Death and the Lit Chick sm-2

by G. M. Malliet

  "Not really. Nothing at all, really. Born in a house the size of the Vatican. Public school background, Oxbridge, yada, yada. One of the few aristocrats to escape the rolling tumbrels of inheritance taxes and make enough money to maintain his stately home by himself, without having to turn it into a theme park. Doesn't appear to have ever have held an ambition beyond the family business. He's apparently honest, as far as businessmen go."

  St. Just was not overly surprised. Easterbrook's cold mind may have been forged in the dank, unheated dormitories of a Gulag system like Eton or Gordonstoun, but that wouldn't necessarily have turned him into a criminal. If that were the case, the gaols would be filled to over-crowding with bluebloods.

  "Married?"

  "Yes."

  "And?"

  "She grows tulips."

  "Anything else? Anything on her?"

  "No."

  "Tulips."

  "Yes."

  St. Just stood and walked over to one of the arrow-slit windows. Far below, Portia was sitting on a garden bench, wrapped tightly against the cold, the light from the castle windows gleaming faintly on her dark hair. Winston sat beside her, his head close to hers in urgent conversation-closer than St. Just felt was strictly necessary to convey an opinion, however urgent. His heart did something he didn't know hearts could really do-a triple-axle followed by a somersault. He had to get this woman out of his mind; she was making him ill.

  He realized Moor was speaking to him.

  "I'm sorry, what?"

  "What we don't know is why it was done, then."

  "Or how. Not to mention, by whom."

  Moor nodded. "And we won't know who until we know why. Sod this for a lark. Practically any of them could have done it."

  St. Just turned deliberately away from the window view. It was like removing a sticking plaster with one pull. He wanted to be down there with Portia, dragging her away from Winston's doubtful charms, not stuck here discussing this damned case.

  He felt somehow like a traitor, but he had to ask. In a voice as casual as he could manage, he said, "Anything on Portia De'Ath?"

  Moor shook his head. "Not on her, no. Her only connection with crime is that her American uncle was shot by an off-duty policeman. Killed. Turned out the man was unarmed. That kind of thing can queer you on police the rest of your life."

  Oh, God.

  "Let me see that report."

  Moor handed it to him.

  "Winston comes up clean, too," said Moor, as St. Just scanned the pages. An untested cop, an uncle who looked like a wanted suspect, stopped at a traffic light. He'd reached for his wallet to show his identification and…

  St. Just willfully pulled his mind back to the case. Time enough to learn Portia's story later. Her uncle's death couldn't be connected to this crime-he only hoped to God it wouldn't end up having anything to do with the pair of them, himself and Portia. It certainly explained the "I could never marry a policeman" remark.

  "Magretta Sincock did see something helpful that night," he told Moor, "but not a ghost. It was Kimberlee, probably on her way to the dungeon, 'to meet her fate,' as I'm sure Magretta would put it. It's odd, but… Winston thought he saw Kimberlee, too, later, but that's unlikely. As did Portia, although she's even less sure. Maybe it was someone wandering the stairs in one of the hotel's white robes. But by the time we lost the lights, Kimberlee was almost certainly already in the dungeon-and probably dead."

  St. Just went on. "They all claim alibis but none that are reliable-or completely verifiable, for that matter. There was a lot of wine with dinner and drinks all around in the hours following. And they say no group, on average, can go through drink like a group of writers."

  He couldn't help himself. He looked back into the garden. Portia had gone, leaving Winston sitting alone again. Good.

  He turned back to Moor.

  "By the way, we really should have someone hanging about the spa. There are some conversations going on in there that we should be privy to, and that might prove useful." And Portia could use watching if she's going to play detective, he added to himself.

  "Good idea," said Moor. "Sergeant Kittle, I've been noticing you've been letting those enlarged pores of yours get the upper hand."

  Kittle, stung, said, "What enlarged pores?"

  "Get on with you, man. See what you can learn from our friends, the murder suspects."

  "Sir, one of the WPCs would surely be a better-"

  "Don't argue with me. Go."

