The Christie Caper (24 page)

The smears appeared every few feet. The farther they went down the hall, the larger and wetter the splotches.

Lady Gwendolyn stopped to study each one, her face expressionless. “When I came upstairs from the bar, I found the door to my suite open—and I smelled blood. It’s such an identifiable odor.”

Annie suppressed a shudder.

“It was obvious, of course, that something bad was afoot I pushed open the door and switched on the light.” The bright blue eyes paused on another smear, then moved ahead. “I found my cape—I do enjoy capes, they are so comfortable for travel—crumpled just inside the door—and massively stained. I found my response interesting, psychologically. Outrage, followed by fear. It’s quite a comeuppance, you know, to realize you are the target of malevolence. That, of course, at the very least. Malevolence and, no doubt, the unmistakable intention to embroil me in a sticky wicket. After all, how could I hope to explain the presence of blood on my cape? But the situation, surely a bizarre one, dictated I should quickly report to your authorities. I stepped back into the hall, intending to go downstairs and alert the desk, when I saw more smears. I began following them. So here I am.”

Her light, clear voice betrayed no fear. In fact, Annie was sure she detected a vibrant note of exhilaration.

“And you, dear?” Was there just a hint of reservation in her query? But surely that was understandable.

“I got a message asking me to come to room two thirty-nine. From James Bentley. He said he had important information for the sponsors of The Christie Caper.”

“Hmm. So that’s where we’re going.” Lady Gwendolyn picked up speed, brandishing her umbrella.

Annie took a deep breath, then gripped a plump arm. “Lady Gwendolyn, maybe we’d better go down to the desk and get help.”

“In due time, my dear. I never ignore a challenge. Someone wants to involve me in this malfeasance. You and I are much too late to help the victim—if there is a victim. And, at this point, I don’t expect peril for us. Had there been danger, it would have awaited me in my suite. So, let’s play out the hand.” She sniffed. “Someone has cleverly intended me to be the scapegoat in this devious plan … well, we’ll see about that. I may be old, but I am not—as you Yanks say—a patsy.”

The door to room 239 was ajar.

Lady Gwendolyn poked the tip of the umbrella against the panel.

Slowly, the door swung in.

“Oh, my God.” Annie heard her own voice, high and strange.

The old author merely stood there, those brilliant blue eyes absorbing the hideous scene.

A young man’s body lay facedown on the pale carpet. A wide scarlet wound curved round the back of his head.

The murder weapon was propped against his hip.

An unusual weapon, shaped like an adz. Although blood clotted along its sharp cutting edge, crimson and blue ornamental stones could be glimpsed in the handle. Made of brass, it was topped by a cocky ornamental brass bird.

“How curious,” Lady Gwendolyn observed thoughtfully. “I’ve never seen a sugar cutter before—but I recognized it instantly.”

Annie stared at the bloody weapon. Sugar cutter. Sugar cutter!

Frank Saulter loped up the hallway. The chief stopped at the open door, looked past Annie and Lady Gwendolyn. For an instant, the usual policeman’s mask of imperturbability slipped. Astonishment made his face look young and vulnerable, then, once again, the mask returned and he was impassive.

“Have you touched anything?” he asked crisply.

“No, of course not” Annie had hurried downstairs to the desk to make the call, and then quickly returned, to find Lady Gwendolyn still in the doorway. But she couldn’t help noticing that her famed companion made no response.

A cluster of curious onlookers was gathering in the hallway. Annie saw a bellhop exit from the elevator, take in the scene, and step quickly back into the elevator. She started to say something, but Saulter interrupted.

“All right. If you’ll both return to your rooms—”

Briskly, Lady Gwendolyn succinctly outlined the condition of her room.

Saulter tensed. “You say there’s blood on a cape. Your cape?”

Annie intervened. “Now, Frank, it’s obvious that—”

“Nothing’s obvious, Annie. All right then.” He looked grimly at Annie. “If you and Lady Gwendolyn will go to your suite and wait there …” It was nicely phrased. But it was a command.

To say that there was instant antipathy would be to understate.

It was, as Max said later, a glorious effusion of hostile vibrations unequaled since critics attacked
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
as basically unfair to readers.

Perhaps it was because Lady Gwendolyn eyed Circuit Solicitor Brice Willard Posey upon their introduction with all the enthusiasm of Hercule Poirot confronting a cold draft.

