Miss Buncle's Book

by D. E. Stevenson

  “But I must be very careful,” said Mr. Abbott to himself, as the imp went away to fetch Miss King for the ten minutes’ interview, “I must be very careful.”

  Miss King accepted the chair which Mr. Abbott offered her with his pleasant old-fashioned bow, but declined a cigarette. You couldn’t smoke a man’s cigarettes and then threaten him with a libel action.

  “I have only a very few minutes to spare, Miss…er”—he glanced at the card which lay on the table—“Miss King,” said Mr. Abbott blandly.

  “A very few minutes will be sufficient for my purpose,” replied Miss King in her most capable manner. “I have merely called to request you to withdraw Disturber of the Peace from circulation.”

  “Dear me!” said Mr. Abbott, blinking, “that is surely very—er—drastic.”

  “Desperate diseases demand desperate remedies,” said Miss King sententiously.

  “And what is your objection to the novel?” inquired Mr. Abbott gently. “It seems to me a very harmless sort of novel. I would not compare it for a moment with a desperate disease. In fact I found it amusing—light reading, of course, but distinctly amusing—”

  “It is a horrible book,” said Miss King, losing a little of her business-like calm. “It is causing a great deal of misery and trouble to innocent people—”

  “How can that be?” wondered Mr. Abbott aloud.

  “You will withdraw it immediately,” continued Miss King, taking no notice of his interruption. “You will withdraw the book from circulation. I have been empowered by several people in Silverstream to come today and ask you to withdraw it.”

  “And if I refuse?” inquired Mr. Abbott softly.

  “You will not refuse,” Miss King told him, trying to make her voice sound confident, “you do not wish to—to be had up for libel, I suppose.”

  “No,” said Mr. Abbott simply.

  “Well, you will,” declared Miss King. She knew that she was putting her case badly. She knew—although she had not admitted it to herself—that her case was already lost. She was nervous, and her flow of language—business-like language—had deserted her. Coming up in the train she had overwhelmed Mr. Abbott with her eloquence and brought him to his knees. But Mr. Abbott was so different from what she had imagined, so quiet and calm and sure of himself, so benign-looking. If he had been angry or rude she could have dealt with him much more easily. She had never imagined that a publisher was like this.

  “I’m afraid you must be more explicit,” said Mr. Abbott with unruffled calm.

  “I thought I had been explicit.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head at her sorrowfully. “You have told me what you want, but surely you can’t expect me to comply with the request of a complete stranger without any adequate reason being offered. My business is run on strictly business lines. I do it to make money,” said Mr. Abbott, lifting his brows apologetically.

  “So I supposed,” said Miss King with some sarcasm. “And that is the reason I’m here. You will save money if you withdraw the book immediately. You ask me to be explicit and I will be explicit. My friends and I intend to put the matter into the hands of our lawyers and you will find yourself involved in a costly action for libel unless the book is withdrawn immediately—that is the position in a nutshell.”

  “Have you consulted your lawyer, Miss King?” asked Mr. Abbott, still with that peaceful smile.

  “I fail to see how that affects the position.”

  “It doesn’t, really,” he admitted, “I only wondered if you had. In any case your suggestion is impracticable. The novel is selling well and—”

  “I don’t care how it is selling—if it is selling well that is all the more reason to stop it,” cried Miss King incoherently. “How would you like to be pilloried in a horrible book like that? Every small detail of your domestic life laid bare—your most sacred secrets dragged into the limelight and trampled upon—how would you like it, I ask you?”

  “My dear lady!” exclaimed Mr. Abbott, surprised and pained by her vehemence. “My dear lady, people often imagine that their personalities have been drawn upon in a novel. I put it to you that you are mistaken, that the secrets exposed in Disturber of the Peace are not your secrets at all. Authors must be credited with a certain amount of imagination, you know. They seldom draw their portraits from life—”

  “Portraits!” she cried. “This is not a portrait, it’s a photograph.”

