by Simon Brett
Carlton Rutherford reckoned that, because all his research was already done, he had a head start. But only if he got down to the writing straight away. He knew that experienced journalists could – and frequently did – paste-and-scissor together celebrity biographies over a weekend.
He was greatly reassured as soon as he started the actual writing. So exhaustive had been his chronicling of Bartlett Mears’ life that he could copy out most of his notebooks verbatim. The book was virtually written; all it needed was a little judicious editing, to take out the only-mildly-scurrilous incidents and bring the thoroughly scurrilous ones closer together.
He worked flat out for three weeks and the draft was done. It was the most searing indictment of a human being he had ever read.
One thing still niggled, though. Dashiel Loukes had been right. No biography of Bartlett Mears would really be complete without an infusion of Mariana Lestrange’s distinctive vituperation. Her public set-tos with her former husband were well chronicled; but she was bound to have a store of character-destroying reminiscence of their life together. That was the dash of venom which the biography required.
He got her phone number from a literary editor who gave him occasional reviewing work. She answered the phone with the brusqueness of someone who jealously guards her privacy, but when Carlton Rutherford announced his mission, her manner changed.
Yes, she would be delighted to tell him anything he wanted to know. No fate was bad enough for that bastard Bartlett Mears.
Mariana Lestrange lived in Hampstead. Of course she did. Bartlett Mears still lived in Hampstead, come to that. So did the majority of the glamorous literati with whom he had had affairs before, during and after his second marriage. The supply of them in Hampstead was so constant, he’d rarely felt the need to look elsewhere.
She received the biographer in her imposing sitting room. One of its walls was shelved with British and overseas editions of her novels; another with international awards and citations.
‘So,’ Mariana Lestrange purred in her famously sexy voice, ‘you want all the real dirt on Bartlett Mears . . .?’
She must have been nearly sixty, but was still very beautiful. Tall, slender, with a surprisingly ample bosom, she wore her artfully blonded hair as a frame to the small face whose nose would have been too large on someone less striking.
Carlton Rutherford felt a little uneasy in her presence. He always reacted that way to women of obvious sexual attraction. The state of his virginity remained precisely as it had been in 1959.
‘Yes,’ he said nervously. ‘Anything you’re prepared to tell me. Obviously, I know all the stuff that’s been in the papers, but, er, anything more intimate would be . . . very welcome . . .’
‘Hm. Who’s publishing your book?’ she asked sharply.
‘Well, er . . . The thing is, that’s not quite decided yet . . .’
‘Ah, I see. You mean it’s going to be auctioned.’
Carlton Rutherford did not disabuse her of this error. For a writer of Mariana Lestrange’s stature, auctions would be a regular occurrence. She knew nothing of the end of the market where publishers don’t fight over books, but have to be cajoled into accepting them, and even then frequently don’t.
‘Well, where shall we start . . .?’ Mariana purred on. ‘Impotence the first night I agreed to make love to him . . .? Or Bartlett peeing over the bed in our honeymoon suite . . .? Or the time he hit me so hard he broke my jaw . . .?’
‘Oh, any of those. All of those. It all sounds wonderful!’ Carlton Rutherford responded gleefully. ‘Fire away!’
So Mariana Lestrange fired away. She produced a savage catalogue of meanness, drunkenness, sexual malpractice, infidelity, theft and cringing deceit. She enumerated her former husband’s disgusting personal habits – his practice of stubbing out cigarette butts in coffee cups, his self-pitying hypochondria, his pill-gulping, his nose-picking, his farting, his belching, his snoring, his halitosis and the revolting state in which he left his underwear.
The resentment born of five years’ cohabitation seemed not to have mellowed one iota with the passage of time. Only the tiniest of prompts was required to bring it once again bubbling to the surface.
Carlton Rutherford’s pen could hardly move quickly enough across the page to record this cataract of domestic villainies. With each new revelation he hugged himself, gleefully envisaging where it could be inserted into his narrative.
