The Death of a Much Travelled Woman Read Online Free PDF

her down? Was she drugged? Was the car that passed me that afternoon on the road your car, and were you driving her unconscious body to the moor and the bog? How did you manage it?”
    “My dear Cassandra,” Constance said distantly. “Tommy Price’s death was accidental, as the coroner ruled. Everyone knows that Tommy loved the moors, and that the ground can be treacherously unstable. Why don’t we just say that Tommy Price had the death she deserved: quick and dramatic.”
    “I think I had better tell someone,” I said.
    “No, you won’t, my dear. You won’t be believed, you know. Leave it as it is, and you’ll be far more comfortable. You’re only a tourist to the land of murder and I, after all this time, am now a traveller there.”

Murder at the International Feminist Book Fair
    “D EE!” I CALLED TO the woman in the pegboard exhibit stand, the small freckled woman with a round green cap who was staring a little woefully around her at unopened cardboard boxes.
    “Cassandra Reilly, my girl!” She fell into my arms. “It’s been years.”
    “Was it Manila or Auckland?”
    “Manila,” she said. “I missed Auckland. And now here we are at Vladivostok. Who could have imagined it?”
    “Thank goodness for glasnost .” I began to help her unpack the boxes. “Still just doing Canadian authors?”
    “It’s all you can get money for,” she said. “Though of course as a loyal Canadian I’m convinced our writers are the best.” She taped up a photograph of Serena Wood, Coastal Editions’ star author. Back in the 1970s she had written a book on log cabin building for women, and it was still selling. “I thought they might be interested in this in Siberia,” Dee said hopefully. “That’s around here someplace isn’t it?”
    “Farther south, I think,” I said, shivering slightly.
    “How about you?” Dee asked. “Still doing Spanish translation? Still living in London? I don’t know how you stand the place.”
    “Oh, it’s all right,” I said. “I’m hardly ever there, anyway. I just came back from six months in Latin America.” I swung my briefcase for her to see. It was packed with manuscripts and books that I hoped to foist on reluctant publishers. “I’m on a translation panel tomorrow. One of my authors, Luisa Montiflores, is here. She’s a depressed Uruguayan, very famous in some circles. Actually, I have to meet her now. Can we get together for lunch tomorrow?”
    “Great.”
    The fair began with a flourish of speeches in Russian, English, with simultaneous translation into French, Spanish, Catalan, and Croatian. I looked around for a couple of hours and chatted with friends and acquaintances. Then I made my way over to Dee’s stand, which now had, like all the others, a number and a sign printed by the Russian organizers. CAOSTAL EDITIONS. Well, it was close.
    When I arrived, a tall woman in a black skirt, black leather jacket, black scarf, black boots, and black hat was haranguing Dee in an upperclass British accent.
    “But my books do extremely well in England,” she was saying. “My last novel was about a woman who left her husband for another woman, and it received very good reviews in the Observer and the Times .” She pulled a clipping from her Filofax and read: ‘Mrs. Horsey-Smythe treats this subject subtly and maturely, with none of the po-faced humorlessness characteristic of the so-called lesbian novel.’ So, you see, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t do well in America. My agent doesn’t understand why…”
    “I’m sure your book is just wonderful,” said Dee insincerely, “but, as I’ve been trying to tell you, I’m not an American publisher. Oh, Cassandra, hello!” She looked relieved to see me. “This is Felicity Horsey-Smythe. Cassandra Reilly. Cassandra lives in London too. Peckham or someplace, isn’t it?”
    Felicity gave me a smile the shape of a fingernail clipping and, pretending to see a dear friend across the hall,