‘Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.’
Nigel read on to the end of the typescript. It carried Miss Miles’s life as far as her third husband. There was no reference to this husband’s befriending of the young Basil Ryle, nor to the episode when the authoress had been hazed in General Thoresby’s mess. The birth of Cyprian Gleed was described with profuse clinical and emotional detail: thereafter, he served chiefly as a peg upon which to hang theories of child-upbringing or lush sentiments about motherhood. The effect upon Nigel of some 70,000 words of Millicent Miles was to make him long for the company of a real woman. He rang up Clare Massinger, and invited himself to dinner.
After they had eaten, he handed her the two concluding pages of Chapter Four. She read them with visibly growing distaste.
‘What’s all this about “my pen falters as I trace these memories”?’ was her first comment. ‘I should have thought she’d rattle the stuff off on a typewriter.’
‘So she did. It’s author’s licence. You could hardly expect her to say “my typewriter trembles.” Anyway, she didn’t write that last page.’
Nigel explained. Clare’s voice went into a high pitch, as she said:
‘But it’s horrible, isn’t it? Do you mean to say he sat down at the typewriter and—and while she lay weltering in her gore?’
‘It seems likely. The join’s pretty neat, don’t you think?’
‘The join?’
‘Yes. The page she wrote ends “The man I chose had appeared” … The next page begins “often to me in my dreams.” Why did the murderer have to substitute this last page at all? Presumably because the one for which he substituted it gave us a clue to his identity, even his motive.’
‘Yes, that’s obvious.’
‘Perhaps what she had written was “The man I chose had appeared already in these pages.” That would narrow things down quite a bit. In fact, it would point directly at “Rockingham.”’
‘Who on earth is Rockingham?’
‘Oh, of course, you need to read this.’ Nigel handed her the page from the middle of the chapter, and told her about the initial G. erased from the margin. Clare perused this page, then dropped it from between finger and thumb on to the divan beside her.
‘I never knew people could write like this—seriously, I mean.’
‘My darling Clare, do you never read the shiny magazines?’
‘Good gracious no. They’re written by career girls for veneer girls, aren’t they?’
‘Now look at that last page again. Suppose the murderer didn’t write it merely to conceal his identity. Suppose it’s aimed positively to put us off a certain track. What track would it put us off?’
Clare re-read the page, brooding over it like a witch, the black hair tumbling about her wrists.
‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘there’s this about their not having had a child. Yes, and it’s sort of repeated lower down—“nothing of his to remember him by.” Is that it?’
‘Clever girl. Basil Ryle told me that Millicent had told him she was seduced at the age of nineteen, deserted by the man, and had a stillborn child.’
‘I don’t see how a stillborn child, nearly thirty years ago, would be a motive for murder.’
‘But if she was romancing about that part of it? If she had a child, and it lived?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Clare slowly. ‘But in that case it’s she who’d have a good reason to murder the chap, not vice-versa.’
‘Not necessarily. If this chap turned up again recently in her life, if he was a man who couldn’t afford a scandal, she might have been blackmailing him over their child. Blackmailers do get murdered.’
‘Ye’es, I see that. But could the darling of the Lending Libraries afford a scandal either? If I was the chap, I’d just have called her bluff. I say, you don’t think Basil Ryle is her son?’
‘My dear Clare, what a farcical notion!’
‘You’re only saying that because it hadn’t occurred to you,’ replied Clare demurely.
‘But she was leading him on, as a lover—actual or prospective.’
‘He discovers she is really his mum, and in a fit of revulsion murders her. Just like a Greek tragedy.’
‘Do be serious, Clare,’ protested Nigel, but a little uneasily. ‘Ryle knows all about his parents.’
‘It’s a wise child who— Well, who’s your candidate for Rockingham?’
Nigel got up and began stalking round the studio, picking up objects from shelves, staring at them unseeingly, and putting them down again the the wrong place—if any place, in Clare’s habitat, could be called wrong for any object.
‘Protheroe or Geraldine,’ he said at last. ‘It ought to be Protheroe—you see, I feel in my bones that the murder must be tied up with the libel affair.’
