Death and the Lit Chick sm-2

by G. M. Malliet

  "Good God. But I-"

  "This would really be a good moment to tell me the truth. Your story of chaste, courtly love may not hold up."

  Desmond Rumer, meanwhile, was looking at Jay with a steely hatred. He made to cross the room toward his rival, only to find Sergeant Kittle had stepped nimbly into his path. Reluctantly, Desmond backed away, but he remained standing, fists clenched at his sides.

  "Oh, all right, all right!" Jay bellowed, then, collecting himself, said more equably, "We had begun an affair. But I didn't kill her and it's a far leap to try to claim I did. I was just afraid if you knew how far I was involved with her it would look bad for me. The situation had altered when she turned up, you know, dead."

  "This admission at this late date is what looks, you know, bad. Just for your future reference. Sir."

  "All right, I said. But I told you everything that was salient to your investigation. I went to her room at 10:30 to keep our prearranged rendezvous, but she wasn't there. She'd given me a key-I told you that."

  St. Just nodded. "She was probably already dead by then."

  St. Just still thought Jay had rather a wonderful motive, but he decided not to waste any more bullets on him.

  "Just tell me," said St. Just, "one thing. Where did you meet her for your little secret get-togethers?"

  "We always met at my place. Once or twice we went away for the odd weekend, met up in the Bahamas. I didn't even know where she lived, except in the vaguest terms. Kimberlee was evasive, always. It was part of her nature, I thought. I didn't know about… him. I didn't know he was the reason." He stole a glance at Desmond, who returned the glance with a glower of scarcely controlled loathing.

  "That's what I thought," said St. Just. He turned, assessing each of the suspects, one by one. Eeney, meeney, miney… His eyes settled at last on one face in particular.

  "But for the real liar, of course, the prize goes to the one who killed Kimberlee, and the one who killed Florie."

  WITNESS FOR

  THE PROSECUTION

  St. Just had once sat through an interrogation training course in analyzing facial expressions. Looking about, he saw nearly the whole gamut arrayed before him: Fear, guilt, puzzlement, annoyance, anger. Pretty much everything but joy and lust.

  "This would have been a simple case to solve if so many of you hadn't lied about so many silly things," he reiterated. "Stolen books, love affairs-none of the secrets some of you have been hiding holds a candle to murder. Even in the case of Donna Doone, who has a sadder connection with Kimberlee. But Ms. Doone, we needed to have heard about that from you."

  Donna nodded miserably. "She killed my brother. She was directly responsible for his death."

  "And there is a case to be made that she was. Unsubstantiated allegations, cleverly worded-that poisonous type of writing was Kimberlee's specialty."

  "I never knew," said Donna slowly, "what it was like to actually want to kill someone. But that's how I felt about Kimberlee. For a very long time. But I'd put it all behind me for the most part-I have my writing, you see. That helps me forget."

  "Donna," said Winston. "You really shouldn't say any more." St. Just was more than a little surprised to see a look of stricken tenderness on his face. When had this connection sprung up between them?

  She shook her head, returning his look with one of deep affection. "It's all right, Winston." She turned her eyes to St. Just. "When she came here, it just stirred it all up for me again. I hated the sight of her face. Hated… And then-she didn't know who I was, you see-I showed her my book, she asked to see it, and she laughed-"

  "Donna," said Winston again. "Please. You need to take advice."

  "But you didn't kill her, did you." This, also gently, came from St. Just.

  "No," she said sadly. "And I guess you'll just have to take my word for it."

  "Ms. Doone, I think I can do better than that." He turned again to the rest of the room. "Now, others here have far less serious secrets they've been at pains to hide. For example, this staged animosity toward Kimberlee…"

  His eyes were on Magretta now, who gave him her patented "Who, me?" look of innocence.

  "That really worked against you once she was killed, Magretta, when it became a dangerous game-for you. You should have helped us get a clearer picture from the start. The whole thing was a publicity stunt, wasn't it?"

