Keats, stepping through the restaurant door. I set my empty cup down on the roof of the car and head towards them.
Seeing me, April's face breaks into a genuine smile and I am touched.
She is a lovely girl.
'How was dinner?' I ask.
'Wonderful!' she enthuses.
'Wasn't it. Perry?' And she turns to where he has stopped, a pace behind as if suddenly uncertain of the etiquette of dating young women who have personal bodyguards. Which is when the shot rings out and April screams as she is catapulted into my arms and I know what is clinging to my face and hair, most of it, is blood, and at that precise moment I don't know if it is April's blood or mine and, in all honesty, right then and there, I don't care.
Aside from one of the cats purring somewhere out of sight, it was quiet The record had long finished. Half the sandwich lay uneaten on its plate. Resnick sat where he was for several minutes more before closing the book, placing it on the arm of the chair, getting up and leaving the room.
Fourteen 'I read your book. Dead Weight.'
You did? What did you think? '
'Well, maybe I didn't read all of it. Not yet. I'm sure I will.'
Cathy Jordan was looking at Resnick with amusement, her head tilted a little to one side, waiting for the truth. They were having breakfast at her hotel, sharing the decanted orange juice produce of several countries the pineapple chunks and the already solidifying scrambled eggs with a scattering of executives and Japanese tourists.
The majority of visitors to the festival were saving their pennies elsewhere.
'The first few chapters,' Resnick said.
'One last night, the others earlier this morning.'
'I didn't think earlier than this existed.'
Resnick shrugged.
'The older I get…'
'I know, the less sleep you need. With Frank it's the opposite. I swear that man'd sleep twenty hours of any twenty-four if you'd just let him.'
'And Frank is…'
'My husband. But stop evading the issue what did you think of the book?'
'I liked it.'
'You did.'
'Yes. You sound surprised.'
She smiled with her eyes.
'No, but I figured you might be.'
Resnick cut his sausage, skewered a section with his fork and dabbed it in the mustard at the side of his plate. He knew she wasn't about to let him off the hook.
'It's direct, isn't it?' he said after a little chewing.
'Like you like you talking.'
Cathy was pointing at him with her knife.
'Not a good mistake to make. Annie isn't me. A long way from it.'
'All right, then. Somebody who sounds like you.'
'Who'll talk with her mouth full over the breakfast table and threaten her guest with sharp implements?'
'Exactly.'
She laughed: okay.
'I suppose,' Resnick said a few moments later,
'I was expecting something more-I don't know wordy. More description, is that what I mean?'
'Probably. Three quarters of a page detailing the stained glass window over the door, a couple more pages describing what our suspects are wearing, from the make of their brogues to the pattern on their pocket handkerchiefs, that kind of thing?'
'I suppose so.'
'Potential clues.'
Yes. '
'Well, if that's the kind of writer you want…' Cathy was pointing her knife towards an elderly woman, slightly stooped, grey hair pulled back into a bun, waiting while a younger man in a navy blue blazer pulled out her chair. 'Dorothy Birdwell,' Cathy said, 'spinster of this parish. '
'She's a writer?' Resnick asked.
Cathy arched an eyebrow.
'Rumour has it.'
The waitress, a student on a six-month visit from Lisbon to learn English, offered them more coffee; Cathy Jordan spread a hand over the top of her cup, while Resnick nodded and smiled thanks.
'Toast,' Cathy said to the waitress, 'we could use more toast. ' And then, to Resnick,
'One literary novel when she was at Cambridge or Oxford or wherever it was. Love between the wars; unrequited, of course. After that, nothing for a decade. More. Up to her scrawny armpits in academia. Then, out of nowhere, comes A Case of Violets and everyone's frothing at the mouth about the new Allingham, the new Marsh, the new Dame Agatha. Right from then till practically what? – ten years ago, everything she wrote was guaranteed, gilt-edged bestseller.'
Resnick watched as the man in the blazer and light grey trousers carefully eased Dorothy Birdwell's chair into the table, bending low to enquire if she were all right before taking his own seat.
'Who's that?' Resnick asked.
Cathy lowered her voice, but not by very much. 'Marius Gooding. Her nephew. Or so she says. Of course, we like to think he's something more.' Cathy laughed, quietly malicious.
'Can't you see them, every night after she's taken her teeth out, getting at it like monkeys, swinging off the chandeliers?'
Resnick could not. Marius seemed fastidious, slightly effete, his moustache daintily trimmed. Resnick watched as he leaned forward to tip a quarter-inch of milk into Dorothy Birdwell's cup, before pouring her tea. Marius was possibly forty, Resnick thought, though he contrived to look younger the kind of man you expected to find hovering around the edges of Royal Ascot, the Henley Regatta, though since Resnick had never been to either, that was a mixture of prejudice and conjecture.
'Dorothy Birdwell,' he said.
'What did puncture her career ten years ago?'
Cathy Jordan laughed.
'We did. Women. Marcia Muller, Paretsky, Grafton, Patsy Comwell. Linda Barnes. Julie Smith. A whole bunch of others. Took old Dottie's space on the book-racks and wouldn't give it back.'
'Just because you're women?'
'Some say. Pretty much.'
'Dorothy Birdwell'sa woman.'
'Another rumour. Nothing proven.'
Resnick smiled but continued.
'These authors you mentioned, they're all American? Is that the reason?'
'Maybe it used to be. Part of it, anyway. But not any more. Liza Cody, Val McDermid, Sarah Dunant – you've got people of your own, doing pretty good.'
'So what is the reason?' Resnick asked.
'Why the big change?'
Cathy pressed butter onto her toast and shattered it into a dozen brittle pieces.
'Okay. Pact: most crime readers are women. Fact: we give them protagonists they can identify with. Heroines. Never mind old biddies purling two and two together or chief inspectors with aristocratic leanings and
