B00BCLBHSA EBOK (14 page)

Emily arrived in the T. S. Eliot suite just as the
press conference was about to start. As she took her place next to Dr. Muriel, she leaned over and whispered, “I’ve got a bone
to pick with you.”

Dr. Muriel folded
her arms and looked amused. She thrived on argument.

“There’s no such thing as the One Star Club, is there?”

“Ha! I suppose there
could
be such a thing.”

“But if there were, it would be a wild coincidence, wouldn’t it? Because you’ve just made it up.”

Dr. Muriel
grinned. “Ah, Emily. It’s impossible to hoodwink you.”

“But why say it, if it’s not true?” Dr.
Muriel’s methods ran counter to what Emily understood about how science worked.

“I find it instructive to see how people react to such stories. One
has so little control over ‘real’ information. Who can say what is the truth? Who ‘owns’ the truth? So it can be useful to
look at how a person reacts to a hypothetical,
i.e.
a ‘truth’ that the
storyteller owns. I call it evaluating by theorizing.”

Whereas Emily might have called it
making things up
.

“You see, by looking at a person’s reaction to the hypothetical,
about which one knows a great deal (having created it), one hopes to understand
that person’s likely reaction to a real situation, about which one knows next
to nothing.”

Dr. Muriel seemed
very pleased with the way things had gone in the Captain Thomas Coram room. But
Emily wasn’t so sure. “I hope it doesn’t provoke anyone into doing something
rash.”

“That would be most unfortunate.”

“I don’t see how anyone in that room could be responsible for Winnie’s death, do you? There was no motive.”

“No, indeed. I
should think the temporary boost for book sales and the press attention for the
conference was entirely unintentional.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” called Morgana from the table at the front.
“I think we might begin, don’t you?”

There was a shushing and settling in their seats as everyone got
ready to listen to what she had to say. The shushing was more for the enjoyment
of doing it than for any need to quiet a rowdy crowd. Attendance at the press
conference was sparse. Four rows of chairs had been set up facing a table at
the front, but there were plenty of places available—apparently there were
hotter tickets on a Saturday night in Central London.

Morgana Blakely stood behind the table, looking nervous but brave,
like a shy celebrity who has been asked to take part in a game show in aid of
charity. She had accessorized a flouncy, knee-length black dress with a
pale-pink cashmere shrug and a jaunty pink fez. She caught Emily’s eye and
smiled, but there was no sunshine in the smile—it was more of a wince. Emily
and Dr. Muriel sat in the second row. Zena sat next to Cerys in the
first row. Trevor was there, but Zena had taken care
to place herself some distance from him, as if there was impropriety in sitting
next to a reporter at a press conference.

Emily leaned back in her seat to see who else was there. Nik Kovacevic was standing by the
door at the back of the room, with his hands folded in front of him. Maggie was
sitting in the fourth row at the back, handbag on her lap. There was no sign of
Teena, Polly or Archie.

Members of the public were not supposed to have been admitted, but
the people who were here for the vigil had been allowed in. They were being
indulged. Their “grief” was their trump card, even though it was a manufactured
grief for someone they hadn’t known.

“These are the sort of people,” whispered Dr.
Muriel, a little too loudly, “for whom TV talent shows and celebrity Twitter
feeds have more meaning than events in their own lives. They have forgotten how
to live for themselves. They have forgotten how to interact with others.”

Emily agreed. There were several middle-aged people in the audience
who reminded her of women she had met in temp jobs over the years, of whom colleagues
had whispered without irony or censure, “She’s never been the same since Diana
died.” In Emily’s experience, people like this overlooked the small sputtering
victories and disappointments that weaved in and out of their daily lives,
which were apparently meaningless to them. Though they were ordinary
themselves, they rejected anything around them that was ordinary. There had to
be a divorce, a death, a rags-to-riches story with a narrative arc, to deserve
their attention and empathy. If it hadn’t been written by a storyliner
on a soap opera or a reality TV show, they didn’t understand its relevance to
their lives.

