Murder by the Book (8 page)

Langham frowned. ‘Well, I wouldn't phrase it quite like that.'

Lassiter stared at him. ‘And you know what?' he said. ‘You're exactly right. Spot on. Comes easily because it always has, and in consequence it means nothing to me … Nothing. Christ, I need another drink.'

‘Let me get these.'

‘You're a gentleman and a scholar, old man.'

Langham took the empties and escaped to the bar. Only when he was easing himself back through the press of bodies did he recall what Lassiter had said about a business proposition. What on earth had he meant by that?

A depressing thought dawned. What if Lassiter wanted him to write the next Nigel Lassiter title?

He slid Lassiter's whisky across the table and sat down. ‘You mentioned something about a business proposition?'

‘And so I did! Old brain's grinding to a halt.' Lassiter leaned back and regarded him. ‘Occurred to me the other day, reading your latest … I had an idea.'

Here it comes, Langham thought. How do I say that I'm quite happy writing my own books, and really don't want to ghostwrite the latest ‘Nigel Lassiter'?

Lassiter leaned forward and said with the maudlin sincerity of a seasoned drunk, ‘Why don't we – you and I, Donald – why don't we collaborate?'

Langham's heart sank. If anything, the thought of collaborating with Lassiter was even more dreadful than the idea of writing a ‘Lassiter' novel solo. ‘You mean, write a book together?'

Lassiter guffawed. ‘Not together! Not together
as such
, Donald. Christ, it's hard enough living with my wife these days. The thought of shacking up with another writer … no offence meant. What I mean is, I use Sam Brooke in my next book, and you use my detective, Sergeant Hamm? They make guest appearances, as it were. Work together on a case.'

Langham felt relieved. He considered the idea, and it had mileage. The publicity would do his sales no end of good. That was, of course, if Lassiter really meant what he was saying and it wasn't just some drunken notion forgotten with the onset of his hangover in the morning.

‘I like the idea, Nigel. I think it'd work.'

‘You do? Excellent. Let's meet up later this week, over lunch – and I'll try to go easy on the old booze.'

Langham raised his glass. ‘Let's do that.'

‘Capital, Donald! I think this calls for a celebratory drink.' He swayed to his feet and bought another round.

When he eased his bulk back down, Lassiter said, ‘Must admit I've been hitting the old bottle of late. The last novel was a bastard, and then yesterday I heard about old Sidley.'

Langham nodded. ‘As I was telling Grenville, he was my very first editor.'

‘I worked with him just before the war,' Lassiter reminisced. ‘Douglas and Dearing bought the three collaborations I did with Frank Pearson. Remember old Frankie?'

‘I met him a few times. Wasn't he with Charles Elder for a few books in the thirties? Prickly customer, I recall. He rather fell out with me over a review I did of one of his books.' It was one of the acerbic reviews Grenville had alluded to earlier.

‘“Prickly” hardly describes the man,' Lassiter said. ‘We got on fine in the early days – the mid-thirties, that'd be. We were both youngish, ambitious, interested in the same kind of fiction.'

‘How did you come to collaborate?'

‘Don't get me started!' Lassiter laughed and took a gulp of whisky. ‘Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time – like many a marriage, and look how most of them end up!' He fell silent, gazing into his glass. ‘I liked Frankie, back then – before we fell out.'

‘What happened?'

Lassiter shrugged. ‘Frankie had energy. Came up with ideas ten a penny, and they were often good ones. What he lacked was human empathy. His characters were cardboard cut-outs totally subservient to his convoluted plots. He thought that plot, twists, cliffhangers … he thought they alone kept the reader hooked.' He belched. ‘'Scuse me … My argument was that readers would … would only engage with a story if they believed in the characters, if they empathized with the human element. Make your characters real, believable, sympathetic, and you've got the reader. They'll keep turning the pages.'

‘Let me guess. It was his idea to collaborate, right?'

Lassiter nodded. ‘I was doing reasonably well. I'd sold three books to Hutchinson's and they were selling OK. Frankie … well, he'd sold a few to Hubert and Shale, a third-rate outfit whose books went straight into the lending libraries. They sank without a trace and Frankie was despondent. Over a few pints one night I tried to tell him, tactfully, where I thought he was going wrong. The upshot was that he suggested we write a crime novel together. He'd do the plot, I'd do the character sketches and we'd take it in turns to do the writing.'

