So Much For Buckingham: The Camilla Randall Mysteries #5 (8 page)

Why did the Internet bring out such bad behavior in people? I closed my laptop and decided to watch the TV news instead.

I had a TV now—an old DVD-combo hand-me-down from Silas and Plant—plus cable, which would be cut off if I didn't get my royalties soon.

I poured myself the last of the Chardonnay and took it with my sandwich into the little living room.

But I nearly spilled the wine when I saw Plant—there on the TV screen. He was wearing his new Ralph Lauren tuxedo. But it was covered with what looked like the world's worst case of dandruff.

The announcer said there had been an accident—or maybe a bomb—at the Old Vic Theater in London.

Plant looked relatively uninjured, although his hair was mussed, which almost never happened.

A reporter asked him about the bomb and Plant said something odd about Richard III. I wondered if he might be in shock.

The explosion—or whatever it was—had happened on Friday night in London, which would have been early afternoon yesterday in Morro Bay. Just about when I'd been talking to him on the phone.

Maybe that's why the call got cut off.

And here I'd thought Plant had simply been cavalier about my distress. I should have known better. I reached for my phone and called him again, feeling awful. He might be lying injured on some hospital bed. The newsman said something about people being treated at a nearby London hospital.

The phone rang and rang and went to Plant's voicemail, again.

Should I find the hospital website and call them?

But that would be expensive, especially since I'd probably be put on hold and use up all my minutes.

I had to phone Silas. He couldn't be so angry over something that happened twenty years ago that he would have no concern for the man he'd just married.

I decided to take a chance and dialed Silas's number.

Voicemail.

I started to feel panicky. Maybe there would be more information about this bombing, or whatever it was, on British news sites. I went back to my laptop and started Googling.

The Guardian
had a long article about the theater incident, but didn't offer much information I could use. They said only a handful of people had been hospitalized. Most had been treated in some sort of portable clinic. No injuries were life-threatening, they said. The reporter seemed to lean toward calling it an accident.

Somehow that made me less worried than if it had been a bomb. Plant was probably fine.

But then why wasn't he answering his phone?

Maybe something was wrong with it. I checked my email. Plant would certainly have Wi-Fi at the hotel. He'd said something silly about not taking his laptop so he and Silas would have fewer distractions. I hoped he'd changed his mind when the trip changed from honeymoon to theater tour.

Oh, good. I had one new email. From a U.K. address.

I started to feel relief. It had to be either Plant or somebody from Sherwood.

It wasn't Plant's usual email address, but there was his name at the bottom. "Plantagenet O." The "O" must be a symbol for a hug. He'd never used it before, but these were hug-inducing times.

But the message was anything but huggy.

"The rape train is coming. Your raped and mutilated corpse will be in tomorrow's
Bay News
. We will choke you with Hinckley Lutterworth's severed penis. Libra will rise."

There were two attachments, photos. When I enlarged the first I saw a 1930s California bungalow-style stucco cottage. Mine. The second was a picture of my store.

I started to shake. Partly with fear and partly with rage. These rapist, misogynist monsters had been here. In my very own courtyard, taking photos of my house. They could be out there right now. And worst of all, they were impersonating my best friend. Obviously they wanted me to feel entirely alone.

Which I pretty much did.

My first instinct was to call the police. But then I realized they would probably just laugh at me. People made stupid threats on the Internet all the time these days. You could see them in the comments of every online news article. In fact, I remembered reading that the Supreme Court had recently ruled that making online threats was perfectly legal if the threatener didn't mean to carry them out.

How was I supposed to know if this faux Plantagenet really intended to rape and murder me?

And who on earth was Hinckley Lutterworth? Was that some alias Ronzo had been using when he was on that awful GoreFest website?

Why didn't these people have lives?

I took a breath, trying to pull as much air into my lungs as possible. This was probably just a prank. Like the stupid Amazon reviews.

The screen door banged.

And banged again.

If this was a prank, it was entirely too close to home. It was time to call the police, no matter what the Supreme Court said.

