They started with high hopes for the magazine’s success; but looking back in years to come Sterne could see that it was doomed from the outset. Lilliput never succeeded in making a profit and eventually passed away, mourned by many. And Octopus, it had to be admitted, never came up to that standard. It staggered on for several months with ever-decreasing sales in a failing market and then sank without trace, the rich uncle in Birmingham having decided that enough was enough and that he could not allow his conscience to lighten his purse any further.
Still, it had been fun while it lasted.
Chapter Twenty-Three – SIMPSON OF THE YARD
He was still submitting stories to other magazines and having some of them accepted. But the fees were small, and without the salary that Wilkinson was paying him he would not have been making a living, though he still had a few hundred pounds put away.
One day Wilkinson said: ‘Have you ever thought of using an agent to handle your work?’
The question took Sterne back in his mind to the early days when he had been bitten by a shark in those waters. He told Wilkinson this and of his decision not to be had again.
‘I’m not talking about that sort of agent,’ Wilkinson said. ‘If you’re interested I could introduce you to a genuine one. She’s a friend of mine and her name is Frederica Lathwell. You could show her some of your stories and she would give an honest opinion. She wouldn’t charge you anything for that.’
Sterne thought about it. Then: ‘All right. What have I got to lose?’
‘Nothing,’ Wilkinson said. ‘Nothing at all.’
*
Miss Lathwell had an office in Norfolk Street just off The Strand. It did not impress Sterne very favourably when he and Wilkinson visited it by appointment. It was small and cluttered and had a curiously fusty odour, which probably came from the piles of manuscripts lying around. Or it could have been the walls, the paper being blotchy and possibly mildewed. There was a grimy window which might have been said to be keeping out the daylight rather than admitting it, and a small electric fire was providing the heating.
The agent herself was a not unattractive woman in a rather full-blown sort of way. She was dark-haired; the hair being drawn back with a parting in the middle, and her face was somewhat wide, with highish cheekbones that gave her a vaguely oriental look. Her lips were full, giving an impression of sensuality, and she had gold rings dangling from her ears. She was wearing a shapeless woollen jumper with a black skirt and black stockings. She was smoking a Turkish cigarette, and the nicotine stains on her fingers indicated that she smoked a lot. She was probably approaching thirty years of age.
When Wilkinson had made the introduction she took a hard look at Sterne, as if she could estimate a man’s literary ability by his physical appearance.
‘So,’ she said, ‘you are David Sterne.’
Sterne agreed that he was. Wilkinson had said so and he was not prepared to contradict a friend.
‘And you have some short stories you would like me to handle?’
‘If you think they’re good enough.’
Wilkinson had told him that Miss Lathwell had taken over the agency fairly recently, after war service in the W.R.N.S. It had been founded in 1930 by an uncle of hers as the Norfolk Literary Agency, and that was the name under which she operated now that the uncle had retired.
‘I believe he still has a stake in the business, but she’s the boss now and she’s very competent, so I’m told. Drives a hard bargain in her clients’ interests.’
Miss Lathwell took the three stories that Sterne had brought, glanced at them and put them aside.
‘How’s that magazine of yours coming along, Osbert?’
‘Not so badly.’
‘You’ll never make a go of it, you know.’
‘Don’t be so pessimistic, Freddie.’
‘I’m not being pessimistic; I’m being realistic. Give you ten to one it doesn’t last a year.’
‘I never bet.’
‘Just as well. You’d lose your money.’
*
‘She’s wrong about Octopus,’ Wilkinson said, when they were on their way back from the agency. ‘It’s a good magazine. It’ll pull through.’
But Sterne was beginning to have doubts, and he suspected that Wilkinson was too; though he would not admit it. Maybe Octopus was good. But was it good enough? Were any of them? Suppose that kind of magazine and the short story magazines, even those of long standing, were all on the way out. How many of them would still be alive in ten or twenty years’ time?
*
It was next day when the telephone in the office rang. Wilkinson answered it, and had a brief exchange of words with the caller at the other end of the line. Then he hung up.
‘That was Freddie,’ he said. ‘She wants you to go round there and have a talk.’
Sterne wondered whether that was a good sign or a bad, but there was only one way to find out. The previous day he had gone to the Norfolk Literary Agency in company with Osbert Wilkinson. This time he went alone and found Miss Lathwell waiting for him. She did not beat about the bush.
‘I won’t handle them,’ she said.
He felt immediately deflated. This was a pretty direct rebuff, and it was not what he had been expecting.
‘So you don’t think they’re good enough?’
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘In fact they’re very well written and they could quite possibly find a market. But you don’t need an agent to sell them for you; you can do it just as well yourself and save the commission; which, to be entirely frank with you, wouldn’t really be worth my while bothering with.’
‘I see.’
She must have sensed his disappointment; she would have had to be very insensitive indeed not to have done so, and she gave a sudden smile which altogether transformed her face and made it really quite charming, he thought.