  As the door closed on Sergeant Kittle's back, stiff with outrage, St. Just said, "We come back to why she would be in such an unlikely spot, at such an unlikely hour. I doubt very much she was looking for inspiration for her book, as Magretta claims was her own mission. That's just silly enough to be believable where Magretta is concerned, but Kimberlee-I'm not so sure. So the question is, which of these people would Kimberlee agree to meet? We assume her lover. Why? Why not meet Jay in her room as he claims they had planned?"

  "So many 'whys.' Someone met her at the bottle dungeon and that's all she wrote. Literally. We-"

  Just then they heard a scream, followed by a low, keening wail.

  "It's coming from outside," said St. Just, already running. "Let's go."

  AND THEN THERE WERE FEWER

  It was a small body, nearly as short as a child's, but then Florie Macintosh in life had been a small woman.

  Magretta had found her, a fact suspicious in itself. To find one body-fine, okay. Two bodies shot a person straight to the top of a suspect list.

  Florie was floating facedown in the moat, in an unlighted area to the rear of the castle. A large gash to the back of her head gave him the hope she'd died quickly, unawares, even before she'd hit the water. A mace, no doubt taken from the castle's extensive collection of weaponry, lay on the ground not far from where she floated. Magretta, sobbing hysterically, was crouched at the edge of the wide ditch, staring in disbelief into the dark water.

  St. Just exchanged a few words with one of the constables hovering nearby before angrily stalking away, leaving Moor and Kittle to organize the forensics. There was nothing to be done until they retrieved that little form. He'd seen enough drowning victims to know Florie was past mortal help. And he didn't dare trust himself around Magretta.

  "Have someone keep an eye on her-constantly," he told Kittle before he left, with a nod in Magretta's direction. "And get her away from the body."

  Damn. Damn it all to hell. How could he have been so stupid? He'd as good as told Magretta that Florie was the one who blew her "alibi" apart. Could she really have raced right out to exact revenge? Had Florie been killed only because he'd bluffed Magretta into thinking Florie was a witness against her?

  Was Magretta insane? Or just panicked into carelessness? Kimberlee's death showed signs of careful planning-the murderer had to have lured Kimberlee somehow to such an obscure part of the castle. Florie's death-it was madness for the murderer to have taken such a risk.

  He tried to turn all his prior thinking on its head. Everyone had kept assuring him that Kimberlee Kalder had everything going for her-and yet Kimberlee Kalder had ended up dead. Now he wondered: Had he been wrong from the start not to recognize her as a victim-as someone whose looks and success would attract jealousy wherever she went, almost-as Desmond had said-no matter what she did?

  His footsteps led him unseeing, far past the range of the castle floodlights, towards the outdoor cages of the falconry. A snowy owl was the only one at home at the moment. He had read somewhere there was a word for a group of owls-a parliament, that was it. A funny word for such a typically solitary creature. St. Just stopped in his tracks to stare at him-or her. The company of a creature that killed for food was infinitely preferable to that of a creature that killed for love or money-the usual human excuses. Love or money, sometimes with a little revenge thrown in.

  The owl stared back at him with its great golden eyes-eyes that might have been lined with kohl. It seemed to say both, "Hello? What's all this,
then?" and "I could have you for breakfast if I felt like it, you know," but all in a supremely indifferent way.

  "Boo," said St. Just, experimentally.

  The owl, not surprisingly, had no time for this and looked peevishly away: There must be better prey out there than this fool. St. Just stared at its downy, silken back. As he did so, a thought seemed to come from the remembered depths of the creature's eyes.

  "What if?" he said aloud. "What if it was something else she'd seen? Someone else?"

  He walked slowly back in the direction of the hulking gray bulk of Dalmorton.

  ____________________

  Florie's body had been removed from the water. Sergeant Kittle stood respectfully back inside the scene shield, watching forensics do its job, his melancholy expression even bleaker than usual. Moor was on the phone, giving somebody hell.

  "They found the laptop, sir," Kittle told him.

