08 - The Highland Fling Murders (2 page)

I burst out laughing. Sally Bulloch was so brimming over with energy and spirit that it tumbled out of her every waking minute. No wonder she’d become such a legend in London that the Athenaeum’s restaurant was named after her.

“Everyone,” I said, “this is Sally Bulloch, the executive manager.”

“Welcome,” she said, pretty face beaming. “Come on. The bar is open.” With that, she was on her way across the lobby in the direction of the Athenaeum’s famed watering hole, the Malt Whisky Bar, where seventy single-malt whiskeys are featured.

“Sally,” I said.

She stopped, turned, and cocked her head.

“I think we all need to get to our rooms first. Rain check?”

She laughed. “Absolutely.”

A few minutes later we were led to our rooms by nattily dressed young bellhops. The moment mine had departed, I kicked off my shoes, opened the drapes, and looked out over London. What a splendid city, I thought, one of my favorite places on this earth.

I unpacked, and was in the process of hanging my clothes in the closet when the phone rang. I picked up the closest of three in the suite. “Jessica Fletcher,” I said.

“Jessica. Archie Semple here.”

“Hello, Archie. How are you?”

“Splendid, now that you’ve arrived. I realized how negligent I’d been in not arranging transportation for you from the airport.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. I’m traveling with eleven good friends. I think I mentioned that to you last time we talked.”

“That’s right. You did. Bloody big group to have in tow.”

“Yes it is. But they understand I can’t spend much time with them while I’m promoting my book. Speaking of that, when do I start?”

“This evening. At dinner. An interview with the Times’s leading book critic. Delightful lady. Margaret Swales. You can call her Maggie.”

“Off to a running start, I see. Where and when?”

“I’ll swing by the Athenaeum at seven. Busy day tomorrow, too. Still planning to venture north to the land of the barbarians?”

“ ‘Land of the barbarians’? You mean Scotland?”

He let out with a hearty laugh, punctuated by a loud cough. He obviously still smoked his dreaded cigars.

“Why do you call Scotland barbaric?” I asked.

“Because of their bloody violent history. Bloody. The proper word. Grown men running around in skirts. Bloody bizarre, I say. Bloody foolish.”

I wasn’t in the mood to debate it, so simply said
I’d
be ready by seven.

The Cabot Cove contingent had agreed to meet in the Malt Whisky Bar in an hour. I showered and dressed for the evening before going downstairs to join them. I was the last arrival. By the time I got there, my friends were into serious tasting of the bar’s large single-malt scotch inventory.

“Look here, Mrs. F.,” Mort Metzger said, handing me a menu. “After you drink each scotch, you check it off on this list. Taste all seventy of ’em, they give you a free bottle.”

“You aren’t intending to do that, are you?”

“Not me. But maybe they’d let us do it as a group.”

“I don’t think that’s the purpose,” I said.

“Hi.”

Sally Bulloch pranced into the bar area, her blond hair bouncing in rhythm with her step. “Everything peachy?”

“Yes.” It was a chorus.

“Say, Ms. Bulloch, could I have a word with you
^?
” Mort Metzger asked.

“In a minute,” she replied, moving to other tables ; she seemed to know everyone in the room.

“Are you going to ask her whether our group can taste all the scotches?” I asked Mort.

“Thought I would.”

“Don’t. It puts her in an awkward position.”

“Ayuh,”
Seth Hazlitt chimed in. “Damn foolish idea anyway.”

“They’re giving a free bottle,” Mort said.

“And that’s not a reason to—”

Sally reappeared, ending the conversation between Mort and Seth. “You wanted to ask me something,” she said to Mort.

Mort glanced at me and Seth before saying, “Just wondered whether you could recommend a good restaurant for us. I know British food isn’t much, but—”

“British food is very good now, Mort,” I said.

Sally laughed. “It is in
my
restaurant. Why don’t you eat here? We’re featuring breast of Barbary duck with bubble and squeak tonight.”

“‘Bubble and squeak’?” Charlene Sassi, the group’s most knowledgeable cook, asked.

“A little cabbage, a little potato. You’ll love it.”

“Got anything simpler?” Mort asked.

“Chicken simple enough?”

