G Malliet - Death and the Lit Chick

She looked at him.

"Try calling them on your mobile," she said. "They'll have to get across the moat somehow and break in through one of the lower windows." Then, noticing his look, she said, "What?"

"Do you always plan ahead for emergencies like this?"

"It's just that I was photographing the lower windows yesterday. The stonework is fascinating. What we really need is the fire department with a ladder."

"What we really need is a portable generator. And a land line. Mobiles weren't designed for stone walls thick enough to withstand a siege," he said. "One thing's nearly certain: It was an inside job. There's no way anyone could have gotten in from outside, not without getting soaking wet and leaving tracks like a badger, at any rate."

They heard the sound of sirens wailing somewhere off in the distance, growing steadily louder as emergency vehicles peeled up the road. St. Just and Portia again walked up the stone stairs, nearly colliding with Donna Doone at the top. "Is there no way to get that generator going?" he asked her, fruitlessly punching numbers into his mobile.

She shook her head.

"Robbie says the battery's depleted or overheated or it froze at some point or something. He's got a call in for a portable replacement, but if you ask me, it's Robbie should be replaced."

"It can't be lowered manually, the bridge?"

She sighed in frustration. "Winston asked the same thing. You would think that would be an option, wouldn't you? It used to be, but the rope was damaged and never repaired."

Portia, meanwhile, walked over to one of the windows at one side of the drawbridge. An ambulance and two police cars, a panel of lights flashing across the top of each, were pulled up outside. Five policemen were on the lawn, staring helplessly across at her. Not knowing what else to do, she waved and then with her forefinger and smallest finger, mimicked someone talking on a telephone. One of the men, small and white-haired, sprinted over to his car; minutes later the phone rang at the reception desk. St. Just ran over and picked it up.

"Yes, it's murder," Portia heard him say as she approached. "Is fire on the way? Good. You'll need a ladder and some way to winch up a portable generator. Yes, I know, it's incredible they didn't realize. A fuel-generated power source would have prevented it."

So it was that half an hour later, the hotel guests, who by this point had gathered in Mrs. Elksworthy's room, as having the best view, were treated to the sight of firemen wading waist deep in moat muck over to the base of the castle, carrying overhead a ladder up which they proceeded to climb, and gaining entry through one of the lower, unused bedrooms. Two men carrying a generator in a sling followed behind; it was hoisted knapsack-style by the two men at the window. St. Just, Portia, and Donna were there to greet them.

"We'll need the guests' cooperation," said St. Just. "Everything that isn't powering that drawbridge will have to remain shut off."

Donna went to find Robbie and his maintenance crew. Some time later, to the sound of faint cheering from Mrs. Elksworthy's room, the grind and moan of the drawbridge coming down could be heard.

"DCI St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary," he said, and held out a hand to the Scottish DCI, resisting the temptation to bend at the knees to meet him on a more level playing field. Ian Moor was an elfin man who must just have passed the height requirement for acceptance onto the force. He wore a handlebar moustache that looked pasted on but undoubtedly was real-two dramatic white swoops that cupped either side of his round face. It was a face mobile and alive with an expression of happy anticipation; his eyes twinkled with evident pleasure at having a brand new case to solve.

St. Just pulled out his wallet and opened it with a reflexive snap. Moor took the leather holder from his hand and stared at his photo ID with the gimlet eye of a museum curator presented with a suspicious artifact. Then, ostensibly satisfied, he closed the wallet with deliberate care before handing it back.

"Cambridgeshire. Lovely town, Cambridge. The wife and I went there on one of those charabanc tours one summer. Boring place, really, isn't it?"

St. Just smiled. For one thing, he hadn't heard anyone use the word charabanc for twenty years.

"Sometimes. When the students aren't around, certainly it can be a quiet place."

Moor grunted. "Not Scotland Yaird, then." He gave St. Just a beatific smile. "Worse luck for us. With their help, we could have wrapped this up by teatime."

The Scottish policeman looked around at the crowd again gathering at the top of the stairs, like children spying on the grown-ups' party.

"These would be the crime writers, then?"

"Yes."

"And you, Sir. You're a writer, too-in your spare time, perhaps?"

"Not I. A happy life for me. I'm here to deliver a talk at the conference being held at the Luxor in Edinburgh. Anyway, the young woman over there"-and he indicated Portia, standing by the hall table, a ghostly apparition surrounded by candlelight-"she was among the first to find the body."

The two men, now joined by another whom St. Just took to be Moor's sergeant, walked over to Portia. The policeman introduced himself as DCI Ian Moor and his far more subdued companion as Sergeant Kittle.

Portia nodded. Kittle had a face like a ruined monastery. A perfect character for my book, she thought reflexively.

"Portia De'Ath," she said. She made as if to offer a handshake, but Moor hadn't paused for the formalities. He continued on through the door into the bottle dungeon and down the stairs, where they all-except Portia, who, at a signal from Kittle, held back-followed him to the guardrail. The three policemen stood looking at Kimberlee's body, flung like a rag doll at the bottom.

"Bloody hell," said Moor. "How are we going to get a team down there?"

He turned and looked back up the stairs at Portia.

"Who is she?" he asked her.

"Kimberlee Kalder. A writer."

"A successful one?"

"Very, in the U.S. especially, but also here."

"Jealousy?"

St. Just noticed Portia seemed to have no trouble following DCI Moor's rather telegraphic mode of questioning.

"Maybe. She earned a lot, and very quickly. She was quite young and had become a multimillionaire with her first book. The rest of the writers here, nearly all of them, have toiled for years-decades-with far less success. Kimberlee also didn't go too far out of her way to ingratiate herself with the others."

"I don't know… That's a far-fetched motive for murder," said Moor.

"I think you'll find that within the culture of this group, it's not at all far-fetched," said Portia.

"But," said St. Just, speaking more to himself than the others, "why kill her here, at the conference? Rather a public choice…"

"Maybe because something happened here," said Moor.

"The award," said Portia, who proceeded to tell him about the night's dinner.

"It was an extraordinarily tactless thing for Easterbrook to do," she concluded. "There was already some feeling that his long-time writers were being neglected, chucked out, and/or replaced. And God knows, if anyone needed the ego boost of an award-not to mention thirty thousand pounds-it wasn't Kimberlee."

"Ms. De'Ath noticed something that's undoubtedly important," St. Just told Moor. "There is no means of producing light-no candlestick or lighter-on or about the victim's body. At least, so far as we can tell without moving the body. Kimberlee either came down here before the lights went out-"

"Or she came down here with someone who had a light," Moor finished for him.

"There's no handbag, either," said St. Just. "She had one at the dinner. Some small, sparkly thing like women carry in the evening."