by John Harvey
For once the forecast hadn’t lied. The sun at mid-morning was bright enough for Kiley to wish he’d brought sunglasses, instead of which he was forced to narrow his eyes against the light. Kate’s friend turned out to be an artist named Arthur Neal, whose strong and colorful paintings Kiley had surprised himself by liking a great deal.
Leaving them to their conversation he made his way along a gently winding stretch of Georgian terraced houses and from there down onto the front. The retirement home was a few hundred meters north along the promenade, a generous-looking red brick building set back behind well-trimmed lawns. After signing in the visitors book at the reception desk, a pleasant-faced woman in an ill-fitting uniform—part-nurse, part-warden—led him to where the former publisher was sitting at the side of the building, rug loose across his knees, eyes closed, catching the sun.
“Mister Swift … Henry … You’ve got a visitor.”
The old man—not so very old really, according to Google in his early eighties—opened an eye and let it fall closed. Kiley brought a folding chair over from where it was leaning against the wall and joined him.
“I thought she’d woken me up,” Swift said, “to give me another lecture on the risks of skin cancer. Actinic keratosis. Basal cell carcinoma. Never seems to occur to them any little thing that hastens the inevitable might be welcome. Save all the trouble and expense of organizing a one-way ticket to Switzerland. Assisted suicide capital of the world. What can I do for you, Mister …?”
“Kiley. Jack Kiley.”
“Jack, then. I’m Henry.”
“William Pierce, Henry, you were his publisher?”
Swift’s head swiveled slowly. “Please don’t tell me you’re another mature student, cobbling together a Ph.D. from our poetic yesterdays? The Open University has a great deal to answer for.”
“If it makes you feel happier, my last brush with formal education was a little over thirty years ago. More passed than failed but it was a close thing.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m a private detective.”
Swift gave him a quick, approving smile. “Here to learn where the bodies are buried, no doubt.”
“Are there bodies?”
“In publishing? Quite a few. Stabbed in the back, mostly. Skeletons, by now. Metaphorical for the most part, but not all.”
“Many in Pierce’s cupboard?”
“Skeletons? No more than to be expected. Savage bastards, poets.”
“Pierce included?”
Swift shrugged. “No better, no worse than most.”
“You stuck with him, though. As a publisher, I mean.”
“And as a friend.”
“If there were any old unpublished manuscripts rattling round, you’d have known?”
Laughter rattled around Swift’s chest and emerged as a rasping cough.
“That old chestnut, is it? Thought that had been done and buried years ago. William’s brush with the pot-boiler trade.”
“There was a book, then? A manuscript, at least.”
Swift pulled the rug higher with an arthritic hand. “Talk of a book, there was plenty of that. Late at night, the bottle down to its final dregs. How William was going to take on the Yanks and beat them at their own game. Jonathan Latimer. Mickey Spillane. He even had a title. Something about dames.”
“Dead Dames Don’t Sing.”
“That’s it. With a title like that, he used to say, stick the right picture on the cover and it’ll sell a million. Just one problem, I used to tell him, you can’t just have a cover, you’ve got to have a story to go with it. And he’d tell me this yarn about a jazz singer and a black G.I. who’d hung around in Soho after the war. At which point I’d say that’s all very fine, but it’s not enough to have that all in your head, you’ve got to get it down on paper. And he’d wave his hands around and say tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow and pour himself another drink.” Swift paused for breath. “We all know what happens to tomorrow.”
“So it never got written, that’s what you’re saying?”
“Oh, some maybe. A little. A chapter or two. Nothing more Nothing that I ever saw.”
“And he couldn’t have finished the book and taken it to someone else instead? Another publisher?”
“Someone less literary, you mean? It’s not impossible. There were enough to be found, bottom feeders happy to swim in the muck. Writers, too. Hacks who’d turn around a manuscript in four or five weeks, three at a push. Science fiction, westerns, fantasy, crime. 128-page paperbacks, 50,000 words. The sort of work that called for one thing William never had and that was discipline, the kind that keeps you at your desk for up to eight hours a day. Sonnets, they were more his cup of tea. Fourteen lines you could worry away at between lunch and heading off back down to the pub.”
A sudden flurry of coughing bent the older man almost double and sent Kiley inside in search of water. Swift drank in small sips and dabbed a tissue at his eyes.
“Go days practically without speaking and then when I do, this happens.” Reaching out a crippled hand, he patted Kiley gently on the knee. “Piece of advice. Don’t get old. And don’t take my word for any of this. There must be one of two of the old crowd still alive. Fitzrovia. Soho. The Wheatsheaf, that’s where a lot of them used to congregate, Rathbone Place. Later it was the Highlander in Dean Street—changed its name since—a lot of film people used to drink in there. Where William met her, of course, that actress he had a bit of a fling with. The one who was going to be in the movie he was sure was going be made from his novel. After it had topped the best seller lists, of course.”
