Death of a Mystery Writer (4 page)

“Perhaps,” he said. “Let's talk about it.”

Thursday

Oliver Fairleigh's visit to London had gone very well. He had created hell at the BBC. He had delivered the last chapters of his new book to his publisher, and received the nervous homage due to a bestselling author. He had partaken of a good meal with his favorite child. He had heaved himself into his club in St. James's, where old men who had sodomized each other at school shook their heads over the younger generation. All these things he had enjoyed. It would be too much to say that they had put him into a good mood, or made him at peace with the world, but they had certainly made him feel that for the moment life was bearable.

Eleanor Fairleigh-Stubbs was rather surprised. After the euphoria had worn off, the period between books was usually especially difficult. Yet here was Miss Cozzens sitting in the study, putting her files in order and writing replies to fan letters, and here was Oliver, walking with her and Cuff in the gardens of Wycherley Court in the early-summer sun, for all the world as if he were an ordinary country gentleman.

It wouldn't last. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach that it wouldn't last into Saturday. Every year the birthday dinner—the preparations, the mere thought of it—filled her with a gloom that was amply justified by the occasion itself. It was the nadir of her year, worse even than Christmas. But Lady Fairleigh was a hopeful woman. If she had not been, she would not have married Oliver Fairleigh. So she put her forebodings from her, and tried to enjoy the brief period of peace.

“The roses are coming along well,” she said tentatively, bending close and inspecting them for aphids with an expert eye.

“Don't know how,” said Oliver Fairleigh, peering at them less expertly, his gooseberry eyes popping out from under flaring eyebrows. “With that incompetent Wiggens as gardener.”

“I see to the roses myself,” said Lady Fairleigh, with the very slightest touch of asperity in her voice. “As you know.”

“Probably accounts for it,” said Oliver Fairleigh. “I wouldn't trust Wiggens to water a pot-plant if I could get anyone better, but I can't.”

“He does his best,” said his wife vaguely. “Perhaps Bella could find us someone—with her gardening contacts.”

“Bella doesn't know one end of a daffodil from the other,” said Oliver Fairleigh. “And her only contacts would be with other young devils in a similar state of ignorance.”

“How did she look?”

“Beautiful as usual,” said Oliver Fairleigh, smiling benignly. He looked sunnily around the lawns and hedges and flower beds that comprised his domain, and positively oozed self-satisfaction. “We did a good job there, my dear,” he said.

Eleanor Fairleigh-Stubbs was rather surprised at the concession to her embodied in the “we.”

“Such a
dangerous
name to choose,” she said. “Lovely that it turned out right. Is she really liking the job?”

“Says she is.” Her husband's mood seemed to cloud over slightly. “Just waiting to get on those damn-fool color supplements, I imagine. And sleeping around with that end in view.”

“Now,
Oliver,
I'm sure you don't know she's been doing anything of the kind.”

“I've never known a girl that good-looking who wasn't sleeping around,” said Oliver Fairleigh, grandly general. “That being so, I suppose she might as well do it with an end in view.” He added, as he often did when talking about the affairs of his children: “She can't expect anything more from me.”

Eleanor Fairleigh knew that if there was one person who could wheedle cash out of her husband, it was Bella, but she did
not say so. “She'll be coming to the birthday dinner anyway, won't she?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, she's coming.”

“Perhaps we can talk about it then.”

“About what? Who she's sleeping with?”

“No—of course not. Just how she's doing, and so on—who her friends are. Girls will tell things to their mother that they wouldn't tell anyone else.”

It struck Oliver Fairleigh that his wife had a genius for hitting on generalizations that were the exact opposite of the truth, but he was used to her combination of woolly thinking and unjustified optimism, and he seldom bit her head off more than three or four times a day, so he left her in her comfortable delusion.

“Well, I'm glad boys don't do the same to their fathers,” he grunted. “I couldn't bear to be made the recipient of Mark's confessions.”

The name of that particular son was always a danger signal in conversations with Oliver Fairleigh. His wife, no wiser now than ever, weighed in with an appeal: “But you will be nice to him on Saturday, won't you, Oliver?” As she said it, she felt sure she was only making things worse.

Oliver Fairleigh left an eloquent pause.

