The Festival Murders

by Mark McCrum

  More laughter, of the relieved variety. Meadowes had saved her and people were grateful for that, whatever they thought of the question. Down the front Laetitia had spotted her moment and was up on stage thanking him with the usual festival clichés. After the extended applause, Conal got to his feet and joined the surge of people making for the exits. He had said more to Francis than he’d intended this morning, and then regretted it. Now he felt better about the whole thing.

  He headed down the front to join the Wyveridge crew. Fleur was standing to one side, looking slightly at a loss. As she spotted him, her face lit up with a wide smile.

  ‘Not got your camera out, Fleur?’

  ‘I lent it to Grace for the day. She wanted to do interviews with people about the whole Bryce thing. It must be going well, because I haven’t seen her since.’

  ‘I thought she was a newsprint journalist.’

  ‘She is. But she’s keen to break into the online side of the paper, so she was hoping to get some sample video interviews with well-known people. All of which is cool for my film.’

  ‘So you are going to do something about the festival?’

  ‘After that whole Bryce–Dickson fallout yesterday I thought it might be fun. And now of course …’

  ‘It’s morbidly fascinating.’

  She nodded. ‘D’you think I’m a terrible person?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s just, I got such a lot of good footage last night. We’ll have to see what Grace comes up with today.’

  ‘Loads, I’m sure.’ Conal shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. ‘Hey, what are you up to?’ he asked.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘Not a lot. I thought I might go to that Joe Sacco talk later.’

  ‘Definitely. That’s a must for me.’

  ‘I hoped you might be going.’ Her eyes rested on him encouragingly.

  ‘Look, d’you fancy getting out of here for a bit?’ he said. ‘Head for the hills for a couple of hours. All this high-octane literary bollocks gets quite exhausting after a while, don’t you find?’

  SIXTEEN

  Back in the Green Room Francis poured himself a large glass of white wine. It was only four thirty, but what the hell, it had been a long day. And he had done it, got through his talk in one piece, despite some outright rudeness and a couple of tricky questions. His queue at the bookshop afterwards hadn’t been enormous, but it was perfectly respectable and, he couldn’t help but notice, longer than Virginia Westcott’s. Oh god. Here was Laetitia again. Now he couldn’t keep the bloody woman away from him.

  ‘Francis. That was terrific. It’s the kind of event that makes me glad I do this festival.’

  Francis was aware of Dan Dickson, sliding quietly past. But not so quietly that Laetitia hadn’t spotted him. ‘Dan, Dan!’ she cried. ‘Do come and meet Francis Meadowes.’

  Dickson stopped in his tracks. Close up, hailed like this, the celebrated iconoclast looked almost shy. He probably liked this sort of forced introduction as little as Francis did. But that’s what women like Laetitia were put on the planet to do. Oil the wheels.

  ‘Francis has just done the most wonderful talk about, well, the history of crime-writing really.’

  ‘The Amateur Sleuth,’ said Dan. ‘I was there.’

  ‘Oh were you?’ said Francis.

  ‘Very informative, mate. I knew that Holmes had a French antecedent, but I didn’t know about the Oriental roots. Or realise there was anything in the Arabian Nights.’

  ‘Ja’far ibn Yahya, the first fictional detective.’

  ‘Diverting questions …’ Dickson raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘What about that “coconut” woman!’ said Laetitia. She waggled her fingers into quote mode, protecting herself from any taint of political incorrectness. ‘What was she on? I’m surprised you were so nice to her.’

  ‘I was just wondering whether I’d been a bit mean. Making her say what she meant like that.’

  ‘So not. Don’t you think, Dan?’

  Dickson shrugged. ‘I guess it’s up to Francis how offended he wants to feel.’

  Laetitia laughed, a trifle uncertainly.

  ‘I was more interested in the other questions,’ Dickson continued. ‘They were desperate to know about Bryce, weren’t they?’

  ‘I was ready for that.’

  ‘So we noticed. You were marvellously obstructive.’

  ‘I’m sorry you didn’t say more,’ said Laetitia.

