“And I’m the Duke of Windsor,” he said. I offered to pay him, but he wouldn’t accept anything.
We left the pharmacy and walked slowly down the street until we reached a small pizza parlor. “Feel like a slice?” I asked. “I haven’t had pizza in a long time. Is the London version as good as we have back in the States?”
“I don’t know. I have never had pizza in the United States.”
“Come, let’s enjoy some pizza and a cold drink and talk a bit.”
She was more relaxed as we sat at a Formica table in the pizza parlor. I said, “Jane Portelaine is supposed to be on vacation in Spain. Why did she come to see you? Why did she hit you?”
“Mrs. Fletcher, I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“I suppose I can’t make you, but I have tried to be helpful. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Ms. Portelaine. Was it someone else?”
“Why do you think it was her?”
“Because I could smell her perfume. She uses a great deal of a fragrance known as Victorian posy. I smelled it in the room.”
“I might as well tell you what happened, Mrs. Fletcher. There’s nothing mysterious about it. I’d only met her once, through Jason, although I knew a lot about her. He would tell me what an ugly, nasty person she was, how much he hated her. He’d used her to get close to Marjorie Ainsworth, and said he wanted to stay close. Then she learned that Jason and I were lovers.”
“Why would it bother her that you and Jason were lovers?”
“Because ...”
“Because she’d been Jason’s lover, too?”
Tears formed in Maria’s eyes. I said, “I’d heard about them having a relationship of some sort, although I can’t imagine she was nearly as meaningful to him as you were. Did you know about any romantic or sexual involvement between them?”
“No, I did not. I always assumed Jason was faithful to me.”
“Had the relationship between them been going on right up until the time he died?”
The tears came freely now and she shook her head, not as a denial but as a signal that she wanted to stop the conversation. I said, “Yes, I understand. This must be very painful for you. Frankly, I’m not only surprised that Ms. Portelaine is here in London, but that she would actually strike you. She’s never impressed me as the type of person who would resort to physical violence.” I’d no sooner spoken the words than I realized they weren’t exactly true—there had always been an edge to Jane’s personality.
I finished my soda. “Now that Jason is dead, Maria, what would cause Ms. Portelaine to attack you? I could better understand it if a relationship between them were going on at this moment, but Jason is dead.”
She wiped her eyes with a napkin, careful not to press on her nose or left eye, and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Fletcher, you’re a very kind person. I think what you are doing tomorrow, letting the world know that Jason wrote Gin and Daggers, is a wonderful thing.” She stood, turned on her heel, walked from the pizza parlor, took a right, and, by the time I reached the sidewalk, was lost in a crowd of people.
The press was still at the hotel when I arrived. So was Lucas. He bounded toward me, grabbed my arm, and said, “Trouble, Jess.”
I assumed he meant the press, and laughed it off.
“Not down here, Jess, up in your suite.”
I didn’t have a chance to ask questions because Lucas literally propelled me through the crowd and to the elevator, where a Savoy security guard kept others from getting on. We said nothing on the ride up, but the minute we were in the hallway, Lucas said in a stage whisper, “Everybody who’s ever been involved with Marjorie is waiting for you. They are furious.”
“Furious about what?”
“At your plans to announce tomorrow that Marjorie did not write Gin and Daggers.”
“Why should they be furious? What if it’s true?”
“Jess, we’re—no, I take that back. They’re dealing with stakes much bigger than your sense of honor and fair play.”
“Who let them in?” I asked.
“I okayed it. I didn’t know what else to do.”
As we entered the suite, everyone started talking at once.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I take it there is a message you wish to get across to me, but I will get it only if I hear one voice at a time.”
They sat on a long couch—Clayton Perry, Marjorie’s American publisher; Bruce Herbert, her American agent; Archibald Semple, her British publisher; and the London book critic, William Strayhorn.
“Is it true that you are going to announce that Marjorie did not write Gin and Daggers?” Strayhorn asked.
