One True Sentence: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 1)

by Craig McDonald

  Soon, newspaper accounts weren’t enough. I began to ask some questions of my own around the edges of the actual crime. Through a kind of luck, or perhaps just some crazy knack, I overtook the official investigation and reached a solution of my own. I finished my draft of Connor’s novel, then anonymously tipped police to my solution and set them on the correct investigative path.

  A template was set. For the next several Templeton novels, I sought out real-life crimes — ongoing dramas — and appropriated them for my fiction. So, you see, this little escapade of playing sleuth for Gertrude, at least for me, wasn’t a new proposition…it was more akin to my secret métier.

  My secret.

  As my rather peculiar work habits evolved, I realized soon enough that if someone ever connected some of these real-life crimes to Connor Templeton’s novels I might be at some potential for peril. I was already writing under a pseudonym. It seemed no great reach to adopt an alias in each new city I sought out as the backdrop for Connor’s next mystery novel. Each new book brought a new city or country, a new crime to investigate and write about…and a new identity.

  At least twice, I “solved” crimes in a manner that I knew precluded local authorities from ever replicating my results, despite all my tips. Eventually, in both cases — convinced other innocent lives were at risk — I acted on my own to mete out something I regarded as justice. I became a kind of chronicler cum vigilante.

  Imagining the recipients of my private justice to be incarnations of Leonard Sloan made it easy.

  I was in Egypt for a second time, in 1922. I was there researching my novel Cleopatra’s Curse. I became aware of the presence of a second mystery writer, another woman, who was also living in Egypt to gather background for her next mystery novel, The Ghoul of Giza. You’ll have guessed by now that the other mystery writer was Estelle Quartermain. The name I was using at the time was Margaret Walker. You’ll take note of those initials…extrapolate out from there, I know.

  I so know you, my darling Hector.

  There was a murder. For a time, official suspicion fell on Estelle. The victim was poisoned — strychnine, again. There were dark whispers of some sort of affair between Estelle and the victim…a man named Robert Turner, who allegedly ended his affair with the mystery writer. (Estelle, I’m coming to learn, cuckolds her husband quite shamelessly…and takes rejection quite poorly.)

  I put aside the plot for my in-progress novel, and instead began writing a novel about Estelle’s predicament. A novel about a female mystery writer who is herself suspected of committing a murder.

  Estelle evaded prosecution; I completed and published my novel.

  Through channels, I heard that Estelle was livid…that she wanted to sue Connor Templeton for his “brazen, lying roman à clef.”

  Of course, she couldn’t do that and risk drawing the attention of those vast majority of readers who hadn’t made a connection between the mystery writer in my book and Estelle Quartermain.

  About three months after my book appeared, something very bad happened. A box of pastries was delivered to my publishing house, addressed to me. Since “Connor” was “abroad,” one of the secretaries in the office sat the box out for the office staff to enjoy. My publisher’s secretary nearly died from the rat poison in the cakes…bleeding internally from the anticoagulants infusing such poisons.

  Then, in March 1923, an anonymous fan letter was sent to my publisher. A mail room attendant was killed from inhaling the dust in the envelope — crystallized strychnine.

  I had become, it seems, Estelle’s bête noire…and the object of her murderous revenge. Fortunately for me, my identity remained a closely guarded secret. At least that was so until a few nights ago, when Gertrude shared my secret with Quartermain.

  From that moment on, I knew I was living under a sword. I knew Estelle would come at me directly.

  But there was a new wrinkle, unfolding almost simultaneously with Gertrude’s revelation to Estelle regarding my identity. Estelle was about to murder Charles Turner…the brother of Robert, the man whom she was suspected of murdering in Egypt.

  Only in the past few hours, through research, have I learned of Charles’s relation to Robert. It seems that Charles was sparing no expense to employ private investigators and researchers in an effort to prove Estelle’s complicity in his brother’s death.

  I think it was just a freak coincidence that Charles happened to attend the same party that Estelle and I had been invited to at Gertrude’s salon. The poisoned snuff might have killed Charles anywhere, at any time.

