The Christie Caper (15 page)

“It’s a matter of public policy,” Max explained. “You’d never get the truth about people’s actions in the past if every statement about a dead person was vulnerable to legal action for libel or slander.”

“It’s not right!” Annie wailed. “That means the minute you die,
anybody
can say
anything
they want to about you!”

“Truly venomous,” Laurel decreed.

“But dead ears can’t hear,” Henny pointed out.

Lady Gwendolyn slapped a plump hand against the tabletop. “There must be a solution!”

Max tapped the legal pad beside his plate. “The Christie estate might have a basis for an injunction on the grounds of trade injury if Bledsoe tried to publish a book containing unfounded assertions that might damage the commercial value of her books.”

Annie stopped pacing and looked hopeful. Laurel clapped her hands excitedly. Lady Gwendolyn leaned forward eagerly, but Henny started shaking her head.

Max shrugged ruefully. “Annie, we are not the Christie estate. Even there, a strong argument could be made that notoriety sells a hell of a lot of books, witness the sales spurt of
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
after her disappearance in 1926.”

“It isn’t right,” Annie said again, her voice shaking. And she understood so well Mary Drawer’s angry response to the murder of her aunt in
The ABC Murders.
It wasn’t
right!
Neil Bledsoe’s attack on Agatha Christie wasn’t
right.
It was akin to murder to willfully and viciously try to destroy the image of a gallant and kindly woman whose creative gifts were second to none.

Max absently munched on a carrot curl. “Annie, don’t borrow trouble. Bledsoe’s probably just raising a little hell. He hasn’t actually
done
anything yet.”

“What
can
he do?” Henny asked practically. “I think everyone’s overreacting. For God’s sake, this creep can’t hurt Agatha Christie!”

“What about tomorrow? What about his grand announcement session in the Palmetto Court?” Annie paused in front of the island mural.

Lady Gwendolyn’s cup rattled sharply against her saucer. “But his threat may be only the tip of the iceberg.” She pursed her softly rounded lips.

Everyone looked at her respectfully.

“Think,” she commanded her listeners. “Obviously today’s performance is just the beginning.”

Annie felt as if a curtain had parted. Performance. What an apt description. Hadn’t there been, throughout Bledsoe’s
attack, a sense of unreality, a feeling that his appearance was deliberately calculated to produce a certain effect?

Henny reached for an olive. “Jerk,” she said succinctly.

Laurel cleared her throat. “Not attractive. That is, not in his intentions or, certainly, in his manner. But really, not a man to dismiss lightly. Unfortunately, great”—a quick glance at Max—“uh … personal magnetism is not necessarily associated with rectitude. However, if one were to be confined to a desert island and to choose companions solely on the basis—”

Annie broke in. She understood very well indeed where Laurel was heading. But such discussion was not appropriate for everyone present. To be precise, Max would never comprehend the fact that Bledsoe, asshole that he might be, was undeniably a sexual magnet as far as most women were concerned.

“Hunk.” Lady Gwendolyn’s light voice summed it up.

Annie stared at her in astonishment, Laurel in admiring agreement, and Henny with amusement.

Max looked startled.

“But irrelevant to our present concerns,” Lady Gwendolyn continued. “The point is, we must look beyond the moment. We must be aware of the overall picture. Neil Bledsoe’s appearance at this conference has been an anomaly from the beginning. Here is a hard-boiled fan at a meeting alien to his beliefs. Why? That’s the question to be answered.”

“Buttering up his old aunt, in hopes of a legacy,” Henny suggested cynically.

A brief headshake, which sent a hairpin flying from the coronet braids, dismissed that suggestion. “Even a cursory acquaintance makes it clear that such an approach wouldn’t be in character. No,” Lady Gwendolyn mused, “it will be nothing that simple.” She tilted her head questioningly, and another hairpin hung perilously from the pale red braids. “Perhaps he plans to mount a vendetta against an enemy from his past?”

“He wants to destroy my conference,” Annie moaned.

Max drew a huge question mark on the pad. “Maybe. Maybe not. He’s having a hell of a time. That may be all there is to it.”

Lady Gwendolyn smiled at Max. “In this instance, I feel confident that the truth, when known, will be quite convoluted. There will be nothing simple here. As we’ve all observed, there are dark secrets between this man and some of the other conference attendees. There was such patent relief on their part when he attacked Christie. Each apparently feared that Bledsoe’s presence here was personally directed at them. But—keep in mind—the Christie attack may merely be a smoke screen.”

So Lady Gwendolyn, too, had seen those expressions of relief. But it was possible to be
too
clever. “We have to look at what’s right in front of our noses,” Annie insisted.

“I’m reminded of an old adage.” The author smiled gently at Annie. “A carrot for the donkey. Fools it every time.”