‘Nigel, sweet, you’re being utterly incoherent.’
‘Assuming it was Stephen Protheroe who fiddled with that proof copy—’
‘Stephen? But last time we discussed it, you said—’
‘Never mind what I said last time,’ Nigel tetchily replied. ‘Can’t I change my mind? Stephen had far the best opportunity to tamper with the proof. And then there’s the evidence of Bates.’
‘Shall I leave the room so that you can talk to yourself in private?’
‘Sorry, love. Bates was Production Manager in the firm. Stephen has no tolerance for bores, and Bates—according to him—was a Grade A bore. Yet when he’s finished reading the proof, instead of getting a secretary to take it to Bates, Stephen goes along with it himself and has a jolly chat with Bates while it’s being wrapped up to send to the printer. That seems to me highly suspicious.’
‘Why?’
‘Why should he expose himself to five minutes of boredom unless he wanted to make sure that Bates didn’t glance at the proof before dispatching it? The seance with Bates was the last step in an artful campaign to get the book published with its libellous passages all alive and kicking.’
‘All right, then,’ said Clare after a dubious pause. ‘So Protheroe is the murderer?’
‘That’s just the trouble. Stephen wouldn’t care a damn if Millicent Miles threatened to tell the world she’d had a child by him. Arthur Geraldine, on the other hand, might. But one simply can’t imagine Geraldine plunging his firm into a libel action.’
Clare Massinger rose from the divan with one of the swift, sinuous movements that made her hair swirl like smoke on a gusty day, and drew Nigel down beside her.
‘Poor boy. Your head’s bad, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, this bloody sinus—’
‘I mean, you’re not cerebrating on all six cylinders.’
‘Oh. I thought you were giving me some womanly sympathy,’ Nigel complained.
Clare ignored the appeal. ‘Suppose Millicent Miles did have a living child by X. It’d be—what?—nearly thirty now. Suppose she threatened its father to tell it—call it “him”—tell him that he was a bastard.’
‘Nobody minds being a bastard nowadays.’
‘Oh don’t they just? In some circles it’s thought a terrible disgrace.’
Nigel went off at a tangent again. ‘I can’t get it out of my head that Stephen must have known Miss Miles in the old days. The first time I met him, he said, “She always—she hates puns.” Was it a near slip of the tongue? “She always hated puns”—is that what he was about to say? Later that day he jeered at her, “I thought your births were always painless.” Oh, I know the phrases needn’t have meant more than they said on the surface. And Millicent told Ryle she’d never met Stephen till this summer. But I got this strong impression of a familiarity between them. If it existed, why were they at such pains to deny it? Well, I can see only one answer to that.’
‘What answer?’
‘That they collaborated over tampering with the proof copy, that their motive for doing so sprang from something in their past association, and therefore the association must be
kept dark.’
‘It’s all madly theoretical, isn’t it?’ said Clare. ‘I’ll fix up for you to meet Mrs. Blayne—she’s the woman who knew Miss Miles in her youth.’
‘Thank you. That might help. But then there’s old shark-face—Geraldine,’ continued Nigel abstractedly. ‘Millicent told me she’d met him years ago, “under rather strange circumstances.” And why did he let her go on occupying that room at the office and making a general nuisance of herself? And he did rather firmly warn me off digging up the past. He’s married—a far better subject for blackmail than Stephen, I’d have thought, if blackmail was what Millicent got murdered for.’ Nigel, frowning, picked up one of Clare’s little clay horses and rubbed it against his cheek. ‘It’s odd, the way people will commit murder to achieve security. As though one could ever buy peace of mind with someone else’s blood.’
‘Most people don’t see beyond the next step. Particularly when the next step is a precipice they’re pushing somebody over.’
‘If, on the other hand, it was Stephen Protheroe alone who fiddled with that proof, and if Miss Miles could blackmail him about it—’
‘But why should she?’
