by Dean James
And now I was staring, through crying eyes, at a letter from an acquaintance informing me that Jack had died two weeks after I left Houston for England.
I folded the letter carefully and put it back inside the envelope. Pulling open the bottom drawer of the desk, I laid the envelope on top of the pile already nestled there. I shut the drawer, then turned my chair back to the computer screen.
Taking a deep breath, I focused once more on the task at hand. Time to start a new book.
CHAPTER SIX
By the time I quit working to get ready for the meeting, I had written two chapters of my next minor masterpiece of mystery and mayhem. I am nothing if not modest about my achievements. The critics adore my mysteries, and I have enough awards from peers and fans to choke a Clydesdale. I shut down the computer, took my miracle pill, and dressed for my first encounter with the board of the Snupperton Mumsley Amateur Dramatic Society. Had I but known, as the saying goes.
I approached the parish hall on the dot of nine o’clock. In the light of a fading August evening, the hall looked to have been built in the 1950s, judging from its utter lack of character and charm. Utilitarian, I supposed. Functional but graceless. Like one or two of the residents of Snupperton Mumsley. Following the voices I could hear into the main hall, I found various persons onstage. A long table stood there, with most of the board and members of the Church Restoration Fund Committee seated around it There was apparently very little difference in membership between the two groups.
Lady Prunella Blitherington was trying vainly to make her voice heard over the rest. I walked across the floor and sprang lightly up onto the low stage. As the din of conversation ceased upon my dashing entrance, I nodded to Trevor Chase. Lady Prunella rose from her position at the head of the table and deigned to introduce me. “My dear Dr. Kirby-Jones, mere words cannot express our delight in the fact that you have decided to join us tonight.” She gestured imperiously. “Of course, you already know Abigail Winterton.”
I inclined my head, and Lady Prunella continued. “May I present Trevor Chase, who owns the village bookshop?” There wasn’t quite a sniff in her voice, but I could tell she didn’t approve of Trevor. I smiled at him, and he winked at me. “We met earlier today.”
At this, someone clumped out of the shadows at the back of the stage, where miscellaneous bits of scenery leaned and sagged. “Mother, I can’t find it anywhere,” Giles Blitherington complained, taking no notice for a moment that his mother was speaking.
Lady Prunella pursed her lips at this sign of ill-bred behavior on the part of her darling, but she allowed it to pass without comment. “Giles, darling, you remember Dr. Kirby-Jones?”
Giles smiled at me, tossing his head. Quite a change from yesterday’s attitude, I noted. Was he flirting with me? I cast a quick glance at Trevor Chase, who was so obviously not watching Giles, it was almost funny.
Not waiting for a verbal response from her son, Lady Prunella continued. “May I present Mrs. Samantha Stevens, who is also a recent addition to our ranks.” And an unwelcome one, to judge from Lady Prunella’s ill-concealed distaste. Mrs. Stevens favored me with a glittering smile. “Dear Lady Blitherington,” she cooed, “always so delightfully polite and proper. Dr. Kirby-Jones and I met in the village shop this morning.”
I attempted to say something flowery and charming, but Lady Prunella cleared her throat loudly. “And may I also introduce Colonel Athelstan Clitheroe? Another member of our select little group.” Lady Prunella must approve of the colonel, I thought, since she sounded almost cordial when she spoke his name. “Unfortunately, neither our dear vicar nor Jane Hardwick could be with us tonight. But we shall endeavor to uphold the charge given us, nevertheless.” She smiled, rather like a hyena about to devour some disabled prey.
Her introduction performed, Lady Prunella plumped herself back down in her chair, which squeaked alarmingly beneath her bulk.
I turned my attention to the assorted persons around the table. Colonel Clitheroe interested me greatly, because he was the man I had seen earlier in the shadows of the churchyard with Letty Butler-Melville. Perhaps there was more to my little mystery than I had anticipated. I made general noises of greeting to everyone and scouted about for a chair to pull up to the table. Giles, the gracious lout, had taken the only available one right in front of me. So much for flirting.