“Yes,” he said.

Eleanor Fairleigh was so surprised that she stopped in her tracks and looked with earnest inquiry into her husband's face.

“What's the matter, woman? You asked me a question and I gave you an answer.” He continued on his way, with a sort of mock-aggrieved grumbling: “It was a truthful answer, too. That's the trouble with women. They'll believe any amount of comfortable lies, but you tell them the truth and you haven't a hope of being believed.”

Lady Fairleigh-Stubbs put her arm through her husband's, and they continued their walk.

“Well, that
will
be nice,” she said. “If you can. Because he's not a bad boy. And he's very good-natured.”

“He
is
a bad boy, and he is
not
good-natured,” said Oliver
Fairleigh. He added, with a rare honesty: “Not that I'd like him any better if he
was
good-natured.”

Eleanor Fairleigh was puzzled by his attitude. “Just so long as you
try
to like him,” she said, smiling vaguely at a rhododendron bush and gripping his arm a little closer.

“I am most certainly
not
trying to like him,” said Oliver Fairleigh, irritated by the grip on his arm which seemed either proprietorial or conspiratorial. “I said I would be nice to him on Saturday. That is the limit of my oath.”

“It's a start, anyway. . . .”

“Sunday I do not vouch for. Sunday I said nothing to Bella about,” said Oliver Fairleigh with grim relish. Relieving himself of her arm he turned abruptly and, kicking Cuff to follow him, stomped toward the house.

“Oh, Bella . . . ,” said his wife wistfully.

She turned and resumed her walk. The garden
was
looking lovely, though of course Oliver was the last person in the world to appreciate it. A garden to him was a sort of backdrop to his own performance; to her, since her children had grown up, it had become almost the most important thing in her life. She walked around, more briskly now that Oliver had gone, noting what was coming on well and what had not recovered from the drought last year. Finally she made for Wiggens, relaxing over his spade, and gave some directions about the flowers to be cut to decorate the house for Saturday.

“Family do, then, is it?” asked Wiggens, who had only been with them six months.

“Yes, Sir Oliver's birthday. All the family will be there—Bella, and Terence, and Mark.”

“Oh, Mr. Mark too?” asked Wiggens, and it struck Lady Fairleigh that he gave her a rather odd look.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “Mr. Mark too.” And she turned and went toward the house.

When she walked into the kitchen to see—in her vague way, for food did not interest her, except as a way of keeping her husband in an equable mood—what was happening about lunch,
she knew at first glance that Mrs. Moxon had something to confide in her. Mrs. Moxon was ample, reliable, and talented, and her only drawback was an insatiable curiosity and an unstoppable tongue. It was not just that one could not avoid hearing the affairs of everyone in Wycherley retailed at inordinate length; there was the question of what went in the other direction, from the manor to the rest of the village, and that worried Lady Fairleigh intensely. Not that it did her husband. He liked being talked about.

“I
was
sorry to hear about it, madam, I really was,” said Mrs. Moxon, rubbing her doughy hands on her apron, and putting on an expression of sympathy profound enough for a family death.

“Sorry, Mrs. Moxon? There's nothing to be sorry about. Nothing has happened.”

“Oh, then you've not heard about it, then, madam? Well, I'm sorry I mentioned it, I really am. Just that I thought you looked worried, so I supposed you must have heard.”

“Heard what, Mrs. Moxon? Please don't be so mysterious. Come straight at it.”

“Well, it's Mr. Mark, my lady. What he said at the Prince Albert in Hadley last Saturday.”

“He was drunk, was he?” said Lady Fairleigh-Stubbs, with a watery smile. “Well, you've been with the family long enough to know that's nothing new, Mrs. Moxon. And he
is
still young.”

“Oh, it's not that, ma'am. Of course I know all about that, and locking the spirits away, and all. Though never a word has crossed my lips, of course. But it's what he said—screamed through the whole pub, they say.”

“What did he say?” asked Eleanor Fairleigh, her heart thumping against her ribs.

“It was about his father,” said Mrs. Moxon, now frankly enjoying herself. “He said he ought to be shot. Straight out like that, shouted it through the whole pub. All the village is talking about it.”

