The Christie Caper Read Online Free Page A

as a deep northern sea, patrician features that would be as enchanting at eighty as at eighteen, crouched—dammit, she even crouched gracefully despite her fashionably long skirt—at the center table of the Christie exhibit.
    For a long moment, the golden head tilted at a listening angle, then, with a nod of satisfaction, an elegantly beringed hand (sapphires predominating) opened a canvas carryall.
    Annie cleared her throat.
    The intruder’s slim shoulders stiffened.
    Annie flicked the switches and light flooded Death on Demand, illuminating every corner, the coffee bar with mugs bearing the names of famous mysteries in bright red script, the cheerful enclave for readers that offered inviting cane chairs, Whitmani ferns sprouting from raffia baskets, and onyx-based brass floor lamps, the softly gleaming gum bookcases lined diagonally to the central corridor.
    Without turning, the intruder addressed her in an unforgettable, husky, lilting voice. “Dear Annie, how
like
you to be lurking.” Serenely, she bent back to her carryall and busily lifted out an assortment of objects. “I didn’t want to be any trouble. Just a
little
thought of mine. A soupçon of
history
adds so much to every aspect of our lives.”
    Annie stalked across the floor, valiantly repressing a sense of imminent defeat. Laurel was
not
going to prevail. Not this time. She managed to keep her voice pleasant when she stood beside her mother-in-law. “Laurel, I know you mean well….” As she spoke, Annie felt she’d fulfilled her obligation for Christian charity for at least a month. “But this exhibition is in honor of Agatha Christie.” She continued forcefully,
“Agatha Christie only.”
    Laurel looked up reproachfully. Her primrose-blue eyes brimmed with disbelief, dismay, and acute puzzlement.
    Since they’d already fought this battle a dozen different ways on a dozen different days, Annie felt a strong urge to say, “Aw, come off it, Laurel.” That she didn’t was an indication, she felt, of restraint akin to saintliness.
    “After all,” Annie continued grimly, ignoring the seductive eyes, “we are celebrating the centennial of the birth of the greatest mystery writer of all time. More than one billion of her books have been published. One
billion,
Laurel.”
    Laurel smiled benignly. “Of course.” An airy wave of her hand dismissed the figure. “But Annie, we cannot,” she said gently, “have the chicken without the egg. Now, can we?” She bent back to her carryall and reverently lifted out a facsimile of a 3½-by-6½-inch manuscript page covered with tiny, cramped script. She held it out as a priestess might proffer an icon. “Where would Agatha Christie be without Edgar? Who wrote the very first detective story in the history of the world?”
    Annie muttered, “How about Vidocq? For that matter, what about Voltaire’s Zadig?”
    But Laurel continued to pull items from the carryall, carefully placing them in a semicircle on the center table. In addition to the reproduction of the first manuscript page of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the new items included a shiny golden beetle (“The Gold Bug”), a stack of letters (“The Purloined Letter”) and (Annie’s interest rose. Where on earth had Laurel obtained them?) the November and December 1842 and February 1843 issues of
Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion,
which had carried “The Mystery of Marie Roget” in three installments.
    Finally, with a satisfied murmur, Laurel placed in front of the intrusive objects a sign lovingly executed in calligraphy (Annie didn’t even want to know when her mother-in-law had mastered this art):
    In the Beginning
    “Oh, no,” Annie moaned.
    Laurel gazed at her daughter-in-law fondly. “My sweet, it is only fitting. As our dear Arthur Conan Doyle said, ‘Edgar Allan Poe was the father of the detective tale.’”
    “So he did,” Annie agreed. “Doyle also went on to say, ‘I fail to see how any of his followers can find any