Crossing the Lines

by Sulari Gentill

  The detective introduced himself as Bourke and invited Edward to take a seat. The constable said nothing. Apparently he was just there to take notes.

  Edward gave his statement, such as it was. Name. Address. Yes, he knew the deceased, Geoffrey Vogel. No, he wouldn’t say they were friends; they’d had a professional relationship once. Yes, he’d spoken to the deceased that night. He couldn’t say where exactly he’d been when Vogel was killed because he was unsure when exactly that was, but he was somewhere in the gallery, possibly quite close to a tray of hors d’oeuvres.

  Detective Bourke pushed hard on Edward’s conversation with Vogel, extracting an almost verbatim account of what was said.

  “Detective,” Edward said in the end, “am I to understand that you don’t believe Geoffrey Vogel’s death was an accident?”

  “Why do you say it was an accident?”

  “I don’t say anything. I just assumed he fell down the stairs…he’d been drinking…why don’t you think it was an accident?”

  Bourke answered cautiously. “We have reason to believe he may have been pushed.”

  “What reason?”

  “By your own admission, Mr. McGinnity, you resented his interference with your work.”

  “He edited a novel badly. Vogel was a hack and a pompous fool, but that’s hardly motive to push him down the fire stairs.”

  For a moment, Bourke studied him silently. Edward waited.

  “What exactly is the nature of your relationship with Ms. Meriwether, Mr. McGinnity?”

  “She’s a friend.”

  “And what was Ms. Meriwether’s relationship with the deceased?”

  “Didn’t you ask her?”

  “Answer the question, Mr. McGinnity.”

  Edward shrugged. “I don’t know. I think he was a fan of her work…beyond that I doubt they had a relationship.”

  Bourke snapped shut his notebook. “Thank you, Mr. McGinnity. We’ll be in touch.”

  Edward stood, a little unsettled by the abrupt closure of the interview.

  Bourke yawned.

  Edward glanced at his watch. It was twenty past three. Perhaps the detective was just tired. God knows he was.

  ***

  Madeleine pulled the rug more tightly around her as she waited for Hugh to bring in coffee. It was one of those chilly evenings which came upon a sunny day and caught you by surprise. They hadn’t yet organised that season’s firewood nor started lighting the fires, and the house was cold.

  Shivering, Madeleine rubbed her arms as Edward placed his jacket over Willow’s shoulders, his hand on the small of her back as they emerged from the glassed entrance of the gallery. There were still clustered gatherings standing in the foyer and on the steps. A kind of sombre excitement prevailed and many glances were cast towards the artist whose debut in the national gallery had ended so dramatically.

  “Willow, thank goodness I caught you!” Adrian Barrington jogged up to them with movements exaggerated to emphasise that he was not pleased with having to move so rapidly. He was a large man, as flamboyantly dressed as Geoffrey Vogel had been, but in a manner that seemed less slavishly engineered. There was an eccentric dignity about Barrington that Vogel had failed to achieve. He was Willow Meriwether’s agent, a gourmet, a connoisseur of art and food and all things fine.

  Madeleine liked him immediately.

  He kissed Willow on both cheeks. “Congratulations, my darling…you’ve sold out. There was a bidding war on Literatum scripius excellio. Dear lady, you are officially a phenomenon!”

  “Really?” Willow looked shocked. “I thought that after Geoffrey—”

  “Well, that’s the thing, my dear,” Barrington shrugged. “The accident stalled demand, but once the rumours of murder got round, it was like the post-Christmas sales at Harrods. I had to beat them off! Who ever thought that overdressed philistine would make such a valuable contribution to the world of art!”

  “Oh,” Willow replied hesitantly.

  “Darling, this is good news!” Barrington declared. “People will be talking about the Meriwether exhibition for years. Macabre provenance is highly bankable. Your career is made, my love!”

  Edward put his arm around Willow and kissed the top of her head. “Not to mention that you are ludicrously talented.”

