A Question of Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  “I’m not good at small talk,” Chasseur said, sounding irritated. “It bores me.”

  “Everything bores you,” I heard his wife mutter, although I would have thought she was the bored party in their marriage.

  “You’ll do just fine,” I said, not sure why I felt compelled to allay his concerns. “They just want to know about you and your characters, subjects on which you’re an expert.”

  Our waitress, a pert and pretty young woman who’d introduced herself as Jody, had the bountiful energy and ready smile of a college coed, which it turned out she was. Clearly thrilled that she’d been assigned “the authors,” she responded enthusiastically when Chasseur engaged her in conversation that was overtly flirtatious. I glanced at Claudette, whose sour expression said her husband’s behavior wasn’t lost on her, and I had the impression that it was nothing she hadn’t seen before.

  GSB Wick was served the Bacardi cocktail she’d ordered. Her companion, Harold, was on his second martini, each sip raising the ruddiness of his cheeks and nose.

  “What a beautiful color,” I said, admiring the shimmering green liquid in Ms. Wick’s large cocktail glass.

  “A daiquiri with a teaspoon of grenadine instead of sugar,” she said, tasting the drink. She nodded her approval and downed half of it in a single swallow.

  I took a sip of my iced tea and responded to what the Savoys had said was expected of us. “I enjoy meeting mystery fans,” I said, “and look forward to talking with them. That’s what I like about lecturing and book tours. I actually get to meet the people who are reading what I’ve written.”

  “The way I see it,” said Chasseur, obviously recovered from his momentary insecurity, “the great unwashed reading public suffers from a terminal case of hero worship, and who am I not to indulge them?” He called out to Jody in a loud voice, “Another martini, sweetheart, dryer this time. Tell the bartender to put a little vermouth in the air-conditioning.”

  Boynton laughed heartily. “Jolly good line,” he said to Chasseur, his words slightly slurred. “I must remember it.”

  “Harold isn’t a writer,” Georgie said of her friend, “but he collects one-liners.”

  “Always enjoy a good turn of phrase,” he said.

  The Savoys were called away from the table several times to take care of last-minute production details and answer questions brought to them by cast members. They finally gave up on the idea of having dinner with us and disappeared from the room.

  There was little anxiety during the rest of dinner, although Chasseur’s occasional suggestive comments to Jody caused some discomfort—but apparently not for his wife, who ignored him.

  Claudette was an interesting woman. She was beautiful. No one would debate that. She had the classic American looks seen in every fashion magazine: straight blond hair, golden tan skin, wide blue eyes, full lips under a delicate nose. She would draw attention—especially male attention—wherever she went, but I doubted she would reciprocate. Her manner seemed aloof and disdainful. It would have been easy to assume she possessed a vapid personality, consumed with herself and no one else. Yet there was an expression in her eyes that convinced me otherwise. She was listening intently to our conversation, but declined to participate. Was she shy? Or did she feel, like many beautiful women whose life path had been determined by their good looks, that she was intellectually inferior to others in her life, including her husband—especially her husband, who had made a point of belittling her intelligence?

  As often happens when writers get together, most of the talk was about agents, money, publisher misdeeds, and other less literary topics. Chasseur held himself out as an expert on Hollywood and the transformation of books into motion pictures. He pontificated about it, citing his own experiences as proof of what he was saying. Eventually, he got on the subject of his publisher’s lack of advertising and marketing support for his novels, and termed his agent “worthless.” I expressed my satisfaction with both my publisher, Vaughan Buckley of Buckley House, one of the last remaining independently owned publishing companies in the business, and my agent of many years, Matt Miller.

  “That’s hopelessly naïïve,” Chausseur said. “You’ll never know how much money they’ve stolen from you.”

  “I beg to differ—” I began.

  My defense of my business colleagues was interrupted by an altercation at an adjacent table, where a man and a woman were engaged in a loud argument. All eyes in the vast dining room turned to them as the man abruptly stood, threw his napkin on the table, and stormed from the room. The woman started to cry, excused herself, and followed.

