The Festival Murders

by Mark McCrum

  ‘OK if I join you?’ he asked the other pair who were sharing. Even as he noted the milky-blue eyes of the woman with tightly curled dark hair, and the muscly black guy in the yellow T-shirt beside her, his stump neatly wrapped in a tailored sleeve, he realised that this must be Anna the rejected mistress and her new boyfriend, Marvin the Marine. What a beautiful coincidence; you really couldn’t have made it up.

  He put his bird down next to their drinks. ‘Thanks,’ he said. And then, after a few moments, ‘Bit packed today, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘They’ve had to close the bar at the White Hart, so I think a lot of people have decamped here.’

  There was another pause. Francis contemplated the dappled sunlight filtering through his pint of shandy and Anna’s adjacent ginger beer. Then, with a jolt, he noticed that Marvin’s good hand had no thumb. Just four fingers and a mini stump.

  ‘Are you staying there too?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Anna replied. ‘And we were really enjoying it. Lively bar, nice restaurant, quite funky rooms, but it’s all gone a bit spooky now … after the events of last night … which we pretty much slept through, being right at the other end of the hotel.’

  ‘Didn’t the fire alarm wake you up?’

  ‘Only briefly. You?’

  ‘I was in a room right next to the action, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh really.’

  She was as inquisitive as Francis himself. Bit by bit he fed her the key elements of the morning and his place in them, wondering if and when she would fess up to the reason for her interest. After a bit they exchanged names and Francis’s suspicions were confirmed. He shook Anna’s delicate, artistic hand and, in as natural a fashion as he could muster, Marvin’s chunkier fingers, and explained what he was doing at the festival.

  ‘Sorry to be so curious about everything,’ Anna said with a light laugh. ‘The thing is, I knew Bryce …’

  ‘Really?’

  Beside her, Marvin frowned. ‘Sweetheart,’ he began, his voice a gravelly bass with a strong Midlands accent.

  She put a hand on his good arm, which rippled with well-defined muscle. ‘It’s fine, Marv. No, the thing is,’ she went on, turning to Francis, ‘I was his girlfriend for a while.’

  ‘No wonder you’re interested …’

  She shrugged. ‘So what about all these polizei everywhere?’ she asked. ‘Do they know something we don’t?’

  ‘Since they’re not talking to anybody,’ Francis replied, ‘my guess is as good as yours. They may be erring on the side of caution. What with Bryce being the age he was and apparently healthy. Which was the case, as far as I can understand. I mean, he didn’t have any underlying conditions that you knew about, did he?’

  ‘He had high cholesterol. Of the wrong sort. That he refused to even attempt to reduce. Apart from making the occasional half-hearted jog across Hampstead Heath.’

  ‘No special diets then?’

  She laughed. ‘He used to sometimes buy that Benecol spread to put on his toast. As if that was going to make much difference to a man who ate out in restaurants all the time.’

  ‘What about drink?’

  ‘Plenty of that. Every now and then he’d have these stints of trying to give up for a month, usually in January, but then he’d get so grumpy he’d be back on it after a fortnight.’

  ‘Drugs?’ Francis asked.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ Marvin growled again.

  Anna gave him a swift, uncompromising look. It was clear she wasn’t going to be told what to do by anyone, least of all her new boyfriend.

  ‘Bryce wasn’t a spliffer, put it that way,’ she said.

  ‘Something else?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’m guessing coke.’

  Her smile gave her away. ‘He didn’t do it a lot,’ she said. ‘But he wouldn’t turn it down and yes, he did buy the occasional wrap for special occasions.’

  ‘And that was it?’

  ‘He did a bit of ecstasy in the Eighties, I believe. But he’d packed all that in by the time I met him. We had a couple of Es right at the start, but then he started worrying about his age, you know, the effect it might have on his heart.’

  ‘Fair enough. And you’d never have put him down as the suicidal type?’

  ‘Bryce? God no!’

  Francis laughed at her reaction. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Too much vanity.’

  ‘Don’t vain people ever kill themselves?’

