So Much For Buckingham: The Camilla Randall Mysteries #5 (15 page)

Even if home was a huge, empty McMansion.

Piglet and Pooh had not returned. Their questions had been so very odd. He understood why they might be suspicious about Neville's message in the book. How could he have not noticed Neville was writing it? Of course, he had been pretty out of it that night.

But he didn't understand why the police seemed to hold him responsible for whatever was in Alfred's awful script.

They seemed to think he had the script by choice.

He'd explained that it's what happens when you're an Academy Award winner. Everybody thinks you have a magic wand that can turn anybody with an amateur screenplay into a star.

But Pooh and Piglet had responded to everything with blank stares. He didn't know if they simply didn't believe he was a well-known screenwriter, or if they didn't care.

A little while after he finished the sandwich, two uniformed men came into his little room looking very stern. One of them spoke in a robotic voice and informed him he did not have to say anything.

"That's fine." Plant stood, since the men weren't joining him at the table. "I really don't have much to say. I've told your detectives all I know, which isn't much. So if I could just get my things and be off back to London..."

"You do not have to say anything," the robot policeman repeated. "But it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

Evidence? Of what?"

––––––––

W
ine on top of cognac was probably not a good idea, but I didn't care. I let Peter order a nice local
sauvignon blanc
to go with our meal at a waterfront seafood restaurant. It was a noisy, touristy place, but the fish was local and fire-grilled.

I'd chosen an inexpensive place because I didn't want more of Peter's probably ill-gotten cash spent on me than necessary.

Besides, I felt safer with a crowd around me, far away from any troll-infested computer screens.

I let him pour me a full glass. I knew that getting drunk wasn't going to help anything, but I wanted to forget for a few hours that my whole life was being destroyed by a bunch of crazy people who didn't even know me.

"Why are people online so cruel?" I asked as I speared a crispy baby squid and dipped it in tartar sauce.

"Partly because they're anonymous, I suppose." Peter seemed to be enjoying his salmon, too. "And partly because the vastness of the Interwebz makes them feel small and powerless. Especially young men. Their DNA tells them to go out and slay dangerous beasts and impress a female so as to lure her back to the cave. But our culture puts them in Mum's basement, playing at slaying dangerous beasts on an electronic box. Usually with no real women about to provide the proper, er, biological outlet."

"They can't get dates, so they go online and type obscene things in a hundred and forty characters or less?" I said. "Does that work for young men these days? Didn't anybody ever tell them about
Playboy
magazine?"

Peter let out a belly laugh. "It's not just men. A fair number of young women attack other women too, so it's not entirely caused by frustrated male libidos. But I have to admit the worst offenders belong to my gender. There was that dreadful "Gamergate" nonsense last year..."

"What was Gamergate?"

Peter set down his fork. "Camilla, even in a prison in one of the remotest corners of this planet I heard about it. You weren't aware?"

"Plant always tells me I'm a total Luddite." I was glad now that I was a cybermoron. After this, I was planning to stay that way.

"A feminist game designer gave a new videogame a bad review and the Internet exploded with toxic vitriol and rape threats," Peter said. "A fountain of misogyny. The attackers, mostly male, terrified several women game designers out of their homes and even threatened to shoot up a school if the reviewer spoke there."

I had trouble swallowing my bite of sourdough bread. Was that in store for me?

"They threatened to shoot up a school?"

"Yes. They promised a huge Columbine-style slaughter on a University campus. These people don't seem to be able to tell the difference between videogames and real life. They start living their entire lives inside the
World of Warcraft
or some other pseudo-medieval online role-playing game. They think they're warriors fighting evil armies of Orcs or whatever."

"And I'm a designated Orc?"

Peter nodded.

I held out my empty glass to Peter and let him fill it to the top.

––––––––

P
lant could hardly believe the horrors that were happening to him. These people all seemed to think he was responsible for what happened to poor Neville.