“I figure,” he said.

“Are you eating with us, Jess?” radio station owner Peter Walters asked.

“Afraid not. I’m being interviewed by someone from the
London Times.”

“We’ll miss you,” Walters’s wife, Roberta, said.

“Why don’t we all meet back here after dinner,” Seth suggested.

“Fine idea,” I said. “I can’t promise, but I’ll try. Have to run and do a few things before I’m picked up. Have dinner here. The chef is wonderful. My favorite’s the charbroiled sea bass. See you later.”

My British publisher, Archibald Semple, is a dear man with a bevy of bad personal traits. He’s quite obese, and defines slovenliness, tending to perspire in even the coolest of settings. His suits, expensive no doubt, look horribly cheap on him because of his corpulent frame, and he has a penchant for what the British often call “dickey bows,” large, floppy bow ties. His fingernails are always highly lacquered, something I find unattractive in men, and he attempts to cover a broad expanse of bald head by bringing up long, wet strands of hair from just above his left ear.

But it’s when dining with Archie Semple that one is called upon to keep a stiff upper lip. He consumes food with the zeal of a starving pack of wolves, much of it ending up on an assorbnent of ties that are, to be kind, dreadful.

Other than that, I love him dearly. He’s an astute and effective publisher, one who has taken each of my novels and turned them into best-sellers in Great Britain.

He picked me up in a limousine driven by a handsome young man in uniform. After preliminary and perfunctory greetings, we headed for Wilton’s on Jermyn Street, one of London’s finest restaurants. I’d had dinner there the last time I visited London; its chef has elevated what used to be pedestrian English food to fine cuisine.

.Margaret Swales was a birdlike older woman with an infectious laugh. She wore a garish purple dress adorned with heavy strands of jewelry, and a small purple pillbox hat from a bygone era. What was especially charming about her was her intense interest in my responses to her questions. She had many of them.

Over a sumptuous meal beginning with oyster cocktails, proceeding to plain Dover sole for me, roast wigeon-a wild, fish-eating river duck served only when in season—for Archibald and Ms. Swales, and topped off with sherry trifle, the conversation gradually shifted to a discussion of British mystery writers, and crimes real and imagined.

“... Of course, we Brits tend to call mysteries ‘thrillers,’ even when they aren’t thrilling at all,” Maggie said, sipping tea. “We’re accused of being claustrophobic in our approach to the mystery, although I must say I’m rather comfortable being cloistered in a room with a villain about to commit deadly mischief on someone else.”

I laughed. “I love cozy mysteries, too,” I said, “but have trouble plotting them. Your British writers seem to have a special knack for it.”

“I suppose. But I’ve lately developed an appetite for true crime, especially those with historical significance.”

Archie Semple chimed in: “We’re beefing up our true-crime list at Semple House. I quite agree with you. Truth, indeed, can be stranger than fiction. We’ve signed up a marvelous young chap to do a book on the Lydia Duncomb murder. A real sizzler.”

“I’m not familiar with that,” I said.

“Seventeen thirty-two, Tanfield Court, the Temple. No reason you should know of it, Jessica, being a Yank and all.”

“I haven’t been called that in years,” I said.

“Brutal murder,” said Margaret Swales. “Strangled in her flat. Her maid’s throat slit, too. The murderess, Sarah Malcolm, was escorted to the gallows at Temple Gate by a man of the cloth who’d fallen in love with her.”

Archie rubbed his hands together. “Bloody juicy stuff, wouldn’t you say, Jessica? The only surprise is that it didn’t take place in bloody Scotland.”

Margaret Swales laughed at the comment. “Yes, the Scots have had their share of gruesome murders, particularly up north, the Highlands, on the coast.”

Archie looked at me for a comment. I didn’t have one. We ended dinner on the pleasant note of Ms. Swales pledging to do a lengthy article on me and my new book, which delighted Archie.

As we were leaving Wilton’s, Aichie stopped to say hello to a man at another table, who was with three other people. “Marshall,” he said, “meet Jessica.”

The man, who was short and slender and expensively dressed, stood and shook my hand.
“The
Jessica Fletcher?” he said.

“Afraid so,” I said.

