“Yeah, yeah, I know. Lots of rest, no physical activity, no alcohol. It’s like being eight with chicken pox again, but with aches and pains.”
Fenella laughed. “I’m sorry, and I’ll do my best to keep you entertained.”
“I’d love to do some more sightseeing, but mostly I want to find out what happened to Stephanie. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything new?”
“Annie is planning a memorial service for Saturday,” Fenella began. She told her brother everything that Annie had said during their phone conversation.
“But that doesn’t even make sense. If they all left together and Stephanie was already gone, how did one of them kill her? They must have all been in on it together. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Let’s let the police worry about that,” Fenella suggested. “I wonder if they know about the memorial service. Maybe I should call Mark and tell him about it.”
A knock on the door kept James from replying. Fenella crossed the room and pulled the door open.
“Good afternoon,” Mark Hammersmith said. “I understand your brother has been released from Noble’s. Is he here?”
“Yes, he is. We were just having lunch. Would you like to join us?”
“I probably shouldn’t, but I do need to speak to James. I have a number of questions for him.”
“Questions? About what?”
“About a number of things,” Mark replied vaguely. “Can I come in?”
Fenella stepped back to let the man into the apartment. “We’re in the kitchen,” she said.
Mark followed her across the room. “Good afternoon,” he said to James. “I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I am, thanks,” James replied. “But what can I do for you?”
“You can start by telling me why Stephanie asked her friends to help her find a way to get away from you,” Mark replied.
13
James shook his head. “What?”
“Perhaps you could tell me again about your relationship with Stephanie. Tell me again how you met,” Mark asked.
“She wrote to me to tell me that she’d enjoyed my book,” James replied.
“Do you always correspond with your fans?” Mark wanted to know.
“My publisher has a form letter that he sends to most of them. I never even see those letters. Stephanie wrote to me at my home address, rather than in care of my publisher, though.”
“How did she get your home address?” was Mark’s next question.
James frowned. “I’m not actually sure. It isn’t a huge secret or anything, though. Probably anyone could find it if they tried hard enough. It’s only a post office box, actually, not my real street address, anyway.”
“You never asked her how she found you?”
“No, it never came up. Like I said, she wasn’t the first person to track down the box number, and she wasn’t the last, either. I probably get at least one letter a month in my box.”
“And do you reply to them all?”
James shrugged. “It depends on my mood. Most of them I ship off to my publisher and let him deal with them. I give threatening ones to the police. Occasionally there will be something interesting in one of them that gets me to reply in person, but it’s pretty rare.”
“So why did you reply to Stephanie?”
“She sent me like five pages of nonsense. Some of it talked about the Isle of Man and some of it was about how she wanted to be a writer herself. I found it, well, amusing, I suppose. I went through the first two pages with a red pen, correcting all of her grammar and punctuation, and then sent it back to her. I didn’t expect to hear from her again.”
“I can see why,” Mark said dryly, “but she did get in touch again, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she sent another letter, one that had been carefully edited. She wanted writing advice. She told me she had millions of ideas but no way to put them on paper. I’ve been struggling for ideas for years, so I suggested maybe we could work together on something. It was a crazy idea and I never truly expected her to take me up on it. She didn’t write back, but then one day she turned up on my doorstep.”
“And you started a relationship?”
James flushed. “She was far more attractive than I’d expected from her letters. I told you before that she’d sent me some photos, but I wasn’t sure that the photos she’d sent were really her, you know? It was probably a mistake to get romantically involved with her when I was hoping to work with her, but I found her charms somewhat impossible to resist.”
“Did you want a drink?” Fenella asked Mark, wanting to give James a break from the rapid-fire questions.
“Pardon? Oh, sure, something cold would be good,” he replied.
“You’re welcome to make yourself a sandwich as well,” she offered, gesturing toward the counter where everything was still spread out.
“I will, if you don’t mind. I didn’t get time for lunch yet, and I doubt I will later.”
Fenella handed him a can of soda after he’d put together a sandwich. James made himself another sandwich as well and then the three of them sat back down together.
“Right, so where were we?” Mark asked. He tapped on his phone for a moment and then looked at James. “Were you and Stephanie working on a book, then?”
“We were starting to put ideas together, but we hadn’t actually done any real work yet,” James replied.
“Can you be more specific?”
James shrugged. “Stephanie was trying to make an outline for a story, something that I could work from as I wrote. She was also going to give me detailed character profiles, but I don’t think she’d started them yet.”
“So she was providing the plot and the characters, and you were going to actually write the book?”
“Something like that. We hadn’t worked out all of the details yet. She may have done some of the writing as we went along. I really don’t know.”
“But she hadn’t written anything yet?”
“She hadn’t even finished the outline yet,” James told him.
“Can you think of any reason why she might have told her friends that she’d already written the book?” Mark asked.
“Maybe she was just showing off,” James suggested.
