A Little Class on Murder (8 page)

No surprises there.

The door burst open and a young woman with a dark frown and two improbably long, black braids stamped inside. Oh God. Yes, that was an Elton John T-shirt. Maybe she had a whole closet of them. Her arrival would have been a downer, Annie recalling her outburst about mysteries, but her inclusion in the class faded to insignificance as Annie contemplated three particular students. Never had she envisioned spending a morning discussing the mystery with Laurel, Henny, Miss Dora, and assorted strangers.

She was committed.

She would pretend the front row wasn’t there.

Fixing her eyes resolutely on the boy with the faintly pink hair in the back row, Annie cleared her throat. “Good morning. I’m Annie Laurance Darling. I’m not a teacher by trade. I’m a bookseller and a collector. I specialize in mysteries. In this class, we are going to be discussing The Three
Grande
Dames
of the Mystery.” At her unwavering regard, Pink Hair’s ears began to pinken, too.

The black cane thumped imperiously against the floor.

Annie reluctantly looked down. “Miss Dora?”

“Who?”

“Now, I’m sure that Annie, in her very thoughtful way, has prepared this morning’s presentation,” Laurel began melodiously.

“Ladies, ladies, thank you,” Annie said swiftly. “We shall study Mary Roberts Rinehart, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy Sayers.”

“L,” Miss Dora rumbled.

It was hard to shock Laurel, but her gasp was clearly audible. “Hell? I must say, I
am
surprised at such an unwarranted response, when poor, dear Annie is doing her very
best
to offer writers appealing to almost all readers.”

“L! L! L!” Miss Dora screeched. “Dorothy
L
. Sayers. Drove her mad if you left out the initial. Dorothy Leigh Sayers, after her mother’s family. Broke a contract once with the BBC because they left the L out of her name. L. L. L,” she repeated venomously.

Gesturing vigorously with an apple, Henny demanded, “Good show, but what about P. D. James? Ruth Rendell? Mary Higgins Clark? Elizabeth Peters? Phoebe Atwood Taylor? Charlotte MacLeod? Dorothy Salisbury Davis? Mignon G. Eberhart? Phyllis Whitney? Daphne du Maurier? Christianna Brand? Josephine Tey? Patricia Highsmith? Mary Stewart? Victoria Holt? Helen MacInnes? Margaret Millar? Mabel Seeley? Dorothy B. Hughes? Amanda Cross?”

Miss Dora got into the spirit of Henny’s inquiry, punctuating each name with a vigorous thump of her cane.

The boy with the pink hair silently rose and, back to the wall, began to sidle toward the closed door.

“Of the Golden Age,” Annie bellowed valiantly. She gripped the lectern. “These three great women mystery writers each contributed substantially to the mystery, and it is upon their foundation that many subsequent great writers have built. But it is they who led the way.”

“Footprints in the sands of time,” Laurel cooed, approvingly.

“Before I pass out the reading list,” Annie said hastily, “and a roll sheet for everyone to sign, I would like to give a brief sketch of the lives and work of our three great—”

The hall door swung in again. Annie flicked a sidelong glance and recognized the square-faced, snub-nosed, wiry new editor of
The Crier
. He ducked his head apologetically, and turned toward the back of the room.

Annie spoke a little louder. “Mary Ella Roberts Rinehart was born August twelfth, 1876 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in very modest circumstances. Her father, Tom, was a dreamer and an inventor. Her mother, Cornelia, was an intensely practical woman. Rinehart was destined to become the highest paid author in America.”

The editor dropped into an aisle seat midway toward the back.

“Dorothy Leigh Sayers, the only child of a Church of England minister and his wife, was born July thirteenth, 1893 in Oxford, an appropriate beginning for a woman with a brilliant mind and a scholar’s quest for truth. When she focused that intelligence upon the detective novel, she created an immortal sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, and enhanced the status of the crime book to that of the novel of manners.

“The greatest detective story writer of all time, Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller Christie, was born September fifteenth, 1890 in Torquay, the daughter of an American father of inherited wealth and an English mother. Although all three authors continue to sell very well today, Christie is the reigning queen of the mystery. No one has ever surpassed Christie in brilliance of plotting.”