She whispered to Dr. Muriel, “I think
they’re expecting to listen to Morgana’s speech and make simple choices—yes/no;
good/bad; naughty/nice; winner/loser; forgiven/condemned.”

“Ah! Like a live studio audience for the press conference?”

“Shush!” someone said from the front row.

Morgana began, “I would like to welcome you to the Coram Hotel on
behalf of the Romance Writers of Great Britain. I should begin by explaining to
newcomers and members of the press that we are in no way affiliated to the
Romance Authors of America, the Romance Writers of the United Kingdom, the
Romance Novelists’ Association…”

Emily looked around, trying to identify the members of the press
among the audience. There were two people with notebooks open on their laps.
One was Trevor, who looked over at Zena every now and
then, leading Emily to deduce correctly that he was
her contact from the
Ham & High
.
The other was a middle-aged white man wearing heavy-rimmed glasses with thick
lenses. Neither man wrote anything down as Morgana droned on about the RWGB and
the purpose of the annual conference: “For a few wonderful days, we bring
romance writers together from all over the country to celebrate our art, our
passion: writing. For a few days, we are not alone at our computers: we can
laugh and share with one another the joy we get from
writing stories that make the heart sing.”

Dr.
Muriel nudged Emily and whispered, “Those people from the blogathon
room? What would you call them?”

“Vigilants?” suggested
Emily.

“Looking at the expressions on their faces, the vigilants seem to have certain strong feelings:
Winnie
did not deserve to die
, and
You
are the bad people who brought her here
.”

“So long as Morgana keeps her speech simple and easy
to follow, some of them might change their minds.”

But Emily was worried for Morgana. She was going to
try and charm everyone. She would use rhetorical devices to appeal for
sympathy. She would be subtle and low-key. She would be self-deprecating and
apologetic. Any confession of guilt would be taken at face value, as a
confession of guilt rather than a polite shouldering of the burden of
responsibility as host of this conference. Emily watched a lot of television,
and she enjoyed reality programs. She knew that Morgana needed to break down
and cry—a really wailing, mucusy cry would be best—and allow herself to be built up again by the intervention of a third party if she
wanted the sympathy of the bystanders in the audience. Morgana might be able to
appeal to the members of the press with her fancy speech but, so far as Emily
could see, there were only two of them, and Trevor would be looking for a local
story, and the other chap…he might not even be a member of the press. He could
be sitting there waiting for inspiration to write a haiku in his notebook for
all Emily knew.

Morgana said, “I’d like to read an excerpt from a piece of Winnie’s writing that will give an insight into what a
special woman she was.” Everyone looked disappointed. Not knowing that they’d
have preferred it if she’d tossed aside the paper she was reading from and
started to cry, Morgana looked perplexed but carried on. This was about Winnie, right? This was a tribute?

Emily knew Morgana wanted to say the right thing. She still hadn’t
understood that it wasn’t about Winnie. She was on
trial. Nobody cared
what
she said, they cared
how
she said it. Dignity and composure shown by a woman in the aftermath of a
tragedy was usually interpreted as a sign of guilt. If they had been furnished
with a piece of apparatus with voting buttons, Emily thought that several of
the vigilants would have pressed the guilty button by
now.

“Dear Winnie was a member of our family…”
This was better. The vigilants perked up. Families
were dysfunctional and prone to shouting. They harbored
secrets. Or they did on TV, anyway. This might not be too dull, after all.

The heavy wooden door at the back of the room opened
and closed with a bang. Morgana paled, as if she had seen a ghost. Emily turned
to see whether Nik Kovacevic
would try to bar the newcomer’s way. But he was no longer at the door. Perhaps
he’d decided he had better things to do than listen to platitudes.

At first Emily couldn’t place the man who came in,
though she felt she recognized him from somewhere. He had a brick-shaped face,
short, graying hair, and a neat mustache.
And he had the shocked look of a man who has just encountered a moderately
dangerous wild animal, though the most dangerous wild animal in Britain was a
badger, and there were precious few of them in Bloomsbury.