  ‘There’s a police investigation going on,’ said Francis. ‘I can hardly start adding my own suspicions to the mix.’

  Laetitia’s mobile trilled – a snatch of hip hop. ‘Sorry, guys, got to get this. But I’m coming back. Yes, Rupert,’ she said, as she marched off across the tent.

  ‘Murdoch, d’you think?’ said Dickson.

  Francis chuckled. ‘She is quite something, isn’t she?’

  ‘A legend in her own Green Room.’ There was a pause, as Dickson lowered himself onto the tatty armchair vacated by Laetitia. ‘So you do have some suspicions?’ he said. ‘About Bryce?’

  Francis met his gaze. Close up, Dan had fine, frank eyes; chestnut brown irises, ringed with a thin line almost as dark as his pupils. It really wouldn’t do to share his private thoughts with ‘dickson’, would it? And yet he was flattered, and tempted.

  ‘How well did you know him?’ he countered.

  ‘Bryce? I’ve known him for years.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you were at Cambridge with him?’

  ‘I was at the other place, mate. For my sins.’ Francis did his best not to laugh out loud. Dickson’s image was hardly Oxbridge, but why would it have been? The tweedy whiff of elitism didn’t sell books these days. Dickson had wisely cultivated a much more streetwise vibe, even if he talked about ‘the other place’ in private. ‘But we were both knocking around London in the Eighties,’ Dan went on. ‘Bryce was a ubiquitous figure. Supposedly working on his magnum opus while contributing reviews to this or that little publication.’

  ‘And what happened to the magnum opus?’

  ‘Never appeared. Bryce claimed he never submitted it. Anyway, by then he’d found his métier as a critic, tearing into established names. He was used by more and more editors, got a little gig on the Indie when it started, carried on writing reviews while teaching media studies, finally scored the Lit Ed’s job on the Sentinel. He’s been there ever since, growing ever more papal in his pronouncements.’

  ‘So were you pissed off by that review?’ Francis asked. ‘I wouldn’t have blamed you.’

  ‘Of course I was! I mean he wasn’t content just to trash Otherworld, was he? Which I’ve spent five years on. He had to go for my entire oeuvre. The thing that gets me is that so much of his bile is about him. He can’t do it himself, so he has to keep taking it out on the rest of us who are at least trying. It’s pathetic. Was pathetic, I should say.’

  ‘So you don’t regret his passing?’

  ‘His passing. Very quaint, Francis. When to all appearances you seem to think he’s been rubbed out. Actually I’m going to be honest and say I don’t. Obviously I feel sorry for his nearest and dearest, though the truth is he’d managed to piss most of them off too. But professionally speaking, I’m afraid he’d become a Grade A shyster. He was just so destructive – to the culture. Week after week, putting people off this or that struggling author, making them feel good and clever about being philistines. Until the only thing his public were going to be allowed to read was Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad or possibly Bryce-frigging-Peabody himself.’

  ‘What about his women?’ Francis asked.

  ‘What about them? If they were stupid enough not to see what he was like, more fool them.’

  ‘As far as I can gather, he had a long-term partner and a girlfriend and dumped both of them simultaneously when he met Priya.’

  ‘The “Asian babe”?’ Dickson didn’t need to use his fingers to make the quotes; his ric
h, ironic tone did all the work for him. ‘You really are quite the amateur sleuth yourself, aren’t you? I’m afraid I’m not that up to speed on Bryce’s complex private life these days. But yes, what I heard on the grapevine was that the incumbent doxy found out she’d been binned at some dinner party, when someone said, “Have you heard the news about Bryce Peabody? He’s left his partner for a younger model.” She thought it was her, and then freaked out when she discovered the truth: that she’d been out-younger-modelled.’ Dickson cackled throatily.

  ‘So what about his long-term partner?’ Francis asked innocently. ‘Did you know her too?’

  ‘I’ve known Scarlett for years.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You really are quite something, aren’t you?’ Dickson paused and stretched. For a moment Francis thought he was going to get up and walk off. But then he seemed to think the better of it. ‘I doubt whether it’s possible for anyone to know Scarlett very well,’ he said. ‘There’s a basic standoffishness at her core. Even Bryce struggled, poor fellow.’