  “Quite an unpleasant public display, I would say,” Harold said.

  I smiled. I recognized the man as Monroe, the actor playing the father at the rehearsal earlier in the day. “I think it’s part of the show,” I said softly, laughing.

  “What show?” Chasseur said.

  “It’s part of the weekend’s theatrical experience,” I said, sorry that I’d brought it up. Who was I to spoil the fantasy that Melinda and Lawrence had created for Mohawk House that weekend?

  The disruption was soon forgotten, and we went back to enjoying our dinner and discussing the financial pitfalls of writing for a living. But that lasted only a few minutes. The loud sound of gunfire, followed by a female scream, was heard from just outside the dining room. The small woman who’d argued with the redhead during check-in ran into the room, shouting, “Come quickly, please. He’s got a gun!”

  Chapter Five

  The characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin

  resided in a brownstone on West Thirty-fifth

  Street in Manhattan. Who created them?

  Many diners left the room to see what had happened, and I was one of them. Although I was certain it had to do with the play, I wanted to join in the scenario Lawrence and Melinda Savoy had come up with for the weekend. After all, that was half the fun of being there.

  The crowd had gathered in a large anteroom a few feet down the hallway from the main entrance to the dining room. I couldn’t see the object of their fascination until I managed to skirt the knot of people and stand on my tiptoes. I recognized Paul, Cynthia’s suitor in the play and the young man with whom I’d had a brief unpleasant encounter in the smokers’ vestibule. He was standing over an older man slumped in an overstuffed chair. That man was unknown to me. He hadn’t been in the scene I’d watched earlier during rehearsal.

  “Don’t think I’m not on to you,” Paul shouted at the man. He pointed his gun at the ceiling and squeezed the trigger. The audience jumped at the loud explosion, although the bullet didn’t make any hole in the plaster that I could see.

  “What do you want?” the older man shouted at the young actor. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Don’t kid a kidder,” Paul replied, waving the pistol in the man’s face. “You know more than you’re letting on. And I’m going to get every last detail from you if it takes all night.”

  At that moment, Mark Egmon pushed his way through the crowd. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  Paul immediately pocketed his weapon. “Just a slight disagreement,” he said, glaring at his victim and daring him to contradict his story. He turned to the new man. “Who are you?”

  “Mark Egmon, manager of special events here at Mohawk House. I heard someone had a gun. We don’t allow firearms in the hotel.”

  Paul held up two empty hands. “Not me, Mr. Manager. As you can see, I’m unarmed.”

  Egmon looked from Paul to the man in the chair. “Does he have a gun?”

  “No, sir,” Paul replied. “He certainly does not.”

  “All right, then. There’s no reason for this crowd to be here. C’mon, folks, break it up. Nothing to see here. Go finish your dinners. The dessert bar has been set up.”

  The man in the chair groaned and rubbed his chest with his right hand.

  “What’s wrong?” Egmon asked, squatting down beside the chair. “And you’d better not be complainin
g about the food.”

  “The food here is great,” Paul said. “I tell everyone that.” He nudged the man’s leg with his foot. “What’s the matter with you?”

  The man groaned again. “Heart,” he managed to get out in a pained voice.

  Egmon jumped up and turned to the retreating crowd. “Is there a doctor in the house?”

  Another man who’d come from the dining room stepped forward. “I’m a doctor,” he said.

  “Good,” he said. “This man needs help.”

  With that, Egmon announced that he would call an ambulance, helped the actor to his feet, and propelled him away, the physician close on their heels. People who’d recognized that this was part of the show were laughing. The doctor, now aware that he’d been drawn into the play, also started to laugh, and gave a big, theatrical wave to the crowd on his way out.

  As I turned to rejoin my writing colleagues in the dining room, I spotted Lawrence Savoy, who’d been watching the performance from a distance.

  “What fun,” I said to him.

  He smiled. “Just the beginning, Jessica.”