Annie had the distinct feeling she’d been called—very gently—a donkey. Her mouth opened, shut. Dammit, how was she supposed to compete with the cleverest living mystery writer?

Annie whirled and stalked to the open doors of the balcony. She stared down at the spouting fountains, then spoke calmly, but there was underlying steel in her voice. “There he is, sitting at his ease in the Palmetto Court with that scruffy writer ogling him like he’s a hero.”

Bledsoe clearly was in good spirits, talking animatedly, gesturing broadly with his huge hands, then lifting up a tall glass, draining it almost to the bottom, and refilling it from the pitcher. Sangria. Annie thought he looked like a vampire quaffing blood. Probably why he liked the stuff. The young writer, her oddly angled face aglow, hung on his every word. Annie fought away a surge of absolute fury. Anger wasn’t the answer. But there had to be an answer.

A waft of Evening in Paris perfume, and Lady Gwendolyn stood beside her. “One has to admit that Bledsoe’s an interesting chap. I once knew a Johnny like that. In the war. I always felt he had an ace up his sleeve.” Her mouth quirked in a half-smile at once wry and grim that sat oddly on her soft, pink lips. “He turned out to be a double agent.” She stared down at the critic. “I shot him.” Her tone was matter-of-fact.

Annie drew a breath in sharply and looked down at the small, plump author. The very matter-of-factness of Lady
Gwendolyn’s statement told volumes about this gentle but indomitable old lady.

She looked up at Annie with troubled but fearless blue eyes. “I have the same sense now as I did then. Danger lies ahead.”

Annie had looked forward to slipping into some of the afternoon panels, The Occult in Doyle, Christie, and Rinehart, The Other Wonderful Women—Sayers, Allingham, Tey, and Marsh, Mary Roberts Rinehart—a Quintessential American, and Those Lively Ladies—Taylor, Rice, and Ford. She chalked up missing them as another grievance against Bledsoe—and Lady Gwendolyn. Although, she grudgingly had to admit, the old author’s ideas were sound. “Scout the territory,” she’d ordered. “We can’t operate without intelligence.”

Annie’s assignment was simple. Find Kathryn Honeycutt. Pump her. Somehow, it came as no surprise when she spotted Bledsoe’s aunt coming out of the session on the occult.

Annie studied the woman who had accompanied Bledsoe to the conference. Kathryn Honeycutt was in her late sixties, probably, and, except for those squinting eyes behind thicklensed wire frames, almost a ringer for Miss Marple, tall, quite thin, fluffy white hair. Annie suspected that Honeycutt was well aware of the resemblance and cultivated it, wearing a gray cotton dress cut in an old-fashioned way and a fleecy white shawl. Cultivated, too, Annie decided, was an expression of brisk inquiry and lively curiosity which mixed oddly with her obviously poor eyesight. However, she looked pleasant. Though it was hard for Annie to believe anyone with any decency could be a friend of
that
man. But Honeycutt wasn’t just a friend. His aunt, someone had said. You don’t pick your relatives. Still, why was she with him? Why had she come?

Kathryn Honeycutt stood near the wall and squinted at her program.

The program Annie had worked so hard to create. The program that louse Bledsoe was trying his best to destroy.

“Pardon me. Mrs. Honeycutt?”

A welcoming smile lit the pale thin face. “Oh, Mrs. Darling,
this is such a marvelous conference! So fascinating about Mary Roberts Rinehart and the ghost in her house in Washington, D.C. A political boss! Rinehart was quite intrigued by the other side, and made some attempt to contact her husband after his death, but with no success. And I hadn’t known about those early stories of Christie’s. Even a seance in ‘The Red Signal.’ And
several
seances in Rinehart’s
The Red Lamp.
Odd coincidence on the titles—they sound similar but they had entirely different meanings. And of course, Arthur Conan Doyle devoted much of the end of his life to spiritualism. So sad.” A gentle sigh. “Trying so hard to get in touch with his son, Kingsley. Oh, that war destroyed a generation of young Englishmen.”

The more Honeycutt talked, the less she looked like Miss Marple. Annie was relieved. She couldn’t bear to think of the resident sleuth of St. Mary Mead as a companion to Neil Bledsoe.

“I’m glad you enjoyed the panel.” Annie tried to infuse warmth in her voice. After all, she’d once had a lead role here on the island in
Arsenic and Old Lace.
But her acting ability just wasn’t up to this role.

Kathryn Honeycutt’s face drooped. The happiness seeped away. “I want you to know I
am
terribly sorry that Neil is causing trouble. It makes life so difficult—Neil, you know—always causing trouble. Ignore him, my dear. That’s the only thing to do. I, for one, refuse to let my nephew ruin this wonderful week for me. I stopped apologizing for Neil years ago.” She looked at Annie earnestly, her eyes hugely blue and fuzzy behind the thick lenses. “You won’t hold the way he acts against me, will you?”

