"Cambridgeshire. Lovely town, Cambridge. The wife and I went there on one of those charabanc tours one summer. Boring place, really, isn't it?"
St. Just smiled. For one thing, he hadn't heard anyone use the word charabanc for twenty years.
"Sometimes. When the students aren't around, certainly it can be a quiet place."
Moor grunted. "Not Scotland Yaird, then." He gave St. Just a beatific smile. "Worse luck for us. With their help, we could have wrapped this up by teatime."
The Scottish policeman looked around at the crowd again gathering at the top of the stairs, like children spying on the grown-ups' party.
"These would be the crime writers, then?"
"Yes."
"And you, Sir. You're a writer, too-in your spare time, perhaps?"
"Not I. A happy life for me. I'm here to deliver a talk at the conference being held at the Luxor in Edinburgh. Anyway, the young woman over there"-and he indicated Portia, standing by the hall table, a ghostly apparition surrounded by candlelight-"she was among the first to find the body."
The two men, now joined by another whom St. Just took to be Moor's sergeant, walked over to Portia. The policeman introduced himself as DCI Ian Moor and his far more subdued companion as Sergeant Kittle.
Portia nodded. Kittle had a face like a ruined monastery. A perfect character for my book, she thought reflexively.
"Portia De'Ath," she said. She made as if to offer a handshake, but Moor hadn't paused for the formalities. He continued on through the door into the bottle dungeon and down the stairs, where they all-except Portia, who, at a signal from Kittle, held back-followed him to the guardrail. The three policemen stood looking at Kimberlee's body, flung like a rag doll at the bottom.
"Bloody hell," said Moor. "How are we going to get a team down there?"
He turned and looked back up the stairs at Portia.
"Who is she?" he asked her.
"Kimberlee Kalder. A writer."
"A successful one?"
"Very, in the U.S. especially, but also here."
"Jealousy?"
St. Just noticed Portia seemed to have no trouble following DCI Moor's rather telegraphic mode of questioning.
"Maybe. She earned a lot, and very quickly. She was quite young and had become a multimillionaire with her first book. The rest of the writers here, nearly all of them, have toiled for years-decades-with far less success. Kimberlee also didn't go too far out of her way to ingratiate herself with the others."
"I don't know… That's a far-fetched motive for murder," said Moor.
"I think you'll find that within the culture of this group, it's not at all far-fetched," said Portia.
"But," said St. Just, speaking more to himself than the others, "why kill her here, at the conference? Rather a public choice…"
"Maybe because something happened here," said Moor.
"The award," said Portia, who proceeded to tell him about the night's dinner.
"It was an extraordinarily tactless thing for Easterbrook to do," she concluded. "There was already some feeling that his long-time writers were being neglected, chucked out, and/or replaced. And God knows, if anyone needed the ego boost of an award-not to mention thirty thousand pounds-it wasn't Kimberlee."
"Ms. De'Ath noticed something that's undoubtedly important," St. Just told Moor. "There is no means of producing light-no candlestick or lighter-on or about the victim's body. At least, so far as we can tell without moving the body. Kimberlee either came down here before the lights went out-"
"Or she came down here with someone who had a light," Moor finished for him.
"There's no handbag, either," said St. Just. "She had one at the dinner. Some small, sparkly thing like women carry in the evening."
"An evening bag," offered Portia.
"Right. An evening bag. She may just have left it in her room. She's still wearing her jewelry…"
Portia again spoke up. "You can forget robbery as a motive. I never saw her with jewelry of any value. What she had on tonight-still has on-is costume jewelry, enameled. Of a good quality, but not real jewelry. That's a nice watch she has on, though, and she's still wearing it."
DCI Moor, who only just now seemed to wonder how this civilian had injected herself so thoroughly into his case, turned deliberately to St. Just to ask his next question:
"Did she generally carry anything else worth stealing? Large sums of money?"
