There was little doubt it was Kimberlee Kalder, and less doubt she was dead. She lay on her back at the bottom of the bottle dungeon. Even in the flickering and feeble light of the candle, Portia could see the poor girl's head and neck were twisted at an impossible angle. Her right leg seemed to have snapped just before the knee. She was in her stockinged feet, but in the corner of the horrible little cell where she had died was one of her black, pointed shoes, crouched like a rat. She was wearing the white dress she'd had on that evening for the awards dinner.
But something about the scene was wrong-Portia wasn't sure what. Something was missing or something had been added.
"What is it?"
Portia jumped, nearly shouting at the voice behind her. Mrs. Elksworthy was at her shoulder.
"It's Kimberlee. She's dead. Go fetch DCI St. Just, would you? Quickly. Have him call the local police and then get him down here. Top of the stairs, the room two doors down on the right."
Magretta's screams could still be heard, now coming from a floor far above.
"Then for God's sake go and see if you can calm Magretta."
Mrs. Elksworthy seemed frozen to the spot. Portia had seen this kind of reaction before, even in sensible souls, such as Mrs. Elksworthy appeared to be. Especially in sensible souls, to whom the chaos of violent death was an abomination.
"Joan," Portia said sharply. "You have to help me."
Nodding slowly, Mrs. Elksworthy started backing up the stairs, her eyes holding Portia's.
"Hurry!" Portia urged. At that Joan turned and ran as quickly as her short legs and the narrow, worn steps would allow. Anxious not to disturb what was clearly a crime scene-there was no way Kimberlee could have just fallen over the banister; it would have been nearly as high as the bottom of her rib cage-Portia crept back up the spiral stairs to the wooden door at the top. Mrs. Elksworthy and St. Just had just arrived at the foot of the main staircase, both illuminated by candles.
"The local police are on the way," he said. "Are you all right?"
Portia nodded absently. "Think so." Looking up, she could see every guest on that side of the castle had been alerted that something was amiss. They all seemed to be leaning over the landing banister. All except Tom.
"She's been murdered, Arthur," Portia said quietly. Her familiar use of his Christian name struck neither of them as odd. "There's no way she fell."
St. Just, following her gaze to the row of horrified eyes watching them from the landing, turned to Mrs. Elksworthy. "I'll need you to keep everyone out of the way until the police arrive. Will you do that?"
Mrs. Elksworthy, who seemed to have aged a decade in the last few minutes, nodded.
"Nothing to worry about," Portia heard her telling the little assembly a bit later. "Just an accident, I'm sure. The police will have it sorted in a minute."
"It will take a lot longer than a minute," murmured Portia to St. Just, following him back down the bottle dungeon stairs. She watched as he, in his turn, looked over the railing and took in the scene.
"Stand here a bit closer with that candle," he said. "Mind the wax, though." He stooped to examine the railing.
"There are what look like fresh marks here in the wood, possibly scratch marks made as she fought off her attacker, or possibly made as her attacker hefted her over the railing. I'll make sure forensics examine those nails of hers. They would have made good weapons, if she got the chance to use them. What do you think?"
He turned to Portia, who was staring intently at the body, with all the clinical detachment of a SOCO.
"Robbery?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Something was added, or taken away." The words ran like a mantra through her head. Something… missing? Turning, she held her candle aloft to examine the floor around them. In the corner a bit of cellophane glinted, perhaps part of a sweet wrapper-nothing more. "Damned time for us to lose the lights, don't you think?" she asked. "It's dark as pitch down here. And she didn't have a candle, unless it's somehow hidden by her body… Wait. That's what's missing. She could never have found her way down here in the dark without breaking her n-oh, sorry. But you can see what I mean. She didn't fall down the stairs and pop over the railing to end up in the bottle dungeon. Maybe she made it this far on her own steam and then there was a struggle. Or she was pushed down the stairs and someone heaved her body over the rail. She wasn't a large person; it's just possible that's what happened."
"We'll see what forensics has to say," said St. Just. "Oh, for pity's sake."
"What?"
"We're forgetting, there's no way in here with the drawbridge up."
She looked at him.
