Naked Once More (47 page)

“She adored that cat. People assumed that he wandered away after she left. But I’ve known cat fanciers, and some would rather abandon their child than their pet, especially if they feared it would not receive proper care from others.

“No one seemed to know anything about Kathleen’s writings other than
Naked in the Ice.
I found no other manuscripts. But, monumental as that book is, I couldn’t believe that was all she had produced, especially after Laurie told me she had been writing for years. It was certainly possible that she had destroyed her earlier work. As a writer I could understand why she might not want her unedited, unpolished efforts dissected and perhaps even published. But I also knew that unpublished manuscripts are potential assets. Rewritten and revised, they could be sold. It would have been quite safe for Kathleen to market them; none of her family took the slightest interest in her writing. They would not recognize a plot as hers.”

Laurie Smith leaned forward and carefully put her glass on the table. Her face was rigidly controlled, but the tears on her cheeks reflected the firelight like beads of blood. Jacqueline glanced at her, and looked quickly away.

“There was something else Kathleen might have taken with her, but without asking questions I had no right to ask, I wasn’t able to ascertain the truth. What about money?
Naked in the Ice
was published two years before Kathleen disappeared. She didn’t get a big advance. It was her first book, and she was unknown. But from the day of publication the sales were enormous, and there were other payments, for film and serial rights. Publishers have things set up so they can hang on to the author’s royalties for months—as long as a year in some cases—but they have to shell out eventually, and in two years Kathleen must have collected several million dollars.

“She spent a good deal of it—mostly on her family. But she wasn’t personally extravagant, except with regard to books. There must have been quite a lot left. How much? Well, no one would know except Kathleen herself, and her business manager, St. John.” Jacqueline directed a smile of saccharine sweetness at Kathleen’s brother, who braced himself as if expecting the worst. “Poor St. John,” Jacqueline cooed. “She left you in an impossible position, didn’t she? You couldn’t admit a lot of the money was missing; people have such nasty suspicious minds, they would have thought you took it. But didn’t you wonder what had become of it?”

“Er—yes, of course,” St. John said hoarsely. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “But I really wasn’t… I didn’t control… I told you, she was incredibly gullible, always giving money to charities and beggars. I assumed… It was beneath my dignity to explain…”

Jacqueline nodded sympathetically, but her eyes glowed green with amusement. St. John didn’t have to explain what should have been obvious to all those who knew him. He hadn’t been able to handle his own money, and Kathleen had known better than to trust him with hers. His title had been an empty one, a gesture of kindness.

Jacqueline fixed them all with a bright smile. “Well, how do you like it so far?”

“Is this some kind of joke?” Booton Stokes demanded.

Jacqueline’s smile faded. “Murder is no joke. Whatever you may think of my plot, a murder was committed. The police know that Jan Wilson’s death was no accident.” She sat down. “Let’s take a little break. Another drink, anyone?”

“Are you still sticking to that absurd claim that Jan Wilson was Kathleen?” Craig demanded.

“I never claimed that,” Jacqueline said. “I never believed it. Oh, by the way, Bill—in case there is still the slightest doubt…” She took several sheets of paper from her purse and handed them to him.

Bill had managed to keep quiet so far, though it had not been easy. The sight of the fingerprints burst his calm. “Where the hell did you get these? How long have you had them? Why didn’t you turn them over to the sheriff right away?”

“I found them in a secret hiding place in Kathleen’s cottage,” Jacqueline said. “The only one who could have put them there was Kathleen herself. Think about that, and ask yourself why she went to the trouble of having her prints registered. To me the explanation is obvious—she anticipated that one day she might have to prove her identity.”

She fished in her purse again and drew out a ball of string and a crochet hook. “I hope you don’t mind if I crochet. It helps me keep my thoughts straight.

“I knew Jan Wilson couldn’t be Kathleen. It was so obvious it stuck out like a sore thumb, but none of you noticed it because you didn’t know Jan. How many of you had ever seen her, much less spent enough time with her to observe the one unmistakable, incontrovertible fact that made the identification impossible? I’m sure it was mentioned in the coroner’s report, but numbers don’t make an emotional impression.”