“I really don’t intend to reveal what I have to say until tomorrow, but yes, it does concern that.”
“Are you crazy, Jessica? Do you know what this will do to Marjorie’s reputation?” Perry asked.
“No, Mr. Perry, I am not crazy. Yes, I do know what this will do to Marjorie Ainsworth’s reputation, and, in my judgment, it will do very little. Her preeminence in the field of mystery writing—all writing for that matter—has been established over the course of many, many years and involves countless books. If she did not write this latest book, her fans will still think of her as the writer of all the others that gave them so much pleasure.”
“Don’t do it, Mrs. Fletcher,” Archibald Semple said weakly from the corner of the couch. “She was a British institution, and we do not make it a habit of attacking our institutions.”
I pulled a chair from the desk and placed it in front of them. “Gentlemen, can we please separate concern over Marjorie’s reputation and concern over the loss of profits if people are told that she didn’t write Gin and Daggers?” I looked at Bruce Herbert, who had said nothing. He raised his eyebrows, closed his eyes, and turned in the general direction of the window.
I continued. “No one thought more highly of Marjorie Ainsworth than I did, and no one in this world is more concerned about honoring her memory. However, there is the matter of a young man named Jason Harris, whose throat was slit, whose face was battered, and who was tossed in the Thames. He is the one who should receive literary credit for writing Gin and Daggers. I’m sorry, but I intend to see to it that he receives his just due.”
Strayhorn, the critic, stood and assumed a statesmanlike posture across the room, his elbow casually resting upon the mantel of the suite’s small fireplace. “Mrs. Fletcher,” he said, “I think it is safe to say that you believe in books.”
I turned so that I was facing him. “Of course I do.”
“We are very much in the midst of a society whose cynicism is unparalled. Nothing is trusted any longer—government, educators, physicians, solicitors, and publishers of books. The sales of hardcover books, particularly fiction, have been eroding at a steady rate for years.”
He stopped talking. I waited. When he said nothing else, I asked, “What does this have to do with the issue we’re discussing here today?”
“Can you imagine the sense of betrayal millions of people who loved Marjorie. Ainsworth will suffer if you make this announcement?”
I had to give him credit; at least he was basing his objections on a larger, loftier principle than the others, who obviously had their pocketbooks uppermost in mind. At the same time, I found his thesis to be absurd. Pointing out to the public that a great writer had lost her faculties toward the end of her long life and had engaged the services of a younger, more energetic writer to complete her latest work, would hardly mark the end of civilization as we know it. I didn’t put it to him quite that way, but I came close.
“What proof do you have?” Strayhorn asked, looking intently at me, the prosecuting attorney grilling a shaky witness.
“That will be revealed tomorrow, Mr. Strayhorn.”
“I insist, Mrs. Fletcher, that you present your evidence here and now.”
I returned the chair to its place beneath the desk. “No, I will not do that. Sorry, but you will all have to wait until tomorrow to hear the details.”
I must have presented a firm façade because they stopped talking to me and started chattering among themselves. Eventually they drifted from the room muttering objections, interspersed with mild obscenities, and were gone—with the exception of Bruce Herbert.
“Bruce, is there something else you’d like to say?” I asked.
He looked at Lucas. “I’d prefer to speak to you in private, Jessica.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Lucas said, “I’m like family.”
“Not my family,” Herbert said. “Please, give us five minutes.”
I nodded to Lucas that he should accede to the agent’s request. “I’ll run downstairs and check on the convention’s progress,” he said, “but I’ll be back.”
When Lucas had left, Bruce Herbert said, “Jessica, I’m no fool. I know the subject you raised over cocktails yesterday about a series of novels, using the name of a liquor and a weapon in each title, was not an idea that came to you because of Marjorie and Gin and Daggers. You’ve heard about Brandy and Blood.”
