A Conventional Corpse: A Claire Malloy Mystery

by Joan Hess

  Dilys wandered past her into the bathroom, then reappeared with a glass of gin. “Do you honestly believe she knows where it is? Five minutes ago I saw Sherry Lynne slinking down the hall with her cat. If the cat swallowed it, we have no choice but dissection. Sherry Lynne will not take kindly to it, and may well decide to dissect us. If we band together, we can take her. Well, I think we can.”

  “Enough,” I said with as much authority as anyone could who was sporting nothing but white cotton panties and braises below her waist. “Laureen, did you happen to see anyone in the garden after you came back this afternoon?”

  “It was raining,” she said as she re-aimed her weapon at my pants. “Why would anyone go into the garden?”

  “I saw Sherry Lynne,” volunteered Dilys. “I was ever so wet when I returned from shopping, and I was hoping Lily might provide me with a cup of cocoa. My mother always gave me cocoa and a biscuit when I walked home from school in the rain. She’d toss a bit of coal on the fire and we’d while away the afternoon reading aloud from Wuthering Heights. I was bloody sick of Heathcliff by the time I was old enough to take a secretarial job in London.”

  “You saw Sherry Lynne?” I prompted her.

  “I’d just entered the sunroom when Sherry Lynne went barreling out the door as if the ice cream track had just come through the gate. I heard no tinkling, though, so I went upstairs to unpack my purchases. I know I shouldn’t have, but I bought a silk tie for my husband and a spice rack for my daughter-in-law. Perhaps it will inspire her to do more than prepare fish fingers in the microwave. Wilmont does so love baked beans on toast.”

  “So you did look out the window,” I said to Laureen. She rearranged my pants and continued wafting the hair dryer across the wet patches. “Only long enough to notice it was raining.” Her hand began to bobble. “Dilys, will you please take over?”

  “You didn’t see anyone?” I persisted.

  “I had a headache, as anyone would who had been in the presence of Walter Dahl for more than five minutes. Last week my secretary chanced upon a rare copy of a Theo Bloomer mystery in a used bookstore, and I’d hoped to crawl in bed and read until I had to sparkle yet again. Sparkling on demand is not easy, especially at my age. Then again, it may not be a factor; the book in production at Paradigm House is likely to be my last.”

  Dilys blinked. “Retiring, are you? Does this mean a few more inches will open up on the bookstore shelves?”

  “And according to the proposed promotion budget, I shall sink without leaving a ripple. I’d looked forward to a classy farewell tour, visiting the mystery book-stores that have been so loyal all these years. Now it appears that my eloquence will be wasted on English classes at the local community college.” She was quiet for a moment, then managed a smile. ‘To return to Claire’s question, I came downstairs—but not for a cup of cocoa, I can assure you. I’d rallied enough courage to beg Lily for a few ice cubes. I was on the way to the kitchen when I saw you crawling around the parlor.”

  Dilys gave me a piercing look. “You were crawling around the parlor? I suppose that’s no more peculiar than pulling off your pants in Laureen’s room. I must say the majority of booksellers I’ve met over the years are of a sober bent, but they have little choice, considering the uncertainties of their income. Never once has any of them indicated a predisposition to undress in order to impress an author.”

  “I wasn’t crawling around the parlor,” I said irritably. “I was searching for something—and it was not the Star of Farberville.”

  “Then where could it be?” asked Dilys, taking charge of the hair dryer. “If we’re going to dissect the cat, I’d appreciate the chance to change clothes. I had several compliments on my new vest.”

  “There is no Star of Farberville,” I growled.

  “Ah, well,” said Laureen as she settled into an armchair, her hand steadier but her thumb and forefinger making an odd pinching motion, as though she wanted to pluck petals off the upholstery, “then you must have some sort of explanation for your behavior. Heroines must. Genre tradition demands it these days. Twenty years ago I could send them up into the tower, candles clutched in their perspiring palms, but now they seem to need a motive, no matter how contrived.”

  “I am not anyone’s heroine!” I snapped, wishing I was properly dressed so that I could spring to my feet and glower down at her. “I was searching for Ammie’s manuscript. What exactly did she say to you about it in the garden?”

