A Spelling Mistake

by Nancy Warren

It didn’t look like anybody was in a rush to go inside Candace’s room anyway, but I thought it was best to be sure.

  I looked at them all. “Which of you has the manuscript?”

  They all looked in various ways sick or pale or just shocked. Now every pair of eyes turned to me. In Karen’s, I only saw curiosity, but the others were sharply inquisitive.

  “What do you mean, who’s got the manuscript?” Irving asked me. “Candy had it. She wanted to finish reading it last night before she passed it on to me.”

  I shook my head. “The manuscript is gone.”

  Giles was the only one who didn’t shout. He said, “Are you certain, Quinn?”

  “Not positively certain. But her reading glasses were beside her on the bed as though she’d been interrupted. The manuscript is not on the bed, it’s not on the side table, and it’s not on the dressing table. It’s also not on the floor. So unless she’s put it away somewhere, it’s gone.”

  Karen Tate said, “If I’m reading in bed, I put my book away first and then take off my reading glasses. She could have tucked it away in a bag or even her suitcase as she was leaving this morning.”

  That was a good point. The police would soon know if the manuscript was in her things, but I had a suspicion that whoever had killed her had wanted those pages.

  Irving spluttered, “It must be there.” He took a step forward and, even though he was a lot bigger than I, I stayed where I was in front of that door. He recollected himself and said, “It must be in there. It must.”

  I wasn’t so sure. “When the police get here, they’ll search the room thoroughly, and then we’ll know for sure.”

  He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist. “I can’t get over it. Candy? She was my whole life. We had such plans.”

  “Your whole life? I thought you were her agent.”

  “We were keeping it on the down-low, but I was a lot more than her agent. We were going to get married.”

  “Well, somebody decided to stop her before she could complete those plans.”

  We stood there crowded in the hallway for another minute, and then Giles said, “I think I’ll just go to my room and…” He petered out. I got the feeling he didn’t know what to do with himself any more than the rest of us did.

  Perhaps he just wanted to privately mourn or to brush his teeth or something. But Irving said in a loud voice, “Oh no. I bet you stole that manuscript, you slimy, British pencil pusher. I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’ll try to hide it, maybe burn it. I wouldn’t trust you further than I could throw you.”

  Giles drew himself up to his full height. “Don’t be impertinent. I wish she’d given me that book for safekeeping. How I wish it. But she didn’t.”

  Irving’s shock was wearing off, being replaced by an unpleasant belligerence. “Well, somebody’s got it. And none of you are getting out of my sight until the cops get here.”

  There was some grumbling, but he was right, and we all knew it. And if somebody here had the manuscript, he, or she, was likely Candace Branson’s murderer.

  Karen, who was really impressing me as a bed and breakfast hostess, took charge. “Why don’t you all come back downstairs. I’ll put the fire on in the front room and bring some more coffee. You can all wait there until the police want to talk to you.”

  “After you,” Giles said to Irving with exaggerated politeness. The three men walked ahead of us, and Karen waited until they’d started down the stairs before turning back to me. “What rotten luck. I mean, I’m sorry for that woman, naturally, but is this house cursed? That’s the third death in that room this year.”

  She didn’t even know about Biddy. I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Bad luck, more like. Try not to worry.”

  She rubbed her temple as though she was getting a headache. “I’ve put everything into this place, Quinn. My inheritance, all my savings. I borrowed money. If word gets out one of my first house guests was murdered, what will that do to my business?”

  That was an unanswerable question, and I didn’t even try. I put a hand on her arm. “You didn’t murder that woman. Someone else did. The police will figure out who did it and we’ll move on. Besides, the way I look at it, even if word gets out about what really happened here, it will probably only bring in more Bartholomew Branson fans.”

  She made a face. “That wasn’t exactly how I’d planned to increase my business.”

  “Well, beggars can’t be choosers and all that,” I said. “You go on down now. I’ll stay here until the Gardai arrive. I don’t trust any of them downstairs.”