‘By telling him he must withdraw his opposition to the firm’s reprinting her books, or she’d expose him. Awkward dilemma. He’s a man of integrity—where books are concerned, anyway. But his security would be at stake. Liz Wenham told me his whole life was bound up with the firm. They’d have to sack him: he’d never get another job in publishing: and he’s dried up years ago as a writer. Oh yes, if security was the motive for this murder, Stephen Protheroe’s the obvious suspect.’
Chapter 10
Revise
IT WAS A tradition of Wenham & Geraldine, handed down from the firm’s earliest days, that on the last Wednesday of every month the partners and the reader should dine together. In more expansive times a private room at Skimpole’s used to be engaged for these occasions; but a bomb had destroyed Skimpole’s in 1944, and it being unthinkable that the firm should patronise any other restaurant for the time-hallowed observance, these dinners had been held since then in Arthur Geraldine’s flat. Normally they were confined to the firm’s ruling circle. But twice a year, the legendary James Wenham had laid it down, guests might be invited—a fellow-publisher, a distinguished editor, a literary-minded bishop perhaps, even an author. When one of the firm’s authors received such an invitation, it was understood to be a notable honorific, a medal for long service and good conduct, particularly the latter.
The strength of this tradition may be gauged by the fact that, in spite of a murder on the premises, neither to Liz Wenham nor to Arthur Geraldine did it occur for a moment that the monthly dinner should be cancelled. Where the blitzes had failed, it was unlikely that poor Millicent Miles would succeed. The partners did, however, pay tribute to the out-of-jointness of the times by inviting Nigel Strangeways, although tonight’s was not one of the twice-yearly guest dinners.
Arthur Geraldine had given Nigel the invitation this morning, in the manner of one who both asks and bestows a blessing. Though reporters, the police and his lawyer had been making for a harassed life, the senior partner had not lost his urbanity. Like many Irishmen, he was a natural actor, with a very hard core of realism, no doubt, beneath the smooth, fluent exterior. ‘Black tie, if you will,’ he had murmured. It was evidently part of a tradition: one must dress for dinner to keep up one’s morale and self-respect in a jungle infested by wild authors, prowling literary agents, treacherous fellow-publishers, and pigmy reviewers with their lethal blowpipes.
Dressing on Wednesday evening, Nigel reflected upon a day which had been most unsatisfactory. First, there was the interview with Jean, the girl for whom the lively Susan had been substituting in the Reference Library. Jean could add little to her friend’s second-hand account of the altercation between Stephen Protheroe and Miss Miles; she was pretty sure that ‘Goggles’ had been used in the vocative case; also, she had heard one shocking remark made by Miss Miles—‘You’re just impotent!’ It was odd, the way the case kept reverting to this topic—did she have a child at nineteen? Did it live? Whose was it? But Miss Miles’s vindictive remark probably referred to Stephen’s impotence as a writer; Nigel had heard her say to him, on another occasion, ‘I do write, anyway.’ Just before he left her, Jean said:
‘Susan’s got something on her mind. She hasn’t told me, but I can see it. I wish I knew—’
At this point her telephone rang. Mr. Ryle wanted her to look out two books and bring them down to his room. The interview was ended. Whatever it was that weighed upon the feather-pate of Susan, Nigel had more important matters to deal with first—or so, regrettably, he assumed.
Stephen Protheroe was one of them. He looked up from a MS., with the dazed expression of a bookworm that has chewed its way through another inch of paper, as Nigel entered.
‘What does “Rockingham” mean to you?’ asked Nigel without preamble.
‘China. Also an English Prime Minister of the later eighteenth century. Why?’
‘You didn’t read Miss Miles’s autobiography, then?’
‘My dear fellow! I don’t believe in going to meet horror half-way.’
This shock-tactic having failed, Nigel tried another. Yes, Stephen thought he remembered the particular row Jean had overheard. It had been about his opposition to the firm’s reprinting some of Millicent’s novels. Yes, she had started calling him ‘Goggles’; nicknaming was a feature of her lamentable schoolgirlishness; had she not called General Thoresby ‘Thor’? She was a woman addicted to over-familiarity.
