Murder by the Book (34 page)

‘You intended to make it look like suicide?' Langham said.

‘As per my novel
Murder in the Mansion
, yes. But then you and your little French floozy turned up and spoiled my fun.'

Langham said, gaining satisfaction from the words, ‘You didn't kill him, Pearson. Charles is going to pull through.'

The little man's cruel lips lifted in a smile. ‘Then I shall have to make doubly sure that, next time, I succeed.'

‘If there is a next time,' Langham muttered.

Pearson chose to ignore the remark.

Langham said, ‘And Alexander Southern and Amelia Hampstead? What grudge did you bear them?'

Pearson smiled. ‘Southern was a reader for Gollancz in the late thirties, and he advised them not to touch what I thought then was my best novel to date. So he had to die. I drove down to the village where he lived near Canterbury and watched him for a few days. He was a creature of habit, and liked to take a quiet afternoon stroll. In one of my novels an old major is killed by a hit-and-run driver, a method I employed to great effect with Southern.'

‘And you killed Fellowes because he gave you a bad review?'

‘With his own silver stiletto award,' Pearson said. ‘A method taken from one of my more recent titles. The old boy put up quite a fight.'

He paused, then went on: ‘And I would have successfully drowned Dame Amelia in her own moat – from my
Death at the Castle
– had it not been for her damned hound …' He held up his left hand, and for the first time Langham made out the bandage wrapped around his wrist.

‘What on earth did you have against Amelia?'

‘She blocked my election to the Professional Crime Writers' Association in the early forties, on account that she thought my work “sub-standard”, as she later told a friend – a slight for which I never forgave her.'

Langham closed his eyes. His lower leg felt as if a red-hot poker was being stabbed into the muscle with agonizing regularity. He wondered if he would pass out, and fought against it: if he slipped into unconsciousness now, then who knew what sadistic pleasures Pearson might exact?

‘But Nigel Lassiter was the best. I really enjoyed what I did to old Nigel,' Pearson said, almost reminiscently. ‘The look on his face when I turned up at the cottage … He had already discovered the grave, having found the front door locked and wandered around to the back garden. I approached him from behind and cleared my throat. Oh, how he jumped! And jumped again when he saw that it was I. And jumped a third time, backwards this time, when I shot him through the chest with a crossbow, a device I used in …'

Langham stopped him with a raised hand. ‘Spare me the details, Pearson.'

‘And now,' Pearson went on, ‘now it comes to you. The element of surprise is no more, but there will be something about my killing of you that will give me more satisfaction than any of the others. Perhaps because I despise your work the most, perhaps because your review cut the deepest.'

He pulled something from the inside pocket of his mackintosh, and Langham saw that it was a copy of the
Capital Crime
magazine, the very one which carried his review of
Death on the Farm
.

Pearson opened the magazine and smiled across at Langham. Then he began to read. ‘“The plot is ramshackle, and so patched together with authorial convenience as to be laughable …”' Pearson looked up. ‘Rather like your own novels, no? How about this: “Even the lead character is so flat as to be one-dimensional.” And then your parting shot – did you think yourself oh so clever when penning this, Langham: ‘“
Death on the Farm
is on every level a turkey”?' Pearson smiled, almost sadly. ‘Do you regret what you said, Langham?'

A retraction, at the eleventh hour, would do nothing to placate the madman. He said, ‘I stand by every word, Pearson. More, I could have been crueller.'

‘Really, Langham? Then perhaps you will regret never again being able to have the chance …' Pearson tore the pages from the magazine and wadded them into a tight ball.

‘This will be my finest work, Mr Langham. The critic
eats
his words. You will open your mouth and eat these pages and then I will take great delight in shooting you.'

Langham made himself laugh.

‘Oh, you find that amusing, Langham?'

‘What I find amusing is that to kill me you'll have to deviate from your master plan. This scenario was never envisaged in any of your potboilers.'

