"Yes?" he prompted patiently.
"It's just that…" She returned her attention to him. "Now I come to think of it, I wonder why she bothered. Why she was here at all. To boost her name recognition? Gilding the lily, surely. To lord it over the rest of them? More likely. I suppose that's the answer. Kimberlee never did anything, from what I could gather, that didn't involve the entertainment or furtherance of the career of Kimberlee Kalder, author."
"You knew her well, then? I thought you'd just met her on this trip."
"Knew her well? Oh, Lord, no. Just by reputation, you know. I may have met her in passing at one or two dinners or conferences before her career really took off. Most of us spend a certain amount of time on the circuit-one has to, these days. Also, she made her name rather infamous on a few mystery listserves for her blatant self-promotion. There were some anonymous postings about how fascinating and brilliant her book was-those postings were definitely suspected by some to have come from Kimberlee herself. Quite forbidden, that kind of thing. Got herself tossed off a few lists, I'd imagine. But I didn't know her personally. No. No, indeed. I choose my friends more carefully than that."
Funny, thought St. Just. The sudden claim to passing acquaintance. That was common in a murder case, of course. People either didn't want to know you at all, or they decided they'd always been your bosom buddy, once you were dead. The truth might be anywhere along that continuum.
He took a final sip of his coffee. It was cold now. He pushed the cup to one side.
"What was the topic of conversation after I left the library that night?"
"Much the same as when you were there. The usual stuff, which is why I don't recall it in detail. That and a few drinks-not good for the memory."
"Give me some examples."
"Oh, writers talking about platforms and hits and listserves and blogs and grogs and meager royalties."
"I thought all writers ever talked about were sales and royalties. Please don't tell me what a grog is."
"Yes, still, as in the good old days, meager royalties. Some things don't change. And it's a group blog."
"I still don't know what it is. But hits-I do know what hits are. That used to be a term reserved for Mafia types."
"Coincidence?" she said, smiling. She had a not-unattractive smile. He shifted in his chair.
"Kimberlee used to work in journalism. You aren't familiar with her from that time?"
She shook her head.
"I first became aware of her when she wrote for that fashion rag. She caused a publishing storm at the time that caused the magazine to drop, for the moment, its heated debate over whether metallic blue eye shadow really deserved such a bad reputation. This time, Kimberlee was rumored to be writing a tell-all about Easterbrook and his authors," she said.
"So I've heard…"
"In fact, Kimberlee told Jay, I think it was, that the night before the awards dinner, she had put most of the finishing touches on the only copy of her manuscript and would be mailing a disc next week."
So, thought St. Just. Where there's a disc there must be a laptop. Where the devil was it?
"Mailing it to whom? Jay? Or Ninette?"
"I didn't ask."
"Blackmail?" he asked. "Do you think that was her game?"
"Could have been, but would she really need the money? I doubt it-not unless she had a well-concealed drug or gambling problem. The power? Maybe. Much more likely. But if we can indulge in speculation, word on the street, if you want to talk blackmail, is that it was Tom Brackett who was blackmailing Easterbrook-to get more publicity and promotion for his books. If I got wind of that bit of news, Kimberlee certainly would have."
"Any basis to this speculation?"
"Tom gets nearly all the publicity out of Easterbrook, in comparison with the rest of us. Just take a look at that showy four-color ad for his latest book, in the conference program. Since when does a piece of dreck like G-Man Ranger Danger warrant that kind of splashout?"
"I thought he was a popular author."
"Well, yes, he is-but with a lot of help from Easterbrook. That's what is odd, you see. It's not as if he's writing either great literature or great entertainment. It's not as if he has a personality, for pity's sake. It's hard to see why Easterbrook would back him at the expense of the others. Winston and Portia, for example, are far better writers, and far more personable. Even Magretta: Magretta writes-or maybe wrote, is a better word-popular entertainment, and God knows she knows how to put on a show."