  "We-e-ell, not the whole thing," she said. "Kimberlee and I discovered by accident that press about bad blood between us made sales figures for both of us go up. You can track this kind of thing online these days, you know. Any newspaper article we could engineer, debating the worth, or not, of chick lit books-making it look like a spitting feud, you know-that caused quite a spike in both our online visitors and sales. So we went about deliberately stirring things. As Oscar Wilde said, 'There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.' It certainly worked to my advantage over time-if they, the press, mentioned Kimberlee, it got so they almost had to mention me. It was harmless."

  "Let's let me be the judge of whether or not it was harmless, shall we?"

  "How did you guess?" she asked.

  "Partly because you overdid it. You overacted-how did B. A. King put it? You chewed the scenery. Yes. I gather that was the stamp of your previous career in the theater."

  "Well, really," huffed Magretta. "I-"

  "And you-" St. Just added, turning, "-you might also have told me, Quentin, that you were in on this little scheme. So much for high journalistic standards. You did nothing but create more little lies for us to clear away, before we could begin to see the larger truth."

  "It's got nothing to do with anything… I told you, Kimberlee was going to give me a blurb. What was the harm? One hand washing the other."

  "Yes, I wondered at that, Kimberlee promising you a blurb. She had to be getting more out of it than what you let on. The open-handed gesture was never in her repertoire, according to all of you, and your history with her hardly suggests she would be nursing some wistful nostalgia for an old friendship. Why on earth would she go out of her way to help you-unless there was something in it for Kimberlee? Let's see, who else? Oh, yes, Winston Chatley."

  "Me?" His gaze flitted automatically toward Donna.

  "It was B. A. King who suggested to me Winston had blackmailed Easterbrook, in order to get his books published. He implied Easterbrook had been having an affair and since it was his wife who happened to control the wealth… But I didn't believe a lot of what B. A. King told me, and I certainly doubted this. If Winston was such an excellent writer, as I've heard, why would blackmail be necessary to get published?"

  The writers looked at him, stunned.

  "You must be joking," said Magretta. "Haven't you learned anything in the past few days? Writers would kill to get published-just using a figure of speech there, of course," she added. "But would they stop at a spot of blackmail? No. Heavens no. Talent or a lack of it has nothing to do with getting published. That's why we're such desperate creatures."

  They all nodded their heads in agreement.

  "Yes, you've already told me the lengths you, personally, would go to in order to get what you wanted. B. A. King told me he heard a loud splash-something being thrown out of Kimberlee's room. I tended to dismiss that-he was so busy implicating everyone and dragging red herrings about the place. Plus, he was drunk and rambling half the time."

  "Look here, that's uncalled f-"

  "But by your own admission, Magretta, you did throw the computer out of Kimberlee's window. It would just fit through the medieval arrow slit, wouldn't it? It's almost as if the stonemasons had planned for future technology. You had found Kimberlee dead when you went to the bottle dungeon, wandering about, maybe a little drunk. You stole Kimberlee's purse, with her key, from the crime scene. This was, of course, how you knew you had the free run of her room. Kimberlee was dead."

  All heads turned to Magretta.

  "What?" she said. "I had my reasons. He
knows."

  "Perhaps what you really wanted, Ms. Sincock, was to end the reign of Kimberlee and her pink handbags. Did you imagine killing her would put an end to the chick lit trend?"

  "That's preposterous. Of course not."

  "Yes," said St. Just. "I do tend to agree. Be all that as it may, B. A. King told the truth about the splash he heard. But he got the wrong angle on the blackmail, didn't he? Winston wasn't the blackmailer. According to Annabelle, that was Tom Brackett, a much more likely scenario. He was holding Easterbrook's feet to the fire so he could get expensive publicity and more promotion for his 'spy' books."

  This earned Easterbrook a few reproachful stares, and a few wistful ones as well: Why didn't I think of doing that?

  "Of all the nonsense…" began Tom. But he stopped on seeing the look on Easterbrook's face.