Swift shook his head.
“Bit of a fantasist, William. All right for a poet, desirable in fact; not so good when it comes to real life.”
A fantasist, Kiley thought, as he stood his chair back up against the wall: where he had heard that before?
When they met at the station, Kate had a carefully bubble-wrapped and brown-papered package, the size and thickness of a large, fat book under one arm. He didn’t ask. She’d also brought home-made scones from the Neals’ kitchen and a Thermos of coffee; the flask to be returned at a later date.
“Good day?” Kiley asked.
“Lovely. You?”
“Interesting.”
At Ramsgate they changed trains, the last vestige of sun faltering gradually towards evening. The coffee was black and strong, the scones rich with butter and black currant jam. Kiley thought about Henry Swift, living out his last years alone but looked after, in sight and sound of the sea. On a good day, if he screwed his eyes up tight, he would just be able to spy the coast of France. Better that, Kiley thought, than taking a flight to Switzerland and never coming back.
Alongside him, Kate was just starting chapter 32 of David Copperfield: The Beginning of a Long Journey.
Leaning across, Kiley squeezed her hand, kissed her hair.
“What’s brought that on?” she asked.
Kiley grinned. “I don’t suppose there’s any more coffee in that flask?”
It wasn’t until they were passing through Canterbury and Kate looked up from her book long enough to admire the spire of the cathedral, that Kiley told her about his conversation with Pierce’s former publisher.
“A thing with an actress,” Kate said, her interest piqued. “I wonder who that might have been?”
“Someone who frequented the Highlander, whoever she was.”
“The Nellie Dean, as
it is now.”
“I was thinking, that writer friend of yours … didn’t she do a book set in Soho?”
“You mean Cathi?”
“Unsworth, yes. Bad Penny Blues, that what it was called? “
Kate nodded.
“Isn’t she involved in some organization that’s got something to do with Soho back in the fifties? I remember you going to a talk there once.”
“The Sohemians, yes.”
“Maybe you could ask her? If she doesn’t know herself, she might be able to point you at someone who does.”
“And I should do this why?”
“Because you like being Nora to my Nick?”
Kate’s face broke into a smile. “You did read that book I gave you.”
“Thin Man, thin book. Just about my size.”
“You said it. Now let me finish this chapter. Old Mr. Peggotty is about to set off alone in search of his niece.”
“Good luck with that.”
Kiley’s mobile started ringing as they were crossing the station concourse at St. Pancras. Kate brushed his cheek with hers and continued walking. Disembodied, Alexandra’s voice sounded oddly childlike, a child playing dress-up.
“You checked out, Jack. Your pal at Scotland Yard.”
“So I can see your father’s manuscript?”
“Maybe.”
“I thought we had a deal? My credentials are okay I get first sight of the manuscript. Everything seems kosher, I advise Daniel accordingly.”
“Aren’t you forgetting the other little matter, Jack? Part of your job description, I’m sure.”
“And what would that be?”
“Just how far am I to be trusted? In your professional judgment, that is.”
“It’s an interesting question.”
“And have you arrived at any conclusion?”
“Not so far.”
“Then why don’t you come round a little later? Check me for probity and, just maybe, if you’re very good, see the manuscript at the same time.”
She was laughing at him and for now he didn’t care. The address she gave him was in Kensington, a short distance from the Royal Albert Hall. She was still laughing as he closed the phone.
The apartment was on the top floor of a mansion block, with views out across Kensington Gardens. High ceilings, deep rooms. Both sides of a broad hallway were hung with framed photographs Alexandra had taken: portraits of celebrities along one side, mostly from the arts: the actor, Bill Nighy, Kiley recognized; the painter Frank Auerbach—this latter only thanks to a show at Tate Britain Kate had dragged him round not once, but three times. Opposite were city shots, buildings from strange angles, distortions, odd diagonals, unsuspected patches of color.
“You much into photography, Jack?”
“I like a good snap as much as anyone.”
Alexandra tilted back her head and laughed, the movement softening the outline of her face.
“Does anyone really go for that act, Jack?”
“Which act is that?”
“Your straight-talking, call-a-spade-a-spade, don’t-waste-any-of-those highfaluting-ideas-on-me act.”
“Once in a while, yes.”
“Kate Keenan included?”
Kiley shook his head. “Smart woman, Kate. Sees through me like glass.”
“And takes you to her bed just the same. Or so I’ve been led to believe. Clearly more to you, Jack, than meets the eye.” The smile was coy and knowing at the same time. “When you’ve finished admiring my portfolio, come on through.”