  Call it fate, call it serendipity…perhaps dumb luck. But the poison took Charles down in front of Estelle and I and the rest of you.

  Reeling from the revelation about my identity, I think Estelle tried to get in front of events by immediately declaring Charles’s death to have been the result of poisoning…to beat me to the punch, if you will. Then she got herself assigned by Gertrude to investigate a murder of her own devising, one Estelle had meant to be confused with the cycle of murders of little magazine publishers being committed by the Nadaists.

  When those “Ms” and “Ws’” started appearing, I knew that Estelle was setting about her revenge…framing me for at least some of those little magazine murders. I figured that Estelle was murdering others in order to make her frame a tight one. I think —and admittedly, this is a hunch — that Estelle had never heard of Margaret “Molly” Wilder, and so she couldn’t know how those false clues she laid would be seen by you and by Simon. Estelle couldn’t know that for some they would point suspicion at Molly Wilder rather than at me.

  But I saw their true intent clearly enough.

  In a perfect world, I would have insisted we go to Italy a day earlier, before time and circumstance overtook us…forced me to a brash decision — faking my own kidnapping and death.

  When I heard from you that Simon was beginning to poke around Connor Templeton and those crimes from other countries informing Connor’s books, I knew I was in terrible jeopardy. Simon strikes me as the committed kind, and I don’t think the rationale for my just actions would ever be accepted by such a man.

  I hope that you and your policeman friend will bring Estelle to book for her crimes. I know that if you do that, if you bring her in alive, Estelle will do everything she can to implicate me —either to lessen her own consequences, or, in spite, to see me destroyed along with her.

  The world believes Brinke Devlin is dead.

  With Brinke, dies Connor Templeton.

  Connor will have a last couple of posthumous mystery novels, then his future royalties and such will be paid to Connor’s “ward.”

  I’ll be watching the newspapers. If I don’t see Estelle arrested soon, I’ll assume she dodged another bullet. I suppose then I’ll try and settle matters with her directly. If she doesn’t find me first.

  My darling, darling Hector. I so much wanted to marry you and have our life together on that island. To laugh and drink and play with you naked in that Gulf coast wind and water.

  To perhaps buy a boat so we could explore Cuba and Bimini.

  I’ll be eagerly watching for Rhapsody in Black to see what becomes of wicked Alison Wilder.

  I hope you’ll be watching for Bud Grant’s debut novel, Triangle, to see what becomes of Horace Lester. I suppose I’m falling in love with Horace, so I suspect he might see further installments.

  And now the last:

  I’m holding out hope we might yet still have that sweet life together on that island.

  On February 14, 1925, it is my intention to be waiting in Key West in a back pew of Saint Mary Star of the Sea on Windsor Lane. I’m going to be there at seven p.m. on Valentine’s night. I’ll light a candle, and wait for an hour. I hope you’ll walk through that door, Hector. I hope that you will come in and smile and sit down next to me and take my hand and tell me that we may start again.

  It’s a long time, I know, from this bitter, icy February to February of next year…particularly for a man
like you, living in the City of Lights with so many vivacious, adventurous, and attractive women.

  But if one has not stolen your heart by then, then you can know a woman just as good as any of those will be waiting for you on Bone Key.

  If you don’t come, I’ll understand. But I will be devastated.

  I want our beautiful life together.

  I suppose you tire of me writing it, and that you perhaps doubt it, given all I’ve done, but I love you, Hector. I love you, I love you, I love you…with all my heart.

  Always yours,

  Brinke

  Hector read Brinke’s letter three more times. Then he folded it and inserted it into a compartment of his wallet.

  Brinke was right.

  It was such a long, long time until next February.

  42

  Hector again passed by the offices of Intimations. He looked at the door. The single hair he had pasted across the door now lay on the ground.

  Looking around again for sentries, he risked knocking on the door. No answer.