The famous author glanced inquiringly at Annie. “I say, I understood Inspector Saulter to be the man in charge. He’s a sensible chap.”

That tears it, Annie thought.

And it did.

Posey drew himself up to his full six feet four inches, which was an effort because he was barrel-chested, and glared down at the diminutive writer.

As always, Posey was immaculately dressed, a navy blue suit (taut against his girth) and blue shirt (best for television) and smelled strongly of cinnamon aftershave. “I, madam, am a circuit solicitor for the great state of South Carolina, and I am taking charge of this homicide investigation.” His watery blue eyes bulged as he smugly surveyed the room.

It must have been extremely disappointing to his massive ego when he realized his audience consisted merely of Lady Gwendolyn, Annie, and Max, none of whom responded with the anticipated respect.

Posey’s glance grew chilly. He flipped open the little notebook in his hand. His mellifluous voice became considerably less mellifluous. “You, madam, are Mrs. Gwendolyn Tompkins of Maidstone, Kent, England?”

“Lady Tompkins,” she corrected icily.

“Mrs.
Tompkins,” Posey rejoined stubbornly.

The battle was joined at that instant.

“Can you explain La—
Mrs.
Tompkins, how a garment
belonging to you became stained with what is apparently the blood of a murdered man?”

If a plump, Kewpie-doll face could look mulish, hers did. “No.” She did not amplify.

There was a tense pause. Annie glanced at Max. But he was watching Posey.

Lady Gwendolyn tilted her head (always a danger with coronet braids) and looked up inquiringly. “Can you?”

Posey gave her an incredulous, indignant glance and took a deep breath. Only Saulter’s arrival prevented an explosion. As it was, Posey’s face was dangerously red when he swung around in answer to Saulter’s call.

“Okay, Brice. Body’s gone. Homicide team’s still working. The hotel wants to know if they can clean up when we get finished.”

“Oh, my dear chap, I must advise against it,” Lady Gwendolyn interjected serenely. “And I would like to study the scene as soon as possible. Your chaps may have overlooked some telling detail.”

“We may have overlooked—” Posey snorted. “Madam, the day I let unauthorized nonprofessionals into a crime scene is—”

“—the day you might learn something useful,
Mister
Posey. By the by, what is the victim’s real name?”

If Lady Gwendolyn wanted a stunned silence, she got it. Unconcernedly, she restored two bronze hairpins to her braids.

“It’s not Bentley?” Max asked, puzzled.

Annie clapped her hands to her head. Sugar cutter. James Bentley! Oh, heavens!

Saulter tensed. He looked like a G-man who’s just been told Baby Face Floyd is holed up inside a barricaded warehouse.

But it was the sudden transformation of Posey that appalled Annie. The bright red flush faded. His porcine lips parted in a cunning smile. “How very interesting, Mrs. Tompkins, that you know this young man was registered under an assumed name. Surely you want to share with officers of the law the background to your acquaintance with this unfortunate young man.”

A sniff of disgust. The coronet braid quivered and slid a bit as she flipped her aristocratic head in irritation. “I say, don’t you see the parallel? It’s quite blatant. One of Christie’s best books:
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.
James Bentley lodged with Mrs. McGinty. He was convicted of bashing her head in with a sugar cutter.”

“Jesus!” Posey exclaimed.

“Of course, our crime differs markedly since in this case it is the man known as Bentley who was slain with the sugar cutter. However, it should be obvious that a parallel was intended. Now”—Lady Gwendolyn gestured vigorously with her umbrella (it was perhaps unfortunate that Posey flinched)—“it’s interesting here to speculate.” A broad sweep of the umbrella punctuated each query.

“Is there an unhinged Christie addict on the premises?

“Was the young man murdered
because
he assumed the name of a Christie character?

“Is the assumed name irrelevant?

“What information did this young chap intend to proffer to Annie?”

And it all came together for Annie. “Bentley!” she exclaimed. “That’s the name of the guy who ran up Saturday night and said he saw the gunman in the bushes near the site of the old playhouse!”

Saulter grabbed his notebook from his back pocket and riffled through the pages until he found the one he sought. “I’ll be damned. He sure as hell is.
Was.”

