The Christie Caper (19 page)

The lines wound through the Palmetto Court to Neil Bledsoe’s table. The table was untenanted at the moment, but Annie could see stacks of the yellow flyers, an ample supply of pens, and a pile of subscription blanks.

So now they knew Bledsoe’s real reason for attending The Christie Caper. It wasn’t to torment his enemies or to sabotage the conference. If such were the by-products of his scheme, no doubt it would be added pleasure. But these weren’t his primary interests. As soon as possible, Max would dig deep into Bledsoe’s financial situation, but Annie was sure she already knew the truth: Bledsoe was in trouble over a gambling debt or
Mean Streets
was in a hole. Bledsoe desperately needed money—and lots of it—and was willing to stoop to any level to increase the number of subscribers. Everything in magazine publishing hinged on the number of subscribers: advertising rates, ad linage, lender confidence.

If all of these people subscribed …

She glared at the people in the lines. Dammit, what kind of loyalty were they showing to Christie? And what could she do about it? And where the hell was Lady Gwendolyn, after all her fine talk about taking action? Not that she’d come up with any concrete plan before they parted. Annie scanned the court again. Not a trace of the English author. Annie didn’t doubt the author’s determination to foil Bledsoe. But where was she?

Well, somebody had to do something!

Annie marched to the deep end of the pool and climbed swiftly up the ladder to the ten-meter diving platform. She walked out onto the board. Now the lines snaked past the tables and around the shallow end of the pool, almost to the boardwalk.

Annie pulled a crumpled yellow flyer from the pocket of her white cotton slacks. She took a deep breath and shouted:

“DON’T GRISWOLD AGATHA!”

She hadn’t known that’s how she would begin. The words
popped unbidden into her mind. But once started—and startled faces turned up to watch—she sketched it for her audience, just as Laurel had for her. At one point (shaking her fist over the gutter-inspired tactic of inventing slander then attributing it to “common knowledge”), Annie heard a husky “brava” and looked up to see Laurel clapping energetically on her balcony. On the adjoining balcony, Max raised his hands above his head and clasped them in a victory stance. Lady Gwendolyn flashed a brilliant, approving smile.

Laurel and Max and Lady Gwendolyn were not the only balcony observers.

Neil Bledsoe, a cigar poking jauntily from the corner of his mouth, leaned casually against a blue vase, arms folded, and listened intently.

Annie held up the yellow flyer. “This is a scam!” she shouted. “Don’t waste your money. I can answer these questions for you.

“What was Christie’s relationship with Eden Phillpotts? It was,” Annie said clearly, “simply that of a novice who shyly sought advice from the then-famous novelist, who was a neighbor of her family. Upon reading her first novel,
Snow upon the Desert,
Phillpotts took the time to write the eighteen-year-old Agatha a very thoughtful, encouraging letter. In it, he noted that Agatha had ‘a gift for dialogue,’ and so he was the first critic ever to recognize one of Agatha’s greatest talents as a writer. In a second letter, he offered a good deal of insightful technical advice. Finally, Agatha wrote asking him what she should be doing with her life. Phillpotts warned her that ‘art is second to life—’”

“All this talk about a writing mentor,” Bledsoe boomed.

The faces below swung toward him.

The critic leaned forward, his massive hands on his railing. “Funny question to ask
him,
what should she be doing with her life. We all know,” and his deep voice dropped suggestively, “those of us with any sophistication, that old men do enjoy young women. This is a question I pursue in
False Face.
Subscribe now to make sure you can get your December issue and find out the truth.”

In a clear, ringing shout of outrage, Lady Gwendolyn announced, “Phillpotts had
gout!”

The faces below swung toward Lady Gwendolyn.

“That’s in the feet,” Bledsoe replied pointedly.

A titter ran through the crowd.

Lady Gwendolyn enunciated icily, “Double entendres are the product of a second-class mind incapable of producing substance.”

Annie shouted, “Bledsoe’s trying to make something out of nothing.”

The audience swung about and looked toward the diving board.