As the stage seemed recently to have been set for some sort of drawing-room comedy, replete with tea tray and two sofas, I rooted out an empty chair lurking behind one of the sofas. While I found a place to sit, between Trevor Chase and Samantha Stevens, Letty Butler-Melville came bustling in from somewhere backstage, wheeling a heavily laden tea cart before her.
Lady Prunella paid absolutely no attention as Letty began to serve tea except to remind her sharply, “Sugar, no milk!” Robert’s Rules of Order evidently held no interest for our dear chairwoman as she launched into the business of that night’s meeting.
“We have all agreed that we shall direct our energies to a production to benefit dear St. Ethelwold’s and our dear vicar’s efforts to keep the building in good repair. The only question remaining before us at this time is what play we should produce.” She frowned at each of us in turn during an interval in which no one spoke but slurped tea instead.
“Obviously, in order to keep our production costs down so that we may give as much money as possible to dear St. Ethelwold’s, we must save money wherever we can. I propose that in order to do so in a most significant way, we produce a play for which we will have to pay no royalties. Indeed, no author fees whatsoever, as the author has kindly consented to our using the play for these reasons.”
Giles grumbled something into his teacup, but Lady Prunella affected not to notice. Samantha Stevens spoke up instead. “That is certainly prudent of you, Lady Blitherington. But, do tell us, who is the generous soul who has made such an offer?”
Abigail Winterton had been remarkably restrained to this point, I thought, but now she snorted loudly and clumped her teacup down in its saucer. She was about to launch into a tirade, but Lady Prunella fixed her with a basilisk stare, and the shopkeeper subsided.
“My own dear son has offered to let us produce his play Who Murdered Mater? I have no doubt that a clever whodunit will bring us a huge audience and thus help us raise a goodly sum for the church.” In a rare moment of goodwill, Lady Prunella beamed at us all.
Samantha Stevens clapped her hands together and laughed, a silvery, musical sound. “What an absolutely delicious title, Giles! However did you think of it?”
Giles’s face slowly suffused with redness, while Abigail Winterton and the colonel tried to be discreet with their amusement Trevor Chase, in between casting venomous glances in Giles’s direction, looked more and more as if he wished he were somewhere else.
Colonel Clitheroe cleared his throat. “My dear Lady Blitherington,” he bleated. I was astonished at his voice; I had been expecting the stentorian tones of an Anglo-Indian officer, right out of Agatha Christie. But instead I heard the wimpy tones of a Caspar Milquetoast.
“Do you believe you’re right about the whodunit,” the colonel continued. “That Mousehole play still packs ’em in. Don’t quite understand it myself, but still, there you are. Good show, and all that.”
At least his dialogue was true to form, I thought. Yet another delicious stereotype in this charmingly stereotypical village. Where on earth did he come from?
“Thank you, Colonel,” Lady Prunella beamed, not bothering to correct his mistake. If she even realized the title was wrong, that is. “One can always rely on your sensible approach to things.” She paused to frown at the rest of us. “I take it, then, that we are all agreed?”
“Lady Blitherington,” Samantha Stevens said, “one cannot disagree with you in principle. That is to say, I think a whodunit could be just the ticket. But I also think we should all have a chance to read the play first before we decide whether to produce it. After all, we don’t know that it is quite, well,
shall we say, suitable, for our purposes?”
In other words, it could stink to high heaven, I thought. You go, girl!
Stunned silence followed Mrs. Stevens’s suggestion. I grinned, looking away from the tableau for a moment. Lady Prunella sat frozen, her mouth hanging open at the audacity of someone’s challenging the abilities of her own dear Giles.
Lady Prunella found her voice. “Mrs. Stevens, you are only lately come to Snupperton Mumsley, so I will grant that you are not aware of the manner in which we do things here. My family and I have been generous patrons of the Snupperton Mumsley Amateur Dramatic Society since its inception, and as hereditary chairwoman of the group, I believe that I may speak for the board when I say that I would not have proposed the use of Giles’s play were it not eminently suitable for production by our illustrious group.”
Even with her hideous voice, it was an impressive speech. Once upon her dignity, Lady Prunella could have been Britannia bravely sailing forth to conquer the uncivilized nations of the world. But would it serve to put Samantha Stevens in her place?