  "Good. I'll be wanting a word with your IT man." St. Just turned away as the examiner began to practice the intimate, violating rituals of his trade. There was no dignity to be accorded the victim of foul play. "For one thing, depending on what's on that laptop, we might need it at trial. Listen, can you get a search-and-rescue dog out here?"

  Kittle, momentarily taken aback, said, "I guess so, sir. Who are we looking for?"

  "I think I've already found the one I'm looking for, actually. How long will it take to get someone out here?"

  "An hour. Two at the most."

  "You're certain?"

  "For a high-profile case like this? With a serial killer on the loose? Yeah, I think so, sir. Besides, Robert, the handler, is one of my mates. I'll get him here with Rob Roy. That's the dog, sir."

  "Good. Once they've arrived, I want you to get the suspects together in the library. All of them. Tell them the castle is offering free drinks all night. That will get them there with bells on. And when you talk with Donna about the drinks, tell her I want a word with her."

  "Well, I don't know about-"

  "Don't worry, I'll clear all this with Moor. Oh, and one more thing," he added. "Find me a good local bookstore, one that's willing to cooperate with the police, no matter the time of night."

  And he told Sergeant Kittle exactly what he wanted.

  ____________________

  They were clustered by the priest's hole, whispering, the whole job lot of them. They jumped apart as St. Just, Moor, and Kittle came into the room, precisely like a gang of old lags caught trying to break out in an old gaol movie.

  He did a quick head count as they turned to look at him. They were all there, and looking only slightly mollified by the free drinks, crisps, and snacks the sergeant had arranged via Donna.

  St. Just was carrying a small carton, which he placed carefully on the seat of one of the chairs. He turned to address the group. Good, all eyes front. Rather, all eyes were trying to get a closer look at the carton behind him, which happened to be labeled "Olive Oil-Imported from Greece."

  Annabelle Pace broke the silence.

  "Any progress yet, DCI St. Just?" she asked. Her voice held a tinge of exasperation. Annabelle still seemed to be auditioning for a role in newsreel footage of wartime shortages, this time wearing a gray, loose-fitting dress that might have started life as a slipcover.

  "Well, I've determined that many of you are lying. That's progress of a sort."

  There were splutterings of protest at this, but not as much, he thought, as one might have expected.

  Mrs. Elksworthy said, "Perhaps you will explain what is meant by lying?" But her voice was tentative. He might only have imagined that her eyes held a pleading look.

  "First, would everyone please take a seat. Make yourselves comfortable. This may take awhile." He waited until they'd settled in. Jay, he noticed, took his usual position by the window, so as to be highlighted to best advantage. Did the man never give it a rest?

  "I say, Inspector, it's a jolly late time of night for this," said Easterbrook.

  "Certainly it's too jolly late to help Mrs. Macintosh," St. Just replied curtly. His anger at himself for not foreseeing the danger to Florie was still bitter, even though he recognized that it was her death that had pointed the way. Hands in pockets, he began pacing the room. "Now, in any murder investigation, things are uncovered that a suspect-however innocent-doesn't necessarily want revealed." His eyes slid of their own accord in Mrs. Elksworthy's direction. "We, the police, are perfectly aware that most of what is uncovered may have nothing to do with the case. Still, we need all the pieces of the puzzle so we can start throwing out the pieces that belong to a different puzzle altogether.

  "For example, Mrs. Elksworthy. You never told anyone you spoke with Kimberlee that night in her room. I had to learn that from someone else."

  She answered, in a slow, tentative voice he had never heard her use before.

  "Yes. Yes, I-Oh, what difference does it all make now? I had a friend of many years. Her name was Laura. But I suppose you know all about it. About… everything?"

  He gave a slight nod of his head.

  "We don't care about the particulars, Mrs. Elksworthy. But I need you to tell me yourself why you were in Kimberlee's room."