‘We found an entry in her desk-diary at home,’ said Nigel. ‘For last Friday. Very cryptic. The word “Thorsday,” with a question mark and an exclamation mark after it. What do you suppose that could mean?’
Stephen’s mouth made one of its nibbling movements.
‘An appointment with the General? But she wasn’t sure if he’d keep it?’
‘General Thoresby has told the police there was no such appointment. He was out of London on Friday.’
‘Well then!’ Stephen Protheroe threw up his hands.
‘My own guess,’ said Nigel, ‘is that the entry referred to the General’s book. A meeting with someone else about it. A show-down, perhaps. I’m convinced the murder and Time to Fight are linked somehow. The police don’t seem very keen on the theory,’ he mendaciously added; ‘but those are the lines I shall work on. A missing link. Buried deep in the past, maybe.’
If there was an opening here, Protheroe did not take it; nor had Nigel any desire, at present, to force his hand—or, for that matter, anything to force it with. Stephen was an elusive personality, warm and stimulating at times, but capable of switching off his attention in a disconcerting way. Now, like a fish darting into an aquarium grotto, he retired again into the MS. he had been reading.
The rest of the day was no more rewarding. Nigel found Basil Ryle too busy, or unwilling, to see him. He finally tracked down, after several telephone calls, the Mrs. Blayne whom Clare had suggested as an informant about Millicent Miles’s early days; but Mrs. Blayne, a J.P. and an indefatigable committee woman, could not make time to see him till tomorrow. Late in the afternoon, he had a talk with Inspector Wright at Scotland Yard. Wright’s team had extended their search, over the last twenty-four hours, from Wenham & Geraldine’s offices to the private residences of the partners, Stephen Protheroe and Cyprian Gleed: none of these raised any objection; and no bloodstained clothing or goloshes had been found, no sign of anything having been burnt. The murderer, in any case, had had the whole weekend to dispose of the traces of his crime. In so far as the alibis of the five for Friday evening could be checked, they had stood up to the rigorous examination: Wright’s men would now have to check their movements over the whole weekend; and of course there was the usual notification of laundries, dry cleaners, old-clothes shops. But at the moment it seemed as if the murderer had walked out of his bloodbath as clean as a needle. Arthur Geraldine’
s razors—he was the only one who used cut-throats—had been tested in the laboratory and found guiltless. The autopsy upon the dead woman showed that the time of death must have been between 4 p.m. and midnight on Friday, probably earlier rather than later—a finding which was consistent, Wright judged, with the nailing-up of the sliding window. Little had been proved, except that the killer was an audacious and a resolute individual.
Shortly after eight o’clock Nigel rang the side-door bell at Wenham & Geraldine’s. Arthur Geraldine himself opened it, and took him up to the top floor in the lift. Nigel was introduced to Mrs. Geraldine, a slim, tall, well-preserved woman, with an excessively gracious manner, some ten years younger than her husband. Liz Wenham, Ryle and Protheroe were already there, conveying that atmosphere of intimacy blended with a certain disorientation and disengagement, which is so often generated when people who work together in a unit meet socially. Nigel, however, found himself fascinated less by the atmosphere than by the environment. The drawing-room was a show-piece, a museum. On the mantelpiece, on shelves along three walls, in cleverly-lit corner cupboards, there stood a ravishing array of china. Nigel was no expert on ceramics, but he could recognise the quality of what he saw here.
‘I’d no idea you were a collector. What exquisite things you’ve got.’
Arthur Geraldine’s eye lit up, the thin shark mouth softened. ‘I’m glad you like them. Yes, I suppose I’m a bit of a connoisseur’—he pronounced it, in the Irish way, ‘connossoor.’
‘Must be a life’s work keeping them dusted,’ said Liz Wenham gruffly to her hostess.
‘Oh, my husband never allows anyone else to touch them. Arthur, do give Mr. Strangeways a drink.’
Geraldine was already displaying a piece to Nigel, his fingers curling round it, caressing it, as though the porcelain communicated to them its own delicacy.
End of Chapter Page 12
