Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery by G.M. Malliet

assure you, I was not like the others in my profession, who lived on coffee and cigarettes and nothing else. I went through all the adolescent agonies trying to gain weight but could not. And then suddenly it didn’t matter.” She shrugged at the absurdities of the fashion world.
    She talked on in her high, cultivated voice, Sir Adrian beaming at her side like a proud curator unveiling a newly discovered Picasso. Sarah found herself mesmerized by Violet; this was a woman who tended to command, to dominate—qualities Sarah admired vicariously, knowing she would never possess them herself. The others were less smitten, reminding themselves they were in the presence of the enemy. Albert drank steadily, his usual response to novelty, boredom, or any condition in between; George, soon tiring of any conversation that did not revolve around himself, was surreptitiously studying his nails; Ruthven and Lillian exchanged meaningful glances across the Turkish carpet. Otherwise, the family avoided looking at one other. Natasha was wondering with admiration from what designer Violet had got her dress.
    All this, in spite of his apparent state of blissful infatuation, Sir Adrian did not fail to notice.
    Violet eventually subsiding, he clasped her strong, masculine hand in his pudgy, veined, wrinkled one. Sarah looked away, realizing she had never once seen her parents holding hands.
    Sir Adrian raised his glass.
    “To families.” He beamed. It was all going pretty much as he had hoped. The only thing to make his happiness complete would be the appearance of Chloe, the mother of this despised brood.
    Sarah and Lillian each took a polite, submissive sip. George and Ruthven gave a half-hearted lift of their glasses but did not drink.
    Albert drained his glass.
    Sir Adrian, having set the cat among the pigeons, was content.

    Sarah was in the midst of unpacking in what had been her bedroom while she was growing up—growing up being a strange euphemism for the wrenching separation from everything her childhood represented to her: hostility, sarcasm, criticism, a general feeling of being the uninvited guest at her own party.
    The room in fact bore no resemblance to the bedroom of her childhood. Sir Adrian had hardly waited for each of his children to be boarded off to school before bringing in a team of decorators to remove all vestiges of their occupancy. Sarah’s was what was now called the Victoria room, festooned, quite unlike that stumpy, dark queen, in a glut of rose sateen and pink lace. Even Sarah, the most unworldly of people and the least aware of her surroundings, recognized that the room was hideous. The deep rose color reminded her of uncooked liver. The bathroom was even worse: Its ceiling, walls, and even its door were covered in red, flocked-velvet wallpaper. Shutting the door was like being sealed in a coffin. She gagged exaggeratedly as she looked about her, longing for the cramped but comforting darkness of her flat.
    She was just folding one of the cavernous caftans she favored into a drawer when the knock sounded. It was Ruthven, accompanied by George and Albert. The loathsome Lillian was not in evidence, she saw with relief.
    “Family council meeting? How nice,” she said, trying and failing to remember them ever having banded together in the way they had today. A saying went through her mind: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. While their father had always been the common enemy, they had tended to deal with him before now—or rather, tried to—on their own, in their own ways.
    It felt strange having her brothers in her room, grown men who through some miracle had become larger versions of the small boys she remembered: Ruthven, always the bully; George, always vain, but with no particular grounds for being so. Only Albert had changed, it seemed to her—he was diminished, smaller than she remembered, his striking good looks fast fading into the pale anonymity of middle age.
    “I wanted a word before