I didn’t give him a chance to offer any disclaimers.
“What we have learned about Parker Foxcroft has not been pleasant,” I said. “The likelihood is that he was practicing blackmail on a small, possibly a large, scale. But who was he blackmailing, and why? What did he know that gave him so much power over the person we’ll call ‘X’ for now?
“The identity of X lay concealed somewhere in Parker’s files, we were convinced of that. A search of his office yielded nothing—until we found two computer disks that he had hidden away. My brother was able to track down the file that led us to X’s identity, thanks to a clue Susan Markham had given us.”
“And what might that have been?” demanded Hatcher in a loud voice—too loud for the size of the room. “And why weren’t the police told about this ‘clue’ of yours?”
“We might have told you, I agree,” I said, “but it wouldn’t have meant any more to you than it did to us—at first. It was a literary clue that Parker left, and I’ll explain it later. What is important is that Parker had used it as the name of a file on one of his disks. When Tim read the file and printed it out for me to read, we knew immediately what had taken place—and why.”
At last I detected a stir of interest, if not excitement, in the room, so I plowed on.
“The file was named IRVING, and it contained the letter Parker Foxcroft wrote rejecting Alexander Michaelson’s novel, a letter that Mrs. Michaelson, unfortunately, destroyed.”
“What else would you expect me to do?” Judith Michaelson cried out. “My husband was dead!”
“No one is blaming you, Mrs. Michaelson,” I said. “If you had saved that letter, we’d have known the identity of the murderer sooner, it is true, but anyone else would have acted just as you did.
“The manuscript, by the way,” I continued, “was lost and also probably destroyed. What we learned from that letter—correction, what Tim learned from that letter—is that it described a novel now riding high on the fiction bestseller lists. A novel called Pan at Twilight.”
I had to hand it to Herbert Poole; he barely blinked an eye. A slight smile was the only reaction he gave to the title of his book. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Show me. Cool.
“Tim, fortunately for us, had read Pan at Twilight, and Parker Foxcroft, of course, had read it when the book was in manuscript. The so-called author of the book”—and here I made no effort to conceal my contempt—“was sent the manuscript by Alexander Michaelson’s widow, because he was a knowledgeable friend, and she wanted his opinion on her husband’s work. Knowledgeable, yes; friend, hardly. This ‘friend’ told her that the book was probably unpublishable, and he recommended that she destroy it. He arranged for a messenger to pick it up, presumably to deliver it to the critic Peter Jensen. He then copied it and submitted it to his publisher under his own name, as a ‘daring’ and ‘different’ new turn in his career. The rest you know; the book was an immediate success. What we didn’t know is that Parker Foxcroft recognized the book as one he had rejected, and, possibly smarting over the realization that he had passed up a best-seller himself, and seizing the opportunity to blackmail the author”—here I made quote marks in the air—“he threatened to expose a flagrant case of plagiarism. If not a crime, by the way, plagiarism is certainly more than just a breach of good taste.”
“You!” Judith Michaelson rose and pointed at Herbert Poole. “How could you?”
Poole raised his hands in the air as though to disavow any acquaintance with this peculiar creature across the table from him. His smile now was so disingenuous I felt like picking him up and shaking him like a rat. Who, me? that smile said.
“Let me explain why Parker chose the code name IRVING for his blackmail. There are a number of Irvings in publishing history, but the one Parker chose was John Irving. Why him? Because John Irving, like our murderous author, had published three unsuccessful novels before he achieved what we call his ‘breakout’ or ‘breakthrough’ book, the one that brought him fame and fortune. In Irving’s case it was The World According to Garp; so successful was it that we sometimes speak of a book being ‘Garped,’ meaning that it has broken its author out of obscurity and into the limelight. For Herbert Poole, the ‘Garping’ was Pan at Twilight. That was Parker Foxcroft’s little literary conceit—his joke, if you will.”
I could tell from the expression on their faces, and the way they shifted about, that I had finally reached Hatcher and Falco; they were paying attention; and certainly Joe was with me. The others reacted with a mixture of dismay and, understandably, relief. Not I, but he, is the guilty one.
“Beautiful, Nick,” said Margo. “Well done.”
Poole was no longer smiling, but as cool in demeanor as ever.
“There’s no proof there,” he said. “No evidence. You can’t prove anything. It’s all supposition.”
“The plagiarism will be hard to prove, perhaps, but if you photocopied Michaelson’s original manuscript and just put your name on it,” I said, “that copy will be in the publisher’s office. There will be no problem tracking it back to Michaelson’s manual typewriter.
“Also,” I continued, “you remember that line in All the President’s Men? Deep Throat says to Woodward and Bernstein: ‘Follow the money.’ I think that if we look at your bank account and Parker’s bank account, we will probably find a pattern of withdrawals from your account and deposits in his. ‘Follow the money.’
“I’ve put up with enough of this nonsense,” said Poole. He got up and rested his hands on the table. “You’ll be hearing from my attorney, Barlow. I consider that I’ve been libeled.”
