Murder, Mystery, and Magic

by John Burke

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1955, 1956, 2011 by John Burke

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  For my son,

  David Burke,

  Who carries on the traditions

  Of a true fantasy fan.

  AGENT’S CUT

  My secretary has always been very good at fending off importunate authors hoping to bluff their way into my office clutching armfuls of typescript for which they were sure I could negotiate a profitable deal with some distinguished publisher. But just before lunchtime this one incredible day she put her head round the door looking pale and worried, unsure of how she ought to have coped.

  “David, there are two…two men here to see you.”

  “I’m sure you can give them a thorough vetting, Maisie, before—”

  “They’re policemen.”

  They were in fact two plainclothes officers: a Detective Inspector Emerson and a detective constable whose mumbled introduction escaped me.

  “Mr. David Milburn?”

  “The name’s on our plate by the door.”

  It was a silly, nervous thing to say, with no reason for being nervous. We surely weren’t going to be accused of handling pornography or terrorist propaganda?

  “Your agency represents Mr. Crispin Brooke?”

  “It does.”

  “When did you last see Mr. Brooke?”

  “I had drinks with him and his wife last evening. Why? Is anything wrong?”

  “You said with Mr. Brooke and his wife?”

  “Yes. We were celebrating acceptance of his latest novel.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “What’s odd? It’s quite common for old friends to get together when a deal’s been pulled off.”

  “Of course. You were friends as well as business acquaintances?”

  The sun was warm on the window, but somehow a chill draught had begun fingering its way into the room.

  “Of course we were. I mean, we are.”

  The detective inspector smiled a very disturbing smile, as if he had caught me but in some damaging admission.

  He said: “So you are not aware that Mr. Brooke died last night?”

  It was not just a draught now, but a freezing pain in the guts. I could hardly breathe. “Died?”

  “And you must have been the last person to see him alive.”

  “No, that’s not so. Gemma—Mrs. Brooke—she must have been the last one. After she had dropped me off and gone back—”

  “Dropped you off, Mr. Milburn?”

  I stammered out a sympathetic tale of Crispin having perhaps had too much to drink, so that I decided to leave early and his wife had driven me home and then must obviously have hurried back to see how he was.

  Detective Inspector Emerson took his time, as if savouring something in his mouth, chewing on it and liking the taste better and better, yet at the same time frowning at something far from tasteful.

  “But that’s rather odd, Mr. Milburn,” he said at last. “Because Mrs. Brooke assures us she wasn’t at home yesterday. She was spending the night with a friend, and knew nothing about her husband’s death until she went home this morning. And then notified us. It was a great shock to her.”

  * * * *

  I had been Crispin Brooke’s literary agent for five years, and his wife’s lover for three weeks, when she began to confide her worries about him.

  “He’s so depressed. Moaning all the time.”

  She sounded cheesed off rather than sympathetic. Gemma was a languid woman with an oddly flat, passionless voice. This chill was one of the exciting things about her. It was a perpetual challenge to try and stimulate that exquisite yet unresponsive body. When she did respond, she went through all the right motions; yet one had the feeling that somewhere within that flawless ivory flesh, behind those slack and languorous lips, she was in danger of yawning.

  I had not so far been so tactless as to ask how she got on with her husband. After all, he was my client and we were supposed to be friends. But presumably she wouldn’t have come to bed with me if she hadn’t found him lacking.

  Crispin’s career had in fact been going downhill for quite a time now. Publishers had lost interest in his work. There were new names; new fancies; new voices squealing in the Groucho Club, new reviewers with backs to be scratched; and Crispin wasn’t one of this clique.

  It was a warm afternoon, and Gemma was lying back with a thin trickle of sweat glistening between her breasts. “We’ve got to do something,” she persisted. “I can’t take much more of his miseries.”

  I would rather have talked about something else, or drowsed for a while before we had the second bout. Mixing business with pleasure—particularly when it was her husband’s business—did seem in bad taste. But I supposed we’d have to tackle this question sooner or later.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I do my best. But he’s out of fashion.”

  “He writes just as well as ever, doesn’t he?” That level tone might have been taken to mean that she never bothered to read any of his work, and was asking only out of curiosity.

  “Publishers have changed. The market has changed.”

  “I don’t believe most readers want this modern rubbish. Every book jacket nowadays might as well have a photograph of the author’s navel on it. That’s all they ever seem to contemplate.”

  I heaved myself up on one elbow and contemplated her navel; and then the rest of her. She wasn’t all that many years younger than Crispin, but her skin and shape were those of an unravished teenager. Perhaps until recent weeks she hadn’t been ravished all that often: although she never spoke about it, I was beginning to suspect that Crispin wasn’t terribly active between the sheets.

  Or maybe she couldn’t be bothered to encourage him. The icy calculation in her eyes and her movements might put many a man off. I should count myself lucky she had decided to indulge in some variations with me.

  Odd, for a man of action like Crispin to be inactive in this one field of operations?

  After leaving the SAS he had made his name with tough adventure stories.

