Death of an Innocent (Richard and Amelia Patton)

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘You’ve got no romance in your soul,’ she said, not too seriously. ‘Your mind’s set on business — now isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m remembering why we’re here.’

  ‘There’s time for that. Relax. Make yourself at home.’

  I shrugged, smiling.

  She walked round the room, idly picking up pieces of porcelain I wouldn’t have dared to touch, and glancing at their bases. ‘It’s genuine stuff, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  She walked some more, then she came to a halt in front of me. ‘He’s changed, Richard.’ Her tone had changed, too. There was concern in it.

  ‘It’s twenty years,’ I reminded her.

  ‘All the same...there was always a bounce to him, a kind of eagerness to get on to the next important objective in his life. And somehow, he always gave the impression that you were it. The very centre of it. There was a sort of casual elegance about him. Proud, dogmatic, and charming with it.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have lost that.’

  ‘It’s not the same. He’s having to make an effort.’

  My hands were dirty, with the smoking I’d done on the journey. I wished he’d shown us where we could wash. I hadn’t noticed any dogmatism and pride in him. I said nothing. Philip had seemed almost resentful of our presence.

  ‘He was all lined up for entering politics, or trying the diplomatic service, I remember.’

  ‘Perhaps he hadn’t the drive.’

  ‘Or perhaps he was too open and sincere,’ she said supportively.

  ‘No use in politics, then.’

  ‘I never thought he would be,’ she admitted thoughtfully. ‘He could never stick to anything for long.’

  ‘Such as his women friends.’ Then I wished I hadn’t said it, catching Amelia’s sideways smile.

  ‘He seems to have stuck faithfully to Olivia,’ she murmured.

  As though it might have been a stage cue, she made her entrance. Olivia Dean, having cast aside Christobel Barnes — or perhaps it had been Lovella Treat — flung open the door, and maybe a flush of one of them still commanded her because it was a heroine’s entrance, centre-stage, theatrical and brimming over with emotion.

  ‘Darling!’

  ‘Livia!’

  Then they were in each other’s arms, then banging cheeks, standing back to observe what the ravishing years had destroyed or matured, and if there was a dry eye in the house it was Olivia’s.

  Having come directly from her den of creation, the muse was still with her. She had mentally rehearsed her entrance and greeting, and had now carried it through so that it was firmly recorded for posterity. But now it could be discarded, and she was all down-to-earth practicality in a moment.

  ‘You’ve put on weight, Mellie.’

  Mellie? There’d never been any hint of such a corruption of Amelia.

  ‘But not you, I see. You’re working yourself to a frazzle, Livia.’

  ‘I do six hours a day. Say stockbroker hours. It’s not painful. Did Philip offer you a drink? Oh, there he is. Philip, didn’t you offer them a drink?’

  ‘I asked Doris to put a kettle on,’ he told her mildly, grimacing an apology, shrugging his shoulders at me. Then he emerged fully from behind her and said: ‘What’ll you have? We can cover most eventualities.’

  ‘Unless,’ Olivia said severely, ‘you forgot to get in the sherry.’

  Then she turned to Amelia. ‘It’s still sherry before dinner, I assume, Mellie?’

  ‘Sherry,’ she agreed, and to me Philip raised his palms and tucked his lower lip between his teeth, like a naughty boy who’s forgotten to call in at the shops.

  Later, I realized he was addicted to these comic, self-denigrating gestures and expressions. They were intended to convey that his inadequacies were vastly overrated.

  The two women were now in excited discussion. Twenty years to be covered in a few minutes. With a glass of Amontillado in my fist, listening half-interestedly to Philip’s explanation that the new book was promised for the 1st of January, I was able to consider Amelia’s friend with interest.

  I had attempted not to frame a mental picture of a writer of women’s romantic fiction, but I hadn’t really succeeded. There had been an expectation of someone svelte and lissom, with large and captivating eyes and a luscious mouth. One whom a man might expect to be sultry and passionate, tingling on the edge of a collapse into emotional outbursts and sentimental sighs. Of course, I was wildly wrong.

