"Not about Kimberlee. Not how she had to be done in or got out of the way or anything like that. I don't think her name came up apart from a few snippy remarks early on about the bonus cheque Easterbrook gave her."
"You say there was a lot of to and fro for drinks and so on. I'll ask again: Can you be at all more specific as to times?"
Winston paused, cradling his chin in one large hand as he canvassed the previous night's events.
"B. A. King and I were in the library for about the first half an hour. Maybe more. Then we both fetched new drinks and trotted over to the sitting room. Tom, Edith, and Quentin were already there. We talked awhile, then I volunteered to fetch a round for all of us-as I say, we all needed a refill fairly quickly. So, add another half hour? Tom and B. A.-whatever does that stand for?-went to the gent's, separately, and Edith went to powder her nose. But it's not exactly the kind of occasion that makes one whip out one's notebook and jot down the time. I'm afraid you'll have to ask them what they remember. I left them to it some time before eleven and as I was headed upstairs, we lost the lights. I went to find candles-well, you know all this. I left Portia as she was going downstairs to fetch a book. The darkness and the drink were making me drowsy-I thought I saw Kimberlee on the stairs, you know, but now I doubt the evidence of my own eyes; it was more an impression, really. In the dark… now I'm not so sure. I can only say I saw a whitish form-that blonde hair, and the white dress. Anyway, when I called to her she didn't reply."
"Go on."
"Then Magretta sounded the alarm-this had to have been close to or spot on midnight-and we all scurried out to see what was the matter. Everyone seemed to come from all directions then. It's impossible to be clear about everyone's locations at that point."
St. Just sat absorbing this narrative, wondering how much of it could be corroborated. He was going to have the devil's own time sorting out everyone's whereabouts the night of the murder.
"I gather from the tenor of your questions," Winston added, "that we are indeed suspects? You've ruled out anyone on the staff, for example? Or an interloper?"
"We've ruled out nothing," said St. Just. "But of course if you were in the castle that night, you're a suspect."
"Only if I could walk through walls, Inspector."
Nonsense, thought St. Just. The bottle dungeon was less than thirty seconds away from the sitting room-a sprint down the hall and across the lobby. Any of them could have killed Kimberlee under the pretext of nose powdering. The lobby was vast and sparsely furnished, so there was a real risk of being seen, but still…
"You were in your room until the body was found?" he asked.
"Yes. Funny thing, that…"
"How so?"
"It was all just so-I don't know… dramatic. The lights, the scream at midnight. It was like being in a movie."
St. Just looked down at the closed notebook Winston held in his hand.
"Notes for a future book?" he asked.
"I'm afraid so." Winston grimaced apologetically. "Actually, I was thinking in terms of a screenplay. It's the writer's curse to take absolutely anything that happens and turn it into grist for the mill. Being involved in an actual murder investigation is too good an opportunity to pass up. Sorry-what an awful way to phrase that, but I'm sure you must know what I mean. I'm also working on the timeline you asked us for but it's going to be damn-all use, I'm afraid-as you've just seen."
"How is it you started to write mysteries for a living, Mr. Chatley?" St. Just asked. "What did you do before you became a writer?"
"Winston, please. I was always a writer, I just wasn't paid for it the first fifteen years or so. Being a bartender was my day job. Or my night job, as it were. At a place in London called the Serengeti."
"It took fifteen years for you to sell a book?"
Winston shook his head bleakly. "Well, it took fifteen years for me to make enough money from my writing to keep a cat alive. The writing bug-it's a virus. There is no cure. And sometimes you write whatever anyone will pay you for."
"I gather you've done fairly well in recent years."
Winston flapped his hand in a see-saw motion, noncommittally. This time, something like a smile lit up his sober countenance. In his Eeyoreish way, Winston was an appealing character.
"I'm not rich or even comfortably off, but I was able to quit the day/night job, and that was always the goal. I have a parent who needs my attention, you see. In that regard, it's worked out well. There is no other job that offers the freedom and mobility of writing. And, as I say, any other job is unthinkable once you've been bitten."