  "You can find yourself a new publisher now this has all spilled open," Easterbrook told him. "That little game is over."

  St. Just continued, "King did get a couple of things right. You see, it's so hard to tell when you're dealing with someone who deals in half-remembered gossip and innuendo. He also claimed to have seen Magretta skulking about when she claimed she was asleep or in communion with her Muse."

  "I don't skulk," said Magretta. "I told you what I was doing. I helped your investigation, remember?"

  "After first sabotaging it almost beyond repair, yes. Thanks so much. But let me come to the point. Someone here at the castle is not what they say they are.

  "And that someone would be you, Desmond, the 'devoted husband.'"

  SOMETHING WICKED

  There was a long pause. The others exchanged puzzled glances, then settled their eyes on Desmond. He kept his gaze stolidly fixed on St. Just.

  "Tell me something, Desmond," said St. Just. "Satisfy my curiosity, let's say. Have you ever set foot inside the priest's hole?"

  "What? No. No, never. What priest's hole?" he asked, in a voice loud and hoarse. He might have been shouting against a sudden influx of noise.

  St. Just smiled in satisfaction. It was all he could have hoped for.

  "Then why did forensics find strands of short dark hair in there? You're the only one we've got who would have any earthly reason to hang about the priest's hole that night. The rest of them had rooms.

  "We can easily test hair for DNA, too, you know," he added.

  The room fell into a hushed silence, the muted ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece the only sound. But St. Just thought he could almost hear the two minds that most concerned him communing telepathically across the room.

  "Let me tell you how this happened," said St. Just. "You, Desmond, killed your wife, Kimberlee. It had to be done before she got around to filing divorce papers. My conversations with both her agent and her publisher elicited a portrait of Kimberlee as a steely woman of business-the type of person who could annihilate you in a divorce action. So the question, of course, is why she would want a divorce. Did she find out you'd been unfaithful? Or did she just want out herself? I gather she did have rather a short attention span for relationships. Either way, you couldn't have her suing you for divorce, quietly or otherwise. You'd become accustomed to the lifestyle her money provided… far more money than you'd ever made in your lifetime."

  He looked at the man, closely watching his eyes, eyes that glanced nervously about the room, as if deliberately avoiding… a certain person. "You didn't arrive after the murder. You've been here all along. You hid in the priest's hole, and you returned there after you killed Kimberlee.

  "But you left the castle the next morning, after Kimberlee's body was found. You changed clothes somewhere at a safe distance from the castle, and then you returned much later in your business suit to talk with the police, wearing your distraught-husband face."

  "But," said Portia. "There were people crawling all over the place by then, and police guarding the only entrance. There's no way he could just walk out."

  "Ah, you've come to the heart of the matter, Portia. I'll get to that in a minute," St. Just replied. "No, there was no way, Desmond, you could walk in or out as you pleased. You'd need help from an accomplice. An accomplice here in the castle.

  "Let's trace it back, shall we? The drawbridge went up just before dinner and stayed up until Donna released Rachel Twalley and some of the other guests. She closed it behind them. The drawbridge opens only from the inside, and it makes a tremendous racket. We'd all have heard someone letting you in. You had to have come in before dinner, when it stood open.

  "But here's a curious, related thing. We checked all the hotel's files going back years, and only one name appeared. And it wasn't yours, Desmond. Now, no one could just wander in and start looking about for the priest's hole. A stranger asking the staff about it would be sure to be remembered. No. It took someone who had been here, someone who knew the layout, someone to make sure the entrance to the priest's hole hadn't been sealed or obstructed at some point.

  "It also needed someone to help you escape the next day, someone to act as lookout, someone to give you the all-clear signal.

  "And that someone was… your lover, Annabelle Pace."

  At this, the silence was broken by a collective gasp of disbelief.

  "I told you," said Magretta.

  "You did no such thing," said St. Just.

  "You're mad," Annabelle said stoutly. "I'll not stay to listen to this."

  At a nod from Moor, Sergeant Kittle lightly stepped over to block the door.

