I helped myself to a latte from the machine and scanned the room for an empty seat. All around were groups chattering excitedly, and each new arrival was greeted by hugs. I knew no-one at the Crime Writers’ Weekend and had never felt so alone. I spotted a spare seat at a corner table, where an older woman was absorbed in her phone.
‘Is anyone sitting here?’ I asked.
‘Not unless they are invisible,’ was the curt reply.
‘May I join you then? I’m Abbie,’ I said with a smile.
‘I can read,’ replied the other woman, looking at my name badge.
‘Of course, and you are Jane I see,’ I continued. ‘It’s my first time here and I’m so looking forward to hearing Felicity Fanshawe tomorrow. I’ve read all her books and I’m hoping she will sign her latest one for me. So clever to change genre. I think it’s her best one yet.’
‘Do you really?’ Jane walked out of the room leaving a half-drunk mug of coffee.
I shrank into the corner, but Emily, a member of the welcome committee, came over.
‘Don’t mind Jane,’ she began. ‘She’s got a chip on her shoulder because she’s never been published.’
‘Well neither have I.’
‘Yet,’ added Emily with a smile, and soon we were chatting like old friends.
‘Are you coming to the Flappers evening?’ asked Emily.
‘Yes, I’m so looking forward to it. I’ve hired a costume. I love the twenties music and of course the Charleston.’
I finished my coffee and went back to my room to change. It was halfway along a corridor in Lake House, a functional sixties rectangular block of no architectural merit, at odds with the beautiful old manor house I had just left. I put on my fringed blue dress, long beads, matching headdress, and long gloves and practiced the Charleston in the full-length mirror. As I opened my door, Felicity was emerging from her room along the corridor looking very glamorous in a shocking pink sequinned dress. with a feathered headdress and a matching feather boa.
I enjoyed the evening, chatting and drinking more than I was used to and danced with a young man called Steve, who was a reporter from the local paper. I avoided Jane, who was dressed all in black with a matching feather boa. Felicity left early, saying she had to look through her talk for the next day and Jane left shortly afterwards.
I slept soundly and was just coming out of the bathroom the next morning when I heard a piercing scream. I opened the door to see the cleaner running along the corridor and speaking to the other cleaner in some Eastern European language. They both abandoned their trollies and hurried across to the manor house. As I went to breakfast, I noticed a black feather on the stairs.
The main hall was full, and there was an excited buzz, waiting for Felicity Fanshawe. We waited and waited. After ten minutes the chairman came to the rostrum, looking pale and nervous.
‘I am sorry to inform you that Felicity will not be giving her talk. Lake House will be closed for the day, but all facilities will be open in the Manor House. This is all I can tell you for now, but please stay on site and report anything unusual you have seen or heard.’
As we made our way to the bar, everyone was stunned and speculating why the main speaker was missing.
‘Perhaps she’s got Covid or a hangover,’ suggested Steve.
‘No, I noticed she hardly drank anything and left early. I hope she’s not ill, although I did notice an ambulance in the car park outside Lake House after breakfast,’ I told him.
‘And there’s a police car there. Why would they close all of Lake House if she was ill?’
The police set up an interview room in the main lounge and questioned all the 100 guests, examining photos of the previous night’s event. It emerged that the cleaner had knocked on the door of Felicity’s bedroom and, hearing no response, had entered and found Felicity lying on the floor motionless. I had heard nothing apart from the cleaner’s scream but remembered the black feather on the stairs. Only one person had worn a black feather boa.
As Jane was taken to the police station, she called out, ‘She stole my book!’
Well, I had lent books to people who had not returned them, but surely that was not a motive for murder. At the police station, Jane confessed all under questioning.
‘I had written my first crime novel. I knew Felicity from school, and she was already an established writer, so I sent it to her for a critique. She sent it back with a note that it needed a complete rewrite: the plot was too thin, the characters were not believable, and the dialogue stilted. I hadn’t the heart to rewrite something I had struggled with for so long, so I put it in a drawer. Felicity had already had ten romantic novels published, so I was interested to read her first crime novel. Imagine my surprise and anger when it was my book, almost word for word. She had only changed the title and names. It became a best seller and won the Agatha Christie prize. I came to the crime weekend to confront her. I followed her to her room and asked for half the royalties or I would go to the press and expose her. She laughed in my face and said nobody would believe me, a complete unknown. I grabbed her feather boa and pulled hard, and she fell to the floor, banging her head on the metal bedpost. I hadn’t meant to kill her, just frighten her.’
Jane got ten years for manslaughter. In her defence she produced her original manuscript, complete with Felicity’s damning comments. Steve reported on the trial, appeared on the national news, and was promoted to chief reporter. In prison Jane ran the prison library and wrote a series of crime novels, which became best sellers. I wrote romantic novels published by Felicity’s publisher with great success, but I never again attended the Crime Writers’ weekend.
About the author
June Webber has written stories for CafeLit, some of which have been included in The Best of CafeLit 11 and 13. She attends Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, where she had a play performed. She is a member of two writing groups and one poetry group. She lives in Dorset and is a great grandmother.
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