Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

Monique nodded. “But you feel her death resulted from a kind of negligence?”

“BattleSpear negligence! That’s a good word! I went to the station and asked for someone in charge. I wanted to explain that they’d harassed her till she flipped and gave up and muddled her pills. Harassment’s a crime isn’t it? All I got was some sergeant who’d tried to turn his memoirs into a novel, and he said that if they locked up all the rude, grasping, shortchanging publishers in London, they’d have no cells left for other kinds of crime. But I managed to get the inquest adjourned and if you can do me a profile of how they upset her frame of mind, treating an artist like a shopgirl, I might get a sensible verdict!”

I had my doubts. I glanced at Monique. She was listening with the interested, compassionate, otherwise expressionless poker face she uses for all awkward clients. I’m told I use it too. Edwin turned back to the kitchen. “What’s in here!” He opened the washing machine and let out an incredibly vile smell of old urine.

“That’s terrible! ” I said, hastily adding: “What is in there?” before he could back away and make me investigate myself.

He held his nose and looked inside. “Just her jeans and panties. She must have had a fit and forgotten it was bust. The fits affected her memory, you see. That must be why the place smelled bad.”

“Not entirely.” Monique said. “I think the smell we noticed earlier came from this couch.” She went into the living room and pointed at a black, leather-look settee which faced the TV.

“So she had a fit watching TV. She must have remembered to try and wash her clothes, but forgotten to clean that up. God! If only someone had been here!”

He again looked ready to rush for the toilet. To distract him, I said: “Did you say there was also a smell of joss incense? I think I’ve found out why.”

I indicated the open bedroom. It had a single bed, made, and was decorated with childish posters, mostly of fantasy adventures and carrying the BattleSpear logo. There was a large table on which a game based on such scenes had been set out with metal figures and toy scenery. I expected Edwin to complain at this invasion of his son’s room, but he refrained: presumably it was allowable for children to enjoy BattleSpear. I indicated the incense boat on the window ledge. Two joss sticks had burned right down. Edwin said: “Beats me! It’s unbelievable. Megan hated the smell of joss, ever since her accident. She never used it.”

I knew the smell of joss sometimes came as an aura before her fits. “This accident. Did it have anything to do with her epilepsy?”

“It did. Megan did a hard course, Joint honours, no bloody puns, Envo’ Sci’ and Biochemistry. She was told… Glade told her… she was heading for a First on the strength of a project. She went out to celebrate with some of her course, got slewed, went to someone’s room, rolled up and lit up. Lots of joss but not much dope, I heard. I wasn’t there, myself, that time.” He stopped abruptly, I suppose numbering the times in Megan’s life when he wasn’t there. “So they ran out of dope and Megan set out on a bike to get some more. No one knows exactly what happened. She was found by the road. When she came to, she couldn’t remember.

“Not long after that she started getting the joss… aura, they call it… and then getting fits. Totally buggered her exams. Memory was a sieve made of Swiss cheese. Oddly enough she was better on those pills. Most of the time. She’d oversleep and couldn’t get up to do a job, so she started writing seriously. Didn’t totally swear off dope, just bicycles. And joss, more to the point.”

“Did anyone but your son use this room?” I wasn’t that interested in joss sticks. I wanted to access and assess his jealousy.

“I suppose so. Not lately. She was so into researching the bloody BattleSpear game… she used to play it by e-mail, for Christ’s sake… at least she didn’t let the nerds get up here!”

Monique asked: “How about that character who was here just now? The old friend… ex-tutor?”

“Doubt it. He was even more anti-joss than she was. Spent all his time trying to keep her away from what he called hippies. Me, mostly. I suppose you’d better see where I found her.”

He went back to the living-room, then stopped abruptly. “Of course Glade felt she had to be an academic like him. Kept telling her to get a medical cert and sue the uni if they wouldn’t let her do a Ph.D. I don’t know if that’s relevant.”

I doubted it. I sensed he was stalling, not wanting to go back into that room. He went on: “Luckily, she got a break almost at once. She got a story in Interzone… top SF zine… and that led to her getting a novel contract. Pissed Doctor Glade off… we didn’t see him for ages. Anyway, he…”

Monique took charge. “Were you going to show us where you found her?”

“Yes.” He took a deep breath.

I felt desperately sorry for him. “Look, I know this isn’t easy.”

He opened the door to the last room. The curtains were open, but not the windows, which had ventilating fans set into two panes. It was dominated by a large double bed, with the covers thrown back. There was a computer, another games table, even some BattleSpear posters, though these had adult… or at least teenboy… themes, women warriors in leather or rubber armour. Most of these weren’t modelled by Morrigan, but over the bed was a large painting on glass. It showed her underwater, appearing to rise through the sea toward the sunrise… or sunset, I realized. The picture was so positioned that the light of the setting sun through the window might sometimes reach it. Morrigan’s hair was uncovered, the green ends blending with the water, the red and yellow with the sunset. It was the only picture I saw in the flat in which she appeared to be entirely naked, though it was hard to be certain, as seaweed and fish were floating strategically.

He caught the direction of my gaze. “The original cover painting from the Morrigan May special issue from Interzone. It’s by Sexton, the top fantasy artist.”

While not exactly provocative, I felt the nude image would remind anyone who entered the room that it held potential for other games than BattleSpear. I said: “I never quite understood what caused the two of you to split up.”

“Nothing!” he shouted. “Oh, odd differences over this and that, not even real quarrels. We never stopped getting on, helping each other…”

Monique said quickly: “So! It’s dramatic and ironic… you found her lying like Marilyn Monroe, dead from barbiturates.”

“Not exactly. There was no last call… I swear it! Not to me, anyway. Maybe to someone dodgy… no. No!” He blinked, then said: “But there is another odd thing. What was it… ‘ all the morning papers said, was that Marilyn, was found in the nude! ’? Well Megan used to like sleeping nude, in fact she always did in summer, unless she thought she might fit, in which case she’d wear a thick pair of panties.

“This was different. She was naked below the waist, even though she’d probably just fitted, but she had on a sweatshirt and even a bra. She never normally wore a bra to sleep.”

“OK, OK, this was an odd situation,” I said. I’d liked Megan, and nothing I’d seen in the flat suggested she was a person who would kill herself deliberately and leave her body for her son to find. I thought Edwin disliked that idea as much as I did, but he was afraid of the more logical formulation of an accident. If Megan’s faith in healing had led her to prematurely abandon her drugs, then lose track of the safe dose and overdo them, her life’s work was in vain. His continual flirting with the idea of an impossible murder told me this was a safer theory for his peace of mind. Unfortunately, publishers tend to prefer their authors alive. Once they’re famous they can die and someone will keep on writing their books, but no one would ghost-write and publish Megan’s healing theories under these circumstances. So I added with feeling: “And a tragic one! But how do you know it wasn’t just unusual? She wasn’t expecting you… do you know exactly when…”