They took his clothes and gave him an awful tracksuit thing to wear. Something between battleship gray and dirty navy. Remarkably itchy. They even took his shoes and gave him a pair of flimsy plastic slippers. Like toe-less Crocs. Not warm. Then they took photographs and fingerprinted him and took a swab to the inside of his cheek for DNA.

It was all so humiliating.

Murder. They thought he'd killed another human being. On purpose.

A human being he had been pretty sure didn't even exist until he saw him dead.

Poor guy. So young. Whatever he'd been involved in at the Old Vic, young Neville didn't deserve what had happened.

The police seemed to think Plant had something to do with the Old Vic catastrophe, as well. Although he wasn't quite sure what.

He wasn't sure of anything.

Except that he was in jail. A horrible, smelly, ugly jail. His cell—euphemistically dubbed a "custody suite"—was a tiny, barren little room. No bars on one side like an American jail. Just four cracked plaster walls painted a foggy gray-blue. He would have preferred bars. They might have given him some glimpse of other humans.

As it was, he felt completely adrift and alone in his own stinky little cloud. He didn't want to think too much about the components of the stink, but the toilet—his only piece of furniture aside from the concrete block of a bed—was obviously a predominant source.

In fact, it was very like being locked in a public restroom at a highway gas station in one of the less prosperous cities of the rust belt.

At one point, a guard had told him he could make a phone call. But only inside the UK. Of course Plant knew nobody here—except the screenwriting hotel clerk Alfred. And his awful script seemed to be one of the reasons Plant was going through this.

Pooh and Piglet had disappeared last night when he'd asked for a lawyer. He didn't know if they'd be back.

Or even if they had regular lawyers in this country. They called them barristers or something. They wore funny wigs.

He pictured some blustery
Rumpole of the Bailey
type coming to his rescue. But that didn't make him feel much better.

Mostly his mind was filled with the image of Neville, lying in that pool of blood. Such a lot of it. Spattered on the stone battlements. So awful.

How could anybody have done that to another human being?

And why did they think Plant had done it? He was an American. If Americans wanted to kill people they used guns. Not large, showy knives. Which must have been what killed the poor man. Nothing else would produce that much blood.

It had to be something very Crocodile Dundee. Couldn't they find a suitable Aussie to pin it on?

He could only pray that the police would find the murder weapon. Of course at a venue like the Old Hall, where half the people carried some sort of medieval weaponry, that was going to be difficult.

He spent a miserable night in his cell on the inadequate, smelly mattress that topped his concrete bed, drifting in and out of fitful sleep. It was tough to fall asleep without a book. He always read before going to bed. But here he was with no book, no TV, not even a radio.

Only the cold and dreadful silence.

And one scratchy wool blanket. Where did they find such a primitive artifact in the era of polyester? The brownish thing had to be some sort of World War II surplus.

He lay under it, shivering, trying to think rational thoughts. Not easy when he was still jet-lagged and sleep deprived.

But the deep sleep he needed so much eluded him. The smells that came from his mattress were so putrid he almost decided to lie on the bare concrete, but he could not have dealt with feeling any colder than he did already. Somehow he drifted off into a strange dream about Alfred the hotel clerk, who had developed enormous tusks, like a walrus.

He woke to hear someone unlocking the metal door to his cell. Probably somebody bringing him another tasteless sandwich and dreadful coffee.

Or Pooh and Piglet, with more enigmatic questions.

But when the door opened, he saw a man he'd never met. A very young man. Probably of some sort of Asian descent. He was baby-faced and round, but wore an impeccably tailored suit.

"Mr. Plantagenet?" the young man said. He gave a broad smile, displaying a gap between his front teeth that brought to mind the late Terry-Thomas.

"My name is Sanjay Brumble," he said. "Of Mackerell, Greyling and Trought. I am your solicitor."

––––––––

L
uckily Peter didn't mind driving my Honda, even though it involved driving on the wrong side of the road for him.

I still felt wobbly when we got back to the cottage.

I checked for phone messages on my landline as soon as we got inside, but of course there was nothing.

