Holmes & Moriarty 02 - All She Wrote (MM) (7 page)

“Better late than never,” Rowland greeted me cheerfully.

Arthur grunted something that sounded unconvinced on that score.

“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot the stories and had to go back and get them.”

The seven members of the AC eyed me with various degrees of skepticism. All except Rudolph, who was smiling sympathetically.

“You’re here now,” he reassured. A man well used to dealing with frazzled writers.

“Would you like coffee or juice?” Sara rose and went into the small kitchen which was divided from the main room by a rustic-looking bar. “There are pastries. Or fruit and yogurt if you prefer.”

Sara was eating fruit and yogurt. Everyone else was downing pastries like there was a moratorium on calories. Victoria had compromised by taking a few pieces of fruit, but clearly the pineapple was merely serving as garnish for her baklava.

To stall as long as possible I helped myself to coffee and a lemon tart and then I took my place at the table. I wouldn’t exactly pronounce the silence
dead
, as I shoved the stack of papers aside and pulled my laptop out of the case, but it did feel uncomfortably like a pride of junior high school students was waiting to devour a stray substitute teacher.

I smiled nervously. “It’s been a long time since I attended one of these shindigs, let alone conducted one.” I groped for my reading glasses, more as stage prop than anything.

“You don’t find it necessary to upgrade your skills in such a competitive field?” Poppy asked.

“Have you been talking to my agent?”

Not a smile. I was starting to feel like XP at a Vista class reunion. Jeez, one thing I’ve learned is you need a sense of humor to survive the publishing industry.

Nella said, “Last time we each read our first chapter and then we all commented on it and then Anna and Rudolph gave us their feedback.”

The others concurred.

“Okay, that’s fine by me.” I hastily dusted pastry crumbs from the stack of manuscripts.

“Who wants to go first?”

“I’ll go first,” Nella offered.

“No, no,” Rowland said. “Save the best for last.”

Nella blushed. The others looked less enchanted but tried to be pleasant about it.

“I’ll go first,” Poppy said, clicking keys on her notebook. Everyone settled back, coffee cups and pastries in hand.

Twenty shell-shocked minutes later no one was eating and Nella faintly excused herself to go to the washroom.

“You’ve got balls, I’ll say that for you,” Arthur said. “Unlike that poor bastard in your story.”

Poppy laughed heartily. She looked inquiringly around the table.

Victoria said in her mild way, “Of course, I’ve read it before. I think this draft is cleaner, crisper.”

“It seemed florid to me,” Rowland said, with unexpected aggression. “Too many adjectives and adverbs. Too many dialog tags. Too many exclamation points and italics. And I didn’t like the main character at all. If you’re going to start with something that violent and gross, you’ve lost me as a reader.”

“You’re not my target audience.”

“Who is your target audience?” Sara asked.

Nella returned from the bathroom. Her face looked bloodless. Rowland smiled at her and she smiled weakly back.

“My target audience is women readers and mystery readers.”

Sara replied, “That’s too broad.”

No pun intended? I held my tongue.

“I get the feeling you don’t like men very much,” Arthur said, maybe reading my mind.

“I’m not my characters or my story.”

“I liked it,” Nella said faintly. The kid had courage.

Poppy beamed at her.

Sara stated in her precise way, “I think it’s violent, self-indulgent and unrealistic. The characters
sound
like characters in a book. And the entire book can’t be a flashback.”

Poppy turned to me. “Can the entire book be a flashback?”

“Uh…if you can make it work.”

She turned away, satisfied.

At that point the Asquith Circle took their gloves off, metaphorically speaking, and the critique began in earnest.

In the end Rudolph merely had to say a few diplomatic generic comments, although when pinned, he straightforwardly admitted it was not a book he would buy.

That left my turn. “It’s not a comfortable read,” I said, “but I don’t need a comfortable read so long as you make me care about the characters or tell a story so interesting I have to know how it all turns out. To be honest, that didn’t really happen for me here. I have to agree that the characters didn’t seem recognizably human.”

I felt that was a gracious compromise to
I’d prefer to claw my eyes out rather than read
your work again.
Poppy, unimpressed, curled her lip.

