Book People Donna Doone was at work on her novel, happily oblivious to the futility of writing a detective story set in prehistoric times.
She was at her desk in her little private office at Dalmorton Castle, staring at a computer screen that stared back, somehow accusingly, with the manuscript on which she had secretly been working for two years, stealing a few minutes from her employer wherever she could.
She had chosen to set her romantic-suspense crime novel in the Paleolithic era, something she was sure had never been attempted before. She was only just now beginning to appreciate why. But, she reminded herself, there were best-selling books with cat sleuths, pie-baking sleuths, psychic sleuths-pie-baking, psychic, quilting, archaeologist cat sleuths, for all she knew. Why not a crime novel featuring a Neanderthal detective, the first amateur detective in history? Or prehistory, as it were. It did away with the need for anything like a working knowledge of legal or police procedure. It also largely eliminated the need for scenes where teams of crime scene technicians swooped in with fingerprint kits and swabs and whatnot. Somehow, Donna didn't feel modern-day forensics were her strong suit.
She was certain, however, that she was striking just the right note with her dialogue, which she muttered aloud, reading from her screen:
"Why you think Batmo kill him, Ugmay?" asked Desirooma, deep brown eyes beneath her low, overhanging brow crinkled with concern, but filled also with that sullen, come-hither look that always made Ugmay's blood pulse with desire. He dropped his club to kiss her, hardly but gently.
"Me no know, but find out. Look, see scratches on Black Rock? He no fall, he push. Only bad man like Batmo do this. Me find. Me kill."
He kissed her again, pregnant with animal longing.
"Ugmay, you no fight Bad Batmo alone," she flushed, some time later, readjusting the bison pelt around her broad, work-coarsened shoulders. "Here, eat nuts and berries I gather for you today as Sun Goddess light fire in sky."
"You good number-five wife, Desirooma," said Ugmay. Donna plunged bravely on, sending Ugmay and Desirooma off to report the suspicious death of Gonzola to their tribal chief. She was interrupted by a hesitant tapping on her door. Quickly, she hit the save and close commands on her computer, bringing up in place of Caveman Death a spreadsheet of hotel reservation statistics. Only then did she call out, "Come in."
A small red head appeared around the opening of the door.
"They're starting to arrive. The book people."
"Be there in a minute, Florie. Be sure to alert reception."
Florie nodded, thinking as she shut the door that Donna had overdone the perm again. Her head was a perfect round ball of tight curls, as if she'd pinned one of the loofahs from the spa to her head.
Taking care to first turn off the computer, Donna walked down the hallway connecting the set of offices that constituted the administrative area for the spa and hotel. At reception, a young clerk stood chatting with one of the many bridal consultants who organized the weddings that took place in the castle's old chapel nearly every day. This weekend, nuptials had been put on hold because of the group from the writers' conference, but on Tuesday there would be another giddy bride and groom. The castle increasingly was becoming a romantic destination spot, with Scottish law, unlike English, still favoring hassle-free weddings. Donna had heard one American refer to Scotland as the Las Vegas of Europe, and she supposed they weren't far wrong. In any event, it meant a thriving cottage industry for the castle, and steady employment for Donna.
"Just until I sell my manuscript," she reminded herself.
From reception she walked up the stairs leading to the grand entrance hall, and from there into the sitting room to check on the preparations for afternoon tea. She heard from outside the crunch of tires on gravel. The velvet-covered window seat offered a view below of the front entrance to the castle. Donna settled herself comfortably to observe the various guests arriving by taxi or limousine.
An inveterate crime-novel reader, Donna found she could recognize nearly all the authors, even Magretta Sincock, whose publicity photo on the back flap of her books hadn't changed in thirty years. Seeing Magretta in person for the first time, Donna felt a pang of sympathy: Magretta must have added three stone since that early photo, and seemed generally to be having trouble climbing out of the taxi. She wore lipstick of a virulent orange, recklessly applied, and looked very much old and diminished, despite the cinematographic splendor of her outfit-a flowing affair of puce green silk. Why, wondered Donna, did women with red hair always think any old shade of green flattered them?
Magretta began capering her way over the drawbridge, but halted at the sight of another arrival-a stork-like, dour man who Donna thought bore a striking resemblance to photos she'd seen of Abe Lincoln. As the man drew closer, she saw this was Winston Chatley, his undertaker's countenance easily recognizable. He wrote those dark, serial-killer thrillers. Not really Donna's cup of tea.