  We could both hear sirens now. I wouldn’t have long to wait.

  Karen went downstairs, and soon I heard voices and then people coming up the stairs. Seeing the paramedics pause at the top, I called out, “She’s in here.”

  They ran forward, and I stayed outside, obviously, as they went in. They left the door open, but they could very quickly see there was no hope for the woman lying on the bed. Still, they examined her.

  The house began to fill very quickly after that.

  Two detectives I’d come to know arrived when I was still upstairs. Detective Inspector Walsh and Sergeant Kelly.

  “Quinn Callahan,” the older detective said. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “Good morning, Detective.” DI Walsh looked like a boxer who’d been knocked out more often than he’d won. His nose had clearly been broken more than once, and he had a tough-guy body and attitude.

  “What happened here?”

  I shook my head. “I really don’t know.”

  “This is a bed and breakfast. Don’t you live here in town?”

  Why did the most innocent actions always seem imbued with criminal intent when describing them to a police officer? I felt flustered, and I’m certain it showed. “I do. I live in a cottage on the edge of town. But one of the gentlemen staying here left his glasses behind last night at the gala launch of Bartholomew Branson’s posthumous thriller novel.” I was giving way too many details. I needed to rein it in. “I was worried that he might leave town without realizing they were missing, and so I brought the glasses over here this morning. And then, since I caught them at breakfast, they invited me to join them.”

  “I see.” He kept staring at me in a way I found extremely uncomfortable. As though he knew there were questions he wanted to ask me but he couldn’t quite put his finger on them. I understood completely how he felt. My brain was brimming with questions too. And I wasn’t sure which were the right ones to ask.

  Finally, he went with, “Did you know the victim?”

  “Yes.” I explained that she was the former wife of the sadly deceased Bartholomew Branson and that she’d come to Ballydehag for the launch of his posthumous novel.

  “So they were on good terms then?” Sergeant Kelly asked me.

  Now that was a sticky one. I couldn’t tell him that I knew they weren’t on good terms because the vampire had told me so. On the other hand, I couldn’t pretend they’d been a happily divorced couple. I shrugged. “Candace Branson insisted that she and her ex-husband were on very good terms. However, they must have gotten divorced for a reason. And I didn’t get the feeling that his editor and agent believed they’d been quite so happy. Or quite so amicable.”

  “That’s interesting. So she came all the way to Ireland for the launch of her dead husband’s book?”

  “That’s right.”

  “After they’d been divorced for how long?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Well, I suppose we can’t look to the husband, which is the usual place we begin our inquiries in a place like this.”

  “Why not?” the sergeant asked.

  “Because he’s dead,” I reminded him.

  “In actual fact, we don’t know that.”

  I stared at him with my jaw dropping. Did the sergeant believe in vampires? You could never tell.

  But DI Walsh merely nodded thoughtfully. “I take your point, Kelly.
Bartholomew Branson went missing from a cruise ship off the coast of Ireland and was never seen again. We’ve been assuming he was drowned, but no body was ever discovered.”

  “But where else could he be?” I asked. Hoping very much that they never discovered he was within five miles. And while not exactly alive, he was not exactly dead either.

  “You didn’t discover the body, did you?” DI Walsh asked me.

  I was happy to tell him no. Irving Schultz had that distinction. Then I had to admit that I had entered the dead woman’s room.

  “Why?”

  “I wasn’t certain Irving was right. He was upstairs and back so fast. I hated to think she might need medical attention but didn’t get it because we all took Irving’s word for it that she was dead.” I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I had believed the man and hadn’t had to see poor Candace like that. “So I went into her room. She’d been strangled and was very obviously dead.”

  “All right, you can go now,” DI Walsh said.

  I was glad to get away from death. Happy to get out of this house and back to my cottage. However, when I got to the bottom of the stairs, Karen was just coming in from the kitchen with a tray of coffee.