  Hector took a last look around the street, then knocked out the piece of cardboard taped over the broken window pane. He reached in and let himself in again.

  One more dead mouse lay in a trap on the floor by the desk.

  Molly’s personal belongings, including her canister of lipstick, were gone.

  ***

  Hector spent the long day writing in the Closerie des Lilas. It was warm in the café and Hector took a table at the back — Hem’s customary table. Hector looked up from his notebook occasionally to rest his eyes and to flex his writing hand.

  He was nearly three-quarters through the draft of his first novel.

  Blaise Cendrars was again at the other table at the back of the café, writing poetry with his one good arm and slamming back drinks.

  Old men were playing dominoes and arguing politics…still fighting the last war over drinks.

  Hector looked out the front window. There was a terrible wind and the heavy snow flurries were falling nearly sideways and beginning to stick — covering the sidewalks and streets.

  Hector took lunch and dinner at the café and drank a bottle of wine and several glasses of whiskey, but he never really felt drunk.

  At eight p.m., Hector closed his notebook, just one chapter away, he reckoned, from a full, first draft of Rhapsody in Black.

  He stepped out into the cold night and hailed a taxi.

  43

  Snow was again falling on the Seine.

  It was a couple of minutes past nine and it was unusually quiet on the bridge…very little street traffic because of the ice and heavy snow, and even less foot traffic.

  Hector stood looking down off the Pont Neuf. The river was covered with a fresh layer of ice and the lights from the bridge shone on the hardened surface far below.

  Another bank of fog crawled across the river. Hector stood in one of the hazy, solitary cones of light made weak by the snow…stood there like a flickering beacon, or a target.

  A lone figure was walking across the Pont Neuf…crossing from the Right Bank to the left. Hector turned to watch her approach — the occasional glimpses of her silhouette as she passed from cone of light to cone of light left no doubt about her sex.

  Finally, one light from the one he was standing under, Molly said, “I didn’t want it to end this way…couldn’t imagine it ending this way, Hector.” She reached the place where he was standing.

  She looked like hell…dark hollows under eyes…gaunt. Her violet eyes were hazy, unfocused.

  He reached out with a gloved hand and tipped her chin up to better see her features in the light. “Oh, Molly, honey. What have you taken? Cocaine? Opium?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Hector. It doesn’t matter anymore. It didn’t help, and it doesn’t matter.”

  “Molly.”

  Her hand rose to his lips. “There’s really nothing left to say, Hector. It’s over. The police are looking for me. They’ll never let me be. Never believe me innocent. And in many ways, I’m not.”

  Hector said, “That’s not true. Philippe said you knew nothing about your parents’ murders. Or about what he was doing here in Paris. He said you didn’t know until I told you — until Brinke did — that Nada had become a kind of murder and suicide cult.”

  “I suspected even before then,” Molly said. “But I didn’t ask the hard questions, Hector. I just went along, a kind of silent accomplice.” Molly shivered and said, “Can I have a cigarette?”

  Hector pulled out his pack of cigarettes, shook loose two, and put them between his lips. He lit them both, cupping his hand to protect the match from the wind, then passed one to Molly. He turned and propped his forearms on the bridge rail, staring off down the Seine, Molly, mimicking his posture. She said, “It’s depressing, isn’t it? The view, I mean.”

  “That’s a matter of perspective,” Hector said softly. “We need to change yours.”

  Molly blew a thin stream of smoke off into the darkness. “No, I’m seeing things as they are, Hector. I killed Lloyd Blake, you know. I was sleeping with Lloyd for more than a month…spending nights in his bed when his wife was away. He kept talking about a special publication of several of my poems in the spring issue of his magazine. He was going to publish several pages of my writing, he said. He reneged and I went berserk. He was so horrible…a horrible man to make love to. He made me wear wigs…red and black…calling me by different names. Sometimes he hurt me. We were in bed that last night together, when he told me my writing is horrible…unfocused. He said my poems are ‘ponderous,’ that they are like ‘unleavened dough.’”

