A Little Class on Murder Read online

The scent came first. The unmistakable fragrance of lilac, clear and sharp and sweet.

  Annie’s hands tightened in a death grip on the sides of the lectern. It couldn’t be. Surely it couldn’t—

  It could.

  Laurel swept through the doorway, beaming, of course. She was a vision of ethereal loveliness, her golden hair shining like a cap of spun moonlight, her patrician features Grecian in their perfection, her deep blue eyes brimming with good cheer and happiness and a kind of childlike delight that no one (in Annie’s experience) had ever been able to resist. She moved, as always, so lightly that she might have been a ballerina in flight. Her costume was fetching in its simplicity, an oversize pink shirt, white cotton trousers, and pink canvas sneakers. A pink-and-green-striped cotton carryall hung from one shoulder. Obviously, this was Laurel’s vision of coed stylishness. She could have passed for fourteen.

  “Annie, my sweet, it’s so marvelous to be with you again. My dear, I’ve missed you. Ingrid is a dear, of course, keeping me supplied and offering so many tips. But it isn’t the same thing as being here at your feet.” An impish smile. “Metaphorically speaking. To follow your mind in its dogged path—no, no, that isn’t quite what I mean. But you are so orderly. First things first; a place for everything, everything in its place; the early bird gets the worm. Though I’ve always thought a hurried breakfast so often causes indigestion. But your passion for order is wonderful, admirable. It will make you such a good instructor.”

  A waft of lilac and the touch of Laurel’s lips on her cheek, swift as a hummingbird.

  “Now, I’ll just take my place to one side. I won’t be in your way. Dear Maxwell thought behind-the-scenes support the very best approach. But I say family is family and where is one’s place but beside the family in the midst of new and challenging endeavors.” An ecstatic sigh, a gentle wave of pink-tipped fingernails, and Laurel drifted to a seat at the far end of the front row. With a final cheery, encouraging smile, she slipped gracefully into the chair, dropping the woven carryall at her feet. It gaped open and was revealed as a book bag, chock-full of crisp new paperbacks: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Man in Lower Ten, and Whose Body?

  Laurel here. Laurel here! Annie stared after her. Then the back of her neck prickled. That sound. That thump behind her!

  It took every vestige of will to turn her head to face the door to the hallway.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Quick, purposeful, decisive thumps.

  The ebony cane with its black rubber tip poked around the comer, followed by its mistress.

  The tiny old lady stood motionless in the doorway for a long moment, staring at the room, the other occupants, and then at Annie. She had raisin-dark eyes luminous with intelligence. They were deeply set in a yellowed, crinkled face that looked like parchment. A tall red velvet hat with a yellow feather perched atop her shaggy silver hair. Her heavy silk dress was red, too, so dark a red it rivaled blood. Tiny feet shod in high-top leather shoes peeked from beneath the full skirt.

  “Miss Dora,” Annie gasped.

  A cold, formal nod and the silver hair shimmered like cirrus clouds across a winter sky. The cane thumped on the wooden floor. Miss Dora Brevard settled, as if to a birthright, in the chair directly in front of the speaker’s lectern, sitting straight as a ramrod, feet firmly planted on the floor, wrinkled hands tight on the silver knob of her cane.

  “Received the course announcement. It said—” Miss Dora fumbled in a crocheted receptacle, drew out an old-fashioned pair of pince-nez, clipped them to her bony nose, then rustled further to haul out a yellow mimeographed sheet. “ ‘Mrs. Annie Laurance Darling, proprietor of the Broward’s Rock mystery bookstore, Death on Demand, will present at ten A.M. on Tuesdays and Thursdays a course on The Three Grande Dames of the Mystery.’ ” She shoved the sheet into her bag, removed the pince-nez, and demanded, “Who?”

  “Who? Who what?” Annie asked faintly.

  “The Three Grande Dames. Who are they?” Those obsidian eyes glittered with irritation.

  Laurel’s husky voice, ever-so-slightly chiding, flowed across the room like golden syrup. “Now, now, now. We must all be patient. Dear Annie will share in her own good time. It doesn’t do to hurry young people. And emanations of an irritable nature do have such a damping effect upon nervous, high-strung creatures.”