Plant was still AWOL. Things were getting scary now. Had these review/gamer people kidnapped him or something? They were obviously delusional and capable of anything. My fears for Plant brought me down to earth after my tipsy dinner.

I decided to tell Peter I needed a shower. I probably did. I also needed some sobering up and time to think.

Most of all, I needed not to be in Peter's presence, because he was looking more attractive by the minute and I did not want to make the mistake of falling for him again.

Peter went off to play with my laptop and Buckingham padded along behind him, hardly glancing at me.

I had to admit I was a little miffed that my new cat so obviously preferred Peter. I hoped I hadn't done anything to hurt Buckingham's feelings. Maybe his former owner had been a blondish scruffy haired guy or something.

Peter had neatly hung up the green towels in the bathroom. He got points for good manners there.

Once I got in the shower, I felt an overwhelming need to cry. Tears ran down my face along with the spray. I didn't know if I was crying for Ronzo or Plant or myself. It was all too sad and stupid.

The stupidest thing of all was the fact Silas wouldn't return my calls. How could anybody be so childish and petty? He must know the name of the hotel where Plant was staying. He could at least give me that.

I pulled on a clean sweatshirt and jeans—consciously not dressing up for Peter. I didn't even re-apply make-up and let my hair hang wet without blow-drying. I wanted to let Peter know I was not interested in rekindling our romantic relationship.

But first I decided to call Silas again. Hawaii was two hours earlier. It would be 7 P.M. Dinner time. He wouldn't be meditating or whatever, so he could damn well pick up his phone. And even if he didn't, I was going to leave a stern message.

I needed to know where Plant was. I felt like I was going to go crazy with not-knowing.

"Bloody hell!" Peter shouted.

I ran out to the living room

Peter sat at my desk, typing away on my laptop.

"More garden gnome abuse?" I said.

"They're way beyond garden gnomes," he said. The sodding Yorkists have killed someone."

I shivered. Now my damp hair felt clammy on my neck.

"The people who are threatening me? They killed somebody? Who?"

"Some poor bloke doing a reenactment of King Richard's visit to Swynsby."

Peter turned and looked at me. He took a big breath as if he were about to say something, then shook his head.

"What is it?" Whatever he was going to say, I needed to hear it. Nothing was worse than being kept in the dark.

Peter showed me the website of
The Daily Mail.
"The British press have decided to be judge and jury here. Some bloody reporter has your friend Plantagenet as the prime suspect in the reenactor's murder." 

It featured a photograph of a crowd of people dressed in medieval garb in front of Swynsby's Old Hall. In the foreground was Plantagenet, flanked by two determined-looking police officers.

Peter stood and gave me a hug.

"I'm so sorry, Camilla. I'll get to the bottom of this. I promise."

––––––––

S
anjay Brumble kept smiling, which Plant found disconcerting. Mr. Brumble looked so young that Plant couldn't help thinking he was some teenaged boy play-acting at being a lawyer. Everyone he'd met here seemed to be play-acting in one way or another.

He'd heard somebody on the plane say that England was on its way to becoming one big touristy theme park—maybe it had already happened.

"Tell me your side of the story, Mr. Plantagenet," Sanjay said. "What happened yesterday at the reenactment at the Old Hall?"

He set down an expensive looking briefcase on Plantagenet's bunk and opened it to pull out an iPad.

"It's Mr. Smith," Plant said. "Plantagenet is my first name."

"Ah!" Sanjay kept smiling as he tapped on his iPad. "A thousand pardons, Mr. Smith. I know how difficult it is to have an unusual surname, so I assumed...."

Plant gave a guarded nod. He didn't want to alienate this young person who seemed to hold his fate in those pudgy hands.

"The Brumbles are my adoptive parents," Sanjay explained, still beaming.

"I was adopted too," Plant said.

Maybe if they bonded over their odd names, this wouldn't feel so awkward and surreal. He was still groggy and had no idea of the time. Or even if it was day or night.