They left Lord Easterbrook still surveying the shell of his publishing empire, hoping something could be rebuilt from the ruins.
Outside the rain had stopped, and a hesitant sun peered over clouds shot through with quicksilver. St. Just announced he was going for a walk, to catch the freshened air.
"I've seen enough plaid to last me a few days," he said.
"Where are you going?" Moor asked, as he and Kittle headed back up to the incident room. "Thailand?"
St. Just first bundled against the weather in an overcoat, a somewhat crumpled Borsalino hat, and a blue and white Peterhouse scarf, among the most ancient items in his ancient wardrobe. His clothing had been chosen, in fact, almost entirely by the females in his life: mother, then sister, then wife. As all but his sister were now deceased he found it impossible to throw or give away the gifts that had been chosen for him with such care.
Besides which, he had the male's instinctive fear and dread of department stores. He'd probably be buried in these clothes, he reflected.
The wind of the previous night had vacuumed the cold air clean, but the rain had released a lingering odor of decaying leaves and undergrowth, mingled with the muddy scent of the disturbed riverbed. Twigs and fallen branches littered the ground. St. Just was wandering the denuded gardens at the back of the castle when he spotted Winston Chatley, defying St. Just's earlier request that everyone stay indoors, sitting swathed in Gore-Tex on a stone bench by the kitchen garden wall. He held a small notebook balanced on one knee and was scribbling so furiously he didn't at first notice the policeman's approach. St. Just was loathe to interrupt such a show of industry, but reminded himself this was a murder investigation, not a writers' retreat.
He watched Chatley surreptitiously for a moment. As a suspect, he had a lot to recommend him, St. Just felt, if only going by appearances. Winston was probably a bit over six feet tall, but his stork-like limbs sprouting from a smallish, narrow torso were what gave the impression of vast height. His features could be kindly described as craggy, his face carved into great hillocks and valleys, with a large overhanging brow. It was a face crowded with bones, reminding one of the skull beneath. As St. Just drew closer, he could see deep lines etched into the man's forehead. He looked like a crime writer of a particularly sinister sort.
Then Winston spotted St. Just and smiled. The illusion of menace disappeared. The man looked as approachable as a puppy.
Or was that the illusion?
"I say," said St. Just. "Terribly sorry to interrupt you, but needs must."
Winston carefully closed his notebook and tucked his pen in the inside pocket of his jacket. St. Just noticed the worn lining of the garment as he did so.
"Not at all, Inspector. I realize you have a job to do. And the sooner you do it, the sooner we all can leave."
"A man after my own heart," said St. Just. "Would that all suspects so easily made that connection."
St. Just sat beside him.
"I think it won't be much longer," he said. He had no idea if that were true but it sounded reassuring and competent. St. Just had a vast fund of platitudes to help put suspects at ease. And Winston, he had to remind himself, was a suspect. Kimberlee Kalder's success had put all the other, more established writers' noses out of joint. He'd seen dafter motives for murder.
"You told one of the policemen yesterday that a group of you staying here at the castle broke off from the rest for a tete-a-tete, so to speak, on the night of Kimberlee's murder."
"That's right. It wasn't exactly by prearrangement or anything. It was that the noise level in the library was bound to get a little louder with each round. I speak from long professional experience of crime writers gathered en masse. Football hooligans tearing apart a stadium are far quieter and generally better behaved. So we four decided to escape to the oasis of the sitting room. You know, that little area at the front of the castle where they serve afternoon tea."
"And you four were… remind me…"
"Tom and his wife Edith. B. A. King, the agent or publicist or whatever he is, decided to join in-uninvited. Odious little toad. Quentin Swope flitted in and out-mostly in. Looking for something scurrilous to write about, I imagine. He was in fact just packing up to leave for the night when we lost the lights."
"So except for Quentin, you all can alibi each other?"
Winston shifted slightly, turning to face him.
"Oh, I say. This is a first. I've been writing about alibis for years and now I'm expected to provide one myself. That's jolly goo-oh, sorry. I do realize the matter is serious. Well, the answer to your question is essentially yes, sort of. But to be truthful, they weren't all there all the time. People drifted in and out, to the powder room and so on. There was a lot of traipsing back and forth for drinks, since the bar, as you know, is in the library."
"And what did you talk about?"
"What writers always talk about if left unattended for two seconds. Money. Royalties. Foreign rights-the sweetest words in the English language, those. Amazon.com rankings. Barnes and Noble rankings. Bookscan. Agents. Editors. The Imminent Death of Publishing as We Know It."
"And you talked for how long?"
Winston considered. "I'm not entirely sure. The conversation eventually moved on to a rather remorseless narrative from Tom of his literary achievements. That seemed to go on for hours-simply hours. The storm reached a high pitch while we were there. You'll recall, of course, that it was an absolute corker of a storm. Gale-force or worse. I enjoyed it immensely, I must say-the sensation of being snug inside whilst nature beat itself senseless against the thick stone walls. Anyway, we'd all had a lot to drink so anything like an exact accounting is nigh impossible. We were all blowing off steam after the buildup of the past few days."
"There was a lot of tension?" St. Just prompted.
"I should jolly well say there was a lot of tension. What was Easterbrook thinking, bringing his authors together only to treat one like the golden-haired child and the rest of us like darkling orphans? That bonus cheque-a monstrously bad idea. I shouldn't be surprised if some of his authors defected."
"So Kimberlee was unpopular with the others?"
"Yes. Stupendously so. Not entirely her fault, as I've said. It was Easterbrook who put the match to the tinder, deliberately or otherwise."