“Now that adds yet another fascinating element,” Lady Gwendolyn mused, ignoring Posey. “It puts a new light on tonight’s message for Annie. That’s the place to start. What did our young victim
see
Saturday night?”

Posey teetered forward, brows drawn in a heavy frown. “Oh no, madam. The place to begin is—with you!” And he thrust a beefy forefinger at the fragile old lady.

Wednesday, September 12.

During her months of planning, Annie had envisioned Wednesday, the midpoint of the conference, as a rather low-key day, with plenty of panels available, but with the focus
on hard-to-find films of the Christie novels. Her thought had been that some conference-goers might elect to sightsee on that day, perhaps driving to Beaufort or Charleston. It would be a shame to travel all the way to the Low Country and see nothing of two of its loveliest and oldest cities.

It had never occurred to Annie in her wildest flights of fancy that she would, in addition to her conference duties, spend the day on a four-star mission, seeking clues to a totally unexpected murder, continuing her investigation into the mysterious attacks against Bledsoe, vainly attempting to satisfy authorities that Lady Gwendolyn—despite the bloody cape—hadn’t swatted a conference attendee with a sugar hammer, and gathering information, hopefully derogatory, to be used in blocking publication of a scurrilous biography of the Queen of Crime.

Wasn’t it, in a way, truly a Christie twist that she should be charged with pursuing such complicated and contradictory goals?

Lady Gwendolyn reassured Annie over a hearty English breakfast.

“The more complicated it gets, my dear, the more intriguing it is. However, I fear we have a problem. That fat fool”—this turned out to be her invariable description of Posey—“is concentrating on me, so he will make no progress. But we’ll solve it. It’s simply a matter of putting our minds to it.”

Annie wished she shared the spunky author’s confidence. Actually—and Annie was only able to toy with her souffle au kipper, though it was delicious—every time she remembered the scarlet of that wound and the viscous pool flaring round that blood-drenched head, she felt sick and sorrowful. “James Bentley” had been young and alive. Some human hand had brought that bronze implement crashing down. Why?

“Chin up, my dear,” Lady Gwendolyn enjoined, her tone firm but her eyes kind. “We shall prevail.” She even managed a chuckle. “It would certainly set the crime writers at home on their ears if I ended up in an American hoosegow. However, I don’t intend to afford them such grand entertainment. Surely we can outwit that fat fool.”

•   •   •

Murder! A murder in the hotel!

The news spread faster than the rumors about poor Colonel Bantry in
The Body in the Library.

Annie could feel the covert glances, instantly averted when she looked up to meet them. She could hear the excited buzz of conversations that ceased when she came near.

So the murder was having an effect. But the reactions were exactly what might be expected from people present at the outskirts of tragedy.

A very normal response.

That was the most unnerving facet of the day, its very ordinariness. On the surface, everything and everyone was so ordinary. Several hundred very ordinary people.

Was one of them incensed enough by the attack on Christie to commit murder?

Perhaps that dark-haired woman sitting in a deck chair by the shallow end of the pool. Wasn’t that a true crime book in her hands?

Or the academic with the Vandyke beard—hadn’t he looked a little strange, walking with his head down and muttering rapidly to himself?

Or the redhead from the treasure hunt. Was the venomous glance directed at Annie a result of yesterday’s fray? Or much more serious?

And, once the initial buzz of excitement waned, the continuing everyday sounds of the convention emphasized the stark contrast between the placid course of the conference and the dark bloodiness of murder:

“C’mon, let’s hurry. I don’t want to miss
Black Coffee.
You’ve got to see the guy who plays Poirot!”

“Can you believe she was seventy-five when she wrote
Third Girl,
and she was really into the hippie scene!”

“A Murder Is Announced
absolutely has a fabulous beginning! What a terrific premise.”

“You know … I’ve always wondered if she had a fixation on time … think of all those alarm clocks in
The Seven Dials Mystery
and the five clocks, all set to a different time, in the opening chapter of
The Clocks.”

“Crooked House
will give you cold chills!”

Everywhere Annie went, or so it seemed, she caught a glimpse of Lady Gwendolyn—surveying the breakfast crowd, loping through the lobby, poking a head into the panels, peering over the edge of the reopened roof—and always and ever those brilliant blue eyes seemed to be searching, searching.