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  Morgana got back on her bar stool. She motioned for Emily to sit. She whispered, “It’s a kind of online event.”

  “Oh! Bloggers? That kind of blogathon.” She was starting to sound like Cerys.

  “In commemoration of Winnie. It’s taken off like wildfire. It’s like Princess Diana all over again.” Morgana drained her glass.

  “It’s not your fault she’s dead.”

  “I’ll be doing some sort of tribute in my welcome speech tonight, of course. But I rather think that’s not soon enough. We need to handle this now. It might…Nik said…” She stopped, and shook her head. It was too much.

  “Nik said what?” Emily was prepared to hate him for whatever he had said.

  “Nik said they’ve started ringing up. Members of the public who’ve seen it on the news. They want to come here. They want to hold a…” She couldn’t say it.

  Emily tried to guess: an inquest, a party, a banner, a puppy, a picture of Winnie, a…

  “A vigil,” said Morgana. “Zena’s gone to see about it—if we can get a room for them to meet in. They’re going to mass here, and those who can’t get here in person will join the blogathon online. She thinks we ought to have a press conference before it gets out of hand. There’s anger out there. Here was this woman, this innocent, blameless woman, and we lured her here, and she died, alone and friendless.”

  “Well,” said Emily, awkwardly, “you’re not going to say that at the press conference, are you?”

  The barman set down another cocktail—it was orangey colored, with black bits in it. Passion fruit? Now didn’t seem the time to ask. Morgana rallied a bit. She said, “No, darling. Of course not.” She knocked back half her drink.

  “Cocktails are so delicious, aren’t they? I always find it difficult to tell how much booze is in them.”

  “You’re a sweet girl, and very tactful. Don’t worry, there’s hardly any booze in these at all. I have to face the press, and I need a little boost from the sugar syrup in here. I shall be quite sober.”

  Cerys came rushing in: “I’ve heard the news from that young policeman. Anyone else been interviewed?”

  “Yes,” said Morgana.

  “Yes,” said Emily.

  “That poor woman! Her poor family. Breaks my heart to think of her beaten to death by a pack of animals, dying there all alone. We gonna cancel, M? We can’t carry on, it’s disrespectful.”

  “How can we cancel? Check-in’s at three. People are starting to arrive. I’m calling a press conference. We can use it to express our sincere regrets for the loss of this woman’s life, and draw attention both to the role of romance writers in spinning dreams that distract from reality, and the way that we can address social issues and important matters of life and death in our pages.”

  Zena approached, stately as a queen and trimmed with purple silk: both Cleopatra and her barge.

  “Who’ve we got coming, Zena?”

  Zena picked up the shopping bags Morgana had been guarding for her—Emily was amused to see a Topshop bag with something pink inside it among them—and sank into a comfy chair. To answer, she had to look up at Morgana, perched on her stool by the bar.

  “I got my man Trevor coming along.”

  “Oh, good! Daily Mail?”

  “Ham & High,” said Zena.

  “Ham and High?” Cerys said pleasantly, picking up the menu from the bar. “That sounds delicious.” She winked at Emily to include her in the joke. “I think I’ll have one of those.”

  “The Ham & High is a local newspaper, not a…a toasted sandwich,” said Morgana. She giggled.

  The other women laughed companionably, and Emily finally saw the friendship between them, as they tried to defuse the tension of the day with silliness.

  “Ladies?” The Australian barman interrupted the laughter. He held up a phone attached by a long wire to the extension in the bar. “Call for an Emily Castles.”

  The call was from Polly, speaking in the kind of groany, ultra-weak voice people normally reserved for calling in sick to work.

  “Emily? I need help. Can you come to my room?”

  “Polly?” Emily was so obviously alarmed that the others looked round, concerned. “Polly?”

  But the line was dead.

  Chapter Five

  POISON

  Emily didn’t wait for the elevator. She ran up the stairs up to Polly’s room on the second floor, ran along the corridor and knocked, and waited. What if Polly was unconscious or…?

