Carolyn G. Hart (39 page)

A
nnie refilled Max’s white coffee mug
(The Red Thumb Mark)
, then her own. Contrary to her usual habit, she shoveled a heaping teaspoon of sugar into her cup and stirred briskly.

It didn’t escape him, of course. “Well, old dear, you must be frazzled.” He stretched out comfortably, tilting the straight back chair on its rear legs.

Annie looked up from her ragtag collection of papers containing bits and pieces of possible Mystery Nights. “Have you been reading Sayers again?”

He grinned. “Nope. But maybe you should.”

“Civilized mayhem as opposed to Southern discomfort?”

“Right.” Then his dark blue eyes grew serious. “Actually, why don’t you jump ship? Working for those people is like afternoon tea at a nuthouse.”

“Quit
now?
Why, I can do any mystery I want to.”
Visions of plots danced in her head. “Maybe a movable corpse. Like
The Trouble With Harry
. Honestly, Max, did you ever in your life see anything funnier than Harry? Every time somebody buried him, somebody else dug him up.”

He rubbed his cheek with his knuckles. “It’s comments such as that which make me wonder about you sometimes.”

“Oh, my God, it was
wonderful.”

“It wasn’t one of Hitchcock’s successes.”

“Dumb audiences,” she said stubbornly. She took another swallow of the sugar-laden coffee. “Or I can do an academic mystery, something on the order of
Seven Suspects.”

“Not unless you want to bore everybody into a coma.” He took a big swallow of coffee.

“Or I could go for a grim background, like Moscow in
Angels in the Snow.”

She suddenly felt warm and cozy. Was it the sugar and the caffeine, or the wealth of possibilities that lay before her?

Max tipped the chair upright and leaned his elbows on the table. “What’s wrong with good old Thompson Hatfield, the late, unlamented president of the bank? You already had suspects, clues, et al.”

“Oh, no. I’m not going to do any mystery where the victim or suspects could by the stretch of anybody’s wildest imagination have any relationship to anybody in Chastain, S.C. No, sir.” She shook her head decisively. Then she paused and rubbed an ink-stained finger to her nose, resulting in a distinct smudge. “You know, if I didn’t have so much to do for the Mystery Nights, I’d hit Chastain like Kinsey Millhone and shake some teeth until I got some answers.”

His eyes glistened. “Would you wear tight jeans?”

“Don’t be sexist.” But it was an absent-minded put-down, and her frown pulled her brows into a determined line. “Dammit, I don’t like being used—even if the end result was to take a cut at la piranha.”

“Do you think it was a Board member?”

“I don’t know. That was my first thought, but I talked to Lucy on the way out, and she said the Board had reported to the Society at the general meeting last month about the plans to have the Mystery Nights, and my name was mentioned then. I do think it must have been done by someone who belongs to the Society. Lucy said people drop in to the office all the time, but I’ll bet they parcel out their creamy stationery like gold plate. It’s that kind of place.”

“Sounds like a good lead. Who had access to the stationery? Let me see the letter for a second.”

She rooted around in her piles, found the green folder, and slid it to him.

He read it carefully, then announced, “First, it was typed on a typewriter, not a word processor, because the capital
B
jumps up half a line and the lower case
r
is worn.”

“Bravo.”

He ignored her sarcastic tone. “Moreover, the typist isn’t skilled because the pressure is uneven, resulting in erratic inking.”

“Ah, The Thinking Machine at work.”

“The allusion escapes me, but I will assume it is apt. Even though machines don’t think.”

“You, not the typewriter. The Thinking Machine was Jacques Futrelle’s detective.”

He clapped a hand to his head. “How can I not know of him?”

“Probably because Futrelle went down on the
Titanic
before he had time to write more than two volumes of short stories.”

But Max was still analyzing the letter. When he spoke again, the lightness had left his voice. “This is heavy stuff. Somebody
really
doesn’t like your Mrs. Webster.”

“She’s not
my
Mrs. Webster.” She sipped at the hot, sweet coffee. “But I don’t have time to worry about that mess. I’ve got to get the Mystery Nights ready to roll—and come up with a plot that can’t possibly have anything to do with anybody, living or dead, in Chastain. Listen, how does this grab you? I’ll make it a South Sea Island and one of those New England missionaries and he gets involved with this languorous beauty—Max, you’re not listening.”

