Docketful of Poesy (21 page)

Certainly, I didn’t believe him capable of
cold-blooded murder, and it couldn’t have been self-defense because
he was far too pragmatic to have tried to tackle the Februarys on
his own. Which didn’t explain where he was or why he’d
disappeared.

Assuming he had disappeared voluntarily. Brian
refused to entertain any other possibility, but the Februarys had
allegedly tried to kill Peter. Twice.

Twice…

Yes, surely two sets of masked gunmen were not after
Peter? So it had to be the February brothers both times. Which
didn’t say much for their success rate. But putting that aside for
a moment, since Peter had been convinced he didn’t know the
Feburarys, and they had no reason to want him dead, one obvious
possibility was that someone had hired them to eliminate Peter.

And even Peter had admitted that three other people
who might conceivably think they had a legitimate grudge were his
three former criminal associates from the fateful Istanbul job.

I could see Peter deciding to lie low for a while,
but I just couldn’t believe that he’d disappear without a word to
me. Not when he’d followed me all the way to the States. So what
did that mean?

I had no idea what it meant. And it was late, and I
was tired, and I already been through one of the worst days of my
life. One thing I did firmly believe: Peter was well able to look
after himself. So there was nothing to be gained working myself
into a state. A bigger state than I was already in.

Resolutely, I told myself I would wait to hear from
Peter, and until then I would refuse to give into nerves and dread.
I took a long, long hot shower, and crawled into the large, very
comfortable bed. I picked up my copy of
Letty Landon
and
determinedly began to read. I turned pages for some time, but my
gaze kept straying from the yellowed paper to rest unseeingly on
the cabbage-rose drapes closing out the world from my literary
cocoon. I stared at the flowers and the box of chocolates on my
dresser.

Peter loved me. I knew that. We had been through
enough over the past couple of years that I did know—believe—that
he loved me. But I was also experienced enough to know that love
doesn’t necessarily conquer all.

Letty Landon, case in point. Following the abrupt end
of her engagement to John Forster, who apparently couldn’t resist
telling his side of the scandalous story—such as it was—to everyone
who would listen, Letty, at the height of her writing powers and
popularity abruptly made the decision to marry the governor of Cape
Coast Castle in West Africa and leave behind everything and
everyone she knew, for a foreign and dangerous land. All for a man
who had likely concealed the fact that he was already unofficially
married to a local native woman—a man who might have ultimately
murdered his troublesome English bride.

Despite my research, I didn’t really feel that I’d
come to know Laetitia Landon. It was difficult getting a real
handle on her motivations from reading the Enfield and Ashton
biographies. Both writers took such an unsympathetic and
deprecating view of the poetess—both her work and her
character.

In fact, both biographers claimed Letty was
creatively burned out and personally disgraced by the time she
retreated to what was then called the “Dark Continent.” I was
surprised by my own defensive reaction to their conclusions. At
thirty-five Letty had certainly reached an age when an unmarried
woman was officially considered “on the shelf”, but despite the
rumors that surrounded her, she was still welcomed in polite and
literary society, she was still a notable celebrity, and she was
still continuing to produce commercially successful prose and
poetry.

Clearly something beyond her childhood fascination
with the place must have motivated her choice to depart for Africa,
especially since Governor George MacLean was such an
unprepossessing specimen. Did she really flee because she couldn’t
stand to be gossiped about or to bear the indignity of
spinsterhood? Surely somewhere in all of Great Britain there was a
quiet corner where she was unknown—and a man willing to marry a
still attractive and gifted woman?

Laetitia Landon remained an enigma to me—and to her
biographers, I suspected.

One again, I studied the portrait of her in
L.E.L.: A Mystery of the Thirties.
Letty smiled vaguely
across the decades.

I think I’d half hoped that my sleep would be
disturbed by a phone call from Peter, but no call came.

The next time I opened my eyes it was morning, and
wan, rainy daylight spilled through the parting of the draperies.
It was after ten o’clock in the morning, but the lateness of the
hour didn’t matter. Even if it had not been the weekend there would
be no filming today. In fact, I suspected that the production of
Dangerous to Know
might now be halted once and for all.