  Polly wasn’t unconscious or dead. But she was obviously unwell. She opened the door for Emily and then lay on the bed looking paler than ever, with bluish lips and sweat on her upper lip. She had been sick—there was the sharp, unmistakable smell of it coming from the bathroom.

  “I think there’s something wrong with the chocolates,” Polly said. “I took a bite of one and…” She shuddered and lay back on the bed, eyes closed. A small trickle of drool appeared at the corner of her mouth, which she wiped with her fingers. “I’ve called a doctor.”

  Emily handed her a tissue. “Maybe we should get it tested for, I don’t know, can you get salmonella in chocolates? We should get it tested to see if there was something wrong with it.”

  “Good idea,” said Polly. “But I flushed that one.” She lay quietly for a few moments, and then she said, “There was a weird taste in it. Rancid, like…peanuts that have gone off. Or…no, not peanuts. More like…almonds. But horrible and bitter.”

  “They had something nutty inside? Praline? You’re allergic to nuts?”

  “No, I’m fine with nuts.” A slight note of exasperation. “The one I bit into had purple fondant inside, like you’d expect. There weren’t any nuts in it. But it didn’t taste right. I spat it out. You think it could have been tampered with?”

  “Who’d want to do something like that?”

  “We left the bags downstairs for a while after we’d put the gifts in them. Someone could have come along and tampered with the chocolates.”

  “I can check with the staff—see if they saw anyone hanging about down there. But it’s more likely to be food poisoning, isn’t it? Or stress, maybe? Worrying about Winnie.”

  Polly seemed irritated by Emily’s determination to find a reasonable explanation. Emily was interested to see this side of the normally calm Polly. Obviously she was one of those people who get a bit needy when they’re ill.

  “What if I saw something or heard something or said something that makes me a target for the same person who killed Winnie?”

  This wasn’t needy. This was narcissistic. Emily felt embarrassed for Polly. And then she remembered how Detective Rory James had felt sorry for her earlier, when he hadn’t believed her story about the phone call from Winnie, and she tried to be less judgmental. What if there was something wrong with the chocolates? She considered the practicalities. There were around forty conference attendees who were currently checking into their hotel rooms. How many of them might be tempted to start on the chocolates before dinner? Probably quite a few. Unless they could be sure that something else had made Polly sick, she’d have to make arrangements to get the violet crèmes removed from the gift bags before anyone else ate them, as a precaution.

  Emily let the doctor in when she arrived. She was a calm-looking woman in her fifties with watery eyes and thread veins at the sides of her nose. She plonked her medical bag on the dressing table. While Polly described her symptoms, Emily withdrew slightly and looked around Polly’s room for clues to her condition. Was there anything here that could have made her ill? There was a nearly full pack of white-tipped menthol cigarettes on Polly’s dressing table. Well, those were no good for her for a start. Just by the pack of cigarettes there were around a dozen bottles of various shapes and sizes containing astringents, exfoliants, eye cream, face cream, hand cream, body lotion, nail varnish, nail varnish remover and various other potions and lotions that Emily couldn’t distinguish from the labels at a distance.

  “Perhaps there was someth
ing you spilled on the chocolate and accidentally ingested?” She was rather proud of using the word ingested, hoping to impress both Polly and the doctor. “Nail varnish remover’s poisonous, isn’t it? Something like that?”

  Ignoring her, the doctor said rather irritably to Polly: “There’s no reason to suspect poisoning. An upset tummy is a more likely explanation. You want to watch out for dehydration. Make sure you drink plenty of water in the next few hours, and take it easy. We could do a stool sample. But you seem to be recovering.”

  The threat of a stool sample seemed to be for Emily’s benefit, to make her unpopular with Polly.