Mrs. Stevens had an odd gleam in her eye, one that promised another battle, sometime in the future, with a different outcome. Lady Prunella had best not turn her back on her adversary.
“Dear Lady Blitherington,” Mrs. Stevens said, her voice as smooth as cream, “of course you are right. I had not stopped to consider your obvious concern for the group in my own efforts to safeguard those same interests.”
Lady Prunella, blindly considering this a victory, decided to be gracious. “Thank you, Mrs. Stevens. We all do so very much appreciate your interest in the group and your generous support of it.” Perhaps Lady Prunella had belatedly remembered that Mrs. Stevens had as much, or more, money to offer the group than did the Blitherington family and it behooved her to kiss and make up. “As it so happens, Giles has brought copies of the play for everyone. I knew you would want to read it”—here she could not restrain a small, triumphant smile—“and here it is.” With a flourish she reached beneath the table and pulled out a stack of scripts.
Abigail Winterton cleared her throat loudly, and Lady Prunella stared at her, arrested in mid-thwack. “A whodunit is all very well, Prunella,” she said, “but perhaps those who will be coming to our play would prefer something a bit more literary.”
I found the sneer in her voice amusing. Evidently she was yet another of those tiresome persons who believed that simply because a work of fiction contained a murder or two, it was worthless as literature.
“And what would you suggest in its place, my dear Abigail?” The venom in Lady Prunella’s voice could have felled a herd of elephants. Lady Prunella slapped her hand down on the pile of play scripts in a shockingly vulgar display of temper.
Proof against Lady Prunella’s tone of voice, Abigail Winterton smiled, smugness smeared across her face like marmalade. “A drama which addresses the human condition as seen in the moral decay in a contemporary English village. Much like our own dear Snupperton Mumsley. And I’m sure the author would not ask for royalties, at least this once.”
The room had grown absolutely still, and I watched with considerable interest as every gaze seemed riveted upon Abigail Winterton.
“Would you care to elaborate upon what you mean by moral decay, Miss Winterton?” Samantha Stevens’s voice frosted the air.
Abigail Winterton preened before all the attention. “Well, if you must know, in this particular play—the author of which happens to be a keen observer of human nature—moral decay encompasses so many things. You all know what life is like in a village. For example, a village like our own dear, dear Snupperton Mumsley.” She giggled. A most unfortunate sound, I assure you. “There are so many secrets, those shameful little things about one’s past that one never wants the neighbors to know about.” She paused, smiling with delighted malice.
“It all sounds rather tawdry and unbearably common to me,” Lady Prunella said, sniffing loudly.
“Perhaps,” Abigail Winterton replied, “but the human condition so often is.”
Trevor Chase said, sounding as if he were speaking with teeth clenched, “Why should the board approve putting on something like this? It sounds completely outrageous to me. We don’t even know who the author is!” Her eyes flat and hard, Abigail Winterton stared briefly at each member of the assembled group in turn, skipping only yours truly. “The author is someone local who for the moment prefers to remain anonymous. Having read it, I think it would be so very interesting to do this play. I’m sure the whole village would find it vastly amusing, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t!” Lady Prunella stood up. “Abigail, I do believe you’ve totally lost your mind. This is ridiculous. We have a perfectly good play to use. Why should we even consider the drivel you’ve suggested?”
Abigail Winterton gave that same malicious smile. “Oh, my dear Prunella, I could think of any number of good reasons why it would behoove the board to approve my choice of a play.” Once again she stared around the table, leaving out only me. “I’m sure most of you would agree with me.”
Lady Prunella sat down with a thump. Her face had paled. “Very well, then,” she said in a weak voice. “Do you have copies of this play for us to read?”
Abigail Winterton’s face turned shifty. “At the moment there is only one copy of the play, and the author hasn’t wished to let it out of sight. Copies should be ready soon. You all will have copies as soon as they are available.”
