Poison Pen (3 page)

After sending several dark looks in Nigella’s direction, Francisco Botticelli and Katie Bell settled themselves on the sofa nearest to me and Graham and, to my delight, began to have a fantastically good gossip.

“Congratulathons on the Vellum Prize,” said Francisco. He spoke with an Italian accent and a slight lisp. “You muth be delighted.”

“Congrats to you too, sweetie,” replied Katie. “I think we’re all here this weekend, aren’t we? She seems to have invited the whole shortlist.”

Francisco lowered his voice. The sofa springs groaned as he leant forward. “Including Zenith.”

Katie Bell stifled a gasp of disgust. “I know! God alone knows why she couldn’t just stick to singing. Why do a kids’ book, for heaven’s sake? Can you believe it’s been shortlisted? I’m sure that book was ghost-written. It’s a disgrace! An insult to every author in the country. I’ll bet she can’t even write her own name. You know, when I heard she was on the list I almost told them where to shove their prize.”

“Me too. But she won’t win. And ith all stitched up in any casthe. Did you see Nigella’th review of
The Thspy Complexth
?”

“I know. It makes you sick, doesn’t it? She gave
Stupid Cupid
a right roasting.” Katie sighed. “Which hotel are you in, Francisco? Shall we meet up for a drink or something later? Charlie’s here today too, isn’t he? And Basil’s over there with Muriel. We could all go for a meal.”

“That would be magnifico. Let me sthee where I’m sthaying.”

There was a rustle of paper as they opened their welcome packs. And then the cosy mood was completely shattered.

Francisco gasped and muttered, “I don’t understhand…”

“What’s this?” said Katie. Her voice was harsh. Shocked. Upset.

I turned around in my chair. Each of them was holding a yellowed sheet of paper. Someone had cut out letters from newspaper headlines and stuck them together to create a message.

BEWARE THE DRAGON’S BREATH! screamed Francisco’s.

CUPID’S ARROW WILL STRIKE! shrieked Katie’s.

Underneath the words were grotesque cartoons of each writer. Francisco – roasted alive. Katie – an arrow through her heart.

“Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” Katie demanded from the room in general. At the sound of an author in Obvious Distress, Viola came thundering to the rescue. She was as appalled by the poison-pen letters as the two writers were.

“Where were they?” she demanded, her voice trembling with fury.

“In our packs,” they replied in unison.

All of a sudden, everyone was looking at me and Graham. Me and Graham, who had stuffed the packs. Me and Graham, who had handed them out. Me and Graham … who didn’t have a clue how the notes had got there.

Worse
was to come. Viola insisted on rifling through everyone else’s welcome packs. The first few she checked were devoid of notes, and for a second, Graham and I breathed a sigh of relief. But then she checked Basil Tamworth’s. THE BOAR WILL BE REVENGED! squealed the message in his pack, and underneath a lurid cartoon showed an over-large pig biting Basil’s head off. Muriel Black’s shrieked KILL THE WITCH! She was drawn pinned to a tree, a sharpened broomstick through her stomach.

Viola found three more messages in the packs that hadn’t yet been given out. THERE WILL BE FOUL PLAY! roared Charlie Deadlock’s.

RIDING FOR A FALL! whinnied Zenith’s.

BLOODSUCKERS DESERVE TO DIE! howled Esmerelda Desiree’s.

There were graphic illustrations of each writer lying murdered: Charlie Deadlock, squished under a giant football; Zenith, trampled by a horse; Esmerelda, drained by a vampire.

Viola fixed Graham and me with a look that might have killed if we hadn’t been so sure of our innocence.

“
We
didn’t put them in there!” I declared loudly. “Why would we do that?”

“I can assure you, Mrs Boulder, it wasn’t us!” Graham’s protestations of innocence were equally indignant.

The organizer continued to glare at us, and I think we would have been asked to leave the Good Reads Festival then and there if Sue Woodward hadn’t abandoned her refreshments and come to our rescue. The mild-mannered, cardigan-wearing librarian was astonishingly firm when she told Viola, “Poppy and Graham are both mature and responsible students. I can guarantee that they had nothing whatsoever to do with this.”