"Hmm." St. Just felt he'd heard mania described in much the same way. And here he was with a whole castle of these Type-A, driven personalities.
"One further question," he said. "Did you have any impression Kimberlee had paired up with someone on this trip?"
A shake of the head. "Some kind of fling, you mean? It wouldn't be uncommon on this kind of jaunt, but no, I hadn't noticed in particular. She seemed to spend a lot of time with Jay, but I rather thought she was just buttering him up, for whatever purposes of her own. I assumed those purposes were professional rather than personal. But the fact is, I avoided her where I could. I know she was charming, but it was lost on me, I'm afraid."
St. Just couldn't but agree. But was Winston telling the truth there-or did he realize it was safer for the police to believe in his indifference?
Not long afterward, St. Just bade farewell and left Winston in the garden, his unhandsome head again bent to the notebook open on his knees.
IN THE PRESENCE
"I don't think Tom is available to see you right now."
The woman standing at the open door to the Tartan Suite was by far the dreariest thing in the hectic room. Her hair was of an indeterminate color that could best be described as taupe, and she had pale eyes to match. St. Just was strongly reminded of a Weimaraner. Her lumpy skirt and twinset might have been woven from pottery shards and twine. St. Just had once owned a rucksack that looked like Edith Brackett.
The thought triggered a niggling memory-something he'd seen in recent days, surely-or was it? The memory eluding him, he reluctantly let it float free. Maybe if he didn't worry at it…
It was a shame, really, he thought now. The woman had classic, even features and, from what he could tell, a neat, trim figure. But she looked the type of woman who was allergic to everything and existed mainly on tofu. With a little embellishment and the application of some of Kimberlee's powders and potions, he thought she could approach eye-catching.
"Mrs. Brackett," he said. "This is a police investigation." (Was he condemned to spend his life reminding people of that fact? He imagined he was.) "Your husband, ready or not, will have to see me. Would you go and fetch him here, please?"
She indicated the closed door to her left. "He's asleep. I think."
Oh, well. There's an end on it-poor bloke's asleep. I'll just take my tiresome little investigation and go away.
Feeling the lack of sleep himself, St. Just repeated, smiling, but with a hint of sternness in the smile: "Fetch him now, please."
A look of something like fear darted across her features-a mad thing that appeared and vanished so quickly St. Just wasn't sure he'd seen it. Was the woman afraid of disturbing her husband?
"I'll awaken him, if you prefer," he said.
A kaleidoscope of emotion at that: relief, gratitude, embarrassment.
"If you wish," she said, an attempt at indifference that didn't play well. She was afraid.
St. Just made a mental note to get her alone and suss out what that was all about. Even better, perhaps Moor had a WPC who could be co-opted for the job. For now, he rapped sharply on the door between the suite's sitting area and bedroom-more sharply than he'd intended. He had a particular and unapologetic hatred for bullies.
A huge bellow leaked like smoke from around the sides of the closed door.
"Goddammit, Edith. I told you-"
The door was flung open. Tom
Brackett stood wrapped in one of the hotel's voluminous white terrycloth robes. A rotund Banquo's ghost, thought St. Just, but with a face brick-red with anger. St. Just felt he had seen worse sights than Tom Brackett's hairy legs emerging from the robe, but thankfully, not often.
"Terribly sorry to disturb you, Sir. I just need to ask you and your wife a few questions."
Brackett jutted his chin aggressively in Edith's direction.
"You really never learn, do you-"
"Actually, Mrs. Brackett tried to stop me, Sir. I insisted that you wouldn't both want to be charged with obstructing a police inquiry. Now, would you like to get dressed before we continue? If you'd prefer, we can have our chat at the police station."
Brackett glared. He had tried to tame his thick eyebrows with clipping and gel, a toilette that somehow irresistibly recalled Joan Crawford, but he otherwise resembled a bad-tempered sea lion with a day-old growth of dark hair surrounding his Van Dyke beard.