  Olivia Dean was a short woman — two inches shorter than Amelia — stocky and widely-beamed, firmly planted on capable feet. She was at that time wearing her writing costume, slacks and sweater, and looked at the same time relaxed and competent. She had square features, with that squashed-up hint of trials and tribulations resolutely faced and trampled underfoot. At that moment she was excited and voluble, but her mouth wasn’t far from being set and uncompromising. She was a woman who knew what she was after and was determined to get it, whatever had to be sacrificed. She wanted to be the world’s premier romance writer. If she destroyed herself in doing so, she would leave behind a monument to achievement. And an epitaph: she knew what she wanted.

  And yet — wasn’t there a hint of humour, albeit turned against herself? What else would explain ‘Lovella Treat’? It suggested, even, a small self-contempt, to be hinted at. A modesty, perhaps, an underlying lack of self-confidence, like a not-quite-anonymous gift to charity, a plea for recognition.

  I was aware that Philip had stopped talking. When I turned to him he was smiling, head cocked. My turn. Say something, Richard. Charming place you’ve got here? But no, I hadn’t yet seen much of it.

  I said: ‘Amelia didn’t tell me. This burglary of yours — what exactly was taken?’

  His smile remained, but it was no more than a shape for his lips. His eyes were empty.

  ‘Well, that’s the worrying thing, you know. Nothing was taken.’

  2

  They gave us a corner room, at what they called the front. There had been a change in the weather — a variation in air pressure or something — so that the rain had ceased and the mist was held down as a thin layer. The moon, with a halo, gave enough light for me to view the prospect from the low and narrow window. Beneath us was a paved area, on which I should, no doubt, have run the car. At the far side of it there was a low wall with an opening in it, beyond which the ground seemed to slope into the mist. I guessed that the gradient ended at the water’s edge, because the tips of wet reeds caught a reflection of the moon, and just visible there was the roof and half the wall of what could have been a small boathouse.

  We had eventually been shown up here by Philip. There was an attached bathroom, so that bedroom and bathroom occupied the top floor of the original cottage. I couldn’t change for dinner, because my wet suit was still on the rear seat of the car, but I felt better after a shave and a bath, and inside the bathroom I could hear Amelia splashing about. I stared out at the flat grey view.

  They had done what they could with the upper storey, but nothing could disguise the fact that it was poked up beneath the roof. The ceiling was low, and the rafters at the outer wall protruded through the ceiling down to the top of the window. The floor creaked. Although the furniture was modern — two single beds, a bedside table, dressing-table, two wardrobes — and the decoration done in light and flowery pastels, the room still carried a taint of poverty. In the 1700s the tenants had used it as somewhere in which they could fall exhausted on to pallets, beyond caring about the oppression of the room. The tiny window would never have been opened, and their lives would have been governed by sunset and sunrise.

  I turned away. I was thinking myself into depression.

  ‘We haven’t heard much about this burglary,’ I called out. ‘After dinner, Richard. Don’t be so impatient.’

  ‘Did I tell you what Philip said?’

  ‘Two or three times.’

  I hadn’t been able to extract any more information from him, a
s we’d been drawn into a group of four, and as most of the chat had been about university days, I’d found myself odd man out.

  It was therefore with anticipation that I followed Amelia down to dinner. Over the meal, still nothing of what mainly interested me. Olivia was now firmly in charge. She spoke of foreign royalties, and the loss of revenue caused by the strength of the pound. She spoke of the possible serialization of one of her recent books. By the time we’d emptied two bottles of wine, the atmosphere was light and amusing. She had us laughing at her scandalous remarks about the recent Romance Writers’ Convention they had attended in Copenhagen.

  ‘All fritter and posture,’ she commented, her mouth suddenly sour. ‘No sense of occasion, no serious responses.’

  ‘It was,’ murmured Philip, ‘a social get-together. A bit of fun.’

  ‘It was a flop,’ she told him decisively.

  Philip caught my eye. His eyelid flickered and he dipped his head. I felt, uncomfortably, that I was being drawn into some sort of conspiracy against his wife, even a betrayal. But though I watched him when he was watching her, I could detect nothing but admiration.