‘Now don’t be downhearted,’ she said. ‘I haven’t brought you here just to give you a kick in the teeth. In fact, from what I have seen of your work, I’m quite convinced that you have it in you to make the grade. But not perhaps with short stories. That’s an awfully difficult field to plough; and the market is shrinking in spite of all those little magazines like New Writing and Modern Reading and Seven and Writing Today – and, of course, Octopus. They won’t survive for very much longer, and I doubt whether even the old ones like Strand and Argosy will either.’
‘This is a gloomy picture you’re painting.’
‘It is. And I may be wrong, but I think it’s a true one. There are the women’s magazines of course. They take short stories, but not the sort that you write. So here’s what I’m going to suggest, and it’s up to you to make the decision. Why don’t you write a novel? Have you ever thought about it?’
‘Oh yes. I started one once. Maybe got about two thirds of it written.’
‘So what happened to it?’
‘It went to the bottom of the Atlantic with the ship I was sailing in.’
‘Ah yes. Osbert told me you were in that business. It’s a kind of link, isn’t it? Between you and me. I was in the Wrens, but it was a shore job, of course.’
He thought it was rather a tenuous link; but if she liked to make it, why not?
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I think you should try again. And here’s another suggestion: why not write a whodunit?’
‘A detective novel?’
‘Yes. There’s always a market for them. And the advantage is that once you’ve got your main character up and running you can go on using him over and over again. If readers get to know and like him you’ve got a captive audience, as it were. They’ll come back for more of the same.’
‘But I don’t know anything about crime writing.’
She brushed this objection aside. ‘Oh, you’ll soon pick it up. The pattern is more or less standard. You have a victim or victims; you get together a lot of suspects with strong motives for committing the crime; you leave a shoal of red herrings lying around; and
gradually your sleuth works his way to the real murderer, who is of course the most unlikely one of the lot.’
‘You make it sound very simple.’
‘Basically, it is. It’s up to the individual writer to introduce variations on the theme. So what do you say? Are you willing to have a go?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Sterne said.
*
‘Well?’ Wilkinson said. ‘How did it go?’
‘She refused to handle the stories.’
‘Oh dear. Didn’t she like them?’
‘Actually, I believe she did, rather. But she said I could do as well with them as she could – and save the percentage. Then she suggested I should write a crime novel.’
‘Are you going to?’
‘I said I’d think about it.’
*
He thought about it for a couple of days and decided to have a shot at it. That was when Detective Inspector Hector Simpson was born – Simpson of the Yard. He wrote the book, A Web of Deceit, in two months in his spare time from working on the magazine.
He gave it to Osbert Wilkinson to read. He liked it.
‘David, old man, I think you’ve found your métier.’
‘I just hope Miss Lathwell thinks the same.’
*
Frederica Lathwell was not quite so enthusiastic. She suggested some revision to improve the story. Sterne hated re-writing, but he took her advice and did the revision. Finally she gave her approval of the finished work and agreed to handle it.
‘So what happens now?’
‘As far as you’re concerned,’ she said, ‘nothing at all. Perhaps for many moons. Publishers are notoriously dilatory. But please, David, promise me one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That you won’t keep ringing me up to ask how things are going. I’ll let you know at once if there’s any news.’
He promised not to be a pest and went away to wait in silence while Simpson of the Yard was sent off on his travels.
Chapter Twenty-Four – VICTIM
The letter came in a cheap buff envelope. It had been forwarded to him by a magazine which had published one of his stories. She must have seen his name above the story and decided to take that way of getting in touch with him. The notepaper had the same shoddy look as the envelope; it was ruled and might have been torn out of an exercise-book. The handwriting ignored the lines and went scrawling across the page like the track of a spider that had dipped its feet in an inkpot. He had seen that writing before. It had been a long time ago, but he recognised it at once.
‘Dear David,’ he read, ‘I know I have no right to ask this of you, but I beg for old time’s sake that you will come and see me. There are things I so much wish to put straight. Do please come. Petra Lakos.’
There was an address. It was in Canning Town.
He wondered what she meant by putting things straight. What was there to put straight? He had not thought of her or Peter for a very long time. He had imagined they were still in prison, but it appeared that she at least had been set free. He was glad that it was so – for her sake. He would of course go to see her; no question about that.
*
He travelled out by Tube, getting off at the West Ham station. After a good deal of walking and several inquiries he found the place. It was a bed-sitter up one flight of carpetless stairs. The house smelled of boiled cabbage and dry rot. There was a number on the door and he rapped on it with his knuckles. He heard her voice, quavering a little.
‘Who is it?’
‘David Sterne.’
There was a sound of bolts being slid back, and then the door opened and she was standing there.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Do come in.’
He was shocked by her appearance. Her hair was dead white and she had thinned down to a mere shadow of her former self. She looked old, really old, the skin of her face one mass of wrinkles, as though when the flesh had melted away it had collapsed in upon itself. She was wearing some old clothes that she must have had before her arrest. They were much too big for her now and hung loosely on her much diminished frame.