"Like Kimberlee Kalder."
"Yes."
"Only Kimberlee Kalder did it better."
"Yes."
"And you?"
"What about me?"
"How would you rank your work?"
"Entertainment, well forgotten within a decade. I have no illusions, Inspector. It's a job like any other, and it beats waitressing. There's something else-you've heard by now Kimberlee had some kind of tiff at the conference with B. A. King, haven't you?"
"How did you come to hear of it?"
"The rumor mill, of course, Inspector. But I thought nothing of it. No one can stand B. A."
"So I gather," said St. Just. "Now, you told the police you were in the library from after dinner until the body was discovered."
"Yes, I was with Mrs. Elksworthy. Portia De'Ath was also with us-both before and after we lost the lights. Well, they were all with us at some point, really."
"Mrs. Elksworthy remained with you the whole time?"
"Except for a brief visit to the powder room. Very brief."
"What time was that?"
"I've no idea. I suppose we'd been talking for an hour since dinner."
"And you remained in the library."
"That is correct. I assure you Mrs. Elksworthy had no time for… what you are suggesting."
"You were seen talking with Kimberlee earlier that night. What was that about?"
She cocked her head, puzzled, then said, "In the hallway, you mean? I'd forgotten about that. Actually, I was popping into the ladies and she asked me if I had a blank CD she could have. I couldn't oblige her-I'm still stuck in the stone age, using floppy discs. I guess she wanted to make copies of her magnum opus."
He sighed. The more he learned, the more puzzled he became.
"Well, if you think of anything further-"
"Inspector, when are we going to be allowed to leave?"
"A matter of hours rather than days, I would say."
He stood, giving his spine and shoulders a stretch. It seemed like days since he'd slept and exhaustion was creeping in-wearing cleats, apparently.
"Days? Good heavens, man. I have a plane to catch."
"And I, a murderer."
PURPLE PROSE
After Annabelle left, St. Just turned at last, with palpable reluctance, to the document in which Magretta had captured her experiences on the night of the murder. It was written in purple ink on the castle's stationery, in a large, loopy handwriting that ran chaotically over the pages, at times running off the edge. Holding his head in his hands, he read:
Following a repast of pink salmon, plucked new that day from a sky-blue Lothian loch, and not too overcooked, I repaired to the library to announce my intention to retire for the night. It was indeed a dark and stormy night of the sort described by the deeply misunderstood and underappreciated Bulwer-Lytton and-dare I say it now?-shivers of apprehension raced up and down my spine, in formation, like jack-booted thugs. I knew, in the way a sensitive spirit such as mine will know (my mother was psychic), that Death had come to dwell at Dalmorton Castle.
Filled with a dreadful and eerie foreboding, then, I bravely went to my room to work on Madness and Love on the Moors (working title for my much-anticipated new novel, which will soon be available online and in fine bookshops everywhere. It is the sequel to my best-selling Death Be Not Plowed. I am told my novels make the ideal holiday gift).
Still, upon retiring to my chambers, the feeling of doom would not leave me. I also had a
killing head, a migraine of the worst sort. Nonetheless, after laboring at my profession for nearly an hour against these terrible odds, I looked by chance out the window where the storm raged with the sound and fury of souls in purgatory-but I could see nothing amiss. No creature stalked abroad that cursed, cursed night.
But then! Then! At the stroke of ten I thought I heard a prowler trying to break into Kimberlee's room. I clothed myself in green velvet, the color of emeralds in sunlight, and out I crept into the hallway and over to Kimberlee's door. Hesitantly, I knocked. There was no answer. I knocked again. The silence of the dead reigned, apart from the crashing crescendo of the storm and the throbbing pulsation of my heart. Then it was that I felt a ghostly presence, an eerie sense of Someone or Something from Another Dimension. Turning, I saw a vaporous form, draped in white. It was-no more and no less-the Ghost of Dalmorton Castle. I now know it had come to warn me of Kimberlee's impending death.