  ‘But he stayed with her, none the less?’

  ‘He did.’ Dickson yawned noisily. ‘Always a mystery what motivates people in relationships, don’t you find? My guess is that despite all his infidelities, she offered some kind of basic security. But you can’t discount the children either. He did love those little girls – and why wouldn’t he? Have you met them?’

  ‘I haven’t met Scarlett.’

  ‘I speak as a man too selfish to get involved in the rearing of another generation, but there is something entrancing about them. Bright, funny, beautiful – the kind of children you’d dream of having, if that was your dream. As for Scarlett, although she did endlessly complain about Bryce, she always lit up in his company. She could also be very jealous. In a way you perhaps shouldn’t be if what you’d agreed to was an open marriage …’

  ‘An open, common-law marriage?’

  Dickson’s grin acknowledged the absurdity. ‘But look, if you went round there at weekends, which I did on a couple of occasions, it felt like a perfectly normal family scene: kids running around, Mum and Dad bickering over the Sunday roast, everyone getting pissed together. But then, come Monday, they went their own way. You’d see Bryce in the Groucho with the latest starstruck student or sub. The word was that Scarlett reciprocated; and for a while I think there was a reasonably serious man. But it was like a lot of these situations. You got the feeling that the bloke had the best of it, really.’

  ‘And where is she now? Still in the family home?’

  ‘In London she is, yes. But if you mean right now, she’s up here too. Out at their cottage with the children. I saw her yesterday, at the Michael Rosen gig. She didn’t make mine, sadly. Otherwise, who knows, she might have pitched in.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Francis was glad he’d followed his instincts and brought the Saab rather than accepting the festival’s offered alternative, a ‘limo’ from Dewkesbury station, some twenty-five miles away. The joke among the festival’s participants was that said limo was actually a bog-standard minicab, but then authors hardly expected to be treated like film stars. They were grateful for the chance to promote their books; happy enough with the proffered payment of half a case of English wine and a few extra goodies that Laetitia had conned out of local enterprises: a round of Dewkesbury Camembert, a jar of organic honey from the Dewkesbury Bee Centre.

  Now his sleek blue chariot was winding up a narrow lane between high stone walls, thick with luxuriant undergrowth: long grass, nettles, brambles, bracken, wild flowers you would never see on Hampstead Heath. At a glance these barriers looked as soft as hedges; but try getting too close and you soon realised what an illusion this was, how rock solid they were underneath. SINGLE TRACK WITH PASSING PLACES was written on the sign at the bottom of the hill, and the best plan was to bolt along, getting as far as you could before you ran into someone coming the other way. Hopefully not literally.

  As part of their strange non-marriage (Dickson had explained), Bryce and Scarlett jointly owned a cottage, ten miles outside Mold.

  ‘I think I’ve seen a snap of it, in the festival albums,’ Francis said; but even if Dan was aware which one he was talking about, he wasn’t going to be drawn.

  ‘You might well have done,’ he replied. ‘They’ve had it for years.’

  Francis found it easily enough. The nearest village, Tittlewell, was clearly signed, as was the Black Bull pub two miles beyond. FREE HOUSE. OPEN ALL DAY. DRAUGHT HEADBANGER AND DEMON ON TAP. SIMON’S SCRUMPY. MARGE’S HOMEMADE PIES. GAGGIA MACHINE. That was a nice touch. If all went well, perhaps he’d drop in for a coffee on his way back. Down the long hill, up a slope, and there was the stony track on the bend, right by the Gnarled Tree of the sketch-map Dickson had drawn on the back of a press release.

  Francis bumped slowly upwards, keeping carefully to one side of the grassy ridge down the middle. There were big, suspension-busting rocks in there too, as well as deep, puddle-filled dips. You needed a 4×4 for this kind of thing, not a low-slung Saab. He stopped to open and close a cattle gate, stepping carefully over the clanging metal bars, remembering childhood walks on Bodmin Moor. Driving on, he could see the view in the mirror getting better and better, a green and pleasant England spreading away to the east. Finally he reckoned he’d arrived. If this was the cottage, it was quite something, a long low stone building with a pond out front and a big garden running up the hill behind. Two little girls were playing on a swing to one side. At the sound of the car, they stopped and ran for the front door, shrieking for their mother.

