CHAPTER NINE #2
Sandra and Eleanor exchanged glances, and Kate sensed she'd touched on something significant. That, or they were beginning to feel that the new girl was asking too many damned questions.
“Oh, it’s okay,” Eleanor said carefully. “Margaret could be quite direct in her feedback. Sometimes her corrections during discussions came across as criticism rather than helpful guidance."
"Margaret was honest," Sandra said defensively. "If someone misunderstood a plot point or missed an important theme, she would point it out. That's how people learn."
"But there's a difference between pointing out errors and making people feel stupid," Eleanor replied. "Margaret sometimes forgot that not everyone had her educational background or experience with literary analysis."
Kate filed away this information about Margaret's potentially abrasive communication style.
If Margaret had been regularly correcting or criticizing other members, it could have created resentment that went beyond simple personality conflicts.
She was beginning to understand the group dynamics more clearly.
Margaret and Sandra had apparently formed an alliance around maintaining high literary standards, potentially at the expense of making newer or less confident members feel welcome and valued.
"But book clubs…they don’t usually get so heated, right?" Kate asked. She was finding it harder than she’d imagined to ask questions in such a way without revealing why she was truly there.
"Most people just tried to stay out of it," Carol Stevens said diplomatically. "Though I will say that David sometimes seemed uncomfortable when the discussions got too intense."
"David's a good man, but he doesn't like conflict," Eleanor said. "When Margaret and Sandra got into one of their educational mode lectures, David would usually just sit quietly until the conversation moved on. He’d almost look embarrassed."
Kate made a mental note about David Fletcher's discomfort with conflict, adding it to her observations about his nervous behavior during the evening's meeting. She was having to make great strides to commit it all to memory; it was a lot of different names and notes to keep track of mentally.
As the conversation continued, Kate learned more about the underlying tensions that had apparently been simmering within the book club for months.
Margaret's arrival had disrupted the group's previous balance, creating an alliance with Sandra that had made some members feel excluded or criticized. That’s what Kate was taking away from it all, anyway.
By the time Kate left Eleanor's house at nearly ten o'clock, she had a much clearer picture of the complex relationships and resentments that might have contributed to Margaret's death.
The killer might not have been motivated by literary obsession at all, but by personal grievances disguised as tributes to Christie's work.
As Kate settled into her car, she pulled out her phone and called DeMarco. She answered on the second ring with a simple, “Hey. How’d it go?”
"Interesting. Very interesting. There are some serious undercurrents in this group that weren't apparent during our initial interviews. Have you found anything new on your end?"
"Nothing significant. I've been going through social media profiles and financial records, but nothing jumps out as suspicious. A few of them have spotless backgrounds, which is almost suspicious in itself if you ask me."
Kate started her car and pulled away from Eleanor's house.
"That's exactly what I was thinking. For right now, there's one that sort of stands out…
the only guy in the group. David Fletcher.
He was fidgety almost the entire time, and he was the first one to leave.
He's either very uncomfortable as the only man in a group of women who are currently highly emotional, or he's hiding something. "
"What kind of something?"
"I'm not sure yet, but he seemed nervous throughout the entire meeting, and the other members mentioned that he doesn't like conflict. Given some of the personality clashes within this group, that could be significant."
“Let’s dig into him first, then,” DeMarco said. “So…what else did you learn?”
Kate drove through the quiet residential streets while filling DeMarco in on Sandra Morrison's complaints about newer members and the apparent alliance between Sandra and Margaret around maintaining literary standards.
"So we might be looking at someone who resented Margaret's criticism rather than someone obsessed with Christie novels?" DeMarco asked.
"It's possible. The elaborate staging could be a red herring designed to throw us off the real motive." Kate paused at a stop sign, considering the implications. "Though it would take considerable knowledge of Christie's work to create such a convincing literary scene."
"Someone could have researched the details specifically for this purpose," DeMarco pointed out. "It wouldn't require years of reading Christie to learn about the candlestick in Murder on the Orient Express."
Kate found this possibility both troubling and intriguing. If the Christie staging was indeed a deliberate misdirection, it suggested a killer who was not only willing to commit murder but sophisticated enough to create an elaborate false narrative around their crime.
"I want to take a closer look at David Fletcher tomorrow," Kate said as she turned onto her own street. "His behavior tonight was definitely suspicious."
"I’ll lend a hand on that," DeMarco replied. "If he's hiding something, we'll find it."
As Kate pulled into her driveway and ended her call with DeMarco, she found herself wondering if Margaret Carlisle had died not because of her love of literature, but because of her inability to keep her opinions to herself.
The Christie staging might have been nothing more than an elaborate attempt to hide a simpler motive: revenge against a woman who had made someone feel small and stupid once too often.
Given that this was just a book club, that seemed like a ridiculous idea. But in her line of work, Kate had seen people die for far less. And she knew that sometimes, small grievances within small groups often proved to be the deadliest.