"Try calling them on your mobile," she said. "They'll have to get across the moat somehow and break in through one of the lower windows." Then, noticing his look, she said, "What?"
"Do you always plan ahead for emergencies like this?"
"It's just that I was photographing the lower windows yesterday. The stonework is fascinating. What we really need is the fire department with a ladder."
"What we really need is a portable generator. And a land line. Mobiles weren't designed for stone walls thick enough to withstand a siege," he said. "One thing's nearly certain: It was an inside job. There's no way anyone could have gotten in from outside, not without getting soaking wet and leaving tracks like a badger, at any rate."
They heard the sound of sirens wailing somewhere off in the distance, growing steadily louder as emergency vehicles peeled up the road. St. Just and Portia again walked up the stone stairs, nearly colliding with Donna Doone at the top. "Is there no way to get that generator going?" he asked her, fruitlessly punching numbers into his mobile.
She shook her head.
"Robbie says the battery's depleted or overheated or it froze at some point or something. He's got a call in for a portable replacement, but if you ask me, it's Robbie should be replaced."
"It can't be lowered manually, the bridge?"
She sighed in frustration. "Winston asked the same thing. You would think that would be an option, wouldn't you? It used to be, but the rope was damaged and never repaired."
Portia, meanwhile, walked over to one of the windows at one side of the drawbridge. An ambulance and two police cars, a panel of lights flashing across the top of each, were pulled up outside. Five policemen were on the lawn, staring helplessly across at her. Not knowing what else to do, she waved and then with her forefinger and smallest finger, mimicked someone talking on a telephone. One of the men, small and white-haired, sprinted over to his car; minutes later the phone rang at the reception desk. St. Just ran over and picked it up.
"Yes, it's murder," Portia heard him say as she approached. "Is fire on the way? Good. You'll need a ladder and some way to winch up a portable generator. Yes, I know, it's incredible they didn't realize. A fuel-generated power source would have prevented it."
So it was that half an hour later, the hotel guests, who by this point had gathered in Mrs. Elksworthy's room, as having the best view, were treated to the sight of firemen wading waist deep in moat muck over to the base of the castle, carrying overhead a ladder up which they proceeded to climb, and gaining entry through one of the lower, unused bedrooms. Two men carrying a generator in a sling followed behind; it was hoisted knapsack-style by the two men at the window. St. Just, Portia, and Donna were there to greet them.
"We'll need the guests' cooperation," said St. Just. "Everything that isn't powering that drawbridge will have to remain shut off."
Donna went to find Robbie and his maintenance crew. Some time later, to the sound of faint cheering from Mrs. Elksworthy's room, the grind and moan of the drawbridge coming down could be heard.
"DCI St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary," he said, and held out a hand to the Scottish DCI, resisting the temptation to bend at the knees to meet him on a more level playing field. Ian Moor was an elfin man who must just have passed the height requirement for acceptance onto the force. He wore a handlebar moustache that looked pasted on but undoubtedly was real-two dramatic white swoops that cupped either side of his round face. It was a face mobile and alive with an expression of happy anticipation; his eyes twinkled with evident pleasure at having a brand new case to solve.
St. Just pulled out his wallet and opened it with a reflexive snap. Moor took the leather holder from his hand and stared at his photo ID with the gimlet eye of a museum curator presented with a suspicious artifact. Then, ostensibly satisfied, he closed the wallet with deliberate care before handing it back.
"Cambridgeshire. Lovely town, Cambridge. The wife and I went there on one of those charabanc tours one summer. Boring place, really, isn't it?"
St. Just smiled. For one thing, he hadn't heard anyone use the word charabanc for twenty years.
"Sometimes. When the students aren't around, certainly it can be a quiet place."
Moor grunted. "Not Scotland Yaird, then." He gave St. Just a beatific smile. "Worse luck for us. With their help, we could have wrapped this up by teatime."
The Scottish policeman looked around at the crowd again gathering at the top of the stairs, like children spying on the grown-ups' party.
"These would be the crime writers, then?"
"Yes."
"And you, Sir. You're a writer, too-in your spare time, perhaps?"