Langham took a mouthful of Guinness. ‘It worked?'

Lassiter puckered his liverish lips. ‘Up to a point. The novel – though I say so myself – was better than anything he could have done alone, but not up to what I'd been doing until then. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant. Wasn't meant to.' He shrugged. ‘But it's true. It was a second-rate book. I was amazed when Max Sidley took it for Douglas and Dearing.'

‘Frankie must have been pleased. How did it do?'

‘He was, and the book did well enough for Sidley to want two more … Which I was loath to commit to. Truth be told, I did it for Frankie. He needed the money and the kudos the books gave him in the publishing world. So we did two more, each one worse than the last.'

‘Let me guess – Douglas and Dearing didn't want a fourth?'

Lassiter shook his head, a distant look in his eyes. ‘That's just the thing, they did. The books sold reasonably well and Sidley approached us for another one. I'll never forget the meeting with Frankie when I told him I didn't want to do another collaboration. He looked like a puppy I'd just kicked in the balls.' He shrugged. ‘Fact was, my own books were taking off, the advances on the collabs weren't that great, and career-wise it just wasn't a good move for me to churn out these potboilers.'

‘How did Frankie react?'

‘How do you think? Distraught, then angry. He got raging drunk and it would've ended in a fight if I hadn't legged it.' He shook his head sadly. ‘I saw him once or twice after that, just before the war. He did the fourth book alone. Apparently it was appalling.'

Langham said, ‘I think that might have been the one I slated in the
Herald
.'

‘Well, Douglas and Dearing dropped him like a hot coal after that one. He did a dozen or so crime novels for some fly-by-night outfit … even scribbled during the war – he was exempt from military service on account of his eyesight or something. Wrote romances and school stories to keep body and soul together.'

‘What's he doing these days?'

‘Still scribbling, would you believe? He does westerns for the people he started with in the thirties, Hubert and Shale. Potboilers, believe me.' He fell silent, then looked at Langham as if wondering whether to tell him something. ‘I bumped into him about three, four years ago in a pub in Camden. Didn't look well. He'd hit the bottle in a big way. Made my drinking look amateur by comparison. I tried to be friendly, offered to buy him a drink for old times' sake. But he wasn't having any of it. Would've attacked me if he hadn't been legless.'

‘Poor Frankie …'

‘And then yesterday … hearing about old Max Sidley, it brought it all back. Jesus!' he exclaimed. ‘The damned thing is, Donald, the stupid thing is, I feel so damned guilty.'

‘About Frankie?' He started to reassure Lassiter that he shouldn't burden himself with guilt over something he had done – with all justification – almost twenty years ago, but Lassiter interrupted: ‘No, not about Frankie, damn him! About old Max.'

‘Max Sidley? I don't see …'

Lassiter sighed, drained his whisky and said, ‘Do you know how he did it? How he killed himself?'

‘Grenville didn't say.'

‘The poor man took a hand-held electric drill and pressed …' He mimed holding the tool to his ear.

Langham winced. ‘Good God,' he said, then shrugged. ‘But why the guilt?'

‘Because,' Lassiter said, ‘that was exactly the method I devised in
Murder Will Out
, the first book I did with Frankie. We needed to get rid of one of the minor characters, so I thought up a gory suicide. How the hell was I to know old Max would remember it and use it twenty years later?'

‘Exactly,' Langham said forcefully. ‘You weren't to know. Nothing could have stopped Max from killing himself, if that's what he wanted. If he hadn't done it in the way you described, he would have found another way. Nigel, every time we put pen to paper we can't worry that people might copy whatever death we describe. We'd never write a word.'

Lassiter looked up from his drink. ‘I know, I know. It's irrational. But … but nevertheless I feel … guilty is the only word for it. Poor old Max.'

‘When did you last see him?'

Lassiter thought about that. ‘A month ago at a publishing do at the Douglas and Dearing offices. He seemed fine, for someone knocking on seventy-five.'

‘Not at all depressed?'