There were undercurrents here that I simply did not understand. At one point, I would have sworn that Abigail Winterton was threatening everyone in the room, with the exception of myself. I thought back over what Jane Hardwick had said about this woman, that she was sly and prying. Was she actually blackmailing them into performing this play? What had she discovered on her late night rambles around the village? Copying Abigail Winterton, but doing it more subtly, I hoped, I surveyed the faces of everyone in the room. They had all had time to smooth over their shock, but I could feel all sorts of emotions rampant in the room. Vampires are very sensitive to strong emotion, and I felt it coming from everyone in the room, in varying degrees. The problem with so much emotion at once, however, was that it was difficult to isolate person by person. But someone in the room (and maybe more than one someone) was furious enough to kill.
“In the meantime,” Lady Prunella continued, her former bluster gone, “perhaps we could look over Giles’s play in the eventuality that the other play proves unsuitable.” A last gasp of defiance, it seemed, but I thought that the conclusion was already foregone.
Nevertheless, we passed the scripts around and began peering cautiously inside them. Even if Giles’s work stank, it would no doubt be preferable to whatever Abigail Winterton had devised. I settled back in my chair to read, while others around the table got up and wandered around the stage. Trevor Chase and Samantha Stevens were both walking and mumbling dialogue under their breaths, while Lady Prunella and Giles had a conference in one comer of the stage. Letty Butler-Melville pottered around the stage, fiddling with various props. Abigail Winterton thumbed disdainfully through Giles’s play, and Colonel Clitheroe sat staring off into space.
I focused my attention on the script, and to my amazement, I discovered that it was actually quite good. The dialogue was snappy and sophisticated—not stolen straight out of Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde, as I had anticipated—and I looked at Giles Blitherington with renewed respect. He and Trevor Chase were now whispering furiously to each other, while Lady Prunella and Abigail Winterton faced off in another corner. The emotions coming from that corner were powerful indeed. Samantha Stevens resumed her seat next to me and said quietly, “It’s actually quite good, isn’t it?”
I nodded as the rest of the board resumed their seats around the table. I longed to ask her for an explanation of Abigail Winterton’s behavior tonight, but now was not the time.
“Well, everyone,” Lady Prunella said, “I suppose there is nothing further to be said this evening. W
e have one play offered for our use, and I had thought that more than sufficient for our needs.” Her temper flared for a moment, then went out. “Apparently, we shall have another one to consider, however, and Abigail will see to it that we all have copies to examine.”
Abigail Winterton inclined her head graciously.
“Miss Winterton,” Samantha Stevens said, “won’t you tell us who wrote the play?”
Miss Winterton stood up. “You’ll all know soon enough. Good night, everyone.” She smiled one last time and walked to the stairs at one end of the stage. We watched in silence as she strode across the room and out the door.
An air of constraint had fallen upon the remaining group, several of whom eyed me with uncertainty. Ever sensitive to atmosphere, I stood, pushing back my chair. “This has been a most interesting meeting. I shall look forward to conferring with you all later, but now I must bid you good night. More work to do at home, you know.”
Amidst faint wishes for a good evening, I followed the path of Abigail Winterton, meanwhile timing my ears very carefully for what was going to be said as soon as they thought I was out of earshot.
Just as I reached the door, I heard Lady Prunella hiss to her offspring, “I hope someone offs the bloody bitch and saves us the trouble.”
Tsk! Such language, I thought. But who knew that Lady Prunella could predict the future so accurately?
CHAPTER SEVEN
After a busy night of writing, I was pottering about the cottage the next morning, trying vainly to bring some sort of organization to my office, when someone knocked on the front door. In my favorite tattered writing togs, I wasn’t best attired to receive visitors. I glanced at my watch. What would the neighbors think to see me dressed this way, scant minutes before noon?
Ah, well, I shrugged. They’d get used to me.
I opened the front door to the vision of a tall, handsome blond man in an off-the-rack suit. Despite the ready-made appearance of his clothes, my visitor filled them out well. He caught my glance as I made a rapid survey, but his face retained its look of polite inquiry. Behind him stood a chubby associate who was nearly a foot shorter. What have we here? I thought. They had rather an official air about them. I had a good notion just who they were.