I dressed and went downstairs. As I walked past the
lobby heading for the dining room,

Roberta was hanging up the pay phone—the only long
distance line available to the guests of the inn.

“How’s Miles?” I asked.

She shoved her dark curls back with an impatient
hand. “
Apparently
that stupid cowboy hat saved his life.
Apparently
God looks after fools, drunks, and men with no
clothes sense!” She seemed more frazzled than relieved. “He’s got a
mild concussion. They’re keeping him for observation until this
afternoon.”

“That’s good news,” I said.

She looked at me like she didn’t understand the
words. Then she blinked. “Yes. Of course it is. It’s wonderful.”
She stared at the phone again.

“Is something wrong?” I added, “I mean, besides all
the obvious things that are wrong.”

She gave me another of those deer-in-the-headlights
looks, then she said, “I have no idea what to do. When they release
her body—Mona’s, I mean—we’ve got to get her back to the States.
Her daughter is asking when that’s going to happen. I have no
idea!”

I had no idea either, but I knew the place to start.
“I can talk to DI Drummond for you.”

She nodded. I had the feeling she wasn’t really
listening to me. I asked, “Was Mona married?”

“Divorced. She has two daughters I think.”

I waited to see if she wanted to add anything, but
she turned away and began dialing the phone again.

Making my way to the dining room, I found the mood
there as dismal as the weather on display out the wet-streaked
windows. Todd and Tracy were sharing a rasher of bacon between
them. A few members from the crew and production team sat quietly
talking and eating at other tables.

Todd waved me over. “’eard anything, luv?”

“Miles is going to be all right.”

“We already know that,” Tracy said. “You’re friends
with the police. What do they have to say about Mona?”

I said, surprising myself with my own testiness, “I
just woke up. I haven’t talked to the police this morning.
Sometimes I go entire days without talking to the police.”

She gave me a long, narrow look. Todd laughed. “All
on edge, that’s our trouble!” He pushed the plate of bacon my way.
“’ave some breakfast, luv.”

I shook my head, nauseated by the greasy pile of
meat. British bacon is more like ham or Canadian bacon. I prefer my
bacon in crisp paper-thin strips. The way God intended.

“I’ll have some tea in a minute.”

Todd said confidentially, “What everyone really wants
to know is —”

“Are we canceling the production?” finished
Tracy.

“I haven’t heard.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Roberta
said from behind me.

We all jumped guiltily, although our doubt was
reasonable enough, given the number of catastrophes.

Todd and Tracy were, of course, relieved and happy—in
an appropriately subdued fashion. I studied Roberta curiously.
“
Do
you have anything to say about it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t the investors or the board of directors at
Kismet have the final word about this string of bad luck and tragic
deaths?”

“There hasn’t been any bad luck—other than the
deaths.”

“I think Miles might disagree with your idea of bad
luck.”

“You think people don’t get mugged in
California?”

So that was the theory of choice for the attack on
Miles? That he had been mugged? In a village that hadn’t had a
mugging in five years? I didn’t particularly want to argue with
Roberta, but I simply couldn’t believe she was still intending to
proceed with the production. I said, “Just from a practical
standpoint, you’re now talking about replacing two of the original
cast members. Or were you hoping to hire Lady Vee to play herself
in the film?”

“Believe me, it won’t be difficult to find an elderly
out-of-work British actress in this country,” Roberta replied.
“We’ll just have to reshoot Mona’s scenes.”

Tracy put in flatly, “What do you care? You’re
picking up a paycheck. Your book is being filmed. I would think
you’d be glad that Kismet is committed to this project.” Her gaze
was blue and gelid.

All three of them stared at me with various degrees
of distrust.

I said, “The contents of Mona’s flask haven’t been
analyzed yet. You’re all assuming that she overdosed on—on alfalfa
sprouts or something, but what if she didn’t?”