He was staring at the letter, his eyes unaccustomedly grim.

Annie whistled.

Startled, he looked up.

“Hey, it isn’t all that bad.”

“I think it is.” His voice was grave. “I don’t know. I have a funny feeling.”

She quirked an interested eyebrow. “Are you coming all over psychic? Like the tweenie in a Christie country house murder?”

“It doesn’t take any psychic powers to pick up bad vibes from this.” He tapped the letter. “It’s more than an ugly incident. It’s dangerous.”

She didn’t laugh. “I agree,” she said reluctantly. “It’s just like the
The Moving Finger
. The villagers dismissed the anonymous letters as nasty but meaningless. And they were dreadfully wrong.” She picked up the heavy stationery, squinting thoughtfully at the first page. “But surely this was nothing more than an effort to
embarrass Corinne Webster. That’s all there was to it—and certainly I was a kind of innocent bystander.”

Max slammed his fist on the table. “Annie, tell the Chastain Historical Preservation Society to go get screwed.”

She laughed aloud. “Oh, my. What a vision that conjures.” Then she shook her head. “Nope. They’re counting on me.”

“I mean it. I think you should drop the whole thing.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. Really. I promised.” She reached over the table and ruffled his hair. “Come on, don’t gloom. It’ll be okay. The letter writer can’t fool me—or anybody—twice.”

“That’s right,” he said slowly. “But, I think I’ll nose around Chastain, see what I can pick up. That might discourage any further activity.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea.” Once again, she spoke absently, and she gave an abstracted wave as he departed. She could do a Victorian mystery, such as Peter Lovesey’s
Wobble to Death
. Or dart back to the days of Richard the Lionhearted as Victor Luhrs did in
The Longbow Murder
. Or attempt the clever twist achieved by Selwyn Jepson when he presented a modern Macbeth in
Keep Murder Quiet
. Or emulate Edward D. Hoch’s talent for the preposterous, exhibited so well in
The Spy and The Thief
when his master criminal, Nick Velvet, stole an entire major league baseball team. Or perhaps she should go for that perennial favorite, an English country murder, à la Catherine Aird, Reginald Hill, or Elizabeth Lemarchand …

Max floorboarded the red Porsche off of the ferry. As he drove toward Chastain, gray dust boiled in the car’s wake. His urgency surprised him. Damn. Why did Annie
have such an indomitably Puritan conscience? He was the New Englander, and he’d never had any difficulty in persuading himself to do whatever he wanted. He thought for an instant of that wonderful
New Yorker
cartoon of the devil explaining to some newcomers that after all, down here it was whatever worked for you. Annie would never receive
that
advice. He sighed. So he might as well stop trying to talk her out of putting on the Chastain Murder Nights. But, dammit, it didn’t feel right to him. Maybe if he just sniffed around, the letter writer would lie low—at least until he and Annie were out of town.

The place to start was the Chastain Historical Preservation Society. He followed the plaques into the historic district, took one wrong turn into a dead end, but finally ended up at Lookout Point. He locked the Porsche, dodged through Chastain’s version of five o’clock traffic (one milk truck, a station wagon filled with a wild-eyed mother and nine Cub Scouts, a stripped down Ford Mustang, and three Lincoln Continentals) and pulled on the front gate. It didn’t budge. He read the gilt sign.
Hours: 10 to 4
.

Sourly, he wondered why Fletch always found somebody to talk to.

Okay. Four-thirty and nobody home. He kicked the gate. That shut off at least until tomorrow any inquiry into disbursement of the letterhead stationery. But he sure didn’t intend to go back to the island without accomplishing something.

Annie had described all the participants in the morning brouhaha. He leaned back against a brick pillar, pulled a small spiral notebook from his pocket, and studied the list of names.

Corinne Webster, the object of attack. An ice maiden
busy leeching the vitality from everyone around her. She probably wouldn’t talk to him and would be better left for later, in any event.

Sybil Chastain Giacomo. Max’s eyes gleamed. Annie described her as a Ruebens nude in an Oscar de la Renta dress. With the mouth of a termagant. Awesome.

Lucy Haines. Sounded nice. Annie said she looked rather serious. A lean, tanned woman with a firm handshake. A librarian.

Roscoe Merrill. A stalwart of the community, obviously. Treasurer of the Society. A lawyer with a face that kept its own counsel. He’d promised La Grande Dame Webster he’d look into the letter, but all the while he kept stressing that it was better to drop the matter.

