The Awful Truth About the Herbert Quarry Affair

by Marco Ocram

  “Swearing me to secrecy, she revealed she and her husband had been trying for children since the time they had married. They had sought medical advice, and tests had shown Father Kellogg was infertile. His sperm were deformed and could swim only in figures of eight. The poor young woman was now torn between her vows to her husband and her desire for motherhood.

  “To me there seemed a simple way out of her dilemma, and I asked why she had not considered artificial insemination. If it were a matter of cost, surely the rich parishioners would be glad to help such a sad cause.

  “At that she cried even more, and it took all my coaxing to get her to speak. She would willingly have succumbed to the treatment, she said, but her husband could not face the embarrassment of admitting to the world that his seed was afflicted. He saw it as a sign from God that he was being punished for some sin, and he was afraid his congregation would take the same view.

  “Even as she spoke, an idea formed within me. It seemed crazy at first, but the more I thought the more certain I became. I told her I knew of a man, a very rich and discreet man, who was desperate to pass his genes and his wealth to a son or daughter, but for personal reasons could never be married. Why should you and he suffer, I said, when God had arranged that each of you held the cure to the other’s anguish? I was sure this man would donate his seed in the strongest bonds of secrecy in order to achieve his needs. You could have a child after all, ending any possibility that your husband’s fertility could be doubted by his flock.

  “We do not have the time, gentlemen, for me to describe the anxious weeks that followed, weeks during which arguments raged in the Kellogg household. At times Father Kellogg damned the suggestion as Satan’s lure, while at others he imagined the extra respect a complete family would earn from his conservative congregation. And I dare say the thought of inheriting the wealth of my secretive ‘friend’ might have influenced his feelings.

  “A meeting was eventually arranged at which the priest and his wife would be introduced to Elijah Bow. It was a delicate matter, I assure you, for me to appear before them as their anonymous matronly confidante, and to reappear the next moment as the trustworthy industrialist. But it was stage-managed successfully, and a binding legal agreement was later sealed, through which Elijah Bow would provide his seed and commit his estate to its fruits under the strictest possible obligations of secrecy.

  “You will forgive me, gentlemen, for skating over the practical details which the scheme entailed, but the happy day came, and a beautiful girl was born. She was eventually christened Lolita, a traditional name for girls in the Kellogg family.

  “Lola grew to be a most beautiful and talented young lady. I ensured she wanted for nothing. We found a cover-story, the Kelloggs and I, to explain why a wealthy industrialist should take an interest in the young Lola and have her as a house guest from time to time. I even immortalized her in works of art, and am glad, now, that I did. You might have noticed, gentlemen, the large bronze fountain in my hallway. That is Lola.”

  Como and I shifted guiltily on our feet. I coughed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I spotted the statue was her. I thought it was evidence you were having an affair with her. I shouldn’t have.”

  He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “I know your intentions were good, Mister Ocram. And I forgive you.”

  “Mister Bow,” said Como, “I don’t wish to compound your grief, but there is one other thing you need to know, and I believe it would be best if I tell you now.”

  “Yes?” said Bow.

  “Bluther Cale is dead.”

  Bow looked at the huge detective, then crumpled with grief. Como pulled the bell tassel by Bow’s desk. A maid appeared.

  “Look after him,” said Como. And then to me: “Come on.”

  We walked towards the doors at the far end of Bow’s study.

  “Wait!”

  The command had come from Bow, once more the self-possessed industrialist. Como and I returned to his desk and waited while he dried his eyes with a handkerchief.

  “I assume, gentlemen, that in due course you will explain what happened to my manservant. In the meantime, there is something else you should know. Lola was not my only biological child. Someone in Clarkesville is her brother or sister.”

  LESSON THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘Herbert, I am worried about my book.’

  ‘About which aspect of it, Marco?’

  ‘As you know, Herbert, it has a killer plot-twist at the end of almost every chapter. Is there a danger my readers could become punch-drunk?’

  ‘No, Marco. Never underestimate the resilience and masochism of your readers. They crave a good literary beating.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  In which Marco reaches a belated conclusion.

  Como and I were staggered by Bow’s sensational revelation. I had already been struggling to remember all the strands of the case, and this new twist was the last mental straw.

  I pawed at Como’s sleeve for him to follow me into the library.

  “I’m not sure I can take much more of this, Como.”

  “How d’you think I feel? At least you got your five mil as an incentive. Look, we just need to do the normal police thing, right? We ask the questions, and we note the answers, and we sift the important facts from the noise at the fastest pace we can. Solving a crime is no different from a boxing match—you have to…”

  I put up a hand to stop him. I couldn’t take any more boxing analogies. I’d rather lick the dog doo stains off my incinerated car seat.

  “Ok, let’s get back to Bow.”

  We returned to the study, where I tried to force my overwhelmed mind to ask some meaningful questions.

  “Mister Bow, please tell me what you know about your other child.”

  “I know very little, Mister Ocram—not even the child’s gender. I was unaware the child existed until exactly six months ago, when I received this.”

  He took from a drawer in his desk a small envelope which he passed to me. The envelope contained a letter. Como and I read it together.

