An hour later they arrived in Exeter. Rowan Rover bade them a hasty goodbye at the train station, promising to reappear at one on Sunday. “You won’t be seeing me for the next day and a half,” he reminded them for the third time. “Is there anything you want to know before I leave? Anything you want me to investigate while I’m at home with my reference books?”
Elizabeth MacPherson raised her hand. “Could you find out if we’ll be going near Constance Kent’s house? I’m intrigued by her, and I’d like to see it.”
“Who’s Constance Kent?” asked Susan. “What did she write?”
“I’ll check on it,” Rowan promised. “And as to who she was-we will discuss that on some future evening. Just now, I’ve a train to catch.”
Bernard drove them to their lodgings and parked the bus at the far end of the hotel parking lot. He then proceeded to his own home in Kensington.
Elizabeth, who had been reveling in anticipation of all the wonderful old castles they would stay in, was chagrined to find that she had sweaters older than the Exeter Trusthouse Forte. She had to admit, though, that a luxurious room with a private bath and a view of the old city wall and the spires of the cathedral beyond it went a long way toward compensating for a lack of Olde World Charm.
In her room was an invitation to a cocktail party and dinner, beginning at seven that evening. According to the typewritten note, the purpose of the party was to enable her to meet some filmmakers who were scouting for extras for a Dracula movie. Since the note was dated September 7, 1928 and signed by someone named Binky, Elizabeth was fairly certain that this was the opening gambit in the murder weekend. As a concession to Roaring Twenties, she tied a silvery scarf around her forehead, put on her red cocktail dress, and made her way downstairs to the designated party room.
The cocktail party was held in a modest-sized banquet room with red carpeting and a dazzling chandelier. A dozen tables had been set for dinner. White-coated waiters glided among the guests, offering champagne and white wine. About fifty people were congregated in the room, some of them in period costumes, chatting rather uneasily with other strangers. It was impossible at this stage to tell who the actors would turn out to be. Elizabeth found Charles Warren there, decked out in a suit and tie and looking like a bank president. Nancy Warren was equally resplendent, but the change was not so startling in her case.
“Erik Broadaxe dresses pretty good,” she said, smiling at them.
In a few minutes of casual circulating, Elizabeth managed to locate all the members of her party, and some not-too-difficult eavesdropping enabled her to identify several of the players in the murder drama. They were wearing the best costumes, and they seemed to think it was 1928.
“Isn’t this fun?” whispered Alice MacKenzie, whose lime-green pantsuit made no concession to the Twenties-or the Nineties, for that matter. “I brought my little notebook, in case we need to keep track of clues.”
“Let’s sit at different tables and compare notes afterward,” said Susan Cohen. She was wearing a black silk sheath that contrasted poorly with her blonde coloring and pale skin, making her look more like the corpse than the sleuth. “We have an acting company in Minneapolis that stages murder weekends, and I-”
“Shh!” hissed Elizabeth. “They’re arguing!”
They turned to stare at a monocled man in a tuxedo, who had been introduced to them as the baron, director of the vampire film. He was berating a mousy old woman in rimless glasses and a shapeless brown dress. Apparently the woman was the company secretary, and the baron had caught her going through his desk. Alice MacKenzie dutifully made notes of the accusations. In a few minutes the scene was over and a horse-faced woman in a tweed suit approached them, shaking her head. “Those two will bear watching,” she said.
“She’s a plant,” muttered Susan Cohen, when the woman was out of earshot. “Too Miss Marple to be real. She’s probably going to be the troupe’s detective.”
“What about that tall blond man by the door?” asked Maud Marsh, looking elegant in a short dress of white satin. “He looks rather theatrical.”
“I heard him talking to the secretary,” said Nancy Warren. “He says he’s playing the leading man in the film.”
Martha Tabram, coolly elegant in a two-piece outfit of green silk, sipped her wine and eyed the door. “Do you suppose they’ll try to keep us in the hotel all weekend with this foolishness?” she asked. “I want to see Exeter again.”
“I checked my schedule,” Elizabeth told her. “It says that after this we’re free until one o’clock tomorrow, when the baron is rehearsing a scene with his actors. Tomorrow morning our group is supposed to have a tour of the city at ten with one of Exeter’s volunteer guides.”
“Good,” smiled Martha. “I may not return for the rehearsal.”
“You might miss a murder,” Nancy warned her. “But it is tempting to shop, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” said Elizabeth. “Now that we haven’t got Rowan Rover barking at our heels every time we stop at a postcard rack.”
The escape plans were interrupted by a stir in the crowd near the punch bowl. The buzz of voices suddenly fell silent. People began to back away from the baron’s mousy little secretary, who was coughing violently into her handkerchief. Thirty seconds later she dropped her wineglass and crumpled gracefully to the floor, unconscious. Kate Conway, her nurse’s instincts aroused, rushed to the body, but the baron waved her back. On cue, her fellow actors flocked around her. She was carried from the room, while the baron and his leading lady expressed their shock and dismay to the rest of the party.
The Snoop Sister in the tweed suit reappeared. Her eyes sparkled with interest. “I am Miss Eylesbarrow,” she told them. “And I must say I find this very suspicious indeed! Did any of you see anyone tampering with that lady’s drink?”
The mystery group members admitted that they hadn’t been paying attention.
“Oh, but you must watch everyone very carefully!” the woman chided them. “You can’t trust anyone, you know!”
“I hope she did it,” muttered Elizabeth, as the woman walked away.
“Not a hope,” said Susan Cohen. “When it’s time to reveal the killer, she’ll run the confrontation scene. But she’s much too brash. They need somebody who’s gracious and charming to be the amateur sleuth.”
“Like Angela Lansbury on Murder She Wrote?” asked Kate.
Susan shook her head. “I was thinking more of Charlotte MacLeod.”
Maud Marsh was ready to try her hand at solving the case. “What do you suppose she was killed with?” she asked the others. “Poison in the drink?”
“So they would have us believe,” said Elizabeth. “We mustn’t forget that it’s 1928.”
“This has been done in a lot of books,” said Susan, with the air of one beginning a lecture. “There’s The Mirror Cracked, and Murder in Three Acts. Of course, both those murders were done the same way…”
Nancy Warren pretended to hear her husband calling and wandered away, followed by Martha Tabram, stifling a yawn.
“Well, I guess the evening’s drama is over,” said Alice. “People are beginning to sit down to dinner. Let’s go and sit by the baron, shall we? He looks suspicious.”
“As long as we don’t have to sit with Miss Eylesbarrow,” muttered Elizabeth. “I wish Rowan were here. We’d show him detective work!”
Despite the watchful anticipation of the mystery weekend guests, no one pitched forward into his soup during the dinner. The members of the acting troupe stayed perfectly in character and chatted with the guests. The older leading man, Sir Herbert, seemed quite taken with pretty Kate Conway and he spent much of the meal urging her to go into film work, while she giggled prettily in response. Susan Cohen and Elizabeth MacPherson sat beside the actor playing the baron. In a German accent that was on the horizon of plausible, the movie mogul talked amiably with the young women, inquiring where they were from and what they planned to see on their tour of England.