  Mr. Abbott looked at her and decided that it was. She was Miss Earle of course. Miss Buncle had drawn her with a faithfulness which was almost staggering. He felt a little annoyed with Barbara for a moment—it was scarcely necessary, for instance, to have mentioned that small mole upon her chin and the three longish hairs which grew from it. The mole would have been omitted from a portrait of Miss King, or else idealized and made to look like a beauty spot, but in a photograph there was no such evasion of the truth—

  He realized suddenly that Miss King had changed her tactics; she was appealing now to his better nature; she was throwing herself on his mercy; she had begun to tell him her life-story—or at least the part of it which she considered relevant to the occasion—

  “So there we were,” she was saying, “both orphans, without anybody dependent upon us, nor any near relations. I had a house, larger than I required. Miss Pretty was homeless. We both possessed small incomes, too small to enable us to live alone in comfort. I was about to sell my house (for I could not live in it alone) when the suggestion was made that we should pool our resources and live together—what more natural? By this means we were enabled to live comfortably in my house. The companionship was pleasant, the financial problem was solved. There was a book some years ago,” continued Miss King incoherently, “it distressed us very much at the time, but it had nothing to do with us, and I decided to ignore it—this book is far worse—it’s all about us—it’s far, far worse—”

  “You have misread the novel entirely,” said Mr. Abbott uncomfortably. “I assure you that you have misread it. There is nothing in it to cause you the slightest distress. The author is a particularly simple-minded—er—person.”

  “But Samarkand!” exclaimed Miss King, trying to keep the sound of tears out of her voice. “Why Samarkand of all places?”

  “I don’t know anything about Samarkand,” said Mr. Abbott truthfully, “but to me it has an adventurous sound, and I feel convinced that that was what it was intended to convey—”

  “A dreadful Eastern place—full of vice and—and horribleness,” cried Miss King.

  “No, no. Adventure,” replied Mr. Abbott, waving his hands wildly. “Deserts and camels, you know, and Sheiks and Arabs riding about on milk-white steeds, and oases with palms—all that sort of thing. But at the same time,” he added retreating into safety again, “at the same time I feel sure you are mistaken and the characters are surely imaginary—purely imaginary. It is merely an unfortunate coincidence that they seem to bear some resemblance—”

  “Who is this John Smith?” demanded Miss King suddenly, interrupting Mr. Abbott’s flow of eloquence with a lamentable lack of ceremony, “Tell me that. Who is the man? He must be somebody living in Silverstream of course, but who? That’s the question. Bulmer is the only man I know of who writes books, and he would not make his wife elope with another man—it’s simply unthinkable—”

  “I’m afraid our time is up,” said Mr. Abbott, looking at his watch regretfully. “I have given you rather longer than I intended, but it has been a most interesting conversation—”

  “I shall remain here until you tell me who John Smith is,” said Miss King firmly—he could scarcely throw her out, she reflected.

  Mr. Abbott smiled and shook his head. “Quite impossible, my dear lady,” he said. “Besides, why should you suppose that you would know him?”

  “Because he knows me,” replied Miss King wit
h incontrovertible logic.

  “I feel sure you are mistaken,” said Mr. Abbott.

  “I shall remain here until you tell me,” said Miss King.

  It looked as though they had reached an impasse, but Mr. Abbott was a man of resource—there were other rooms in his office. He rose quickly and reached the door before Miss King had perceived his intention. “By all means remain here,” he invited her with his courtly little bow. “You will excuse me if I leave you—I have an appointment” and was gone.

  Miss King realized at once that she had been out-generalled. She sat still for a few moments, looking round the cozy little room and wondering whether the clue to the mystery might be found here by a determined woman. Surely it must lie at her hand, here in the sanctum of the senior partner of Abbott & Spicer’s firm. The walls were papered with light brown, the carpet was thick and soft and brown, the curtains were of dark brown velvet. On a small oak table in the corner stood a book-trough containing two large dictionaries, a copy of Who’s Who, and a London Post Office Directory. In the other corner was a small safe. A large glass-fronted bookcase took up the length of one wall. Above the mantelpiece there was an oak shelf containing Abbott & Spicer’s latest publications. Miss King rose from her chair and took down Disturber of the Peace. She glanced through it with a shudder of distaste, but there was nothing to be learned from it—no clue to be gained as to who had perpetrated it—it was merely an ordinary copy of the book such as could be bought at any bookstall for the exorbitant sum of seven and sixpence.

