The Christie Caper (36 page)

Annie made frantic motions at Max, but he lifted his hands to indicate helplessness—and tried not to grin.

“Are we crime experts?” Lady Gwendolyn demanded.

“Yeeees!”

“Shall we show the white flag?”

“Noooooooo!”
Some in the back rows climbed on their chairs the better to see.

Annie thought miserably about broken bones and liability insurance.

“Shall we—in the name of all that our dear Dame Agatha treasured—remain at our posts, no matter what the cost?”

A roar of commitment.

“Let us go forth in pairs.” Lady Gwendolyn spread her chubby hands wide. “Let us seek answers. Scour the vicinity,
leaving not a stone unturned. Bring your reports and clues to Meeting Room D—and tonight! Tonight revel with your fellow investigators at the Agatha Christie Masquerade Ball here in the ballroom, and tomorrow—September fifteenth, the centenary of Agatha’s birth—gather for the closing luncheon address by our wonderful guest author, Fleur Calloway.” The cheers began. Lady Gwendolyn held up her hands to gain a lessening of the roar. She lifted her voice and announced, “And the luncheon will be followed—” a dramatic pause “—by the grand finale to The Christie Caper, the announcement by myself and my co-hostess, Annie Laurance Darling, of the identity of the murderer who has now struck twice in our midst!”

The huge room resounded with shouts and clapping. Max was clapping too until Annie eyed him sternly.

Lady Gwendolyn clapped happily in time with the cheers. Ardent admirers surrounded the platform. She reached down, shaking hands, smiling nonstop.

Annie glimpsed Saulter and Posey turning away from the doorway, leaving with the crowd. Saulter followed, shaking his head in vigorous disagreement.

At last the big room emptied. Max came up to the platform and looked uneasily from Annie to Lady Gwendolyn.

Annie stood stiff and straight, hands jammed into the pockets of her coral cotton skirt. “Lady Gwendolyn—” It came out a croak.

“I believe in luck, Annie. It’s our turn, I feel it in my bones. We shall prevail.” Lady Gwendolyn’s primrose blue eyes blazed with conviction. She lifted her chin and turned to go.

“Lady Gwendolyn!”

She airily waved a plump hand, the sapphire flashing. “Be of good cheer, my dear. The faint of heart conquer not.” A swirl of gray silk, and she was gone.

An almost suppressed chuckle.

Annie whirled and glared at Henny.

Unabashed, the island’s mystery expert grinned. “Have to hand it to her, grandstander that she is. Don’t sulk, Annie, she’s saved your conference.” Henny was imposing this morning—no doubt she had a board meeting to squeeze
in at some point during the day—in a black silk noil dress accented by a pearl choker and a twisted cerise-and-cream silk belt.

Annie exploded. “Saved my conference … Henny, what if someone else is murdered?”

“Annie, my sweet, do stop trying to assume responsibility for the world. Unless you intend to shoot someone between now and noon tomorrow, your conscience should be clear.” Henny glanced at her watch. “Come on, let’s go to the terrace. I need a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee?” Annie’s voice cracked. “Is that all you’re thinking about, coffee? What about the rest of the conference? Or is that just for me to worry about? And what about noon tomorrow, when we’re supposed to magically come up with the name of the murderer? How could Lady Gwendolyn do this to
me?”

Henny slipped an arm through Annie’s. “Pairs, my dear, if they stay in pairs they’ll be all right. After all, these are the sawiest mystery readers in the world. They know the drill—no midnight forays in a tulle nightgown, no responding to a crumpled note suggesting an assignation in the back of the cemetery, no eating of chocolate creams delivered to the room by a secret admirer.”

“Dammit—”

Henny lifted her voice and continued serenely, “As for the unmasking of the murderer, Lady Gwendolyn has you figured out—my dear, you
always
work better under pressure of a deadline. Doesn’t she, Max?”

It didn’t improve Annie’s humor as they walked briskly toward the main lobby and the steps to the terrace café that the world seemed suddenly to have been Arked. Or Noahed. Or whatever one should call a populace abruptly divided into couples. Two by two. She didn’t know whether to laugh at the obedient response of the conference-goers to Lady Gwendolyn’s commands or to howl.

Howl.

“Henny, Max, my God, what’s that noise?”

“Bloodhounds,” Henny responded quickly.

Of course. No other dog in the world made quite that distinctive sound.