  Amelia chattered in response. I recognized her mood. She’s an alert detector of atmosphere, and something was making her uneasy and nervous.

  I had no time to ask her about this, as, with the coffee, we split up. It was not so much a withdrawing of the ladies, leaving the men to their brandy and cigars, but the simple fact that Amelia and Olivia went to two easy chairs on one side of the room, and Philip led me to a similar arrangement on the other. It could have been planned. For us, it was brandy and pipes. I waited. He eventually offered an apology, when I could see no need for one.

  ‘Olivia,’ he said, sitting back, ‘should now be in one of her writing sessions. Eight to ten every evening. Drag her away from it, and she’s disorientated. Her time machine goes haywire — like jet-lag.’

  He was quite serious, but I could see nothing to justify this remark. Olivia was an ordinary housewife, gossiping with an old friend. Or so it appeared to me.

  ‘She’ll suffer for it later,’ he told me, as though he’d read my thoughts. ‘In her workroom she’s lost, gone into a strange land, dictating away. Ten o’clock, she’ll come out and say, “Brandy, Philip,” then she’ll click back to normal.’

  ‘It sounds grim work for her.’

  There were now none of his little mannerisms of mock apology. I realised these occurred only when he was dealing with Olivia. ‘Dealing with’ was about it. She sounded terrible to accommodate. He tapped his pipe stem against his teeth, in between a smile.

  ‘It’s all right when you get used to it. Two hours in the morning, two in the afternoon, two in the evening. It’s a rule. She says she has to treat herself as an office worker. She dictates. The plots come in her head and she just makes notes of what she wants in each chapter, then she dictates. To a tape recorder. There’s a young woman in the village who comes up every morning and takes the cassettes away, types up what there was, and brings it back the next day. It’s like a word factory.’

  I wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me, certainly some-thing, because his eyes were bright and never left mine. So this was not idle conversation.

  ‘It must be a great emotional strain,’ I murmured, to indicate I was listening.

  He shook his head gently. Greying, gingerish hair tumbled forward on to his forehead, and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. His smile was no longer pleasant. There was a hint of distaste in it.

  ‘She would tell you otherwise,’ he said softly. ‘There’s nothing emotional about it. She’s a pro. She says that with pride. It’s all a matter of knowing what to do. She knows what is necessary to create characters, and she can see clearly all the emotional conflicts that occur when she puts her characters together. She knows what words to use to describe those emotions. They’re not hers personally. She can write a torrid love scene in practical and excruciating detail, and still she’ll be unmoved. She can kill a character in tragic circumstances, and never shed a tear. She knows how to do it. She’s a wonderful woman,’ he finished, using minimal pride.

  I nodded. Looked down at my hands. Looked up. ‘Her sense of humour redeems her,’ I suggested.

  ‘I’ve known her enjoy a good laugh.’ He blinked. ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Lovella Treat.’

  ‘Oh...that!’ He sat back and laughed, a hushed affair, but he enjoyed it. ‘That was me. I suggested that. She said it was fine, and it ran off the tongue. She never did see the joke.’

  ‘So it was intended?’

  ‘A corruption of Love is a Treat. Yes. Intended.’

  So the sense of humour was his. But the joke had been aimed at his wife.

  ‘And you?’ I asked. ‘How do you fit into this book-writing machine?’

  He clearly didn’t want to be considered as a cog in any machine. He was a separate aspect in the business. His voice dropped a note or two and became sonorous, an economist’s voice, designed to impress.

  ‘Me!’ he said, waving a hand negligently. ‘I’m her accountant, her manager. It would be disturbing for her to have to get involved with figures and facts. She says she wants something, and I get it for her, from publicity to a bigger advance, foreign sales, a new car.’

  ‘Don’t you ever get a break?’

  ‘Oh yes. Between books. We go to our place at Antibes. She can wind down. Me too. Anonymous. No encroachment. We look for locations, me with a camera to record them. It’s not all go, go, go. I have...’ He stared at his pipe bowl, ‘as you’ll realize, six hours a day.’