"I wouldn't know," said St. Just. "I have to agree with Ms. De'Ath here. It doesn't look to me as if she had anything on her worth stealing, apart from the watch. And wearing that dress, it's unlikely in the extreme she could have anything hidden on her person."
DCI Moor scratched at the slight growth of white stubble on his chin. "The storm is going to help us," he said at last.
"How so?"
"The road was near to impassible earlier tonight. It was really chucking it down, and for ages. No one came here by car, I'd wager. We barely made it through ourselves."
"You are thinking one of the staff, or one of the guests in the hotel…?"
Moor nodded. "And you agree?"
"Someone could have come in on foot through the woods, over the grounds… but it's doubtful," said St. Just. "For one thing, there's too big a chance of being seen-nearly all the rooms have a prospect. They'd be soaking, besides."
Moor nodded.
"We're lucky in other ways. Sometimes we have the haar this time of year, working to the advantage of the villains. Making them harder to spot, you see."
At St. Just's questioning look, he explained:
"It's a fog-dense as foam, it is-that comes in from the North Sea. You could hide your granny inside the haar and she'd not be found for days. Who is here besides the crime writers?"
"The staff, mainly," said St. Just. "Lord Easterbrook took over the place for the writers, exclusively. He also invited a couple of writers' agents, and a publicist."
"How many people are we talking about?" asked Moor.
"The Easterbrook party? About ten or eleven of them."
St. Just turned to Portia for confirmation.
"And someone brought Quentin Swope, the reporter," she said. "He got stuck here by the storm, I guess-by the drawbridge's not working. I saw him sitting with the group watching the telly just before we lost the lights. Oh, and Rachel Twalley, from the conference-she left earlier, with a contingent of Edinburgh nobs. Donna Doone, the hotel's event coordinator, closed the drawbridge behind them. Lucky escape for Rachel, that."
"How well do you know these people?" asked Moor of St. Just.
"I've known them for just a few days, during the conference."
"And you?" Moor asked Portia. "How well, for example, did you know this Kimberlee? Can someone spell that for me, by the way?"
Portia complied, adding, "I knew her hardly at all. She was on the train with me from London. Friendly… to a point. But she slept most of the way, so there was little time for confidences. Actually, I didn't gather the impression Kimberlee was given to confidences. As to the rest of them: We've all more or less bumped into each other before on the circuit-seen each other at conferences and things."
"But not Kimberlee?"
She shrugged.
"Kimberlee was what you call an overnight sensation. I don't know how well the others knew her. Kimberlee and I share, or shared, an agent-Ninette Thomson-who may know her fairly well. At least she may have known her for some time-not quite the same thing, is it?"
Portia added that they were all scheduled to leave tomorrow.
"Today, rather. Sunday," she said.
"No," said Moor.
St. Just also shook his head. "No one goes anywhere for the foreseeable future."
Moor turned to St. Just, indicating the stairs.
"Come along, Cambridge. You may as well lend a hand so long as you're here."
St. Just hesitated. "I have virtually no authority here. You know that."
"Of course. None, really."
Th
is last came out as "noon rally" to Portia's ears. She looked mystified for a moment, then St. Just saw the penny drop, and smiled. He had a sudden nostalgic turn for "Agnes the Cook"-an ancient, ribald Scottish lady in a nursing home in Cornwall who had been a key witness in a case of his the year before.
"But then," Moor went on, "the suspects won't know that until it's too late. I say what goes on in my patch and I say you're helping us with inquiries-I'll square it with your Super, never fear. And you being a Sasannach is something I'm willing to overlook. Have to make allowances sometimes, you know."
This last was said with a smile to take the edge off-barely. St. Just knew it wasn't worth arguing that he was hardly a Saxon. He lived in England and that was enough as far as Moor was concerned.
St. Just suddenly did not fancy any lag's chances up against Ian Moor. There was more going on behind that jolly Father Christmas-mustachioed facade than met the eye.
For that reason, he didn't bother to ask why Moor didn't first have him, St. Just, checked out for rogue-cop tendencies: He felt certain the Scottish detective was already planning to do just that.
