Gin and Daggers (28 page)

Maria Giacona stood by the window holding a handkerchief stained with blood to her nose.

“Maria, what happened?” I asked, going to her. Now I saw a purplish yellow lump above her left eye. “Who hit you?” I could think only of Jason Harris, of course.

She looked at me with those large, brown, pleading eyes and sat on a crate used as an end table. She continued to cry and to attempt to stem the flow of blood from her nostrils. I crouched down and placed my hand on her knee. I was about to ask her again who’d struck her, but the question was suddenly rendered unnecessary. I raised my face and sniffed the unmistakable scent of Victorian posy in the small room, certainly not the sort of fragrance Maria—or Jason Harris—would use.

“Maria, was Jane Portelaine here? Was she the one who hit you?”

She shook her head. I didn’t believe her.

“We should get some ice for your nose and eye,” I said. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll find a pharmacy. That nasty-looking bruise is getting bigger every second.”

She slowly moved the handkerchief away from her nose. The bleeding seemed to have stopped. “Lie down with your head back for a few minutes,” I said.

“No, I have to go.”

She started to get up, but I pushed down on her knees. “Maria, you must tell me if Jane Portelaine did this to you, and why.”

She gently touched her nose with her index finger, and examined it for fresh blood. She said, “I heard what you plan to do, Mrs. Fletcher. You
are
going to announce that Jason wrote
Gin and Daggers?”

“You read the paper.”

“Yes, and saw it on the television. Are you really going to say that?”

“Yes, because I believe it to be true. I would do anything to avoid injuring the memory of my friend Marjorie Ainsworth, but I think there is a greater truth at stake here. Although Jason is no longer alive to receive the accolades he deserves, his talent should be recognized.”

A small smile came to her face.

“I knew you’d be pleased, Maria. Where have you been? You disappeared so suddenly.”

“I had to get away, Mrs. Fletcher. Jason’s murder was too much for me to bear.”

“I understand. I just wish you’d kept in touch, that’s all. Why did you come to the flat today? The landlady said you paid Jason’s back rent.”

“Yes. I thought I would live here for a while. I couldn’t bear to be near this place after he was killed, but now I have a need to touch everything that was his.”

“I understand that, too.” I did, of course. I’d gone through similar shifts in emotion after Frank died.

I suggested again that we find a pharmacy, and this time she was agreeable. We went downstairs and I asked the landlady for the location of the nearest one. She looked at Maria’s face and shook her head.

I repeated my question, and she told me there was one two streets away. Maria had started to walk in the direction the landlady pointed. I quickly asked, “The tall, thin lady who was here. How long ago did she leave?”

“The scarecrow? No more than fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you.”

The pharmacist invited us into the back room of his shop, where he prepared an icepack for Maria to hold against her face. He said there wasn’t anything else to be done, except report the attack to the police.

“No one attacked me,” Maria said. “I fell.”

“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.”