  ‘I’m sure they do. But not here, not now. It might be a possibility if he were miles from anywhere with nobody to look after him and laugh at his jokes. But at the start of a literary festival. With a brand-new girlfriend. When he was about to give one of his talks. To a sold-out tent. I don’t think so.’

  ‘When it comes to his enemies among the literati,’ Francis asked, ‘can you seriously imagine any of them wanting to bump him off? Getting something into Private Eye would surely be easier.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Anna said, ‘there are plenty of writers who wouldn’t mind seeing Bryce dead. But no, you’re right, they’d be more likely to try and murder his reputation than murder him.’

  ‘Who were his particular enemies?’

  ‘Dan Dickson is up there. Especially after yesterday. As for the others, Bryce writes a big review every week. Many of them are negative. But that’s his schtick. I suppose the interesting thing about all this is that a literary festival is the one time where quite a few of his victims are gathered in one place. If it is murder, it’s a murderer with a sense of humour.’

  ‘And what about you? How did you feel about him?’

  ‘You think I did it!’ She laughed and glanced sideways at Marvin, whose scowl had deepened further. ‘No, I have plenty of good reasons to be cross with Bryce. But murder isn’t quite my style. I have subtler ways of operating.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘Number seventeen,’ a waitress up the garden was calling.

  The arrival of his fishcakes gave Francis an excuse to change the subject to the neutral topic of pub food: how pretentious it so often was in the countryside, and how the spread of gastropubs had all but destroyed the traditional old boozer. From there they segued on to literary festivals and their proliferation. What had begun with Hay and Cheltenham had now grown to the point where there was barely a charming rural spot left in the UK without its own little litfest.

  With each step away from a discussion of the newly deceased ex, Marv’s facial expression relaxed, until by the time they were onto festivals he was laughing out loud. Francis had realised that there was no way he was going to get anything significant out of Anna while her personal protection detail was around. If he wanted to know more, he would have to try and get her alone later.

  FOURTEEN

  An hour before his talk, at two o’clock, Francis made his way down to the main site through the big car park, where groups of festival goers loitered between talks, chattering excitedly, studying programmes or just hanging out. He passed the fluttering purple banners proclaiming 22ND MOLD-ON-WOLD LITERARY FESTIVAL and paced on through the gates into the community school which was the centre of events. It was an unworthy thought, but with the competition removed, perhaps he’d picked up a few more punters for his talk. As he hovered by the entrance to the festival administration office, no less a personage than Laetitia Humble rushed up to him.

  ‘Francis!’ she cried. She flashed him a wide, toothy smile and though she didn’t quite meet his eye, her mascara-laden lashes fluttered madly. ‘So glad you’re here,’ she gushed. ‘There’s been such a lot of interest we’ve had to move you into the Big Tent. In fact, I think you’re going to sell out. Holly,’ she called to one of the festival helpers, who was bent fetchingly over a nearby photocopier, ‘could you be a darling and check with ticketing how Francis Meadowes is doing.’

  ‘I guess Bryce …’ he began.

  ‘Poor Bryce.’ Laetitia’s face switched in an insta
nt to tragic mode. Francis remembered people saying she had once been an actor; clearly she hadn’t forgotten her skills. ‘It’s such dreadful news. We’re all in deep shock.’ Now she took his arm and smiled up at him confidingly. ‘I gather you were one of the people who found the body.’

  News travelled fast in this place. ‘Not actually found,’ he said. ‘But I was in the room just along the corridor, so I was one of the first on the scene.’

  Laetitia’s phone trilled. She glanced at the screen and did a half-roll of her eyes. ‘Sebastian Faulks. Now what does he want all of a sudden?’ She clicked it off and her gaze returned to Francis. ‘So do you think you’ll want to talk about that at all?’

  ‘Bryce?’

  ‘Yes. Finding him and …’

  ‘I wasn’t intending to.’

  ‘It’s almost certain to come up in questions. So you might feel you wanted to address it up front. I’m sure people are genuinely dying – I mean, er, gagging – to know what you think. As a crime writer. I know I am.’