By now they had reached the top of the bottle dungeon stairs and entered the hallway. They could see across the lobby and through to the drawbridge where, in time-honored fashion, three workmen were standing around chatting, presumably "supervising" the work of the one doing the actual work, a man displaying an impressive buttock cleavage at the top of his jeans. Repairs on the drawbridge mechanism were apparently continuing.
One of the hotel's maids appeared near the reception area, handily carrying a tray that had to be half her body weight. Apparently the beleaguered guests were to be provided tea to calm their nerves. She-St. Just recalled her name as Florie-seemed to register the same workman's phenomenon; as she passed down the hallway, St. Just heard her fume, "Lazy sods. Three women would have had that fixed already-but for this we bring in reinforcements." She strode toward the drawbridge as if to drop off this opinion on her way.
Moor turned to St. Just.
"Who knows? With your help, maybe we'll all get to go home just that wee bit sooner."
"All except for the murderer," said St. Just.
"Yes." Again, the twinkle that was nearly a wink. Moor did seem to be a man who enjoyed his work. "Except for the murderer."
THE GAME'S AFOOT
The investigation began with a search of Kimberlee Kalder's room, Inspector Moor first having directed his team to collect statements from everyone in the castle, staff and guests alike. But St. Just also heard him say the guests were the real focus, and he couldn't but agree with that strategy. With sexual assault to all appearances ruled out, along with robbery, it was hard to see how the staff were involved, barring a complete lunatic having gotten past the hotel's human resources department.
"Tell them they are not to go back to their rooms until we give them permission to do so," Moor concluded his instructions. Donna Doone was dispatched from her current occupation of fluttering anxiously about the lobby to find the best place to interview witnesses. Eventually they settled on two of the hotel's small meeting rooms on the second floor, the St. Andrew and the round-walled Sir Walter Scott.
Donna having provided them a passkey, the three men-DCI St. Just, DCI Moor, and Sergeant Kittle-entered Kimberlee's room, knowing they couldn't do much before SOCO arrived but take a visual survey.
St. Just thought he would have known it was Kimberlee's room without having to be told. Clothes were strewn everywhere, in a lacy black and hot pink explosion that looked, somehow, viral against the red tartan decor. Not just a blouse or two draped over a chair, either-it was as if the entire contents of a woman's boutique had been tipped into the room. Many items still wore their price tags. He took a peek at one, being careful of prints, and winced at the triple-digit cost.
He walked over to a small desk by the window. He imagined that daylight would reveal a spectacular view encompassing the castle grounds and forest, the swollen banks of the normally placid River Esk, and the river pasture beyond. Just then a shaft of moonlight revealed a deer emerging tentatively from a screen of trees. Something or someone must have frightened it awake. St. Just watched until it retreated safely back into the forest.
He looked down at the desktop. It held a room service tray with a bottle of wine, two unused glasses, and the leavings of assorted kibbles-cheese, biscuits, and the like. In addition, the desktop was littered with all manner of detritus: little pots of makeup, manicuring equipment, and a small, strange device of metal and rubber that Moor later identified for him as an eyelash curler ("I've got four teenage girls at home. I haven't seen the inside of the upstairs bathroom in ten years but I could spot an eyelash curler at forty paces"). Little jewelry, but what there was, as Portia had pointed out, was good quality. Her evening bag was there, no doubt with Lord Easterbrook's cheque inside. No manuscript, St. Just noted. No laptop, either.
But wasn't Kimberlee supposed to be working on her new book? He mentioned this lack to Moor, currently investigating the contents of Kimberlee's wardrobe.
"I have never," said that redoubtable Scotsman, "been able to understand how anyone, man or woman, can tolerate these things." He held out, draped over a pencil, a frilly pink thong edged in black.
St. Just pointed out the relative lack of anything like writerly equipment.
"No laptop. No manuscript. No paper, except the handful of letterhead provided by the castle. There is a Montblanc fountain pen over there on the dresser." Automatically he thought of Portia and his first sighting of her at St. Germaine's. He supposed an expensive fountain pen might be the celebratory purchase of a writer on making his or her first sale.
