Death of a Mystery Writer (3 page)

“Of course it will do very well,” said Sir Oliver testily. “Other people like my books, even if you do not.” He softened under the influence of the sherry. “You're quite right, though. They're very bad. And especially the Inspector Powys ones. They are quite beneath me. Perhaps I won't write any more. Get myself a new detective. Someone who's a gentleman.”

“I believe the trend is all the other way these days,” observed Miss Cozzens.

“I SET MY OWN TRENDS!” roared Oliver Fairleigh. He impressed Cuff, but Miss Cozzens declined to jump, and went on calmly sipping her sherry. “The best thing,” went on Sir Oliver, as if he had never raised his voice, “would be to write just one more, and kill the little beast off in the course of it.”

Miss Cozzens nodded her approval.
“Inspector Powys's Last
Case,”
she said. “I'm sure you could think of a good way to get rid of him. Something lingering with boiling oil in it would be nice.” She found her spirits rising already at the very thought.

“Absolutely,” agreed Sir Oliver. “There's a project we might both enjoy collaborating on. It would cause a great sensation.”

“People would be desolated. The letters would flow in.”

“Exactly,” said Sir Oliver. “The lights would go out all over Wales.” He considered the prospect benignly for some minutes further. Then the practical sense which had gained him his present position and kept him there reasserted itself. “And if the new man didn't catch on,” he said, “after a few years we could somehow or other bring Powys to life again.”

Miss Cozzens's spirits sank.

Tuesday

Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs was assisted into the BBC studio by the producer. He did not normally need assistance when he walked. Sixty-five years, and habits of self-indulgence, had left him less than spry, but he did manage to get around on his own, with a good deal of puffing and blowing. On the other hand, it was a common practice of his to lull his victims into a false sense of security, whether by an assumed geniality or by putting up a pretense of being but a shadow of his former self.

He's a shadow of his former self, thought the producer to himself with relief.

A show of geniality would not have worked at the BBC. His brushes with that institution had been too many. He had disrupted innumerable talk programs, driven the audience of
Any Questions
to throw West Country farm produce at the stage, turned on inoffensive interviewers with accusations of communism (the more embarrassing since most of them were prospective candidates in the Conservative or Liberal interests). No. Geniality would cut no ice at the BBC.

Today Oliver Fairleigh was to broadcast for
The Sunday Appeal
and the producer congratulated himself that nothing could go radically wrong. He would be alone with his script, with
no one to antagonize or be antagonized by. He led Sir Oliver to the table, sat him comfortably in the chair, and drew his attention to the glass of water placed at his right hand.

Oliver Fairleigh sat still as a gargoyle on a waterspout, staring beadily at the microphone while the technical preparations went on around him. Finally the producer smiled ingratiatingly.

“If we might just test for voice, Sir Oliver . . . ?”

Oliver Fairleigh cleared his throat with a bellow, and began:

“I am speaking to you today on behalf of the Crime Writers' Benevolent Association....”

The producer nodded his head in appreciation. It was an admirable radio voice, rich, resonant, redolent of pheasant, port wine, and good living in general.

“Right,” he said, “I think we can go ahead.” And at a signal from him, Oliver Fairleigh began again.

“I am speaking to you today on behalf of the Crime Writers' Benevolent Association,” he said. “I have no doubt there are few among you who have not at one time or another whiled away the tedium of your summer holidays with a detective story.” The producer smiled sycophantically. It was a good script as these things went—different, made people sit up. “I leave it to the sociologists to explain the fascination of crime stories for the public at large—as no doubt they can do, at least to their own satisfaction. For myself I have no idea whether we incite people to crime, or deflect the impulse they feel to commit it, and it is not germane to my purpose today, which is quite different: it is, quite frankly, to ask you to put your hands in your pockets. The Crime Writers' Benevolent Association—which I might describe as a very harmless sort of trade union—has acquired a large country house in a nonviolent part of rural England, and aims (if public support is forthcoming) to set up a home there for elderly and infirm writers of crime fiction.”