  “Of course, that too!” Barrington added hastily. “This incident just provides a little extra intrigue, applies a subtle nudge to those who have the exquisite taste to be considering a purchase of one of your pieces.”

  Willow sighed. “I’m not sure you could call a murder subtle, Adrian.”

  “Rubbish…it was the most subtle thing Geoffrey Vogel ever did!” He glanced at his watch. “I must go…James—pitiless bully that he is—has decreed a six-thirty start!”

  “Can’t you cancel? Surely he’d understand….”

  “Understand?” Barrington said bitterly. “James’ compassion is inversely proportional to the size of his biceps. His understanding was long ago bench-pressed into oblivion!” The art dealer’s shoulders slumped despondently. “He will take one look at me and know I’ve had champagne and oysters…and those excellent little hamburgers on a stick, not to mention the salmon roulade and truffled cheese balls….He has some kind of sixth sense, I think—he can smell satiation, happiness, the consumption of anything other than celery in the last week. Oh, how I loathe the man!”

  Edward tried not to smile. Adrian Barrington had a complicated relationship with his personal trainer. He paid the much-vilified James exorbitant sums to supervise his training regime and diet, and then did everything he could to thwart the man in his duty. It was a strangely subversive, masochistic ritual.

  Barrington kissed Willow good-bye. “Think of me as you have your morning croissant, my love. I shall be in purgatory, paying for my trespasses with all the other tracksuit-clad sinners.” He shook Edward’s hand. “You’ll see her home, won’t you, Ned? After all, there’s talk of a murderer on the loose!”

  On Choices

  Edward McGinnity and Willow Meriwether walked in silence to his car. He’d been forced to park the Mark II Jaguar over a kilometre away.

  Madeleine took the mug of coffee Hugh offered her, wondering if she should mention that her protagonist was driving a Jaguar. She decided against it. Hugh could be a little irrational when it came to Jaguars.

  “I’m starving,” Willow confessed as Edward held the front passenger door open. “Every time I got anywhere near an hors d’oeuvre tray, some art nut wanted to talk to me.”

  “I’m not sure anything will be open at this time.” He frowned as he considered the problem. Willow and Elliot were both artists…there would probably be nothing resembling food in their terrace. “We could stop in at my place and raid the fridge,” he offered. “I think Mrs. Jesmond left some kind of pie in there.”

  Willow sighed, sinking into the leather upholstery and settling. “Why don’t all men proposition me like that? For God’s sake, man…drive!”

  ***

  “What’s so funny?” Hugh asked, glancing at his wife as he opened his briefcase.

  Madeleine looked up from the laptop. “Willow…Edward McGinnity’s love interest. She’s hilarious.”

  “So what are they up to?” He extracted the files he would review that night.

  “At the moment they’re driving her home after the murder.”

  “In a police car?”

  “No…a Jag Mark II.”

  “Better write in a breakdown, then. It’ll be more realistic.”

  Madeleine rolled her eyes. “Andrew happened to buy a lemon, Hugh. And he was always tinkering with the poor machine without the foggiest what he was doing.” She looked around for somewhere to rest her coffee, eventually choosing the windowsill. “It’s unfair to judge all Jaguars by the failings of your old flatmate’s heap!”

 
“Whatever you say. But if there’s no break down, anyone who knows anything about Jags will be immediately reminded that you’re writing fiction!”

  “The car can break down later.” She returned to the computer screen. “The story’s just begun.”

  Willow was no stranger to Edward’s modern two-storey villa. Madeleine could see that from the way she walked in. The artist’s eyes did not move around the room even subtly. She knew what was in it, on its walls, she knew without asking where the glasses were kept.

  But then she’d helped Edward find the house in the first place, when he’d decided to move from the grand family home which had become his too young. They’d spent weeks visiting open houses, being shown through the best of the inner city real estate market, until they’d come across 19 Bayside Close, distinctly dated but located in the city’s most desirable suburb.