  For a long time they were tough enough and controversial enough to satisfy the public. But as time went on he had used up all this authentic background material, and his imagination wasn’t inventive enough to save his fiction from contrivance and repetition. And when he attempted to introduce a bit of obligatory sex into his stories, it came out laughable.

  I looked down into that disconcertingly cool face and said: “Is this why you’ve been coming to bed with me? Simply to coax me into fiddling things somehow for your husband? To get me under your thumb?”

  She smiled her listless smile. “Not just my thumb.” She pushed my arm away and rolled over on top of me. Her eyes were closed—in bliss, or sheer indifference?

  We forgot about Crispin for a few minutes. At least, I did. But the moment we had finished, and she had uttered that half-contemptuous laugh with which she always rounded off a coupling—insulting in a way, yet provoking a vow that next time I’d make her gasp rather than laugh—she murmured in my ear: “I mean it. We really do have to do something about him. Otherwise I’ll finish up pushing him off a bridge or something.”

  It was nearly time for me to get back to my office and for Gemma to go out and finish her pretence of shopping.

  As we dressed, I said: “Look, I’ve got his last two typescripts on my shelf. They’ve both been round six publishers, and they’re getting very dog-eared. Rather gives the game away.”

  “You can have fresh copies run off, can’t you? Or get them sent out on line, or whatever they call it nowadays. And charge him against his next r
oyalties.”

  “If any.”

  She looked back over her shoulder and shrugged that shoulder as if deciding that I too was a washout. I couldn’t help snapping back: “No matter how we tart either of them up, there’s precious little chance of an acceptance.”

  She reached for her tights. She really did have the most beautiful back; and she was moving her hips most tauntingly, as if to demonstrate what I’d be missing if I didn’t come up with some bright idea.

  It couldn’t just be that she wanted to stop Crispin moaning and boring her. She must think more of him than I had guessed so far. In which case, why was she here with me?

  Using me. But that back, those shoulders….

  “All right,” I said. “There might be one way to ensure publication.”

  “About time, too. I knew you’d come up with something.”

  “You pay to have your own book printed and published. Handle your own distribution. Or pay some firm to handle the lot—printing and distribution. Vanity publishing, they call it.”

  “How much would it cost?”

  “More than it’s ever worth.”

  “How much?”

  “Now, just a minute. Crispin would hate it. No way would he admit that he had to—”

  “He doesn’t need to know.”

  This was surely way out of character. “You’d really do that for him?”

  “He’s been a good breadwinner so far.” She sounded resigned rather than grateful. “We’ve got to keep him ticking over.”

  “Wouldn’t that sort of payment show up somewhere? I don’t know how the two of you manage your budgets, but surely he’d be bound to notice?”

  “He leaves the handling of the books to me. Those sort of books. I was his secretary, remember?”

  I was tempted to ask her if she really loved him that much, but it didn’t seem quite right at the moment. Or maybe any other moment.

  I always hated this stage when all that sleek beauty disappeared within an everyday dress: smart and expensive, but still only an unremarkable sheath for such remarkable contents,

  “Next Tuesday, then?” she said levelly. “And you’ll let me have all the details then?”

  “Now, look, I’m not sure—”

  “Rather than some vanity publisher, as you call it, couldn’t you approach a reputable one? Someone glad to do you a favour?”

  “Favours come with a high price tag in this business.”

  “I’m sure you can manage it, David.” She stooped to look in the dressing table mirror and pat her already trim hair back into its tight, boyish helmet. As if peering through the glass at someone she had just recognized, she said: “Wasn’t there that rather interesting woman you introduced me to at that last party?”

  “There’ve been so many parties. The only one you came to without Crispin—”

  “Nina. Wasn’t that it? Nina something-or-other. She seemed rather nice. And quite fond of you.”

  “Nina Whiteley.” I didn’t think Nina had ever been all that fond of me, except when I brought her a potential bestseller; but now I did recall that she and Gemma had talked enthusiastically together for quite a time. “A very agreeable contact,” I conceded, “but she’s already rejected those last two books of his.”

  “But with adequate financial back-up to cover any losses, couldn’t she be persuaded?”

  “Are you serious about this? I mean, if anything went wrong, as it well might, Crispin would kill you if he found out.”

  It was only a turn of phrase, but for a moment her eyes gleamed with an excitement I’d never aroused in her before. Her lips seemed to mutter the words silently. Kill me…kill….

  Aloud she said: “Tuesday.”

  She clung obediently to me while I kissed her goodbye, and smiled her frigid smile. It was routine. With the usual post-coital tristesse I found myself thinking that all she really wanted was attentiveness rather than passion.

  Gemma left by the back door of the block into the gardens. I waited ten minutes as usual, before going out and hailing a cab to take me back to the office.

  At my desk that afternoon I was awash with doubts about her ideas on Crispin’s behalf. As a conscientious professional agent, I disapproved of the basic amateurism of vanity publishing; and on top of that there was something about Gemma’s whole attitude that gave me the shivers.