Winston's arrival was immediately followed by that of a woman in a taxi whom Donna knew to be Joan Elksworthy, who wrote those lovely cozy mysteries set in Scotland. Donna began a mental head count: Still missing, among others, was Annabelle Pace, who wrote novels about a female medical examiner that, to Donna's taste, were just a touch too gruesome. There were things, after all, that were just not quite nice to think about.
Behind Joan Elksworthy, in a limousine, came what might have been the male complement to Magretta, the sartorial salt to her pepper, a man dressed somewhat in the style of a carnival barker. Altogether not a nice type, thought Donna, and undoubtedly the worst sort of American: loud.
Another limo crunched up the drive, this one stopping to dislodge another sort altogether, one of those upper-crust stalwarts of the British Empire she thought had died out with the Boer War. This, she felt, must be Lord Easterbrook.
Next, another posh man she didn't recognize, very young and handsome and golden in a Great Gatsby way, sleekly upholstered and spit-polished.
Yet another limo, this one causing a bit of a jam at the foot of the castle moat. The ensuing hubbub heralded the arrival of what was unmistakably Kimberlee Kalder, whose lovely image had illustrated countless displays in every major bookstore for the past year. It didn't seem possible, thought Donna, but Kimberlee was even prettier in person, her skin with the kind of natural glow that could never be achieved by mere spa visits. She wore a black suit with a pink shirt and matching pink high heels, colors she had made her own and seemingly forced upon half the female population of British twenty-somethings. She walked with a model's runway slide, her body tipped slightly backwards as if she were walking downhill, her hands hanging straight at her sides. Her driver brought up the rear, carrying her bags.
Donna Doone sniffed, her lips folded tightly together. A right proper little madam and no mistake, this Kimberlee. Judging by her limo driver's face, he would be glad to see the back of her, too.
Why were writers so often difficult? So… ambitious… bound to cause upset…
She recognized the next woman to arrive, too. This, emerging gracefully from a taxi, was Portia De'Ath, who had won all those awards for her first book. Set in Cornwall, it was-lovely. Lovely looking woman, this Portia was, too, with her sleek dark hair tied back by a scarf. Tiny thing, she was. Rather, a tall thing with a tiny waist and slender hips. Gym or genetics? Perhaps a bit of both. Donna glanced down at her own padded hips and sighed.
As Donna watched, Portia shot Kimberlee a look that was none too different from that of the limo driver. Apparently Portia had also made the acquaintance of the Pink Princess of Publishing.
Let's see… Donna counted on her fingers. That agent, Ninette Thomson, and that spy writer Brackett and his wife were still to arrive, and-Who was this?
A tall, well-built, dark-haired man was emerging from a taxi. He took one look at Portia and stopped dead in his tracks, a look of stunned amazement on his face.
Now that would bear watching. Donna felt she hadn't spent years helping stage weddings without becoming sensitive to love in bloom.
This big fellow was coming down with a very bad case, indeed.
Alive on Arrival Portia De'Ath believed in premonition, if that was the right word for the free-floating anxiety that heralds something about to spin horribly out of control. The problem was, of course, the feeling was always too vague to be acted upon in any preventative way. Only in twenty-twenty hindsight did it seem that precisely this or that disaster had been foreseen.
The entire trip up from Cambridge had been like that: Nothing felt quite right. For a bad start, she and Gerald had quarreled as he drove her to the station-a minor squabble, soon forgotten, but an increasingly frequent occurrence. Of lesser moment, but adding to her discomfort, she'd worn all the wrong clothes for the March weather, which, to spite the forecasters, had turned as balmy as spring. The glassy blue sky held just a smudge of grey cloud, like a small scattered army. Since British Rail apparently followed the same BBC forecast as Portia, her train compartment was overheated, and the window stuck shut. She'd also forgotten to pack the new P. D. James she'd planned to read over this weekend, which left her somewhat at the mercy of her serendipitous travel companion, Kimberlee Kalder.
Kimberlee, of course, looked like an illustration for a magazine article on travel tips for the trendy, her sleeveless pink top perfectly suited to the climate. She wore gravity-defying high heels; diamond studs too big to be real flashed from the lobes of her ears, and evidence of rude good health shone from her luminous face. Despite a somewhat pointed jaw that leant a sly, ferrety cast to her features, Kimberlee was a showstopper.