  “Quinn, please don’t leave me. The lounge is like, I don’t know what, an animal cage. Only they’ve put the wrong animals together. Giles is smooth and cool like a particularly deadly snake. Irving reminds me of a wild boar. He’s snuffling the ground and dying to gore somebody to death, but he doesn’t know who. Chloe is like a fox with small, sharp teeth, but I wouldn’t want to turn my back on her. While Philip is like a lion. Sitting all proud and stately, but his teeth are sharp and his claws are ready to rip.”

  “You are not selling me on spending time with them,” I told her. I really wanted to go home, but the desperate look on her face filled me with sympathy. “That coffee better be fresh.”

  She grinned at me. “Quinn, I don’t know what I’d do without you. If it’s not fresh enough, I’ll go and brew you a fresh pot.”

  I held the door to the lounge room open for her, and as I followed her in, I understood exactly what she meant. I’d heard the expression you could cut the atmosphere with a knife before, but for this atmosphere? You’d pretty much need a chainsaw. None of the three men in the room were looking at each other, but that somehow made it worse. Irving was glaring into the fire that was burning and crackling away, oblivious. Philip had picked up a book off the shelves and was perusing it. Since all the books in this lounge had come from my shop, I knew perfectly well that they were on that shelf for their beautiful covers and not for the contents. Dredging my memory, I suspected he was reading the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Besides, the pages had yellowed and foxed and the print was tiny. I didn’t think he was reading it at all; he was just keeping himself occupied.

  Giles was staring out the window, probably wishing, like I did, that he was on the other side of it, and Chloe was typing away on her laptop.

  The tray rattled when Karen placed it on the coffee table, and she looked at me, opening her eyes wide in appeal. The universal distress signal for, “Do something.”

  Okay. I asked, “Who wants coffee?” in a bright voice that sounded false to my ears.

  “I couldn’t,” Giles said without even turning his gaze my way.

  “Not for me,” Philip said.

  “Coffee?” Chloe said, looking up. “Lovely. I take it black.” As though this was a normal morning and time for her regular coffee break. She was a cool customer, that one.

  “Yeah, I’ll take some,” Irving said, turning from his contemplation of the fire. “Cream and sugar.”

  Pouring two cups of coffee and doctoring one with milk and sugar at least gave me something to do for a minute or so. Then I poured myself a cup.

  The strained silence descended once more. I tried to think of a subject of conversation that was both neutral and dull enough that we could bat it around until the police had finished with us.

  Naturally, everything I came up with immediately raised disaster flares in my head. Branson’s new book? Oh no. Their travel plans for back home? Oh no. This previously undiscovered work by the author?

  Oh. No.

  I put my coffee cup down so hard, the coffee geysered and dribbled over the edge. Bartholomew Branson’s undiscovered manuscript. I knew it wasn’t a Branson. Candace Branson knew it wasn’t authentic. I strongly suspected Irving knew, but the one who had the biggest problem with Candace’s attempt to make money off her dead ex-husband was the dead ex-husband himself.

  Bartholomew Branson. I’d been there when he’d insisted on going out. He’d promised he’d stay away from his ex, but the promise of a furious vampire was probably not on the same level as a promise made by, say, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Baptist minister and prolific sermon writer.

  “Did Candace have any visitors last night?” I asked. The atmosphere was strained anyway. What difference did it make if I asked searching questions about the murder investigation?

  At least that had the effect of getting everybody’s attention.

  Giles turned back from the window. “I heard voices in her bedroom. It’s next to mine. But I assumed it was one of us.” And then he glared at Irving, who reddened under the supercilious gaze.

  “Don’t look at me. I was in my own room. Candace was busy going over that book.”

  Philip said, “I certainly didn’t go into her room last night.”

  “Nor I,” Chloe said.

  “No. Couldn’t have been you, Chloe. I’m almost certain it was a man and woman I heard.”