  “How big a cast do you have?” I asked as we walked together into the dining room.

  “Bigger than usual,” he said. “We try to keep the number down to cut expenses. All the actors and actresses are in the Actors Equity union. But Melinda wrote this new play and got carried away with characters. I’ve been using a few hotel staff to fill in, like Egmon, who helped Harry off the stage just now. You know Mark. A really nice guy. I think he wanted to be an actor somewhere in his past.”

  “Well,” I said pleasantly, “don’t get any thoughts about using me in your production.”

  He feigned shock. “I had you written in, Jessica, as the one who solves the murder.”

  “I’ve solved too many murders in real life to be doing it in a play. Thanks, but no thanks, Larry—I mean Lawrence.”

  Savoy laughed. “Come on, Jessica. We’ve known each other too long to stand on ceremony. You’re welcome to call me Larry. Just not in public.” He winked.

  “I’ll try to remember that,” I said. “Joining us again at the table?”

  “No, too much to do to get ready for the first act tonight. Having a good time?”

  “Of course. I always do at your shows.”

  “Enjoying the other writers?”

  My hesitation wasn’t lost on Larry.

  “Egotistical bunch, I admit,” he said with a straight face, “but they are, after all, writers.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He laughed. “Just getting a rise from you. Chasseur was a last-minute addition to the author panel. He’d been bugging me for a month to be part of this weekend. When Tony Tedeschi—you know him, don’t you?”

  “Yes. A wonderful writer and a nice person.”

  “When Tony had to cancel a week ago—some family emergency—I called Chasseur. He’s arrogant, but he can be entertaining.”

  “Yes, he is,” I said pleasantly. “Both.”

  “Looks like we literally have a captive audience,” he said. “With this storm raging outside, they couldn’t leave if they wanted to. I just heard an updated forecast. More than two feet of snow.”

  “If I didn’t know better,” I said, “I’d think I was back in Maine.”

  Melinda came up to us and pulled Larry away to handle what she described as a crisis. I returned to the table, where only GSB Wick and Harold remained.

  “You missed the excitement,” I said as Harold stood to pull out my chair.

  “I don’t believe we were formally introduced,” he said, slurring his words and rocking on his feet. “Harold Boynton here.” He pointed at his chest and settled his heavy body back into his chair. “Not very polite of me not to have introduced myself.”

  “Ms. Wick took care of introductions,” I said.

  “Boynton, you’re drunk again,” Georgie said with disgust. To me, she added, “I’m going to beg to be excused. I’m not feeling well.”

  Her pale makeup hid the true nature of her complexion, but she did look wan to me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “Nothing at all,” she said. “What I need is to lie down.”

  Boynton struggled to his feet and took her hand as she rose.

  “You stay with Jessica, Harold,” she said. “I’m going to bed.” She put a hand to her forehead. “I hope I’m not getting the flu.”

  I glanced down at the two empty cocktail glasses in front of her, and wondered whether it was the alcohol that had made her ill. Harold made another attempt to escort her from the room, but she was adamant that he stay with me.

  “I’m sure you’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep,” I said.

  “I hope you’re right,” she said and walked away, her painfully thin body moving unsteadily.

  “I love her writing,” I told Harold after he was seated again.

  “Yes, she’s jolly good, isn’t she?” he said.

  “She certainly is. So, Harold Boynton, what do you do back in England?”

  “Retired. Physician,” he said, muffling a burp behind his napkin.

  “Oh? One of my dearest friends back home—that’s in a town called Cabot Cove—it’s in Maine—is a physician.”

  “Might I know him?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Seth Hazlitt.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell. What’s his specialty?”

  “Medicine,” I said with a chuckle. “He’s a true country physician, an old-fashioned general practitioner. He calls himself a chicken soup doctor.”

  Harold joined my laughter. “An endangered species,” he said, “and too bad.”

  “Did you specialize when you were in practice?” I asked.