  Hector sighed, said, “Oh, Molly…that’s just wrong.”

  She pressed on: “Lloyd kept a silver dagger by his bed. He used it as a letter opener. Sometimes he would hold it to my throat while he made love to me. I picked it up, raging, and drove it into his chest…slashed his throat.”

  Molly shrugged, looking off down the river toward the Conciergerie Palais de Justice. “Philippe never knew about that.”

  Hector heard the rawness in his own voice. “That might almost have been justifiable, in its way.” He didn’t really believe that, but Hector knew too well his own ego. He had a sense of how he might have reacted if he was placed in Molly’s position. He said, “Were there others? Other murders?”

  “Just one.” Her jaw was tight. “I saw you leaving La Rotonde yesterday. Like you, I was looking for Philippe. I followed you, following him. I saw you attack Philippe. While you were hauling him up the side of that fire escape, I made my way around the block, into the building behind you, where I could watch and hear. I listened to all that Philippe said to you. I realized what he had cost me in terms of you, and my writing…ruining my chance with Intimations…” She hung her head. “I was horrified about all the people he had killed in my name. Even our parents, who weren’t, as you wrote in your letter, ‘abusive’ or ‘evil,’ but not loving either. But they didn’t deserve that. When we came to Europe, Philippe, or Jackson, as you know now, convinced me that some crazy people back home were spreading rumors about the fire, and so it was better we lived under other identities. Again, I didn’t press hard enough for more from him. Just went along. We were in London. He became Oswald Rook. I took a different name there. He fell in with Crowley. After the…accident…I mean well, Jackson has no—”

  “I know about his self-mutilation,” Hector said.

  She nodded. “We decided then, or I decided, to pose as lovers, so he would be spared pressure from women coming after him…expecting things from him. I never thought about the effect it might have on my own life…until I met you, and you saw me as Philippe’s lover. So stupid of me.”

  Hector steered her back to the events in the alley. He said: “You shot Philippe?”

  “I fired a shot down the alley to lure you away. Then I shot Philippe. He saw me pointing the gun at him…started to call out. I killed him.” Molly smiled, a terrible and tragic smile. “I didn’t feel anythin
g. Isn’t that funny?”

  Hector wrapped an arm around Molly’s shoulder. “Where’d you get the gun?”

  “I bought it for myself earlier that day. I was working up to turning it on myself.”

  “No.”

  “I tried before. Last Christmas…I took some pills.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  Molly searched his face. “And you’ve heard why?”

  Hector nodded slowly.

  “I can’t stand the guilt on your face. That’s why I came here a last time to talk with you, Hector. Just to say you have nothing to feel guilty for. Not from before, and not now. Don’t ever feel guilty, Hector. Please, don’t ever feel guilty.”

  It happened quickly then.

  Molly said, “I love you Hector. I choose to think you love me, just a little.”

  Then she threw herself over the rail.

  Molly underestimated Hector’s reflexes: he caught hold of one of her arms. Hector tried to hook his foot under the bridge’s rail to secure himself. His back was in agony — the whip wounds reopening from the strain of carrying Molly’s dangling weight.

  She stared up at him desperately. “You’re ruining this, Hector. Please — let go. I’ve made my decision. Let me go, I beg you.”

  “You can’t do this,” he snarled, feeling blood spread across his back.

  “It’s all hopeless now, darling,” she said, digging at his hand with her nails, trying to free herself. “There’s no future for me.”

  “There is a future. We’ll get you away from this city…get you another identity! You’ll start over, darling…without the weight of that psychotic brother of yours. Without this twisted infatuation with the void he’s tried to instill in you. This love of meaninglessness.”

  Her eyes were imploring. “Start over? Where? Alone? Do you love me enough to come with me, Hector? To help me?”

  Hector stared down into her wild, crazed violet eyes. What choice did he have? His back was in agony…his arms felt as if they were being ripped from their sockets. Hector couldn’t sustain her weight more than another minute or two. The muscles in his arms and hands were already trembling.