Annie rattled the flyer. “All of these questions, hinting that there’s more than on the surface. Her first love affair? It certainly wasn’t an affair as we use that word today. Agatha’s first serious suitor was Bolton Fletcher, a colonel in the Seventeenth Lancers, fifteen years older than she. He deluged her with love letters, chocolates, flowers, books, and other gifts. He proposed the third time he came to call at Ashfield, but, fortunately, Agatha’s mother felt this was too much too soon, and proposed a six-month ban on visits or letters. At the end of the six months, the colonel sent a telegram asking if Agatha would marry him. She declined.”

Bledsoe pushed away from the balcony railing and stood to his full height and clapped enthusiastically.

Before Annie could erupt, he trumpeted, “By God, this is a good forum. But there’s a better forum—
Mean Streets.
Here’s what I propose, Lady Gwendolyn, Mrs. Darling.” He half-bowed toward each. “My chapters in one issue, your responses in the next. I will provide readers with psychological insights into the life of this peculiarly educated, abnormally reclusive woman, and you can respond with the materials so conveniently approved by Christie’s family.”

Bledsoe looked down at the upturned faces and gestured toward the table with the flyers. “There’s the place to sign up. Be a part of the great debate on Christie. I’ll be right down, and I won’t leave until every person in the hotel’s. had a chance to subscribe.”

Annie, goaded past endurance, yelled at his back as he ducked into his suite. “Wait a minute. I won’t do it. This is criminal. I won’t be a party to—”

Too late she realized she was moving forward. She wavered, her arms pumping wildly, trying to regain her balance, then toppled to her right. As she plummeted down, she
glimpsed Lady Gwendolyn, eyeing her with distress, but her pink lips twitched with amusement. It was almost a relief to smack into the water.

“So I blew it.” Annie savagely raked the brush through her hair, then threw the brush down on the balcony table.

“It’s not a total disaster, Annie,” Henny soothed.

Annie sneezed. “Lady Gwendolyn obviously thinks I’m a complete incompetent.”

Room service, dispatched at Lady Gwendolyn’s behest, had arrived with tea cosseted in a cosy and a note suggesting Annie take a spot of rest. After all, hypothermia could be so dangerous.

“Annie, that was a thoughtful note!” Laurel exclaimed. “I know she would have dropped by to check on you, but I’m sure she’s busy planning some way to thwart Bledsoe.”

Laurel’s confidence in Lady Gwendolyn—and obvious dismissal of efforts by Annie—rankled. Though Annie certainly had too much pride to reveal her hurt.

Henny, however, was definitely not on her ladyship’s bandwagon. “Annie’s made progress, Laurel. After all, at least we’ll have some rebuttal against his slanders.”

Nothing Henny could have said would have made her feel worse. It would only add an aura of acceptability to Bledsoe’s calumnies if Annie or anyone else took them seriously enough to answer.

Annie clapped a hand to her head. “Henny, no! Don’t you see what that will do? People will take it as a legitimate debate. They’ll think the questions he’s raising have merit. It will be just like Griswold slimily saying an unpardonable offense was common knowledge!”

“Oh.” Henny had come directly to the hotel from a board meeting at the hospital. She looked superb in a green linen blazer, daffodil yellow blouse, and beige skirt. She fingered the heavy twisted-rope gold chain at her throat. “I see. But, Annie,” she asked reasonably, “isn’t it better to take an opportunity to refute slander? If it’s ignored, some people will assume it’s right merely because it’s printed.”

Annie, freshly dressed in a blue-on-white cotton sweater
and a short polka-dot navy skirt, dropped into the wicker chair opposite Henny’s and glared morosely down into the Palmetto Court “Look at him. Swollen with ill-gotten success, like a nasty bloodsucking leech.”

Laurel glanced down into the court, but she didn’t look worried at all. No doubt confident that her ladyship would soon settle the matter.

Indeed, Bledsoe did look larger than life, his ruddy face flushed with excitement, his huge hands dwarfing the subscription slips as he counted them. It was almost noon and the last persons in line had reached his table, made out their checks, and received receipts. He made yet another stack in front of him and spoke to Natalie Marlow. The young author smiled.

