by Andrew Garve
I said, “Why would he do that?’’
“Perhaps because he hated Daddy. By backing up Shaw’s claim that the story was his, he’d be able to ruin Daddy professionally.’’
I could see now why she’d been reluctant! I said, “You mean you’re suggesting it was a frame-up—a conspiracy between Shaw and Blundell?’’
“It’s not impossible, is it?’’
“Shaw did it for the money he hoped to squeeze out of your father, and Blundell from spite?’’
“Yes.’’
“It sounds pretty far-fetched to me.’’
“It’s not as far-fetched as Daddy being a murderer.’’
“M’m …!’’ Everything came back to that. After a moment I said, “Well, did Blundell hate your father? I can see there wasn’t any love lost between them, but did he hate him?’’
“He might have. He always behaved as though he did—that’s what I gathered from Daddy, anyway. They used to be on some authors’ committee together, and Blundell was always complaining about the amount of time it took up and making nasty cracks about well-heeled writers who didn’t have to worry about how they were going to earn a living, and looking meaningly at Daddy. Blundell was one of those writers who have to turn out mountains of books in different names and slog away all the time, and he was very bitter and envious.’’
“Did you know him?’’ I asked.
“I met him once, that’s all. It was a year last April—the Mystery Writers’ Guild was holding an exhibition in London and Daddy was roped in to look after one of the stalls, and I went along to help him during the weekend and Blundell was there. He was a terribly grouchy old man—he wouldn’t even speak to Daddy.’’
I looked at her unhappily. “When did you think all this up—about Blundell and a conspiracy?’’
“I’ve practically just thought of it.’’
“Because you happened to see that correspondence again?’’
“Partly, I suppose … And the way you put things, there wasn’t anything else left.’’
“I’d say you were clutching at straws, Mary.’’
“Perhaps—but what else have I got to clutch at?’’
“It seems kind of tough on a dead man.’’
“Not nearly so tough as it’s been on Daddy. At least Blundell is dead. Daddy isn’t.’’
“Well, I must say it doesn’t sound very likely to me. However envious a character Blundell was, I can’t see him joining in a thing like that. The motive doesn’t seem strong enough.… You say he was old, too. Would an old man, who hadn’t long to live anyway, deliberately set out to destroy a younger one simply because the younger one had been luckier and earned a bit more money? Anyone who went as far as that would have to be absolutely eaten up with hatred—and not just ordinary hatred, but real pathological stuff … Is there the slightest evidence that Blundell had that sort of feeling about your father?’’
“I don’t know how much evidence there is,’’ Mary said stubbornly. “There might be quite a lot if we knew more about him.’’
“What you’re doing,’’ I said, “is working backward from your father being innocent, and it’s brought you to Blundell, and now you want to find evidence to fit.’’
“Yes—I admit that.’’
“And not only to fit Blundell, either. You’d have to be able to prove that Shaw knew about Blundell hating your father—otherwise he’d never have approached him.’’
“All right—we need to know more about Shaw, too.’’
She seemed so set on her theory now that I couldn’t just brush it aside—wild though I thought it. I must at least appear to give it a little consideration. I sat in silence for a while, letting my mind range freely over the idea of a frame-up and trying to put myself in Shaw’s position. It was a pretty bizarre field for speculation, but it was by no means without interest. The obvious starting point seemed to be the package that Shaw had sent to Galloway a year ago last February. On the frame-up assumption, I could see two possibilities about that. The first was that the package had contained some manuscript which Shaw had written and which he’d sent to Galloway for criticism in good faith. He’d then got a dusty answer. He’d felt resentful. He’d noticed that the ribbon round the manuscript hadn’t been untied. That had meant that Galloway hadn’t even looked at it—that no one had looked at it. The way had thus been wide open for Shaw to copy Galloway’s next book and then accuse him of plagiarism. That was one possibility. The other was that Shaw had already had a frame-up idea in his mind before he’d sent the package. That seemed the more likely, because otherwise I doubted if he’d have been so ribbon-conscious. He could have sent the package as a try-on, tying the ribbon in a special way so that he’d know whether it had been undone or not. The manuscript could have been one he’d had by him, or something he’d copied out of an old book. The whole thing would have been a gamble, because if the manuscript had come back opened, he’d have had to abandon any plan he’d had. But it wouldn’t have been too big a gamble, because he’d have known that the sort of demanding letter he’d written would probably put Galloway’s back up. The chances would have looked pretty good that he’d get the manuscript back unopened. After that he’d have been in a position to go ahead and bring Blundell into the plot.
