The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [77]
It had never occurred to Annie in her wildest flights of fancy that she would, in addition to her conference duties, spend the day on a four-star mission, seeking clues to a totally unexpected murder, continuing her investigation into the mysterious attacks against Bledsoe, vainly attempting to satisfy authorities that Lady Gwendolyn—despite the bloody cape—hadn’t swatted a conference attendee with a sugar hammer, and gathering information, hopefully derogatory, to be used in blocking publication of a scurrilous biography of the Queen of Crime.
Wasn’t it, in a way, truly a Christie twist that she should be charged with pursuing such complicated and contradictory goals?
Lady Gwendolyn reassured Annie over a hearty English breakfast.
“The more complicated it gets, my dear, the more intriguing it is. However, I fear we have a problem. That fat fool”—this turned out to be her invariable description of Posey—“is concentrating on me, so he will make no progress. But we’ll solve it. It’s simply a matter of putting our minds to it.”
Annie wished she shared the spunky author’s confidence. Actually—and Annie was only able to toy with her souffle au kipper, though it was delicious—every time she remembered the scarlet of that wound and the viscous pool flaring round that blood-drenched head, she felt sick and sorrowful. “James Bentley” had been young and alive. Some human hand had brought that bronze implement crashing down. Why?
“Chin up, my dear,” Lady Gwendolyn enjoined, her tone firm but her eyes kind. “We shall prevail.” She even managed a chuckle. “It would certainly set the crime writers at home on their ears if I ended up in an American hoosegow. However, I don’t intend to afford them such grand entertainment. Surely we can outwit that fat fool.”
• • •
Murder! A murder in the hotel!
The news spread faster than the rumors about poor Colonel Bantry in The Body in the Library.
Annie could feel the covert glances, instantly averted when she looked up to meet them. She could hear the excited buzz of conversations that ceased when she came near.
So the murder was having an effect. But the reactions were exactly what might be expected from people present at the outskirts of tragedy.
A very normal response.
That was the most unnerving facet of the day, its very ordinariness. On the surface, everything and everyone was so ordinary. Several hundred very ordinary people.
Was one of them incensed enough by the attack on Christie to commit murder?
Perhaps that dark-haired woman sitting in a deck chair by the shallow end of the pool. Wasn’t that a true crime book in her hands?
Or the academic with the Vandyke beard—hadn’t he looked a little strange, walking with his head down and muttering rapidly to himself?
Or the redhead from the treasure hunt. Was the venomous glance directed at Annie a result of yesterday’s fray? Or much more serious?
And, once the initial buzz of excitement waned, the continuing everyday sounds of the convention emphasized the stark contrast between the placid course of the conference and the dark bloodiness of murder:
“C’mon, let’s hurry. I don’t want to miss Black Coffee. You’ve got to see the guy who plays Poirot!”
“Can you believe she was seventy-five when she wrote Third Girl, and she was really into the hippie scene!”
“A Murder Is Announced absolutely has a fabulous beginning! What a terrific premise.”
“You know … I’ve always wondered if she had a fixation on time … think of all those alarm clocks in The Seven Dials Mystery and the five clocks, all set to a different time, in the opening chapter of The Clocks.”
“Crooked House will give you cold chills!”
Everywhere Annie went, or so it seemed, she caught a glimpse of Lady Gwendolyn—surveying the breakfast crowd, loping through the lobby, poking a head into the panels, peering over the edge of the reopened roof—and always and ever those brilliant blue eyes seemed to be searching, searching.
Annie looked in on the morning’s