“I think,” said Pamela, grabbing me, “we’d best get some strong coffee into the lad.”
Together, they walked me into Jack’s apartment. I slumped into his lounge chair. Lulu vaulted into my lap, all pretense of gimpiness gone, and licked my nose. I really was going to have to wean her off of fish. Root lurched into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He wanted to listen to the tape in private for some reason. Merilee sat across from me, wringing her hands. Pamela came in from the kitchen and pressed a steaming cup of instant coffee in my hand. I gulped from it. It didn’t clear my head much, but it did burn my tongue.
“How do you feel, Hoagy?” Pamela demanded.
“I’ve felt worse, though I can’t remember when offhand. And you?”
“Me?” Pamela asked.
“It must be a bit disturbing to find out you’ve been managing the country estate of a murderer.”
“Believe me, it is not the first time.”
I stared at her a second. “Pamela, I think I’m going to have to do your memoirs next.”
“I’m afraid there won’t be nearly enough spice.”
“We’ll make some up. That’s where the fun comes in.” Foolishly, I gulped some more coffee. “Not that this isn’t my idea of fun.”
The bedroom door opened. Root stood there in the doorway, his face ashen.
“All there?” I asked him.
“Dreadful stuff,” he said quietly.
“Not a pretty story,” I agreed.
“Dreadful stuff. All of those years … All of those lives …”
“What are you going to do, Inspector?” Merilee asked him.
“Do?” Root swallowed. “I-I’m going to go up there and arrest Tristam Scarr for the murder of four people.”
“Don’t forget the attempted murder of a fifth,” I said. “I’ll be happy to testify.”
Root belted his trench coat, squared his shoulders, and started for the door. Abruptly, he stopped. “What am I doing? What am I doing? That’s not some sewer rat up there. That’s T. S.”
“A sewer rat,” I added.
Root ran both of his hands through his messy carrot-colored hair. “But there are members of the royal family up there.”
“They’ve gone,” Pamela pointed out. “Another engagement.”
Root pursed his lips, shot a glance at the phone. “Still. I’d best ring up headquarters first.”
“Why, Inspector?” I asked.
“That’s just it, you see. I’m not an—”
“You shouldn’t be intimidated by people just because they’re famous.”
“I’m not,” he insisted, reddening.
“Look at Merilee over there,” I said. “She’s as famous as anybody, and she’s just plain folks.”
Merilee stiffened. “Just plain folks?”
Root mulled it over, wavering. “I suppose you’re onto something there …” He glanced at the phone again. Then he took a deep breath. “Well, then,” he announced firmly, “I’m off.” He started once more for the door. This time he opened it.
“Mind if I come with you?” I asked.
He pressed his gopher teeth into his lower lip. “Want to be in on the kill?”
“I want to see the look on his face.”
We all went with him.
A major musical event was happening in the Gadpole ballroom. T. S. was performing up on the stage. It was the first time he’d been on any kind of stage in over ten years, and he was giving the performance of his life—wailing, shrieking, strutting, sweating. He had come out, all right. This was his new beginning. Fittingly, he’d chosen the very first Us hit, “Great Gosh Almighty.” An all-star band was up there behind him—Jimmy Page on guitar, McCartney on bass, Charlie Watts on drums—but it was T. S. everyone was responding to. The dancing had stopped. The eating and drinking and talking had stopped. Each and every guest stood there clapping to the beat, cheering Tristam Scarr’s return performance on until he finally brought the song home to a thundering finish, his hand-mike held up high as a triumphant salute.
And then they roared. It was a roar of approval. Of acclaim. Of love. He stood there, eyes agleam, and soaked it up. It was all for him. No one else. Him.
He had made it, at last.
He was so caught up in the moment that it took him awhile before he spotted me standing there before him with Root by my side. When he did his eyes widened. His face got very white. And then Tristam Scarr’s body betrayed him.
It gave out.
Jack was the first to reach him when he toppled forward. Root got there right after him. Somebody started screaming. They couldn’t bring him to. Root tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him. Pamela phoned for an ambulance. It was no use. T. S. was gone by the time it got there.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE STORY CAME OUT in waves in the press.
First, of course, came the shocking news that one of English rock music’s most legendary bad boys had dropped dead in front of a couple hundred of the entertainment world’s biggest celebrities. Then came the news that a police investigator, one Farley Root, had happened to be on the scene at the time. Then came the rest of it. Why Root was there. The confession tape he’d obtained. What had really happened to Puppy Johnson, to Rory Law, to Tulip, to Father Bob, and to me. Almost. A few days later came the results of the autopsy: Tristam Scarr had died of a heart attack brought on in part by a heavy dose of speed he’d taken shortly before his death—no doubt to get up for his performance. Evidence of advanced heart disease was also present. The drug and the strain of being onstage again had apparently been too much for him.