  Oh, great. I could imagine Bartholomew Branson barging his way in here without thinking through the consequences. Suppose he’d gone to visit his ex-wife? Once she knew he was undead, maybe he couldn’t trust her to keep his secret. Maybe he decided to stop her mouth permanently.

  Chapter 11

  It made me sad to think of Bartholomew as a murderer. To think I’d helped organize the launch that led to Candace’s death.

  Philip said, “I wonder if it was that young fellow who looked like a student. He and Candace had quite an intense conversation at the launch party at the castle.”

  Irving laughed. “Intense conversation? She slapped his face.”

  I didn’t want to think of Tristan Holt as a murderer any more than I wanted it to be Bartholomew. “Did any of you see that guy near here?”

  They glanced among themselves and shook their heads.

  Irving continued, “But Candy was real upset. Said he was coming on to her.”

  As a forty-five-year-old woman, I was the last person to scoff at a young man being smitten with an older woman, but I doubted Tristan Holt had had romance in mind when he spoke to Candace Branson.

  I turned to Giles. “You heard Candace speaking with someone through the walls of a pretty solidly built building. Any chance you recognized the voice?”

  He rocked back and forth on his heels as though trying to take himself back. “No. But now I think of it, I believe it was American and young. Yes, I believe so.”

  How convenient to cast suspicion on someone who wasn’t staying at McDonnell House. Had Giles really heard a young American in Candace’s room, or was he trying to cast suspicion away from himself?

  Even if I assumed he was telling the truth, it wasn’t much to go on. However, if that manuscript was missing, someone had taken it. Unfortunately, the prime suspect in my mind had to be Bartholomew. But if that young guy had come here to continue his discussion with Candace, he was a possible suspect too.

  I wanted to ask more probing questions, but I was startled when the television sprang to life.

  We all turned to stare at the screen. The familiar music from the Antiques Roadshow played, and then Fiona Bruce welcomed us to yet another fabulous British mansion loaded with history. The grounds were packed with antique lovers, some with their dogs and kids, some eating ice cream, and loads standing in line with bulging bags and carefully clutched boxes.

  “Most od
d the way that’s the only television program that ever seems to play in this bed and breakfast,” Giles said. But I noticed that he came away from the window and sat on the couch, where he had a good view of the television.

  Philip put down the book he wasn’t reading and sat on the opposite side of the couch.

  Even Irving drifted away from his contemplation of the fire and stood with his back against the wall. Chloe glanced up from her laptop, then went back to what she was doing.

  No one seemed to notice that the remote was still sitting on top of the TV. And, presumably, no one but me was bothered by the scent of earth and decay.

  Karen came in looking flustered. In a low voice, she said to me, “That music is doing my head in. How is it possible that televisions all over this building turn on spontaneously and they are always playing the same television show?”

  I could have told her. But didn’t. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said in a voice as low as hers had been. “Look at them. It’s caught their attention. I no longer worry that they’re going to kill each other, unless they bore each other with stories of how their great-grandfather had one of those Toby jugs, and if only they’d known it would be worth so much they’d have kept it all these years.”

  Her strained look vanished in a wry chuckle. “I do know what you mean. Perhaps I’ll call it a mixed blessing.”

  And for now, it certainly was. Although why Biddy O’Donnell had chosen to put this television on was more than I could figure out. Maybe she was worried that if she did it upstairs, the police would investigate. Down here, where there was already noise and goings-on, perhaps she thought she’d get away with turning on her favorite show. And, looking at the three rapt faces currently finding out the provenance of a blue china plate with a maharaja’s castle painted on it, she was right. For once in her unpleasant life, she’d done a good deed.

  Since they were all happily, and quietly, engaged in the program, I motioned with my head for Karen and I to go outside into the corridor. We did, and she shut the door gently behind her.

  I asked, keeping my voice low so the police didn’t hear, “Did Candace Branson have a visitor last night?”