Another Margaret (The Randy Craig Mysteries Book 6)

by Janice Macdonald

  I tried calling Guy at home. No answer. I tried the general office. The secretaries hadn’t seen him today, and no, I didn’t wish to leave a message. I didn’t want to create any sort of trail for Quinn to follow, no dots connecting Guy to me. I hit the payphone in frustration. Where the hell was he? Had he really gone out to Elk Island Park on a whim? And if so, did that mean he was out of harm’s way?

  I don’t know what made me dial the number to Quinn’s office. Maybe I was still fearful of a conspiracy with Guy. Maybe I just wanted to get a bead on her logistically. If she was there, answering her phone, she couldn’t also be stalking me through the mall with a butcher knife.

  A mixture of relief and horror flooded through me when her voice came on the line. I was too paralyzed to say anything. “Hello?” she repeated. She waited a beat or three and then said, “Miranda?”

  I must have breathed idiosyncratically, because she continued with certitude.

  “Miranda, we really must talk. I’m sure you’ll want some sort of explanation, and I suppose, under the circumstances, you’re entitled to one. I’m still not certain how you obtained access to the manuscript, but I have to assume you’ve read it.”

  There was silence from me, which she took as confirmation.

  “Well, then I’m sure you’ll understand that after this novel, there was no more need for Ahlers. Can’t you see that it was best for me to silence her before her work took on second-rate signs or reduced in strength? Look what happened to Tennessee Williams in later life. He really should have been stopped after The Rose Tattoo.”

  I couldn’t believe the cold-blooded way she was talking. Silencing a writer before she lost it artistically? I’ve heard of censorship, but this was really taking it to the limit.

  “Perhaps if we could talk,” Quinn continued, “I might be able to explain. It would do me good, probably, to talk about it to someone. Would you come to the office tonight, around seven? I’m sure I could make you understand my position.”

  “Dr. Quinn,” I finally said, “I’ve been to Trumpeter Lake. I don’t think there’s anything you need to tell me.”

  Her voice changed somehow. I realized with hindsight that she’d been pleading with me, and she was now through. The supplication, what little she’d been able to muster, was gone from her next words.

  “You’ve been up north. I see. Well, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps there really is nothing more to say.”

  The dial tone began to buzz in my ear.

  I made my way back to my neighbourhood with my mind on Nancy Drew. She always got clobbered in the line of busybody-ness, but she managed to spring back time after time to get the baddie. Maybe it wasn’t possible to ferret out truth without getting bludgeoned. Of course, I was alone in this venture, I thought, as I rounded the house to reach the back door to my suite. Nancy always had her Ivy League boyfriend to help her out of jams. What was his name…? “Ned Nickerson!” Thrilled at being able to retrieve this bit of trivia despite my fear and exhaustion, I must have said it out loud.

  “I beg your pardon?” a voice spoke from the shadows.

  My heart jumped in my chest, but then I saw Guy unfolding himself from his perch on the back steps. “I know it’s been a couple of days, but surely you could make a pretense of remembering my name.”

  I was so relieved to see him that I gave him a big, tight hug that neither of us had been expecting; we almost toppled backward onto the steps.

  Guy regained his composure and balance first. “Really, Randy, what would the landlords say? Why don’t we go inside so you can further demonstrate how happy you are to see me at our leisure?”

  Relief at seeing him turned quickly into anger, the sort mothers demonstrate to kids who have managed to lose themselves in grocery stores. “Where the hell have you been? Do you realize what I’ve been through? I’ve been trying to call you, and…” My hand was shaking so much I couldn’t direct my key into the deadbolt on the back door. Guy took the keys out of my hand like the take-charge men did in movies from the fifties, and soon we were sitting at my kitchen table. I stared at my knees as he busied himself with kettle and mugs. The next thing I knew I was drinking very sugary hot tea.

  “Ewww. What’s this?”

  “The only part I remember from my first-aid course at St. John’s Ambulance—sugar in the tea for shock. I’m assuming this is shock and not the DTs you’re exhibiting, right? Where have you been anyway?”