Dashiel Loukes had been right. This was the secret ingredient that the biography needed. There is nothing like total character assassination to send a book rocketing up the bestseller lists.
At times Mariana Lestrange’s account sounded so vicious, the antics she described so evil, that Carlton Rutherford almost suspected her novelist’s instinct was fictionalizing for his benefit, but if ever he asked a hesitant ‘Did he really do that?’, she snapped back, ‘Of course! I know. I lived with the bastard!’
He’d thought he was doing all right before, but after the interview with Mariana Lestrange, he knew he’d really got the dirt.
It took him less than a week to thread this new vein of vindictiveness into his text. At the end of that time, Carlton Rutherford checked carefully through his manuscript before delivering it personally to Dashiel Loukes’ office. According to the agent’s unnervingly pretty assistant, her boss was still out at lunch. Carlton Rutherford thought this slightly odd at five forty-five in the afternoon, but did not question it.
He went back to Upper Norwood to await the reaction to his literary bombshell.
At least this time their meeting merited lunch. Dashiel Loukes took him to the Groucho Club and, bathed in the sunlight of the upstairs dining room, gave his verdict.
‘Sorry, old boy. Not a chance in hell of placing it.’
‘But come on, it’s good. All that detail – fascinating stuff. You can’t say I haven’t got all the dirt, can you?’
‘No. Certainly not. No, it’s the most compulsive manuscript I’ve read for years. I was up half the night reading it – absolutely riveting.’
‘Well then . . .?’
‘It’s your old problem, Carlton. Just like it was with Neither One Thing Nor The Other . . .’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Libel, old boy, libel. Your manuscript has got something actionable on every page.’
‘But it’s all true! It’s all substantiated. I actually witnessed a lot of it.’
‘Surely you didn’t witness the incident in the gents’ lavatory with Joe Orton . . .? Or the benedictine-drinking contest with David Niven . . .? Or that business with Malcolm Muggeridge and the spatula . . .?’
‘No, I wasn’t actually there, but it’s all true! I got it from Mariana. Anyway, Joe Orton’s not going to pop up from the grave to deny it. Nor’s David Niven likely to—’
‘I agree, old boy. No problems with them. They’re all safely dead and you can’t libel the dead. No, it’s Bartlett himself who’s likely to make a stink – absolutely guaranteed to make a stink, I’d say.’
‘But it all happened! Mariana Lestrange said he even used to boast about a lot of it.’
‘Boasting in private about it is very different from sanctioning the printing of this kind of unsubstantiated gossip.’
‘Dashiel, how many times do I have to tell you – it’s all fully substantiated!’
‘Carlton, the bottom line is that I’ve consulted a top libel lawyer whom I’ve used many times before. He’s read your manuscript and he says it’s absolute dynamite.’
‘But it’s good,’ the author wailed plaintively.
‘I’m not denying it. It’s very good. Easily the most readable thing you’ve ever done.’ Carlton Rutherford decided not to rise to this implied slight to the rest of his oeuvre, as the agent went on, ‘But the fact remains that it’s good dynamite. No publisher will touch it.’
‘But—’
‘No, old boy, you have to face the truth. There is no chance of publication for this book while Bartlet
t Mears is alive!’
From that moment Carlton Rutherford realized that he would have to commit murder.
The idea didn’t worry him at all. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he relished the prospect.
The manner of Bartlett Mears’ killing did not really matter, so long as he ended up safely dead. But self-preservation dictated that Carlton Rutherford should use a method which could appear to any investigating authorities as an accident.
He did not have to look far to find it. Details that he knew of his quarry’s personal habits – his smoking, his drinking, his addiction to a variety of pills – they all pointed in the same direction.
Bartlett Mears would die in a fire at his home.
It was hard for Carlton Rutherford – or anyone else – to avoid knowing his victim’s tall Victorian Hampstead house, so frequently was it featured in colour supplements and television profiles of its owner.
