Crooked Herring

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘… thus providing one of the key pieces of evidence against me.’

  ‘Your infatuation with Emma Vynall was good evidence too.’

  ‘I was never infatuated with Emma Vynall. But you still told the police that I fancied her rotten.’

  ‘Well, you did.’

  ‘Once, perhaps. But you didn’t have to say it. It wasn’t helpful.’

  ‘Still, it was me that got you off. I mean, if I hadn’t got Mary to say that she’d slept with you …’

  ‘That was a complication that I would prefer to have avoided. It could have ruined my defence and led to Mary being convicted of perjury. But never mind. In the end it left the police bemused but they won’t be pursuing that line of inquiry further. It did no harm.’

  ‘So, the police haven’t released you because of the watertight alibi I constructed for you?’

  ‘I’ve always had my own watertight alibi. And it was a real one – not an invention. I just preferred not to use it unless I absolutely had to.’

  ‘What was that, then?’

  ‘I spent New Year’s Eve in bed with somebody.’

  ‘Not Mary Devlin Jones?’

  ‘Clearly not.’

  ‘Emma Vynall?’

  ‘No. Even though I apparently fancy her rotten.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘I’m coming to that. Fortunately I never needed to tell the police who it was.’

  ‘So, if the police didn’t believe you were in bed with Mary, and you wouldn’t say who you were really in bed with, how did you get out of gaol?’

  ‘The CCTV footage.’

  ‘But it was thrown away.’

  ‘No, the police picked it up. My lawyer told me what you’d told him. You thought, and Kevin may have thought, that the old machine had gone for recycling. All that had happened was that the police had contacted the manager – the proper manager, not the idiot boy you spoke to. The manager said that he still had the machine in store and the police came and took it away. He hadn’t told Kevin because it was none of Kevin’s business. The police went through the footage for New Year’s Eve. It was clear that Henry had lied to them and that he and not I had been with Crispin shortly before midnight. He has now been arrested. Henry’s problem was that he was just a bit too clever for his own good. He’d forgotten, on the night, that there might be CCTV in the car park, but when I told him that the recording had been wiped he felt completely safe. Hence his willingness to taunt me with the details of how he had done it all.’

  ‘So the police have identified him from the CCTV?’

  ‘Yes, and from the photo in the pub.’

  ‘They found it? But the landlord said he had no idea who took it.’

  ‘People put pictures up in all sorts of places these days. The police searched Facebook for “New Year, Didling Green”. It came up straight away. Then there were the sockpuppet accounts. They were just the icing on the cake, but it was helpful in proving my contention that Henry had been trying to frame me.’

  ‘The police traced them to Henry? I told them they might be able to but they didn’t seem that interested.’

  ‘They were already onto it. Amazon were apparently very helpful. They wouldn’t say exactly how they had done it, but they identified Henry as the originator. One of the problems with crime writers is that they don’t keep up to date with the technology. Their apparently watertight plots are blown wide open. Thus it was with Henry.’

  ‘Wow. So that’s Henry put away for a few years. He’ll have time to reconstruct his great literary crime novel then.’

  ‘He doesn’t need to. It was never destroyed.’

  ‘But he burnt the paper copies, wiped the discs, shredded the notes and then shed genuine tears into an empty glass …’

  ‘The CWA had sent a copy to each of the judges. Crispin and I had destroyed our copies years ago, of course, but Janet Francis has an army of efficient helpers and a well-organised paper filing system. Some intern had filed them in boxes in the storeroom – all two hundred of them. If Henry had asked her, he could have had it back any time.’

  ‘And it is a great literary masterpiece?’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Janet has – she says it’s a pretentious load of crap. We were quite right not to shortlist it. Of course, following Henry’s arrest, and the publicity that will certainly follow, some publisher may now be interested …’

  ‘Well,’ said Elsie, ‘Janet may have the manuscript but she no longer has Karen Rockingham. I signed her yesterday.’

  ‘So I heard. But you let Janet know about Henry’s plot to reveal Karen’s crime-writing activities, and she was working on releasing the news to the press. All should have been well. So why did Karen switch agencies before the news was even out?’

  ‘Because,’ said Elsie, ‘I then phoned Karen and explained that the only reason Janet was able to rescue things was that I had found out what was going on. If she wanted to avoid screw-ups in future, she’d better sign up with an agency that was slightly more on the ball.’

  ‘And she did?’

  ‘And she did.’

  ‘You explained, of course, that the person who leaked the information was now working for you?’

