G Malliet - Death of a Cozy Writer

“Sarah,” he said gently. “The thought doesn’t necessarily become the deed, you know. But I agree, it doesn’t pay to let people into one’s mind too much. Look, anything said between you and me goes no further, right? Like when we were kids?”

Sarah nodded, putting on a brave smile.

“Like when we were kids. You tried to protect me, Albert. From Ruthven and Father both, and from George. Whenever they remembered I existed, that is. All in all, I was happiest when they forgot I did exist. I haven’t forgotten what you did.” Her voice rose in intensity. “I’ve forgotten nothing.” She wrapped her arms tighter against the cold. “Maybe, some day, I can repay you.”

A faint alarm sounded in the farther reaches of Albert’s brain.

“Sarah, exactly what is it you have in mind?”

ALBERT SAT AT THE desk in his room in the small hours of the next morning, a frown of concentration distorting his handsome features. He’d slept only a few fitful hours, disturbed by a recurring dream in which he stood frozen onstage, in full costume and makeup, staring blankly at a hostile, hooting audience, lines forgotten. His fellow actors hissed at him from the wings. Suddenly he would realize he was in the wrong play altogether, but he couldn’t move off the stage: Someone had nailed his shoes to the boards.

Around four o’clock he’d given up hope of getting back to sleep. Remembering the manuscript, he put on a dressing gown against the chilly room and stoked the fireplace back to life, thinking he may as well spend the long hours until breakfast attempting to find out what the old man was up to.

“‘As soon none hive owl,’” he read aloud. “No, that can’t be it. This is worse than Chaucer. What the devil is he trying to say? ‘Nearly damaged bug loot, he went-’ No, wait, it’s ‘Nearly deranged by lust, he went-’ Went where?”

That American chap Jeffrey must be the only man alive who could read this scrawl. Albert doubted even his father could read these days what he had written, between his poor eyesight and fading health. The lines ran up and down the page like a printout from an EKG. Albert threw down the papers in disgust, then carefully gathered them again. He had a feeling whatever they were about, they were important. And he hesitated to ask Jeffrey for help.

No, he felt altogether it was not safe to ask Jeffrey.

But this was ridiculous; he’d never be able to sort the mess out himself. And he was beginning to worry that his father would sooner or later discover the manuscript was gone. For the first time, he wondered how his father had ever managed the cellar stairs to hide it in the first place. In any event, Albert felt he’d better put it back for now where he’d found it.

Then he had an idea, slapping his knees at the thought. Maybe he could enlist the aid of-what was her name? Mrs. Pepper? Mrs. Muffin? Something like that-a former secretary who was among the droves who had quit the job as fast as their legs could carry them. One had resigned, from a safe distance, by mail. But his father had often declared regretfully, for him, that Mrs. What’s-her-name had had a genius for being able to transcribe his handwriting (while never admitting he’d had anything to do with her abrupt departure).

Albert crept to his door and peeked out, knotting his silk gown more tightly about him. His room was one of four ranged along the corridor, at the end of which was a servant’s staircase leading to the attic and down to the kitchen. He thought for a moment he saw the door to the staircase closing-just the merest sliver of light that disappeared before he could be sure it had been there at all. He listened, straining, but could only hear the wind in the trees outside his own window, the eaves of the old building seeming to creak in response.

It is a truism that the more one tries to move stealthily, the more noise one seems to make. Every stair tread leading down from the first floor squeaked almost musically, each tread hitting a different register. In the darkness of the landing, he had a nearly fatal collision with a statue of Aphrodite, making a grab for her marble hips just before she could plunge from her pedestal. He inched along the downstairs hall: almost there now. He felt for the handle to the cellar door and braced himself for the whine of the old hinges.

The cellar stairs were worse; after groping for the light, he made his way down with aching slowness, pausing now and again to listen for sounds from overhead. Nothing.

As he approached the stack of crates from which he’d earlier retrieved the manuscript, he experienced a sudden, inexplicable tremble of apprehension: Something about the room was just that bit askew. Something was here or something had been taken away since his earlier visit.

He turned around, searching the shadows for whatever it was that was set to pounce. Maybe Agnes and her friendly ghost were starting to get to him.

So it was that he didn’t see Ruthven so much as sense that there was a shape huddled inside one of the glass-walled, walk-in cabinets. A dark round shape among the square boxes that hadn’t been there before, and that had no business being there now. Albert walked closer, cautiously, straining to see. A pile of laundry. No, not unless the laundry happened to be wearing bedroom slippers.

It was Ruthven and Ruthven was as dead as Dickens’ Marley. There was no doubt whatever about that. If the dark circle staining the floor around his head were not sign enough, there was also the odd angle at which his slippered feet were splayed in impossible directions.

Something splattered like dark paint across one side of the cabinet, something cascading down the glass in drying rivulets. Something that could only be blood, no matter how Albert’s mind scrambled for a different explanation.

Then there were the eyes. Most of all, the dark eyes-staring, accusatory, and quite, quite devoid of light, death having dried them of tears.

Albert, who had nearly tripped over many a seemingly lifeless corpse, but only on the stage, told himself that this was the real thing. Since it wasn’t in the script, he had no idea what to do. Fleetingly, he wondered if he should check for a pulse, before he realized he had not the least idea how to do so correctly, and no desire whatsoever to touch… it… him. He was shaking so much, anyway, he doubted he could have felt anything but his own heart, thudding madly against his ribs.

Worse, the sight of Ruthven, the thing that used to be Ruthven, was pathetic as much as frightening. He longed to at least straighten out the legs-Ruthven looked so uncomfortable there, against the cold stone floor in his climate-controlled cage.

Albert ran, the now-forgotten manuscript still in his pocket.

THE 999 CALL, MADE by an incoherent Albert, came into the Cambridgeshire Constabulary minutes later, which enterprise gauged Albert as a probable nuisance drunk and reacted accordingly.

Nonetheless, minutes later the Parkside Police Station dispatched one Constable Porter of Newton Coombe, a member of the Special Constabulary whose day job was pastry chef for the St. Germaine restaurant on Silver Street.

As Porter drove up to the imposing Gothic gate and saw the brass plaque announcing Waverley Court, he began to think he might be out of his depth. Wanting a break from the monotony of petits fours , Porter had been finding police work met the bill. Until now. There was such a thing as too much excitement. Careening up the long drive to the house, he had time to think that if some nob really had got himself killed, he, Porter, didn’t want to be the first and only man on the scene.

A surly, olive-complexioned man admitted him at the front door. As Porter reluctantly entered the armored hall, gazing about him in wonder, a blonde man tumbled out of a nearby door, collapsing into his arms as he gasped, “Murder! Cellar! Murder !”