Page 47 of The Battle of the Bookshops
“But you see what this means, though, right?” pressed Charlie, unable to keep a note of excitement out of his voice. “This is one more pointer for the witch-trials theory. They executed witches, I know that much. And—as for not getting buried in a churchyard—if murderers were banished, women who were accused of witchcraft, of rejecting Christianity and worshipping the devil or whatever... they weredefinitelygoing to be banished, don’t you think?”
Jules and Flo shrugged, nodding. Charlie had a point.
“This stuff’s cool, Jules,” Charlie went on, reaching out for the penciled family tree Jules had sketched from her parish records research. “I’ve got to go and work my shift in the health shop now, but tomorrow I’ll contact my historian mate at Exeter Uni and see if I can get her on the case, yeah?”
Chapter 20
It was a sleepy Thursday afternoon, and Jules was supposed to be doing the filing while Flo served customers, but instead, bored, she was doomscrolling through Portneath Books’ Instagram feed. That Cally woman was seriously on it with the social media marketing, she had to admit. And then she saw it.
“Damn it!” exclaimed Jules, chucking the phone down onto the desk with irritation.
“What?” Flo asked, scurrying in, alarmed.
“Raymond Perry,” Jules said. “He’s doing a signing at Portneath Books too next week,andit’s scheduled to be right after ours.” Ha. Roman definitely hadn’t mentioned that during any of their meetings.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s on their Instagram feed,” Jules replied, showing her.
“Better after than before, though,” suggested Flo, peering at the times on the post.
Jules sighed.
Raymond Perry, author of a hugely popular crime fiction series, was hot property in publishing—but famous for being tricky and bad-tempered. Jules was already nervous about having him in, fearful that whatever razzmatazz she could conjure up would fallshort of his expectations. Now she was going to be sharing potential queues of adoring fans and, more to the point, sales with Portneath Books. And that was revenue she could not afford to lose.
She narrowed her eyes. She and Roman might be enjoying each other’s company now, but there was no letting up in the battle between the two shops. Right. She would do everything in her power to ensure Capelthorne’s sold more signed copies than Portneath. They were first, at least, so there was every chance they would.
A full thirty minutes after Raymond was due to arrive, he swept into the shop, leaving any apologies to the scuttling, nervous publishing representative who slipped in behind him. Jules’s heart went out to the poor girl. God knows, she had been in that position herself far too often. The stress engendered in having to keep a diva author happy came back to her in a rush. She settled Raymond at his suitably large and prominent table, with a stack of books and more in a box at his feet, soothing him with plans of lunch at Freya’s in a bit and offering hot drinks and his choice of biscuits in the meantime.
“I’ll have hot water with a slice of lemon,” he told Jules. “And I mean hot but not boiled, and not a scrap of limescale, please. In fact, if you could heat up some mineral water—preferably Evian—I would be most grateful.”
“I’msosorry we’re late,” gabbled the poor publishing assistant, who turned out to be an anxious twenty-two-year-old called Miranda. “I can’t get him to leave anywhere on time, plus he refused to do the signing in the Waterstones shop in Exeter because he said he wanted to ‘rest,’ and the office is going to kill me if he does that again here. He’s already muttering about not wanting to go across the road after lunch.”
Jules briefly entertained the pleasing possibility of Raymond reneging on his arrangement with Portneath Books, but looking at the poor quaking wreck in front of her, she jumped to reassure her.
“Don’t worry,” Jules said, “we’ll give him a slap-up lunch and keep a sharp eye on the clock. The restaurant’s lovely, and it’ll put him in the best mood ever, I promise you. He’ll be a pussycat this afternoon.”
As long as he didn’t sell as many books for Roman as he would hopefully do for Jules.
Unexpectedly, Raymond was the model of charm, just as long as Jules kept funneling a steady flow of adoring fans his way. Whenever there was a lull, he would industriously start signing all the copies he could lay his hands on, which was annoying, as Jules had been hoping to return unsold stock to the publisher. She wasn’t allowed to do so once it had been signed, but it would be uncharitable to assume this was exactly why Raymond was doing it.
The signing session passed smoothly enough, and then Jules took him, Flo, and Miranda out to a hopefully convivial lunch at Freya’s. His mood improved further in the face of a locally caught crab starter, Hollytree Farm lamb cutlets with tiny, fresh peas, and a large helping of Freya’s famous triple chocolate mousse to follow, all dispatched with nearly a whole bottle of the local sparkling wine. He also managed to imbibe two glasses of port taken with heroic amounts of a delicious soft, blue-veined sheep cheese, also from Hollytree Farm. Jules and the other two women watched in awe as he packed it all away, and Jules couldn’t help but make an autobiographical connection between him and the hard-drinking, big-eating protagonist in his books.
Jules escorted him personally to Portneath Books, where she was pulled into the staff room by Roman for a kiss and a debrief.
“He’s a despotic toddler, like most of them,” Jules divulged. “Good luck.”
“Sales?” Roman shot back, his eyes narrowing.
“Sixty-eight copies,” said Jules smugly. “And quite a few backlist sales too.”
“Ha!” said Roman. “Ten quid says I beat you. We’ll compare notes when I pick you up at seven. Still okay for tonight?”
Jules’s heart sank. It was a supper in Middlemass with a few of his mates. She could hardly refuse, but she much preferred having him to herself and was still remembering her wary teenage awe of the “cool crowd” Roman had always so effortlessly been a part of.
“Sure,” she said. “Should I bring anything?”
“Don’t worry about any of that. Just be ready,” he said, kissing her again, this time chastely on the forehead, and shoving her gently back out onto the shop floor. There, Raymond was now being expertly charmed by Cally, who was laughing musically as he regaled her with well-worn anecdotes about his own brilliance.