  But by the next day I was already so hungry for her naked in my arms that I knew I had to act. I wasn’t going to risk facing her on the Tuesday and telling her I’d decided I couldn’t go ahead with the scheme. Would she be capable of turning, expressionless, and walking out?

  All too possibly. So I went to see Nina Whiteley.

  * * * *

  “Yes, I do remember her,” said Nina. “Charming girl. Never met her husband—that client of yours, right?—but I couldn’t help wondering….”

  Not wanting her to speculate too far, I said: “I’ve got a couple of propositions.”

  She settled herself in her chair with that cheerful scepticism which so many agents and authors had had to face. The challenge was to break it down, or fail; to argue with her, or woo her.

  I had never found it easy to woo Nina. She was thin, dark-haired, and had a darkly bossy manner, as if in dealing with men she had to be as masculine and menacing as possible. There was talk of a divorce in the distant past, but the word “Mrs.” never crept into correspondence or into the gossip columns of the literary supplements.

  I said: “I’ve been thinking you ought to have first look at a project one of my clients is working on.”

  “Anybody I’ve heard of?”

  “He’s collaborating with a certain politician’s dumped doxy who has quite a tale to tell. Several tales, in fact.”

  “You mean ghosting.”

  “The collaboration is a bit closer than that.”

  “Tell me more.”

  Her immediately receptive attitude was unusual. As a rule, her studied indifference was part of the game, waiting to see if the next move was worth following up or should be wiped off the board

  I told her more. About the revelations, political and personal, the minister’s discarded mistress was telling to her new lover—a journalist who had done many skilful interpretations of governmental scandals and was always eager to broaden his collection of misdeeds. There was also a hint—I wasn’t going to admit to more than a hint at this stage—of some slightly kinky involvement of another woman in the new ménage At intervals Ms. Whiteley nodded, as if to hurry me along and get down to the real business—which I assumed would be the usual wrangle over royalties, advances, availability of the key people for interviews and publicity and so on.

  When I had finished and, to my surprise and delight, she had expressed readiness to conclude a deal as quickly as I wanted, I said: “And now I’ve got a favour to ask.”

  “I’ve already done you a favour, buying your project.”

  “No, I’ve done you a favour by giving you first offer.”

  She smiled and crossed her long, lean legs. She really was in a good mood this morning. I wondered if she was having an affair, and was still purring over the pleasures of the previous night. But her attention did seem to be entirely on what I was saying.

  “Why don’t we have lunch together?” I suggested.

  I quite expected her to say that she was tied up that day—it was pretty short notice—but she said: “Why not?”

  Over a cool, scintillating Sancerre I put the proposition to her. In return for the rewarding deal I had just done with her, would she be prepared to publish a subsidised edition of Crispin Brooke’s latest novel? Yes, I knew she had already seen both of the more recent ones, and rejected them; but one hadn’t been all that bad, had it?

  “Not all that bad,” she granted, “but not all that good.”

  “But it wouldn’t actually disfigure your list.”

  “No. Only it wouldn’t be likely to sell many copies. Precious little return for our money. Our accountants wouldn’
t like that.”

  “It’s not your money I’m talking about. Accountants don’t get too cross if income is guaranteed before any expenditure has to go out, do they? Crispin’s wife is offering to underwrite the book. Just so he can see his name in print again. To give his friends autographed copies. You know what authors are like. That’s all we have in mind.”

  “We?” She swilled the wine gently round her glass, and the word round her palate. “David, just what terms are you on with Mrs. Brooke?”

  “I’m…well, she’s Crispin’s wife, we’ve all been good friends, she’s…well, naturally I see quite a lot of her.” I didn’t dare lift a suggestive eyebrow.

  There was a long silence. I thought she was marshalling arguments against the proposition, but in the end she said: “I’d rather like to meet her again. Talk this over with her, personally.”

  “Is that necessary? I can act for her, the way I act for her husband.”

  “Then you can arrange an appointment for her in my office.”

  * * * *

  On the Tuesday, Gemma made no move to undress until I had told her the result of my meeting. Then she stripped with methodical deftness and settled obediently on her back.

  When we had finished, she said: “Thank you, David.”

  I didn’t suppose she was offering gratitude for my physical prowess. She simply wanted to take up the conversation where we had left off.

  “Has it occurred to you,” I asked, “that if Crispin cheers up, he may get demanding again? Maybe you’ll find yourself with a reinvigorated lover.”

  “Would you be very jealous?”

  It had never occurred to me until now. “I…I don’t know.”

  “I don’t think we’re taking too great a risk,” she said.

  A reverberating note of contempt had crept into that usually level voice. It was quite frightening hearing her virtually write her husband off as inadequate—and this at a time when the two of us were conniving to salvage him.

  Trying to keep it light-hearted rather than dig too deep, I suggested that the best system would be for me to pay the total amount direct to the publisher, while Gemma could make regular payments to me in order not to knock too sudden and obvious a hole in the Brooke bank accounts.