“I don’t get it,” Bill said. “I know she wasn’t Kathleen, but I don’t see how—”

“Oh, Bill! Her height! She was almost as tall as I am. Kathleen was tiny, everybody mentioned that, and her pictures make it evident. Jan’s leg had been badly injured; but that injury could not have added to her height, it could only have lessened it.”

“But then Paul must have known too,” Bill said slowly.

“He knew,” Jacqueline said.

“Then why—”

“For the same reason I didn’t deny the identification. Earlier that evening he had told me he believed Kathleen was still alive. I had reached the same conclusion—and if we had done so, so might a number of other people, including the one who had tried to kill her before. If you think back, Bill, you’ll remember Paul didn’t make his dramatic announcement until after the reporter had turned up. If Jan had been killed by someone who thought she was Kathleen, let him think he had succeeded. Then Kathleen would be safe.”

“Wait a minute,” Bill exclaimed. “That’s a helluva big assumption you just made. What would lead anyone to suppose Jan Wilson—”

Jacqueline’s eyes dropped to the string of loops she was forming. “The possibility had occurred to me, Bill. Jan didn’t appear in Pine Grove until after Kathleen disappeared. She was fanatically interested in Kathleen, almost to the point of identifying with her. If my theory was correct—if Kathleen had fled to escape a killer—wouldn’t she want to find out who it was? In disguise, and on the scene, she could pursue her investigations safely. I abandoned the idea almost immediately; but I’m afraid that inadvertently I may have been the one who… Look, do you mind if I postpone that till later? We’ve still got a lot of ground to cover, and if I don’t stick to my—you should excuse the word—outline, I’ll lose track of what is admittedly a very complex story.

“I sympathized with Paul’s aim in making that identification, but I knew it wouldn’t hold up for long. Jan’s terrible injuries made a positive ID more difficult, but certainly not impossible; to mention the most obvious point, there was the matter of height. Jan Wilson must have had a past, a history separate from that of Kathleen. Sooner or later the police would trace it. Bill, have you by any chance…?”

“Yeah,” Bill said. “These things take a while, but she’d never tried to cover her tracks. Her name really was Jan Wilson. She was married and had two kids. Both of the kids and her husband were killed in the car crash that injured her. You could say she was lucky the drunk driving the other car was a rich man’s kid. The insurance settlement gave her the money to buy and operate the bookstore.”

He watched the other faces as he spoke. The only ones that didn’t show shock and surprise were those of Paul and Jacqueline. Paul must have told her, Bill thought. Earlier that afternoon. While they were… Hell, it wasn’t any of his business what they had been doing.

“Like a lot of other fans, Jan had fallen in love with Kathleen’s book,” Jacqueline said. “The accident happened at about the same time as Kathleen’s disappearance; it was while Jan was recovering that she read the newspaper stories. I wouldn’t venture to explain the psychological effect on Jan, or why she determined to settle in Pine Grove. She wanted to get as far away from her home and the scene of the accident as she could get. She wanted to wipe it from her mind. If she hadn’t fixed on Kathleen—on some absorbing interest totally unrelated to her tragedy—she might have given up altogether. I’d like to think…” She stopped, cleared her throat. “This is irrelevant. What matters, at this moment, is that as soon as the truth came out, Kathleen could be in danger. She had hidden her tracks rather neatly, but she made what could have been a fatal slip when she wrote those angry, indignant letters. Her chief defense was the assumption that she was dead. Once it was known she was still alive, it wouldn’t be difficult to find her. I knew I had to move fast, before the killer tried again.”

“Wait a minute.” Paul leaned forward, his face bleak with shock. Whatever else Jacqueline had told him that day, this part of her story was news to him. “Are you saying—have you found her? Do you know where she is?”

“I know
who
she is,” Jacqueline corrected. “But you’ll have to let me tell it my way.

“So much of this case has to do with writers and with writing. The motives, the clues, the basic reasoning that led me to the truth are specific to the wild and wacky world of publishing. Unless I can make you see these things as clearly as I did, you’ll never understand why Kathleen did what she did, and what the killer’s motive was.