Bartlett Mears took the image of the impractical artist to extremes and was nationally known to live in a state of paper-strewn chaos. Coupling this fact with his heavy drinking and smoking – not to mention his reliance on sleeping pills – what was more likely than that a casually discarded cigarette butt should ignite a pile of papers in his house and cause a life-ending conflagration . . .?
Carlton Rutherford began surveillance of the murder scene, and soon discovered that Bartlett Mears never walked anywhere. If he was going out, a taxi would arrive to take him to his destination; and on his sodden return a late-evening taxi would pour him out on to his doorstep. Then he would presumably take a few more drinks to anaesthetize himself further before falling into bed and – usually – remembering to turn out the light of his first-floor bedroom.
Obviously the fire would have to take place at night. At that time its victim’s stupor and the lack of witnesses would give the conflagration a chance to take a good hold before emergency services could be summoned. But a little planning was required to ensure that a really good blaze was quickly achieved.
One day, when Bartlett Mears had been taxied away for a long lunch (all his lunches were long ones), his nemesis – Carlton Rutherford – slipped through the side gate of the house and examined the dustbins in the passage.
He quickly found what he wanted. In common with many other writers, Bartlett Mears was a member of a whole raft of literary organizations like the Society of Authors, PEN and the Writers’ Guild. Also in common with many other writers, Bartlett Mears immediately consigned the literature of these organizations – the Author, Pen International, the Writers’ Newsletter – unopened and unread into his dustbin. Carlton Rutherford did not have to search long to find a sheaf of solid envelopes all printed with his quarry’s name and address.
Once he had secured these, and bought vodka, cigarettes and matches, his preparations were complete. It was just a matter of waiting for the right moment to put his plan into action.
The television gave him his cue. One Tuesday he was watching the end of Newsnight and heard the presenter say, ‘Tomorrow evening in Newsnight we’ll be discussing the pros and cons of the Net Book Agreement, and amongst those giving his – no doubt trenchant – views will be the author Bartlett Mears.’
It was typical that the BBC should try to enliven an extremely dull topic by bringing in Bartlett. Whatever the subject, he could always be relied on to say something outrageous – particularly at such a late hour when his day’s drinking would really have started to build up. He was bound after the programme to have a few more drinks in one of the BBC hospitality suites, before rolling into the car that would decant him in Hampstead.
Carlton Rutherford felt almost uncannily calm the following evening as he sat in his little flat in Upper Norwood, watching Newsnight. Bartlett Mears behaved predictably. He was rudely dismissive of other eminent authors, gratuitously offensive to the rather pretty girl conducting the interview, and he used the word ‘shit’ twice to ensure that the BBC switchboard would be briefly jammed by offended listeners. It was in fact the performance for which he had been booked.
Carlton Rutherford was still calm as he got into his dilapidated Austin Allegro and drove easily across London to Hampstead. As he had anticipated, his quarry had refreshed himself for a while with BBC hospitality, and Carlton had been parked opposite the house waiting for a full hour before the chauffeur-driven car arrived.
Bartlett Mears staggered out, with no word of thanks to the driver, and fumbled with his keys for a while before managing to open the front door.
Still icy calm, Carlton Rutherford waited another full hour for Bartlett Mears’ nightcaps to be consumed and for the bedroom light to be switched off.
He gave it another half-hour, then got out of the car and sauntered across to the house opposite.
He doused some of the envelopes of literary literature with vodka, and slipped them through the letter box. Then, casually, he lit a cigarette, drew on it a few times to get it thoroughly going, and dropped that through.
He waited.
At first he thought he had failed and was on the point of starting again, when he was rewarded by a reflected orange glow on the hall ceiling.
Gently, he dropped through more of the envelopes to build up a substantial bonfire.
Then, even more gently, he trickled the contents of the second vodka bottle in through the letter box, careful to restrict its flow so that it would not douse the growing fire, but rather spread across the carpet, warm up slowly and ignite.