I suggested we sit down. “Yes,” I said, “I know about Brandy and Blood. It’s a novel Marjorie wrote before Gin and Daggers. She gave it to you, only you haven’t submitted it anywhere, as I understand it.”
Herbert looked at the floor, and then up at me. “Jessica, I have the distinct feeling that you are finding out more than anyone would really like to know—not only about Marjorie Ainsworth’s murder, but about the young man she took into her confidence, Jason Harris.”
I said nothing; my eyes and expression indicated I wanted to hear more.
“Brandy and Blood was not written by Marjorie,” he said.
“No? Who wrote it, Jason Harris?”
“Yes. Because of Marjorie’s advanced age, he sensed that she would not live much longer, so he batted out a novel in what he hoped was her style, and that could be sold under her name after she died. He tried to create the illusion that Marjorie had written the novel before she went to work on Gin and Daggers, but that isn’t the truth. He’d sat at Marjorie’s side—to be more precise, at Jane Portelaine’s side—throughout the writing of Gin and Daggers and thought he’d gotten her style down.”
“You’re not suggesting, Bruce, that he was concerned about perpetuating Marjorie’s financial estate?”
Herbert smiled. “It wasn’t to perpetuate anybody’s estate. When Jane Portelaine gave the manuscript to me and asked me to handle it, she said that Jason wanted a lot of money for it. Publishing it probably would have doomed Marjorie to an eternity of scorn.”
“How so?”
“Well, it isn’t very good. No, that’s a gross understatement. It stinks.”
I shook my head. “I can’t imagine Jane committing such a traitorous act against her aunt.”
“I don’t know what her motivation was, Jessica. She told me she thought that as Marjorie’s American agent, J would want anything that would be marketable under her aunt’s name. At the time I thought she was sincere, misguided perhaps, but sincere. I suppose I also have to be honest enough to say that if it had been any good, I might have considered going with it.”
“But you sat on it.”
“Yes.”
“What else did Jane say when she gave the manuscript to you?”
“Not much, really. I do remember that she seemed uncomfortable giving it to me. I actually had the feeling that Jason had some sort of hold over her. I wonder if that wasn’t the case.”
“You say the manuscript is terrible. I’ve had conversations recently with people who are praising Jason Harris’s writing.”
Herbert shrugged. “Based upon Brandy and Blood, they’re wrong. Would you like to see the manuscript?”
“Yes, very much.”
“I’m doing this with a purpose in mind, Jessica.”
“Which is?”
“To convince you that Jason Harris did not write Gin and Daggers, was incapable of it. Once you see that, there’ll be no need for you to go through with your announcement tomorrow.”
“I’ll have to make up my own mind about that.”
“Of course.” He went to the door. “I’ll bring the manuscript back in a few minutes. It’s in my room.”
My phone rang. It was Jimmy Biggers. “I’ve been trying to reach you,” I said.
“Been busy, love. What’s this codswallop I hear about the Italian murdering Marjorie Ainsworth? Don’t add up to me. Make sense to you?”
“Yes, perfect sense. I’ve thought all along he was the one who killed Marjorie.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a bummer for us. I was hopin’ you and me would solve this one and share the glory.”
“Looks as though that won’t happen, Jimmy. Sorry.”
“Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, as me mother used to say. By the way, did you enjoy your afternoon in Crumpsworth?”
“How did ... Jimmy, I don’t think it’s standard procedure for a private investigator to follow his own client.”
“Got to bend the rules sometimes, Jessica, especially with a born snoop like you. You never saw me, did you?”
“I don’t know how I could have missed you in that ridiculous car of yours.”
“Didn’t use that one. Borrowed me a friend’s little one.”
“Where are you now?” I asked.
“Back at the Red Feather. I just come in from Crumpsworth.”
“Why did you go back there?”
“You told me to keep an eye on Harris’s stepbrother, David Simpson, so I been followin’ ’im.”
“David Simpson went to Crumpsworth today?”
