The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [125]
“No,” Max exclaimed, craning his neck to look. Max was a train nut. He could recite innumerable facts about the fabled Orient Express, which first left the Gare de Strasbourg in Paris for Constantinople on October 4, 1883, and made its final regularly scheduled run in May 1977.
Annie was determined to forestall that. “Chief, wait a minute. Has Posey had Lady Gwendolyn arraigned for murder?”
Saulter shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “Yep. Four o’clock this afternoon. Charged with the murders of John Border Stone and Mrs. Honeycutt, attempted murder of Neil Bledsoe.” Saulter kept his voice even. “You’ll read all about it in the paper in the morning.” Annie could imagine the Class A press conference Posey must have held.
Max peered over the heads of the crowd, looking for the caboose.
“What about Derek Davis?” she asked.
“Oh, sure. Attempted murder of Bledsoe. They found the pawnshop in Savannah where Davis bought the gun—”
Max looked back at the chief. “First murderer, second murderer,” he murmured skeptically.
“Which gun?” Annie demanded.
“The one he pulled this afternoon in the meeting room. Now, sorry as you may feel for that young man, Annie, I’d like to remind you that he rented a car, drove thirty miles, used a false name, and purchased a gun, a gun that he pulled out of his coat right after threatening to kill his stepfather.”
“Former stepfather,” Annie clarified.
Max was impatient. “Seems like too many guns in this case. What about the gun that killed Kathryn Honeycutt? Have they linked it to Lady Gwendolyn or to Derek?”
“Nope.” It was a wry, dry disclaimer that spoke volumes about Saulter’s attitude toward Posey’s theories. “A search warrant didn’t turn up anything in Lady Gwendolyn’s suite. Anyway, nothin’ more we can do tonight, so we might as well have some fun.” He didn’t look like a man embarked on a delightful social evening. His face creased in a frown. “That young woman, the writer, Miss Marlow, if she’s not careful Posey’s going to throw her in jail. She raised all kinds of hell, swore Derek never did it, that even if he bought a hundred guns, he couldn’t have killed anybody, said we were blind fools, that Derek was so drunk he wouldn’t have gotten the gun pointed at Bledsoe before Bledsoe would have decked him, told Posey she’d see him in hell before she’d ever let Davis stay in jail, then she stormed out. Made Posey damned mad. If you see her, you might tell her to lay off. No sense her going to jail, too.”
“Yeah, we will.” Max had restrained himself as long as he could. “Hey, Where’s the caboose to the Orient Express?”
“This way.” Saulter jerked his head.
Doors appropriate to the various murals—a pantry door beneath a staircase in a village house, a stateroom door aboard a ship—opened between the screens so revelers could slip from area to area, perhaps pretending for a moment that they were walking into one of Christie’s novels. (Annie was sure she detected Laurel’s hand. Another of Laurel’s enthusiasms was Andrew Lloyd Webber. “My dear, he is to stagecraft what Von Braun was to rockets!”) Annie was smiling as she followed Max and Saulter. She was almost to the door when a hurrying figure brushed roughly past her.
Startled, she looked around.
“Chief!” Ed Merritt, the hotel manager, kept his voice low, but he couldn’t control the tremor. “Chief!”
Saulter jerked to face him.
“Chief, oh, Christ, it’s awful—on the terrace—that guy, the one all the trouble’s about—”
“Bledsoe?” Saulter looked older than time, his yellow, wrinkled skin taut with foreboding.
“Jesus, the way he fell—blood and—”
“Fell? Where’d he fall from?” Saulter snapped. “When?”
“Now. Just now. From the balcony of his room,” the hotel manager said. “You didn’t hear the scream in here? God, I’ll hear that scream the rest of my life.”
“A doctor? Have you called a doctor?” Annie demanded urgently.
“Doctor?” Merritt’s eyes skimmed over her vacantly. “What for?”
It was hard to remember, looking at Neil Bledsoe’s broken body, how much bigger than life he’d seemed.
Annie held tight to Max’s hand. After