‘Not at all. As bright as a button, extolling the virtues of some young new writer whose first novel they'd just acquired. So when I heard about … Well, it knocked me sideways.' He smiled, sadly. ‘I did the obit as a tribute. Hell, I put more work into it than I did my last novel – and I know, that isn't saying much.'

Langham smiled. ‘Would you like another drink?'

Lassiter looked at his watch. ‘Christ, it's almost five. Better not, old man. Wifey'll be wondering where the hell I am. I'm like this.' He mimed thumbing a drawing pin into the tabletop.

‘How is Caroline these days?'

Lassiter winked. ‘I complain, but I shouldn't. She keeps my feet on the ground, keeps my alcohol consumption under control, damn her. Bless her. I'd better be on my way. Lovely seeing you, Donald. And I'll be in touch about the collab, OK?'

‘I'll look forward to that.'

‘Oh – you're going to the Crime Club dinner next week, I assume?'

‘Forgotten all about it,' Langham said. ‘But yes, I haven't missed one for years. I'll be there.'

Lassiter saluted, climbed unsteadily to his feet and wended his way through the crowd towards the exit.

Langham remained at the table, half a glass of Guinness before him. He'd finish his drink, then find a phone box and ring Charles to see if the blackmailer had written with his next demand.

Five minutes later he drained his glass and pushed through the crowd, climbing the steps into the fresh air like some troglodyte creature emerging from hibernation. He had the typical light-headedness, and the odd sense of being removed from reality, common after an afternoon session.

He hurried across Leicester Square, found a phone box and got through to the agency. Seconds later Maria answered. ‘Donald, where have you been all day? I've been phoning your flat again and again.'

‘Something's happened?'

‘This morning another letter arrived. This time he wants even more money.'

Langham swore. ‘How's Charles taking it?'

There was a hesitation at the other end of the line. ‘Badly, I'm afraid. Please, could you possibly come over? He's been asking for you.'

‘I'm on my way.'

‘Thank you so much, Donald.'

As he stepped from the phone box and made his way across the square to where his car was parked, he tried to see a way out of this for Charles. The fact was that his agent was in a double bind: he couldn't go to the police for fear of prosecution and a prison sentence – and if he didn't accede to the extortionate demands of the blackmailer, then the result would be the same. Charles was not short of the odd thousand or two, he suspected, but his resources were finite.

He eased his Austin into the busy flow of traffic going north on Charing Cross Road, then turned along Oxford Street and headed west. The traffic was light today, and in due course he pulled into a parking space across the road from the agency.

The door to the street was unlocked, but when he reached the door to the outer office he found it barred. He knocked, and seconds later Maria let him in. She had a strand of jet-black hair nervously nipped into the corner of her mouth, and only when he stared did she remember herself and remove it, self-consciously.

‘I closed the office just after the letter arrived,' she explained. ‘Charles was so very upset. He said he couldn't possibly concentrate on work. I've been with him all day. Thank you for coming.'

‘It's the least I could do. Where is he?'

‘In his rooms …' She indicated the stairway and followed him up.

Charles was pacing the sitting room, waving a sheet of paper before him. Even in distress he had the look of a seasoned thespian hamming it up. ‘Thank God you're here, Donald! Five hundred! Would you believe it, the wretch wants five hundred!'

‘Let me see …' Langham crossed the room and took the letter.

‘Can I get you a drink?' Maria asked.

‘A brandy for me, my dear,' Charles said. ‘Make it a double.'

‘I'm fine,' Langham told her. He took the letter to the window and angled it into the light.

Dear Charles,

It was a rather foolish thing for you to do, allowing a man to do a lady's job now, wasn't it? Your messenger deserved that cosh on the head. This time,
you
will do the delivering. I want five hundred in used ten-pound notes. Follow these instructions to the letter and the judiciary will be none the wiser. Tomorrow, Tuesday the 15th, take your Bentley and drive down to the village of Chalford in Sussex. From there follow the lane to the village of Hallet. A mile out of Chalford you will pass a derelict farm building on the right, and a hundred yards further on, to your left, you will see the opening to a field, barred by a gate. Stop there at two p.m. exactly, get out of the car and leave the money in an envelope propped against the gatepost. This done, return to the car and drive back to London. I have no need to stress that you should come alone.