  Emily went to the dressing table and picked up a bottle at random, squinting at the label for the name of an ingredient that sounded poisonous. This particular preparation claimed to combat “the seven signs of aging.” And those were what, exactly? Emily tried to come up with a list: thinking the country’s going to the dogs, going to bed early, visiting National Trust properties—

  Polly called over in her sick-day voice, “I didn’t drink any nail varnish remover, accidentally or deliberately.”

  The doctor said, “Vital signs are normal. Temperature is normal. You have a slightly elevated heart rate. Have you had a panic attack before?”

  “No,” said Polly. “I’m not sure I’m having one now.” She tried to look insouciant, but she was so pale, and she hardly lifted her head from the pillow, so she just looked tired.

  The doctor went into the en suite bathroom and washed her hands thoroughly. Emily followed her. The doctor said, “You know, it’s dangerous to give an antidote to poison if poisoning hasn’t been confirmed. Do you understand? You’re risking the patient’s life.” She dried her hands and left.

  “You want me to stay for a bit?” Emily hoped that Polly would understand this question was a formality, like asking the host at a party if there’s anything you can do when you arrive—you don’t actually expect to have to chop onions or vacuum the carpets or bath the children. Similarly, Emily didn’t want to stay by Polly’s bedside, she wanted to get away from the vomity smell in the room and get back to helping Morgana.

  “You’re a sweetie. Thanks for coming to see if I was OK. I didn’t say thank you, did I?” Polly’s charm was returning, together with a healthier complexion. “I’m all right. You go ahead. I’m going to sleep it off. I’ll be down later if I feel all right. And Emily?”

  “Yes?”

  “Take care of yourself. If someone tried to hurt me because of something I saw or heard…Well, we were both prowling around where we didn’t belong, weren’t we, at about the time Winnie was killed?”

  “When we saw Nik Kovacevic?”

  “Everyone’s saying no one saw Winnie when she checked in, and that’s not quite true, is it?”

  “Who did she see?”

  “The staff at the hotel, of course. And whereas normally a tourist would be on their guard against strangers in a foreign city, they’d trust the staff, wouldn’t they?”

  “You don’t think Nic Kovacevic killed Winnie?”

  “No. I don’t know what I think. Just be careful, that’s all. I know you want to find out what happened to Winnie and you’re worried about me. But don’t go snooping about in any dark places. And don’t eat the chocolates!”

  Emily went back to her room to get her chocolates. She had no intention of eating them. She planned to give them to Det. James for testing. She put them in her handbag, then she went to find Morgana to tell her about Polly. She found her in the bar with Cerys and Archie.

  “Ach,” said Archie. “Have y’ever met an author who didn’t think they were dying of at least one rare disease? Imagination plus Internet equals hypochondria.”

  “She’d definitely been sick, though.”

  Morgana caught the barman’s eye and signaled for another fortifying drink. “She might have picked up a bug in the Jacuzzi?”

  “Love, you can’t take any chances,” said Cerys. “Besides, it’s a verruca you’d get in a Jacuzzi, not cyanide poisoning.”

  “Cyanide!” exclaimed Emily. She hadn’t mentioned cyanide…

  “Hold your horses. It’s not a confession. I may write romance, but I read my share of mysteries. That taste of bitter almonds you described—that’s cyanide.”

  “Aye,” said Archie. “It is.”

  “Darlings, Polly is a very imaginative person, and of course we love her for it. But while I don’t doubt she thought she could taste bitter almonds in her chocolate, I doubt very much that she’s been the victim of cyanide poisoning. Why can’t she stick to self-diagnosed lupus, suspected RSI and a headache-that-might-be-a-brain-tumor, like the rest of us? Still, we can’t take any chances. Emily, I’m going to go along with your suggestion that the chocolates be removed from the gift bags as a precaution, though the delegates aren’t going to be happy if all they get in this year’s gift bag is a frilly sleep mask and one of Polly’s books.”

  “I could look in the gift shop?”