  A silver-haired agent in a navy blazer and rather too much cologne had talked to Edward about the Mark II and shown Willow directly to the kitchen, which he described as “any woman’s dream.” She’d declared the benches too high. “How on Earth am I going to get up here?” Willow had said, trying to hoist herself onto the island bench. “And marble’s so cold on your back!”

  Edward always claimed he’d bought the place out of embarrassment.

  He’d gutted it then and remade it as his own.

  There was Black Forest cake in the refrigerator. Edward made coffee and served the cake onto plates with generous scoops of vanilla-bean ice cream.

  Willow disappeared up the iron staircase to swap Edward’s jacket for something more comfortable. She descended wearing one of his sweatshirts over her cocktail dress and took both plates to the couch, placing his on the glossy surface of the coffee table beside a small Matchbox Mercedes Benz.

  “You’re writing something new?” she accused, picking up the toy car.

  He brought in coffee in two mugs, placed them down and took the car from her. “Yes.”

  She gazed up at him. “So tell me?”

  Edward sat beside her on the couch and told her about Madeleine d’Leon, his crime-writer.

  Willow listened, eating cake as she concentrated on the picture he was building. “And so the story is about…?”

  “It’s an exploration of an author’s relationship with her protagonist, an examination of the tenuous line between belief and reality, imagination and self, and what happens when that line is crossed.”

  Willow nodded gravely. “I’m not sure what that means, but it does sound award-winning.”

  Edward laughed.

  Willow’s high-arched brow furrowed slightly. “Isn’t your heroine a little ordinary, Ned? Maybe you should jazz her up a bit…give her a dark past as say a stripper, or a drug dealer.”

  “She’s a lawyer.”

  “I suppose that’s pretty close…but, I don’t know—what about a bizarre hobby? She could be a taxidermist. Taxidermists are interesting.”

  “She’s a writer, Will.”

  “But how are you going to make that sustain an entire book? Opening a laptop and typing isn’t exactly an action scene.”

  “The story’s about what goes on in her head and how powerful that becomes.” He took a gulp of coffee as he tried to explain. “She has to be outwardly normal. But Will, her mind is extraordinary…it’s exciting.”

  Willow wrinkled her nose. “And here, I thought you were a legs man.”

  “You underestimate me.” He glanced at the perfect curve of her long calves. She’d kicked off her shoes and curled them up on the couch.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Never! I have no doubt this will be a literary masterpiece.” Willow forked another mouthful of cake, closing her eyes and murmuring her contentment. “Tell me, what’s she doing now?”

  Edward put down his coffee mug. “She’s waiting…in a small-town tea shop. It’s one of those long rooms, with a big window at the front looking onto the street, and kitchen in the back. There’re a few people there. She’s ordered a skim cappuccino while she pretends to be absorbed in her notebook. You see, she still gets nervous in public spaces on her own.”

  “She’s shy?”

  “Not really…just a little self-conscious, I think. It’s why she ordered the coffee…she didn’t really want one yet, but she feels uncomfortable taking a table without making her intention to spend money clear in some way.”

  “Who’s she waiting for?”

  “Her literary agent.”

  Willow dragged a cushion behind her head and lay back, settling expectantly.

  Madeleine skimmed the chocolate-encrusted foam from the top of her cappuccino, licking the sweet froth from her spoon before stirring. She checked her watch, wondering how long Leith would be.

  The offices of Welcome to the Fold, Leith Henry’s literary agency, were in the city, but she’d come through Ashwood for one thing or another every couple of weeks…more often, if she actually had a reason to come.

  “Leith Henry? Isn’t that your agent’s name?” Willow asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that a bit weird, Ned?”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “Because she’s real.”

  “Do you want to know what Madeleine is up to or not?”

  Willow rolled her eyes. “Of course I do…tell me a story, Homer.”