Lordy, how she loved to talk about Agatha Christie. Annie smiled impartially at all the class, forgetting her determination to ignore the first row. Henny smiled back, Miss Dora elevated a sardonic eyebrow, Laurel radiated quiet pride.

The hall door burst open.

Annie knew the ropes. Like a minister with a wailing child in the congregation or an actor with a restless audience, she
ignored the interruption. As a drama instructor had once admonished, “
Project, project, project!
” She raised her voice and continued, “These three women profoundly affected the course of the mystery novel, marking the genre forever afterward with the stamp of their own individual genius. The course of true love marred by murder, an intellectual content that amazed, plotting so brilliant—”

“I’m sorry.”

Annie paused.

Georgia Finney, her face even paler than before, hesitated just inside the classroom and looked at Annie imploringly. The red-haired photographer carried a rolled-up newspaper in one hand. “Please forgive me for interrupting.” Her voice quivered.

“What’s wrong?” Annie’s query was instinctive, a response to genuine distress.

The girl swallowed convulsively and her sea green eyes swung from Annie to the student newspaper editor. “Brad, I got your class schedule. I have to talk to you. Now.”

Kelly frowned. “I’ll be at
The Crier
this afternoon, just as usual. How about three o’clock? That’s a pretty good time, before everything gets hairy with our deadline.”

Georgia thrust the rolled-up newspaper toward him. “It says there are going to be more articles. Brad, you’ve got to stop it! Please come out in the hall. We’ve got to talk.”

Kelly’s square face looked suddenly implacable. He stared at her solemnly. “It’s the duty of a newspaper to report the truth.”

“Brad,” her voice was low and stricken, “these are people you know. Brad, you’re hurting people. Please.”

“No,” he said shortly, and Annie remembered how he’d faced down the giant with the synthesizer music. “These are people who are being paid with tax dollars. The public has a right to know who they are and what they do. I’m just doing my job.”

“Are you?” Anger flushed Georgia’s cheeks. “Your job? Or Mr. Burke’s? Is he behind this?”

“My source is confidential,” Kelly retorted quickly.

Annie had had enough. Whatever quarrel these young people had, it wasn’t her quarrel. And this was her classroom. “Wait a minute,” she said sharply. “Mr. Kelly, you may go out in the hall for this discussion. If you please.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “I don’t please.”

Georgia’s face hardened. “You’re going to regret this, Brad.” In a swift and violent gesture, she ripped the newspaper in two and flung the pieces on the floor, then turned and plunged out into the hall.

The students, including Laurel, Miss Dora, and Henny, followed her exit with fascinated eyes.

Annie took a deep breath. “Mary Roberts Rinehart grew up on Archer Street and this street would figure—”

Max tried to look supportive, indignant, and apologetic without assuming any faint hint of responsibility. “Sweetheart, of course I didn’t know she was coming!” Guessing and knowing were not, of course, synonymous. “This comes as a great shock to me.”

Annie paced in front of his desk. She was obviously steamed, but the angry sparkle gave her gray eyes an unforgettable vividness and her tousled blond hair (she’d probably paced on the ferry all the way across the sound) reminded him of rumpled sheets in the morning sunlight. Not that there was anything remotely loving in the glares she was emitting right this moment. Her glances were right on a par with Bertha Cool scanning Donald Lam: suspicious, testy, and decidedly grouchy. Fortunately, the similarity ended there. Annie was still his sexy, sweet (sometimes) wife, though afternoon delight might be temporarily on hold if he couldn’t convince her of his noncomplicity in Laurel’s unheralded arrival.

Annie stopped, braced her hands palms down on his desk, and stared at him accusingly. “Laurel said you suggested behind-the-scenes support! So what does that mean? You told her about the class? You
told
her?”

“Annie, love, I was so excited at the prospect, so pleased for you. I know how much you enjoy digging out all those fascinating facts about mysteries. The ones you told me about, like
Mary Roberts Rinehart basing
The After House
on the famous ax murders that occurred in the 1890s on that lumber schooner, the
Herbert Fuller
, and how her book reopened the case and resulted in freedom for the mate who’d been convicted. And Agatha Christie patterning Louise Leidner in
Murder in Mesopotamia
after Sir Leonard Woolley’s imperious wife, Katharine. And all the fun Dorothy Sayers—”

“L,” Annie interrupted automatically. “Dorothy L. Sayers.”