Her eyes alight, her fox-sharp nose quivering with excitement, Henny bolted ahead. “Come on, you two. Let’s see what’s happening.”

Which was easier said than done.

The terrace was jammed with people. Everyone seemed to be looking toward one of the walls that provided a barrier of privacy for ground-floor rooms in the wings. At the far end of the wall, Laurel sat cross-legged, quite fetching in lime-green linen slacks and a raspberry blouse. Only on Laurel would the combination have been so attractive. She looked like a summer confection, good enough to eat. She saw them and gestured energetically for them to join her.

Annie reluctantly followed Henny and Max—dammit, why did everyone always respond to Laurel as if she were a queen—while searching for the dogs. The triumphant baying apparently was coming from about the center of the wall.

It took all of Max’s tact and Henny’s determination to edge their way past the thickest clumps of watchers to the end of the wall.

Laurel cooed, “My dears,
so
interesting. To and fro, to and fro. And with such é
lan.”

Henny stood on the toes of her sleek black patent-leather pumps. “I can’t see a thing,” she groused.

Max grinned, scooped Henny up in his arms, and placed her on the wall, next to Laurel. They were a perfect foil for each other, Annie thought grumpily, elegance in sports attire and elegance in dress attire. Max turned to give Annie a hand. She ignored him, scrambling up by herself. He grinned and pulled himself up to join her. Even from this vantage point, there wasn’t much to see. Three droopy-eared, slick-coated, abysmally homely hounds continued to bay, but the object of their attention was an apparently unremarkable spot of ground at the center of the wall upon which the quartet of observers sat.

“Exactly,” Henny observed.

Annie looked at her expectantly.

Henny merely nodded importantly.

Laurel clapped her hands. “So perceptive of you, dear. Just like Miss Marple when bird-watching in St. Mary Mead.”

Annie gritted her teeth. Someday Laurel was going to go too far, and that day might be imminent. As for Henny, this was maddening. Obviously, to discover what Henny meant, Annie was going to have to ask outright, thereby revealing that she hadn’t the faintest idea what was interesting or why.

Annie’s eyes slitted.

It could be a bluff.

If Annie asked and Henny had truly deduced something from the hounds’ puzzling behavior, Annie lost face. (Shades of dear old Charlie Chan, a face-saver in the grand tradition.)

On the other hand, if Annie asked and Henny’s Holmes-like behavior was shown to be a sham, Henny lost face in a big way.

“Exactly what?” Annie inquired in a dulcet tone.

“The hounds have traced the killer’s route to that spot,” Henny announced confidently.

Laurel beamed her approval. “Oh, my dears, such excitement.” She turned to Annie. “I did hate to miss the meeting, but I felt sure Lady Gwendolyn would prevail.”

Annie fought off an attack of apoplexy. So Lady Gwendolyn’s appearance on the platform was not fortuitous. Somehow that made it worse. What gall. What arrogance. What infuriating chutzpah. And Laurel had connived in the treasonous plot!

Oblivious to Annie’s mounting displeasure, Laurel chattered on. Even more displeasing, Henny and Max hung on her every word.

“… overheard Mr. Posey ordering the dogs. I awaited their arrival and followed their progress. Circumspectly, of course.”

Oh, certainly, Annie thought. Nothing could possibly be more circumspect than an elegant blonde in a raspberry-lime combo atop a wall.

Suddenly authoritative, Laurel reported crisply, “During the early morning search by investigators, while we were restricted to our rooms, two items of especial interest were found, a pair of soft brown cotton men’s gardening gloves, which unfortunately will not yield fingerprints, and—” here she paused for effect “—a twenty-two pistol.”

“Where?” Annie demanded. So much for her resolution not to feed Laurel’s pampered ego.

Laurel pointed over the heads of the crowd toward the center of the café area. “They found the gloves and gun there. They took the dogs up to the third floor to the Bledsoe suite and let them smell the gloves. Such sweeties,” Laurel cooed, “especially the one with the mottled splotch over one eye that makes him look quite quizzical.” Her glance swept over Annie. “Rather like Annie when she’s puzzled. Dear fellows, all three.”

“The hounds smelled the gloves,” Max prompted gently.

“Oh, yes, of course.” Laurel resumed her crisp tone. “The dogs went down the hall to the stairs, down the stairs, stopped and set up a lovely howl outside the closet with the breaker switches, then trotted outside to the terrace and went there and there and there”—Laurel waved gracefully, raspberry nails glistening in the sunlight, at various points around the perimeter of the terrace—“where the firecrackers and smoke bombs went off, then stopped at the center of the wall. And that’s where they’ve stayed.”

