He turned to smile at a twittery woman who was tugging at his elbow. “Tell me,” she said, through Bambi eyelashes, “where do you get your ideas for a poem?”
An elegant woman also bent on speaking to him had overheard this remark. “Poets get ideas everywhere,” she snapped. “That’s what makes them poets!” Having thus frightened the church bulletin versifier out of the fold, the dark-eyed young woman offered her hand to John Clay Hawkins. “My name is Samari,” she purred. “I also write verse.”
“You must meet Carter Jute,” Hawkins murmured, recognizing an example of his colleague’s taste in women.
The woman ignored his ploy. “I especially wanted to speak to you. I have found the ranks of scholarly poetry to be rather a closed circle”-she glanced over at Jess Scarberry and shuddered delicately-“with good reason, perhaps. But I do think I have a special gift, and I’d like you to read my work and to suggest some places that I could send it.”
As often as this trap had sprung shut on him, John Clay Hawkins had not yet devised a foolproof way to get out of it. He tried his first tactic: the Aw Shucks Maneuver. “Oh, I just buy Poet’s Market every year, and send ’em on out to whoever seems to like my sort of work,” he said modestly, studying the tops of his shoes.
“Yes, but you’re a name,” Samari persisted. “I’m not. It would really help if you’d recommend it. Then I could say that you told me to send it to them.”
Hawkins studied the jut of Connie Maria Samari’s jaw, and the sharklike glitter of her eyes, and he recognized the Type Three Poet, the Lady Praying Mantis. In relationships she eats her mate alive, and professionally, she is as singleminded as Attila the Hun. Struggling would only prolong and embitter the encounter. Worst of all, he actually had to look at her work. A simple “Send it to Bob at Whistlepig Review” would not satisfy her. She wanted a diagnosis based on a reading. “Well, bring it along later,” he sighed. “I’ll be in my room-406-after eleven. I’ll look at it then.”
As she moved away in search of other prey, Hawkins remembered that he had also promised to have drinks with Jute, Snowfield, and Scarberry after eleven, and he had promised interviews or consultations with two other novices. Fortunately, Hawkins was a night person, and his lecture wasn’t until eleven the next morning. Surely, he thought, there must be quicker forms of martyrdom.
Rose Hanelon, who went to bed with the chickens (exclusively), had been sound asleep for several hours when the pounding on her door called her forth from slumber. Groping for her eyeglasses and then her terry cloth bathrobe, she stumbled toward the door, propelled only by the thought of dismembering whoever she found when she opened it.
“Miss Hanelon?” An anxious Margie Collier, looking as if she’d thrown her clothes on with a pitchfork, fidgeted in the doorway. The sight of a glaring gargoyle in a dressing gown did little to calm her. “Did I wake you?” she gasped. “I mean-I thought you writers worked late at night on your manuscripts.”
“No,” said Rose between her teeth. “I’m usually out robbing graves at this hour, but it’s raining! Now what do you want?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but since you are a mystery writer, we thought-Oh, Miss Hanelon, there’s been a murder!”
“How amusing for you.” Rose started to close the door. “These little parlor games are of no interest to me, however.”
“No! Not a murder game! A real murder. Someone has killed John Clay Hawkins!”
“That is too bad,” said Rose, shaking her head sadly. “He wasn’t my first choice at all.”
Eventually Margie Collier’s urgency persuaded Rose that the matter was indeed serious, and her next reaction was to ask why they had bothered to wake her about it, instead of calling the local police. “They aren’t here yet. Besides, we thought they might need some help,” said Margie. “The people at this writers’ conference are hardly the criminal types they’re used to.”
“No, I suppose not. They’re the criminal types I’m used to.” She stifled a yawn. “All right. Give me ten minutes to get dressed. Oh, you might as well tell me about it while I do. Save time. What happened?”
Margie sat down on the bed, and modestly fixed her eyes at a point on the ceiling while she recited her narrative. “About midnight, a woman named Samari went to Dr. Hawkins’s room to show him her manuscript-”
“I’ve never heard it called that before-” Rose called from the bathroom.
“She’s a poetess.” Margie’s tone was reproachful. “She knocked, and found the door ajar, and there he was, slumped in his chair at the writing table. Someone had hit him over the head with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
“Was it empty?”
“I believe so. There wasn’t any spilled on the body. Ms. Samari came and got me, not knowing what else to do.”
“An empty whiskey bottle.” Rose wriggled a black sweater over her head. “Dylan Thomas would probably approve of that finale,” she remarked. “There. I’m ready. If you insist on doing this. I’ll bet the police shut down this show the minute they get here.”
“Maybe so,” said Margie. “But that won’t be until sometime tomorrow. The storm is too bad to take a boat across. And they won’t risk a helicopter, either.”
“What? We’re stuck here? What if somebody becomes seriously ill?”
“I asked the hotel manager about that. He said there’s a registered nurse on the staff. Actually, she’s the dietician, but in an emergency-”
“Never mind. I guess I’m elected. Let’s go investigate this thing.”
Margie brightened. “It’s just like a mystery story, isn’t it?”
“Not one that my editor would buy.”
Although Rose Hanelon wrote what she liked to call traditional mysteries, she was well-versed in police procedure, first of all because she read widely within the genre, and secondly because the townhouse adjoining hers belonged to a police detective who liked to talk shop at his backyard cookouts. He particularly enjoyed critiquing the police procedurals written by Rose’s fellow authors. With no effort on her part, Rose had assimilated quite a good working knowledge of law enforcement. She wondered if it would serve her well in the current emergency. Probably not. People had to cooperate with police officers, but they were perfectly free to ignore an inquisitive mystery writer, no matter how knowledgeable she was about investigative procedure.