Dr. John Sanford. Intense, self-absorbed, arrogant. And something in the letter made him mad.

Edith Ferrier. The letter made her mad, too. Why did she take it personally? And she didn’t like Corinne. Why?

Miss Dora Brevard, permanent secretary of the Board, and Chastain’s ancient historian in residence. But she seemed to aim her venom at Sybil, not Corinne.

Gail Prichard. The letter writer said Mrs. Moneypot’s niece was seeing a very unsuitable man. Obviously, that was a reference to the combative reporter. Max ran down the list again. If he had his druthers, he’d drop in on the luscious Sybil, but he had a feeling—just a faint niggle of warning—that Annie might take that amiss. And the letter seemed far too subtle an approach for Sybil. So, checking the map Annie had loaned him, he began to walk down Lafayette street toward the heart of town.

•   •   •

“She wants the one with the nun who detects.”

Annie looked blankly at Ingrid. “Nun?”

“Mrs. Canady. She’s called twice, and she insists she wants the new book with a nun.”

Dragging her mind back from the depths of its involvement in the rapidly burgeoning plot for the Mystery Nights, she repeated, “Nun?” Then, in a burst of animation, she rattled off, “Sister John and Sister Hyacinthe? Sister Mary Teresa? Sister Mary Helen?”

“A new series,” Ingrid offered helpfully.

Annie squinted her eyes in concentration. New series. Oh, yeah. An
ex
-nun. “Ask her if she wants Bridget O’Toole in
Murder Among Friends?”

As Ingrid loped back to the telephone, Annie gathered up the strands that had been swirling together in her mind: A weekend at an English country home, croquet, tea, and murder. Perfect. Move over Sheila Radley and Dorothy Simpson.

Audubon prints of a red-shouldered hawk and a wood ibis hung against the Williamsburg green wall. Heavy brown leather furniture offered soft-cushion comfort and the aura of a good men’s club. A faint haze of autumn-sweet pipe smoke hung in the air.

Roscoe Merrill met Max at the door, offered a brief handshake and an appraising look, then guided him to the oversized wingback chair that faced the desk.

“So you are helping Ms. Laurance with the program for our house-and-garden week.” Merrill settled back in his padded swivel chair, his face bland, but his eyes wary.

Max fashioned a genial smile. “Yes, she’s hard at work on the nefarious-doings plot now. However, both
she and I were disturbed at the trick that was played on her.”

Max’s good-humored sally evoked no helpful response. The lawyer merely stared intently and said noncommittally, “Unfortunate. Very unfortunate. But just one of those things.”

Max quirked an eyebrow. “Does this sort of thing happen often within the Society?”

“No. Oh no, of course not. You misunderstand me, Mr. Darling.”

Max waited.

Merrill’s dry voice was unemotional, a nice match for his measuring eyes. It was easy to imagine him in settlement conferences, cautious, careful, and calculating. He would never give the store away. His pale gray suit fit him perfectly, and he wore his suit coat even in his office. Not a shirt-sleeve man. He had the air of authority to be expected in the senior partner in an old-line law firm. The law books ranged on the shelving behind his desk were leather bound and had been there for a century. The law firm had borne his family name since 1820. Merrill, Merrill, and Merrill.

“Not at all a usual occurrence, of course. I can’t think, in fact, of any other example where the Society letterhead has been misused. A shocking episode, upsetting to all of us. No, Mr. Darling, what I referred to was the—” Merrill paused as if in search of precisely the right word—“the proclivity of women, perhaps, to be a trifle more emotional in their responses to certain situations than men. And, of course, the fact that women, because they are not creatures of business, do not realize sometimes the seriousness of what might otherwise pass as a prank.”

Max briefly fantasized about Annie’s probable feminist
response to Merrill’s pre-1940 view of women.
Ka-boom
.

“As I told Corinne, it will be very much for the better if we all overlook this incident, painful as it was. To seek to discover the perpetrator would avail nothing. Of course, Corinne has a legitimate complaint. Her signature obviously was forged to that missive, but making this a matter of law would bring an importance to it that it certainly doesn’t deserve.”

Max had a collection of relatives who specialized in obfuscation, so he sorted nimbly through the verbiage. “You think a woman did it. And you don’t think it matters.”