“Kathleen cared deeply about the integrity of her work. She had already started work on the sequel to
Naked.
When it was assumed that she had committed suicide, the outline she left could be and was interpreted to be her means of ensuring that the writer who was selected wouldn’t be just another hack. But I was now convinced that Kathleen planned, not to die, but to disappear. Would she then be content to see some other writer finish her work? I think not. I think she meant to write the sequel herself. That was the real reason for the outline, and the competition. Who better than Kathleen herself could produce an outline that was closest to the original?

“In her new identity she had to earn a living by some means or other. Writing was the only trade she knew, and her talent was extraordinary. Some might say it was naive of her to expect to succeed a second time; there is a lot of luck involved in selling a book. It is nevertheless true, in general, that if the book is good enough, it will sell. Kathleen wasn’t just good, she was brilliant. She had enough money to live on while she established herself. A lot of writers were imitating Kathleen Darcy, consciously or unconsciously; any similarities in literary style would be attributed to that, and she carefully avoided using the same subject matter. Over the years she built a reputation in a related field, that of historical romance, and when the announcement of the sequel was made, she was one of the people who had to be considered. There weren’t that many, and Mr. Stokes here had to make a pretense of playing fair.

“Up to this point, everything had worked out as Kathleen had planned. What she didn’t anticipate was that Stokes was only pretending to play fair. He wanted the prize for one of his own writers; not only would he make an extra fifteen percent on the deal, but he could maintain control over all the aspects of the book, with no other agent to raise awkward questions.”

“Jacqueline, Jacqueline.” Stokes shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger. “You’ve made it eminently clear that you don’t want to write this book. That’s fine with me. This isn’t necessary—and much as I hate to say so, dear lady, you are slipping dangerously close to a suit for libel.”

“Slander,” Jacqueline corrected. “Libel comes later—after the newspapers print the story I am planning to sell them.”

Stokes shrugged and leaned back in his chair, smiling. “On your own head be it, my dear.”

Jacqueline dismissed him with a curl of her lip and went on. “Mr. Stokes’s choices were limited. There weren’t many writers who could qualify. His choice of Jack Carter as one of the candidates proves how desperate he was to gather a sufficient number; Carter had no qualifications whatever. In fact, Stokes had no one under contract who was qualified. So he approached Brunnhilde—am I right, darling?—and offered her the book if she would sign with him.”

“That’s outrageous,” Stokes gasped. “Brunnhilde, tell her. Tell them all.”

“Yes, do tell,” said Jacqueline, smiling like a shark. “You’re in the clear so far, Zel——Brunnhilde. You haven’t done anything naughty—have you? The words ‘saw,’ ‘chocolate,’ and ‘slop jar’ mean nothing to you—do they?”

“Uh,” said Brunnhilde. “Uh—what do you want me to say?”

“That Bootsie tried to make a deal with you. For heaven’s sakes,” Jacqueline added impatiently, “there’s nothing illegal about that. Immoral and unethical, perhaps, but not illegal.”

“That’s right,” Brunnhilde muttered. “He did… we did talk about it. Just talk.”

“Just talk.” Jacqueline cut in quickly, before Stokes could protest. “That was all you did, because I showed up, and Bootsie decided I was a better choice. You may find this hard to believe, Zel——er—Brunnhilde, but some people consider you difficult to get along with. It would be immodest of me to suggest that there might have been another reason.”

Paul said curtly, “Get on with it, Jacqueline.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” Jacqueline protested. “If people would just cooperate and answer my questions, we wouldn’t have these distractions. What was I about to say? Oh, yes. The point, which may not be obvious to you who are not writers, is this: there was no way Booton could know in advance which of the candidates would qualify. When I signed on with him, and when Brunnhilde was preparing to make her deal, neither of us knew about Kathleen’s outline. We assumed Booton and the heirs—but primarily Booton—had the freedom to choose the writer, without any restrictions. He knew about the outline, though. He was legally as well as morally obliged to follow Kathleen’s directives. So wasn’t it a fascinating coincidence that I—the only candidate who was a client of Booton’s—just happened to produce the best outline?”

“Watch it,” Stokes snapped. “If you’re suggesting—”

“I’m suggesting that you changed Kathleen’s outline to agree with mine. I myself had had second thoughts about some of the ideas I proposed; I should have known Kathleen would never have considered them.”