by Helen McCloy
Two-Thirds of a Ghost
A Dr. Basil Willing Mystery
by
Helen McCloy
“One of the most enjoyable whodunits of this or any season. Reason: Its gorgeous satire on the book publishing business and the people in it or on the fringes.”—Columbus Dispatch
“Cleverly complex.”—Kirkus Reviews
Amos Cottle was a valuable property—a first-rate novelist who produced four best sellers in four years. He had to be protected. From himself (he was an ex-alcoholic). And from his wife (she was a gold-digging siren and she spelled trouble). His publisher and his agent thought Amos’s problems were solved when they clawed the beautiful Vera out of his hair and shipped her off to Hollywood. But they were wrong. For there came a night when Vera returned. That was the night Amos had to have a drink. It was too bad he never lived to sober up.
Dedication: To Joan Vaczek
St. Swithin Press
First published by Random House, 1956
Copyright by Helen McCloy
Cover art by Milton Glaser
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-927551-08-0
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
CHAPTER ONE
More than one glance followed Meg Vesey through the dusk as she stepped across Madison Avenue. Tall heels foreshortened her feet like little hoofs and made her tread delicately as a doe. Flakes from the light snow flurry frosted her furs and the Christmas packages in her arms. Her chin was firmly rounded in profile and luscious as ripe fruit. Her mouth was a little wide, but it seemed to smile even in repose. Her eyes were her real beauty—a clear, sparkling hazel-brown, large and well set, darkened by long, black lashes. Her make-up was light. You could see the petal-pink freshness the cold wind brought to her cheeks.
At 58th Street she passed under a brightly lighted marquee into a dim, hushed lobby. “Good evening, Mrs. Vesey!” The doorman had a smile for her and she didn’t have to give the elevator man her floor.
Her glance strayed to a tabloid someone had left on the elevator bench. Something moved behind her eyes. Her face congealed, losing color.
“Charles, is this your paper?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“May I borrow it?”
“You can keep it, Mrs. Vesey, I’m through with it.”
“Thank you, Charles.”
Even her voice had changed. It was dull and withdrawn now.
She left the elevator and rested her packages on a hall table while she took a latchkey out of her bag. The door opened into a vestibule glowing softly with shaded lamps. Voices and laughter came through another door, but she turned in the opposite direction.
The room she entered was a study. Against a background of dove-gray walls and olive-green upholstery, there stood a desk, a typewriter, filing cabinets and bookcases, all new, bright and efficient-looking. But any functional grace the room might have had was spoiled by its wild disorder. It had the same effect on the beholder as a pretty, young girl in sluttish disarray.
Newspapers and cigarette ashes were a drift across the floor. A doll, its wig half torn from its head, sprawled nude and abandoned on the sofa. A box of crayons had spilled on the window sill. A puppy’s tooth marks scarred the leg of a charming little footstool and a cat’s claw’s had ripped dangling threads from the silk brocade of an armchair. A cigarette had burned out on the mantelpiece, leaving a brown oval under its cylinder of ash. The open dropleaf of the desk was an inchoate mass of typescripts, recording tapes, letters and cardboard folders stamped Augustus Vesey, inc., Authors’ Agents. Beside the telephone, a sheet of handsome, engraved writing paper was scrawled with doodles and cryptic messages in some private shorthand: “Call Tony? NY op 2 for West Coast after 8 London will call back.” Evidently Gus had been home for lunch.
Meg sighed. She knew from long experience that it would take just about thirty minutes to make the room anywhere near presentable again. At this moment she didn’t have thirty minutes.
She tossed her packages on the sofa, cast aside hat, coat and gloves. She swept the carbon script of a TV show off the nearest chair and dropped into it. She took tortoise-shell spectacles out of her bag and looked at the tabloid.
There was a photograph, but it was impossible to tell if Vera had changed greatly in the last four years. The smudged print showed only a faint blur of pale hair and a sharply pointed chin.