“A real pleasure. Archie’s star author.”

“I hope not,” I said.

“We’ll wrap things up tomorrow?” Archie asked.

“Absolutely. The solicitors will be there. Shouldn’t be a hitch.”

“Good. See you then, Marshall.”

Back in the limo, Archie asked whether I wanted to go to his club for a nightcap and further “chat.”

“Love to, Archie, but I promised my friends I’d meet them at the hotel. They’re quite content not seeing me very much, but I would like to spend as much time together as possible.”

“I can certainly understand that, Jessica. The fellow I introduced you to. Marshall Flemming. Flemming Publishing. Heard of them?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Very successful. Subsidy publishers. Pay them, they publish your book.”

“We have a number of those in the States.”

“Yes you do. Keep a secret?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I’m about to buy Flemming Publishing. Should wrap up the deal in the morning. Bloody successful group. Offices in London, Biratingham, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.”

“Congratulations. Will it remain a subsidy publisher?”

“Absolutely. Not that I’m about to have Semple House publish subsidized works. I’ll keep it a separate division.”

“Why would you buy it if you don’t want to get into subsidized publishing?” I asked.

“Cash flow, my dear. My profit margins are being dreadfully squeezed these days. The entire publishing industry is feeling it. Having Flemming House’s strong cash flow will make all the difference, give me the financial wherewithal to go after bigger and better mainstream books.”

“Sounds like a prudent business decision,” I said.

“I think it will be. Well, let’s get you back safely to the Athenaeum. How’s Sally Bulloch?”

“As bouncy as ever. If I were to give her a nickname, it would be Buoyant Bulloch.”

He laughed. “Quite good, Jessica. She ought to write a book. Lord knows, she’s as much a fixture in London as—well, perhaps not as much of a fixture as Big Ben and the Tower, but close.”

I didn’t disagree.

We parted in front of the hotel with Archie handing me my itinerary for the following day. It was a busy one; getting a good night’s sleep was very much in order.

The Athenaeum’s lobby was bustling with well-dressed people. I made my way through them and entered the Malt Whisky Bar, which was even more crowded. Cigar and cigarette smoke created a heavy blue cloud over the heads of customers. I spotted my group in a far corner.

“Jessica, I was wondering whether you’d get here,” Jim Shevlin said, standing and offering me his chair.

“I made it,” I said. “But I’m not staying long. My publisher has set up a brutal schedule for me tomorrow, and my arcadian rhythms are annoyingly out of kilter. But I will taste a single-malt scotch, just because I think I should.”

To my amazement, Sally Bulloch was still going strong, flitting from one group to another, making sure they were happy and comfortable, exchanging quips, laughing and joking with her hotel’s guests, as she would do in her own home. That’s what I enjoy about the Athenaeum. It’s like being home in a room filled with friends.

It wasn’t until I’d ordered a scotch called Laphroaig, and winced at its intense peaty flavor, that I realized that Alicia Richardson and her husband, Jed, weren’t there. I asked about them.

“They took off on their own, Mrs. F.,” Mort Metzger said. “We ate here. Great food. But Jed and Alicia said they weren’t hungry and felt like taking a long walk. You know Jed. Like Ken, here. Never can sit still. All they talked about on the flight was fishing for trout and salmon. They sure love the outdoors.”

“I hope they know where they’re going,” I said to no one in particular.

I stayed with the group for a half hour before yawning, standing, and wishing them all pleasant dreams. It was as I started to drift off in my comfortable king-size bed that I thought of Jed and Alicia. They hadn’t returned by the time I left the bar, and I began to worry about them. London is a safe city by world standards. But still—

Blessed sleep displaced any further worries about them.

My phone rang at six the next morning. It was Seth . Hazlitt. “Jessica,” he said, “we’ve got a problem.”

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “A problem? What sort of problem?”

“Jed and Alicia never came back.”

I was wide awake.

“Ken checked in on them. You know Ken and Jed, always up before the sun. Nobody in their room. Ken checked the desk. Their room key’s still there. Never picked up.”

“Do you think—?”

“I don’t know what to think, Jessica, ’cept there’s got to be a reason for it, probably not a pleasant one.”