  ‘I may not have mentioned it yet.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t done too badly out of my incarceration, have you? You’ve acquired three new writers: Mary Devlin Jones, Elisabeth Söderling and now Karen Rockingham. And you got yourself a new assistant in Tuesday Lane-Smith, though you’ll probably need a couple more just to handle the Rockingham account.’

  ‘It would be a sad world if good deeds went entirely unrewarded.’

  ‘By good deeds, you mean the way you almost got me twenty years in gaol by interfering and faking evidence?’

  ‘That’s slightly uncharitable but yes, if that’s how you want to describe it. Anyway, how do you know all this? You’ve been in a dungeon with just a meagre streak of daylight providing enough illumination for you to be able to see your bowl of gruel. You won’t have been able to talk to anyone except your lawyer and maybe the gaoler when he came to refill your jug of putrid ditchwater and plump up your straw pallet for you.’

  ‘Janet drove me back to West Wittering,’ I said. ‘She gave me a full account during the two-and-a-half-hour journey. She is not happy.’

  Elsie looked at me. I’m not sure at what point it had dawned on Henry Holiday that he had not been quite as clever as he had thought, but my guess was that his face at that point looked much as Elsie’s did now.

  ‘Janet drove you back?’

  ‘Yes, Janet drove me back.’

  ‘Janet Francis? Not somebody else, coincidentally called Janet, who happens for unrelated reasons to be a bit unhappy about something – the death of a pet hamster, say, or Ed Milliband’s latest opinion poll ratings?’

  ‘Yes, Janet Francis. She doesn’t have a hamster, as far as I know.’

  ‘Ethelred, when you said that you were in bed with somebody on New Year’s Eve, you couldn’t have possibly meant …’

  ‘Janet and I have been friends for some time. Neither of us had anything to do on New Year’s Eve so I invited her over. One thing led to another. The morning after, we both agreed over hot coffee and croissants that it had really been a bit of a mistake. Not that either of us regretted it … it had been fun … but all the same … We’re at an age when one-night stands feel a bit … juvenile. So we promised each other that we would stay friends but would never mention New Year’s Eve again.’

  ‘Even if the alternative was going to the gallows?’

  ‘That was not an eventuality we foresaw, even if there was still any such thing as gallows in this country, which there isn’t.’

  ‘So you always had a fallback if the other evidence failed?’

  ‘Not one I wanted to use.’

  ‘And the police were right. You were concealing the fact that you’d had somebody with you. I just thought they were being stupid.’

  ‘The pol
ice aren’t stupid. Not in real life. Fortunately I never had to tell them about Janet because they came up with the other evidence. Which meant I also never needed to deny Mary’s touching but completely untrue statement about what she was doing on New Year’s Eve. That was fortunate for a lot of people.’

  ‘Well, how right you were to end it amicably over coffee. I mean, I realise that you thought you were attracted to Janet. And I suppose, now I think about it, that she is precisely the sort of bossy, upper-middle-class, school-captain type that you go for. And she’s as old-fashioned as you are, in her own sweet way – I mean, those Filofaxes and card indexes she so loves. She probably enjoys country walks and the Last Night of the Proms and the Chelsea Flower Show and wet Labradors slobbering over her. But you were so right to dump her. She’d have bullied you mercilessly, Ethelred. She’d have organised your life for you down to the last detail. She’d have … Why did she drive you home?’

  ‘I phoned her as soon as I was released.’

  ‘Not me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You’ve treated Janet very badly. Do you realise how humiliated she felt having to sign that ridiculous piece of paper saying that I’d spent the night with Mary Devlin Jones?’

  ‘But you’d agreed to remain just good friends … Oh, no, don’t tell me …’

  ‘We’re not going to move in with each other … not yet. But I think we’ll be meeting up from time to time. As often as possible, in fact.’

  ‘But I’m still your agent …’

  ‘That might be awkward. You really have upset her. And taken her biggest client.’

  ‘But the story for the Sunday Times …’

  ‘Janet has organised something with the Mail on Sunday. Then I’m going to work on the book about it all that will come out later this year. Janet thinks we might sell a couple of million. She says you always undervalued me as a writer.’

  ‘No more than you deserve.’

  I said nothing. Elsie was right. All of those put-downs over the years – hadn’t I somehow invited them? I’d got what I deserved. It had just taken me a long time to realise that there was an alternative. I could have what I didn’t deserve.