“I don’t believe that woman would kill her husband,” Sara said. “I think she would talk about it and fantasize about it, and never do anything about it.”

“That’s how much you know.”

Sara raised her brows. Victoria said staunchly, “Well, I like it. I think it’s your best work yet.”

We hastily moved on.

Afterward I didn’t remember much of the morning. Everyone read, everyone got their feedback. Nella got rave reviews pretty much all around. Even Rudolph seemed fondly paternal in his comments. Sara, by far the best writer in the bunch, went last. She was treated with scrupulous politeness and a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Even Anna hadn’t bothered to make notes on her manuscript, which seemed more than tactless. I’d have been interested in hearing Rudolph’s thoughts—I was surprised he didn’t make Sara an offer then and there—but Sara herself cut him off by suggesting that we break for lunch.

I suspected that she couldn’t take one more chilly kiss of death. Anyone who wrote as well as she did was obviously passionate about the work and her craft, and this kind of indifferent reception had to be soul destroying.

So, although I am rarely mistaken for one of those warm-and-fuzzy, teddy-bear guys, I blurted out, “Lunch sounds great, Sara, but I want to say I thought your book was amazing. I literally couldn’t put it down last night. I thought it was beautifully written. The word that comes to mind is lyrical.”

Rudolph seemed startled. The rest of the AC looked blank. Sara, for one split second, looked touchingly unguarded.

“Thank you.”

“It’s a wonderful book,” Rudolph said quietly.

She gave him a very brief, shy smile and then she was back in snow-princess guise, informing us that, per tradition, we were on our own for lunch, but would be meeting back at the cottage at two o’clock sharp.

On cue, everyone rose, closing laptops and notebooks, picking up purses and pulling on jackets.

Sara had it all so perfectly under control I wondered why Anna hadn’t had her run the seminar in her place. Except, I remembered with a flinch, after lunch I was supposed to give the first of my talks from the viewpoint of the nominal successful writer present.

With that recollection went my appetite for lunch, but Victoria and Poppy hailed me as I was buttoning up my Burberry.

“We’re driving into Nitchfield,” Poppy said. “There’s a place there that does a real old-fashioned English high tea, and we thought that might be fun since you write a series about a British biologist.”

“Botanist.”

“Right.”

Nella was with them and all three eyed me expectantly. I couldn’t remember the protocol.

Hazily, it seemed to me that Anna had made a point of lunching with different groups of students throughout the weekend of the seminar. That was part of the fun, right? Getting to pick a professional writer’s brain in an open, casual atmosphere?

I glanced around for guidance. Sara was cleaning up the plates and crumbs from the morning session. Rudolph was speaking to her quietly. It was clearly a private discussion.

Hopefully one in which he was offering her a publishing contract.

Was that perhaps part of the problem? Did the other members of the circle feel that Sara already had an unfair advantage because of her position? Did they think Anna had helped her with her story? Or was it simply that Sara’s reserve didn’t encourage people to like her? Whereas Nella was such an eager, enthusiastic kid it would take a harder heart than mine to squash her.

Speak of the devil. “I wanted to ask you about your agent,” Nella said as my gaze happened to meet hers.

“Uh, sure.” What the hell. I didn’t have plans for lunch and if I was going to do a good deed, I might as well do it to the hilt. “High tea or lunch or whatever sounds great.”

They made sounds of approval. Victoria called, “Rowland, did you want to join us for lunch?”

Rowland shook his head regretfully. “I was thinking I should check on Mother.”

Victoria looked disappointed, although she said cheerfully, “Maybe next time.”

Rowland nodded. He smiled at Nella, who blushed and smiled back.

Ah-ha
, I thought. Followed by,
Uh-oh
. Didn’t anyone want to date in their own age bracket these days? He had to be twenty years her senior, and yes, Nella was technically an adult, but the memory of how naive I’d been at twenty didn’t fill me with confidence.

We trailed out of the cottage in a procession, Rowland walking ahead of us. By the time we reached the stairs he was well in the lead, moving with surprisingly brisk purpose.

