Free Murder Most Merry by ed. Abigail Browining

such a way that no one could know your identity... Haig, you ought to be able to work that out.”
    “I could,” Haig agreed. ‘If that were how it happened. But it didn’t.”
    “It didn’t?”
    “You forget the least obvious suspect.”
    “Me? Dammit, Haig, are you saying I stole my own manuscript?”
    “I’m saying the butler did it,” Haig said, “or the closest thing we have to a butler. Miss Botleigh, your upper lip has been trembling almost since we all sat down. You’ve been on the point of an admission throughout and haven’t said a word. Have you in fact read the manuscript of As Dark as It Gets? ”
    “Yes.”
    The client gasped. “You have? When?”
    “Last night.”
    “But—”
    “I had to use the lavatory,” she said, “and the book was there, although I could see it wasn’t an ordinary bound book but pages in a box. I didn’t think I would hurt it by looking at it. So I sat there and read the first two chapters.”
    “What did you think?” Haig asked her.
    “It was very powerful. Parts of it were hard to follow, but the scenes were strong, and I got caught up in them.”
    “That’s Woolrich,” Jayne Corn-Wallace said. “He can grab you, all right.”
    “And then you took it with you when you went home,” our client said. “You were so involved you couldn’t bear to leave it unfinished, so you, uh, borrowed it.” He reached to pat her hand. “Perfectly understandable,” he said, “and perfectly innocent. You were going to bring it back once you’d finished it. So all this fuss has been over nothing.”
    “That’s not what happened.”
    “It’s not?”
    “I read two chapters.” she said, “and I thought I’d ask to borrow it some other time, or maybe not. But I put the pages back in the box and left them there.”
    “In the bathroom?”
    “Yes.”
    “So you never did finish the book, our client said. “Well, if it ever turns up I’ll be more than happy to lend it to you. but until then—”
    “But perhaps Miss Botleigh has already finished the book,” Haig suggested.
    “How could she? She just told you she left it in the bathroom.”
    Haig said, “Miss Botleigh?”
    “I finished the book.” she said. “When everybody else went home, I stayed.”
    “My word,” Zoltan Mihalyi said. “Woolrich never had a more devoted fan. or one half so beautiful.”
    “Not to finish the manuscript.” she said, and turned to our host. “You asked me to stay,” she said.
    “I wanted you to stay,” he agreed. “I wanted to ask you to stay. But I don’t remember...”
    “I guess you’d had quite a bit to drink.” she said, “although you didn’t show it. But you asked me to stay, and I’d been hoping you would ask me, because I wanted to stay.”
    “You must have had rather a lot to drink yourself.” Harriet Quinlan murmured.
    “Not that much.” said the caterer. I wanted to stay because he’s a very attractive man.”
    Our client positively glowed, then turned red with embarrassment. “I knew I had a hole in my memory,” he said, “but I didn’t think anything significant could have fallen through it. So you actually stayed? God. What, uh, happened?”
    “We went upstairs,” Jeanne Botleigh said. “And we went to the bedroom, and we went to bed.”
    “Indeed,” said Haig.
    “And it was...”
    “Quite wonderful,” she said.
    “And I don’t remember. I think I’m going to kill myself.”
    “Not on Christmas Day,” E. E. Stokes said. “And not with a mystery still unsolved. Haig, what became of the bloody manuscript?”
    “Miss Botleigh?”
    She looked at our host, then lowered her eyes. “You went to sleep afterward,” she said, “and I felt entirely energized, and knew I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I’d read for a while. And I remembered the manuscript, so I came down here and fetched it.”
    “And read it?”
    “In bed. I thought you might wake up, in fact I was hoping you would. But you didn’t.”
    “Damn it,” our