But what could I do? The figure turned to depart. I called after it. "Wait!" I cried. "Wait!" But the dead need pay no heed to the living.
Quite exhausted now, minutes later I was asleep, sleeping the dreamless sleep of the just.
There was more, but apart from a dramatic description of her discovery of the body, in which she glossed over her shrieking fit of hysteria that had roused most of the castle, it amounted to a rambling promotional spiel on the inspiration for her books. He sighed, putting the sheets back in his pocket. He noted the "killing head" didn't quite go with the dreamless sleep, nor with the fact she apparently felt well enough later to scamper girlishly about the castle.
Precious little real help there, he thought. Curious omission she'd made, though. He dallied awhile, a great weariness washing through him, but in the end he knew it would have to be "once more into the breach" that night. He still needed to talk with Mrs. Elksworthy. Even though he felt he could rely on the thoroughness of the Scottish detectives' report of their interview with her, there was no real substitute for the face-to-face interview.
For now, he decided to skip Magretta, feeling somehow he had just spent many, many hours in her company. But the thought of Magretta and the desire to avoid her, of course, made her manifest. Her voice rang out as he crossed the lobby.
"There you are, my darling Inspector!" she cried. "I have solved the crime! With a little help from dear, dear Portia. You simply must come with me and see."
Latching onto his arm, she began to pull him toward the library.
"Wait until you see!"
____________________
Three women were in the book-lined room: Donna Doone, Mrs. Elksworthy, and Portia, but he was surprised to find them crowded behind the small service bar with the bartender. They all stood staring raptly into what appeared to be a large storage room behind a door-a door disguised as a bookcase. The good-sized area-several meters square-held the overflow from the bar: cases of beer and cartons of liquor were stacked against the stone walls.
"Do you see what it is, Inspector?" asked Magretta.
"A storage room?" he hazarded.
All four of them shook their heads. Portia said, "Look closer. Behind those boxes against the far wall."
He stepped inside, stooping under a doorway clearly intended for shorter medieval-era frames. The area was illuminated by a single bare electric bulb overhead. Peering about, he saw that the boxes Portia indicated in fact stood some way out from the wall. Behind them was yet another wooden door. Opening it, he was startled to find himself in a large broom cupboard stocked with cleaning supplies. He twisted the inside handle of that door and ended up in the hallway outside the library. On either side of him were doors to the loos, his and hers.
There was something odd… He turned and looked from side to side. The broom cupboard didn't appear to be as wide as the bar storage room, as would have been expected. Then he realized there was yet another door to his left, disguised by shelving like the one in the bar. Behind it he found narrow stone steps leading down. A failsafe escape, in case the hiding place was discovered. He made his way back into the bar area.
"As you can see, you wouldn't realize there was a room behind that wall in the bar," said Portia. "There's a switch hidden in one of the 'books' that you have to push to release the door. What it is, is a priest's hole."
St. Just addressed Randolph, the young bartender.
"Those steps lead where?"
"There's a passage runs under Reception. The exit is a door into the hallway near the bottle dungeon-the hallway guests take to get to their rooms."
"How widely known is this?"
"Not widely." Randolph had a shock of auburn hair that seemed to be standing straight up from his scalp at the sheer excitement of it all. "We found more than one couple using it as, how would you say, a trysting place over the years. You know the sort of thing. Forbidden pleasures. There's still mention of the priest's hole in the castle's marketing materials, but staff have been instructed for some years to keep quiet about its exact location. The tunnel isn't mentioned at all."
He added: "The loos were installed when Dalmorton became a hotel… they weren't part of the original construction, of course. They just built them out into that wide hallway."
St. Just turned to Portia. "How did you happen to find it?"
She tapped a thin, leather-bound volume sitting on top of the bar. The title, in Gothic script, read: Dalmorton through the Ages.