“—had when writing
Murder Must Advertise
, using her background as a copywriter at the London advertising agency of S. H. Benson’s.” He paused. Annie was nodding contentedly. “Certainly, I had the best of intentions.”

That wasn’t the politic remark to make.

“Good intentions!” she fumed. She resumed her pacing. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

He received this original pronouncement in respectful silence.

Annie shoved a hand through her sandy hair. “I can’t believe this has happened to me. My class—just a nice little class on murder, and now look what’s happened!”

Max began to feel a trifle combative. After all, Laurel was a good sort. He banished to a deep recess of his mind the outcome when Laurel had engaged in activities close to the hearts of his brothers-in-law. “Well, now, Annie, really, don’t you think you’re overreacting? I know Mother can be a bit overwhelming, but she really does mean well.”

“It isn’t just Laurel. I could cope with one. But not three!”

“Three?”

“Oh Max, it isn’t just your mother. Henny’s in my class, too. And Miss Dora. You remember her. She has that old house and she runs that town and everybody’s scared to death of her. She’s in there, too. And every time I really get started, one of them interrupts. Laurel coos something about love and Miss Dora thumps that damn cane, then Henny has a bright aside. Max, they’re devouring my class.”

Not just Laurel! Max was careful not to let his relief show, but this certainly put a different face on it. “Three of them,” he exclaimed happily.

Annie glared, and he promptly assumed a totally sympathetic expression. “Annie, that’s a damned shame.”

“Isn’t it just,” she said bitterly. “And if that’s not bad enough—a free spirit, an old bat, and a mystery nut—all hell’s breaking loose over the college newspaper and I might as well have recited GNP statistics for the rest of the class period. Nobody gave a damn about anything but that damn student newspaper.”

Max seized on the diversion. “What student newspaper? What happened?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. And I can tell you this, Max Darling, I’m not going to have a single thing to do with any of it!”

Annie breathed deeply of the cool November air. A light breeze stirred the Spanish moss in the live oak limbs and rustled the fronds of the sturdy palmettos. Their footsteps echoed on the wooden verandah. They had the harborside to themselves, it was so early. She squeezed Max’s hand, then darted a quick sideways glance. Max looked glum. Which was, of course, so unlike his usual pleasant, equable demeanor.

Was it cruel and unusual punishment to roust him from the comforts of the tree house and deposit him at his office door before eight o’clock in the morning?

Annie almost took pity. After all, they could be home in five minutes, and she knew what would lighten his mood. Turn him effervescent, as a matter of fact.

Then she vanquished temptation. Duty called. She had been so distraught over the unexpected composition of her class that she had thrown up her hands in despair last night and neglected to prepare.

Preparation was paramount. She was determined, at all costs, to hew to the line. Nothing was going to deflect her from the task at hand. Nothing. In such a doughty fashion would Inspector French pursue even the most tedious investigation.
(And he was as fond of food as was Annie, though, of course, this had nothing to do with her admiration for him.)

So she smiled encouragingly at her husband. “Max, work is
fun
. Look at it that way.”

“At eight o’clock in the morning?” he asked dismally.

“It’s for your own good. You haven’t been busy enough. I can tell,” she said firmly.

“Really? Does my hair turn green? Do my ears droop? What signal do you receive?”

She grinned. “It’s much more subtle. You are as languid as a sunning cat. Max, you need to be stirred up. Activated. Energized. Now, I want you to promise me you’ll take on a new challenge today.”

“Hmmph.”

They reached the front door to Confidential Commissions, Max’s agency which specialized in solving problems. He had formed it and purposefully kept its nature and function vague, because the sovereign state of South Carolina has quite rigorous requirements for the establishment of private detective agencies. So Max ran a tasteful ad in
The Island Gazette
and
The Chastain Courier:

Annie stood on tiptoe and slipped her arms around his neck.

Max immediately looked much more cheerful, and he caught her up in a vigorous embrace.

“Max! Not here. That’s too—”

Annie was trying to make her point, but somehow she lost track of it.