Annie did not consider herself a critical person. She couldn’t help thinking, however, that Natalie Marlow looked about as attractive as an inmate at Tehachapi. Her bilious-green khaki shorts flapped just above bony knees, and a pink tank top emphasized her equally bony shoulders. A sex symbol for a grasshopper, maybe.

Yet Bledsoe was focusing his not inconsiderable sex appeal on her as if she were the kind of voluptuous blonde so beloved of pulp-fiction writers. No white suit for Bledsoe today, but still all white. His polo shirt and polished cotton shorts set off his impressive physique.

He leaned forward, stared into Natalie’s eyes, and spoke.

The writer’s angular face glowed with happiness, she nodded several times, pushed back her chair and hurried off into the hotel.

Bledsoe bent back to his counting.

Annie didn’t want to know how many subscriptions he’d sold.
Beaucoup,
obviously. Did each stack hold a hundred? Dammit, it wasn’t accomplishing anything to sit here and watch the sorry bastard in his triumph. Besides, it was almost time to meet Max at the registration table and get the Christie Treasure Hunt under way.

Suddenly, Henny drew her breath in sharply. “Oh my God!” she cried.

Laurel gasped and pointed toward the roof.

Annie looked up and watched in frozen horror.

A blue vase along the roof wall teetered for a long, heart-stopping instant, and then it began to fall, slowly, almost lazily.

Directly below, Neil Bledsoe was just pushing back his chair.

A woman screamed.

T
he huge vase, a blur of sapphire and red, exploded on impact. Bledsoe’s table crumpled beneath the crushing weight. Fragments of pottery and clumps of dirt and geraniums rose in a shower of debris.

“Oh my God,” Henny said again, but this time in awe, not horror.

“Why, look at him climb!” Laurel exclaimed.

Alerted by the scream of a waitress, Bledsoe had looked up just in time to fling himself backward to safety, and now, his face blood-red with anger and exertion, he was swarming up the carved pillars that supported the balconies, from the ground floor to the roof. He made that climb look easy, his huge hands seeking fingerholds among the protruding curls and knobs of the hyacinth-decorated pillars, his sneaker-clad feet finding one perilous foothold after another.

The man, Annie realized, was one hell of an athlete. Bledsoe reached the roof edge and flung himself over it. He was so big that even in a menacing crouch, he was still clearly visible from below. His head swung back and forth as he searched the roof. Finally, his chest heaving from exertion, he slowly stood erect. With an angry headshake, he turned and glared down at the Palmetto Court and his mesmerized audience.

Thwarted fury roughened his deep voice. “Somebody call the goddam cops—and don’t touch a goddam thing down there.”

•  •  •

Yellow crime scene tape fluttered both on the roof and around the impact area in the Palmetto Court. A hastily drawn sign on cardboard directed guests seeking service to the picnic area adjacent to the boardwalk where the hotel was providing a buffet luncheon free of charge.

As Annie skirted the cardboard sign, she was glad to see that Frank Saulter had his back to her. She didn’t have time to talk to Frank right now. He had plenty of witnesses, of course. She wasn’t necessary to this particular investigation, but she didn’t kid herself. Frank would want to talk to her. But later was better. The Agatha Christie Treasure Hunt was scheduled to begin in fifteen minutes. She’d seen no reason to cancel. After all, the crashing vase had caused some damage, but no one was hurt. Annie took a tighter grip on the cardboard box with the Clue Sheets and the Title Slips as she hurried into the lobby. She’d taken no chances with these, leaving them in the storeroom of Death on Demand until now. (Agatha had frostily ignored her visit Fairweather friends deserved no better. Besides, Agatha wasn’t fond of Max’s secretary, Barb, who was provisioning the water and food bowls this week. Barb, Agatha was prone to growl, talked too much and had the effrontery to pick up cats without permission.) Annie had known better than to leave the Clue Sheets and Title Slips at the conference registration desk at the hotel. She was experienced at mystery events, and, much as she hated to admit it, some people would do anything to win, including attempting to rip off the clues in advance. It had come as no surprise to hear from Ingrid that the boxes behind the registration desk had been moved about, obviously as the result of a midnight search. But she wasn’t born yesterday.