––––––––

P
lantagenet woke feeling as if he'd been on the losing side of a bar fight. He had bruises on his arm and his knee ached where he'd fallen on it.

He must have been in shock last night.

It might have been wiser to let those National Health people look at him in that portable clinic, but after he'd talked endlessly to the dimwitted reporters and given his identification to the police, all he'd wanted was to get back to the hotel to sleep. And get warm. He'd been nearly soaked through by the time he got back to the hotel.

They never let him go back into the theater for his raincoat.

He'd had odd dreams—in which Neville featured strongly. Neville kept telling him to go to Swynsby. At one point, he appeared dressed up in the Richard III costume Kevin Spacey had been wearing.

"I'll see you in Swynsby," Neville-as-Richard said in an ominous tone.

Whatever Neville was—clairvoyant, hallucination or terrorist—Plant decided he should probably heed the advice and go to Swynsby. Not because he believed in dream messages—and he certainly had no desire to reconnect with Neville—but he needed to go for Camilla's sake.

He was here in England, less than two hundred miles from Swynsby-on-Trent, and he could do a good deed by tracking down Camilla's royalties. He needed for this benighted journey to have some useful purpose.

He should take the train up to Lincolnshire today.

Not that he relished the thought of more travel. He felt groggy from his accumulated lack of sleep, and longed for a twenty-four hour nap.

But he dutifully dressed—just a casual blazer and khakis, hopefully suitable for the country—and fortified himself with a hearty "full English breakfast." 

He packed a few things into his carry-on bag in case he had to stay overnight. He brought his Armani jacket and dress slacks in case he had a business meeting with the Sherwood people. He packed his valuables, too. He was fairly sure his locked room was safe, but one could never be sure.

The ever-helpful desk clerk, Alfred, looked up the train schedule for Northeastern England and found a train leaving in an hour that stopped in Swynsby. He even phoned for a cab to pick Plant up in 10 minutes.

Plant gave him a grateful smile and told the saga of his iPhone disaster.

"I feel as if I'm a time-traveler from another century," he told Alfred. "I'd forgotten what it's like not to be able to look up trains or call cabs with one's own phone."

He went on to explain that he might not be back until Monday or Tuesday. Not that anybody was likely to ask about him, but now that he had no phone, he wanted somebody—anybody—to know where he was.

"There's a pub my friend told me about called The Merry Miller. It's near the company I'm going to visit. I think I remember they have a few rooms. I might get one if I need to stay overnight.

Alfred gave a small smile. "After your bit on the Beeb last night, it might be wise to escape the London press for a day or two."

"My bit?"

"You warmed the hearts of many Ricardians when you spoke to the BBC reporter, Mr. Smith." Alfred said. "There's no agreement on whether it was a bomb or an accident, but everybody loved your suggestion that Richard's ghost might be stalking that piece of Tudor propaganda Will Shakespeare wrote. And we certainly welcomed what you said about Richard's burial. It's shameful they've dumped him back in Leicester. Westminster Abbey should have taken him, but at least he might find a more appropriate home at York Minster."

Alfred got more animated as he spoke—more like an eager college student than the Downton Abbey-style servant he had seemed earlier.

Not that Plant was pleased with his revelations.

"I, um, was just making a joke really. Not a particularly good one. I think I was more in shock than I realized."

How awful his offhand remark had made its way onto the BBC news. And he found it disconcerting that Alfred mentioned York Minster. Wasn't that the place Neville had made a toast to?

"Richard of York Belongs in York," he'd said.

Things did continue to be surreal. He wondered how long it took to get over jet lag.

"Do you think the media might come looking for me?"

"They already have." Alfred pointed toward the street. "Quite a few. They're herd animals, reporters. I made them wait outside, of course."

He indicated a knot of people with camera bags outside the hotel's glass doors.

"Good god," Plant said. "I had no idea. I'm sorry I've made so much work for you."

"Happy to help. Your work is brilliant.
Wilde in the West
is one of my favorite films."