I outlined my ideas to Mary, and we discussed them for a while.
“Of course,’’ I said, “there’s one very practical point we’re both overlooking. If it was a frame-up, Shaw would have had to digest your father’s book when it came out and rewrite it in his own words and type out a fair copy all in about four weeks, in order to be able to take it to your father on the boat when he did. Could he have done it in the time?’’
“I don’t see why not,’’ Mary said, “if he was all set for it. Daddy’s book was very short—only about forty-five thousand words.’’
“But Shaw’s wasn’t, by all accounts.’’
“No, his was longer, but the work couldn’t have been very exacting considering how he wrote. It must be easy to type thousands of words quickly if you’re not particular what words you use. And for all we know, Blundell might have given him some help in the week or two before he died.’’
“H’m …!’’ I pondered. “There’s not a scrap of real evidence against either of them, is there? Actually, Shaw’s behavior struck me as pretty genuine, on the whole. Look at the way he had to go and search out Blundell’s letter, for instance, after he told your father about it. There was no question of his coming to the boat prepared to prove his point.’’
“That could have been a sort of double bluff,’’ Mary said. “He was probably very clever.’’
“If he worked out a plot like this,’’ I said, “he must have been a near-genius.… There’s another thing. Did you ever see the original manuscript of Shaw’s—the actual one he was supposed to have submitted to your father and Blundell?’’
“Yes, I saw it soon after Daddy’s arrest, with the lawyers.’’
“What did it look like? Its condition, I mean.’’
“Well, it was pretty tatty.…’’
“Ah! Would it have been if Shaw had just typed it out from your father’s book?’’
“It might have been. He could have prepared all the sheets beforehand and fingered them until they looked old, and typed on them afterward. We’ve got to assume he thought of everything. That’s why Daddy’s in such a mess.’’
I grunted.
“Anyhow,’’ she said, “there’s something you haven’t mentioned at all, which I think supports the frame-up idea very strongly. The title that Shaw put on the manuscript he sent to Daddy—The Great Adventure. Do you realize that that was the one thing Daddy was bound to see even though he didn’t undo the ribbon—and that it was so vague it gave no idea of the contents at all? Don’t you think that’s significant? Obviously Shaw would have to be vague if he intended to make it the title of a story he was going to copy later but didn’t know anything about, not even the subject.’
’
That was, I felt, a point—the first real point Mary had made. But it was hardly a decisive one. Lots of titles were vague.
“Well,’’ I said after a moment, “where does all this get us?’’
Mary’s face, which had become animated during the discussion, clouded again. “I suppose it doesn’t get us anywhere very much,’’ she said. “I’d like to find out a lot more things about both Blundell and Shaw, but I wouldn’t know how to begin.’’
“What sort of things?’’
“Well, whether they knew each other, in the first place. Whether Shaw knew that Blundell disliked Daddy. Whether they met, and how often. Whether they corresponded with each other. And what they were really like, of course. Particularly Shaw. I’d like to know when he first started writing, and how much he did, and whether he talked about his work. I’d like to know whether he ever mentioned his plot to anyone while he was working on it, and where he got his technical information about underwater diving from. All about him, in fact.’’
“That’s a pretty tall order,’’ I said. “Particularly as both men are dead.’’
“I know it is.… Of course, it was a pretty tall order for you to track me down, wasn’t it?—but you managed it.’’