“Maybe,” Mark replied, making a note on his phone. “Would you be prepared to let me search your belongings for the draft manuscript that Stephanie told her friends you have?”
“Draft manuscript? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” James said. “I don’t want you searching my things, either. Even if I do have a draft manuscript, which I don’t, why does that matter to the police?”
“It matters if it provided a motive for murder,” Mark replied.
“You think I killed Stephanie so that I could steal the manuscript?” James asked.
“It’s one possibility,” Mark said.
“It’s a crazy idea. First of all, there is no manuscript. Second of all, Stephanie and I were working together. If there were a manuscript, it would already belong to me, or half to me, anyway.”
“Unless you didn’t want to admit that you’d used a ghost writer,” Mark suggested. “Maybe you wanted to publish the book under your name and cut Stephanie out entirely.”
“Is that what her friends told you? They all got together and murdered her to keep her from telling anyone about Arthur Beck. Now they’re trying to pass the blame off to me with this crazy story,” James scoffed.
“But you won’t let me search your things?” Mark asked.
“If it will help get the focus of your investigation back onto the three women who killed Stephanie, then you can search my things,” James said. “Fenella, did you pack up the papers in my room when you packed my bags?”
“No, I just brought your clothes and personal items,” Fenella replied. “I thought I could go back for the paperwork if you wanted it.”
“So everything you want to look at is at the house where I was staying,” James said. “I alre
ady gave you everything of Stephanie’s, so you know there wasn’t any manuscript there. You’ll have to go and search the house, I suppose. I’m meant to be resting, so I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind.”
“Perhaps Fenella would like to accompany me?” Mark said.
“I could do that,” she replied.
“You’ll find some sheets with the story outline. They may even look like the beginnings of a story, but they’re really just rough notes. That’s truly as far as we ever got,” James said.
Mark didn’t look as if he were in any hurry to get to the house to start searching. He took another bite of his sandwich and then swiped something in his phone. “How were you and Stephanie getting along lately?” he asked.
“I won’t lie to you; traveling together was, well, difficult. We were forced together in fairly tight spaces for much too long. We were both snapping at one another by the time we arrived on the island. The fact that I was badly jet lagged when Stephanie wasn’t didn’t help.”
“How important was it to you to have her help with the book?”
“I was looking forward to working with her, as I thought some of her ideas were interesting, but if she’d decided she was no longer interested, I would have understood. I know I’m not the easiest person to live with and I’ve never tried collaborating with another person on a book before. I have no idea if it would have worked or not, and now I suppose I’ll never know.”
“Do you think you were putting pressure on Stephanie to stay with you for the sake of the book project?”
“Not even a little bit. The thing is, I’m the well-known author. If Stephanie wanted to be published, she knew her best chance was to work with me. Once our book hit the market, if it was a success, she’d have a foot in the door, not to mention a source of income that she didn’t currently have.”
“And she was happy with your plans for how you were going to publish, I mean, in just your name?”
“We weren’t necessarily going to publish in just my name. We were still working that part out, but she was going to get credit in some way. And yes, as far as I know, she was happy with the arrangements, at least as far as they’d gone. If I ever do decide to try something like this again, I’m going to have a lawyer work out every detail before we begin, though.”
Mark nodded. “That’s probably a wise idea.” He finished his sandwich and typed a bit more into his phone before looking at Fenella. “If we could, I’d like to go and search the house now.”
Fenella stood up. “Are you going to be okay on your own?” she asked James.
He shrugged. “I’ll be fine. I’ll watch the sea for a while and then take a nap, probably.”
“Call my mobile if you need me,” she told him. “Do you want to double-check the things I packed and brought here before we go?” she asked Mark. “I’m sure you want to be thorough.”
He nodded. “If no one minds.”
It only took him a few minutes to glance through the suitcases that Fenella had packed. It was clear there wasn’t any paper in any of them.
The trip to the house on Poppy Lane took only a little bit longer. Mark was silent on the drive over. Once inside, he checked every room, not just the one that James had been using.
“Of course, with today’s technology, the entire manuscript could be on a flash drive or even in the cloud,” he remarked as Fenella locked the house behind them.
“You didn’t find any flash drives, either here or at my apartment,” she pointed out. “I don’t have any cloud accounts, but I don’t know how you would check that. James doesn’t even have a computer, but again, I suppose you can’t just take my word for that.”
“I probably should have his house in the US searched,” Mark said as they drove back to the promenade. “I’d rather not take things that far yet, though.”
“Have you found Arthur Beck?” Fenella asked.
“We’re working on that and many other things.”
“Did you know there’s going to be a memorial service on Saturday for Stephanie? Annie told me about it. James and I are planning to attend.”
“I didn’t realize you’d spoken to Annie. Can you take me through the conversation, please?” he asked as he parked in front of Fenella’s building.