  “Perfectly reasonable question,” Miss Dora snapped, eyeing Laurel with the enthusiasm of Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover for his long-suffering assistant, Sergeant MacGregor. “Don’t believe in pussyfooting around.”

  Annie was just ready to intervene (after all, she didn’t need Laurel defending her—she was not a nervous, high-strung creature—and Miss Dora’s question was perfectly reasonable) when her glance froze.

  Oh God.

  The sight framed in the doorway was almost too much for her to accept. Laurel was bad enough. Miss Dora would cast a pall on an Addams Family tea party.

  But this—

  It wasn’t as though she didn’t recognize the costume: a large gray flannel skirt with a droopy hem, a full blouse with a lacy panel down the front, a shapeless rust-colored cardigan, lisle stockings, extremely sensible brown shoes, and hair bobbing in springy sausage-roll curls.

  “Henny,” she moaned.

  Henny Brawley gave her a reproachful look and pulled an apple from her skirt pocket. “Dear girl, here!” and tossed it. “Full of nutrition. Just the thing for a woman’s intuition.”

  The latter hint, of course, was to prevent Annie from the embarrassment of not recognizing Christie’s irrepressible sleuth and alter ego, Ariadne Oliver.

  Annie was too dispirited to reply. She caught the apple, and stared from Henny, dropping happily into the far left front seat, to Miss Dora, just opening her mouth, to Laurel, who gave a reassuring nod.

  The bell rang.

  The boy with the faintly pink hair scooted inside, kicked the wooden chock free, and headed for the back of the room as the door slowly eased shut.

  Her class had assembled: Pink Hair, a massive hulk who had to be a football player, three middle-aged women, an elderly man in an orange jogger’s warm-up, a woman in her forties.

  No surprises there.

  The door burst open and a young woman with a dark frown and two improbably long, black braids stamped inside. Oh God. Yes, that was an Elton John T-shirt. Maybe she had a whole closet of them. Her arrival would have been a downer, Annie recalling her outburst about mysteries, but her inclusion in the class faded to insignificance as Annie contemplated three particular students. Never had she envisioned spending a morning discussing the mystery with Laurel, Henny, Miss Dora, and assorted strangers.

  She was committed.

  She would pretend the front row wasn’t there.

  Fixing her eyes resolutely on the boy with the faintly pink hair in the back row, Annie cleared her throat. “Good morning. I’m Annie Laurance Darling. I’m not a teacher by trade. I’m a bookseller and a collector. I specialize in mysteries. In this class, we are going to be discussing The Three Grande Dames of the Mystery.” At her unwavering regard, Pink Hair’s ears began to pinken, too.

  The black cane thumped imperiously against the floor.

  Annie reluctantly looked down. “Miss Dora?”

  “Who?”

  “Now, I’m sure that Annie, in her very thoughtful way, has prepared this morning’s presentation,” Laurel began melodiously.

  “Ladies, ladies, thank you,” Annie said swiftly. “We shall study Mary Roberts Rinehart, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy Sayers.”

  “L,” Miss Dora rumbled.

  It was hard to shock Laurel, but her gasp was clearly audible. “Hell? I must say, I am surprised at such an unwarranted response, when poor, dear Annie is doing her very best to offer writers appealing to almost all readers.”

  “L! L! L!” Miss Dora screeched. “Dorothy L. Sayers. Drove her mad if you left out the initial. Dorothy Leigh Sayers, after her mother’s family. Broke a contract once with the BBC bec
ause they left the L out of her name. L. L. L,” she repeated venomously.

  Gesturing vigorously with an apple, Henny demanded, “Good show, but what about P. D. James? Ruth Rendell? Mary Higgins Clark? Elizabeth Peters? Phoebe Atwood Taylor? Charlotte MacLeod? Dorothy Salisbury Davis? Mignon G. Eberhart? Phyllis Whitney? Daphne du Maurier? Christianna Brand? Josephine Tey? Patricia Highsmith? Mary Stewart? Victoria Holt? Helen MacInnes? Margaret Millar? Mabel Seeley? Dorothy B. Hughes? Amanda Cross?”

  Miss Dora got into the spirit of Henny’s inquiry, punctuating each name with a vigorous thump of her cane.

  The boy with the pink hair silently rose and, back to the wall, began to sidle toward the closed door.

