The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [137]
“I just keep having the most marvelous ideas for a new book.” The line crackled.
“Lady Gwendolyn, where are you?” No answer would have surprised Annie—in a commune, atop a fire lookout tower, nursing a gin gimlet at Raffles in Singapore.
“In flight. They have an air phone. I just couldn’t resist.”
Annie had last seen her visitor at the Savannah airport en route for New York.
“Are you going home?” With most people, it was a natural assumption.
“No.”
It was a beautifully modulated Neow.
“I decided to visit your West Coast. I understand there are many writers there. I will be attending a retreat.” A burble of laughter. “I’ve already come up with the title for my next book—The Christie Caper. Do you think it has a certain ring?”
Static exploded on the line. Annie held the receiver away from her ear and faintly heard, “After that, Death of a Fat Fool. So I’m thinking of coming back by your island on the way home. A spot of research.”
It was not the most direct route to England. But Annie was thrilled. “As soon as you can,” she urged.
Annie was smiling when she returned to her task. Lady Gwendolyn—brilliant, jolly, intrepid—a co-conspirator to be prized.
The front doorbell rang.
Still on her knees, Annie twisted around, then scrambled to her feet “Mrs. Calloway, how nice of you to come by.”
Fleur Calloway, slim and lovely in a lemon blazer, a cream blouse, and daffodil skirt, hesitated in the doorway. The late afternoon sunlight turned her gloriously red hair to flame. She said, abruptly, “I wanted to see you before I left the island.”
“Let’s have coffee,” Annie urged, and she led the way to the back of the store and the coffee bar.
As Annie poured almond mocha into their mugs, she said warmly, “Your speech at the luncheon was just wonderful. It was a perfect ending to the conference.”
“Lady Gwendolyn’s closing remarks,” Fleur said quietly, “were well received.”
Annie had been delighted to give the speaker’s role to Lady Gwendolyn so that she might make good on her promise to announce the name of the murderer at the luncheon’s end. The doughty author held her listeners spellbound with her account. Neil Bledsoe, murderer. And so the story ended, a murderer who escaped men’s justice in an odd twist of fate. “But,” Lady Gwendolyn had concluded, “can we doubt that the mills of the gods grind exceedingly fine?”
Annie looked directly into Calloway’s luminous, questioning eyes. “I’m very glad it’s over.” She knew that Fleur Calloway understood that she was not talking about the conference.
Fleur Calloway, who had loved her daughter so much and every day placed a single yellow rose on her grave.
Fleur Calloway, who grew up in the bayous of Louisiana with four rambunctious brothers.
A snake and a single yellow rose.
The author’s lips trembled. “How? How did you and Lady Gwendolyn and—is it your mother-in-law and—”
“It wasn’t difficult. Once I knew what must have happened—”
Fleur pressed a hand against suddenly trembling lips—“I talked to Laurel and Henny.” Annie paused. “Laurel has three daughters. She loves them very much. And Henny was adamant that the truth would do no one any good. They agreed at once to my plan.”
Fleur stared at her with luminous eyes. “I still don’t see why you would take such a risk … for a stranger.”
“Because we felt it was right,” Annie said simply. She put down her mug. “Just a moment.” Hurrying up the aisle, she scanned her almost reshelved Christie section and found the title she sought. Returning, she placed it on the coffee bar. “I’d like for you to have this. It’s a story of people working together to see justice done. This is a first edition. To remember … Death on Demand.”
The author looked down at the cover, at the copy of Christie’s famed Murder on the Orient Express, the indescribably brilliant and touching novel in which Christie made it very clear that law and justice are not always synonymous.
Calloway’s eyes had the bright shine of tears when