Poison Pen by Tanya Landman Read Free Book Online

he parked the trailer outside and left them there. The staff thought it was a bit unusual, but it all seemed official so they went along with it. Later, someone must have let them out and herded them into the meeting room. You saw for yourselves the mess they made.”
    “How did Basil come to be trampled?” I asked. “Why didn’t you just back out again?”
    “Poor Basil! He gets so nervous! He’s terribly shy – public events are torture, really. That’s why Trevor came along to hold his hand, not that he was any help. Basil’s mind was on his talk, and he was halfway across the carpet before he saw the pigs. Then he sort of froze. The sow was at one end and the piglets were at the other. Somehow he managed to get right between them.”
    “And, as we know, it’s extremely dangerous to come between a mother and her young.” Graham looked at me, and I knew we were both remembering a tigress who’d killed her keeper in a similar situation. Graham added, “Sheep will attack dogs that threaten their lambs. And I gather that pig bites are particularly unpleasant.”
    “Yes, I suppose it could have been a lot worse.” Sue sighed. “Viola was furious. She said, ‘You’d think he’d know how to deal with a few pigs after writing all those books!’ But he just stood there, watching the sow charge at him.”
    “How did you get him away?”
    “Chocolate biscuits. I’d brought a packet along for afterwards, you see. I pelted her with them and she was thrilled to bits. While she hoovered them up, Trevor and I got Basil out.”
    It made me laugh to think of Sue hurling chocolate biscuits like frisbees at a charging sow. I complimented her on her quick thinking.
    She gave me a watery smile. “It was a terribly narrow escape. He might have been killed! Imagine that! As it is, I don’t suppose the poor man will ever want to talk in public again.”
    “But who’s doing all this? Who could hate a bunch of authors that much?”
    “I can’t imagine,” said Sue, biting her lip. “And what’s worse – I can’t imagine what will happen next.”

collateral damage
    The attacks on Zenith, Katie, Muriel and Francisco were the results of very clever booby traps triggered by timing devices, according to the evening news. Inspector Humphries told the reporter that they could have been set up well before the festival began. So while the police trawled through the records of who’d had access to the town hall during the last few weeks, Graham and I tried to figure out what on earth was going on.
    It was Saturday night and my mum, Lili, had gone out to fetch a Chinese takeaway. I reckoned we had about half an hour, maximum, to do some serious research on the web before she came back. She’d missed the news, but if she found out we’d got ourselves involved with more Suspicious Goings-On it would mean the end of our careers as student ambassadors.
    We knew that all the authors who’d been attacked wrote books for kids or teenagers. The other thing that linked them was the Vellum Prize, so we typed it into the search engine and were rewarded instantly with the list of shortlisted books.
    Katie Bell –
Stupid Cupid
    Muriel Black –
Wizard Wheezes
    Francisco Botticelli –
Dragons and Demons
    Charlie Deadlock –
The Spy Complex
    Esmerelda Desiree –
The Vampiress of Venezia
    Basil Tamworth –
This Boar’s Life
    Zenith –
Princess Peony and her Perfect Pony Petrushka
    “So the only one who hasn’t been attacked is Esmerelda Desiree, but she’s not doing her thing until tomorrow,” I said.
    “I just hope Mrs Boulder has taken adequate security measures,” worried Graham. “I would have thought Esmerelda Desiree must be next on the attacker’s list.”
    It turned out that the Vellum Prize was worth a lot of money – the winner would walk away with a cheque for £25,000.
    “There would be the increased book sales too,” Graham reminded me. “And as we know, money is number five on the US Motives for Murder