"Not I. A happy life for me. I'm here to deliver a talk at the conference being held at the Luxor in Edinburgh. Anyway, the young woman over there"-and he indicated Portia, standing by the hall table, a ghostly apparition surrounded by candlelight-"she was among the first to find the body."
The two men, now joined by another whom St. Just took to be Moor's sergeant, walked over to Portia. The policeman introduced himself as DCI Ian Moor and his far more subdued companion as Sergeant Kittle.
Portia nodded. Kittle had a face like a ruined monastery. A perfect character for my book, she thought reflexively.
"Portia De'Ath," she said. She made as if to offer a handshake, but Moor hadn't paused for the formalities. He continued on through the door into the bottle dungeon and down the stairs, where they all-except Portia, who, at a signal from Kittle, held back-followed him to the guardrail. The three policemen stood looking at Kimberlee's body, flung like a rag doll at the bottom.
"Bloody hell," said Moor. "How are we going to get a team down there?"
He turned and looked back up the stairs at Portia.
"Who is she?" he asked her.
"Kimberlee Kalder. A writer."
"A successful one?"
"Very, in the U.S. especially, but also here."
"Jealousy?"
St. Just noticed Portia seemed to have no trouble following DCI Moor's rather telegraphic mode of questioning.
"Maybe. She earned a lot, and very quickly. She was quite young and had become a multimillionaire with her first book. The rest of the writers here, nearly all of them, have toiled for years-decades-with far less success. Kimberlee also didn't go too far out of her way to ingratiate herself with the others."
"I don't know… That's a far-fetched motive for murder," said Moor.
"I think you'll find that within the culture of this group, it's not at all far-fetched," said Portia.
"But," said St. Just, speaking more to himself than the others, "why kill her here, at the conference? Rather a public choice…"
"Maybe because something happened here," said Moor.
"The award," said Portia, who proceeded to tell him about the night's dinner.
"It was an extraordinarily tactless thing for Easterbrook to do," she concluded. "There was already some feeling that his long-time writers were being neglected, chucked out, and/or replaced. And God knows, if anyone needed the ego boost of an award-not to mention thirty thousand pounds-it wasn't Kimberlee."
"Ms. De'Ath noticed something that's undoubtedly important," St. Just told Moor. "There is no means of producing light-no candlestick or lighter-on or about the victim's body. At least, so far as we can tell without moving the body. Kimberlee either came down here before the lights went out-"
"Or she came down here with someone who had a light," Moor finished for him.
"There's no handbag, either," said St. Just. "She had one at the dinner. Some small, sparkly thing like women carry in the evening."
"An evening bag," offered Portia.
"Right. An evening bag. She may just have left it in her room. She's still wearing her jewelry…"
Portia again spoke up. "You can forget robbery as a motive. I never saw her with jewelry of any value. What she had on tonight-still has on-is costume jewelry, enameled. Of a good quality, but not real jewelry. That's a nice watch she has on, though, and she's still wearing it."
DCI Moor, who only just now seemed to wonder how this civilian had injected herself so thoroughly into his case, turned deliberately to St. Just to ask his next question:
"Did she generally carry anything else worth stealing? Large sums of money?"
"I wouldn't know," said St. Just. "I have to agree with Ms. De'Ath here. It doesn't look to me as if she had anything on her worth stealing, apart from the watch. And wearing that dress, it's unlikely in the extreme she could have anything hidden on her person."
DCI Moor scratched at the slight growth of white stubble on his chin. "The storm is going to help us," he said at last.
"How so?"
"The road was near to impassible earlier tonight. It was really chucking it down, and for ages. No one came here by car, I'd wager. We barely made it through ourselves."
"You are thinking one of the staff, or one of the guests in the hotel…?"
Moor nodded. "And you agree?"
"Someone could have come in on foot through the woods, over the grounds… but it's doubtful," said St. Just. "For one thing, there's too big a chance of being seen-nearly all the rooms have a prospect. They'd be soaking, besides."
Moor nodded.
"We're lucky in other ways. Sometimes we have the haar this time of year, working to the advantage of the villains. Making them harder to spot, you see."