  “West Edmonton Mall.”

  “Ah! Then it’s shock, all right.”

  I laughed, in spite of everything. Guy looked so concerned, so helpful, so downright nice that I decided at that moment he couldn’t be some kind of evil cohort of Quinn’s. Maybe it was just that I was too weary to expend energy on being suspicious of people. Ahlers had been murdered. I’d been chased. I’d been forced to change clothes in a mall toilet stall. It was all getting to be too much for me to process.

  “I suppose you want to hear the story thus far,” I sighed.

  “If you’re up to it.”

  “I honestly think I’ll go mad if I don’t talk about it.”

  Guy sat on the edge of one of my teetery chrome chairs while I told him of finding the hidden diskettes, my forwarded letter from the publisher revealing Quinn as the executor of Ahlers’ papers, and the discovery of the fourth novel. I continued by recounting my slip in nomenclature, Quinn’s admission of murder, the chase to the bus, and my terrifying flight through the mall. Piece by piece, it didn’t sound like much, but connected in the torrent spilling over my tonsils it all seemed to add up. Most importantly, Guy seemed to agree with me. At least he looked captivated by my wild tale. Or maybe it was my tee-shirt.

  “And then she hung up on you?” he asked finally.

  “Click. Final.”

  “But what did she mean by ‘there’s nothing more to say’? What do you think she wanted to explain to you in her office?”

  I shrugged. “Her relationship with Ahlers, I guess.”

  “But what about her relationship, specifically?”

  “Guy, it’s obvious—she and Ahlers were lovers. Ahlers was the creative writer, Quinn the academic. Sounds like a love/hate relationship from the outset. Real Eleanor-and-Marie stuff, if you think about it. Anyway, Ahlers allows Quinn first crack at her work, probably even before the proofs stage, so that Quinn can get a jump on everyone else in the field. Then, when the books are published, Quinn moves into the fore with her incisive critical work on the novels.”

  “Then why kill the goose that’s laying the golden egg?”

  “Because the fourth novel, the one yet unpublished, is a detective novel. It’s a brilliantly subversive detective novel, but a detective novel nonetheless. Don’t you see? All that territory staked on the next Margaret Laurence, or Margaret Atwood, and she turns out to be the next Margaret Millar!”

  “I don’t know, Randy. It feels like something’s missing from the argument.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not sure. But why would Ahlers write a detective novel under her own name if she was so concerned about her lover’s critical reputation?”

  “Maybe they fought. Maybe Ahlers ditched Quinn and got herself killed because of it.”

  “Or maybe Quinn ditched Ahlers and she intended to get back at her by writing a ‘sub-literary’ text.”

  “Then why show it to Quinn at all? Why not just publish and have the last laugh?”

  “Maybe she just died naturally, and Ahlers’ papers went to Quinn automatically from an unchanged will.”

  “No!” I banged my tea mug down on the table for emphasis. “I may know nothing else about this whole mess, but I do have one fact straight from the horse’s mouth: Hilary Quinn killed Margaret Ahlers. Maybe it was a lovers’ quarrel. Maybe it was jealousy on the part of a writer manqué. Maybe she did it to ‘edit’ Ahlers’ work permanently. But I know she did it; she told me as much. If I want to find out why, there’s only one thing left to do.”

  “A
nd what’s that?”

  “Meet with Quinn at seven tonight.”

  “You can’t be serious! You’re actually thinking of bearding a confessed murderer in her den?”

  “I have to do it, Guy. The story’s not over till it’s over.”

  “Some stories are perfectly fine without closure, you know.”

  There was more than theoretical argument showing on Guy’s face; he was worried about my safety. But I had somehow moved beyond fear and into the realm of pure, unquenchable curiosity.

  23.