Still gazing intently at his script, Oliver Fairleigh went on:

“Picture to yourselves the condition of these poor hacks, whose mastery of their miserable trade is so uncertain that they have proved unable to provide for themselves a comfortable
autumn to their lives.” The producer looked at the technician, and the technician looked at the producer but Oliver Fairleigh, apparently oblivious, continued gazing at his script. “Picture to yourselves the condition of mental debility to which a lifetime of locked-room murders, rigged alibis, and poisons unknown to medical science has reduced them. Imagine them in their final days quoting to each other the feeble catchphrases of their fictional sleuths. If such a picture of mental and physical decay does not evoke from you feelings of benevolence, then you are, I fear, beyond the reach of calls upon your Christian charity. Good night to you all.”

As the technician switched off the tape, the producer got up, wringing his hands, with a wide smile on his face.

“That was most amusing, Sir Oliver. If we could record the last paragraph again, as it stands in the script—”

“Script!” bellowed Oliver Fairleigh, pushing back his chair and making for the door with astonishing speed and agility. “I've been reading the script. Must have sent you an early draft. Take it or leave it, my dear chap. Take it or leave it.”

And he disappeared out of the studio in the direction of the lifts.

The producer sank back into his chair, looking very depressed.

“I suppose I'd better get on to Dick Francis,” he said.

Wednesday

Oliver Fairleigh had arranged to meet his daughter at Manrico's, a restaurant on the less seedy outer fringe of Soho where he knew the food would be up to his requirements. He did not meet her at any of his more usual haunts because he was afraid she would turn up in patched denim and raucous check.

As it was, Bella turned up crisp and delectable in a ravishingly close-fitting shirt and slacks which cried aloud of fashion and expense. The faces of middle-rank executives, pink from expense-account wine, swiveled at her entrance and followed her greedily and regretfully until she seated herself opposite her father. Bella, when she wanted to, could epitomize style and breeding, and use both qualities to add to her desirability. She had beauty, of a slightly pixie quality, she had a glorious mass of auburn hair, she had a body which moved confidently, knowing it would be admired and that a chair would be there when she sat down. Bella was Oliver Fairleigh's favorite child. Indeed, she was the only one he liked at all.

Over the antipasti Bella looked at her father—that hoydenish look that made strong men grovel—and said: “What's this I hear about you at the BBC?”

Oliver Fairleigh, biting on an olive, burst into a great wheezy chuckle of delight, which turned into a choke.

“How did you hear of that?” he asked.

“We in the newspaper world hear everything—you should know that by now,” said Bella.

“Newspaper world!” snorted Oliver Fairleigh. “A gang of pimps and informers! A fine crowd for my daughter to mix with.” He paused, and then it was his turn to look roguish. “Anyway I should hardly think the
Gardening Gazette
deserves to be dignified with the title of newspaper.”

“It's a start,” said Bella, shrugging with indifference. “One makes contacts.”

“Hmmm,” said Oliver Fairleigh, looking displeased. “I suppose that means you're sleeping around with the editors.”

“The editors, Daddy, are far too old to be interested,” said Bella. “And anyway, they keep such peculiar hours.” Oliver Fairleigh looked far from satisfied with this answer. “But the BBC,” said Bella, noting his mood. “What exactly did you
do
?”

A great wicked grin spread over Oliver Fairleigh's face.

“I wrote a new script. I'll give it to you if you like. You should have seen the producer's face. He's been hearing these bromides week after week, and suddenly I pumped an enema into him!” The great wheezy chuckle emerged again, pushing itself out like reluctantly emitted wind. It stopped short when the wine waiter appeared at his elbow. Oliver Fairleigh was never frivolous about wine.

“Are you allowed to drink?” asked Bella suspiciously.

“Wine, yes. Not anything stronger, except at weekends. But a little wine, oh yes, certainly.”

“For your stomach's sake, I suppose.”