  It was a hand-written confession signed by Lola’s mother, Frances Kellogg. In it she told how she had shared some of Bow’s donated seed with another ‘equally deserving woman’ in the congregation of the Clarkesville Church. There were no other details to help identify the woman, no other explanation of why Frances Kellogg did what she did. There was only an apology, and a request that Bow forgive her in the sight of God.

  “I assure you, gentlemen, I did everything legitimately in my power to persuade Frances Kellogg to identify the mysterious recipient of my donated seed, but she refused to speak, saying she had made a holy vow of secrecy no mortal threat could cause her to break. I could take no legal action for fear my relationship to Lola would be exposed in court as a consequence. But now you know the truth.”

  It was dark when we left Bow’s house and crunched across the gravel to the Gran Torino. I took a deep breath of the cool evening air. I was feeling tired.

  As we cruised down the N66 in light traffic, I shared my thoughts with Como. One thing didn’t add up.

  “Supposing everything Bow has told us is true. Supposing another woman did give birth to a child of Bow’s. The woman must have become pregnant around the same time as Frances Kellogg, as the donated sperm wouldn’t keep any longer without cryogenics. Which means she must have given birth around the same time as Frances Kellogg. Clarkesville isn’t a big county. There can’t be more than one birth a day on average. Supposing a spread of ten days either side, there can’t be more than twenty kids who might be the other Bow child. Bow must have worked that out. He has billions of dollars and vast resources. Surely he would have tried to track down his other heir.”

  “Maybe,” said Como. “Or maybe he didn’t want the pain of it. Or maybe he tried and failed. Or maybe he respected the vow Frances Kellogg had taken.”

  “All the same, there’s a powerful motive hidden th
ere somewhere. With Lola dead, the other child is set to inherit Bow’s billions.”

  “True. But it’s a double-edged sword, Writer. You come forward to claim your position as Bow’s heir and you immediately come under suspicion in connection with Lola’s death.”

  “No,” I said. “Not if Herbert’s already gone to the chair for it.”

  LESSON THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘Marco.’

  ‘Yes, Herbert?’

  ‘I am not sure about this sentence you have written: ‘If you can go for a run in the rain, you can write a book’.’

  ‘What is wrong with it, Herbert?’

  ‘I think you might have underestimated what it takes to write a book, Marco.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  In which Marco forgets he is not Philip Marlowe.

  I spent the night in the guest room at Herbert’s, where Como had dropped me after Elijah Bow’s explosive exposé. I’d turned in just before ten after reading a Raymond Chandler I’d found in Herbert’s bathroom. The next morning, I felt sharp, alert and active.

  After sleeping on the idea, I was more convinced than ever that finding Bow’s secret offspring would provide the key to decipher the mystery. Another heir provided a perfect motive for killing Lola and framing Herbert, at a stroke removing the original heir to Bow’s fortune while diverting the blame for her death. I checked the mental calculations I had performed in Como’s car, and confirmed there could at most have been twenty babies born in Clarkesville around the same time as Lola, one of whom must be Bow’s other child.

  Five minutes on the internet confirmed my next step. The county birth records were held in the public registry office next to Clarkesville City Hall. I would drive there at once.

  I almost made the mistake of jumping into my black Range Rover, but I remembered, just in time, that its charred remains were awaiting forensic examination in Flora Moran’s lab. Damn.

  I went into Herbert’s garage and rummaged around. There was a bicycle, but its tires were flat and perished. The only other transport was a sailboard which Herbert often took onto the wild ocean surf to clear his mind for his writing. Hmmm. I found a hand-held anemometer and popped back outside; there was a southerly force four—perfect. Pausing only to tuck my corduroys into my socks and to shorten the strap on my satchel, I dragged the sailboard out and across the sand and headed along the coast.

  At Clarkesville, I moored at a pontoon in the marina, paid the extortionate berthing fee, gave instructions for the sailboard to be scraped of barnacles and re-caulked in all joints, then trotted down Main Street to City Hall. The registry office was in a sad, timber-framed building next door. Judging by the cobweb on the door handle, I was its first visitor for some days. There was a bell on the dusty reception counter. I pinged it, flipped a cigarette into my mouth and struck a match on the sole of my shoe. A man came in, a small man wearing last week’s shirt and last year’s smile.

  “What can I do for you, Brother?”

  I blew smoke into his face. “If there’s no whiskey in the joint then I’ll have the birth register.”

  “Ain’t been no whiskey in this joint since ’36, Mister.”

  “And no Hoovers by the look of things,” I said, sneezing in the dusty air. “Are you gonna get the register or just stand there looking pretty? On your way, Small-size.”

  “Ain’t no need to get shirty, Mister.” He shuffled off to get his ledger while I rolled a nickel between my fingers and stared at the words ‘get shirty’, hardly an expression an American would use. Doubtless I would receive no end of criticism for the incongruous Briticism I’d intended as a witticism, but such is the lot of the mold-breaker.