I smiled. It looked as though I’d got myself a job! I’d no objection to that—I was ready to have a crack at anything if there was the faintest hope it would produce results. But I didn’t want to make any firm promises till I’d thought about it a bit more.
I said, “What I’d like to do is read your father’s book and Shaw’s manuscript. Have you got either or both of them?’’
“I’ve got both.’’ She went to the bureau again and took out a book with a lurid cover showing two men fighting on the bed of the sea, and a wad of typescript. “Shaw’s story is just a carbon copy, of course.’’
I nodded, and put the things in my case. “Well—maybe I’ll do a bit of sleuthing,’’ I said. “But it’s no good pretending I believe in your Shaw-Blundell frame-up theory, because I don’t. Frankly, I think it’s moonshine.’’
“I know,’’ she said. “But then you don’t believe that Daddy’s innocent.’’
Chapter Six
The office was in a state of August lethargy when I reported for duty after lunch. Ames had already scraped the news barrel for the early staff and could think of nothing better for me to do than page through a stack of magazines for a bright idea. It was a perfect opportunity to catch up on my private reading. I raced through Full Fathom Forty in a couple of hours, switched to the manuscript of The Great Adventure in the early evening, and by clocking-of time had finished that too.
Both the stories were very much what I’d been led to expect. Galloway’s was a brisk, taut job and the excitement was held all the way. He was a professional storyteller who’d completely mastered his medium, and he also had an original turn of phrase now and again that gave his writing distinction. It was the sort of book that anyone would have been proud to write. Shaw’s manuscript, on the other hand, was woolly and verbose, with long purple passages of description that scarcely carried the story forward at all and great chunks of unlikely dialogue and never a short sentence where a long one would do. It bore all the marks of the undisciplined amateur who was suffering from a rush of words to the head—but the plot was fine. Stripped of its verbiage, it was exactly the same plot as Galloway’s.
By now I was quite sure that coincidence wasn’t the explanation of the similarity and that one of the two men had copied the other. True, there were no verbal resemblances, but the order of events, the events themselves, and the behavior and reactions of the main characters were the same. Both men had drawn on the same technical material. The question was, who had been first in the field? During my reading of the two stories I’d kept an eye open for any internal evidence of copying, any phrase or sentiment or attitude that seemed out of character for the writer. But I hadn’t been able to find any. Galloway had confident references to a number of places that seemed to suggest first-hand knowledge, and he also had a vivid description of a storm at sea as seen from a small boat which was almost certainly based on experience. Shaw hadn’t got those references. Shaw, on the other hand, had made one of his characters go to a record office to check up on some facts and had included some filing detail that only a librarian would have thought of or cared about. Galloway hadn’t got that. Whoever had copied whom had done an extraordinarily skillful job of selection and rejection. On the whole I’d have expected Galloway to be the more skillful, though of course I knew much less about Shaw. And perhaps it was a question of cunning rather than of skill.
Back at the flat I put the stories aside and began to think again about Mary’s frame-up idea. Without her around to argue its claims, it seemed more unlikely than ever. On its merits I could never have persuaded myself that it was worth following up. But its merits weren’t everything. Mary wanted it followed up. That was enough. Because she believed her father innocent and I didn’t, there was a tremendous gulf between us. Going to work on her theory would at least provide a temporary bridge. And there was always an outside chance that I might be lucky and discover something useful.
I already knew where Shaw had worked and lived. Now I dug out an old copy of the Authors’ Who’s Who and looked up the entry for Blundell. His address was given as Primrose Cottage, Bear Wood, Little Stamford, Essex. That seemed to be the obvious starting place for him. I turned up Little Stamford in a gazetteer and discovered that it was practically in Suffolk. It would take me a full day to drive out there and make my inquiries. As it happened I had the next day free so I decided to check on Blundell first. I’d have liked to take Mary along with me, but it seemed better not to. Anything we talked about would only be a conscious avoidance of the issue that divided us. And my inquiries would probably go more smoothly on my own.
