Poison Pen
Authors: Tanya Landman
For Daniel, John and every
cherub-faced child I’ve met
who’s possessed by a
gruesome imagination…
By
7 p.m. the London offices of Fletcher, Beaumont & Grimm were almost deserted. Almost, but not quite. In a book-lined study a reader sat behind a mahogany desk, turning the pages of a freshly typed manuscript. The silence was broken only by the occasional rustling of paper and the steady ticking of a grandfather clock. Across the room a leather armchair creaked as Sebastian Vincent, the manuscript’s author, shifted nervously, waiting for the reader’s response.
At last the wait was over. Sebastian watched as the final page was replaced carefully and smoothed with a sigh of satisfaction. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? He hoped so, after the blood, sweat and tears he had put into writing it!
The reader met his eye and nodded before saying, “This is a work of rare genius, Mr Vincent. Very many congratulations.”
Sebastian gulped. “You think you’ll publish it?”
“Oh yes. I will have to present it for approval at our next editorial meeting, but that’s a mere formality. Your book is thrilling. Unputdownable, as they say. There’s no doubt in my mind that you have a prize-winner here – a bestseller.” There was a pause and the reader’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Tell me, Mr Vincent… Have you shown your book to anyone else? Any other publishers, for example? To anyone at all?”
Sebastian shook his head. It was true. He hadn’t shown it to anyone in the book world, at any rate. “I came straight to Fletcher, Beaumont & Grimm. I’d heard you were the best, you see.”
“Good. Very good.” The reader smiled and threw open the door of a well-stocked drinks cabinet. “Can I get you something?”
Sebastian looked uncomfortable. “I can’t. I’m on medication, you see.” He let out an awkward laugh. “A drink would be fatal!”
“Well, maybe an orange juice, then?”
“Thank you.”
Sebastian’s mind was dancing with glorious images: book signings with queues of adoring fans; literary festivals with eager readers hanging on his every word; TV and radio programmes with respectful critics asking for his opinion on the issues of the day. He swallowed his juice, not noticing its strangely bitter aftertaste, and then stood up to leave.
Still dreaming of a golden future, he shook the reader’s hand warmly. Sebastian smiled, and the grin didn’t leave his face as he was escorted through the maze of corridors to the front entrance. The moment the reader closed the door behind him, Sebastian pulled out his mobile and tapped in a number. He couldn’t wait to relay the good news.
“Well? What did they say?” demanded a voice at the other end of the phone. “Did they like it?”
Sebastian didn’t answer. He was suddenly doubled up with pain. He yelped. Gasped. Moaned. The phone fell from his hand.
“Sebastian? Seb? What’s happening?” The voice was shrill with panic. “Say something! Are you all right?”
Sebastian Vincent was as far from all right as it was possible for anyone to be. He writhed and convulsed, screaming – begging – for the pain to stop. And thirty seconds later it did. Thirty seconds later he was perfectly still.
Thirty seconds later Sebastian Vincent was curled on the pavement. Dead.
My
name is Poppy Fields. When my friend Graham and I volunteered to help out at the local book festival, our school librarian told us it would “really make things come alive”. She solemnly swore that meeting authors would be exciting; that their characters would “come leaping off the page”.
She didn’t mean it literally.
But on the very first morning, a fictional being really did seem to spring out of a book. Weirder still, he appeared to have Evil Intentions towards his creator. Before long, authors were getting attacked left, right and centre – and Graham and I found ourselves slap-bang in the middle of another murder investigation.
We have Book Week at school every year and it’s normally a low-key sort of affair. Mrs Woodward, the librarian, puts up a few extra posters and the English department drags in a not-very-well-known author or poet to give creative writing sessions. It’s not what you’d call mind-blowingly thrilling stuff, and I wouldn’t have put meeting real live writers on my 10 Things To Do Before I Die list. But the idea of getting involved in the book festival was irresistible: Viola Boulder made sure of that.
Viola was the organizer of the brand new Good Reads Festival. She’d persuaded a load of well-known authors (and a whole bunch of lesser-known ones) to come to our town for an action-packed weekend of events. There were going to be Seriously Earnest talks for grown-ups, but she’d planned a load of fun stuff too: storytimes for the tiddly-tots and write-your-own-horror workshops for teenagers. When Mrs Woodward announced the whole thing in assembly, she was almost quivering with excitement.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet first-class writers like Francisco Botticelli—”
She was interrupted by a small explosion of enthusiasm from the fantasy-lovers in the hall. Francisco Botticelli writes seriously long epics about dragons and trolls. You know the sort of stuff: innocent young boy must fight the forces of evil aided by a fire-breathing dragon and a few trusty gnomes. The baddie is supposed to be all-powerful but, surprise, surprise, after a few tearful death scenes with minor characters, the goodies win against overwhelming odds and everything’s fine until the next bumper volume comes along. His new one was called
Dragons and Demons
and it ran to a whopping 786 pages. Francisco Botticelli’s books are massive in every sense. Personally, I think they’re a health hazard. You wouldn’t want to read one in bed. I mean, if you fell asleep holding it, you could give yourself a nasty head injury.