  “Of the Golden Age,” Annie bellowed valiantly. She gripped the lectern. “These three great women mystery writers each contributed substantially to the mystery, and it is upon their foundation that many subsequent great writers have built. But it is they who led the way.”

  “Footprints in the sands of time,” Laurel cooed, approvingly.

  “Before I pass out the reading list,” Annie said hastily, “and a roll sheet for everyone to sign, I would like to give a brief sketch of the lives and work of our three great—”

  The hall door swung in again. Annie flicked a sidelong glance and recognized the square-faced, snub-nosed, wiry new editor of The Crier. He ducked his head apologetically, and turned toward the back of the room.

  Annie spoke a little louder. “Mary Ella Roberts Rinehart was born August twelfth, 1876 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in very modest circumstances. Her father, Tom, was a dreamer and an inventor. Her mother, Cornelia, was an intensely practical woman. Rinehart was destined to become the highest paid author in America.”

  The editor dropped into an aisle seat midway toward the back.

  “Dorothy Leigh Sayers, the only child of a Church of England minister and his wife, was born July thirteenth, 1893 in Oxford, an appropriate beginning for a woman with a brilliant mind and a scholar’s quest for truth. When she focused that intelligence upon the detective novel, she created an immortal sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, and enhanced the status of the crime book to that of the novel of manners.

  “The greatest detective story writer of all time, Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller Christie, was born September fifteenth, 1890 in Torquay, the daughter of an American father of inherited wealth and an English mother. Although all three authors continue to sell very well today, Christie is the reigning queen of the mystery. No one has ever surpassed Christie in brilliance of plotting.”

  Lordy, how she loved to talk about Agatha Christie. Annie smiled impartially at all the class, forgetting her determination to ignore the first row. Henny smiled back, Miss Dora elevated a sardonic eyebrow, Laurel radiated quiet pride.

  The hall door burst open.

  Annie knew the ropes. Like a minister with a wailing child in the congregation or an actor with a restless audience, she ignored the interruption. As a drama instructor had once admonished, “Project, project, project!” She raised her voice and continued, “These three women profoundly affected the course of the mystery novel, marking the genre forever afterward with the stamp of their own individual genius. The course of true love marred by murder, an intellectual content that amazed, plotting so brilliant—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Annie paused.

  Georgia Finney, her face even paler than before, hesitated just inside the classroom and looked at Annie imploringly. The red-haired photographer carried a rolled-up newspaper in one hand. “Please forgive me for interrupting.” Her voice quivered.

  “What’s wrong?” Annie’s query was instinctive, a response to genuine distress.

  The girl swallowed convulsively and her sea green eyes swung from Annie to the student newspaper editor. “Brad, I got your class schedule. I have to talk to you. Now.”

  Kelly frowned. “I’ll be at The Crier this afternoon, just as usual. How about three o’clock? That’s a pretty good time, before everything gets hairy with our deadline.”

  Georgia thrust the rolled-up newspaper toward him. “It says there are going to be more articles. Brad, you’ve got to stop it! Please come out in the hall. We’ve got to talk.”

  Kelly’s square face looked suddenly implacable. He stared at her solemnly. “It’s the duty of a newspaper to report the truth.”

  “Brad,” her voice was low and stricken, “these are people you know. Brad, you’re hurting people. Please.”

  “No,” he said shortly, and Annie remembered how he’d faced down the giant with the synthesizer music. “These are people who are being paid with tax dollars. The public has a right to know who they are and what they do. I’m just doing my job.”

  “Are you?” Anger flushed Georgia’s cheeks. “Your job? Or Mr. Burke’s? Is he behind this?”

  “My source is confidential,” Kelly retorted quickly.

  Annie had had enough. Whatever quarrel these young people had, it wasn’t her quarrel. And this was her classroom. “Wait a minute,” she said sharply. “Mr. Kelly, you may go out in the hall for this discussion. If you please.”

  He shook his head stubbornly. “I don’t please.”

  Georgia’s face hardened. “You’re going to regret this, Brad.” In a swift and violent gesture, she ripped the newspaper in two and flung the pieces on the floor, then turned and plunged out into the hall.

  The students, including Laurel, Miss Dora, and Henny, followed her exit with fascinated eyes.