Then Emily realized where she knew the man from: she
had seen his photo on Winnie’s tribute page. Though Winnie herself, like many women, was thinner in some
photos, plumper in others, and had experimented with a variety of hairstyles,
Des Kraster looked almost exactly the same in real
life as he did in his wedding photo, though his hair was now slightly grayer.

Emily looked at Morgana and saw that she recognized
him, too. As Des found a seat in the fourth row, blinking and breathing
unevenly, Emily saw that the poor man was trying not to cry. This had the
effect of making her eyes fill up with tears. Looking around, she could see
that others were similarly affected. Tears are even more infectious than yawns
or smiles when a man is trying not to cry in a room full of women.

Standing behind the table at the front of the room, Morgana
made her hand into a fist and brought it in front of her mouth, but she was
unable to stifle the mewling sound that came from it. Her nose ran, and tears
ran from her eyes.

The strangers in the room saw it, and they forgave
her.

Des looked around at the rather lovely
meeting room and wondered about the people who had gathered—so he understood—to say something about his wife’s death. It was weird to think of all these
famous novelists sitting here ready to speak up for Winnie
(Des had no reason to think that the audience comprised anyone else, and had
been somewhat misled about the purpose of the press conference by the Reception
staff at the hotel, in good faith, since they had little enough idea why it had
been arranged themselves).

Des wouldn’t have been able to say with any
truthfulness that he had dreamed of visiting London with Winnie—he’d rather have gone to Las Vegas any day of the week. And it was no man’s
dream to travel anywhere at short notice to make arrangements to repatriate his
wife’s body. But Des had been touched to learn, as he checked in to the hotel
around half an hour ago, that the room he would be staying in had been paid for
by the committee of RWGB. He felt kindly toward this classy-sounding lady in
her pink furry outfit standing at the front of the Captain Thomas Coram room
with snot dripping out of her nose, not realizing that he was simply
benefitting from the Coram Hotel’s rather draconian cancellation policy, having
been shown to the bedroom that had been reserved for Winnie’s
stay.

Des was exhausted. He noticed the weepy eyes of some
of the audience members turned toward him and guessed they recognized him from
the wedding photograph on the tribute site, which he had seen. He shrank from
the attention. He had no way of knowing that the glamour these people
associated with the recently bereaved made it impossible for them to resist
staring at him. He hoped that something might happen to get them all to look
elsewhere. He got his wish.

It happened like this. First of all, from somewhere
outside, there was a prolonged squawking sort of a sound. No one noticed it
above the honking of traffic until it drew nearer and got louder: the thick
brick walls of the hotel had been built to keep the outside out. But then the
windows briefly darkened as a flying object passed by on its downward
trajectory. Screams and shouts of horror came from three smokers standing by
the railings outside the Captain Thomas Coram room. Passersby
stopped in the street to look. The members of the audience at the press
conference stood and made for the door or the window. Pandemonium ensued.

There are some people who run from
trouble and some who run toward it. Though it wasn’t yet clear what had
happened, many people instinctively tried to run from the room, to get away
from danger as quickly as possible. They feared some kind of terrorist attack.
Then someone near the window shouted “Teena! It’s Teena!” and people started to gather there to look. There
was no way to get to the window to see for herself, so
Emily realized she had to get outside and see what was going on.

It seemed melodramatic to run—whatever had happened, had happened,
and running outside wasn’t going to help. But Emily wanted to get there
quickly. She couldn’t walk at a normal pace. So she scuttled. She bustled. As
she walked down the steps that led up to the hotel, and saw the street outside
that she had left only that morning, it seemed as if a year must have passed. The
light had altered because it was now evening, and the rain had stopped, so the
quality of the air was lighter and fresher, and it seemed a different place.
The most different thing about it, though, was that there was a woman’s body
impaled on the spikes of the ornate black railings outside the hotel. The woman
was dead. The woman was Teena.

