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“You may choose to accept the view expressed by learned counsel for the defence that all the evidence in this case is circumstantial, and that there is not a shred of witness testimony to prove that the accused committed this dreadful crime, nor that he had indeed ever met the victim, let alone set foot inside the victim’s home. You will, I have no doubt, give this all the consideration that it merits, and you will, I am sure, recall the words of Thoreau, who said, ‘Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.’ The circumstantial evidence in this case is indeed strong, but it is for you to decide whether it was Jolyon Carstairs who indeed watered the milk.

“You will now retire to another place to consider your verdict.”

There was scattered applause from the jury which was quickly suppressed by ushers.

The jury returned after seven minutes with a verdict of Guilty and a recommendation for No Clemency.

Thus Mrs. Ethel McGonagall Hoskins and her cleaning lady Vera Bumstead, in the kitchen of Mrs. Hoskins’s house in the Vale of Health close to Hampstead Heath: for Mrs. Hoskins a cup of decaffeinated coffee with just a drop of milk, and for Mrs. Bumstead, a mug of Darjeeling with three sugars.

“Be sure if you would, Vera,” said Ethel McGonagall Hoskins, “to sweep carefully under the furniture in my study. I find I am beginning to have a bit of the old allergicals recently, and it may be due to house dust, my doctors think.”

“I will,” said Vera, who was starting to have enough of all this. Doctors yet. It had been very kind of Ethel to think of her old friend and to engage her as cleaning lady following the purchase of her house funded by the publication of Two Write! her first crime novel (Robert Hale £14.95; Berkley $24.95: “A stunning debut” — Kirkus Reviews; “Packed with comic criminal insights” — PW; “Ms. Hoskins springs fully fledged onto the crime scene with a laugh-a-minute murder mystery that combines, curiously but successfully, a crystalline literary style with some hilariously robust reportage from the lower depths. Her stammering detective is a joy” — Sunday Times), but enough was enough. Ethel had got well above her station.

Vera watched Ethel as she marched out of the gate and off in the direction of the Heath, where it was her habit to take a long walk in the mornings, to get the old creative juices flowing, as she had told Vera. Vera had her own thoughts about this but kept her thoughts to herself. You don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to, she had told herself more than once, but there were still things about Ethel that nagged away at her.

All right, admit that she wrote a book. After the trial both of them had been out of a job, naturally, since one of their blokes was in the nick, the other was in the hereafter. Vera had quickly found more work through the Golden Mop, but Ethel had quite simply vanished off the face of the earth for six months and had then resurfaced with a book written, an agent, a publisher, interviews on Woman’s Hour and everything.

Nothing against Ethel, of course, more power to her, but where did she get her ideas? She’d always said she wanted to be a writer, but you don’t get to be something just by wanting to. What was more, Vera knew she was working on a new book. She’d gone into the study when Ethel was working, and Ethel had, as quick as a flash, shoved away a big blue folder, which stirred some sort of muddy memory for Vera, into the top drawer almost as though she had something to hide.

Ethel normally took two hours to get her juices flowing, so Vera had plenty of time. She went into the study and looked at the desk. Quite handy, really, that one of the things she’d remembered from Two Write! was a minute description of how to pick a lock.

She took two hairpins from her hair and knelt down at the desk, repeating to herself the instructions that Ethel had given in Two Write!

She was taking great care not to scratch the lock so as not to leave traces of her incursion.

“But,” she muttered to herself, manipulating the hair grips, “what’s the harm in looking? I mean, even if she does find out, what’s she going to do? Kill me?”

She had opened the drawer, pulled out the thick blue folder, and opened it, and was staring open-mouthed at the pages of all-too-familiar handwriting, her mind, if not racing, then at least moving along at a smart clip, when a draught riffled the pages and the shadow fell slowly across her.

Copyright © 2006 Neil Schofield

The Book of Truth

by Nancy Pickard

Nancy Pickard brings her series character Marie Lightfoot, a writer of true crime, to EQMM this month. The first of Lightfoot’s three book-length cases, The Whole Truth, earned a nomination for the Edgar, and the subsequent novels, Ring of Truth and The Truth Hurts, were published to rave reviews. Ms. Pickard’s latest novel, The Virgin of Small Plains (Ballantine), is a non-series book set in her home state of Kansas.

* * * *

“Is this really Marie Lightfoot?”

“It is.” I smiled down at a copy of my new book that just happened to be in my lap when I picked up the phone. The author’s photo on the back sure enough did look like me. “This is Marie.”

“You answer your own phone?”

It was a friendly, incredulous, older male voice.

“I do.” I was in a good mood. The book had entered the New York Times bestseller list at number three, up two places from my last one. Even better, I wasn’t blocked on my current manuscript. Another couple of uninterrupted months and I might even make the deadline. Teasing my caller, whoever he was, I said, “I also sweep my own floors, eat my own food, and I even write my own books. Who’s this?”

“Amazing. I’d have thought — oh, never mind, you don’t want to hear all that. Ms. Lightfoot, my name is Luis Cannistre. I am one year away from retiring from the Bismarck, North Dakota, Police Department and there is a case I need to see solved before I leave here.”

“All right,” I said, meaning only, okay, I’m listening. Bismarck. That was a new one. For that matter, so was North Dakota. I had written about criminal cases in many different locales, including my own hometown of Bahia Beach, Florida, but I had never pursued a case as far north as he was located. Already slightly intrigued by the setting, if nothing else, I said, “What’s the case?”

“Triple murder, although not all at once. Three young women. Abducted and killed over a period of three weeks, twelve years ago.”

Once he got over his surprise about me, he was succinct.

“I’m guessing you have a prime suspect?” I said, knowing that most unsolved murders do have favorite suspects, albeit without enough evidence to prosecute them.

“Oh, we’ve got a suspect, all right,” he said, in a wry tone.

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in prison, Ms. Lightfoot. He’s serving a life term for killing one of them.”

“Then what’s the problem? Do you think this guy was wrongly convicted, Mr. Cannistre? Or is it Detective?”