“Of course not,” Annie said gently.

“Besides, Neil’s outburst will be a moment’s sensation and
then pouf!”
Honeycutt fluttered her hands. “We all know Agatha Christie was grand. It won’t matter what someone like Neil says. No one who’s ever read a word of hers will believe anything he says or does.”

“I wish that were true, but when people throw mud, some of it always sticks.” Annie looked at her soberly. “Will you help me, Mrs. Honeycutt?”

“Call me Kathryn,” the older woman responded immediately. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take a walk with me.” Annie wanted an uninterrupted session. “Tell me about your nephew.”

They followed the boardwalk over the dunes to the beach. Their shoes sank in the soft gray sand until they reached the sleek dampened tideflat. The onshore breeze ruffled their hair, tugged at their clothes.

“Oh, this is just glorious.” Kathryn’s slender hand, the nails short and unpainted, encompassed the ocean, the beach, the softly blue sky. She twisted her head to look a little defiantly at Annie. “I’m
glad
I came, even though I knew there would be bad moments. There are always some bad moments with Neil.” She paused, pointed the toe of her shoe at a tiny sand dome, watched it collapse. “Frederick and I did our best. We tried to treat him like a son. But he was never our son. Frederick’s sister, Juliette, was his mother. She—she didn’t want him. Neil knew that. You never fool kids. He never forgave her. He wouldn’t even go last year, when she was dying.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “I’m so glad Frederick didn’t know.” She shaded her eyes, looked off toward the faraway horizon. “Frederick died five years ago.”

“Why did Neil come here? Do you know?” Annie asked.

Kathryn pushed her wire glasses up on her nose. “I’m sure he has a reason.” She reached out, grabbed Annie’s arm. “Oh, look, look! There’s a dolphin. Look at him jump! Oh, another one.”

Thirty yards offshore the steel gray mammals arched gracefully in the air, up and over and down, kicking up a spray of foam.

They watched until the dolphins were out of sight.

“Usually it’s money with Neil. I thought it probably was again. Sometimes he gets mad at me, thinks I’m extravagant. He says you can’t earn interest on money tied up in old stamps.” Her lips tightened obstinately for a moment. She stared earnestly at Annie. “The thing about it is, it’s my money, and I can spend it any way I want to. And if it’s all gone one of these days, that’s for me to worry about. But sometimes I’m lucky. Such a surprise. At bingo the other night. The jackpot was carried over from several games … I won. I decided I’d surprise Neil since he’s paying for our trip. This morning—I asked if he needed money—I felt so
sure that was it—you could have knocked me over with a feather, Neil turning down several thousand dollars! Can you believe it?”

They turned and headed back toward the hotel. “So he doesn’t need money?”

“Of course he needs money. Just as I thought, he has money problems. But he didn’t want a dime from me.” The old lady fluttered. “He gave me the funniest look—I guess he never expected me to try and help—he was just flabbergasted! He said he appreciated it, but he had a plan. He said he was going to come up with a lot of money.”

As they walked along the boardwalk, their footsteps echoed, just as the words echoed in Annie’s mind.
A lot of money … a lot of money … a lot of money …

Monday afternoons at Confidential Commissions often featured a thoughtful perusal of the balance of the Sunday
New York Times,
a period of contemplation—after all, how could one lead a reasoned life without the judicious, and unhurried, application of reason—and occasionally a relaxed game of darts. It wasn’t, certainly, that Max Darling was averse to work. At the urging of his wife, Max agreed that work was real, work was earnest, work could even—he had a little trouble here—be wonderful. As a matter of fact, Max was enormously proud of Confidential Commissions, his quite original business venture. A circumspect ad ran daily in the personals column of both the
Island Gazette
and the
Chastain Courier:
“Troubled, puzzled, curious? Whatever your problem, contact CONFIDENTIAL COMMISSIONS, 555-1321, 11 Seaview, Broward’s Rock.” Not a private detective agency, since the State of South Carolina had quite particular requirements for the licensing of such offices, requirements Max had no intention of fulfilling. Ergo, his own private counseling agency. No law against counseling. He had been employed to solve several interesting problems. Lady Gwendolyn had been quite impressed with the capabilities of his agency. Of course, he never worked on weekends. Weekends, though tailored around the exigencies of running the greatest mystery bookstore this side of Atlanta, were meant for windsurfing, love, tennis, love, boating, love, whatever,
but, most of all, love. Not that love was limited to weekends, but freedom from work surely meant freedom to play, and if there was a better game in town Max had yet to find it. After a successful weekend, he never felt in any great rush to plunge back into the workday world, so the hum of activity this Monday afternoon at Confidential Commissions seemed odd indeed.