He went in and she closed the door and locked it. She motioned him to a chair.
‘Please sit down.’
It was an armchair, rather threadbare. The entire room looked pretty wretched; he supposed she rented it furnished and could afford nothing better. The bed was concealed by a curtain.
‘You will drink a cup of tea?’ she asked.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘don’t bother.’
‘It will be no bother, I assure you; no bother at all.’
He did not persist in his refusal because he knew that it would give her pain. He remembered their first meeting when she had given him tea and cake. So long ago; a lifetime, it seemed. This time there was no cake but a dry biscuit to go with the tea that she made in a little niche which served as a kitchen.
She sat down facing him. She stared at him for a while in silence, as though refreshing her memory of him.
‘You have not altered greatly,’ she said, ‘though of course you are older. You have seen fighting, perhaps?’
‘I was in the army,’ he said. But he did not go into details.
‘Yes, of course. But now you are out and writing again.’
‘Yes.’
His gaze moved round the room, and she noticed it.
She said: ‘You are wondering where Peter is.’
It had in fact been in his mind. He supposed Lakos must still be in prison.
‘He is dead,’ she said. ‘Three years ago. We were never allowed to see each other, you know.’
Sterne did not know what to say. He mumbled: ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, it is so long ago, so long ago. Time heals, they say. It isn’t true. It doesn’t. Not entirely.’
Still she had said nothing regarding the purpose of the visit, the putting of things straight. He thought it time to give a hint.
‘You were going to tell me something.’
‘Of course. I have not forgotten. But it is painful, so very painful. You believe no doubt that Peter was an evil man; that I too was evil.’
‘No, no.’
‘But how could you think otherwise? We had been working for the Nazis. We had betrayed the country that had given us a refuge. We had even misled you into believing we were just harmless eccentrics. Is it not so?’
‘Well –’
‘Of course it is. But there was a reason. Peter had a brother in Germany. Otto was married with two children. The Gestapo got hold of them and discovered the connection. They threatened all kinds of atrocities against that poor family if Peter did not co-operate. A letter came from Otto begging him to do as the Gestapo demanded; if not for his sake, for the sake of his wife and children. What else could Peter do? You see the terrible position he was in. He detested the very idea of helping the Nazis, but the alternative was to condemn his brother and his brother’s family to unimaginable horrors. Now do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Sterne said, ‘I understand.’
‘And in the end what was the use of it?’ She spoke bitterly. ‘They all died just the same in a concentration camp. The betrayal had been for nothing.’
Before leaving Sterne took out his wallet. ‘I would like to help if –’
But she refused to accept anything. ‘I am not in want. I need very little. I simply wished for you to know the truth. And now perhaps you will not think so badly of me and Peter.’
He assured her that he would not, and she gave a wan little smile.
‘We always loved you, you know. You were like a son to us.’
*
It was two days later when the police contacted him to tell him that Petra Lakos was dead. She had written his name and address on a card, and then she had taken the overdose that had killed her. They knew of no one else who had any connection with her, so they came to him.
He had to give evidence at the inquest, and a verdict of accidental death was returned, sinc
e there was nothing to prove that she had intended to kill herself. But he himself was certain that she had. What had she left to live for?
He made the funeral arrangements. On the day of the burial it rained heavily. Wilkinson went along with him to keep him company. They were the only mourners. It was a miserable affair. Poor Petra; just one more victim of that vicious megalomaniac who had taken his own life in the Berlin bunker.
Chapter Twenty-Five – END OF THE ROAD
It was in an evening paper that he had picked up from a news-vendor. The headline ran: ‘STARLET WEDS STAR’. There was a not very good photograph of the happy couple and a brief account of the Hollywood wedding of ‘Up-and-coming young British actress, Angela Street, to long-time filmstar, Leopold Lester’. Lester had been married three times before, but for Miss Street it was her first venture into matrimony. The two had been playing opposite each other in a film and had fallen in love for real on the set.
There was more, but he would not read it. He crumpled the paper into a ball and shoved it into a litter bin. He was shattered. He found it quite incredible that she should have fallen for a man like that, a fifty-year-old ham actor with three wives and a string of love affairs behind him. She must have been out of her mind. And all this had happened without a word from her to him. He had been left to find out about it from a newspaper. Had she no more consideration for him than that?
This of course explained the lack of letters from her of recent months. She could not be bothered to write to him because she had been too much involved with this damned film and the bastard who was acting with her.
He had had a premonition of something of this sort when she left New York and dashed off to California. In the make-believe hothouse of Hollywood people lost all grip on reality; they went completely off the rails. But this –
*
He told Wilkinson; he had to confide in someone; he could not keep it all bottled up. Naturally enough, Wilkinson was less shattered by the news than he had been.
‘Don’t take it so hard. It’s not the end of the world, you know. Plenty more pebbles on the beach.’
A Wind on the Heath Page 15