  Madeleine felt agitated, restless. She was looking forward to seeing her agent, but part of her wanted to be at home in her pyjamas, writing. It was always the way when a new idea had her in its grip—it ruined her for anything else. Madeleine knew that apart from writing, she would do nothing wholeheartedly again until the book was finished.

  The tea shop door opened and a long, slender woman with a sheath of rose gold hair stepped in, waving as she did so. Madeleine moved her notebook off the table to make room as the agent peeled off her scarf, her coat and then her leather gloves, emerging from her stylish outer cocoon in a chic paisley blouse and low-slung jeans.

  Madeleine wondered, fleetingly, how much time she could save if only she wore clothes as well as Leith Henry, if she could throw on anything in her cupboard, confident that it wouldn’t make her look fat, or washed out, or just plain odd. As it was, Madeleine lost at least half an hour a day choosing what to wear, except those days she spent in her pyjamas writing. She smiled. Perhaps that was the source of her creative passion…a longing to wear nothing but pyjamas.

  “What’s funny?” Leith asked, looking over her shoulder as if she expected the answer to be there.

  “Nothing,” Madeleine replied. “I was just thinking of something stupid.”

  They chose from the menu to ensure their order was taken before the frantic lunchtime influx. Leith considered several dishes before settling on a lamb burger. Madeleine selected the chickpea salad as she always did. On matters of food, she was a creature of habit.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late,” Leith sighed. “I had a client ring at the last moment…the smelly one.”

  Dr. Leith Henry was a psychologist by trade, and still practised two days a week. She maintained that counselling was not all that different to being a literary agent—both professions were about having difficult conversations with people who could well be crazy. The smelly client apparently suffered from a form of hydrophobia which meant he was afraid to wash. He had been referred for counselling when his co-workers refused to work in the same office.

  They talked for a while about the efficacy of scented candles as opposed to spray fresheners. It seemed neither had been powerful enough to mask the presence of the pungent hydrophobic.

  “So,” Leith began when their meals arrived, “I’ve read the chapter you sent me last night.”

  “What did you think?” Madeleine felt suddenly panicked. She wasn’t sure she was ready to be professional about Edward.

  “I liked it…a lot…but what happened to
Veronica Killwilly?”

  “Nothing’s happened to Ronnie. This just isn’t about her.” Madeleine’s shoulders tensed. She felt strangely disloyal. Veronica Killwilly was the protagonist of her previous books, a series about a housemaid who solved murders in her spare time. It was with Veronica that she had built a readership upon foundations of obscurity.

  “The publishers like Veronica.” Leith poured tomato sauce on her burger with the unrestrained pleasure of a child.

  “Don’t you think they’ll like Edward?”

  “They’ve spent a fortune building your brand.”

  “I’m a person, not a brand.”

  “Not anymore. You’re Madeleine d’Leon, synonymous with the working-class, feminist heroine who solves crime by looking at what people throw away…and now you want to write about a man with more money than he knows what to do with.”

  “I can’t just write Veronica Killwilly investigates for the rest of my life, Leith.”

  The agent nodded. “I know. I just want you to know how they’re going to react. Especially now that there’s talk of a television series.”

  “There’s what?”

  “It’s early days yet. I wouldn’t have mentioned it except that I want you to understand why their reaction might be less than enthusiastic.”

  “I don’t care about their reaction. I want to know what you think.”

  Leith put down her knife and fork and took a sip of sparkling water.

  Madeleine braced herself.

  “It’s different in style to your previous work,” the agent said thoughtfully. “The prose is amazing, like reading poetry. Edward is intriguing, kind of sexy in a brooding sort of way. He jumps from the page. You know, Maddie, if you continue the way you’ve begun, I suspect it might end up your best work to date.”

  Madeleine warmed, breathing again. “I think so too. I can’t explain it…I can see him so clearly. It’s like he exists, like I’m being allowed to watch.”

  “Watch what?”

  “His life…his mind…”

  Leith laughed, shaking her head.