  "I think you will. So, we have Desmond hiding in the priest's hole, and maybe taking a little nap there after the murder. Murdering one's wife is so fatiguing, is it not, Desmond? But… why not just plan to kill her and leave? Why? Because the drawbridge would be heard. You might also be seen fleeing across the grounds.

  "At first I thought the original plan was that you would wait, hiding, until everyone was asleep and then slip out, risking the noise. Maybe stay in a hotel in Edinburgh that night under an assumed name. But now I don't think so. I think the plan all along was to sabotage the drawbridge-literally, throw a spanner in the works-so the castle would be sealed all night, providing you an airtight alibi, so to speak. There would be no way a 'stranger' could enter unheard. The storm and power outage allowed you to skip that little sabotage step. That part, I am sure, was to have been Annabelle's role. She was free to walk about, after all; you were not.

  "You-you only had to sit tight in your hidey hole until the time was ripe. You were Annabelle's alibi. She didn't make a move that night without being seen by someone. She couldn't have done the killing, and she did not. By the way, where's your mobile, Desmond?"

  "I left it at home by mistake, I was that upset," he said. His face was flushed. A thin, bright sheen of perspiration had appeared on his forehead.

  "No," said St. Just. "Not a mistake. Your own alibi was that mobile message you supposedly sent to Kimberlee's phone from London.

  "Only you didn't really send that message, did you? At least, not directly. You knew the police could tell from where the call was made. So you left your mobile at home in London. The simple thing would have been to bribe an accomplice to send the message from London for you, but that was a risk in itself. I think you-clever, technical genius you-programmed the mobile for a delayed send of a friendly message you'd written to Kimberlee. And then you headed for Scotland. Her mobile shows the message was sent at ten the night she died. Almost the exact minute you were killing her-the time you had planned in advance to kill her.

  "You invent software for investors, Desmond-you told me writing these programs is how you made your packet. You must have taken this as a small challenge, to adapt the delayed-order-placement feature you'd invented to a mobile phone message. We'll be taking a close look at that mobile, you can be certain."

  A smile began to play about the edges of Desmond's mouth. St. Just added, "We'll be taking a closer look, even if you designed a program to remove almost all traces of itself, and then cause the device to restart, eliminating the
last little bit. But certain controls would have to be defeated first, and that in and of itself would leave a trace."

  The smile disappeared.

  "But back to Annabelle's role in this. She was here in the first instance to show you the hiding place."

  "You'll have to do much better than this," said Annabelle.

  "I shall. You had another role, which was to get Kimberlee to the bottle dungeon. You were seen in the hallway outside the ladies' room, talking with her. You passed her a message, didn't you, purportedly from Jay Fforde, that there had been a change of plans and she was to meet him earlier than planned, and in a different place than planned. I doubt Kimberlee would question this, your being enlisted as go-between. That was part of her nature, wasn't it? The love of intrigue. Remember, her first book was a romance novel. Her second was all about the mating rituals of the sexes. It was the perfect ploy to get her where you wanted her."

  Annabelle looked at him contemptuously.

  "And this passes for evidence these days, does it? So I was here at the castle, over two years ago, during the Edinburgh festival, as you can easily find out by going through the castle records. So what?"

  He had to hand it to her; she wasn't just going to give it up. She, he suspected, had masterminded the whole scheme. Desmond didn't have the starch. St. Just paused, a knight looking for the chink in the armor. There was always one.

  "Yes, I think the credit for this elaborate charade must go to Annabelle," he said aloud.

  "Do tell."

  "What was it?" he went on relentlessly. "A plot for a new book, one that you decided to apply to real life? Or did you from the beginning address your demonic creativity to the little problem of how to get rid of Kimberlee Kalder? Either way, it worked-or nearly did."

  "Nonsense."

  "It is most assuredly not nonsense. You, as you say, were here during the Edinburgh festival. And you are the only one in this room who has ever been a guest here."

  "I repeat: You call this evidence? What about the staff?"