She quickly recounted the telephone conversation that she’d had with the other woman, while Mark made notes on his phone. When she was done, he sighed.
“I don’t suppose I can talk you into skipping the memorial service?”
“Why?”
“I’d rather keep James and Stephanie’s friends apart, that’s all.”
“I can try talking to James, but I know he really wants to be there.”
“I’ll be there as well, so let him know that I will stop him from talking to the women if he tries anything.”
“I’ll tell him. I think he just wants to pay his respects to Stephanie, though. He’s planning another service back it the US as well.”
Mark nodded. “If I don’t see you between now and then, I’ll see you on Saturday.”
Fenella climbed out of the car and made her way into her building. She stopped to check her mailbox, which was empty as usual, and then headed up to her apartment. As she opened the door, she could hear James’s voice.
“What do you mean, who is this? That isn’t any way to start a conversation. Who were you calling?”
Fenella raised an eyebrow at him. He was sitting on the couch, holding the phone and scowling.
“Maggie? Well, there, you see. You have the wrong number,” he said after a moment.
“Wait,” Fenella said. “That might be Jack.”
“Jack? Is this Jack?” James asked the caller. He looked at Fenella. “Yeah, it’s Jack. Do you want to talk to him?”
Fenella made a face. She didn’t, really, but she couldn’t exactly bring herself to tell her brother that. “Sure, I’ll talk to him,” she said.
“Who was that?” Jack demanded as soon as Fenella said hello.
“What do you want, Jack?” Fenella replied.
“I was calling to tell you that I miss you,” Jack replied, “but it seems as if I’m wasting my time. You’ve moved another man into your apartment, I gather. It seems to me that you’ve moved on rather quickly. After being with me for ten years and never once suggesting that we should live together, you’ve been there, what, four or five months and you’ve already invited a man to live with you? I’m saddened and shocked, if I’m honest.”
Fenella sighed deeply. “Not that it’s any of your business, but that was my brother James who answered the phone.”
“Your brother? Why didn’t he simply say so?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure your call took him by surprise. He may even have been asleep. He’s recovering from an accident.”
“What happened to James?”
“It’s a long story, and not one that need worry you.”
“Now I am worried, though. It does seem as if that island is a very dangerous place. Every time I call you it seems as if someone has just been murdered or some such thing. You really should come home.”
“This is my home now,” Fenella said firmly. “I am home and I don’t anticipate returning to the US, at least not in the foreseeable future.”
“That’s the other reason why I called. I’ve been thinking a lot about your situation there and I’ve realized why you keep refusing to come back to me. It’s money, isn’t it?”
“Money? No, not even a little bit.”
“You can be honest with me,” Jack told her. “You sold up everything here and rushed over there without doing any checking into what you’d actually inherited. Now you’re stuck in a tiny apartment in what’s probably a bad neighborhood and you’ve no way to afford a ticket home, let alone to replace your house and everything else that you sold or gave away. I know you well enough to know that you’ve far too much pride to admit to any of that, though.”
“I have plenty of money,” Fenella told him, very conscious that her b
rother was paying close attention to her end of the conversation.
“You know you don’t have to pretend with me. Anyway, I want to help. I was thinking that I might take early retirement. That would give me access to a large lump sum of money. I could come over there and help you settle your aunt’s estate. I’m sure it will be difficult to sell her apartment, but with my financial backing, you won’t have to worry about how much you actually get for it. Once everything is taken care of, we can move back to the US. I was thinking maybe we could try Florida. I think I’ve had enough of snow and ice, really.”
In spite of how she felt about the man, Fenella couldn’t help but be touched by the generous offer. “That’s very kind of you, Jack, but I’m really okay. I’m not moving back to the US because I simply don’t want to do so. Money is not an issue.”
“But I miss you. We belong together. If you won’t move back here, I will have to move there.”
“No!” Fenella exclaimed. “You can’t move here. You’ve no legal right to live in the UK.”
“I’ve been checking into that. We’ll just have to get married, as far as I can tell. Once we’re married, I’ll be able to live wherever you are.”
“But I don’t want to marry you,” Fenella said softly.
Jack laughed. “You’ve always said that, but you don’t really mean it. If I came over and got down on one knee, you’d say yes. I know you would.”
“I might have once, but I wouldn’t now,” Fenella told him, trying to be gentle, but losing patience with the man. “I’m really happy here. I have new men in my life, and I’m finding that being single agrees with me. You’re better off where you are, anyway. You’d miss teaching and you’d miss the American way of life.”
“But I’d stop missing you,” Jack replied sadly.
Fenella swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Jack, but I have to go. James needs his next dose of antibiotics and he has to take them with food. I need to go and make him a snack. Please try to move on with your life. I’m not coming back, and I’m not marrying you.”
“Then I shall have to find another way for us to be together,” Jack said. “I won’t give up on us, you know. It would be easier if you simply stopped pretending to fight me.”
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