First thing next morning I got the car out and drove off into Essex. It was a fine, sunny day and there was a good deal of traffic about, but it thinned out as I reached the lanes on the Essex-Suffolk border and I got to my destination well before lunch. Little Stamford turned out to be a delightful, pocket-sized village, with a triangular green, a pond, a few old timbered cottages, and a neat little pub called the Bell. I put my head inside the saloon bar, and there was no one there except the landlord. I went in and ordered a pint of old-and-mild and settled down for a quiet chat, as I’d done for the Post in hundreds of similar pubs before. I had no difficulty in getting all the general information I wanted about Blundell. Once I’d bought the landlord a drink and told him I was a reporter and was doing a series of articles about thriller writers, living and dead, I could get by with anything. All landlords know that all reporters are crazy, anyway.
Blundell, it appeared, had been a North Country man of Irish descent who had settled in the south during the thirties. At the time of his death he was a florid, heavily-built, slow-moving man, with a shock of white hair. The landlord guessed that his age had been something between sixty-five and seventy. He’d had a delicate wife whom everyone had liked, but she’d died about five years ago. Since then he’d had a succession of housekeepers, the last being a village woman named Mrs. Pearce. The Bell had been his “local’’ and it had been his habit to drop in most evenings and drink a glass or two of brandy. He’d been quite a celebrity in the district, but he hadn’t been very popular. It seemed he’d turned very cantankerous after his wife’s death, which was why his housekeepers hadn’t stayed with him—that, and the fact that Primrose Cottage was buried away in a wood nearly a mile from the village. Blundell had liked the solitude, but no one else had. He’d seemed in good health for his age right up to the last day and then he’d suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack. I asked if he’d ever brought any friends to the pub and the landlord said he had, once or twice, when he’d had people staying with him. I described Shaw, but the landlord said he couldn’t remember anyone like that. I asked what had happened about the cottage and the landlord said it was up for
sale and had been for months. It was a nice little place, he said, but because of its isolated position it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. As Blundell hadn’t had any children, it had passed, apparently to a brother in Leeds, a well-to-do manufacturer, who’d taken one look at it when he’d come down for the funeral and put it in the hands of an agent and not bothered about it any more. I asked if Mrs. Pearce was still around and the landlord said yes, she was housekeeping for a colonel at a house called The Oaks. He gave me directions and presently I moved on.
Mrs. Pearce was plump and placid. When I explained who I was and why I was interested she seemed quite ready to talk about Blundell. She’d spent just over a year with him, she said, and though she didn’t want to speak ill of the dead it was a fact that he’d been very difficult and crotchety and she didn’t think she’d have been able to stick it much longer. Toward the end he’d been drinking heavily, which he couldn’t really afford anyway, and it had seemed to make his temper worse and she’d had to warn him she wouldn’t stay in the cottage alone with him if he got drunk. Still, she had to admit the drink hadn’t prevented him from working hard—he’d been shut up in his room all morning and every morning and sometimes in the afternoons as well if the weather was bad. I asked her about his visitors and she said he hadn’t been a very sociable man and there’d only been about three visitors in her time, all of them old like himself. The description of Shaw meant nothing to her, I found, and neither did the name. She felt sure she’d never heard it mentioned, she said—not that Mr. Blundell had talked to her a lot about his affairs. I asked her if Blundell had spent much time away from home and she said he’d traveled up to London quite a bit, just for the day, but not regularly. I said hadn’t he ever spent a night away? and she said only when he’d gone to Cornwall once for a holiday. I asked her if she could remember whether he’d been to town much in the few weeks before his death, and she thought a bit and said, no, he hadn’t, because at that time he’d been working very hard on a story he’d been trying to get finished—which just went to show, because he’d never managed to finish it and it was still there in the house now. I said was the house still furnished, then, and she said, yes, it was just as Mr. Blundell had left it, because Mr. Blundell’s brother hadn’t done anything about selling his things.