  Gaining confidence, Miss King now turned to the desk—it was a large oak desk and it stood in the middle of the room, carefully arranged so that the light from the window should fall over Mr. Abbott’s left shoulder. The drawers of the desk were all locked except one, in which was an assortment of paper and envelopes. On the desk stood a telephone of the usual pattern. There was also a manuscript entitled The Flames of Hell, by Hesa Feend. (Mr. Abbott had been considering its merits and demerits when Miss King had interrupted his morning’s work.) Miss King glanced at it with disgust. The large sheet of blotting paper on the desk was virgin, save for a signature which Miss King decided was that of Mr. Abbott himself. The waste-paper basket contained two circulars, and a review of Mr. Shillingsworth’s latest novel just published by the firm. Nothing remained to be investigated but the safe. Miss King investigated the safe fruitlessly.

  She glanced once more round the room—how tantalizing it was to be here in this room with the clue so near and not to be able to find it! If I could only find out who it was, she thought, with a sigh. The room lay before her, perfectly open. Mr. Abbott had given her the freedom of the room, but she had found nothing. Was it any use waiting in case Mr. Abbott might return, or Mr. Spicer might come in to get something? She thought not.

  She went over to the door and put her hand on the knob. Had he locked her in? she wondered suddenly. Mr. Abbott had done nothing so ungentlemanly. The handle turned, the door opened, Miss King was standing in the passage. With some little difficulty she found her way down various long corridors and iron steps, and in a few moments she had reached the street.

  Miss King was in such a hurry to shake the dust of Abbott & Spicer’s from her feet that she ran straight into the arms of a man—a tall thin man—who was about to enter the building.

  “Mr. Bulmer!” she exclaimed in amazement.

  Mr. Bulmer looked as startled as herself and somewhat sheepish into the bargain.

  “If you have come to see that man it’s no good,” she told him breathlessly. “He’s a perfect fool”—she had forgotten for the moment that he had outwitted her—“one of those solid smiling fools that nothing will move or excite.”

  “I don’t want to move or excite Mr. Abbott,” replied Mr. Bulmer sourly. “I merely want to find out the name of the man who wrote that novel about Silverstream. Mrs. Featherstone Hogg lent it to me yesterday and I sat up reading it half the night. Have you read it?” he asked, looking down at Miss King with sudden suspicion.

  “Of course—that’s why I’m here.”

  “You don’t like it—eh?” he asked, smiling in rather an unpleasant sort of way.

  “No more than you do,” retorted Miss King, who was always at her best if people turned nasty. She wondered if she should press home her point—men did not care to be deserted by their wives. It was not true, of course. Margaret Bulmer had not really gone off with Harry Carter—at least if she had, Miss King had not heard of it—but the book said that she had. The book had exposed Mr. Bulmer’s selfishness and cruelty so frankly that you felt quite glad Margaret had escaped from him; you did not blame her for it. On the other hand Mr. Bulmer was angry about the book; he might be a good ally in the fight against Abbott & Spicer and the mysterious John Smith. Miss King decided not to press the point home.

  “The book must be withdrawn from circulation,” said Miss King firmly.

  Mr. Bulmer laughed bitterly. “So that was your idea. Why don’t you go to the zoo and ask the lion to give you his ration of meat? You would be more likely to succeed.”

  “What do you mean?” she inquired.

  “I mean, Disturber of the Peace is a bestseller. A publisher doesn’t get hold of a bestseller every day of the week. Abbott won’t withdraw it—he’d be a fool if he did.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked him. “You’re going to do something, I suppose—you’ve come here to see the man, haven’t you?”

  “My idea was merely to get hold of the author’s name and strangle him slowly,” replied Mr. Bulmer with a nasty smile. “Quite a primitive idea compared with yours, isn’t it? But more likely to succeed—”

  “I asked him that too,” said Miss King.