  “Who?” said Laureen.

  “Ammie Threety,” I said evenly. “You and she had a long talk in the garden during the reception last night.”

  Dilys nodded. “Oh, yes, I saw the two of you go outside. If I’d had the courage to ignore the implicit command to grovel at Roxanne’s knees, I would have joined you.”

  Laureen rubbed her temples. “In the garden?”

  I wondered how much gin was left in the bottle in the bathroom. Smiling nervously at Dilys, who was now drying my socks, I pulled down my shirttail and went to look. The fifth next to the sink was short only two inches. No empty bottles had been tossed in the wicker wastebasket beside the lavatory.

  “Yes, little Ammie,” said Laureen as I went back into the bedroom. “She’d written what sounded like a muddled mess. I will admit, however, that it’s almost impossible to describe a plot to someone else. I’m forever having to backtrack and mention that, by the way, so-and-so was married to the cad during the war, and that the cousin wasn’t really a cousin, but was black-mailing the father for failing to acknowledge his obligation to his demented wife in the asylum. Ammie had the same problem. My brain was numb when we came back inside.”

  “Yet you thought it had promise,” I said, pulling on my damp pants.

  “Thrillers are the rage these days. Ammie may have had a round face and sweet brown eyes, but her imagination was quite lurid. Her manuscript would have needed heavy editing, but what I could follow of the plot was intriguing. She was knowledgeable about facial reconstruction, forged identities, and the falsification of court documents. Her information, she told me, came from hours of reading while she sat on a stool behind a dreary store counter.”

  While all I’d ever done was balance the checkbook, sort through invoices, and when I felt as if I’d earned a respite, read books by the likes of Laureen Parks and Dilys Knoxwood. My few forays into nonfiction involved self-help books extolling me to set goals, meet deadlines, and provide my adolescent with both non-critical acceptance and totalitarian discipline. After a day or two of my muddled attempts, Caron tends to beg to be allowed to live at Inez’s house.

  But I had yet to learn the ins and outs of facial reconstruction or any of the other things Ammie had so assiduously studied. Next week, I vowed, I would read all the material in the Book Depot involving freak genetic mutations.

  “Your socks,” Dilys said, tossing them to me as she eyed me with a worried look. “My mother always said that cold feet follow the path to the grave.”

  I put the socks on, and then my shoes. I would have been pleased if Dilys’s sainted mother (or even Heathcliff) had come into the room with a tray of hot cocoa and biscuits, but I was forced to settle for a sip of gin. “Did either of you notice Roxanne in the garden after the morning session?”

  Laureen shook her head. “I rested on the bed. The travelling yesterday took its toll.”

  “And I was shopping,” said Dilys. “Did you ever determine who put that peculiar message on Roxanne’s laptop?”

  “No,” I said. “How did you happen to find it? The screen was dark, and it never occurred to me to punch a button.”

  Dilys went into the bathroom and replenished her glass. “Well,” she said as she sat cross-legged on the foot of the bed, her lips pursed, “I’ve been experiencing a problem with Paradigm House. I am far from computer-ilterate, but I thought it was possible that Roxanne might have stored sales figures in her files. A green light was blinking, which indicated the machine was still on. I decided it couldn’t hurt to give it
the old school try. When I saw the message, I rather panicked.” She glanced at Laureen. “It immediately brought to mind the novel you wrote about the ghostly messages on the mirror. It was all I could do not to run out of the room, whimpering in terror.”

  “The mirror was eighteenth century,” said Laureen. “The technology was different in those days.”

  “Why would someone leave that message?” I asked. Dilys sighed. “I should think it was meant to send us scurrying to the cistern, which we did. If Roxanne intended to commit suicide, she most certainly would have wanted mourners ringing the cistern wall, wailing and sobbing into their hankies as her body was carried up. What would be the point of doing something that dramatic without an appreciative audience?”

  I frowned. “But she wouldn’t have known about Wimple’s disappearance. No one did until after the morning session was over.”