"I'm not really surprised," said Moor. "She was here on a holiday of sorts, wasn't she?"
St. Just, nodding, still wasn't sure what to make of it. Would a writer travel anywhere in the world without something to write on? Portia will know, he thought.
"Maybe there's a notebook, at least, in her purse," said St. Just. "I don't want to rummage around in there until it's been dusted. There's a mobile phone on the desktop, buried under the makeup gear-we'll need someone to look into that, of course."
He again looked across at the dresser, where copies of Kimberlee's book lay scattered about. There was also a romance book of the bodice-ripper sort, by one Leticia-Anne Deville, titled When Summer's Passion Lingers. It didn't immediately strike him as Kimberlee's kind of book, but he would have been hard put to say what Kimberlee's type of book may have been. He picked it up, using his handkerchief. Then he saw something from the corner of his eye.
"Oh, wait," he said, crossing the room. "She was writing something, after all. But it's a letter. She'd evidently been using one of these books as a surface to write on, rather than the desk."
He held up a note on castle stationery, written in a round, childish script that just avoided having its "i's" dotted with smiley faces.
"So this may have been what she had been doing between leaving the bar and going for her fatal excursion to the dungeon," said Moor. St. Just and Portia had filled him in as best they could remember or knew of Kimberlee Kalder's movements of the night before.
"Possibly," said St. Just. "She could have written it earlier on, of course. Whenever it was, she was interrupted."
He began reading aloud, with as deadpan a delivery as he could manage:
"'Dearest Darling: What agony-to see but not be with you! Only awhile longer and the charade ends! But you are right, my dearest. We must play it cool, especially in front of the wrinklies. This must remain our secret… must make sure he doesn't suspect… clever of you to think of a way. But-so soon! Patience!-we'll be united in love forever!!! First I have to-'"
"The letter breaks off in mid-sentence." St. Just turned the page toward Moor. "Perhaps she ran out of exclamation marks. It almost sounds like something Magretta would write, actually."
Moor grunted.
"A love letter."
"Or a suicide note."
St. Just said, "I'm joking. Kimberlee was the least likely person in the world to cheat everyone of her presence. It is, of course, a love letter."
St. Just reread the note to himself, frowning.
Sergeant Kittle, on his hands and knees at the moment, looking under the bed, said, "Maybe a London boyfriend she was planning to meet up with later. Otherwise, why write a letter? Why not just tell him to his face, for heaven's sake?"
"No," said St. Just. "She talks about the 'agony' of seeing him. He's here. Remember they're all writers, this lot. Probably she saw the opportunity to write a longing, soulful love letter as too good to pass up. It's a dying art in the days of the text message, one would imagine. Maybe the whole thing is just some writer-type exercise, a limbering-up activity that she meant to throw away. 'Must make sure he doesn't suspect.' Make sure who doesn't suspect?"
"Someone at the conference, presumably," said Moor.
"Or even, someone she just doesn't want to get wind of what's in the air. Fear of spreading gossip."
"I suppose that's possible," agreed Moor. "But, just by the way, there's nothing there to indicate that letter wasn't addressed to a female."
St. Just regarded him thoughtfully.
"It's not impossible, of course," he said. "But if you'd ever met her you would know how unlikely that is. Insofar as Kimberlee Kalder was able to direct her attention outside herself, I'd say her inclinations were heterosexual-rather insistently so."
"Did she travel here alone, do we know?" asked Kittle, now shooing the dust off his knees.
"Ms. De'Ath said they traveled up together, but I didn't get the impression that was by prearrangement. If Kimberlee got on the train alone, someone still might have traveled "with her," but in a different compartment. Or the same someone, traveling on a different train altogether, or by car or plane, could have met up with her here. In either event, Kimberlee and whoever it was may have made a point of not being seen traveling together-from the tenor of that letter that's certainly what they would do."
Again, he read the short letter aloud.
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