She picked it off like seaweed. “That scarf’s dry-clean only.”
She took off, shaking her head.
“Excuse me? Can I see?” Royce was still trying to get his nose in the room; due to his stature, all he could do was push against the forest of shoulders. “Come on!”
“You’ll contaminate the crime scene,” Lisa said, turning around.
“I think you’ll benefit from my medical expertise,” he huffed.
“That’s in doubt, seeing as he was supposed to be your killer.”
“Maybe he couldn’t live with the guilt,” Royce protested. “Did himself in.”
“Stabbing yourself in the neck with a pen doesn’t seem a reliable method of suicide,” Majors said. “Besides, I don’t think many people tear apart their room and desperately try to stem the bleeding if they’ve done it to themselves.”
“Let me examine the body and I’ll tell you.”
“Royce.” I couldn’t resist. I moved my body slightly more in front of the door. “I don’t think you should be examining anything here. I’m told your whole background is a myth. You were never a pathologist, you were just an intern. Your bio’s as inflated as your ego.”
“You were happy to take my advice when it suited you,” he shot back. “I have studied for decades! I have two degrees. I went to the same university as Arthur Conan Doyle, I’ll have you know. That’s my bona fides. And,” he complained, “the Sunday Times said I had a very good grasp of realism.”
The Sunday Times had clearly not met Royce face-to-face.
“Well, in keeping with your actual experience in forensics labs, if we need a coffee I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Royce was shaking. “If you continue to treat me with such disrespect, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll withhold my diagnosis on the cause of death.”
“He’s got half a pen jammed in his throat,” I said. “I think we’ll figure it out.”
At this, Royce stormed off, forcing Brooke to step into the kitchenette alcove as he passed. She joined the back of the group, but Lisa put her hand on Brooke’s shoulder and guided her away. “It’s pretty gory in there,” she said. “You’re too young to see this.”
Wolfgang, in the end, was the first to enter the room. He stepped over Wyatt’s legs and peered at the paper on the desk, thumbing through the top few pages. I followed him in, looking around the room for more clues, but, given its size, I’d already spotted most things of note from the doorway. I couldn’t decide whether the room had been torn apart in search of something, or whether it had been the chaos of the deadly struggle. Wyatt’s bag was zipped on the floor. If someone was looking for something, they hadn’t searched all that hard.
Over Wolfgang’s shoulder I could see the top page of the stack on the desk: a manuscript with the title, typed in neat typewriter font, Life, Death and Whiskey. Then the words First draft and our departure date from Darwin, which meant he’d finished it, or at least typed the cover page, on the first day. Underneath, hand-scrawled in blue ink: by Henry McTavish. The story told itself: McTavish had finished the manuscript, signed it and handed it to Wyatt, and that had kicked off the argument I’d overheard on the first night.
“It’s not a Morbund novel,” Wolfgang said, looking up from the manuscript. I painted on some surprise: he didn’t know I’d heard Wyatt complaining about exactly that. “But it’s also not crime. It’s, well—it’s literary fiction.” He raised his eyebrows. “It’s not that bad.”
That this was perhaps the first compliment I’d heard Wolfgang ever give did not escape me. It seemed to surprise even him.
“McTavish was writing literary fiction?” Majors said.
“I mean, it’s still McTavish. He’ll never shake all his foibles—a writer’s prose is like a tattoo. Some habits die hard. But he’s improved in some areas.” Wolfgang seemed to realize he was being kind, because he chucked in an “I suppose.”
I thought about Simone pinching the air at Wolfgang’s sales. No wonder Wyatt was upset about the novel. It wasn’t just a departure from McTavish’s well-known character, it was a shift to a potentially lower-selling genre. But it was an interesting shift, and one that humanized McTavish a little in my eyes. Even he, after all those books he’d sold, wanted to be taken seriously.
“Lisa,” I said. “Time for you to flex. Who owns Life, Death and Whiskey now? Legally?”
Lisa thought for a second. “It’s still owned by McTavish, really, even if he’s dead. Copyright is generally the creator’s death plus seventy years. So yesterday plus seventy, I suppose.”
“But Wyatt was going to make money out of this—that’s why Royce thought he was behind the murder. McTavish delivers an out-of-genre book, so Wyatt knocks him off and suddenly its value skyrockets. Right?”
“Yes, but only from the increased sales,” Lisa said. “Wyatt’s right to publish the work wouldn’t have changed at all. He either has a contract, which he will now hold with McTavish’s estate, or he doesn’t have a current contract, and that means he has to buy it from the estate.”
“Henry was a lifelong bachelor,” Wolfgang said. “No family.”
“So where does the copyright land?”
“There will either be beneficiaries in the will,” Lisa said, “or I suppose it would go to probate, and they’ll find a suitable recipient.”
“And people can claim they are suitable recipients, right?”
“Yes, that’s what probate means—they manage all that.” Lisa shrugged. “But in Henry’s case, who could?”
“Long-lost brothers, et cetera et cetera,” Wolfgang muttered, nose still in the pages. “They’ll come out of the woodwork when there’s money involved.”
“And Wyatt’s not a suitable claim?”
“Not based on being Henry’s publisher, no.”
“They have a long relationship though,” Majors said, over by the vanity mirror and small cupboards. “It’s not crazy to think Wyatt could have been the beneficiary of Henry’s estate. Lifelong friends might make their way into a will. It gives Wyatt motive, again, for murder. But motive for murdering Wyatt—well, the person most likely to benefit would be second in line. Hey, that pen in his throat has Gemini branding on it. Where do you get one of those?”
“Publishing gift,” I said. “Royce has one.”
“He had it during his little speech,” Wolfgang said. “Dare I say, he made a great effort for us to see it in his hand.” I pictured Royce picking through the gathering, making sure the pen pointed at every one of us. It was a sharp insight.
“McTavish probably had one,” Lisa said. “Did you see a similar pen in his suite?”
I shook my head. The only pen I’d seen was a felt-tip. Then again, I hadn’t been the first one there. What had Brooke said? I came for a souvenir.
“And you,” Wolfgang said. I had to follow his gaze to see who he was looking at. Lisa. “Before you changed publishers.”
“Maybe I have one somewhere,” Lisa said. “Buried in a box at home, no doubt. I was published by Gemini a long time ago.”
“Convenient,” Wolfgang said.
“What about this?” Majors was pointing at the cupboard, where two wooden boxes were lined up next to the miniature safe, which was open and empty. She cracked one box. Inside, atop a white silk cloth, lay a Gemini pen. She checked the other, similarly stocked. I’d never realized, but the case for a fancy pen looks very similar to a coffin. “Maybe there was a third.”
“What the hell are you all doing?” Aaron asked from the doorway. Jasper and Harriet hovered behind: they must have fetched him.