  She appeared a moment later, in a flowery apron over white blouse and blue jeans. She was more lined than in the Young Guns photo, but still beautiful in a fey kind of way. Slighter in the flesh than Francis had imagined, and now with long hair down her shoulders. For a moment he wondered if he should have come at all; he had no role here whatsoever. Curiosity and a gut instinct had driven him on, away from the afternoon party developing in the Green Room. Who – what precisely – did he think he was?

  ‘Good afternoon. Scarlett …’

  Now he couldn’t remember her surname. Idiot. He could hardly say Peabody.

  ‘Paton-Jones, yes.’

  He held out a hand. ‘My name is Francis Meadowes. I’ve come out from the festival. I’m one of the writers who’s speaking …’

  She was laughing. ‘Sorry. I thought you were the police. They told me to expect a Family Liaison Officer.’

  ‘So you know?’

  ‘Yes.’ She made a warning face in the direction of her two girls, who were standing to one side, staring at him. Identical twins, mini-me versions of their mother, apart from those big, thoughtful brown eyes. Francis could see what Dan had meant; they were a rather magical-looking pair. ‘Girls. D’you want to go and play for a bit? And then Mummy’ll make you some supper –’

  ‘With striped ice cream?’

  ‘Yes, Perdita. With striped ice cream.’

  This seemed to do the trick. The girls took one more look at the intruder, then ran off, screaming and giggling, round the side of the house.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t told them yet. I thought I’d wait for the police and find out exactly what happened first.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Just that Bryce died suddenly in the night. A friend phoned this morning. Then, later, the police, though how they got this number I’ve no idea, as we’re ex-directory. I suppose I’m being naive. They’re probably watching us as we speak from some satellite. I’m afraid I haven’t been in … to the hotel. It was OK for his new bird to identify him, apparently. So what’s your role in all this, may I ask?’

  As Francis explained, he watched her interest growing.

  ‘So perhaps I can offer you a cup of tea,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘As you’ve nobly trekked all the way out here.’

  He followed her inside the ‘cottage’, which was done up to the highest contemporary standards. There was polished slate on
the kitchen floor and varnished boards in the long sitting room that led off it. Central was a big open fireplace with stylish sofas and chairs grouped around it. The walls were hung with original paintings and prints, while on tables and stands were a number of carved figures: two Buddhas; a Ganesh; various African bodies in dark wood.

  Scarlett came through with a tray: Clarice Cliff teapot, two matching mugs, biscuits.

  ‘What a beautiful place you have here,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’ She looked around, proprietorially. ‘It is rather special, isn’t it?’

  ‘When people said “cottage” I imagined something a bit more basic.’

  ‘We’ve put in quite a bit of work over the years. It was pretty basic when we started out, believe me. Damp up all the walls, no big windows, pre-war kitchen, outside loo. But when we saw the location we just had to have it.’

  She sat down and poured tea for them both. ‘So what’s going on?’ she asked.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘With the police and everything. Aren’t they happy with the doctor’s verdict?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Not having spoken to them in any detail.’

  ‘Do you think Bryce had a heart attack?’

  ‘He might well have done.’

  ‘But you’re not sure, are you?’

  ‘This is an odd situation for me. I’m a crime writer by profession. I’ve imagined and written about scenes like the one I saw today many times. And yet this morning was the first time in my life I’d seen a dead body in situ. So I have to admit to being intrigued.’

  ‘What exactly did you see?’

  ‘Apart from a single bruise on his right cheekbone, there was nothing at first glance to indicate any foul play. And yet my gut feeling now is that this wasn’t as simple as a straightforward heart attack.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I suppose I don’t believe Bryce wouldn’t have had time to call someone. Surely some kind of pain would have woken him up. There’s a phone right by the bed.’