  The silence lengthened until eventually even Elsie realised that something was slightly amiss. ‘You’re a bit cross with me, then?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I could apologise to Janet.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll pass that on. But it wouldn’t really change things.’

  ‘Is it because I lost the evidence that would have cleared you of a murder charge?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Is it because I ate your chips?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘So, that’s that?’

  ‘Just leave the keys on the shelf in the hall.’

  ‘Bye, then.’

  ‘Bye.’

  Just as she was leaving the sitting room, Elsie turned. ‘I bet Janet wouldn’t have faked evidence for you or blackmailed people or got half the crime writers in the country to commit perjury.’

  ‘Hopefully not,’ I said.

  A bit later I heard her car engine cough into life and a bit after that I heard her turn the corner at the bottom of the road. Then there was silence.

  POSTSCRIPT

  I’m not sure people read postscripts that much, either. I mean, you’ve found out who committed the murder or whether Elizabeth Bennet married Mr Darcy. They were popular in the nineteenth century, of course – a whole chapter or two on what each character did next, whether they got their just deserts, whether they were happy, how many children they had.

  But the story’s finished when it’s finished in my view. There’s the final tableau, then the curtain falls and the audience goes out into the cold night, turning up their collars against the rain.

  I have not lost touch entirely with Elsie. Twice a year an A4 envelope still arrives with the accounts for the earlier books that are still under contract to her. A short time afterwards, a payment is made into my bank account, less fifteen per cent commission. And every now and then her assistant, Tuesday, phones with some query about a request for a book signing or new large-print rights. She is always very bright and cheerful, and seems unaware that my new books are all contracted to Francis and Nowak.

  When Elsie departed, she left behind her a Sainsbury’s bag containing two Kit Kats, a leather-bound notebook and a tape recorder. She has never asked for them back. The notes, though purporting to be a diary, increasingly took the form of a first draft of a book about the Vynall murder. I have therefore felt free to draw on them in producing this account of my last ever case. I did write and offer to share the royalties with her if I found a publisher, but I received no reply. Karen Rockingham’s sales as a crime writer are enormous and she is doubtless very busy. When I last heard, the agency was about to move into new and much grander offices.

  I was called as a witness, of course, at Henry Holiday’s trial. He cut a very sorry figure in the witness box – the round, red face just peeping over the rail, the old-fashioned waistcoats, the slightly grubby paisley bow ties. Everyone agreed that he was an improbable murderer. The second death threat letter, which he had carefully preserved, simply provoked mirth when produced in evidence – it was, with hindsight, a ludicrous fabrication. So, indeed, was the entire story he had spun to incriminate me – it was as crooked and full of holes as any of his plots. Henry produced the occasional flash of the old arrogance, but the main question on everyone’s lips was how he thought he would ever get away with it. It’s strange how, for a while, I actually thought that he might. But that’s what we writers do all the time – suspend disbelief for a short while and tell a story.

  Then the curtain falls.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many writers like to state in their acknowledgments that they could not have produced their book unaided. Obviously I could have done this one on my own, but it would have probably consisted of some A4 sheets of paper, badly stapled together, full of typos and with a number of holes in the plot. The version you have here is better in all respects. My thanks are therefore due to everyone at Allison and Busby and in particular to Susie Dunlop, publishing director, Sophie Robinson, Lydia Riddle and to Fliss and Simon Bage. I am also grateful, as ever, to my agent, David Headley, and to my family for their continued support, without which even the stapled A4 version would have been a challenge for me.

  I must also take this opportunity to apologise to the people of West Wittering for dumping another body on their doorstep. I would like to reassure potential visitors that on most days in West Wittering nobody is murdered at all. I should also like to apologise to the City of Chichester for suggesting that it is not as exciting or dangerous as Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles. Anyone who has negotiated the bypass at 8.30 in the morning will know that is untrue.

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  About the Author

  L. C. TYLER was born in Southend-on-Sea and then educated at Oxford and City Universities. His day jobs have included being a systems analyst, a cultural attaché and (for a few weeks one summer) working for Bomb Disposal. He has won awards for his writing, including the Last Laugh Award for the best comic crime novel of the year. He is Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and has been a CWA Daggers judge. L. C. Tyler has lived all over the world, but most recently in London and Sussex.

  lctyler.com

  By L. C. Tyler

>   Crooked Herring

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  12 Fitzroy Mews

  London W1T 6DW

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in 2014.

  This ebook edition first published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2014.

  Copyright © 2014 by L. C. TYLER

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–167–39