  “Perhaps,” said Dilys, pensively picking at her cuticles, “she saw the cat on the edge of the cistern. She typed the note, then went outside to save it from certain death. She shoved aside the lid, and when she leaned over to coax Wimple to slither up the wall, lost her balance. This man, no doubt a Good Samaritan, came dashing across the garden, gripped with an inflated sense of heroism, and imprudently decided to rescue her. I find it terribly romantic, if a bit gory. Miss Palmer never leaves the parlor for this very reason.”

  I was beginning to feel more assertive now that I was dressed decorously. “That doesn’t explain why Roxanne would have typed such a whimsical message.”

  “No,” Laureen said pensively, “Roxanne never evinced any sense of humor. If, for some inexplicable reason, she decided to leave a message on the laptop, it would have been to the point and included an unflattering adjective regarding the cat. She had no use for dogs or cats, and if she had possessed an aquarium, it would have contained barracudas.”

  “That fed exclusively on the digits of mid-list authors?” suggested Dilys. “It’s not hard to envision her coming home from the office with a pinkie or two, then watching complacently as the surface of the tank roiled until the flesh was stripped and the bones drifted to the bottom.”

  “More gin, dear?” said Laureen.

  I bit my tongue until my outrage subsided. “I feel a pang of sorrow when I read about a car wreck in the newspaper. I come close to crying when the local television news carries a story about a child run down in the street or killed by senseless violence. If one of the spokesmen for the religious right were to suffer a fatal heart attack, I’d wish I had been more tolerant of differing opinions. Roxanne was your editor, for pity’s sake! I’m not sure how the relationship went, but I’d think she took you to lunch when you were in New York, and called you on the phone every now and then to keep you informed. Sent you proposed covers, discussed tours and promotion. She might not have ever slept in your respective guest rooms, but . . .”

  Laureen looked at Dilys. “When did Roxanne last call you?”

  “Let me think. Wilmont had not yet been born, and he’s almost four. Roxanne and I did have a honeymoon period, during which she sent flowers and called to tell me how much she loved my latest manuscript. Honey dripped out of the telephone receiver to the extent I’d have to wash my chin when the call was over. Then one day, like Jackie Paper, she ceased to call. I leave queries with her assistant, and if I’m lucky, get a reply in a week or two. I feel as though I’ve been turned out to pasture to graze on my ever-dwindling backlist.” She took a deep breath. “So, Claire, I will not shed a tear at Roxanne’s funeral, presuming I bother to attend. She was a vicious woman.”

  “You’re too polite,” said Laureen. “Paradigm House had been paying me rather nice advances, but once Roxanne turned on me, my sales dried up—along with my advances. Low print runs, delays in shipping, dreadful covers, confusion with the reps, months before subsequent printings could make their way to the bookstores. Once upon a time I warranted full-page ads in The New York Times.”

  “More than I can say,” Dilys said with a sniff. “My agent thinks it will be difficult for me to find a new publisher as long as my backlist is unavailable. Denton had best develop a taste for baked beans. If I don’t get higher royalty checks, we’ll be eating them straight from the can.”

  I was trying to think of something to say when a voice from downstairs timidly called my name. “I’d better go see what this is about,” I said, then fled with unseemly haste.

  Earlene was next to the front door, wringing her hands in a manner Laureen had described in a good three dozen books. “Please don’t be too harsh with me,” she said as I came down the stairs. Her eyes filled with tears. “I would have called Sally, but I couldn’t find a pay phone. I’m sure if you had been there, you would have known exactly what to do.”

  “What exactly did you do?”

  “After Walter hurled a pen at Allegra and Laureen poured a pitcher of water on his head, I was afraid that murder might actually come to the campus.” She took a handkerchief from her coat pocket and blotted her nose. “I left the room. I was searching for a phone when I saw a smoke detector.”

  My eyebrows rose. “You set off the fire alarm?”

  “I always keep a book of matches in my purse in case of power failure. It never occurred to me that the sprinklers might go off, too.”

  “You did all that? I’m impressed.”