Furniture and fittings were arranged as artfully as one of her photographs—facing settees, low table, chairs—move anything even a little to one side and the whole thing risked falling into disarray. And like her photographs the colors were mostly muted, monochrome, offset by scarlet cushions, a side wall of brightest blue.
Alexandra stood close against the window, partly silhouetted against a purple sky. She was wearing a white top that was part vest, part something else; skinny blue jeans, bare feet. There was a tattoo, indistinct, on the inside of her right arm.
“A drink, Jack?”
“Why not?”
She left the room, leaving Kiley to admire the view, and returned with two heavy-bottomed glasses and a bottle of Bushmills’.
“You could try the settee, Jack, it’s not as uncomfortable as it looks.”
Partly through genuine interest, Kiley asked about the photography, how and why she’d started, if she’d studied and where; whether it had been difficult at first to get her work accepted by the bigger magazines. Any counter questions about himself, his own work, he deflected, turning the conversation back around.
Alexandra reached across and refilled his glass. The Bushmills’ had a slightly honeyed taste that made it seem as you were scarcely drinking alcohol at all.
“I went to see your sister,” Kiley said.
“Made you feel welcome, I’m sure.”
“She was a little formal, thinking back.”
“Stand too close there’s a good chance of getting frostbite. It’s a recognized fact. Fingers first, then toes.”
“She thinks you’re out to sabotage the launch of her novel.”
“As if. Besides, she’s more than capable of doing that herself. Can you imagine Frederica schmoozing the press? A PR disaster of significant proportions.”
“Maybe the book will speak for itself?”
“These days, it takes a lot more than that. If she were to maneuver herself into a threesome with a couple of Premiership footballers, or come swinging out of the cross-gender closet, that might manage to shift a few copies, but otherwise . … If she’s lucky it’s a couple of half-way decent reviews, a profile in the Telegraph no one’s going to read, and, just maybe, a shot at the Booker long list.”
“No love lost between you, would that be the right expression?”
“I could think of others.”
“As I understand it, your father appointed Frederica his executor some little time before he died. She says if any unpublished manuscript existed she would have known about it for certain.”
“Well, she would, wouldn’t she? And besides, it’s hardly the kind of thing he would have talked to Frederica about. He’d have been able to judge her reaction only too well, known she’d disapprove.”
“Did he ever discuss it with you?”
“Not really, no. Not in any detail. Just, you know, when he’d been drinking some time. It never occurred to me that he’d actually put in the time, committed his ideas to paper. Until I saw it with my own eyes.”
“And that was when?”
“Earlier this year. In Cornwall. Just outside St. Just. Miller’s Cottage. It belonged to my mother, her side of the family. We used to go there on holiday when we were children. Sometimes my father would go down on his own, squirrel himself away whenever things got too hectic at home and he needed time and space for his poetry. It must have been where he wrote the novel as well.”
“And what? It was hidden away in a drawer somewhere?”
“The loft space. We scarcely used the cottage anymore and it was falling into disrepair, so we were going to put it with an agency, rent it out. Holidays. There were things that needed doing before that could happen and Frederica reckoned she was too busy. So I went down to make an inventory, see what was worth keeping, what wanted throwing away. There’d been some kind of leak and the man I called in to fix it went look
ing for a header tank in the roof. He found this bundle wrapped in sacking, tied up with string. There was a stationery box inside. A manila folder inside that. When I turned it over, there was the title, Dead Dames Don’t Sing. My father’s name underneath. The pages inside were a little damp but nothing more. At first, I could scarcely believe it. But there it was, all sixteen chapters. Right up to THE END.”
“You read it?”
“Not then. Not right away. But later.”
“And?’
Alexandra laughed. “Everything the title led you to expect. Desperate women and dangerous men.”
She swiveled sideways, her bare foot sliding across the top of Kiley’s shoe.
“You’ve been very patient, Jack. You want to take a peek?”
The safe was in the bedroom. Where else? The room itself oddly austere. A white duvet, barely creased. Little by way of decoration save for the portrait of Alexandra, nude, that hung above the bed.
She moved the canvas just far enough aside to expose the safe.
The manuscript was in a folder, as Alexandra had said, a label stuck to the front bearing the title and the author’s name.
“You can take it out, Jack. It won’t bite.”
“Shouldn’t I be wearing special gloves or something?”
“Just make sure you handle with care.”
The pages were smooth like any other; what did he expect? Most of the paper was off-white, save for a section towards the end, around thirty pages, which was pale blue. The type was faint in places, as if Pierce had waited too long before changing the ribbon. Notes were scattered here and there in the margins, similar to the ones in the section Kiley had already seen; the occasional word crossed out and an alternative written in, circled where necessary and arrowed into place. All in the same recognizable hand.
“Satisfied?” Alexandra asked.
“Yes. As far as it goes.”
“You wanted to make sure the rest of the manuscript was all there. There it is.”