“Slandered, Herbert, not libeled. And I believe you’ll probably be hearing from the police.”
Hatcher, Falco, and Scanlon moved toward Poole.
Then Judith Michaelson rose and said: “Herbert.”
He turned to her; she held a pistol in one hand and the purse she’d taken it from in the other.
“No, no, Judith,” said Poole, but she had fired even as he spoke—two shots before Hatcher was able to wrest the gun out of her hand. Poole slumped back in his chair, head falling forward onto the table.
He looked, I thought, exactly as Parker had looked when I found his body.
Chapter 31
Herbert Poole did not die of the gunshot wounds he suffered at the hands of Judith Michaelson. Like so many people, she was not altogether sure where in the chest cavity the heart is located, or perhaps she was just a poor shot; consequently, one of her shots nicked Poole’s right lung and the other struck him in the right shoulder. He survived to face murder charges. The police were able to link Poole with Parker Foxcroft’s blackmailing activities, and a creditable witness placed him in the neighborhood of our offices when Parker was shot. Poole, however—rather than stand trial on a murder charge, where the verdict might have gone either way—elected to plea-bargain with the district attorney, accepting a charge of manslaughter. The D.A. recommended a sentence of seven to ten years, which the judge, in keeping with the quality of mercy, ultimately suspended. He walks the streets a free man. I do not, however, expect to publish a mystery under his name, or any other kind of book.
Judith Michaelson deserved punishment far less than Poole, but wound up with a sentence for aggravated assault of a year in a correctional facility. She served only six months, but in my view, as much as I deplore people taking vigilante action, she ought not to have served jail time at all. However, we know that fairness and justice are almost as elusive as that will-o’-the-wisp we all talk about, but which nobody has ever seen. Poetic justice was served when it was revealed that the gun she shot Poole with was the very one her husband used to take his own life.
Vindication of a sort, however, was rendered by Herbert Poole’s publisher, who made a substantial cash settlement on Judith Michaelson, taking the money from Poole’s royalties. He fought this in court subsequently, but lost. I assume that Judith made a much more persuasive witness on the stand than he. Fur
thermore, Tim submitted a computer analysis of Poole’s books, demonstrating that the first three were the work of one writer, and the fourth, his best-seller, the work of another.
All this happened not at once, but as the summer passed into fall and then winter. Meanwhile, the fortunes of Barlow & Company began to prosper, not because of anything I did, but in part because the Book-of-the-Month Club decided to start a Prudence Henderson Harte Library, bringing all her earlier books back into print, with a vengeance. Moreover, a movie made from a novel by another of my authors, Warren Dallas, sparked a new and phenomenally successful movie tie-in paperback. Backlist, in the publishing business, is what makes the mare go, now and always. As for frontlist, Sarah Goodall’s female P.I. novel, Iceman, has been delivered and will be published next spring. Will it be a success? Who ever knows?
Margo and I did not exactly decide to live together, but “to be together as long as it seems to be working out,” a loose but mutually satisfactory arrangement. While she still maintains her own apartment, “for breathing room”—that is, the occasional solitude everyone needs—we are together every weekend from Friday through Monday, either at my house or in Connecticut, and we have planned a two-week Caribbean cruise in December, which I think is the closest we will come to a second honeymoon.
I believe it was Balzac, in his Physiologie de Mariage, who recommended that a married couple not only not share the same bedroom, but that they not share the same house. Impractical these days—but Honoré had a point all the same.
On one of those weekends I invited Joe Scanlon to dinner.
“I’m not pressing you for that revised manuscript, Joe. You understand that, don’t you?”
“It’s almost ready, Nick, I swear.”
“Anyway, come to dinner with Margo and me. We haven’t seen enough of you lately.”
“Can I… that is, may I bring a friend?” I would have sworn that he sounded almost bashful.
“Of course, Joe—please do.”
The friend he brought turned out to be his agent, Kay McIntire, whose beauty and intelligence I have already praised enough. I had only to observe the two of them together—the way they looked at each other, and those secret smiles—to know that they were prime candidates for Liz Smith’s column.
“Makes me feel almost like a matchmaker,” I told Margo after Joe and Kay had left.
“You’re mellowing, Nicky,” she said. “No more the grumpy, somewhat misogynous middle-aged bachelor?”
“I am happy for both Joe and Kay McIntire as two people I like and wish well. But I retain the privilege of lashing out at whatever in this life I find offensive.”
Only one thing in my thoughts did I keep private even from Margo, and that was the memory of Susan Markham. Her death remained a constant reproach, more powerful at some moments than at others, but always there, just beneath the surface of my contentment. Despite the best efforts of the police, no way had been found to link Herbert Poole to her murder, and so the crime remained on the books, still open. How I wished I could find a way to prove his guilt. Without physical evidence, there was nothing to tie Susan’s death with Parker’s, only my suspicion—no, my conviction—that Poole had done it. Take the bottle of wine, for just one example. Only an abstainer like Poole, a wine illiterate, if you will, would choose a rosé as a special gift. He was also probably the one who dropped the urn off the roof, but I couldn’t prove that either.