The news was in the printed matter.
STARLET FIGHTS STUDIO
Beverly Hills, Calif., Dec. 12. Special Beauteous Vera Vane, fabulously successful starlet on the Catamount lot, threw aside the glittering promise of stardom in pictures today for love’s sweet sake when she broke with the studio over a clause in her new contract requiring that she remain in Hollywood for the next three years.
“My place is with my husband,” said gorgeous Vera, at a press conference this morning, with tears in the great blue eyes that have won the hearts of millions of movie fans throughout the civilized world. “Hollywood’s glitter is just that—glitter and nothing more. Movie people are a bunch of phonies. I’m taking the plane east on Sunday and, in future, I’m just going to be a homebody and cook for my husband in a little farmhouse in Connecticut. Any of you boys know a good recipe for corned beef and cabbage?”
When asked if she intended to have a family, Miss Vance answered promptly: “Of course I’d like to. Who wouldn’t?”
Miss Vane’s husband is Amos Cottle, author, who skyrocketed to fame four years ago with his best-selling war novel, Never Call Retreat. His latest book, Passionate Pilgrim, has a religious theme. The couple separated three years ago, but neither has remarried.
A representative of Catamount Studios told newsmen today that Miss Vane’s option had been dropped because she and the studio were unable to come to an agreement on salary.
Meg let the paper fall from her hands. After a moment, she crossed the room to the desk. Her address book was not in the proper pigeonhole. Polly, who was just learning to print capital letters, had doubtless appropriated it as an exercise book. Maddelena, who functioned as both cook and nurse, wouldn’t think of objecting to anything Polly did. So Meg had to ask Information for Amos’s number.
After a few minutes, she heard his phone ringing in ice-bound Connecticut, but there was no answer. She put the phone back in its cradle.
She found her box of notepaper on the floor, but there was no sign of a pen anywhere. She sat down at the typewriter and began to type furiously, words tumbling off the keys almost as fast as the thoughts whirling through her mind.
Dear Amos,
I saw the evening paper. I’m so terribly concerned about you. Gus will be, too. We both know how you feel about that dreadful woman. I can’t understand how she has the face to tell reporters that she’s coming back to you after you told her so explicitly three years ago that you never wanted to see her again under any circumstances. A talent like yours should not be subjected to this sort of persecution, just when you’ve really got going on the new book, too! You know a vicious woman like Vera could ruin you utterly. Please let me know if there’s anything Gus or I can do. Would it be a good idea if she stayed with us when she reached New York? I can’t imagine a more difficult house guest, but I’d gladly take her in if that would leave you free to go on with your work unmolested. Perhaps Tony Kane can help. As your publisher, he ought to. He knows lots of people. Per
haps he could get her a part in some Broadway play. That would keep her away from you, though I pity the producer—she’s such an embarrassingly incompetent actress. Anyway, let us hear from you as soon as possible and don’t despair. We’ll do something.
Best wishes from both of us,
As ever.
She signed herself “Meg” with Polly’s red crayon. She found a stray envelope in the stamp drawer and typed the address.
AMOS COTTLE, ESQ.
ROGUE’S RIDGE
WESTON, CONNECTICUT
She sat still a moment, frowning. Then she put another sheet of writing paper in the typewriter and began to type more slowly.
My dear Vera,
I learned from this evenings’ paper that you are planning to return to the East. After all that has happened, I’m sure, you won’t care to see Amos, but Gus and I should be glad to help you get settled here. We have a large apartment now with a pleasant guest room. Would you care to stay with us for a few days while you look about for a place of your own? Do say yes.
We both look forward to seeing you soon and hearing all the latest Hollywood gossip.
Yours sincerely,
Meg Vesey
The sincerely cost her a grimace, but a more intimate ending would have been even more repugnant. She didn’t use a crayon for a scrawled signature this time. She found a fountain pen in her handbag and wrote her name carefully, wondering why antagonism should be more polite than affection.