She had appeared in the carriage just as the train pulled out, pulling a checkerboard-pattern Louis Vuitton bag like a dog on a leash, and carrying a matching computer bag slung over her shoulder. Greeting Portia with a girlish shriek of recognition, she'd deposited herself on the seat opposite, then stretched out her legs like a bored leopard, also taking over the place beside her. She pointedly ignored other passengers as they peered into the compartment from the corridor, looking for a spare seat.
"You're going to this soiree at Dalmorton, of course," Kimberlee said, talking into a compact mirror as she checked her flawless makeup. She had pale blue eyes and straight, white-blonde hair that positively shouted "plundering Viking ancestors." She now gave a vigorous toss of her head in a gesture that Portia came to realize was habitual, and probably designed to show her natural highlights to advantage. As Portia ruminated on the genetic heritage that blessed or doomed us all, Kimberlee continued:
"I saw your name in the conference program. I can't tell you how, like, surprised I was to learn the true identity of the author of the Vyvyan Nankervis novels was none other than Portia De'Ath. The very same writer with whom I happen to share an agent and a publisher. Why ever did you keep it such a secret?"
Portia shrugged. "Self-preservation? I'm at Cambridge as part of a fellowship program. Not quite a 'don,' as the Herald would have it. Trust me, the real dons would want to know why I'm spending time writing crime novels when I'm supposed to be writing a thesis that's the last word on recidivism."
Kimberlee creased her lovely, vacant face with an effort at understanding. Her blue eyes blanked on "recidivism," but after some apparent internal struggle she decided not to ask.
"Oh, surely not," she said instead. "Would it, like, have mattered-like, seriously-if they'd known?"
Like, how to explain, thought Portia. The "they" of their conversation being eccentric Cambridge academics, there was no telling. All Portia knew was that life for a female visiting fellow at St. Michael's was tough enough without sticking pins in the eyes of her mostly male comrades. Comrades who would be deciding her academic future very soon.
"Oh, right, I suppose I do see what you mean," Kimberlee went on. "It's the same old story: Crime writers just aren't taken seriously, for they all hand out laurels to Ruth Rendell. You'd think we were drug dealers. Still, crime writing pays, for some of us; those ivory-tower types are just jealous, living in hovels, most of them. I wouldn't give it another, like, thought."
Portia gazed levelly across at her companion, delighted by the mixed metaphor and wondering if she herself were seriously included in that "for some of us" remark.
She was already regretting her promise to moderate a panel at the Dead on Arrival conference, not least of all because, as Kimberlee had said, the conference sponsors had chosen to "out" her without her permission. Clearly they were blissfully unaware of the pains to which she'd gone to keep her secret vice a secret. And yet: She had felt that a long weekend in Scotland might be a rejuvenating reward for the soul, a plunge into cold water after the steaming sauna of academic life.
She had been at St. Mike's two years, a fleeting nanosecond in the glacially slow-moving world of academic research. But a fair amount of her time was taken up not with the penal system but with a dark-haired fictional detective of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary named DCI Nankervis. What had begun as a lark had become nearly a full-time job, requiring more and more hours devoted to correspondence with agents and editors, in addition to the writing itself, of course. Generally, she avoided book promotion like the plague it was, but this offer from Lord Easterbrook had sounded too good to pass up-all expenses paid for three nights at the fifteenth-century Dalmorton Castle while she and her fellow authors appeared on panels at the nearby conference in Edinburgh.
Kimberlee, apparently quickly bored by any problem not her own, indicated they had reached the limit of her interest by immersing herself in Vogue. After awhile she dozed off, the magazine landing with a resounding "thunk" on the carriage floor.
By now they were leaving the Satanic mills of the industrial revolution behind, heading into lush terrain as the train neared Scotland. Huddled piles of sheep sped past the window, white dots against a green-gray landscape. Portia anticipated the moment when the sea would open up on her right, offering an endless horizon dappled with fading sunlight. She recalled that Rosslyn Chapel, that supposed site of Masonic mysteries, was not far from Edinburgh, and didn't wonder at the myths that clung to the area.