  “Well, keep on asking,” Mr. Bulmer replied sarcastically. “Perhaps in time he will get tired of saying no. Come up and see him constantly—publishers love to have their mornings wasted for them—put off your visit to Samarkand for a few weeks, and sit upon Mr. Abbott’s doorstep.”

  “Samarkand,” cried Miss King, goaded to frenzy. “I’m not going to Samarkand—why should I? What’s it got to do with you where I go? I shall go to Samarkand if I like—”

  She put up her umbrella and plunged away from him down the teeming street.

  Chapter Nine

  Mrs. Bulmer

  Margaret Bulmer knew quite well that something had upset Stephen but she did not know what it was. He had said nothing to her about the book which had been lent to him by Mrs. Featherstone Hogg, nor had he offered it to her to read. On the contrary when Stephen Bulmer had finished the book he had looked about his study for some safe place to hide it, and, finding none really safe from the prying eyes of wives and housemaids, he had deliberately made up the fire, and, tearing the book to pieces in his thin claw-like hands, had fed it to the flames. Slowly and bit by bit Disturber of the Peace had been reduced to ashes in Mr. Bulmer’s grate. He felt a sort of queer satisfaction in the rite. The copy belonged to Mrs. Featherstone Hogg, of course (she had paid seven and sixpence for it), but that didn’t matter in the least. He was not afraid of Mrs. Featherstone Hogg. If she asked for the book it would give Mr. Bulmer the greatest pleasure to reply that he had burnt it—he hoped she would ask for it.

  After he had finished burning Disturber of the Peace he went up to bed very quietly. Margaret had been in bed for hours. He took great care not to waken her, for somehow he did not want to face Margaret’s clear gaze just now. He was not really like David Gaymer, of course, but perhaps he had been just a little inconsiderate now and then.

  Margaret was not asleep; she was merely pretending to be asleep because it was easier, and she was so tired. She was surprised when Stephen came up to bed quietly instead of stamping about in his dressing-room as he usually did, and throwing his boots on the floor. She was even more surprised when he crawled into bed without putting on the light and telling her tha
t his hot-water bottle was stone cold. She wondered vaguely if Stephen were ill, but decided that he couldn’t be ill, or he would have wakened her up to find the aspirin tablets and to warm some milk for him—she drifted off to sleep.

  In the morning Stephen was still “queer.” He came down to breakfast shaved and dressed instead of having breakfast in bed as he usually did, and, instead of immersing himself in The Times, he was quite conversational. He even spoke kindly to the children (who were too astounded at this unusual behavior to answer him at all) and asked Margaret what she was going to do with herself—he was going to London by the ten-thirty. Margaret replied that she was going to give the children their lessons. She caught him gazing at her in a queer way when he thought she was busy with the tea-cups. She was relieved when he departed to catch his train.

  Margaret thought about it all as she ordered the dinner and gave the children their lessons. Of course it was quite a usual thing for Stephen to sit up half the night; he said he could write better when the house was quiet. (The house was quiet all day as it was possible for any house to be. Everyone was provided with carpet slippers and there was soundproof felt on the stairs. If Stephen were not writing, he was asleep, or thinking, and, whichever of these pursuits he was engaged upon, the house had to be quiet. At the slightest sound the door of the study would fly open and Stephen would emerge white with fury and stamp up and down the hall raging like a maniac, and demanding of his Maker why he could not get a little peace in his own house. Sometimes Margaret took the two children out into the woods for a picnic lunch, and urged them to run about and make a noise. She tried to make them play games such as she had played in her childhood, and to shout and sing, but it was no good. The children were like two little mice. She couldn’t get a loud sound out of them. Margaret worried about the children quite a lot, it was not natural for children to be so quiet, but she could do nothing. They were terrified of Stephen, of course, that was the reason—terrified of his rages and his loud strident voice. They would creep past his door like ghosts; they would stop suddenly in the midst of their quiet games and listen with strange intent looks upon their little faces.)