  The Humanities Building was locked up tight as a drum by six on summer evenings, but I was armed with my pass-key and the knowledge that Campus Security was out there, somewhere. Guy had refused to let me tackle Quinn solo, but had agreed to remain in the Grad Lounge while I kept my rendezvous. It made things easier knowing there was help within convenient screaming distance, but not enough to calm my nerves. For all my earlier bravado, I was getting seriously spooked. Guy had told me he’d wait half an hour, and then come in with metaphorical guns blazing. I took what comfort I could in that knowledge.

  There was no air moving in the building, and the banners that normally looked so cheerful hanging among the skylights at ten in the morning appeared mildly malevolent in the dusky light. It was the same sort of feeling I got when visiting the Glenbow Museum’s military gallery. I was clearly in an ideal state of mind to meet up with Dr. Quinn.

  “Come in,” was the command elicited from my hesitant knock at her office door. Quinn was expecting me. She sat behind her desk like a besieged zealot. The visitor’s chair was centred in the remaining floor space. I half-expected arc lights to blaze into my face as I sat down. What the hell was I doing here?

  “Thank you for keeping this appointment, Miranda. I wasn’t sure you would come.”

  “I wasn’t sure I would, either, but I thought I should get all my facts straight before I … before I do anything.” I found myself stumbling over my words and thoughts. And what was I going to do with this information? Should I go to the police or the Dean of Arts?

  “I suppose you’ll be eager to publish, and I would prefer you got all your facts straight, as you say. I suppose it’s the scholar’s dilemma; does one bluster through and deny culpability in this sort of situation, or does one determine the accuracy of the presentation against one?”

  I was stunned. Here was a woman on the brink of jail time, and her only concern was being quoted correctly? What the hell was she talking about? And what did she assume I was preparing for publication, anyway? This was quickly turning into more of a seminar than the dramatic showdown I had anticipated. Admittedly, I don’t have much experience with murderers, but this behaviour wasn’t at all what I’d imagined. I decided to blunder on through the fog.

  “We are talking about the murder of Margaret Ahlers?”

  To my surprise, Quinn laughed. It wasn’t an attractive laugh, and there seemed to be no joy in it, but then I didn’t have much of a basis of comparison, considering I’d hardly ever seen her crack a smile before.

  “You sound like Conan Doyle’s mother. No, of course not. I’m speaking about the creation of Margaret Ahlers.”

  My face must have betrayed my astonishment, because this time Quinn did more than chuckle.

  “Oh ho! Now I understand! You have been cast as a modern Don Quixote, Miranda. You are out to avenge the death of a fiction. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your giant is nothing more than a windmill.”

  “What are you talking about?” I stammered, even as a glimmer of truth was beginning to take forth in my mind.

  “I assumed you knew the truth when you spoke of Trumpeter Lake. I thought you’d found the dresses and the dummy.”

  “The dummy?”

  “I kept a dressmaker’s dummy there. I’d put flashy clothes on it, and situate it around the cottage and the grounds so people would assume there were two women up there, instead of just me.”

  I flashed on poor Dot, stumbling over the “L-word.”

  “It worked,” I admitted. “I heard all about the two ladies who came to stay every summer—you and your shadowy lover.”

  “My lover? How wonderful. I wasn’t sure my clever neighbours would make that connection. Well, I suppose it’s hardly any wonder that I never had any nosy visitors traipsing over to introduce themselves.”

  “But why? Why go to all the bother of creating a second woman?”

  “I needed the solitude to get as much work done as I could. And in case it became necessary, I needed to create the illusion that Margaret Ahlers actually existed. Now I see that it was, in fact, necessary. You must have been quite industrious to follow such a meagre trail.”

  Finally, I was getting some praise from my advisor! This wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind, but it kept me in a state of shocked silence nonetheless. Quinn noticed it, and continued in a more professorial tone. It occurred to me, somewhat irrelevantly, that she must be a pretty good lecturer.

  “There never was an Ahlers, Miranda. I created her, and then disposed of her when she had fulfilled her purpose.”

  “You wrote the novels?”