Once the murmuring had died down, Mrs Woodward spoke again. “Another author I’m sure you’ll be looking forward to seeing is … Katie Bell.”
This time there was an outbreak of gasps and sighs. Katie Bell wrote pink, spangly books about LURVE. As far as I can see, they all have pretty much the same story-line: girl meets boy and they fall deeply in lurve, then girl and boy have argument and, after a lot of weeping and several boxes of tissues, girl and boy get back together for ever. Her current book was called
Stupid Cupid
and the cover had a heart with an arrow through the middle. I can’t quite see the fascination myself, but I reckon at least half the girls in school worship Katie Bell.
The librarian went on to explain that the opening event would be with Charlie Deadlock, author not only of the supremely popular football series featuring Sam the Striker, but also of
The Spy Complex,
a new novel that was hotly tipped to win prizes. Muriel Black, the author of
Wizard Wheezes
, a book about – you’ve guessed it – a mischievous group of young wizards at boarding school, would be doing an event on the Saturday. So would Basil Tamworth, who wrote pig tales like
This Boar’s Life,
involving Farmer Biggins and his herd of Gloucester Old Spots, all of which manage to miraculously avoid the usual porcine fate of being turned into sausages.
And, as if all that wasn’t enough, Mrs Woodward told us that Zenith would be there. There was a spontaneous outburst of singing and pelvic thrusting at the back of the hall. Zenith had been a rock star who’d had loads of number one hits with outrageously raunchy songs like
Do It Now
and
Do It Again
and
Do It One More Time
. She’d made the kind of pop videos that were embarrassing to watch if your gran was in the room. But then she’d adopted several children and gone weirdly spiritual: she was now a vegan who ate only pulses and drank only rainwater. She was getting pretty old. She’d had so many facelifts that her real eyebrows had disappeared into her hairline and she had to crayon on replacements. Zenith had written a book called
Princess Peony and her Perfect Pony
Petrushka.
The cover was heavily pink, with lashings of sparkles. As Mrs Woodward said Zenith’s name, she sniffed as if she didn’t approve of either the singer or the book.
Then the librarian topped everything by announcing the festival’s Grand Finale. She was bursting with pride as she said, “I’ve saved the biggest name for last. Has anyone heard of Esmerelda Desiree?”
Screams. Roars. Whooping and cheering. A deafening outbreak of applause. Esmerelda Desiree. Glamorous author of the blockbuster, gazillion-bestselling
The
Vampiress of Venezia,
which had recently been turned into a box-office-record-breaking movie. The woman was mega-famous. You’d have to have spent the last two years sitting under a stone, blindfolded and with extremely effective ear plugs,
not
to have heard of her.
Eventually, once the noise had died down enough for her to speak, Mrs Woodward revealed the reason for announcing the Good Reads Festival highlights. Viola Boulder wanted ten volunteers – student ambassadors, she called them – to help with the events.
“Anyone interested can come and put their name down at breaktime. It will be on a strictly first come, first served basis. And for those of you who aren’t able to volunteer or to attend the festival, don’t worry. I’ll make sure I obtain signed copies of the authors’ books for the school library.”
To be honest, I wasn’t an especially big fan of any of the writers she’d mentioned, but I was dead keen to meet them in the flesh. I mean, they had to be a pretty weird bunch. They must spend all day on their own dreaming up imaginary worlds – it’s not like a proper grown-up job, is it? I’m interested in human behaviour and I couldn’t help wondering if famous writers were like famous actors. I’d met a few of those and noticed that they seemed to
need
an audience: it was as if they only thought they existed if they could see themselves reflected in other people’s eyeballs. Were authors the same? Or were they shy, retiring creatures who only came out to talk in public if they were forced to? I couldn’t wait to find out.
As Graham and I went off to class at the end of assembly, I said to him, “I reckon we should volunteer.”
Graham stopped and looked at me suspiciously. “I didn’t realize you liked any of those writers.”
“I don’t. I just thought it might be fun.”
“Fun?” Graham looked unconvinced. “An ability to write doesn’t necessarily translate into an ability to perform,” he said, flashing me one of his blink-and-you-miss-it grins. “Remember the poets?”
“How could I forget?” During Book Week we’d had to sit through a reading from the local poetry circle. Poet after poet had intoned dirge-like offerings in strange sing-song voices full of Meaning and Significance. It had been bum-numbingly boring and had gone on for what seemed like for ever. “It won’t be like that,” I said confidently. “I bet they’ll all be really interesting. They’re big names, aren’t they? They’ve got to be good. We’ll go to the library at break.”
Graham and I spend a fair bit of time in the school library. It’s not that we’re book-obsessed, you understand. But in the winter – when the wind’s whistling across the playing fields and howling around the building – it’s nice and warm in there. And in the summer – when it’s baking hot and you’ve forgotten your suncream and the bigger kids are hogging all the shade – it’s nice and cool. Plus, you don’t have to put up with the football-crazed maniacs who love to accidentally-on-purpose shoot the ball at the head of anyone who strays too close to their game. According to Graham, a library is the cradle of civilization. He likes the computers and the reference section. I like staring out of the window. You get a bird’s-eye view from up there, so I can study the playground dramas and crises from a safe distance.