Annie and Max stared at the blank, unrevealing wall.

Henny snapped open her gleaming black patent-leather purse, pulled out a scratch pad, and began to draw. “Let’s see, they started here …” A dark head and a blond head bent in consultation.

“I’d say the dear fellows could use some more scouting lessons,” Annie said dryly. “I mean, why stop at the wall? That’s a dead end.” She leaned forward, and Max reached out to keep her from falling. “Oh, hey, why don’t they take the dogs and go around to the other side? Maybe the murderer went over the wall there.”

As if on cue, the handler motioned for the people pressing close to step back. The dogs broke into a trot. As they passed, it seemed to Annie they were tugging their handler along. They were close enough to see their reddish brown eyes, shiny black noses, and low-hanging ears. The dogs reached the end of the wall, turned, sniffed down the inside of the wall—and did not stop at the spot opposite their initial stand.

But Annie wasn’t following their progress now. “Uh-oh,” she warned, poking Henny with her elbow.

“I see him,” Henny replied.

Brice Willard Posey, the circuit solicitor from the mainland, hustled importantly after the handler and his dogs. When the dogs passed the area opposite their sighting, Posey pompously exploded, “Those damn dogs have smelled too much dope. They didn’t even hesitate where he must have jumped down.”

The dogs had reached the other end of the wall now and were returning. They didn’t stop at any point on the inside of the wall. Reaching the first end, their handler swept them around it and once again, yelping in delight, the hounds trotted straight for their original, unremarkable, unrevealing position and bayed energetically.

Hurrying in their wake, Posey’s always red face turned yet a brighter hue. He stopped and glared at the yelping dogs. Hands on bulbous hips, watery blue eyes bulging dangerously, he berated the dogs’ keeper. “Useless. Worse than useless. They’re supposed to be able to smell something the killer’s worn and track him. Right?” The circuit solicitor poked a stubby forefinger into the chest of the handler.

An arc of brown spit from the wad of smokeless tobacco in the dog owner’s cheek curved dangerously close to Posey’s dark blue suit. The wad shifted. “Did,” came the laconic answer. The handler, whose mustache drooped in a manner of which Hercule Poirot would have stringently disapproved, pointed toward the middle of the café. “Gun. Gloves.” Then he half turned, pointed across the terrace, close to the table where Bledsoe had been sitting when the vase fell. “Smoke bomb. Firecrackers.” Turning, he pointed toward the end of the hotel wing behind the interested quartet. They craned to see better. “Breaker panels.” The finger moved again, jabbing at the wing. “Interior stairs. More smoke bombs, firecrackers. Third floor, ditto. That’s the route.” He bent and stroked his dogs. “Good going, boys.” Rising, he turned and began to stride toward the parking lot, the dogs trotting obediently beside him, with the look of choirboys who’d sung like angels.

Posey bellowed. “Wait a minute! What the hell did the guy do when he got to the wall? Sprout wings? Listen, this is a gyp. Where did he go from here?”

The handler didn’t even break stride as he flipped one at Posey.

On the wall, the four tried to smother whoops of laughter.

They didn’t quite manage.

Ponderously, Posey swung toward them. He glared for a long moment, then lumbered over to them.

Annie resisted the impulse to wish him a good day.

“Mrs. Darling.” To say his tone held little warmth was to put it very nicely indeed. Since Annie was atop the wall, looking down, Posey had lost his usual psychological advantage of height. “I understand you had an altercation with Neil Bledsoe over the book he’s going to write about Agatha Christie.”

Annie’s jaw jutted out. “You bet I did.”

“Are you interrogating my wife, Posey?” Max dropped lightly down to the ground. His tone was pleasant.

Posey was taking a deep breath, preparatory, Annie felt sure, to a grand pronouncement of the duties and obligations of the circuit solicitor for this particular circuit in the sovereign State of South Carolina, when Frank Saulter, his crumpled uniform in sharp contrast to Posey’s still crisp blue suit, hurried up. “Brice, a guest on the second floor thinks she saw the murderer last night, says he went past her balcony—”

“Did she say what size wings he had?” Posey’s thick lips split in a derisive smile. Looking up, he gestured toward the hotel facade.

Annie looked up, too.