  “You still don’t understand, do you? It was the only way I had to make a name for myself in this business. Oh, we hate to call it a business, but behind the ivy-covered walls lies a cutthroat industry like any other. To get tenure and advance, one must publish. To publish, one needs a topic—preferably a topic that no one else has exhausted with their own minutiae. There simply aren’t that many suitable topics to go around, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  The trouble was, I had noticed. Why else would I have been so eager to tackle Ahlers? Because she was so fantastic, or because she represented virgin territory? Quinn was convincing, but one thing still didn’t make sense.

  “But if you can write like Ahlers—or, I mean, like you did—why didn’t you just publish the novels under your own name? Why hide from that kind of talent?”

  “You mean, why hide from the glory and the honour of being a lauded author?”

  I nodded.

  “All I have ever wanted, my entire life, was to be an academic. Always. Even before I first came to university. I knew that someday I’d be here, where I belong. Not all critics are failed writers, although that’s what most people assume. Some of us truly revel in exploring the words of others—what those words say about the authors, the readers, and our civilization. I had to get into the enclave. Perhaps it was cheating, but I knew that this was the only place I belonged, the only place where I could function properly.” She looked slowly around her office, this precious niche she had carved for herself in the fortress of great minds. “I was finally granted tenure six months ago. I no longer need to be novel, just insightful. In short, I don’t need Ahlers anymore.”

  “Then why the mystery novel?”

  “Oh, is that worrying you? I was already playing around with a bit of magic realism and postmodern tweaks, trying to expand Ahlers’ realm. After all, Atwood is making inroads into speculative fiction and Kinsella has a whole ghostly baseball team popping up in a cornfield. It seemed like the right move, while I was working on it. Then I got wind of the tenure committee’s decision. Since I was almost done, I finished it. Perhaps it was the hint of skullduggery behind my own actions that inspired it. I don’t suppose I’ll have it published by Ahlers posthumously, after all, though. It really doesn’t fit the oeuvre, does it?”

  I was no longer afraid of Quinn. She inspired disbelief, and a bit of pity, but no fear. If what she said was true, I held her future in my hands like Alice’s pack of cards.

  “If I expose this fraud, what will happen to you?”

  Quinn returned to reality and stared at me. “If you publish what you know, my career ceases to be. This would not be entirely your fault. I knew the risks involved when I conceived of the shortcut. I won’t beg you not to tell; I’ve never begged for anything in my life. I’ll have to wait and see what you decide. But do remember: whatever you decide will af
fect your windmills, too.”

  I was being dismissed.

  I left Quinn sitting behind her hard-won desk, staring at a Euphemia McNaught painting that must have reminded her, every day, just how far she’d come.

  The meeting had taken twenty minutes. I turned down the hall toward the Grad Lounge to retrieve my Sancho Panza.

  24.

  Guy and I were up most of the night, going over everything we knew and some of what I’d learned from Quinn that evening. Even thought I’d sworn him to secrecy, I wasn’t letting him in on everything—at least until I decided what to do about it all. What I had told him was that Quinn had access to an unpublished manuscript that Ahlers hadn’t lived to publish, that she had been hyperbolizing and I had misunderstood her when I thought she’d confessed to murder, and that she was considering suppressing the new book to preserve Ahlers’ reputation as a mainstream writer.

  “I still don’t see where the conundrum lies,” Guy said, continuing the argument he’d been presenting for the last hour or so. “This could set you up for life. You expose the suppression of a literary work and it nets you a thesis, a mass-market book, and maybe even an interview with Vicki Gabereau. So what’s the problem?”

  “If I expose Quinn—and really, how much of a crime is it to not publish a friend’s manuscript if you think it is substandard?—then quite apart from what happens to Dr. Quinn’s career, what becomes of Margaret Ahlers’ work? People would be forever after measuring one work against the other.” I was spitballing, offering Guy half-truths and hoping I didn’t stumble over myself in doing so. I did feel a commitment to Ahlers more than Quinn; the two were still separate in my mind, no matter what I had just had confessed to me.

  “So what are you saying?” Guy broke through my silence.

  “I guess I’m saying that I’m not going to do anything about it.”