Free Poison Pen by Tanya Landman Page A

posh frock – she’d be another person entirely. If she was in jeans and had her hair up in some sort of hat, for example, nobody would recognize her…”
    “That’s very true. She seems to be a good actress. She freely admitted she’d been to drama school. We have no idea who she really is underneath the glitz and the glamour.”
    “But why would she want to kill the other authors?” I wondered. “Back to the Vellum Prize, do you think? Could anyone want to win it so badly that they’d murder their competitors?”
    “It’s worth a good deal of money,” Graham replied. “Yet she’s a bestselling author. You wouldn’t have thought she’d need the money.”
    “It’s about reputation too, though, isn’t it? You win something like that and people look up to you. Maybe that matters to her. Maybe it matters more than anything…”
    So that was that. We concluded that Charlie was definitely under suspicion for the murder of Max, but Esmerelda was somehow behind the attacks on the other authors. We didn’t know how she’d managed it, but she was our number one suspect.
    Then the local news came on and all our theories were smashed to smithereens.
    Esmerelda Desiree had just been found dead in her hotel room. Stabbed in the neck with a fountain pen.

go west!
    The news carried a long piece about Esmerelda Desiree and her glittering career. There were live pictures of the scenes outside the hotel where her body had been found. Goths had gathered with lighted candles in silent tribute to their heroine.
    Graham and I watched the whole item with our mouths hanging open. There was clip after clip of Esmerelda on various sofas – it looked like she’d done every single chat show on every single TV station in every single country in the world. It would have been enough to make every other author sick with jealousy. Was that motive enough to kill her?
    The feature ended with Nigella Churchill giving a long, slightly weepy interview in which she said that the literary world had lost one of its brightest stars.
    “I talked to her just this afternoon,” said Nigella chokily. “I was fortunate enough to have been granted an exclusive interview. She told me about her forthcoming book,
Go West!
”
    My ears pricked up at once. Beside me, Graham gave a sharp intake of breath. This was significant news.
    “She refused to talk about that this morning,” I murmured.
    Graham nodded, his eyes glued to the TV.
    “Was it a sequel to
The Vampiress of Venezia
?” asked the interviewer.
    “No – it was an historical novel set in the American West. I was privileged to see the manuscript when I interviewed Esmerelda. I was only able to read the first few pages, but it was immediately obvious that she’d produced another bestseller. It’s a tragic, tragic loss.”
    The interviewer murmured something dull and conventional and then moved briskly on to a different item. I leapt up.
    “That has
got
to be Max’s book!” I shrieked, punching the air. “I
knew
someone had nicked it!”
    “So what are we saying? That Esmerelda somehow managed to steal Max’s work and then got killed for it?”
    “That’s about the size of it. All we’ve got to do now is work out how. And why.”
    “And then we need to discover who killed her.”
    “No pressure, then,” I said with a grin. “I suppose we ought to start with the Why. She’s a mega bestseller. Why would she steal someone else’s work? Unless…” I grabbed Graham by the arm. “Suppose she
didn’t
write
The Vampiress of Venezia
? It’s possible, isn’t it?”
    Graham’s brows contracted in a tight frown but I pressed on.
    “Think about it, Graham. Esmerelda has stood out from the very beginning. All the others are nothing like their books, yet there she is – looking like a walking, talking vampire. The perfect package.
Too
perfect. I should have been suspicious about her right from the start. I bet she can’t write a word. That would explain why she was so