  She brightened. “You are? I was so afraid you’d be angry, but I simply couldn’t let the panel degenerate into violence. The attendees sounded quite cheerful as they filed out in an orderly fashion, and only Mr. Dahl voiced displeasure.” She looked up at me with a certain slyness. “I seemed to have killed two birds with one matchbook. I waited outside until the firemen appeared, then told them I’d noticed smoke coming from beneath the door of the room where your books were stored. They were very annoyed with me after they broke down the door and found nothing.”

  “Earlene,” I said as I came down and hugged her, “that was inspired. If I can just track down Caron and my car, the books will be available for sale at the supper. Five minutes ago I was wondering how much canned baked beans cost.”

  “My car is out front.”

  “I shall insist that the steering committee present you with a medal once this ordeal is over,” I said.

  “That’s not necessary,” she said modestly as we headed for her car, “but a framed citation might be nice.” Once she’d found her car key in the bottom of her dauntingly large purse and we were driving toward Old Main, she said, “In a way, I think everything awful that’s happened was Roxanne’s fault, from Ammie’s accident to the unpleasantness on the panels.”

  “How could she be responsible for Ammie’s accident?”

  “Well,” she replied, coming to a halt at a stop sign and looking carefully to make sure no Farberville students were driving home after a Saturday afternoon at the pool hall, “her presence got Ammie to thinking about everything she’d written since way back when she was in Roxanne’s creative writing class. She was probably so wrapped up in imagining herself a best-selling author that she wasn’t paying any attention to the road. I nearly did the same thing myself after I got a letter saying I’d won ten million dollars. It took my husband more than an hour to convince me otherwise.”

  “And the unpleasantness?”

  “It was real hard not to feel the tension once Roxanne arrived. The authors were as subtle as sulky teenagers—with the exception of Walter Dahl, who made no effort to hide his hateful feelings toward her. You should have heard him this afternoon. He pretended he was talking about editors in general, but nobody was fooled. It didn’t sit real well with Allegra, and when she started telling how generous her editor was, that’s when he threw the pen at her. I guess you could say it went downhill after that.”

  She parked in a metered space and cut off the engine. “I just wish she hadn’t come.”

  I was beginning to wonder why she had.

  Chapter

  13

  The floor of the hallway was tracked
with mud, as if a tractor pull had crowned the afternoon’s activities. The dampness was pervasive, but at least there was no lingering stench of smoke or scorch marks on the walls. Earlene and I went to Room 103 and looked down at the splintered remains of the door.

  “They didn’t dilly-dally, did they?” I said.

  Earlene shook her head. “They sure didn’t. I hope Sally set aside grant money for expediencies.”

  “Such as wanton destruction of college property?” My fingers crossed that Arnie had not decided that the boxes of books might be worth a few dollars from a fence with a literary bent (so to speak), I went into the room. The boxes were not stacked neatly on the table, but they were all there. A few had been stained by moisture from the sprinklers in the ceiling; I could, if necessary, knock off a couple of dollars on any water-damaged books.

  Earlene was clearly proud of the outcome of her ingenuity. “Don’t worry about this, Claire. There’s a cart that we used for the coffee urn and water pitchers in the panel room. I’ll get it and wheel the boxes out to the front stoop, then back my car up to the bottom step. We’ll have those books at the Azalea Inn in no time.”

  “That would be great,” I said sincerely. “Do you mind if I go to the second floor for a moment?”

  She was already bustling away toward the far end of the hallway, her shoulders squared as though she were preparing to charge down the gangplank of an aircraft carrier and oversee the signing of a peace treaty. I wasn’t sure if she fancied herself to be MacArthur, Patton, or Napoleon—or a melding of all three, with a pinch of Genghis Khan thrown in for good measure.

  I went upstairs. The door to the English office was ajar and the stream of words from inside was more apt to be full of Spanish expletives than potential names for a baby. I knocked before I entered.

  “Now what?” said the secretary.

  “I’m surprised you’re still here.”

  “You’re not the only one. I was just adding the last few applicants when the fire alarm resounded so loud I almost wet my pants. I didn’t have to, since the sprinklers handled that part and I am now sitting in a puddle that is not, for the first time in several months of incontinence due to erratic pressure on my bladder, my fault. The computer burped, and then the screen went black, taking all my entries for the last hour into some vast cyber-disposal. I am now re-entering them.”