"I see," said St. Just. His guess, from the little he knew of Easterbrook, was that a sense of noblesse oblige did not constitute a large part of his makeup. He might never stop to consider how others might take his actions. He just acted. "So, what else did you talk about?"
"Really, just books. Publishing. The American market. I thought I might pick up some tips or contacts from Tom, expand my sales-and-marketing horizons."
"And did you?"
"Not really. Tom labors in a different field altogether from mine-the spy thriller. And even if we were in the same field, I doubt he'd go out of his way to help a competitor."
That had the ring of truth, certainly, from St. Just's observations of the man. "So, can you remember anything else you talked about?"
"Not about Kimberlee. Not how she had to be done in or got out of the way or anything like that. I don't think her name came up apart from a few snippy remarks early on about the bonus cheque Easterbrook gave her."
"You say there was a lot of to and fro for drinks and so on. I'll ask again: Can you be at all more specific as to times?"
Winston paused, cradling his chin in one large hand as he canvassed the previous night's events.
"B. A. King and I were in the library for about the first half an hour. Maybe more. Then we both fetched new drinks and trotted over to the sitting room. Tom, Edith, and Quentin were already there. We talked awhile, then I volunteered to fetch a round for all of us-as I say, we all needed a refill fairly quickly. So, add another half hour? Tom and B. A.-whatever does that stand for?-went to the gent's, separately, and Edith went to powder her nose. But it's not exactly the kind of occasion that makes one whip out one's notebook and jot down the time. I'm afraid you'll have to ask them what they remember. I left them to it some time before eleven and as I was headed upstairs, we lost the lights. I went to find candles-well, you know all this. I left Portia as she was going downstairs to fetch a book. The darkness and the drink were making me drowsy-I thought I saw Kimberlee on the stairs, you know, but now I doubt the evidence of my own eyes; it was more an impression, really. In the dark… now I'm not so sure. I can only say I saw a whitish form-that blonde hair, and the white dress. Anyway, when I called to her she didn't reply."
"Go on."
"Then Magretta sounded the alarm-this had to have been close to or spot on midnight-and we all scurried out to see what was the matter. Everyone seemed to come from all directions then. It's impossible to be clear about everyone's locations at that point."
St. Just sat absorbing this narrative, wondering how much of it could be corroborated. He was going to have the devil's own time sorting out everyone's whereabouts the night of the murder.
"I gather from the tenor of your questions," Winston added, "that we are indeed suspects? You've ruled out anyone on the staff, for example? Or an interloper?"
"We've ruled out nothing," said St. Just. "But of course if you were in the castle that night, you're a suspect."
"Only if I could walk through walls, Inspector."
Nonsense, thought St. Just. The bottle dungeon was less than thirty seconds away from the sitting room-a sprint down the hall and across the lobby. Any of them could have killed Kimberlee under the pretext of nose powdering. The lobby was vast and sparsely furnished, so there was a real risk of being seen, but still…
"You were in your room until the body was found?" he asked.
"Yes. Funny thing, that…"
"How so?"
"It was all just so-I don't know… dramatic. The lights, the scream at midnight. It was like being in a movie."
St. Just looked down at the closed notebook Winston held in his hand.
"Notes for a future book?" he asked.
"I'm afraid so." Winston grimaced apologetically. "Actually, I was thinking in terms of a screenplay. It's the writer's curse to take absolutely anything that happens and turn it into grist for the mill. Being involved in an actual murder investigation is too good an opportunity to pass up. Sorry-what an awful way to phrase that, but I'm sure you must know what I mean. I'm also working on the timeline you asked us for but it's going to be damn-all use, I'm afraid-as you've just seen."
"How is it you started to write mysteries for a living, Mr. Chatley?" St. Just asked. "What did you do before you became a writer?"
"Winston, please. I was always a writer, I just wasn't paid for it the first fifteen years or so. Being a bartender was my day job. Or my night job, as it were. At a place in London called the Serengeti."
"It took fifteen years for you to sell a book?"
Winston shook his head bleakly. "Well, it took fifteen years for me to make enough money from my writing to keep a cat alive. The writing bug-it's a virus. There is no cure. And sometimes you write whatever anyone will pay you for."
"I gather you've done fairly well in recent years."
Winston flapped his hand in a see-saw motion, noncommittally. This time, something like a smile lit up his sober countenance. In his Eeyoreish way, Winston was an appealing character.
"I'm not rich or even comfortably off, but I was able to quit the day/night job, and that was always the goal. I have a parent who needs my attention, you see. In that regard, it's worked out well. There is no other job that offers the freedom and mobility of writing. And, as I say, any other job is unthinkable once you've been bitten."
"Hmm." St. Just felt he'd heard mania described in much the same way. And here he was with a whole castle of these Type-A, driven personalities.
"One further question," he said. "Did you have any impression Kimberlee had paired up with someone on this trip?"
A shake of the head. "Some kind of fling, you mean? It wouldn't be uncommon on this kind of jaunt, but no, I hadn't noticed in particular. She seemed to spend a lot of time with Jay, but I rather thought she was just buttering him up, for whatever purposes of her own. I assumed those purposes were professional rather than personal. But the fact is, I avoided her where I could. I know she was charming, but it was lost on me, I'm afraid."
St. Just couldn't but agree. But was Winston telling the truth there-or did he realize it was safer for the police to believe in his indifference?
Not long afterward, St. Just bade farewell and left Winston in the garden, his unhandsome head again bent to the notebook open on his knees.