“That he did, drove straight out to Ainsworth Manor.”
“Was anyone with him?”
“I don’t know who the bloke was, but he was skinny and had long hair.”
“Walter Cole,” I said, more to myself than to him.
“Say, Jessica, what’s this announcement you’re supposed to make tomorrow about Ainsworth’s book?”
I laughed lightly. “Nothing you’d be interested in, Jimmy. Purely a literary matter.”
“I’m not much for books, Jessica. I suppose I might as well pack up here and get on to somethin’ else.”
“Yes, I guess you should. Looks like the Yard did its job, which means we don’t have a job to do. Thank you again. It’s been an interesting collaboration.”
“My pleasure. Maybe you and me could get together for a pint before you head back.”
“I’ll be busy right up until I leave, but if there is a break in my schedule, I’ll certainly give you a call.” As I hung up, I jabbed at an imaginary Jimmy Biggers with my index finger.
Bruce Herbert returned with the manuscript of Brandy and Blood. I thanked him and promised I’d read it as soon as possible.
“Do with it what you will, Jessica. It has no value to me.” He placed it on the desk.
“Bruce, this manuscript aside, what is your evaluation of Jason Harris’s future potential?”
“Future? He’s dead.”
“Yes, I know that, but it seems that certain people in the London publishing business think they can turn him into a posthumous literary hero.”
“You mean Walter Cole. I read Strayhorn’s column. Cole’s obviously banking on one thing, that the world will be told, with your help, that Harris wrote Gin and Daggers. If that happens, Harris will suddenly take on international importance. Of course, people will read what he’s written, find out how bad it is, and that will be the end of it, but a big, fast profit could be turned. Think about that before deciding whether to go through with your announcement tomorrow.”
I walked him to the door. “Bruce, I have to do what I feel is just and fair where Gin and Daggers is concerned. If I don’t, I won’t be able to live with myself.”
“Even though it smears the reputation of a good friend?”
“Yes, and even if it diminishes the royalties her books will earn in the future. I’m sorry it directly affects yo
u and others who were professionally involved with Marjorie.”
“Well, I suppose you have to do what you think is right, but give it some serious thought.”
“I’ve been giving it nothing but. Thank you for the manuscript and for your candor.”
Lucas had arranged that evening for a group of ISMW members to have dinner at the Mayfair Hotel, and to attend a performance of The Business of Murder, which had been playing in the theater situated in the hotel for more than eight years. I’d seen it twice—good enough reason to beg off—but Lucas was adamant that I join them.
I was thinking of ways of getting out of going to the play when the phone rang. I picked it up and heard Dr. Beers say, “Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Yes, Dr. Beers. How are you?”
“Quite fine.”
“I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
“I hadn’t intended to call you today. Actually, I am not calling for myself. There is someone here who wishes to speak with you.”
“Who?”
“I’ll put him on.”
“Mrs. Fletcher.”
This was a voice I did not recognize. “Yes, this is Jessica Fletcher. Who is this?”
“It’s Wilfred, ma’am, Miss Ainsworth’s chauffeur.”
“Yes, Wilfred. I’m ... well, I’m surprised to be hearing from you.”
“Mrs. Fletcher, would it be impudent for me to ask for some of your time today?”
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s my afternoon off and I thought I would drive into the city. Would it be proper for me to stop by at the Savoy?”
“Perfectly proper, and I’ll look forward to it. When do you think you’ll be here, Wilfred?”
He paused before saying, “As soon as I possibly can, Mrs. Fletcher.”
Chapter Twenty-two
“Lucas, I am terribly sorry, but I couldn’t possibly leave my friend in the condition he’s in. He’s come all the way from Maine to be with me and I can’t abandon him.”
“What about your doctor friend, Hazlitt? Let him take care of him.”
“Please try to understand, Lucas. Have dinner and go to the theater with the others and enjoy it.”
Murder, She Wrote: Gin and Daggers Page 22