Pearson smiled, revealing a collection of yellowed teeth. ‘Ah, but that's where you are very wrong, Mr Langham. Very wrong indeed. You see, I am working on a novel right now, and I rather fancy that the final scene will be a rendition of our little
tête-à-tête
, with the critic eating his words before his brains are blown out. I shall enjoy writing that scene … I shall enjoy writing it very much.'

Langham recalled something. ‘Which is why you didn't shoot me at the mill, when you had the chance …'

‘Oh, I was tempted, Langham, sorely tempted. But that would have spoiled my fun.' He laughed. ‘I will very much savour writing the final scene … but even more enjoyable will be the day I submit it under an assumed name to the Charles Elder agency, and then sit back and think of your little French piece reading it.'

Hardly before he knew what he was doing, Langham pushed himself from the chair in rage and dived across the room. Startled, Pearson stood and fired. Langham felt something impact with his torso, a great blow that at once winded him and sent him sprawling on to his back.

He lay staring up at the ceiling, thinking about Maria and wishing that things could have been very, very different.

He was only dimly aware of Pearson as he strode across the room and stared down at him, smiling.

M
aria sat at the desk in Charles's office and stared at a patch of sunlight on the carpet. The French windows were open, admitting a warm breeze, and she could hear blackbirds piping away in the garden. She recalled her shock that morning on reading Pearson's dreadful book featuring the hotel murders, and her relief that Donald had seen sense and summoned Jeff Mallory. Soon all this ghastly business would be over; life would resume its usual rhythm and she could give Donald Langham all the love he deserved.

She had spent the morning reading the first few pages of a novel submission and answering a string of phone calls from editors and writers. Well-wishers were still calling for news of Charles, and she relayed the latest information she'd received from the hospital that morning: that Charles was making good progress and would soon be able to entertain visitors.

She finished speaking to the last caller and glanced across at the wall clock. It was after twelve; Donald would be arriving soon to take her out to lunch.

She pulled her compact from her handbag and powdered her face.

She wondered how soon Donald would hear from Mallory about the arrest of Frankie Pearson. She stopped what she was doing – lipstick poised – as it occurred to her that, because of her actions in reading the Pearson novel, the murderer would soon be arrested. She wondered if Pearson had been a fool in making his motives so obvious, or if on some subconscious level he had wanted to give the police a fighting chance of arresting him.

She finished her make-up, thinking that perhaps neither was the case. He was simply a madman who wanted vengeance, and the egomaniac in him thought it appropriate to mete out punishments first written about in his own novels.

She watered the aspidistra, and then glanced at her wristwatch. It was twelve thirty. Donald was late, which wasn't like him. She wondered if he'd become absorbed in the short story he'd mentioned.

She perched herself on the edge of the desk and rang his number.

It was answered almost immediately. A silence, followed by a man's faint voice, ‘Drop it, Langham—'

The connection was cut.

She sat with the receiver pressed to her ear, frozen. She felt suddenly sick and light-headed, and stared through the window at a sycamore stirring in the breeze.

There was someone with Donald in his flat, someone who had not wanted him to answer the phone.

She found herself standing, moving towards the door as if in a trance. Then she was out of the office, hurrying down the steps and climbing into her car. Her short-term memory seemed to be functioning imperfectly, for what seemed like seconds later she was turning into her street in Kensington without being able to recollect the intervening drive. It was so unfair, she repeated over and over, so unfair that she had thought the affair ended, and now …

She found herself running up the steps to her apartment, unlocking the door and running breathless up the stairs and unlocking the door at the top, only then realizing that she should have phoned the police from the office.

Without thinking, she crossed the room and unlocked her bureau. Then she was standing with the small, silver pistol in her hand, staring down at its impossible delicacy. How, she wondered, could something so lethal be so beautiful?

Gideon Martin had said that it was loaded with one bullet.