I was glad that I had not run into Poole after he was carried out of my conference room on a stretcher. I don’t know what I might have done or said. I only hope I could have controlled my natural instincts, which would have been to squash him like some nasty little insect.
Shortly after Labor Day, I received the following letter, which read, in its entirety:
Dear Mr. Barlow:
I am a graduate student in English at your alma mater, Princeton. I plan to do my doctoral thesis on the editor Parker Foxcroft, who, I know, had a prestigious imprint at your firm. I understand also that you are his literary executor.
My request is this: would it be possible for me to examine all the letters, papers, and memorabilia relating to Mr. Foxcroft’s distinguished career?
If it would be convenient, I should appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and discuss this project in more detail.
Eagerly awaiting your reply, I remain
Sincerely yours,
The signature was that of a T. Wyndham Prescott III. I dictated the following reply:
Dear Mr. Prescott III:
Of course you may have access to the files and personal papers of the late Parker Foxcroft. I know he would have been pleased at your request to do your doctoral thesis on his career. In fact, I’m convinced his entire working life was planned so that some scholar, such as yourself, would wish to delve into his literary remains.
Just call my secretary, Ms. Hannah Stein, and she’ll be happy to set up an appointment.
Sincerely yours, etc.
P.S. I haven’t had much contact with Princeton lately, except the usual fund-raising letters from the Alumni Association, but I gather that the Tiger is alive and still roaring.
It was time, it seemed to me, to exorcise the ghost of Parker Foxcroft. After all, like a much, much better man, he now belonged to the ages.
“A page-turner” was how John Dunning, author of Booked to Die, described Robert A. Carter’s first Nicholas Barlow mystery. “Both literate and literary…a clever debut in what should be a sophisticated, satisfying series” was author Jeremiah Healy’s reaction. Perhaps, as they say in the business, Robert A. Carter knows where the bodies are buried…
final edit
Nicholas Barlow is the erudite, urbane, and flamboyant CEO of a small New York publishing company. But the corpse he finds in his Manhattan office is definitely nonfiction. The victim is Parker Foxcroft, editor extraordinaire, or should one say diabolique. So many authors has he cut to the quick, so many co-workers has he offended, and so many coveted prizes has he won, that Foxcroft could have earned a Lifetime Achievement Award for Most Enemies.
Nick wants to just close the book on the case. Instead, he leads the cops’ list of suspects. After all, didn’t he have a public shouting match with the victim at the annual booksellers convention? Didn’t he arrange to meet the victim at the office after hours? And isn’t he now being seen about town with Susan Markham, the drop-dead gorgeous young editor who was Parker Foxcroft’s lover? Nick stands, in his Savile Row suit, guilty as charged of everything except the crime. To move the plot along, he introduces another character: his brilliant though bedridden brother, Timothy. He also feels the need to start grilling suspects, including sweet Susan, which he proceeds to do at the Rainbow Room, Players Club, King Cole Room, and other favorite publishing watering holes.
What he discovers is a paper trail on Parker Foxcroft leading to a denouement that has scandal and death written all over it. Now Nicholas Barlow must quickly read between the lines and guess whodunit before the killer makes his final edit—and Nick becomes his final victim. Once again, Robert A. Carter has given us a deliciously wicked, gossipy, and revealing behind-the-scenes romp through the lives of those who make books.
LIGHTWORKER PHOTOGRAPHY
ROBERT A. CARTER, author and publishing veteran, has written widely on publishing topics and helped develop a publishing master’s program at Pace University. He won wide acclaim for his first Nicholas Barlow novel, Casual Slaughters, and now, in this second in the series, Carter shows that he can write the book on entertaining mystery fiction. A longtime resident of New York City and Connecticut, he now lives in Virginia.
ACCLAIM FOR THE FIRST BICHÓLAS BAHLOW MTSTBHY
CASUAL SLAUGHTERS
“[A] BREEZY FIRST MYSTERY…
A WIT IS BORN.”—MARILYN STASIO,
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“VIGOROUS AND SEXY…
Barlow delivers hard-boiled utterances with tongue-in-cheek relish…the personable hero’s glee at ha
ppening upon a real, rather than a paper-and-ink case, is contagious.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STABBED REVIEW)
“WITTY AND STYLISH…
[Robert A. Carter] has created an engaging hero in Nicholas Barlow, a man of great charm and style, with a well-ordered life, a touch of old-fashioned formality, and a secret yearning to be one of the Hardy boys.”—RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
“HIGHLY LITERATE….
There is something refreshing about an amateur sleuth who solves a case without inane violence…. Possesses a degree of charm that keeps you reading it to the end.”—WEST COAST REVIEW OF BOOKS
“LITERATE, OBSERVANT, AND WITTY.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL
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