G Malliet - Death of a Cozy Writer

“That was part of his topic, certainly,”

She wasn’t listening. He imagined she was trying to piece together, as he had been, the implications of the rest of the family’s learning of Ruthven’s true parentage.

“I wonder how Adrian found out?”

“When Ruthven was in hospital. Ruthven was type A. Sir Adrian was type O. You had to be type A yourself for Adrian to have been the father of Ruthven.”

“Which I’m not. However did he?-wait. That explains what he was doing, coming to visit me. I carry a medical card in my purse-I’m a diabetic, as Adrian well knew, so all my information is there in case they have to tow me out of Harrods on a stretcher one day. Sneaky, creeping little bastard. Adrian paid no attention to Ruthven while he was growing up; it doesn’t surprise me it took him this long to tumble to it.”

“The book seems to have been some form of revenge, from what I know of it, or of him, yes. He seems to have started on it right about the time of Ruthven’s operation.”

“And then made sure it was going to be left to me. I suppose he thought it would place me on the horns of a dilemma, giving me the choice of destroying the manuscript-which would be worth a fortune-or publishing it for the proceeds, and destroying my own reputation in the process. I can see how he would love that, knowing he’d put me in a position where I was damned whichever choice I made.”

“Would you publish it?”

She didn’t hesitate.

“Of course not. I have money of my own, Inspector. This was probably his twisted way of leaving me something essentially worthless. On the whole, I think I may douse it in oil and set fire to it.”

“I’m not certain that option is in your hands. It’s the proceeds he’s left you, not the decision whether or not to publish. He made his secretary the literary executor.”

“The American chap? How extraordinary. I’ll have to have a word with him, now, won’t I?”

The news didn’t please her, he could see. Had she known what Sir Adrian was writing? And if she had-what might she have done to stop him?

She paused, looked around her.

“God, how I hate this house. Do you know how many years since I set foot in here? And I never would have, if he weren’t dead and gone. Very freeing, it is.”

“That seems to be the common sentiment.”

“For the children especially, yes. For us all.” She sighed. “It wasn’t always quite this bad, you know. I thought I’d made a good bargain, at first. But it all went pear-shaped after the children were born.”

Catching his involuntary glance, she laughed, that attractive, deep-throated chuckle that had no doubt, at one time, been part of her attraction for Sir Adrian.

“I didn’t mean that, Inspector. Although that certainly went pear-shaped as well. I meant the marriage. It’s hard to trace these things back to the single, defining moment when you know you have to get out for the sake of your sanity, when you can stand no more, when the whole thing just comes unstuck. With Adrian, there were so many such moments.”

“But you stayed with him, all those children…”

“It was what one did in those days, Inspector.”

“Was he always so…?” An array of possible words presented themselves. Malicious, vindictive, and petty topped the list.

“Adrian?” A faraway look came into her eyes. She might have been surveying the ravaged, wartorn past, looking under pieces of wreckage for signs of life. “No. No, he wasn’t. Or he didn’t appear so, at first. Oh, he was always selfish and full of himself. Confident, in the extreme, of his talents. I used to admire that. So much.”

“What happened?”

“To turn him into a monster, you mean?”

“Something like that, yes.”

She considered. “I used to think it had something to do with his chosen profession. After all, how often can one contemplate murder by poison, stabbing, pushing someone off a cliff or throwing them down a well, et cetera, et cetera, without it all starting to work on one’s mind? Then I started to meet his competitors. What he would call his imitators. He didn’t have colleagues, of course. And they were lovely people-most of them, at any rate. Wouldn’t say boo to a mouse. In the end I decided Adrian was simply born the way he was. Preprogrammed to get nastier with each passing year. His profession had nothing to do with it. In fact, it may have prevented him from doing actual bodily harm to someone.”

“He sublimated his murderous impulses into writing about murder?”

“Hmm. Yes, something like that. Though if someone told me he actually had killed someone, I wouldn’t doubt it for a moment.”

In spite of her words, her face still held a look of melancholy.

“You loved him very much, didn’t you? Once?”

“Once,” she said, but now with the finality of a book slammed shut. “It must be hard for you to imagine, looking at him as he became. But he was… beautiful… once. All the women were after him-there was a lot of the working-class hero about Adrian that was very appealing, in spite of his ridiculous attempts to cover it up. But he singled me out, for some reason. Well, who am I kidding? For my money. And, as you know, I needed a rescuer right about then. Would that he hadn’t. Singled me out. But Adrian was a force of nature.”

“He remained so. A force of nature, I mean.”

She laughed, nearly a shout of surprise. She was perhaps thinking of tornados, floods, and earthquakes-every form of unstoppable destruction known to man.

“Just like Violet,” was all she said.

A dawning suspicion had begun to emerge in St. Just’s mind.

“You say the same crowd traveled in packs in those days. Were you actually there in Scotland at the time of the murder of Winnie Winthrop?”

“Didn’t I mention that? How extraordinary of me. Yes, all that set were there, of course.”

“Go on,” he said carefully. How much more hadn’t these suspects thought worth mentioning to him?

“Let’s see. It was so many years ago, I hardly remember it all. Funny, what I mostly remember is that there was red tartan carpet all over the place, like they do in these old Scottish places. Really quite dreadful. I don’t suppose that’s of much use to you, though, is it?”

St. Just shook his head.

“Let’s see,” she said again. She settled back in her chair and looked at the ceiling, as if the past might be projected up there. “Well, there was a lot of alcohol involved, I can tell you that for a fact. Probably why my memory of events is a bit hazy here and there. I’m really not much of one for the country-it’s so goddamn noisy. There were curlews screeching the whole time we were there, it seemed. I could empathize with Violet on that score-she hated the place and made no bones about it. All peat bogs and bags of poor dead animals. Really, what’s the point when you can always order a good steak in London?”

St. Just sat back, letting her ramble. The oddest connections formed in people’s minds if you just left them alone.

“They were all out shooting when I arrived and the staff were stood down,” she said meditatively. “This mad little Scottish cook had to show me to my room, I recall. She wasn’t half put out about it, either. I can nearly remember her name…”

“Agnes?”

“You know, I believe you’re right. How odd you should know that. Restores one’s faith in the British bobby. She must be long gone by now. But she was the one who nearly pegged the thing onto Violet. I wasn’t there for the inquest-those of us who had nothing to contribute or had convinced the authorities that was so were quick to beat it out of there, let me tell you. But I read the newspaper accounts, of course.”