Viola scanned me and Graham from head to toe and back again with her X-ray vision before giving us the all clear. Then she nodded once, sniffed and ordered everyone back to their posts. Fortunately, the celebrity chef was having some sort of problem with his anchovies, so Viola bowled away to sort him out. Graham and I were officially off the hook. For the moment.

“How did they get in there?” I whispered to Graham. “We’ve been here the whole time! No one’s been near this table but us.”

“Maybe it was that man,” Graham said. “The one without a badge. Did you see anything?”

“Well, he did help me put them back together when I knocked the table over. I suppose there’s no one else it could be. But why?”

“No idea.”

Graham and I sat quietly for a moment, thinking. I glanced around the room. “There are loads of writers here,” I said. “Why target those ones in particular?”

“I suppose we have to ask ourselves what they have in common.”

I considered the matter. Every single author that Sue had mentioned in assembly had received one of those notes. Which could only mean… “I know! They all write kids’ books.”

“Very true,” said Graham slowly. “And there’s something else that links them all…” He paused, his eyes glinting with smugness.

I elbowed him impatiently in the ribs. “Go on, tell me.”

“They’re all on the shortlist for this year’s Vellum Prize.”

“That’s got to mean something, hasn’t it?”

“It has,” agreed Graham, nodding earnestly.

The only problem was, neither of us could work out what.

By now it was 9.45 a.m. The uncollected packs were still sitting – minus their death threats – on the table in front of us. I knew Esmerelda Desiree wasn’t due to arrive until the next day, but the rest of them would be turning up soon.

“What time is Charlie Deadlock supposed to be here?” I asked Graham.

“His event starts at eleven o’clock. According to the information Viola supplied, he ought to be here at ten. She’s asked every author to turn up at least an hour before.”

At that moment, Viola came back in and told me, “The chef’s run out of olive oil. Run and tell the ticket office to send someone out for more, pronto.”

Leaving Graham in charge of the desk, I set off along the corridors of the town hall. I delivered the message without incident, but when I started back, something odd happened.

As I turned a corner I saw a man in a football strip. For a second I thought Sam the Striker had escaped from the pages of his books, but then I got a grip and looked more closely. His kit was the same as the one Sam wore on all the book covers, and he was wearing a Sam the Striker mask.

Now, I knew for a fact that Viola had laid on Winnie the Pooh outfits for the toddlers’ storytime session, and Basil Tamworth had mentioned something about seeing Farmer Biggins. If he’d behaved differently, I might have assumed that the Sam the Striker lookalike was someone from the festival, dressed up to advertise Charlie Deadlock’s event. But there was something sneaky about him. He was moving furtively, as if he was Up To No Good, and the moment he saw me he ran. The whole episode only lasted a moment, but I found it unnerving.

I returned to the green room and sat back down next to Graham, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything. Before I could open my mouth, Charlie Deadlock himself strode through the double doors.

And then a football was kicked so savagely at the window behind us that it smashed through the glass, hit Charlie Deadlock squarely between the eyes and knocked him clean off his feet.

If
Trevor Bakewell hadn’t come back from the toilet at precisely that moment, it would have been a lot nastier. Trevor was directly behind Charlie, so instead of his head smashing against the wall, it thumped into Trevor’s chest. They both ended up, sprawling and winded, on the parquet floor.

The attack was so sudden and so startling that it was a good few minutes before any of the grown-ups thought to peer out of the window to see who’d kicked the ball, by which time he was long gone. Graham and I, on the other hand, had looked through the shattered glass pretty much instantly to see the man in the football strip running away, scarily fast, along the street. We’d both felt the force of that ball whizzing over our heads, and Graham and I stared at each other, eyebrows raised. I could see that we were thinking the same thing: whoever he was, that man was dangerous.

The writers’ green room – that haven of peace and tranquillity – was in total uproar. Viola was torn between incandescent fury and abject shame that such a thing could have happened to one of her precious authors. “It
hit
him!” she gasped incredulously. “It actually
hit
him! I can’t believe it!”

