Donald Bain - Gin and Daggers

I forced myself to return my attention to his question. “What do I make of it?” I repeated. “I don’t know. I was thinking of how angry Tony Zara was when he left the reading of Marjorie’s will.”

“Are you suggesting he might have murdered his wife’s sister?”

“No, but his suddenly leaving the country must raise some question with you.”

“That occurred to me, of course. Here we go again, Jessica, thinking alike. I raised that with Mrs. Ainsworth-Zara, and she did not offer the expected defense of her husband. Quite the opposite, I would say. She actually seemed pleased that I was thinking along those lines. She told me that her husband was awfu’ upset because Marjorie often made a fuss over him, enjoyed calling him her… what did she say?- her ‘little Mediterranean darling’… her ‘Italian duckie’… something like that. He assumed he would be included in her estate, according to his wife, and was furious when he wasn’t.”

“Awfu’?” I said.

“Did I say that? You can take the Scot out of Scotland, but you can’t take the language out of him. Awfu’. It loosely means very… very upset… awfu’ upset.”

“This meal is awfu’ good,” I said.

“Not quite the proper usage, I’m afraid,” he said pleasantly. “Getting back to my meeting this morning, I asked whether she was angry at being left out of her sister’s estate. She said that she wasn’t even surprised because, according to her, her sister had never forgiven her for marrying an Italian. He’s a count?”

“He bills himself as such,” I said.

“Dessert?” he asked, eyeing a dessert menu that had been placed in front of us.

“No, not for me, thank you,” I said. “This has been lovely, and I’m very pleased to see you again, but I can’t help but question the purpose of it. Clearly, you’ve gained nothing of substance from me.”

“Well, Jessica, perhaps now is the time for you to provide such substance.”

He stared at me. I shrugged. “Please explain.”

“You’ve been doing as much investigation as I have, according to my sources. You’ve engaged the services of the inquiry agent Mr. Biggers, have made contact with Jason Harris’s stepbrother, are the only person who had a look at Harris’s body other than his stepbrother, and, in general, seem to have been devoting considerable time to this effort, at least according to Mr. Darling.”

“According to Lucas?”

“I was chatting with him about his panel discussion tomorrow, and happened to ask how much participation you’ve given the convention. He said you’ve barely taken part.”

“Which means I’ve decided to enjoy London. I’ve done some wonderful walking and sightseeing.”

“Undoubtedly you have, Jessica, but I also have the feeling… no, to be more accurate, I have had information given me to support my feelings that you’ve possibly been learning things that would be of interest, and of use to me and the Yard in this investigation. Would you share what you’ve learned with me now?”

I made a decision at that moment that I would totally divorce the two large questions-who killed Marjorie Ainsworth, and whether she had written Gin and Daggers without undue help from Jason Harris. Whatever I knew that had direct bearing on the former, I would share with any and all authorities, beginning with Chief Inspector George Sutherland. Anything having to do with the authorship of the novel was not, it seemed to me, police business, not with the reputation of a dear and deceased friend on the line. I thought of the manuscript sitting in my hotel suite; that certainly would not be mentioned, at least for now.

There was, however, the conversation I’d had with Renée Perry regarding the alleged novel Brandy and Blood, and her assertion that Bruce Herbert had possession of it, and had murdered Marjorie Ainsworth in order to resolve the pending difficulties presented by it.

“George,” I said, “I have run across some information that might possibly be of interest to you where Marjorie’s murder is concerned, but it must be kept…” I smiled. “It must be kept awfu’ private.”

“Of course. Let me drive you back to the hotel, and you can tell me on the way.”

He drove a relatively old racing-green Jaguar that he kept in pristine condition. He drove slowly, and I explained what Renée Perry had told me about the missing manuscript, and her accusation that Bruce Herbert had killed Marjorie.

“Does Mrs. Perry hold any particular credibility with you?” he asked.

“Frankly, no, and when I asked her directly, she admitted she had no proof.”

“What about her husband? We’ve done a considerable background check on him. It seems he heads a publishing company that bears his name and is in precarious financial condition.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.”

“And Miss Ainsworth charges in her will that he’d stolen money from her, and that she had loaned him a considerable amount to keep the company going.”

“I was at the will reading and heard those things. As far as stealing money from her, Marjorie wouldn’t be the first author to make such claims against publishers and agents without evidence to support it. Writers are… writers, and by the very nature of what they do and how they earn a living, tend to become distrustful and paranoid. I remember touring Dickens’s house on a previous trip to London. I jotted down the contents of some of his letters that are on display, letters to his agent and to his publisher humbly requesting money with which to live and, without actually stating it, implying that there might be some hanky-panky going on with their accounting of royalties.” I laughed. “I even committed one of those letters to memory. He’d written it to his publisher, Chapman and Hall, in 1836.

“When you have quite done counting the sovereigns received for Pickwick, I should be much obliged to you to send me up a few…”

I delivered the lines in my best British accent.

“The same with all writers, I take it,” Sutherland said.

“Yes, but I’m not sure I would put much credence in Marjorie’s claim of having been cheated either by Perry House or by her British publisher, Archibald Semple. The loan is another question. I wondered whether there had been papers drawn when the money had been given to him.”

“I questioned Mr. Perry yesterday,” Sutherland said, “and asked him about that. He said there never had been papers, and he characterized the loan as being of a very small amount, nothing of the magnitude Miss Ainsworth indicated in her will.”

“When Mrs. Perry was telling me her story about the agent Bruce Herbert, I actually wondered-” I stopped myself. It’s so easy to comment about other people without having a solid reason for doing so. I once heard a song titled “Your Mind Is on Vacation, Your Mouth is Working Overtime.” I didn’t want that to be the case with me.

I needn’t have worried. Sutherland said, “It occurred to me as you were telling me of Mrs. Perry’s accusation that she might be attempting to divert attention from her husband as a suspect in Miss Ainsworth’s murder.”

I didn’t acknowledge that I had thought the same thing, although I suspect he knew I had.

He drove me to the front of the Savoy and offered to buy me a nightcap. I declined, but asked him why he had seemed so cold toward me at Marjorie’s burial.

“Can I be brutally honest with you without offending, Jessica?”

“Yes, by all means.”

“Any good law enforcement officer knows that the biggest mistake he can make is to become emotionally involved with someone in a case, and I must admit I developed feelings for you from the first moment we met that could easily violate that principle.”