Eleanor Fairleigh turned to go up the stairs. “I expect it was just a joke,” she said. Even to herself she sounded feeble and defeated.
She went up to her bedroom, and sitting wanly on the bed she found that her forebodings about Saturday had returned in full measure.

Friday

It was early evening, and Oliver Fairleigh had been signing letters—the grateful yet faintly magisterial letters that were sent in reply to his fan mail, and which were generally, in fact, the work of Miss Cozzens. The extent of his fan mail was always a matter of interest to Oliver Fairleigh, though he affected to despise the senders and made comments on their standards of literacy. Work on the last chapters of
Murder Upstairs and Downstairs
had meant that it had mounted up over the last few weeks, and signing the replies had put him in a good mood.

At present he was not alone in his study, but the interview he was conducting was not dissipating his good mood. Seen athwart the broad back of his interlocutor, his face glowed with lugubrious anticipation.

“I've no doubt I shan't like it,” he said with a genial snarl. “Come along, man, out with it.”

The broad back remained impassive, the large hands stayed respectfully at the sides, and the gentleman commenced a lengthy and circumstantial recital in a voice devoid of personality or drama. Oliver Fairleigh settled in his easy chair, and gave the narrative his attention only at those points that seemed important.

“Where?” he cut in. “The Prince Albert? That mid-thirties monstrosity on the main road to Hadley—a pull-in for the middle-class motorist? I might have known he would drink at a place like that.” He grunted in contented gloom. “Go on.”

His informant took some time to get into his stride again, but he regained Oliver Fairleigh's interest when he got to the conversation of the two couples in the pub.

“Talking about me, were they?” he said, as if the fact alone gave him pleasure, irrespective of what was said.

When the recital was finished, Oliver Fairleigh lit up a cigar, which only seemed to increase the geniality of his mood.

“Well, well,” he said, “what a jolly little episode. I'm glad you picked it up, very glad. I'll be making it square with you.”

He waved his hand, which was rightly taken as a gesture of dismissal. Left alone he remained pudgily sunk in the easy chair, puffing contentedly. Twenty minutes later, when the cigar was finished, he was still smiling, though it was not a pleasant smile.

“This egg,” roared Oliver Fairleigh, gazing bulbously into its depths, “has most certainly not been cooked for five minutes.”

Sitting up in bed, a great humpty-dumpty figure, with rolls of flesh pushing the buttons on his pajama jacket to bursting point, he looked like an eighteenth-century princeling whose subjects are unreasonably demanding bread. To Lady Fairleigh this, his morning look, was a familiar sight, but not a particularly grateful one.

“Oh, dear, hasn't it?” she said vaguely.

“Sack that woman.”

“Oh, Oliver, don't be foolish. You know you could never get anyone half as good. And as a matter of fact, Mrs. Moxon is busy preparing the birthday dinner. I cooked your egg myself.” She looked distractedly at her wrist. “My watch is
very
small, and it's very difficult to see the minutes.”

Oliver Fairleigh grunted. “I'll go down and supervise the meal when I've had breakfast,” he threatened.

“Oliver, please don't. You know she doesn't like being watched. She's never yet let us down over the birthday dinner. And I do think you ought to have the morning in bed.”

“Why?” roared Oliver Fairleigh.

“Well, it is going to be a big day, and you know you're not to overstrain yourself.”

“Rubbish,” yelled Oliver Fairleigh. Then, remembering, he
reduced volume. “Why should I overstrain myself? There won't be any scenes. I've told you I'm going to be good.”

“Oh, Oliver,” sighed his wife. “That of course will be the strain.”

 • • • 

Terence Fairleigh's room was at the back of the house, but it was a large well-proportioned bedroom with high ceilings, and there was ample room for amplifiers, loudspeakers, and the assorted junk of modern music-making. The walls were painted puce and green, both in shades of such virulence that his father had not entered the room since he first saw them. The decor was otherwise dominated by a large color poster with the words W
ITCHETTY
G
RUB
in phosphorescent pink lettering across the top. It was the name of Terence Fairleigh's group. In the poster Terence (or Terry) was shown clutching a microphone as if it were the breathing tube on a crashing airplane. He was dressed in a skintight suit, every inch of which was spangled; the rest of the group were dressed, or in one case undressed, as the fancy took them.