  "Kimberlee came over to me after dinner the first night and said, 'Writing about Laura was such a challenge, but I think you'll be pleased with the result.' Of course I asked why she would write about her at all. It was 'such a fascinating love story,' she said. I told her she didn't have my permission to write about Laura. But of course she didn't need my permission. 'You're a crook, aren't you?' she said then. And she gave me this triumphant, this gloating, little smile. I think the devil probably smiles like that. Anyway, God knows what she was writing exactly, but I was not going to have her treat Laura's life, and mine, as fodder for some trashy "Latte" sequel. I went to try to talk her out of it. I could have saved my breath, of course. If I hadn't been so angry and frightened-I was just shaking with fear and anger-I'd have known that. She just laughed at me. Called me an old-well, never mind. I should have known better than to even try with her.

  "The real joke is, Kimberlee owed me. She wanted a blurb from me when her book first came out. I was glad to help. Well, I did write something innocuous rather than glowing-I think the marketing people pulled out a single word like 'intriguing' for the back cover. It was that, all right. Intriguing.

  "Oh, what difference does it make now?" she said again, in a voice pitched to a wail. "If I expected gratitude, I wouldn't have helped her in the first place. I just didn't expect that kind of betrayal. But Kimberlee was very much alive when I left her, Inspector. Alive, and laughing.

  "As to the rest-I can't say I'm sorry for any of… what happened… as difficult as it made my life. If left to the U.S. healthcare system, Laura would have died on the streets, too ill and broke to care for herself. I had to do something to help her."

  The rest of the group looked at each other, mystified by this narration.

  "Who in hell is Laura?" demanded B. A. King.

  Somewhat melodramatically, St. Just turned and pointed in the direction of B. A. King, who stared mulishly back.

  "As for you," said St. Just. "You're one of the finest liars in this collection."

  "That's just not true," said King. "I told you everything. Practically solved the case for you, I'd bet. I saw them dredge up that laptop from the moat. That must have been the splash I heard. I told you about seeing Magretta-"

  "Why didn't you tell me about 'your' book when you had the chance? Instead, you dredged up some nonsense about how you'd lost Kimberlee's pen."

  "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

  "I'm sure you do. We checked out the copyright on When Summer's Passion Lingers, a simple enough thing to do. The copyright holder is Thistlegrove Enterprises. An 'enterprise' registered to B. A. King. You changed the title of the book, of course, an elementary precaution. But Kimberlee found out, didn't she? She stumbled across a copy somehow, and she of course recognized her own writing. She began threatenin
g you, probably with legal action. And there is only one way to silence that kind of threat forever, is there not?"

  "No!" King shouted. "You've got it all wrong. It was nothing. Just a little fiddle. She didn't care… The book didn't make much money, anyway. She wasn't… I didn't think-"

  St. Just cut across the blether. "You didn't think there was any way for her or anyone else to find out, did you? She'd moved on to the mystery field, she wasn't writing straight romance anymore. You made up a name, and you submitted her book to a publisher as your own, didn't you? Leticia-Anne Deville, indeed. Now, how did you get hold of the book? I think that was the simplest part of all. Kimberlee's manuscript came in unsolicited when she was looking for an agent, back in the days when you were still working as an agent, before you became a publicist. She must have been just a kid. What could be simpler than to decline to represent her but to steal her book as your own? No wonder she was angry-I'd have been angry, too."

  "You're crazy," said B. A. King. "I'll have you up on slander charges."

  "Be my guest. I'll look forward to that day. Now, another liar is Jay."

  Jay uncurled slowly, cautiously, from his languid pose. The blue eyes beneath the tousled blonde hair held a startled, wary look.

  "Those were stupid lies you told me. The platonic, hand-holding, love-at-a-distance lies. At least you admitted you went to her room the night of the murder-that admission was a wise move on your part. As it happened, you were seen by Quentin, coming downstairs. But you met Kimberlee some time ago, didn't you? You had an affair-a sexual relationship?"

  Jay shook his head, all his arrogance returning. "You couldn't possibly know that. And I really fail to see how it's any of your busi-"

  "Three little words."

  "No. I didn't love her."

  "Two words, actually. DeoxyriboNucleic Acid. DNA. Kimberlee was pregnant. Naturally we'll be testing to see who the father was."