  ‘Laetitia.’ Holly was back again. ‘Francis Meadowes is sold out.’

  ‘Fabuloso!’ She grinned at Francis. ‘What did I tell you? Holly, darling, this is Francis Meadowes.’

  ‘Oh. Wow. Hi.’ Holly’s eyes widened in excitement.

  ‘Hi,’ Francis replied; he could get used to this. ‘So how many is sold out?’ he asked Laetitia, as Holly scuttled back to the photocopier.

  ‘In the Big Tent. Five hundred.’

  ‘Goodness. And only yesterday …’

  ‘You had twenty or something. I know. We offered people who were booked for Bryce either a straight refund or a swapsie with you and the other three o’clock. Fortunately we’ve had quite a lot of swapsies. At least for your event.’

  ‘Remind me what the other one is?’

  ‘Virginia Westcott. She writes kind of upmarket romantic fiction. Masquerading as something more significant.’

  ‘Oh yes. I met her briefly earlier …’

  ‘Not my cuppa char, to be absolutely frank with you, but she is very pop. Anyway, so can’t wait for your thing. Gotta dash now, but you know where the Green Room is. Get yourself a coffee and chillax …’

  ‘Thanks. And perhaps I’ll see you –’

  ‘At your event. Of course you will. I’m introducing you.’ Laetitia’s phone rang again and she glanced down at the screen. ‘Andrew, darling, sorry, I was just chewing the fat-bat with Francis Meadowes … the crime writer, where’ve you been? Too busy penning those wonderful poems of yours for your own good. Anyway, he seems to think …’

  She was out of earshot. Francis cut through the busy ticketing hall where a SOLD OUT banner was now pasted over 3 PM. FRANCIS MEADOWES ON CRIME. He found the Green Room round the back: a small marquee filled with comfy armchairs and low tables. The Sunday newspapers were scattered about, and there was a sideboard with an urn of tea and a Kenco coffee machine stewing away by a stack of white china cups and saucers and a tin of assorted biscuits. Further along were plates of sandwiches and bottles of beer and wine. Francis was tempted to have another beer, but opted for tea instead. Five hundred people. He needed to be on tip-top form. There was nothing worse than getting up in front of an audience after a drink or two and realising your reactions had slowed. He had done that once, thankfully in Shetland, where the three dour rows of punters had appeared not to notice, but it wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.

  He contemplated a Sunday paper, but the headlines seemed irrelevant now. On a side table there was a pile of blue photo albums. A printed sign read MOLD FESTIVAL PHOTO ARCHIVE – NOT TO BE REMOVED. This last instruction was a bit unnecessary, as each of the books was attached to a central ring with a length of brass chain. There was one for each year, stretching back to Mold’s beginnings in the early 1990s. Francis picked 1998 and was rewarded with snaps of a much younger Laetitia, with high cheekbones and hair cut short like a pixie, arm round a genial-looking old boy with a neat white moustache. LAETITIA AND HENRY HUMBLE, FESTIVAL FOUNDERS, read the handwritten caption (though ‘LAETITIA AND’ and the ‘S’ of FOUNDERS looked as if they’d been added later). Francis flicked on, through pages of famous literary names in earlier incarnations. How young they all looked, these Ackroyds and Amises and Barneses and Bainbridges and Bakewells and Dicksons and Drabbles and Motions and Weldons and … here was an interesting one. Young Guns! Bryce Peabody, Scarlett Paton-Jones, Dan Dickson, Tilly Bardwell. The four of them were posing in front of a tumbledown stone cottage half submerged in brambles. So that pretty bob-haired blonde between Bryce and Dan was Scarlett. And Bryce and Dan had been friends …

  Enough of that! Francis had work to do. He took the cards for his talk from his bag and sank into one of the battered sofas, just along from – oh no, it was his competition! As he caught the badger-woman’s eye, she smiled.

  ‘Francis Meadowes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We meet again.’ She held out a bony-fingered hand. ‘Virginia Westcott. I think we’re on at the same time. In the slot that poor Bryce has conveniently vacated. Though by all accounts you’ve done rather better out of him than I have.’