  “Yes, quite so. I was a coroner and medical examiner. Your friend, Dr. Hazlitt, tries to save people’s lives. I chop them up when he fails.”

  I’d never heard a coroner or medical examiner describe his specialty quite so crudely before. I’d had the privilege of meeting many top medical examiners, including Michael Baden and Henry Lee, in the course of research I’d done for my novels. They tended to be gentle when describing what they do, speaking of the deceased with a certain reverence, anatomical and surgical nomenclature aside.

  “Like to go dancing, Jessica, dear?” he asked, leaning toward my ear. “I understand they have a lively pub here in the hotel. We could sneak away together.”

  “No, thank you, Harold, I don’t think so. I brought a good book with me—Ms. Wick’s latest, as a matter of fact. And one by Mr. Chasseur, too.”

  “Pity,” he said, tapping my arm. “I’d like to get to know you better, Jessica.” He placed a hand on the top of my thigh.

  I lifted it away by the sleeve, placed it back on the arm of his chair, and stood. “I believe the play is about to start,” I said, “and I don’t want to miss any of it.”

  Feeling like one of Larry’s actors, I made my exit, stage right.

  As I went to the auditorium, I passed the young actor who played Paul in the play. It was almost curtain time, and although he was in makeup and wearing his stage clothing, I wondered why he wasn’t backstage, ready to perform. As he hurried past me, a young woman grabbed his arm to stop him. “Hey, Peter,” she said, “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

  Paul glared at her, yanked his arm free, and said, “You’ve got me confused with somebody else. Sorry, I’m in a hurry.”

  Paul disappeared into a knot of theatergoers, leaving the woman looking puzzled. She saw that I’d witnessed the exchange, laughed, and said, “He’s a dead ringer for someone I knew back in San Francisco.”

  “It’s happened to me on a few occasions,” I said, walking into the theater with her, “and seems to happen more frequently as I’ve grown older. I don’t think it’s because my ability to recognize people has diminished. There just seem to be more faces that look familiar to me.”


  “Well,” she said as she found a seat, “they say everyone has a twin somewhere in the world, and that guy could be my friend’s twin. Enjoy the show.”

  Chapter Six

  Who wrote the hard-boiled detective novel

  I, the Jury?

  There was an air of excitement and expectation among the hundred or so people entering the auditorium for the first act of the play. I’ve learned over the years how devoted serious lovers of murder mysteries can be. They read every book in the genre they can get their hands on, and have rock-solid opinions about the relative quality of authors, plots, character development, and other aspects of the field. They love arguing with other devotees, and spend countless hours in Internet chat rooms and at conventions dedicated to crime writing.

  I took a seat toward the rear of the room and eavesdropped on conversations around me. The teams had already begun to gather in clusters and to conjure scenarios. The talk—at least what I could pick up—was about Paul and the man in the chair outside the dining room a half hour earlier. Obviously, this incident would have significance as the theatrical production went forward, although at this early stage its importance was entirely speculative, especially since no one knew who these men were or what roles they would assume in the play.

  Lawrence Savoy stepped onto the small stage. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, lovers all of a good mystery.”

  The buzz in the room continued until Larry called for attention. Conversation wound down and he continued with his introduction: “Welcome to the magnificent Mohawk House and a weekend of merry mayhem, dastardly crimes, and murder most foul. And we won’t let this snowstorm dampen our spirits, will we?”

  A chorus of affirmation welled up.

  “As you know,” Larry continued, “we’ll begin each of our sessions with a few questions devised by our distinguished authors to test your knowledge of the murder mystery genre. At the end of the weekend, the person with the most correct answers will win a special prize. Everybody should have a card.” He held up a sample of the small index cards that had been distributed. “You’ll write your answers on the cards provided in your welcoming packets and they’ll be collected before the play begins. Be sure to write your name on them so you’ll be able to pick them up the next time we gather. No changing your answers allowed. If we see an erasure, you’re disqualified. No consulting the Internet. And turn off your cell phones now.”