G Malliet - Death and the Lit Chick

He walked over to a small desk by the window. He imagined that daylight would reveal a spectacular view encompassing the castle grounds and forest, the swollen banks of the normally placid River Esk, and the river pasture beyond. Just then a shaft of moonlight revealed a deer emerging tentatively from a screen of trees. Something or someone must have frightened it awake. St. Just watched until it retreated safely back into the forest.

He looked down at the desktop. It held a room service tray with a bottle of wine, two unused glasses, and the leavings of assorted kibbles-cheese, biscuits, and the like. In addition, the desktop was littered with all manner of detritus: little pots of makeup, manicuring equipment, and a small, strange device of metal and rubber that Moor later identified for him as an eyelash curler ("I've got four teenage girls at home. I haven't seen the inside of the upstairs bathroom in ten years but I could spot an eyelash curler at forty paces"). Little jewelry, but what there was, as Portia had pointed out, was good quality. Her evening bag was there, no doubt with Lord Easterbrook's cheque inside. No manuscript, St. Just noted. No laptop, either.

But wasn't Kimberlee supposed to be working on her new book? He mentioned this lack to Moor, currently investigating the contents of Kimberlee's wardrobe.

"I have never," said that redoubtable Scotsman, "been able to understand how anyone, man or woman, can tolerate these things." He held out, draped over a pencil, a frilly pink thong edged in black.

St. Just pointed out the relative lack of anything like writerly equipment.

"No laptop. No manuscript. No paper, except the handful of letterhead provided by the castle. There is a Montblanc fountain pen over there on the dresser." Automatically he thought of Portia and his first sighting of her at St. Germaine's. He supposed an expensive fountain pen might be the celebratory purchase of a writer on making his or her first sale.

"I'm not really surprised," said Moor. "She was here on a holiday of sorts, wasn't she?"

St. Just, nodding, still wasn't sure what to make of it. Would a writer travel anywhere in the world without something to write on? Portia will know, he thought.

"Maybe there's a notebook, at least, in her purse," said St. Just. "I don't want to rummage around in there until it's been dusted. There's a mobile phone on the desktop, buried under the makeup gear-we'll need someone to look into that, of course."

He again looked across at the dresser, where copies of Kimberlee's book lay scattered about. There was also a romance book of the bodice-ripper sort, by one Leticia-Anne Deville, titled When Summer's Passion Lingers. It didn't immediately strike him as Kimberlee's kind of book, but he would have been hard put to say what Kimberlee's type of book may have been. He picked it up, using his handkerchief. Then he saw something from the corner of his eye.

"Oh, wait," he said, crossing the room. "She was writing something, after all. But it's a letter. She'd evidently been using one of these books as a surface to write on, rather than the desk."

He held up a note on castle stationery, written in a round, childish script that just avoided having its "i's" dotted with smiley faces.

"So this may have been what she had been doing between leaving the bar and going for her fatal excursion to the dungeon," said Moor. St. Just and Portia had filled him in as best they could remember or knew of Kimberlee Kalder's movements of the night before.

"Possibly," said St. Just. "She could have written it earlier on, of course. Whenever it was, she was interrupted."

He began reading aloud, with as deadpan a delivery as he could manage:

"'Dearest Darling: What agony-to see but not be with you! Only awhile longer and the charade ends! But you are right, my dearest. We must play it cool, especially in front of the wrinklies. This must remain our secret… must make sure he doesn't suspect… clever of you to think of a way. But-so soon! Patience!-we'll be united in love forever!!! First I have to-'"

"The letter breaks off in mid-sentence." St. Just turned the page toward Moor. "Perhaps she ran out of exclamation marks. It almost sounds like something Magretta would write, actually."

Moor grunted.

"A love letter."

"Or a suicide note."

Moor widened his eyes.

St. Just said, "I'm joking. Kimberlee was the least likely person in the world to cheat everyone of her presence. It is, of course, a love letter."

St. Just reread the note to himself, frowning.

Sergeant Kittle, on his hands and knees at the moment, looking under the bed, said, "Maybe a London boyfriend she was planning to meet up with later. Otherwise, why write a letter? Why not just tell him to his face, for heaven's sake?"

"No," said St. Just. "She talks about the 'agony' of seeing him. He's here. Remember they're all writers, this lot. Probably she saw the opportunity to write a longing, soulful love letter as too good to pass up. It's a dying art in the days of the text message, one would imagine. Maybe the whole thing is just some writer-type exercise, a limbering-up activity that she meant to throw away. 'Must make sure he doesn't suspect.' Make sure who doesn't suspect?"

"Someone at the conference, presumably," said Moor.

"Or even, someone she just doesn't want to get wind of what's in the air. Fear of spreading gossip."

"I suppose that's possible," agreed Moor. "But, just by the way, there's nothing there to indicate that letter wasn't addressed to a female."

St. Just regarded him thoughtfully.

"It's not impossible, of course," he said. "But if you'd ever met her you would know how unlikely that is. Insofar as Kimberlee Kalder was able to direct her attention outside herself, I'd say her inclinations were heterosexual-rather insistently so."

"Did she travel here alone, do we know?" asked Kittle, now shooing the dust off his knees.

"Ms. De'Ath said they traveled up together, but I didn't get the impression that was by prearrangement. If Kimberlee got on the train alone, someone still might have traveled "with her," but in a different compartment. Or the same someone, traveling on a different train altogether, or by car or plane, could have met up with her here. In either event, Kimberlee and whoever it was may have made a point of not being seen traveling together-from the tenor of that letter that's certainly what they would do."

Again, he read the short letter aloud.

"So, we agree," St. Just said, "the Dearest Darling to whom this is addressed is here at the conference, but she is asking him-or rather, agreeing-that he should make himself scarce and pretend they don't know each other well-at least, in front of the wrinklies and 'him.' I have to say she seemed quite taken with Jay Fforde and made no secret of it."

"Right," said Moor. "And it sounds as if she's cheating on someone else by seeing Jay. Someone here at the hotel?"

"We should be so lucky," said St. Just. "That would narrow the field considerably. Let's see…" He began ticking off the list on his left hand. "There's Winston Chatley and B. A. King. Now, Winston is a compelling personality. I've noticed he's attractive to the ladies, despite the fact he resembles an Easter Island statue. My sense is that women trust and like him. So I suppose he's a possible. And B. A. King is a good-looking man in a going-to-seed kind of way, if otherwise repellent. She might have considered him a diamond in the rough, but it's a real stretch. Besides, I overheard her quarreling with him. Lord Easterbrook-I'm not sure… he's far older, but a May-December romance isn't completely out of the question. She might see forging an alliance like that as some kind of career enhancer. Then there's that reporter chap-highly unlikely, I would say, unless she thought he could come in useful to her somehow. He's near her in age, but Kimberlee was, in her way, eons older in terms of savvy. Tom Brackett?-an impossibility, on the surface, at any rate. He's well off, or so I gather, but she's well off-er, if you follow-or, she was. Also, he's married, but I see his personality as the real deterrent for a young and attractive woman like Kimberlee.