Det. Rory James was there. An ambulance arrived, siren squealing,
and parked up next to the hotel with blue lights flashing. The paramedics went
to work on Teena, still lying face-up on the
railings. Two uniformed policemen drew up in a squad car and immediately set
about trying to keep onlookers away.

Emily tried to get close to Det. James. “Polly!” she said. “Is Polly
all right? Where’s Polly?”

He said, “I need you to leave now. If you recognize anyone here,
take them with you.”

“What happened to Teena? Did she fall?”

“Emily, I can’t tell you anything. You need to clear the area.”

“She thought Winnie fell from the roof
terrace. She went up to see.”

“Ms. Durani
shouldn’t have been up there. I’ll need to talk to you later. We don’t want any
more accidents. You see what happens when members of the public take it upon
themselves to get involved in police investigations?”

There was no sign of Polly. Emily went back inside the hotel and dialed Polly’s mobile phone, but it went straight to voice
mail. She went to the elevator and stood there waiting, feeling slightly
panicky. What if something had happened to Polly?

Emily thought to herself (as she sometimes thought in moments of
stress),
What
would Jessie do?
Jessie was her golden
retriever who had died of old age a few months before. The answer, of course,
was that if Jessie were alive she would go and sniff round by the bins in the
hope of finding a bit of leftover sausage to eat. Emily had no intention of
doing that. Still, thinking about Jessie calmed her. The elevator was taking
forever! She had to do something. She had to go somewhere. She went to the
bins.

The stinky courtyard was so repellent to her, and yet
now so familiar, that Emily was like a newly married princess in a cautionary
fairy tale—the hoity-toity kind of princess who returns one day to her humble
childhood home and gets her comeuppance after complaining about the smell in
the pigsty. She would have found it funny to think of her visit to the bins as
her “homecoming” if she wasn’t agitated and slightly in shock. Two deaths and an attempted poisoning—what next? She had a
horrible image of Polly and Teena tussling, of the
two of them falling, one in one direction, one in the
other. She hardly dared imagine what she might find here. Would M. Loman and Henri the porter be heaving Polly’s body, in a
black plastic sack, out of a yellow or red bin and putting it over the wall?

But no, there she was, alive and well, holding the
long stub of a menthol cigarette and looking reasonably cheerful, which
suggested she had no idea what had happened. “I know, I know! I shouldn’t be
smoking. Don’t judge me. I’ve been waiting here for ages for Teena.”

“Teena…” said Emily. She
cleared her throat unnecessarily. “Teena…”

“She’s gone up to the roof in one of those slow, old
elevators.”

“And she’s come down again, a great deal faster.”

“Emily?” Polly could see there was something wrong;
that Emily was being a bit peculiar. “Are you OK?”

“Teena’s dead!”

Polly looked up toward the roof terrace as if she
doubted Emily’s word, and expected to be able to point out Teena
to her. Emily looked as well. They saw a uniformed police officer come to the
fence and look down.

“But how?” said Polly. “What on earth—someone’s gone
up there? They attacked her? Or…no, you said she’d come back down again.”

“She fell. She fell onto the railings at the front. I
saw her. It was horrible.”

“Ugh, you look as though you’re going to faint. Let’s
go inside.” Polly put the stub of her cigarette carefully into her handbag. “I
can’t believe…God, it’s terrible. Teena was with me
just a little while ago, right as rain.”

Emily thought, maybe it wasn’t Teena!
Maybe there had been a mistake and everything was OK? And then she knew she was
being irrational, and she was in shock. She had seen Teena’s
dead body right there in front of her, only five minutes ago.

“What about the press conference?” asked Polly as they
reached the bar. Morgana, Dr.
Muriel, Cerys and Zena were
already in there, drinking white wine as if it was going out of fashion. Archie
was at the mirrored bar, watching himself trying to order a cranberry juice.