  Annie took a deep breath. “Mary Roberts Rinehart grew up on Archer Street and this street would figure—”

  Max tried to look supportive, indignant, and apologetic without assuming any faint hint of responsibility. “Sweetheart, of course I didn’t know she was coming!” Guessing and knowing were not, of course, synonymous. “This comes as a great shock to me.”

  Annie paced in front of his desk. She was obviously steamed, but the angry sparkle gave her gray eyes an unforgettable vividness and her tousled blond hair (she’d probably paced on the ferry all the way across the sound) reminded him of rumpled sheets in the morning sunlight. Not that there was anything remotely loving in the glares she was emitting right this moment. Her glances were right on a par with Bertha Cool scanning Donald Lam: suspicious, testy, and decidedly grouchy. Fortunately, the similarity ended there. Annie was still his sexy, sweet (sometimes) wife, though afternoon delight might be temporarily on hold if he couldn’t convince her of his noncomplicity in Laurel’s unheralded arrival.

  Annie stopped, braced her hands palms down on his desk, and stared at him accusingly. “Laurel said you suggested behind-the-scenes support! So what does that mean? You told her about the class? You told her?”

  “Annie, love, I was so excited at the prospect, so pleased for you. I know how much you enjoy digging out all those fascinating facts about mysteries. The ones you told me about, like Mary Roberts Rinehart basing The After House on the famous ax murders that occurred in the 1890s on that lumber schooner, the Herbert Fuller, and how her book reopened the case and resulted in freedom for the mate who’d been convicted. And Agatha Christie patterning Louise Leidner in Murder in Mesopotamia after Sir Leonard Woolley’s imperious wife, Katharine. And all the fun Dorothy Sayers—”

  “L,” Annie interrupted automatically. “Dorothy L. Sayers.”

  “—had when writing Murder Must Advertise, using her background as a copywriter at the London advertising agency of S. H. Benson’s.” He paused. Annie was nodding contentedly. “Certainly, I had the best of intentions.”

  That wasn’t the politic remark to make.

  “Good intentions!” she fumed. She resumed her pacing. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

  He received this original pronouncement in respectful silence.

  Annie shoved a hand through her sandy hair. “I can’t believe this has happened to me. My class—just a nice little class on murder, and now look what’s happened!”

  Max began to feel a trifle com
bative. After all, Laurel was a good sort. He banished to a deep recess of his mind the outcome when Laurel had engaged in activities close to the hearts of his brothers-in-law. “Well, now, Annie, really, don’t you think you’re overreacting? I know Mother can be a bit overwhelming, but she really does mean well.”

  “It isn’t just Laurel. I could cope with one. But not three!”

  “Three?”

  “Oh Max, it isn’t just your mother. Henny’s in my class, too. And Miss Dora. You remember her. She has that old house and she runs that town and everybody’s scared to death of her. She’s in there, too. And every time I really get started, one of them interrupts. Laurel coos something about love and Miss Dora thumps that damn cane, then Henny has a bright aside. Max, they’re devouring my class.”

  Not just Laurel! Max was careful not to let his relief show, but this certainly put a different face on it. “Three of them,” he exclaimed happily.

  Annie glared, and he promptly assumed a totally sympathetic expression. “Annie, that’s a damned shame.”

  “Isn’t it just,” she said bitterly. “And if that’s not bad enough—a free spirit, an old bat, and a mystery nut—all hell’s breaking loose over the college newspaper and I might as well have recited GNP statistics for the rest of the class period. Nobody gave a damn about anything but that damn student newspaper.”

  Max seized on the diversion. “What student newspaper? What happened?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. And I can tell you this, Max Darling, I’m not going to have a single thing to do with any of it!”

  7

  Annie breathed deeply of the cool November air. A light breeze stirred the Spanish moss in the live oak limbs and rustled the fronds of the sturdy palmettos. Their footsteps echoed on the wooden verandah. They had the harborside to themselves, it was so early. She squeezed Max’s hand, then darted a quick sideways glance. Max looked glum. Which was, of course, so unlike his usual pleasant, equable demeanor.

  Was it cruel and unusual punishment to roust him from the comforts of the tree house and deposit him at his office door before eight o’clock in the morning?