  Small-size returned with the ledger and heaved it onto the counter. It was a big book, at least six inches thick, with details of every birth in Clarkesville for the last two hundred years. I went over, stubbed my cigarette on the counter and spun the ledger round to read it. Each page listed fifteen births. One line for each birth. The date, the time, the place, mother’s name, father’s name and occupation, baby’s name, boy or girl; each line written in the careful tidy hand of a City Hall scribe. I flicked through to the period I wanted to see. Almost there. Two more pages should do it. I turned to where I expected the relevant entries to be. Nothing. Looking closely, I could see two pages had been cut out, two pages corresponding to the period around Lola’s birth. Someone didn’t want me on their trail.

  I called Small-size back to the counter and swiveled the ledger so he could read it.

  “Notice these pages missing before?”

  He bent close over the book and peered at the two thin stubs of paper where the pages had been cut away. He looked up at me like I was the man in Candid Camera.

  “Are you kidding me, Mister?”

  I said nothing, and lit another cigarette, eyeing him through the smoke. He rushed off with his pants on fire and came back with a supervisor. They examined the defaced ledger as if it were the Mona Lisa and someone had drawn a moustache on it. Any minute now, sirens might go off.

  “Isn’t there a copy?” I asked, just to be sociable.

  The supervisor noticed me for the first time.

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone who wanted to read those missing pages.”

  I blew more smoke.

  “Wait here,” the supervisor said, and legged it to the back office.

  I leaned on the counter with a twenty in my hand. Small-size eyed it like a trained seal proffered a fish.

  “Anyone been here looking at the books?” I asked. “Come on, Small-size. This place is like a ghost town. A visitor sticks out like a tarantula in a bathtub. You know who’s been here.”

  “I don’t know that I can say.”

  I put a second twenty in my hand and puffed more smoke out of the corner of my mouth. Small-size snatched the notes. “It was a dame. A real doll. Came in two weeks ago. One fifty. Five eight. Brunette. Sweet legs. Emerald ring. Asked me to get her a pencil from the back so she could copy something down. Must have snatched the pages when I went to get it.”

  “Here, Brother.” I snaffled another twenty into his hand and sidled out of the door just as the supervisor came back.

  I walked to the marina and down onto the pontoon where I’d tied up the sailboard. Taped to the mast was a postcard of Clarkesville with the message ‘We’re watching you, Snooper.’ I put it in my pocket to show Como.

  The wind was against me. With all the tacking and jibing, it took me three hours to sail back to Herbert’s house on the beach overlooking the ocean.

  LESSON THIRTY-SIX

  ‘Herbert, is it important to make one’s characters likeable if one is to write a bestseller?’

  ‘No, Marco, it is not important: it is essential. The reader must fall in love with the characters, and especially with the central character. They must idolize and respect the central character, and fall in love with him, and not bear to be away from him.’

  ‘So, if I make my central character a bestselling writer—that should do the trick?’

  ‘Certainly, Marco. No one can resist a successful, self-opinionated narcissist.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  In which Marco has it taped.

  Back in Herbert’s house on the beach overlooking the ocean, I explored Herbert’s study for more clues the huge team of police forensic experts might have overlooked. I knew it was Herbert’s habit to dictate ideas on a tape recorder, and I wondered whether Herbert might have left the machine running, thereby leaving an accidental recording.

  Knowing how thorough and methodical Herbert was—like a boxer training for a fight—I imagined he would leave the tapes from his recorder in a cabinet somewhere, labelled with the dates they spanned. I hunted around and discovered a tall cabinet next to his desk, with a label that read ‘Dictation tapes—file in date order.’

  I opened the cabinet and selected the most recent tape. It covered the period just before Herber
t was arrested. There was a player in Herbert’s living room, so I put in the tape, settled down in a chair overlooking the ocean, and pressed ‘Play’.

  The sounds of Herbert’s last days of freedom filled the room.

  Herbert’s voice: Ideas for my new novel, ‘The Calculus of Evil’. The central character is a bestselling author, a man of tremendous intellectual depth, overpowering charisma, vast emotional resources; a man massively rich, at ease with a-list celebrities, a prodigious sexual athlete, admired by all men, desired by all women; a man of noble brow, eyes of lapis lazuli flecked with grey, thick fine black hair with an intriguing hint of silver at the temples; a man easily moved to wrath or joy.

  Girl’s voice from a distance, presumably Lola: Herbert! It’s raining. Please can we go dancing on the beach?

  Herbert: In a moment, my true love. I am just making some notes about myself for my new book. Tell me, Lola, what is it you find attractive about me?

  Lola: Oh Herbert—everything! Your lapis lazuli eyes flecked with grey. I love to run my hands through your rich thick black hair, and the way there is just a hint of silver at the temples. I love your athleticism. I love the way you are as lithe as a cat, as strong as an ox, with the eyes of a hawk. I love everything about you.

  Herbert: But they are all physical qualities. That is why you love the corporeal Herbert, and I can understand all that of course. But why do you love the spiritual Herbert?

  Lola: Because you are a great writer, Herbert, and writers are all so irresistibly fascinating, especially great writers. But Herbert, why do you look so wistful and sad? You should be so happy with me here.

  Herbert: Lola, my love, my darling, you are everything to me. You make me the happiest person in the world. But you are so young, Lola.