Nigella Churchill was on her feet making loud, barbed remarks about “inadequate security” and “amateurish organization”. For a second I thought the organizer might hit
her
, but instead Viola began shouting at her minions to call a doctor and bring tea and phone the police and get security. She helped Charlie up off the floor and practically carried him across to the nearest sofa, fussing over him like an outraged mother hen. Trevor Bakewell took himself off to the far corner, where he plonked himself down next to Basil and started wringing his hands uselessly and occasionally emitting a high-pitched, anxious whine. Nigella strode over on her killer heels and sat down beside Charlie, patting his hand sympathetically. Charlie himself had a nasty nosebleed but that was all. He was batting people away, slightly embarrassed about the attention.

“I’m fine,” he kept saying. “Really… As soon as this bleeding stops I’ll be fine. Please don’t worry.”

Luckily, Sue Woodward turned out to be good at first aid, so she got Charlie’s nose sorted out pretty quickly. Viola pressed a cup of hot, sweet tea into his hands. By the time he’d finished it, the author seemed more baffled than hurt.

“I suppose it was kids, was it?” he asked no one in particular. “Playing football in the street. They were a little over-zealous! That was an unlucky shot, for me at any rate.”

No one but me and Graham had seen the guy in the football strip. While we looked at each other, wondering if we should say anything, the rest of the grown-ups muttered things about “kids these days” and “lack of parental supervision” and “I blame the teachers”. They all seemed to accept Charlie’s theory without a thought.

But Viola frowned and said softly,
“There will be foul play…”
She fixed us with another of her X-ray looks and demanded, “What are you two not telling us? Spit it out.”

Slowly, reluctantly and no doubt looking extremely guilty, we described the man we’d seen.

“His back was to us,” I finished. “We didn’t see his face. Only…”

“Yes?”

“Well, when I came back from the ticket office just now, I saw someone in the corridor who looked exactly like Sam the Striker. And he was wearing the same strip as the man who ran away.”

There was a stunned silence, which was eventually broken by Charlie Deadlock giving a small laugh and saying, “I do have some very enthusiastic fans. I’m sure it was just an accident.”

“Yes,” said Viola uncertainly. “Perhaps…” She looked helpless – as if she didn’t quite know what to do next – and I could hardly blame her. It was all pretty weird.

Charlie brought her back to speed. “It’s nearly half ten,” he pointed out. “People will be starting to arrive soon. Could someone show me to my venue?”

“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Sue asked. She glanced at Viola. “Perhaps you should cancel?”

Viola paled at the suggestion. Charlie’s session had sold out. Turning people away from one of the very first events would be a public relations disaster.

When Charlie assured both women that he was fine and would go ahead, Viola nearly kissed him.

“I might just look a bit odd, that’s all,” Charlie smiled bravely. “But I don’t suppose anyone will even notice.”

I was beginning to like Charlie. He was nice and straightforward and didn’t like making a fuss, which was more than could be said for Nigella Churchill.

“I just hope they’re paying you danger money,” she said acidly as she got to her feet.

Graham and I had originally been given the task of escorting Charlie to and from his venue. He was giving his talk in a large room on the first floor, so it wasn’t exactly difficult to find. But what with the drama over the football and the nosebleed, Viola insisted on abandoning the celebrity chef to Sue Woodward’s supervision and accompanying Charlie up the stairs herself. She bowled along on one side of him and Nigella clicked along on the other, pearls swinging, bosom bouncing.

As we trailed behind, I whispered to Graham, “I’m right, aren’t I? I mean, the man in the corridor must have been the one we saw in the street…”

“I agree,” said Graham. “The likelihood of there being two Sam the Striker lookalikes in the vicinity seems very slim.”

“How much damage did he mean to do?” I wondered. “Could you kill someone with a football?”

“I’m sure that it’s theoretically possible. If Trevor hadn’t been behind Charlie he could well have banged his head hard enough to cause a mortal injury. It was an exceptional shot,” said Graham. “His aim was perfect. I wouldn’t have thought anyone but a professional footballer could have managed it.”

“A professional footballer,” I repeated. “Like Sam the Striker?”

“Sam the Striker is a fictional character,” Graham pointed out.

“I know. But it’s weird, isn’t it? Like he’s stepped out of the book… But why on earth would he want to hurt Charlie?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Graham. “The whole thing is utterly bizarre.”

I couldn’t agree more.

During Charlie’s event, Graham and I were stationed at the side of the hall in case we were needed to run errands or carry messages.