"There's a complete description in here-it's a family history written in 1925 by a younger son of the castle owners. I found the book misfiled on the botany shelf. I asked Randolph here about it."
Magretta said, "I think it has to be Lord Easterbrook."
"I really don't follow that, Ms. Sincock," said St. Just.
"He's the only one unaccounted for, isn't he? He went missing immediately after dinner. He could have positively stolen into the broom cupboard, nipped to the dungeon, and awaited his chance to attack Kimberlee."
It was Portia who said, "But what on earth would have been the point, Magretta? He could have come down from his room or anywhere else with little risk of being seen by anyone on his way to the bottle dungeon. We, after all, were all in here. What this really means is no one of us has much of an alibi now."
St. Just nodded. It put a whole new light on things. Anyone who knew about the underground passageway could nip out on the pretext of using the facilities, race over to the dungeon to meet Kimberlee, and scurry back, avoiding being spotted in the lobby. And all without the inebriated crowd noticing the absence.
Easterbrook was beside the point. Or was the point-for Magretta-to implicate the one person whose whereabouts were completely unverifiable, apart from her own? In any event, he'd have to get Moor's forensics team to have a look down there.
He turned at the sound of a grunt from across the room. B. A. King, who had apparently taken up a permanent position in the library, was starting to rally, or perhaps the exact phrase was, emerge from his stupor on the sofa. He staggered over to the bar with his empty glass.
"Just a splash more," he told the bartender. "Maybe two."
St. Just, turning to Magretta, said, "Leaving aside your supernatural adventures of Saturday night, I'd like to ask you a few questions about your little alibi."
"Oh, yes? What an enjoyable exercise I found that to be, Inspector. My training as a mystery writer, of course, has made me frightfully observant. And to have the opportunity to express my deepest-"
"It might be truer to say your training as a mystery writer has taught you the art of invention."
She inclined her head graciously. "Quite true, quite true! I am renowned for my imagination! But I assure you in this case-"
"In this case, you've been feeding the police a pack of lies. The opacity of the document you handed us, that farrago of nonsensical invention, was designed to conceal your true whereabouts at the time, was it not?"
Gracious pose forgotten, she began to play nervously with the scarf at her neck.
"I beg your pard
on?" Then, recovering swiftly, "How dare you?"
"How dare you lie to the police?"
"I never-"
He decided to chance his arm with a bluff.
"Before you say anything further, I will warn you-you were seen."
At that, she astonished him by turning and fleeing from the room. She was surprisingly fast on her feet and was already in the hallway by the bottle dungeon when he caught up with her. But she was no longer running by that point, merely waiting for him to catch up.
"Not in front of the others," she said. "I beg you."
"Someone saw you that night."
"It was that Florie, wasn't it? She should learn to mind her own business. You're right, I… left some things out of my account."
"The laptop," he said.
"The laptop."
DAUGHTER OF TIME
The only thing about the case St. Just would call a dead cert was that there was a remarkable amount of concealment going on-but whether related to the murder or not it was difficult to say. Obfuscation seemed to be second nature to mystery writers-an occupational hazard, like Mrs. Elksworthy's writer's butt. They fantasized and lied and fabricated for a living, dreaming up improbable plots, seldom stopping off in the real world for more than a brief visit.
That, of course, was what made it all so damnably difficult. He had a sense they all concealed for the hell of it, to keep in practice.
Magretta had a slightly different motive for concealment, as it turned out.
"I know how it must look," she began.
"No, I don't think you can begin to imagine how this looks."
"Listen, I only wanted to destroy the manuscript. That's all. You have to believe me."
"You went to her room that night to steal the laptop," he said flatly.
She pleated her lips into a moue of distaste. "No. I do not steal. I went there to destroy the laptop. You see, I saw her arrive with one-with a laptop case. And she told me she was just putting the finishing touches on her manuscript. The great artist, Kimberlee. She never shut up about it."
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