She picked up the phone and dialled 999. It seemed an age before someone answered. She had no idea what she was going to say until the words came out. ‘This is urgent. There is … someone is holding my friend hostage. He's probably armed …'

‘Please, miss,' said a woman's patient voice. ‘Now, slowly …'

Maria repeated herself, wanting to scream in frustration at the precious seconds ticking by, and finished by giving Donald's address.

She slammed down the phone. It seemed that her heart had expanded in her chest, was a massive organ beating out a rapid tempo that almost deafened her. She struggled to her feet and pushed herself towards the door. Seconds later she was back in the car and driving through the busy streets.

The other person in his flat could only have been Pearson, she told herself. Who else would not have wanted Donald to answer the phone? Ten minutes ago, she knew that Donald had been alive … But what might have happened to him in the interim?

She found herself stuck behind a slow omnibus on the main road half a mile before the turning to Donald's street. She was crying now, repeating his name over and over and weeping uncontrollably, her throat raw and tears stinging her eyes.

She reached into her coat pocket. The pistol nestled there reassuringly.

She approached the side road and turned at speed. The building where Donald had his flat was a hundred yards down the street on the left. She brought the Sunbeam to a halt behind a line of parked cars twenty yards from the front door and jumped out, clutched suddenly by a cold terror.

She hurried along the pavement, wondering where the police were. They should have been here by now … but what could they do, she asked herself – unarmed policemen against someone who would most certainly be armed with the weapon he intended to use to kill Donald?

She stopped at the foot of the steps, looking back and forth along the road for the first sign of a police car.

Then she looked up at the front door, and what she saw decided her. The door was ajar, open six inches. She found herself racing up the steps and pushing open the door. Before her, the interior stairs rose to Donald's flat. She climbed them, looking down to see that she had pulled the pistol from her pocket and was clutching it in her right hand.

The door at the top was shut, but was it locked?

She was reaching out for the handle when a sudden explosion made her jump. She had heard the sound of gunfire in films, but then it had never sounded so loud. Sobbing, she turned the handle and pushed … and she was inside and striding towards the study where Donald had his phone.

She feared what she would find, but knew that her fear would do nothing to prepare her.

She pushed open the door and saw Donald lying on the carpet, and the blood, so much blood – a pool of dark liquid surrounding him – and a little man, an obnoxious, fat, balding man on his knees, reaching out towards Donald's body with something … Maria thought it a handkerchief at the time … reaching out towards Donald's open, gasping mouth.

Trembling, she raised the gun. One bullet. She had to get close to make sure. The ugly little man looked up suddenly. He appeared comically shocked to see her bearing down on him with the gun outstretched. He fumbled on the carpet for his own pistol which he had set aside, and there was something pathetic about the way he stared at her in shock and patted the carpet for his weapon as she stepped closer and closer to him.

One bullet.

Donald lying in a pool of his own blood …

Get close.

Aim and fire before he finds the gun.

Donald lying in a pool of blood …

She pulled the trigger, and the gun clicked impotently, and she pulled again.

And again …

Crying now, she pulled the trigger a fourth time, and the expected detonation did not happen. She squeezed again, for the fifth time, and the pistol still did not go off.

She knew she had one more chance.

She pulled the trigger for the sixth time. The same dull, empty click – and she had time to laugh hysterically through her tears at the thought of Gideon Martin's cowardice in threatening to shoot himself with an unloaded gun.

She let out a cry when Pearson's hand found his pistol and sudden hope lit his face.

Without thinking, she stamped her stiletto heel down hard on the back of his hand and heard his piercing scream. Then she found herself swinging the pistol, using it as a cosh, and smashing the weapon with all the force she could muster into the side of Frankie Pearson's ugly head.

He cried out and rolled away, and Maria dropped her pistol and reached out for Pearson's. She grasped it with a sob of relief and pushed herself to her feet and backed off. She came up against the wall, the impact startling her, and slid on to her haunches. She crouched there, directing the weapon at Frankie Pearson.