After another search, she turned up an air-mail envelope and typed rapidly:
MISS VERA VANE
CATAMOUNT STUDIOS
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA
As she licked the air-mail stamp, she wondered if the letter could reach Vera before she left the West Coast. Surely she would stop at the studio to collect her mail before she boarded the plane on Sunday.
Did the letter sound too friendly to be real? Vera must know how everyone who cared for Amos felt about her. Or did she? Probably not. Her vanity was a thick shell, lined with mother-of-pearl illusions which she secreted from her own press releases. Every irritating foreign substance—like lukewarm praise of her acting—was soon turned into a pearl.
“Mommy!” The door burst open and Hugh catapulted into the room. “I didn’t even know you were home till I went in the hall and heard the typing.” A touch of surprise and reproach in this, then forgivingly: “Joe Devlin wants me to spend the night with him. They live in a penthouse. They have a dog and a pet turtle. They don’t know his sex—the turtle’s—so they call it He-she, and…”
“Just a minute, Hugh. Let me get these letters off.”
“But, Mommy, I want to wear my blue suit and Maddelena can’t find a white shirt and…”
They found the last clean, white shirt in the toy chest in Polly’s room.
“Now how did it get in there?” mused Maddelena, with Sicilian indolence in every line of her ample body.
“You should know. If only…” Meg checked herself.
“If only Daddy and Maddelena and Polly and I would be neater,” put in Hugh. “You’ve said that a million times, too. And when you were a little girl, your mother’s house was five times as big as this apartment and everything was always in apple-pie order and nobody ever lost anything and…”
“All right, Hugh. I see I have the makings of an old bore. Don’t rub it in.”
“Mom-mee!” Polly’s talent for tragedy at the age of five almost equaled Mrs. Siddons’s who could bring tears to a shopkeeper’s eyes when she asked for a spool of thread. “Mom-mee, nobody ever asks me to spend the night. What shall I do now?”
“Would you like to color?”
“I’ve been coloring all afternoon’“
A whoop from Hugh, who had wandered back to the study. “Christmas presents! Oh, Mommy, who are they for?”
“I can’t imagine, can you?”
Polly was at the desk. “Why has this envelope got pretty little red-and-blue stripes on it? And why is there an airplane on the stamp?”
“Oh, Polly, darling, please don’t ever touch anything on Mother’s desk. That’s an air-mail letter and I must get it off right away.” Meg grabbed the envelope from Polly, put the letter inside and sealed the flap. “Hugh, are the Devlins calling for you?”
“Yes, in half an hour.”
“Then let’s pack your bag. You may drop this letter in the mail chute for me on your way out.”
Packing Hugh’s bag in half an hour was an exhausting ordeal for everyone concerned. In the children’s rooms, hairbrushes and combs, toothbrushes and toothpaste all had wings and vanished the moment you turned your back. “It’s The Borrowers,” said Polly.
Gus arrived in the middle of the riot and watched them with affable unconcern in his handsome, dark, eyes. Gus hailed from Louisiana originally and he had enough Mediterranean blood to believe that Maddelena’s light hand with a soufflé more than made up for her impressionistic housekeeping. An earlier, bachelor existence in shabby, furnished rooms had left him as indifferent to disorder as a gypsy. “But why shouldn’t I keep that TV script in the kitchen salad bowl? If it’s there, I’m sure to see it when I want it.”
Meg loved him and made a great effort to conquer her Northern yearning for a well-run household, but it was a partial conquest that made her sometimes irritable and often confused and distracted. Like that time they were sailing for South America and couldn’t find their passports at the last moment…
Mrs. Devlin and Joe arrived just as the hasps of the suitcase were snapped shut. After a five minutes’ search for Hugh’s rubber snow boots, that should have been in the hall closet and were, strangely, under the dining table, Hugh departed with the Devlins, clutching the air-mail letter in one hand, and Meg was left to cope with Polly’s disconsolate wail: “But what shall I do-o-o?”