"I'm amazed you recognized me." Plant basked for a moment in this glint of the fame he'd once enjoyed. "Nobody ever recognizes the writer." 

"I do. I'm a screenwriter myself." Now Alfred's stiff-upper lip butler's smile broadened to a big, toothy grin." Might I show you my work?
The Kingdom of Perpetual Night
. I think you'll find it's very timely, given the events of last night. If you showed it to the right people, it could make us both rich."

Plant's spirits fell as Alfred pulled a dog-eared script from under the desk. This happened in Southern California all the time, but he hadn't expected it here.

He gave a shrug that didn't quite say yes or no and glanced through the lobby toward the street, hoping to see his taxi.

"Um, maybe you could email it to me? Just send it as an email attachment. I can give it all the attention it deserves when I get home to California."

All the attention it deserved would probably be scrolling past the alarm clock opener through the first five pages of desultory dialogue, then relegating it to the trash.

"The title is a line from
Richard III
." Alfred continued, undaunted. "The Duke of Clarence talks about 'that grim ferryman which poets write of' which takes us 'unto the kingdom of perpetual night'. When I think I wrote my screenplay before any of this happened! But now, it's like I predicted the future. Anything related to Richard III should be pure gold after last night..."

What was it with gay Englishmen and Richard III? Was it some sort of code?

"I'd afraid I don't have much clout in Hollywood anymore." Plant did not want to have to carry the script all the way to Swynsby and back. "You know the old saying, 'You're only as big as your last picture'. Unfortunately, I was one of the writers on "
Oscar Wilde, Werewolf Hunter
".

"Never heard of it."

"Exactly."

Plant stepped away from the desk, hoping to escape, but it was too late.

"Here's your cab." Alfred pushed the script into Plant's hand and waved at a man in a cap who had just come in through the lobby door. "Now you'll have something to read on the train. Seriously. Read it. If you can get the film made, I'll split the profits fifty-fifty!"

Some things were the same all over the world.

––––––––

I
reminded myself I needed to breathe. But I had to do it silently. I didn't want whoever was out there to know for sure that I was here.

This wasn't Internet bullying anymore. This was real life. I had rapist psychos banging on my front door.

It occurred to my rational brain that they must be very lightweight rapist psychos. I hadn't heard any footsteps. People always made noise crunching through the gravel in the courtyard.

But I wasn't taking any chances. I dialed 911.

The door banged again.

As the phone rang, I grabbed the empty wine bottle by the neck to use as a weapon.

"What is your emergency?" the operator said.

"Somebody keeps slamming my screen door," I whispered into the phone. "They've sent me a threatening email, pretending to be my best friend, but I think it's a bunch of lunatics from Amazon. They know where I live. They sent a picture of my house. They don't like my taste in architecture, so they want to rape me, apparently. These people are not sane."

"Amazon? The online bookstore? Are you being physically threatened?" The woman's voice was businesslike, but soothing.

"Um...They said news about my corpse would be in tomorrow's
Bay News
. I guess they don't know it's a weekly." I worked hard to make my voice sound calm. I didn't want to sound like a paranoid crazy person. "They also threatened somebody named Hinckley Lutterworth, and I don't even know anybody by that name. Not that I can remember. They also said something like 'Libra will rise'. I have no idea what that's about. I'm a Scorpio."

"Can you see who is at the door ma'am?  Do they have weapons?"

I could see nothing from the front window. Not even a shadow thrown by the bright security light that illuminated the path between the store and my cottage.

I drew up my courage, set down the phone, and unlocked the door.

"I have the police on the phone!" I shouted into the courtyard as I yanked on the doorknob.

But I saw no one. The person who had been banging the door had disappeared. Which made no sense. I still hadn't heard any footsteps on the gravel.

Nobody could have got away that fast. There were trash cans next to the back door of the shop, hidden behind a couple of bedraggled jade plants. Somebody might be scooching down behind them, hiding in the shadows, but it would have to be an awfully small, agile person.