“You think someone would kill Mona?” Roberta looked
at me with incredulity. “Did you
know
Mona? Why would anyone
want to kill her? What would the reason be?”

“Maybe someone with a grudge against the production?”
Todd offered doubtfully. The other two rounded on him in
exasperation. He shrugged. “Saw a film like that once.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that
Mona finds her missing flask in the lobby and the next time she
drinks from it she conveniently falls dead?”

“Nobody knows for sure she died from drinking what
was in the flask!” Roberta said. “The police are assuming that. She
might have had a stroke or some kind of seizure. She might have had
an allergic reaction to something at the tea party.”

Either Roberta had a gift for self-deception like no
one I’d ever met before, or I really was becoming paranoid.

Tracy was watching me with narrowed eyes. “Mona was
always losing that flask. Why should yesterday have been any
different?”

Since this was the very thing I’d brought up to the
police, I was surprised that I had apparently come up with an
answer. “Maybe that’s why someone chose to poison her that way.
Mona was the oldest member of this production. She knew everyone,
knew everyone’s history, everyone’s back-story. Maybe she knew or
had learned something about someone here.”

“What?” asked Todd.

“Who?” asked Tracy.

Now
that
I didn’t have an answer for, so I was
surprised to hear myself say, “Maybe she knew who killed
Walter.”

The silence was deafening. I had the impression that
everyone in the dining room stopped eating to stare at me. Not so
much as a clink of glass or scrape of fork on china penetrated that
hush. But of course that was my imagination. No one actually
stopped eating or talking except my three companions. The listening
stillness emanated from them. From one of them in particular, but I
couldn’t quite figure out who. In fact, I wasn’t sure a moment
later whether I had imagined that strange, quiet moment.

Roberta had gone so white, I wondered whether she was
about to faint. “What are you saying?”

I said slowly, feeling my way to the truth of it,
“It’s possible, isn’t it? Walter was killed in an unsolved
hit-and-run. Everyone assumes it was just an accident or that —” I
glanced at Roberta. “— someone else, such as Peter, was the
intended victim. But what if Walter
was
the target? What if
he was murdered?”

Tracy sighed and pushed her chair back. “I don’t know
what you’re smoking, Grace, but I hope it’s usually more fun than
this. I’m going to go get my nails done. Will someone let me know
later on if we’re canceling the production? I’ll need to let my
agent know.”

She walked away, passing Norton on his way into the
dining room. He looked ghastly as he took a seat at our table.
Pale, blue-jawed, eyes rimmed in red. He looked like the expendable
cast member hiding A Guilty Secret in a schlocky thriller.

Roberta said furiously, keeping her voice low with an
effort, “Why would anyone kill
Walter
? What would the motive
be for killing Walter?”

Todd watched us in fascination, Norton in horror.

“I don’t know. I’m saying, isn’t it a possibility?
Couldn’t one thing be connected to the other?”

“No, they couldn’t. Because there’s nothing to
connect.” Roberta also pushed back from the table. “If you’ll
excuse me, I have some phone calls to make. I’m trying to save all
of our jobs for us.”

In the wake of her departure, I turned back to Todd
and Norton. They stared back at me. After a moment, Todd said
cheerfully, “Sure you won’t have some bacon, luv?”

*****

Driving out to Craddock House an hour later I was
forced to concede that Mona had not seemed like someone who knew
another person’s potentially fatal secret. True, she seemed to know
every member of the cast’s life history, but she seemed neither
like the kind of person who made moral judgments nor went around
blabbing. Nor had she appeared to be the possessor of dangerous
knowledge. In fact, it would be harder to find anyone more relaxed
and comfortable than Mona on the last afternoon of her life.

I pulled up outside Craddock House and sat watching
while the rain ticked down on the Citroen—leaking in the poorly
sealed windows.

The shop was dark. There was no sign of anyone at
home upstairs. No lights, no smoke from the chimney. I told myself
I hadn’t expected it, that I would have been dismayed if Peter had
been there and hadn’t contacted me, but it was still somehow
daunting.