He stayed on the doorstep for two more full minutes, until he could feel the heat of his blaze through the wood of the front door; then sauntered back to his Austin Allegro.
He was back in Upper Norwood, in bed and asleep, within the hour.
He slept well, and was wakened by the Today Programme’s seven o’clock news on his clock radio.
It was exactly as he had wished. The last item of the bulletin announced the death of the popular author Bartlett Mears, in a fire which had gutted his Hampstead house.
Carlton Rutherford leaped out of his lonely bed, and danced a little jig of triumph which left him flushed and breathless.
It was agony to wait till ten, when he reckoned Dashiel Loukes would have arrived in his office. Back in the sixties, when Carlton Rutherford had been one of the white hopes of the agency, Dashiel would have encouraged the author to ring him at home. But those days were long past, and the agent had moved upmarket through a good few addresses since then. His favoured espionage authors were granted his current home number, but for lesser mortals it remained firmly ex-directory.
Eventually the hands of Carlton Rutherford’s clock radio moved round to ten o’clock, and he rang through to Dashiel Loukes’ office.
‘I’m afraid,’ said the dauntingly pretty assistant, ‘that Mr Loukes is busy on another call.’
‘Well, get him off it!’ snapped the author, confident of his sudden value to the agent. ‘Tell him it’s Carlton Rutherford on the line!’
His confidence had not been misplaced. Dashiel Loukes was through to him immediately, almost fawning in his delight to have made contact with one of his most potentially lucrative authors.
‘Carlton, terrific to hear you! Just about to ring you! I assume you’re calling about what I think you’re calling about . . .?’
‘I would imagine so. Rather changes the situation, doesn’t it?’
‘That, old boy, is the understatement of the year! Wonderful thing is – there’ll now be a whole rash of Bartlett Mears books commissioned, and we’ve stolen a march on the lot of them, because our manuscript is already finished!’
It was interesting to hear how your manuscript had suddenly become our manuscript, but Carlton Rutherford was too excited to comment. ‘So what’s the next step?’
‘The next step, old boy, is that I set up the most almighty auction that London has seen for a long time. Bartlett Mears sells in the States too, and he’s translated everywhere. We are talking about a really big international book here. It’s going
to be the title at Frankfurt, no question. We are talking big, big bucks. You’ve really come up with the goods this time, Carlton Rutherford!’
Those were the words that all of his literary life, the author of Neither One Thing Nor The Other had longed to hear.
Radio and television were heavy that day with reminiscences, assessments and tributes to Bartlett Mears. Death changes many people’s tunes and all of his fellow authors spoke with inordinate affection for ‘the old rogue’.
Carlton Rutherford hugged himself as he listened. Just wait, he thought deliciously, just wait till my book comes out. That’ll really set the record straight.
More details emerged about the accident which had so prematurely robbed the eminent author of his life. The general view seemed to be that, given the chaos in which Bartlett Mears had always lived, the only surprise was that an accident of that sort had not happened before.
The one shocking piece of additional information that emerged was that Bartlett had not been the only victim of the conflagration. He had not been alone in the house at the time of his death.
There had been a woman with him.
Her body had been so charred that immediate identification had not been possible.
By the end of the day, however, news bulletins carried the startling news that the other victim had been Mariana Lestrange.
Carlton Rutherford was surprised by this information, but strangely unmoved. So . . . he had murdered two people rather than one. The literary world had lost another of its stars. It was something for which he could not grieve.
He did wonder idly what Mariana had been doing in her ex-husband’s house. He favoured a theory that she had been there to sort out some financial detail left over from their marriage, which Bartlett, typically inefficient, had neglected.
The strong rumour around literary circles that the two writers had actually been found in bed together, Carlton Rutherford refused to countenance.
He was not going to admit any thought to his mind that might threaten the sunny feeling of satisfaction that so benignly reigned there.
The following Sunday, needless to say, the quality papers – and even much of the gutter press – were full of tributes, appreciations and assessments of Bartlett Mears.