  ‘So Laetitia was saying. Yesterday they were talking about moving me to the School Room because I’d sold so few.’ He laughed.

  ‘And now you’re in the Big Tent.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘While I’m in the School Room.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m sorry.’ Francis’s face fell. How obtuse of him not to spot that one coming.

  ‘Obviously the vulgar hordes are bound to be attracted to a crime writer who everybody now knows was first at the scene.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘The gossip at this festival is toxic. People have been tweeting about it all morning …’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not on Twit –’

  ‘Though actually, if people understood anything about this particular story, it would be me they’d be coming to see.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Bryce and I … go back.’ Virginia paused. ‘As undergraduates at Cambridge we were great friends.’

  ‘Really. I didn’t realise …’

  ‘That the old shit was that ancient. Were you going to say? It’s amazing how some of these chaps get away with it, isn’t it? No, Bryce had clocked his half-century all right. One can only hope he didn’t have any problems in the bedroom department with pretty little Preeta …’

  ‘Priya.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  There was a pause. Virginia met his eye, then flashed him a rather awkward, artificial smile.

  ‘So you met Bryce at college?’ Francis asked.

  ‘University, please. Cambridge has many colleges. But yes, in our first term. At one of those fresher meetings, you know, when you go along and wonder whether you’re going to join the Christian Sky-Diving Society or what-have-you.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Join the Christian Sky-Diving Society?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd! There wasn’t one.’

  ‘But you met Bryce?’

  ‘I did. He was very taken with me, I can tell you. I had the power at that point. For a start I was a woman, and in the late Seventies in Cambridge there were something like nine men to every one woman, so getting a girlfriend at all was quite a challenge, unless you wanted to go out with a nurse or someone from one of the secretarial colleges.’

  ‘I see …’ Francis kept his thoughts to himself; the snobbery of this remark was so throwaway it was almost unwitting.

  ‘And then I’d been to a co-ed school in North London which I’d loathed, but had somehow made me reasonably trendy. My stockings were purple, rather than blue, put it that way.’

  ‘What about Bryce?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘How “trendy” was he?’

  This made Virginia laugh. ‘Not very at all. Rather an earnest, spotty little fellow with dreadful National Health specs. H
e’d been at a grammar school in Solihull and still had a bit of that horrible Birmingham twang. Cambridge was terribly public school in those days, so poor Bryce didn’t know anyone. He was very happy to be friends with me.’

  ‘More than just friends, though?’

  ‘What an inquisitive chap you are. Yes, we did get it together. But not immediately. I was a virgin, would you believe? Very concerned about what I should do with my much-prized cherry. Just lose it in a mad one-night stand so I could be like all the others, or keep it for someone special. I liked Bryce, and I could see he was terribly clever, but I wasn’t sure that he was The One.’

  ‘So he persisted?’

  ‘He did. That’s – that was one of the things about Bryce. He was highly persistent.’

  ‘But it didn’t last?’

  ‘Evidently not. No, two years later he’d suddenly made good. He was editor of the student newspaper, Stop Press, and was starting to get known for his brutal theatre reviews. He didn’t need me any more.’

  ‘So he left you?’

  ‘For the inevitable brilliant fresher. In the summer term before my finals. I took it all much worse than I should have done. Totally messed up my exams and barely scraped a 2.2.’

  ‘When by rights you should have got a First?’

  ‘I would have done if he hadn’t messed me around so dreadfully. Promising me things he then went back on. The sad thing is I was far too young to realise how much more important a First is than a silly student love affair.’

  ‘Is it? Once I left York, nobody ever mentioned my degree.’

  ‘It’s there, though. On your CV. All the key employers take note of it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, Bryce got his First.’

  ‘Course he did. His double First. He worked bloody hard for it, don’t think he didn’t. I watched him swotting and sweating. Under that newly debonair exterior was the same old grammar school boy, who worked late and got up early and never let himself go too much.’