The Mystery Guest

All eyes are on me. Cheryl’s face is filled with predatory glee.

“Mr. Grimthorpe suffered from writer’s block,” I explain. “The evidence is right there in that black Moleskine notebook. He was perfectly literate, but he couldn’t write a single word. I remember it so clearly—on his desk at the mansion were stacks of Moleskines he claimed were his first drafts. They were just like the one Cheryl stole from that box—monogrammed and filled with doodles and indecipherable scrawls. When I was a child, I thought it was code or a secret language. But it wasn’t. I see that now.”

“As usual, Molly, you’re making no sense,” Stark says.

“Can’t you see? The black Moleskine is proof of a motive,” I say. “There was a good reason why someone wanted Mr. Grimthorpe dead.”

“Even I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Angela says.

“Nor do I,” Mr. Preston adds.

“For god’s sake, Molly,” Stark says. “Spell it out for us, will you?”

“Motive,” I say. “M-O-T-I-V-E. Meaning: a reason to kill. Mr. Grimthorpe didn’t write his books, not a single one of them. Someone else did.”

Chapter 23

I used to think it only happened in movies, the classic black-and-white kind that Gran and I used to watch together on Movie Nights in our apartment, snuggled side by side on our threadbare sofa. But now I know it can happen in reality, too—that a segment of your past can play out like a movie montage, that life can flash before your very eyes, reminding you of everything you’ve lived through that has brought you to the present moment, that has made you who you are.

That’s what I’ve been experiencing as I reveal the truth to Detective Stark about that fateful couple of weeks I spent working alongside Gran in the Grimthorpe mansion, polishing silver, reading in the library, and befriending a troubled man, an author to whom I fed ideas I had no clue would lead him to write an international blockbuster. I have relived all of this in Technicolor. I have seen it again through fresh eyes.

Mr. Snow suggested that Detective Stark and I retire to his office to speak privately, and for the last hour, that’s where we’ve been. I’m sitting in a chair across from an imposing detective who has always intimidated me. And I’m telling her my life story.

I’ll grant her this: for the first time ever, Stark is listening intently, patiently. For once, she realizes I’m ahead of her, that I know things she doesn’t. I can see her struggling to piece things together, to connect the past with what has happened recently—the unsolved mystery of a poisoned author in the Regency Grand Hotel.

Gran used to say, Stories are a way to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

She was right. Every fairy tale teaches a lesson.

The monster is always real, just not the way you thought.

No secret stays buried forever.

The maid shalt be redeemed in the end.

“Rat-a-tat-tat-tat,” I say to Detective Stark. “That sound was always in the background, the sound of his personal secretary typing. Mr. Grimthorpe wrote longhand, yet never once did I see him doing anything but doodling in those monogrammed black Moleskines. As a child, I was told his personal secretary typed up what he wrote, and I believed it. But now, I don’t think that was true.”

“You said just now that you gave him the idea for the end of his most popular novel,” Detective Stark says. “The lye solution.”

“Yes. That was my idea, but what if someone else gave him the rest of the story, the rest of all his stories? Maybe that secretary was more than a typist. Maybe she was…”

“A ghostwriter?” Stark offers.

“Yes,” I reply.

“A ghostwriter working in secrecy while the fraudulent front man took all the credit and fame,” Stark says.

“And reaped the staggering monetary rewards,” I add. “Would that not breed discontent? Would that not be a motive for revenge?”

Detective Stark stands suddenly. She paces the perimeter of the room. The reverberation of her footsteps travels right up my spine.

“I’ve met some writers in my time,” she says. “The ones who write police procedurals sometimes consult with me. They want to know if they got their details right. Let’s just say, those writers know a hell of a lot about how to murder someone without leaving a trace. The question is: Could a writer—or a ghostwriter—apply their knowledge to a real murder? And if so, could they get away with it?” The detective pauses in her tracks. “Molly,” she says. “I think I’ve underestimated you.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I don’t always know what you’re going on about. But you just put together a whole series of clues I didn’t even realize were clues. I need your help.”

“My help?” I say. “With what?”

“We’re going on a road trip.”

The thought of going anywhere with Detective Stark is the most terrifying thing I can imagine right about now. “Where are we going?” I ask.

“To the Grimthorpe mansion, of course.”

—