Maddelena took Polly into the kitchen to help make some cookies for dinner.
“Alone at last!” Gus took Meg in his arms and kissed her in the way that made her realize Mediterranean blood had its advantages. “What’s on your mind?”
“What makes you think there’s something on my mind?”
“I know you very well, darling. To me your face is just like a sparkling clean window. I can see into every mood.”
“Oh!” It all came back to Meg in a rush. “I haven’t mailed that other letter yet.”‘
“What letter?”
“I’ll get it.”
Meg hurried into the study. The envelope addressed to Amos Cottle was lying on the desk, just as she had left it. She picked up the letter beside it and glanced at her own typing. The words seemed to dance on the page.
“My dear Vera, I learned from this evenings paper…”
What had she done?
The untidied room—the frantic search for pen and paper—Hugh’s sudden interruption—Polly’s persistent wail, “But what shall I do?”—the mad chaos of getting Hugh off with the Devlins … It had been one long series of distractions and, in the general confusion, she had put the letter addressed to Amos in the envelope air-mailed to Vera.
Tomorrow morning Vera would be reading the letter to Amos that described Vera herself as a difficult house guest, an embarrassingly incompetent actress and a vicious woman.
CHAPTER TWO
When Christmas shopping brought Philippa Kane to town, she usually arranged to meet her husband at the Commodore Bar close by Grand Central, so they could go home on the train together. Tonight she found their favorite table empty and established herself with a champagne cocktail, where she could watch both the clock and the revolving door.
Philippa was an aristocrat in the antique sense of the word. She always obtained the best for herself in every phase of life, great or small. She was wrapped in a voluminous cloak of the rare, sea otter fur, so dense that the finger cannot be forced down through the pelt to the skin. An enormous black alligator bag matched tiny alligator shoes. An unbelted dress of black jersey sculptured her torso to the new, Grecian line, and a speckled
pheasant’s breast gave her turban the new width. Her gloves were soft, natural doeskin; her jewels, jade set with diamonds. Even her little coin purse was a limp, elegant affair of gold mesh with a diamond clasp, and her cigarette case was polished olive wood with an ivory intaglio of Apollo and the Three Muses, cunningly carved in miniature after a design taken from an Attic vase.
A russet lipstick brought out the faint, reddish glints in her pale chestnut hair and the faintest touch of emerald eye shadow gave her gray eyes an olive cast. Her face echoed portraits of the Empress Eugenie—a pallid, perfect oval with fastidiously arched brows, long, narrow eyes, an arrogant nose and a disillusioned mouth. Her smile twisted sardonically when she saw Tony struggling through the revolving door with two typescript boxes under one arm and an evening newspaper stuck in his overcoat pocket. He didn’t look at all the way Philippa thought the President of Sutton, Kane and Company should look.
Philippa had come into the world of writers and publishers through marriage. She was born into a different world of gilt-edged bond portfolios and real estate holdings in the heart of Manhattan, apartments on upper Fifth Avenue and palatial cottages in the Hamptons. Like most third-generation heiresses, she took little interest in the unromantic industries that built her grandparents’ fortune. Her Europeanized education made her ideal of luxury the life of the Victorian leisure class. It was inevitable that she should shape her life around one of the three classic amusements of that class—politics, sport or the arts. But today all three are highly competitive professions where the amateur has small chance of success. Philippa wanted to write and couldn’t, but, through her attempts to write she met Tony Kane, then a young assistant editor with a publishing firm called Daniel Sutton and Company.
Her widowed mother tried everything short of corporal punishment to break off what she called a mésalliance. Time had its usual revenge. The 1929 crash swallowed the substantial residue of a once great fortune. Tony and Philippa were married in 1931 and, for several years before her death, Philippa’s mother was wholly dependent on Tony as Philippa herself was now.