  So Emily went to Ye Olde English Gift Shoppe on the ground floor of the hotel. There she bought forty cellophane-wrapped packets of vanilla fudge. The purchase was funded by Morgana, and it cost her ninety pounds. Morgana also thought it wise to tip the hotel staff another twenty pounds for their trouble. As she forked over the cash, she said, “You see why no one else ever volunteers for the position of chair of the committee, Emily?”

  So Emily headed to Nik’s office with forty packets of fudge to ask him to find someone from housekeeping to substitute them for the violet crèmes in all the rooms belonging to the RWGB conference delegates. On her way there she saw one of the waitresses who had been setting up the dining room in the basement conference area earlier.

  “Maria! Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around by the gift bags after we’d filled them earlier on this afternoon?” Emily was careful not to couch the question as though it was an accusation—when anything goes missing in a hotel, everyone always blames the staff. She didn’t want it to look as though she was really saying, Did you take anything from the table? She added, quickly, “Nothing’s missing, it’s not that. I’m not accusing anyone. I hope you don’t think that. I just wondered—did you see anyone?”

  Maria said, “No.”

  “Did you see Nik? The manager?”

  “No. No one.”

  “I was there, and Polly Penham. Do you know her? Pink cardigan?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Cerys—with the blonde hair? And Morgana popped down for a bit, too—the one with the hat? But did you notice anyone come along after we left?”

  “No. No one came.”

  “Thank you.” Emily gave Maria her loveliest dimpled smile and went into Nik Kovacevic’s office.

  Nik was busy at his computer, typing a review for the neighboring Fitzrovia Hotel on a popular travel review site:

  After reading other reviews for the Fitzrovia, my husband and I were looking forward to staying in what we had assumed would be a very classy hotel. It was our wedding anniversary and we wanted a special weekend away to celebrate. Imagine our dissapointment when our room was not ready when we tried to check in. Things went from bad to worse when we finally went up to our room. The decor was tired and the plumbing less than satisfactory. When we called down to Reception to make our feelings known, the staff were unhelpful. We will not be recommending this hotel to our friends. Do not make the same mistake as us. Save your money!

  Prompted to give a rating and a suitable heading for his review, he wrote: 1* Dissapointing.

  He had noticed that people who complained about goods and services online were often “dissapointed,” the sibilance of the extra s endowing the word with a resentful hiss. Therefore he too misspelled disappointment and disappointing for the sake of authenticity. Women wrote more reviews than men, so he also had got into the habit of writing reviews from a woman’s point of view. He had no strong wish to trash other hotels. He really didn’t. But he suspected that the practice of writing phony reviews was w
idespread, and he felt he had no alternative but to reciprocate. The service and facilities at the Coram were impeccable, as he knew at first hand. Yet every week or so there would be another critical review with a one-star or two-star rating on one of these travel sites. How was he to make sense of it, except to assume that rival hotel staff were leaving these absurd complaints? And how was he to counter these practices except to write a few of his own?

  The desk was side-on to the door to Nik’s office, and Emily had approached quietly and quickly. Before he’d had time to close the window on his computer, she had got close enough to him to read what he was writing and get the gist of the review. Nosy cow! But if she had seen what he’d written, she didn’t let on. She had an armful of vanilla fudge and a head full of crazy notions, so perhaps she hadn’t looked at his computer.

  He listened to what Emily had to say. When she was finished, Nik was briefly offended on behalf of everyone, everywhere who had ever had to have dealings with the general public.

  “Tainted? I don’t think Cyril Loman would send you tainted chocolates. There must be some mistake.” Nevertheless, at her request he called for housekeeping to take care of it. He stood and extended one arm toward the door to show Emily out.

  Emily had chosen the word tainted over poisoned because she had thought it would cause less offense. She hadn’t started well, but then she’d hardly started at all. There was plenty more she wanted to say to Nik.

  “The woman who died—”

  “The one who died on the estate? Very unfortunate. Nothing to do with the hotel, of course.” One arm extended again, politely.