“What?” said Emily.

“The press conference. Did they have to call it off?”

“Everyone pretty much lost interest when Teena’s body sailed past the window and impaled on the
railings outside. I don’t think we’ll be getting a write-up in the
Ham & High
.”

“Darlings,” Morgana called. “Come and have some wine.
Were you up there with her, Polly? Did you see what happened?”

“She went up to the roof terrace. I went to the loo,
had a bit of a tidy-up.” Polly had indeed scrubbed the purple and pink off her
face and lips. “Then I was supposed to wait for her by the bins—you know that
courtyard near the kitchen? She had this theory that Winnie’s
body had landed there, and it had been moved. She was going to call down, I was supposed to look up. It was all nonsense,
really, or so I supposed. I mean, no one knows what happened to Winnie except the person who killed her.” Polly paused
then. The other members of the committee were nodding, taking it all in. “I
couldn’t understand why Teena was suddenly the expert
investigator. It’s my fault, isn’t it? For getting her to try
and imagine some event in her life and see it from another side. I
didn’t think she’d choose to write about Winnie’s
death. Anyway, I went outside. I kept looking up, I didn’t see her. And then
Emily came and found me.”

“It’s a blessed relief you didn’t see her fall, love,”
said Cerys.

“I must have just missed it. It took rather a long
time to scrub that lot off my face.”

“I think a vision like that would stay with me for the
rest of my life. Haunt my nightmares.” Cerys shook
her head sadly.

“Aye, it would.” Archie had a blurry look in his eyes,
as if he couldn’t shake off his nightmares even when he was awake…

“Babes.” Zena’s imagination
had taken flight, she could feel it fluttering in her
head. “You’re not saying Teena killed Winnie?”

“No, why would she do that?”

“What if she pushed her off, yeah, and then she was
going to lure you up there and push you off?”

“Darling, you have such a wonderful imagination. It’s
what makes you such a fine novelist. But Teena didn’t
strike me as flamboyant enough to commit murder. Or strong
enough.” Morgana glugged her wine. “And anyway
why would anyone want to kill Polly? That’s just absurd.”

Zena
looked as if she could think why someone might want to kill Polly, but Cerys spoke first. “So they both fell? Nasty
accidents, then, if you ask me. Least it’s over now. I’ll be glad to get
back to Wales, mind. I’ve had enough of this now.”

“I wonder if we should cancel the conference. For
decency’s sake, we should. But we’ll never be able to get hold of tonight’s
dinner guests in time. Half of them will be on their way here in a cab by now.
Not together. Separate cabs. Oh! I’m squiffy. No more
wine for me. If you see me drink another drop, shoot me.”

“Ah.” Dr. Muriel looked
around at the group. “An interesting conundrum. If
Morgana asks to be shot, is it OK to shoot her?”

“I don’t think so,” said Emily, alarmed.

“At least we know your wretched One Star Club has
nothing to do with it.” Morgana signaled to the
barman for another bottle of wine.

Zena’s imagination was still flying free. “Jumping from a roof for no
reason is exactly what members of secret societies do.”

“I don’t think Muriel was suggesting it was that kind
of secret society. More like a malign version of a shopping reward club or a
professional association.” Morgana dug in her purse and scattered several
credit-card-size pieces of plastic on the table in front of her, testifying to
her non-malign membership of the Society of Authors, the Writers’ Guild of
Great Britain, the Romance Writers of Great Britain,
Sainsbury’s Nectar Rewards, Tesco’s Clubcard and the
Automobile Association Breakdown service. “I mean none of these, you see,
require anyone to jump off the roof after sign-up.” She hiccuped.

“I think you should cancel,” said Archie.

Morgana stared at him, aghast, before realizing he
wasn’t talking about canceling all her cards, he was
talking about the conference. She was still slightly aghast, but much less
confused. “You may be right. Poor Des Kraster.
Poor Winnie. Poor Teena. I’m not sure what to
do.”

