Fatal Fantasy (Greta Carriger British Cozy Mystery Book 4) by Susan Harper

Author:Susan Harper [Harper, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2024-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

5

Neither Greta nor Julia got much sleep that night. They arrived home long after midnight following three hours of being interviewed by Detective Constable Spence Loudermilk, a lank, jug-eared young man with an overweening sense of self-importance. Spence wanted to know how they had come to be at the party, whether they had known the victim, and whether anyone had been behaving suspiciously around him that night or in the days previous.

Greta told him all she knew—how she had met Spitz the week before on a visit to the set of his new series; his uncanny knack for making enemies out of otherwise level-headed people; the altercation with the lieutenant that evening and his sudden disappearance shortly thereafter. She omitted any mention of his marital disputes, thinking that Melusane was better equipped to discuss those—though at present Melusane sat leaned against a wall of the house with her hands pressed to her chin, still too dazed and numb to grieve properly.

“Well, given his public stature, the list of potential suspects is going to be considerable,” said Spence, with that air of frustration that seemed to trail him like a cloud of perfume. “Might have been a deranged fan who learned of his whereabouts and managed to lure him to a secluded part of the grounds. The only real clue we have is that final text, and that doesn’t leave us much to go on.”

Greta attempted as best she could to explain the argument that had broken out between Spitz and Warton the week before over whether an author is a reliable interpreter of their own work. Spence nodded along sleepily, only half-listening, until Greta reached the part where Warton mentioned the post-structural theory known as “death of the author,” at which point he glanced up sharply. “What did he mean by that?’

“Nothing sinister, I don’t think,” said Greta, and launched into a brief history of the theory that an author’s personal life should have little or no bearing on how their work is interpreted. “Warton made a lot of people upset, though. Some folks who had never heard of ‘death of the author’ thought he was threatening to murder Spitz.”

“What did Spitz have to say about it?”

“He wasn’t too happy, either,” said Greta, “though I got the feeling his outrage was a little disingenuous. He knew what Warton meant well enough.”

Spence made an attempt to interview Melusane, who after some coaxing admitted that she suspected her husband of having an affair with Topsy Hauer, although she had no real proof except for a letter written in his own hand that she had recently found on a desk. Apparently, he’d appeared to have been in the middle of writing when he had been interrupted. In the letter, he spoke of “things we ought not to have done” and “secrets that I must carry to the grave.”

“And ever since he hired that woman as his assistant,” she said with a loud sob, “they’ve been spending more and more time together. We agreed

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