The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [53]
As she turned away, Chief Saulter came up, and he wasn’t wearing a happy race.
“What’s wrong, Frank?”
“Nothing the end of your conference won’t solve.” At her startled look, he shrugged. “Sorry, Annie. I know how much all of this means to you, but I got some bad news.”
She suppressed a groan.
“There wasn’t any gun on the bottom of the harbor.” He tugged on his black bow tie as if the unaccustomed evening dress choked him.
“Billy may have missed it,” Annie suggested.
“Maybe.” The police chief surveyed the festive dining room. “Dammit, I’ve got a bad feeling. I’ve been looking these people over today”—Annie didn’t have to ask for names—“and I smell trouble.”
First, Lady Gwendolyn. Now, Frank.
“Oh, Frank, everything’s going great”
And it was, she insisted to herself as she started back to the table.
The man at the center of this spider’s web seemed, to all intents and purposes, at peace with the world, his buccaneer’s face genial as he talked with Natalie. Although seated at a large round table, they sat with their heads close together, ignoring the other guests. Bledsoe spoke only to Natalie, his deep voice subdued. One hand rested on her arm. Annie glimpsed the young author’s face and almost flinched at its eagerness and vulnerability.
Annie had read Marlow’s debut novel. A young wife and mother, isolated in a country home, hears a voice warning her not to open the cellar door. It is a voice she knows, that of an elderly woman who had once owned the house—and been murdered in it. The murderer was never found. The young mother does open the cellar door—Annie tried to will away her memory of Marlow’s brutal, unforgettable, macabre prose. She piled horror upon horror upon horror. Even Ruth Rendell might blanch when reading this.
As she watched, Marlow’s fingers reached up, tentatively, slowly, to touch Bledsoe’s face. His hand caught hers; his lips touched her palm.
Annie turned away. No business of hers, but that young woman needed a refresher course on Jerks, How to Spot Them. And perhaps a seminar on Appropriate Behavior at a Banquet.
Nathan Hillman wasn’t engaged with the bonhomie at his table. The seat next to his was empty. Every so often, he looked tensely toward the doors.
Margo Wright, her face gentle and kind, sat beside Victoria Shaw. The author’s widow was animated, her usually faded cheeks touched with spots of color. Every so often Margo nodded in agreement. Occasionally, unobtrusively, she glanced toward Bledsoe and Marlow.
Emma Clyde’s voice always carried. “Fleur, don’t do this to yourself. Let’s go for a drive.”
Fleur Calloway should have been spectacularly lovely, her slim body sheathed in a beautifully cut white satin gown, but her face was as empty as a windswept moor, the muscles slack, her eyes somber.
Suddenly, Nathan Hillman shoved back his chair and hurried past Annie.
Turning, she saw him grab Derek Davis’s arm.
Derek wavered unsteadily on his feet. “Let go,” he muttered. “Let go.”
Annie and Frank reached the two men at the same time.
“Problem here?” Frank asked quietly.
Hillman tried to put a good face on it, though he didn’t loosen his tight grip on Derek’s arm. “It’s all right. Derek’s had a bit too much to drink. I’ll take care of it.”
But Derek was too drunk or too upset to care that he was struggling with his boss.
“Let go of me, Nathan. Lemme go. Maybe you don’t give a damn, but I do. He’s a shit. I tell you he’s a shit.” His voice became shrill. “He killed my—”
Hillman clapped his hand roughly over Derek’s mouth. “Derek, listen to me. Wait a minute, listen. I’ll go over there. I’ll ask Natalie to come join us. But promise me you’ll wait here and keep quiet.” The stocky editor’s face was shiny with sweat, and he looked imploringly at Annie and the chief. “Look, Derek,” Hillman said with false joviality. “Here’s Mrs. Darling, you know who she is—the organizer of the conference. The bookseller. She’s going to sit down here with you. And I’ll go