. When he emerged later, into the festival crowds, he would be the centre of attention. Mold wasn’t a pop concert, so no one would mob him. But they would all notice him, and mutter about him, all those earnest nobodies who bought the Sentinel on a daily basis, who lapped up its liberal, left-leaning views like mother’s milk. He was their naughty chancer, the guy that showed you didn’t have to be dull to be right-on. Tomorrow afternoon they would throng to the Big Tent, longing for more. And boy were they going to get it. Bryce couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought of that great big stick of dynamite lying at the bottom of his briefcase. Celebrity and Hypocrisy. Bring it on!
As Bryce strolled back in from the en suite, Priya was carrying the trays across from the table.
‘That scatty cow spilt half the coffee,’ she said, in the Midlands accent that Bryce still found strangely sexy. ‘But it’s OK, there’s enough left for both of us.’ Priya nodded at the Sentinel, which had mercifully escaped the mess. ‘You got anything in this morning, love?’
‘A little bombshell, though I say it myself.’
‘Let me see.’
‘Shall we eat our brekky first? It would be a shame to let it go cold.’
They climbed between the sheets together, lifted up the steel plate covers and got stuck in.
‘Well, well,’ said Bryce, examining the spread. ‘White pudding. You don’t often see that outside the Gaelic fringe.’
‘It looks disgusting.’
‘Taste it. If you don’t like it, I’ll have it.’
She did so. ‘Yuk,’ she said, making an exaggerated grimace.
Bryce laughed. ‘Famous Scottish delicacy. Oatmeal and pork fat.’
‘Should you really be eating that, Bryce? It must be a hundred per cent bad for you.’
‘Too late,’ he grinned, popping the gleaming slice into his mouth with the expression of a naughty child.
‘You silly man! This breakfast really is a heart attack on a plate. Why couldn’t you have had the Loch Fyne haddock?’
‘I expect I’ll live a few more years yet. Whatever I choose to eat.’ Bryce forked up a rasher of bacon and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘For such a deeply rural bit of England,’ he said, ‘this is an exceedingly good hotel.’
‘Didn’t you stay here before? Oh no, I suppose you didn’t.’
The subject was closed before it was even opened. For festivals gone by, Bryce had of course stayed at the cottage. This year, for the first time, Scarlett was out there with the twins on her own; this year there would be no sneaky texts from Anna, popping up at awkward times on his mobile, requiring an answer, or at least the practised lie that he was ‘out of range’. At one level, he was sad, about the awful mess he had left behind; at another he felt so much better. This was the place he was in now, this was the future. Who was to say that he and Priya wouldn’t be at the cottage themselves next year?
Tray pushed aside, Bryce sank back on the pillow, savouring the last irresistible flakes of his pain au chocolat and keeping a weather eye on his undeniably gorgeous girlfriend as she read his piece. Anna and Scarlett, Anna and Scarlett, he mused, as those penetrating blue eyes of his roamed from the floral-patterned satin curtains of the four-poster and out round the room. How had he let it all go on for so long? He didn’t feel so bad about Scarlett, they had been falling apart for years, it was a relief to have finally achieved closure. But abandoning Anna so abruptly had been cruel; especially as she was now forty-three and had been banging on forever about wanting a baby.
‘Very mean and very funny,’ said Priya, tossing down the Review section and snuggling in to his side. ‘Just like you, my love.’
‘You didn’t laugh much.’
‘More smileworthy than laughworthy.’
‘Silly tosser’s had it coming.’
‘Let’s hope he doesn’t turn up at your talk and make a scene.’
Bryce chuckled. ‘All the better if he does. Anyway, this is just the starter. By the time the punters leave the Big Tent tomorrow, they’ll have forgotten all about the preposterous Dickson.’
‘Really? Who’s next?’
‘Never you mind.’
‘Oh go on, tell me …’
‘Got to promote my bloody book somehow.’