Oliver Fairleigh gazed with comic dismay at that great protuberance. “Well, it would certainly play up if it were denied it,” he said. “Whisky it can do without: a vulgar, provincial tipple. Even liqueurs it can deny itself. But wine—it would be the height of idiocy to deny oneself wine merely to live a little longer.”

When he had tasted the selected bottle, Oliver Fairleigh nodded his head, and settled down to enjoy his meal, muttering as he did so: “I'm not satisfied about you and those editors!”

“How odd,” said his daughter, “that good wine never puts you in a good mood.”

“Why should it?” growled Oliver Fairleigh. “Good wine should be taken as a matter of course. Superlative wine might put me in a good mood. Bad wine certainly puts me in a bad one. Bad wine like that fool Woodstock's.”

“Woodstock? Do you mean Ben Woodstock?”

“Some such name.”

“I didn't know he was back in Wycherley.”

“Living in a damn-fool artist's cottage. Looks as if he expects Henry James to drop by any minute and swap ambiguities with him. But he got me instead.” He pursed out his lips in delighted remembrance of the occasion.

“Poor Ben,” said Bella, watching him closely. “I suppose you scared the living daylights out of him. You used to when he was a boy.”

“I think,” said her father, “that they'd do a term in the prisons of President Amin rather than go through that again.”

“Oh, Daddy, you
are
appalling. You're a monster. Why do you do it?”

Oliver put on a pout, looked like an overfed baby, and said: “I get bored. I have to have things happening. Don't be hard on me, Bella. You should understand.”

“Oh, I understand only too well. I'm just sorry for poor old Ben. He never had much backbone.”

“He certainly didn't go through the fire unsinged,” said Oliver Fairleigh. He added, with a wicked anticipatory expression: “However, I have made up for my bad behavior. I have invited them to dinner next Saturday.”

“Saturday? But that's your birthday.”

“Precisely. I shall need the family gathering to be diluted. I shall need—how shall I put it?—diversionary targets.”

“Is everyone coming?”

“I believe so. Mark is apparently in the area—has even been home, though he made sure he didn't bump into
me.
No doubt I
shall have news of his doings before long in the form of tradesmen's bills. Terence I gather has also signified that he will graciously take time off from making everybody's lives miserable with his cacophony—”

“It's quite a good group—”

Oliver Fairleigh indulged in a trumpet of elephantine disapproval. “What nonsense! A good group! A contradiction in terms! People have gone mad! Someone will be recommending them for OBEs next!” He quietened down as the waiter poured him more wine. “And then you'll be there, of course,” he went on.

“Oh, yes, I'll be there.”

He gave her a look expressing the opinion that she would be the only thing that would save the day from disaster, and then they ate their meal in silence for a little. At last Bella said:

“Daddy”—when she said that, with a wheedling upward intonation, Oliver Fairleigh knew there was something special coming—“why don't you surprise everybody this birthday dinner by being nice the whole evening?”

The babyish expression appeared once more on her father's face.

“I tried it once. I got bored. Anyway, it made everybody twice as jumpy.”

“That's because you're usually only nice when you're planning something awful. I mean, be nice the whole evening, and the whole weekend, if necessary.”

“You can hardly expect me to be nice to Mark for one whole evening. Terence I might just manage it with, but Mark . . .”

“Yes, Mark as well. And Ben too—”

“And Ben's mousey little wife?”

“Does he have a wife?” Bella raised her eyebrows. “Yes, of course. I'd forgotten. He's the sort that someone was bound to get hold of and cling on to, so that they both sink without a trace together.” She remained a moment in thought, and then said: “Yes, her as well. You like surprising people. Well, surprise them by being genial, and pleasant, and tolerant.”

“Tolerant!” snorted Oliver Fairleigh. “The mediocrity's virtue!”

“Daddy!” said Bella. And then, with an implied threat in her voice: “You do want me to come, don't you?”

Oliver Fairleigh looked pleadingly at his daughter, who did not soften her gaze. He returned to his plate, and toyed with his food for a little, but when he looked up again, the same stern gaze was upon him. At length he pushed his plate away.