"Continue what? That little tart's getting herself knocked off is nothing to do with me. And if you think she-" here a jerk of the head in Edith's direction- "had anything to do with it, you've only to take a look at her. She wouldn't have the guts to say boo to a ghost."
St. Just, realizing the man was perfectly capable of carrying on an hours-long conversation while treating his wife as if she weren't even in the room, deliberately turned to Edith.
"I've been wondering, Mrs. Brackett, at your middle name-your maiden name, I assume? Edith Bean Brackett. It sounds awfully familiar to me and I can't think why."
"Tilly Toggle," she said shyly. Her cheeks flushed a bright pink and her eyes suddenly shone. He had confirmation that Edith, in the right circumstances-mainly, out from under her husband's thumb-was beautiful.
Tilly. He barely managed to avoid saying, "Huh?" when the penny dropped. He'd bought those books, a boxed set of five of them, as he recalled, for his sergeant's daughter Emma. Emma wasn't reading yet but, as she could practically program a computer, St. Just had opted to anticipate the day.
"Of course," he said. "I should have realized. Edith Bean. Author of the Tilly books. You must be proud-I see those books everywhere I-"
"Are you here to discuss murder or are you here to discuss books a twelve-year-old could write?" demanded Tom Brackett. "Attack" seemed to be the man's default mode. He sat down heavily in one of the room's two upholstered armchairs, unlovely knees apart, dark brows clouding beneath the sky of his bald pink head. The mustache above his goatee quivered with annoyance.
This was not, thought St. Just, a man who could stand to have the attention removed from himself for one second.
And: He's jealous as hell of his wife's success. Good. Good.
St. Just, motioning Edith to the other armchair, remained standing. He toyed with the idea of interviewing them separately, which would have been truer to established procedure in any case, but he thought more might be learned from the apparently complicated relationship between this pair by keeping them together.
"I gather," said St. Just, "that, on the night of the murder, several of you separated from the main group. I would appreciate it if you would tell me who was with you and what you talked about."
"We've already told-" began Tom.
"I was actually speaking to your wife. Sir."
"That's right," said Edith, earning herself a Why don't you shut up for once? glower from her husband. "We started to watch a television show in the sitting room. Winston Chatley and B. A. King joined us. That reporter Quentin was there some of the time."
"What show was that?" asked St. Just.
"One of the Midsomer Murders," answered Tom. His fingers drummed against the arms of his chair. "Not my onion, of course, but Edith and the others liked it."
St. Just was left to wonder since when Tom cared what others liked. He had recently emerged from an investigation into the death of a mystery writer of supreme awfulness-the writer's persona being awful, not his books-and had imagined he'd never come across his like again. After a few minutes in the company of Tom Brackett, St. Just was drastically revising his opinion.
"After the show, we watched news on the telly," Tom volunteered. "There was some story about one of the lesser royals found in a gutter in Majorca, clutching a bottle of rum. The pundits weighed in with a debate over whether Great Britain really needs a monarchy in the twenty-first century, the commentary voiced over the usual film of Prince Charles talking to his organic peas. You know the kind of thing."
The police could of course check his statement against the broadcaster's tapes. But then, was it really recall, or had he teamed up with his wife to compare notes for the times he was actually not in the room? Could Edith be the apparatchik chosen to provide Tom an alibi?
"What did you talk about?" Again, St. Just aimed the question at Edith, who was blooming nicely under the attention.
"The men talked about the book business," she said, smiling, eager to help. "Mostly, I listened."
"Everyone remained in the room the whole time, did they?"
"I think I did," said Tom. He seemed to be studying the air behind St. Just, not meeting his eyes.
"No, dear, you went to the men's room, don't you remember?"
Tom's wandering focus honed in on his wife. He shot her an expression of outraged disbelief.
That little defection may cost her, thought St. Just.
But Edith went on. "There was only the one bartender on duty so anything we wanted in the sitting room we had to fetch ourselves," she explained. "Winston Chatley went to the gents maybe twice. B. A. King went to his room to get some special Scotch whiskey he wanted the men to try. I think he also went to the gents at some later point. I went for drinks once or twice. Twice, that's right."