At St. Just's questioning look, he explained:
"It's a fog-dense as foam, it is-that comes in from the North Sea. You could hide your granny inside the haar and she'd not be found for days. Who is here besides the crime writers?"
"The staff, mainly," said St. Just. "Lord Easterbrook took over the place for the writers, exclusively. He also invited a couple of writers' agents, and a publicist."
"How many people are we talking about?" asked Moor.
"The Easterbrook party? About ten or eleven of them."
St. Just turned to Portia for confirmation.
"And someone brought Quentin Swope, the reporter," she said. "He got stuck here by the storm, I guess-by the drawbridge's not working. I saw him sitting with the group watching the telly just before we lost the lights. Oh, and Rachel Twalley, from the conference-she left earlier, with a contingent of Edinburgh nobs. Donna Doone, the hotel's event coordinator, closed the drawbridge behind them. Lucky escape for Rachel, that."
"How well do you know these people?" asked Moor of St. Just.
"I've known them for just a few days, during the conference."
"And you?" Moor asked Portia. "How well, for example, did you know this Kimberlee? Can someone spell that for me, by the way?"
Portia complied, adding, "I knew her hardly at all. She was on the train with me from London. Friendly… to a point. But she slept most of the way, so there was little time for confidences. Actually, I didn't gather the impression Kimberlee was given to confidences. As to the rest of them: We've all more or less bumped into each other before on the circuit-seen each other at conferences and things."
"But not Kimberlee?"
She shrugged.
"Kimberlee was what you call an overnight sensation. I don't know how well the others knew her. Kimberlee and I share, or shared, an agent-Ninette Thomson-who may know her fairly well. At least she may have known her for some time-not quite the same thing, is it?"
Portia added that they were all scheduled to leave tomorrow.
"Today, rather. Sunday," she said.
"No," said Moor.
St. Just also shook his head. "No one goes anywhere for the foreseeable future."
Moor turned to St. Just, indicating the stairs.
"Come along, Cambridge. You may as well lend a hand so long as you're here."
St. Just hesitated. "I have virtually no authority here. You know that."
"Of course. None, really."
This last came out as "noon rally" to Portia's ears. She looked mystified for a moment, then St. Just saw the penny drop, and smiled. He had a sudden nostalgic turn for "Agnes the Cook"-an ancient, ribald Scottish lady in a nursing home in Cornwall who had been a key witness in a case of his the year before.
"But then," Moor went on, "the suspects won't know that until it's too late. I say what goes on in my patch and I say you're helping us with inquiries-I'll square it with your Super, never fear. And you being a Sasannach is something I'm willing to overlook. Have to make allowances sometimes, you know."
This last was said with a smile to take the edge off-barely. St. Just knew it wasn't worth arguing that he was hardly a Saxon. He lived in England and that was enough as far as Moor was concerned.
St. Just suddenly did not fancy any lag's chances up against Ian Moor. There was more going on behind that jolly Father Christmas-mustachioed facade than met the eye.
For that reason, he didn't bother to ask why Moor didn't first have him, St. Just, checked out for rogue-cop tendencies: He felt certain the Scottish detective was already planning to do just that.
By now they had reached the top of the bottle dungeon stairs and entered the hallway. They could see across the lobby and through to the drawbridge where, in time-honored fashion, three workmen were standing around chatting, presumably "supervising" the work of the one doing the actual work, a man displaying an impressive buttock cleavage at the top of his jeans. Repairs on the drawbridge mechanism were apparently continuing.
One of the hotel's maids appeared near the reception area, handily carrying a tray that had to be half her body weight. Apparently the beleaguered guests were to be provided tea to calm their nerves. She-St. Just recalled her name as Florie-seemed to register the same workman's phenomenon; as she passed down the hallway, St. Just heard her fume, "Lazy sods. Three women would have had that fixed already-but for this we bring in reinforcements." She strode toward the drawbridge as if to drop off this opinion on her way.
Moor turned to St. Just.
"Who knows? With your help, maybe we'll all get to go home just that wee bit sooner."
"All except for the murderer," said St. Just.
"Yes." Again, the twinkle that was nearly a wink. Moor did seem to be a man who enjoyed his work. "Except for the murderer."