  He made a mockery even out of his difficulties. I guessed that for a full twenty-four hours a day he maintained sentry duty on this empire, resisting anything that might intervene and destroy it all.

  ‘Sounds harrowing,’ I observed, wondering whether he was asking for sympathy. If so, he’d got no chance. He had an equal share in all the goodies. ‘And no possibility of retirement,’ I said with sympathy.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Writers don’t retire. They just run out of ideas.’

  He gave another of his soft, breathy laughs. ‘No fear of that. She’s only got half a dozen, and keeps doing variations. It can go on for ever.’

  I couldn’t understand, then, the challenging tilt of his head. I abruptly changed the subject. ‘Was that a boathouse I saw from the bedroom window?’

  He was startled. ‘Well...yes.’

  ‘A boat in it?’

  ‘Oh, certainly. A dinghy, with an outboard. She said, one day, why didn’t I buy myself a boat. So I did.’

  ‘Use it?’

  ‘I potter around. In the summer, you understand.’

  His little retreat from the pressures. ‘Certainly in the summer.’

  We were running dry. Conversation lapsed. I couldn’t understand what Amelia had seen in him. Yes, I could. Be fair. He had charm and grace, and a sense of humour I could go along with. Dry and deceptive. Yet still there had been nothing said about the burglary. He resented its intrusion as he did ours. It was an indication that his defences had been breached.

  Then the women were coming to their feet, so we joined them.

  ‘Doris goes home at eight,’ said Olivia. ‘I wanted the house to be quiet and empty.’ Then she led the way to the kitchen.

  This, like every other room, occupied the whole lower floor of one of the original cottages. So it was a large kitchen, but now thoroughly and hygenically modernized. Doris had left it clean and sparkling. There was not even a lingering smell of cooking. I wondered why we’d been brought in here.

  Olivia had seemed to be relaxed, but now I could feel her tension. She moved restlessly, one elbow clasped in her other palm, a cigarette poised in front of her face. Without any preamble, she launched into a prepared narrative.

  ‘Last month, October, we went to Copenhagen on an International Romance Writers’ Convention. As I’ve said, a dreadful waste of time. About the be
ginning of the month. When was it, Philip?’

  ‘The tenth.’

  ‘Thank you, dear. The tenth, for a week. We locked up securely. There are valuable items in this house. You’ll have noticed. But we have an alarm system, connected directly with the police station. We’re a bit isolated. When we came back, we’d been burgled.’

  She made it a dramatic statement. Although she had intended her speech to be flat and unemotional, at the end her voice hadn’t been steady.

  ‘But I understand that nothing was taken,’ I said equably. ‘Philip told me.’ She shot a quick, angry glance at Philip, but I gave her no chance to interrupt. ‘So strictly speaking you’ve had a breaking and entering, not a burglary.’

  ‘Thank you for that information.’

  ‘In case you needed to use it in a book,’ I explained.

  ‘My readers don’t care about such details.’ She was edgy with impatience.

  ‘And you’re sure nothing was taken?’

  ‘Do you think...’ She controlled herself, glancing at the floor. ‘We went from one end to the other, top to bottom, every room. Not a page of manuscript disturbed, not an ornament moved. Nothing.’

  ‘But you didn’t inform the police, I understand.’

  ‘When nothing was taken?’ she demanded, her voice strident. ‘And when the alarm never even went off!’

  ‘It’s a point,’ Amelia put in quickly, covering her friend’s lapse in manners, embarrassed by it.

  But I’m immune to aggressive display. I went on steadily. ‘So how did he get in?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  I looked from Olivia to Philip. He shrugged. She, her lips mobile, was struggling for control.

  ‘Then I’d better find out,’ I said, ‘before we go any further. Have you got a torch, Philip?’

  ‘There’s one here,’ he offered, opening a drawer.

  ‘Thank you.’ I tried it. The batteries were fresh. ‘I’ll have a general look around, if you don’t mind.’

  Philip nodded. Olivia, obviously believing I didn’t accept one word of it and was humouring them, turned away. All three sat at the table. Philip suggested tea or coffee. No takers. They sat, as I began in the kitchen still wondering why we’d been brought there.