Eventually the train chugged and screeched its way into Edinburgh's Waverley Station, waking her companion. Portia helped Kimberlee muscle her luggage onto the platform, but when she turned to offer to share a ride, Kimberlee was nowhere to be seen. Minutes later, on reaching the taxi ranks, Portia was dumbfounded to see her-or at least, the back of her white-blonde head-speeding off in a limo. Suddenly the rumors Portia had heard of Kimberlee Kalder, Overnight Sensation, began ringing true.
Bemused and more than a bit annoyed-so much for the sisterhood of writers-Portia hailed a small taxi brightly decorated with an advertisement for jeans, a taxi imaginatively and exuberantly driven by a large, gray-haired man with an apparent death wish. He sped away from Edinburgh and hurtled like a bullet toward the outskirts, passing increasingly small and picturesque villages on the way. They looped under a bridge and zipped past the mildly curious gaze of a large herd of cows.
The driver accelerated on a final curve, and Dalmorton Castle came suddenly into view, perched dramatically on a small rocky mound and surrounded by a moat. She'd been prepared for this by photos from the castle's Web site, but not for the sudden reality. They had slipped the bonds of the modern world. The castle stood as it had for centuries-gray and austere, its dark drum tower and arrow-slit turrets starkly outlined against a blue-moonstone sky.
The castle was effectively sitting on its own little island, Portia realized. What had she been reading recently-something about how one lost touch with the world on an island, for an island was a world of its own. Then she remembered: The words were from And Then There Were None. And Christie had called the world one "from which you might never return."
"Cor," said the driver.
"Yes," agreed Portia.
They arrived at the drawbridge that spanned the moat- a moat, for heaven's sake -before which other conveyances were depositing little knots of people. Another little knot had gathered just inside the castle entrance.
Magretta Sincock stood about fretfully, no doubt waiting to be recognized. Portia, who knew her slightly from previous conferences, cast around her mind for words to sum up Magretta's style. She seemed overall to be aiming for an earth-mother-slash-brothel-madam look, with armorlike bracelets and brooches that suggested something unearthed at a Celtic dig. Her bouffant hair was a frizzy halo of geranium red, which she seemed to think showed to best advantage against shades of green. Today it was a billowing dress cinched at the waist by a wide Friar Tuck leather belt and a matching felt hat. A green boa scarf fluttered in the quickening breeze.
With a final rakish toss of her boa, Magretta attached herself to a blonde, urbane young man who greeted her with evident reluctance, dodging her questions about print runs before making his escape into the castle. Kimberlee Kalder having already sloped off with the only available bellhop, Portia was left standing with a small, nut-brown woman with gray hair cut in the shape of a German helmet. She introduced herself as Mrs. Joan Elksworthy, recently of New Mexico, formerly of Scotland.
Heads together, one gray and one dark, the two women began walking companionably over the drawbridge, stopping briefly to inspect the rope-and-pulley arrangement that raised the bridge in case of invasion. They continued through an arched stone walkway into the castle proper before descending a short flight of stairs to the reception desk. Here they were greeted by a round, bubbly woman, tightly spandexed, who introduced herself as Donna Doone, the castle's event coordinator.
"I'm here to make sure things run smoothly for our distinguished guests," she chirped. "I am so thrilled to have all of you here. I'm a writer myself, you know."
Cautiously, they shook hands all around-cautiously because Donna had the air of an author about to produce her unpublished manuscript for their delectation, there and then. As Portia stood back to admire the ancient room, a large green presence fluttered to her side.
"Now this," Magretta Sincock pronounced, "is more like it."
Her arm swept round to encompass the wood paneling, the rough-hewn fireplace, the stone stairway, and the weapons and armor ranged against the walls. An outsized painting, its varnish alligatored with age, depicted one of the many hopeless but heroic battles of Scotland's calamitous past.
"The perfect setting for a murder, don't you think?" said Magretta. " So inspiring. For one's books, I mean, of course."
Magretta's words made Portia vaguely uneasy. But, really, what were the odds anyone would actually be murdered at a gathering of murder mystery writers, when you really thought about it? Surely these people all batted out their hostilities on their keyboards.
The hotel receptionist called her over a few moments later and Portia stepped up for her turn at the registration desk. As she followed a porter up the main staircase toward her room, she never noticed the large man from Cambridge who stared after her, transfixed.