"How long was everyone gone on these various errands?"
She looked to her husband.
"I really don't recall. Do you, Tom?"
"It's not as if we knew someone was going to get bumped off, is it?" said Tom with his usual delicacy. "If we'd known we might all have paid more attention. Everyone went for a reload, is all I recall."
"Let me ask this way," said St. Just. "Who was gone from the room the longest?"
"Winston, I think," said Edith.
"B. A. King, I think," said Tom simultaneously.
"What, by the way, does B. A. stand for?" asked Edith of St. Just.
"We really don't know yet."
"Depends who you ask," said Tom. "Bullshit Artist is the hands-down favorite, followed by Benedict Arnold."
"What did you do while waiting for his return?"
"We talked about the conference, the people there," said Edith.
"And B. A. was gone how long? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes?"
"No, longer," said Tom. "But then, time became rather elastic. We'd all been drinking, talking, watching people on Midsomer be impaled on pitchforks and run over by threshing machines and whatnot. It's impossible to say for certain."
"Except me," said Edith. "I don't drink. I don't think he was gone more than fifteen minutes, Tom."
Which sobriety probably made her the more reliable witness of the pair, thought St. Just. Her words earned her another glare from Tom. I'll have to offer her police protection if she keeps contradicting her oaf of a husband.
Which of them was telling the truth? St. Just would put his money on Edith. Tom's focus seemed to be on getting everyone but himself in trouble.
"Mrs. Brackett, how often did you say you went to get drinks from the bar?
"Twice."
"How long did it take each time?"
"Maybe ten minutes-it took longer the second trip because the bartender was busier then. The people in the library were all pretty much, how do you say?-three sheets to the wind? Also, I stopped to talk with Annabelle Pace-just mentioning the storm in passing, you know. It was starting to gale by then. It added to the… disorientation I think we all felt. Everything, time, seemed "out of joint"-you know the feeling?"
"So you don't rem
ember with any certainty when you left and came back?"
"She's already answered that," snarled Tom.
Still Edith soldiered bravely on. She seemed to be one of those witnesses who love helping the police-not always the most helpful type, in St. Just's experience. Some tended to embroider or invent where they couldn't remember.
"Not really," she said. "I went for the first round shortly after we'd collected in the sitting room. That was soon after dinner, of course. The second time was maybe forty-five minutes later." As often before, her voice rose at the end of the sentence, forming a question. "It was just before the television show started, I do recall that."
St. Just made a mental note to check the telly schedule for that night.
"We were watching the news when we lost the power," said Edith. "You have to remember all these times are rough guesses at best."
"And what did you do then?"
"We went to bed," they answered together.
Tom added, "We sat around a bit to see if it was a temporary situation. When it became evident it was not, we went to bed."
"Had either of you met Kimberlee before?" asked St. Just.
They both shook their heads.
"How about the others? Had you met your fellow Americans, for example?"
"We might have run across some of them at the occasional New York conference. I really don't recall," said Tom. His voice was harsh and phlegmy, like a clarinet played under water. Again, he spoke over Edith, drowning out her soft voice.
"Tell me how you came to be here." St. Just, leaning against a low cabinet, directed the question to Tom this time. Not that it mattered whom he addressed. The man would prevent his wife speaking wherever he could, probably just from force of habit.
"We'd had a good year, financially speaking. Easterbrook invited us and there seemed no reason to decline. Right about then I saw an ad for airfare to Scotland that was too good to pass up, even allowing for the absolute drubbing the U.S. dollar has been taking lately."
"This is unusual-Easterbrook picking up the hotel tab?"
"I should say it is. Usually, only agents and editors get compensated at these conference affairs. Then they spend all their time actively avoiding anyone who looks like he might be harboring a manuscript about his or her person. The attendees believe the agents and editors are here as talent scouts-can you believe it? Quite the opposite, of course. They're here to see, in this case, Edinburgh, and to stay in a castle or hotel with room service. Full stop."
Death and the Lit Chick sm-2 Page 13
