Murder Takes the High Road(60)
“It was rougher than I expected,” I admitted.
Alison, still brooding over the spoiled game, said, “Ordinarily, by the time we get to the ferry, everyone is totally engaged and going crazy trying to figure out what’s happening. It’s like a team building exercise. And having shared that experience, it makes the rest of the tour brilliant.”
“Anyway, I thought it was a lot of fun,” I said. Which was true, especially in hindsight.
“You were pretty much the only person playing.” Alison suddenly laughed. “Oh my God. That was priceless when you snuck into Rose’s room. Hamish and I were rolling. We had a bet on that one.”
“You were watching?”
“Of course we were watching! I knew you’d go for it. Librarians are always the most proactive about getting to the bottom of the mystery. And teachers, of course, but you can’t count on all teachers.”
On that cryptic note, she turned away leaving me to wonder how many people had been spying on me that night and whether there were peepholes or miniature cameras or periscopes or whatever the hell installed at the Ben Wyvis Manor House Hotel. I sincerely hoped no one had been peering through the keyhole of our room—or that no film of any of my exploits existed.
Dessert was served. Toasted coconut ice cream with raspberry sauce. It was sweet and tart and delicious. Drambuie and other liqueurs circulated, but I stuck to ice cream. I’d had plenty of wine already, and my sense of disquiet persisted.
That said, by the time the meal was finished, Vanessa seemed to have relaxed a little. We adjourned to the library on the first floor.
As I walked through the carved double doors, my immediate thought was that this was where Vanessa lived. It just felt different from the rest of the castle.
The room was enormous, lined floor to ceiling with books as well as beautiful objets d’art. Not the curiosities and kooky knickknacks that decorated the halls and guest rooms. No stuffed animals or phony family portraits. Genuinely lovely pieces of sea glass and stone sat on low tables or behind the glass panes of the bookshelves.
I knew city libraries that weren’t as big as that wonderful room, and I’d have been delighted to simply prowl the shelves to my heart’s delight. As it was, we had only a few minutes to mill while waiting for Vanessa to reappear.
There was fiction, old and new. Vanessa’s books, of course. Every edition in every translation. There were leather-bound copies of classics as well as the latest bestsellers. And nonfiction. In fact, it looked to me like Vanessa owned every conceivable reference book a writer might need. Books on procedure and poisons and places and people. History books, map books, books on weapons and wardrobe, opera and organizations.
There was also a sizable section on true crime. Including books that explored in detail the murder of Donald Kresley. I knew, because they sat on the shelves of the library where I worked. I had read most of them—and struggled with the content. How strange must it be to read books about your own life? Especially given that the accounts were not flattering, not kind, in some cases not even accurate.
And wasn’t it even stranger to own those books? To keep them on her own shelves? Wouldn’t she want to forget?
Maybe in choosing to shelve them she was making a conscious, symbolic gesture to accept and move on? To take a clinical view?
I had no idea. With most writers I’ve met, you have a sense of their character, their inner self from their work. The work revealed more about the person than the person sometimes knew. But I had read every word Vanessa had published, and the woman remained an enigma.
At last I took a seat next to John on one of the velvet sofas. He gave me a wry smile as though he knew what I was thinking. Well, it was what everyone except John was thinking: that it was incredible, unbelievable to sit in this lovely room in a real Scottish castle and know that we were about to hear one of the most famous writers in the world talk about her work. This was what we had traveled halfway across the world for.
The evening’s planned event was a reading by Vanessa from her newest manuscript, to be followed by a Q&A session. The library had been set up as though for filming or giving lectures, and once we were all seated, Vanessa took her place on the low platform, seating herself in the red-and-gold brocade chair that ever so vaguely resembled a throne.
At dinner she had been distant and removed, but when she rejoined us in the library, she seemed more as she had when she had greeted us that afternoon. She spoke at length about her plans to put together a writing retreat on the island. The old summer cottages would provide lodging for twenty hand-picked aspiring authors from economically challenged backgrounds.
We all applauded this admirable scheme, then she read for a few minutes from her latest book Buried Secrets.
“I run to the gate, fumbling with the lock. Heavy, rusted chunk of metal like a dented steel heart beneath my slippery, shaking fingers. Nearly there, nearly gone, just another moment... I hear the footstep behind me, the soft whispery slide of sole on wet grass. I push against the gate, crying.”
In the prologue a teenage runaway discovers a dismembered body in a midnight graveyard—and is herself then discovered by the man who dumped the body. It was haunting and quietly horrific, but then so much of Vanessa’s work was, in its lowkey way, horrific. Murder was never fun in her stories.
And yet this murder weekend was a fun, even playful idea. Clearly there were two sides to Vanessa. Which was the dominant?