“I agree it’s bordering on disrespect, M, but it’s
even more disrespectful to invite people here tonight, and then when they turn
up, you send them away hungry again. I’m not saying that if we throw food at
the problem, it’ll go away—Lord knows I’ve tried it myself often enough over
the years.” Cerys patted her thighs. “I’m testament
to the fact it doesn’t work. But we can all get together and commemorate, see?”

Morgana had gathered up her cards and was having
difficulty trying to fit them back in her wallet. She closed one eye, which
seemed to make things a bit easier. “What would the Romance Writers of the UK
do? Or the LGBT Romance Writers? I don’t want our
members making the comparison and finding us callous.”

“Their events are far too popular to be able to cancel
at short notice, love—too many people coming in from all over the country.”

“All over the world,” said Zena.
“Didn’t the RWUK have Nelson Mandela for their centenary?”

“Last summer party the LGBT lot had was onboard a ship by Tower Bridge. Dame Judi Dench, boombangaboom cocktails, goodie bags from Asprey’s, fireworks. No expense spared.”

“Cerys!” Morgana was flushed, though it might have been the wine. “You
didn’t go?”

“Had to. Invited by a school friend. Would have
seemed rude not to. Mind, it’s windy up on deck. Had my picture taken perched on a cannon between Daniel Craig and Sir Ian McKellen. That was a three cans of
hairspray event, and no mistake.” Cerys patted her
helmet of hair at the back and trembled slightly at the memory, though whether
it was at the horror of her hairdo being blown out of place, or the thrill of
being wedged between those two actors, she didn’t say.

“Ach, who cares about them? We could join their
organizations if we wanted to, but we don’t want to. It’s what’s happened here,
to us, to our people, that’s disturbing. We can’t just
serve canapés and drink white wine,” (Archie himself wasn’t drinking it) “and
pretend it never occurred.”

Dr.
Muriel tapped her cane on the ground, very gently, to get everyone’s attention.
“I could tackle the subject tomorrow, as part of my ethics in literature talk.
That way, everyone gets to air their opinions, without anyone feeling the
decision has been taken lightly, with no respect for the dead. You’ll have a
chance to explain why you haven’t canceled.”

“Muriel, you are so considerate. Will we start with
your session, then? I’d planned to begin with Zena’s
talk on racial characterizations in literature.”

“Sounds interesting, Zena.”

“Yeah, I’m pleading the case for a more varied description of black
skin on the page. Gotta be possible to go beyond using confectionery as a comparison.
‘Chocolate this’ and ‘caramel that.’ Yeah, OK! I’m with you! But that’s not all
there is.”

“It’s a marvelous topic,” Morgana agreed.
“Do you mind if we move it after the break?”

“I don’t mind, babes. If we’re not talking confectionery, Muriel, then
it’s wood: ebony, mahogany, teak—”

“I’ll put you on at eleven, then. And, Muriel, yours’ll
be on first thing. I must make a fuss of poor Maggie, tomorrow. We’ve invited
her all the way here, and she’ll have expected to be feted, and we’ve ignored
her. She’s such a sweet, quiet little thing with that slightly down-beaten
look, as though life’s been nibbling away at her, the way she nibbles away at
those fingernails. Where is she? Any idea, Emily?”

“I’m not sure. Everyone scattered when they realized Teena had died.”

“Perhaps we ought not to lose sight of her.”

“Well,” Emily admitted, “I don’t think she’d be stupid
enough to go up to the roof terrace, but they do say bad news comes in threes.”

“Oh, I doubt she’s in danger. I just mean, given all
that’s happened, I hope she’s not blogging it.”

Polly twisted in her seat and looked around the bar.
“I thought I saw her in here just now…There she is! In the
corner, look—with Winnie’s husband.”

Morgana stood and waved for them to join her. After a
brief whispered conversation, Maggie picked up her handbag and walked over. Des
nodded politely to the committee, and left the bar.