Poppy remarked, “I don’t know why he doesn’t put that old bat in a nursing home.”

Nella, several steps behind, made a sound of protest. Victoria shushed Poppy.

“He can’t hear me.” Poppy said to me, “Rowland lives with his mother, in case you couldn’t guess. She’s like those broads in Victorian novels who get everything they want by playing sick all the time.”

“She has fibromyalgia,” Victoria said.

“Fibromyass.”

Nella’s nervous giggle floated behind us.

“You think we’re awful,” Victoria said, glancing at me.

“No.” That was the truth. I didn’t care what they said about Rowland’s mother. She probably
was
a total PitA. That didn’t mean Rowland didn’t love her dearly—I suspected from what I’d read the evening before, he did indeed love her—and it didn’t mean she didn’t deserve that love.

There’s nothing more puzzling than human attachments.

I was preoccupied with trying to think of a way to ask if they suspected anyone of wanting Anna permanently out of the picture. It seemed sort of awkward to bring it up out of the blue. Somehow Miss Butterwith always knew how to segue any conversation into talk of death and disaster. Since I was the hand behind the puppet, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t have the same ability. Everything I thought of was liable to trigger the very thing Anna wanted to avoid.

“Chris could care less,” Poppy said. “You should read the mean things he writes about people.”

“Huh?” I stared up at her.

“I started reading one of your books last night. You’re mean.”

“Mean?”

“The little things you say about people. Those barbed what-do-you-call-’ems? Asides.”

“I’m not mean,” I protested. “Which book was it?”

“
Miss Buttermilk Has a Case
or something like that.”

Oh. “
Miss Butterwith Closes the Case
.”

“That sounds right.”

I’d been editing that one as things were falling apart with David. It probably
was
more astringent than some of the earlier books.

“You don’t like people,” Poppy observed.

“Yes I do. I like some people.” Admittedly, I was less and less crazy about
her
.

“Ignore Poppy,” Victoria told me.

I smiled politely. I had a feeling that was probably easier said than done.

Rowland had widened the gap between us by the time we reached the top level. His bright blue jacket was the only splash of color as he strode across the white lawns.

I wasn’t as out of breath as Nella, but not by much. I really did need to make an effort to get myself in shape again. Not that it mattered, since the only one seeing my shape would be me.

Victoria asked, “Does anyone need anything from the house?”

We all agreed we didn’t need anything from the house and struck off down the side path to the front drive. I remembered the shadowy figure I’d seen walking that way the night before.

That hadn’t been a dream, right? A heavy dinner, a couple of glasses of vino and too many mystery stories in a row?

Overhead, a plane droned high in the granite sky. Ahead of me, Victoria and Poppy chatted about some mutual acquaintance, and a few steps behind, Nella was huffing and puffing.

Yet my overall impression was of how still it was. The snow seemed to swallow sound in a vast white hush. In the distance I could hear the sharp insect buzz of Rowland’s car falling away.

“How long did it take you to get published?” Nella asked.

“A few years.” I smiled faintly at the memory of all those earnest attempts at the Great American Novel. All those passionate and utterly corny stories of coming out and coming to terms. Thank God no one had given them a second look. “I wrote my first novel the summer before I started college.” It was still buried somewhere in a box in my parents’ garage.

“But you didn’t get published until after college?”

“I didn’t get published until I finished my MFA.”

“Do you think you need to complete an MFA to get published these days?”

“I don’t think you ever needed it to get published. I wanted it because…I like structure and organization and it gave me a starting point.”

“I just want to start writing,” Nella said passionately. “I don’t want to wait to start my career.”

I thought about Anna’s plans for Nella. Well, that was life. The thing that happened while you were busy making other plans.

The Tudor Teashop was a largish building with black-and-white decorative timbering, fake chimneys complete with fake chimney pots, and long, narrow windows with flower boxes containing perky plastic blooms.

Inside, it was quaintly decorated in ye olde pseudo-English style complete with Staffordshire pottery and pictures of the queen. It was packed on this Friday afternoon, but we found a table near the fake fireplace and sat down to order our lunch.