Priya reached out to the bedside table and opened the festival programme. ‘3 pm, Sunday 24th July, Big Tent,’ she read out loud. ‘Bryce Peabody. CELEBRITY AND HYPOCRISY. The legendary literary critic launches The Poisoned Pen, a new collection of his dazzling reviews. He reflects on our obsession with celebrity and considers how ill-founded these public myths often are.
‘Give us a clue, Brycey,’ she said, loosening her dressing gown as she stroked the grey stubble on his chin with those always-arousing fingers of hers. ‘I’m assuming a huge star.’
‘Are you now?’ he gasped, rolling in to her. ‘Make it worth my while and maybe I’ll tell you.’
TWO
Five miles out of town, at Wyveridge Hall, they rose later, having been up, some of them, till the sky had started to lighten and high above the silhouetted battlements the clouds were tinged with pink. The old mansion had about fifteen usable bedrooms and these were crammed with festival goers; in some, the youngest members of the house party, those fresh out of uni, lay ten to a floor in sleeping bags, all paying forty quid a night for the privilege. But Ranjit Richardson, their dreadlocked host, was an astute Master of Ceremonies. He liked to have a few luminaries around too, to spice things up and give his satellite scene some glamour. And they, the younger crowd joked accurately, got special treatment. If you were published, you would, for the same price, be in a room with just one other. If you were famous, you’d have private quarters.
Unusually, Ranjit was one of the first down to the kitchen this morning. It was a wonderful old room that had surely changed little since the days when the Delancey family had been waited on by a butler and a team of servants. An ancient range took up the best part of one wall. Under the mullioned window were three big stainless steel sinks. Huge saucepans, encrusted with years of black grease, hung from the ceiling. Off to one side was a pantry, with shelves of slate and a musty smell of old vegetables.
‘See what your rival’s come up with,’ Ranjit said, yawning as he passed the Sentinel Review section across to the travel writer Conal O’Hare, who sat the other side of the big, wooden-topped kitchen table, eating a bacon sandwich of his own design – four slices of well-crisped bacon, a slew of grainy French mustard, two hunks of wholemeal brown bread.
‘He’s not my feckin’ rival,’ Conal replied, tugging with his spare hand at one of
the dark curls that straggled down below his left ear. None the less he took the paper. Still munching on his sarnie, he speed-read Bryce’s review.
‘Such a twat,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘Dan Dickson’s not that bad. And what has Bryce-effing-Peabody ever written that’s worth reading?’
‘A lot of brilliant reviews,’ said Ranjit. ‘One has to say.’
‘Does one? “Have to say”?’ Conal put on the exaggerated posh English accent that he’d been using to tease his friend since the day they had first met, at Trinity College, Dublin, a decade and a half before. ‘And what else?’ he continued, back in his well-maintained brogue. ‘Nothing. Except a crappy little biog of some barely remembered critic of the last century.’
‘Is that fair? Did you actually read the Leavis book?’
‘I did, as it happens. I went to the launch party. You forget, we used to be friends before the bastard betrayed me. Insofar as that tosser has any real friends.’
‘Don’t get obsessed, mate. What happened wasn’t entirely his fault.’
‘That’s not what I heard,’ Conal replied. ‘Dinners, flowers, presents. When he knew she was involved with me. I mean, that’s the thing that gets me.’
‘All’s fair in love and war. You’d have done the same.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Ranjit. ‘Of course you would.’
‘He’s twenty years older than her. Why can’t he pick on someone his own age?’
‘He’s at the top of his game, he can have who he wants.’
‘He already has a wife. And a girlfriend. It’s just gross.’
‘He doesn’t have a wife, actually. Bryce and Scarlett were never married.’
‘Whatever. They’ve got kids. That’s as good as married.’
‘Not in the eyes of the law.’
‘Screw the eyes of the law. As far as I’m concerned he’s a professional c-u-next-Tuesday, and if I could cause him serious harm I would.’
Ranjit laughed. ‘Oh yes, whatever happened to your “public revenge”?’