So had a certain unpleasant surprise.
I decided to stick around Gadpole until he was buried. I spent most of my time in my rooms trying to finish the job I’d come to do. But I couldn’t seem to concentrate. Mostly, I just lay there on the leather sofa with a single malt whiskey in my hand, staring gloomily at the fire, Lulu dozing beside me in her chair. It was quiet up there, which suited me fine. I was not in a talky mood.
Our editor did call from New York to find out how much I had and how soon I’d have it—sooner being more commercially advantageous than later, of course.
“I really want that confession,” he told me.
“You’ll have it,” I told him. “Does this qualify as topspin?”
“This” he replied happily, “is heat.”
“Heat is better?”
“Listen, Hoag, did he really … are you sure he did all of that shit?”
“Quite sure.”
“I can’t figure it. A guy who has money, fame—has it all, you know?”
“Not quite. He didn’t have it all to himself.”
“Help us out, Hoag. Work with the lawyer, Weintraub. Otherwise he’s liable to hold up the pub date for months. We’re still talking about an authorized memoir here.”
“I’m not writing an apology for what T. S. did.”
“And we’re not publishing one,” he assured me. “Everybody here’s been asking me … I mean, you spent all of that time with him. What was he like?”
I thought that one over. “Very bright. Very talented. Very unhappy. He was the Shadow Man. He lived by night. I had gotten to be sort of fond of him, actually.”
“How do you feel about him now—knowing what he did?”
“I don’t feel anything about him anymore.”
I hung up and stretched back out on the sofa, thinking my answer sounded familiar to me. After awhile I realized it was the last thing Tulip had said to me before he killed her. I guess T. S. had that effect on anyone who got close to him. Call it a form of self-preservation.
A small private funeral was held in the Gadpole chapel. Marco and Derek drove out from London for it. Jay Weintraub flew in from New York. A limo waited to take him right back to the airport. Pamela and Violet and Jack were there. I was there. A local cleric performed the service. The estate guards and a team of police reinforcements kept the press and T. S.’s fans from sca
ling the walls.
Afterward, Tristam Scarr was buried next to Tulip’s urn in the center of the maze. Violet insisted on that. She stared, stone-faced, at the coffin as it was lowered. She did not cry for the man who had murdered her mother.
I left Gadpole the next day—clothes, papers and Merilee’s Christmas gift all packed up. Before I left, Pamela informed me that Violet was inheriting everything that had belonged to her father, making her one of the richest teenagers in Great Britain. Pamela was being appointed her legal guardian, and for the time being would remain there at Gadpole with her.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Pamela,” I said, as we stood there in the kitchen, saying good-bye. “Not that you’ve been named her guardian, but that you won’t be coming back to the States with us.”
She smiled, knelt and petted Lulu fondly. “One never knows. I just might come knocking on your door one of these days.”
“And we just might let you in.”
At that moment Violet came padding through in her ballet slippers, eating an apple and looking very bored.
“Bye, Vi,” I said.
She nodded and kept on walking.
“Hoagy is leaving, Violet,” Pamela pointed out.
She nodded again and kept on going out the door. We looked after her.
Pamela shook her head. “She’s really not a bad girl, you know. The poor dear just needs some normalcy in her life. It’s not something she’s gotten very much of.”
Something told me Pamela would see that she got plenty of it.
I found Jack in his garage apartment, packing his bags.
“Pam has asked me to stay and help her look after things,” he told me, “But I think it best I move on.”
“What about you and Violet?”
Jack squared his jaw grimly. “She’s an heiress now, Mr. Hoag. She’ll be a great lady one day. She doesn’t need the likes of me around.”
“Where are you heading?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
I stuck out my hand. “If you find yourself in New York, look me up. I’ll get you drunk. No charge.”
He shook it. “That’s damned kind of you, considering.”
“Let’s just say I’ve been there.”
“Mr. Hoag?”
“Yes, Jack?”
He looked down at his feet. “Will I get over her?”
I managed a reassuring smile and said “You’d be surprised.”
“Yes,” he said gravely. “I would be.”
Root happened by to take some final statements. I bummed a lift into London off of him.
“Terribly sorry about the way the newspapers made this affair appear Hoagy,” Root said, as we eased down the long driveway in his Austin, my stuff stowed in the trunk.
“How did they make it look?” I asked.
Lulu sat in my lap, longingly watching Gadpole recede through the window. She’d liked it there.
“As if I … well, you and I know it was you who made the important breakthroughs in this case.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Inspector.”
“Actually, I’m not an—” Root stopped himself, glanced over at me with a pleased, buck-toothed grin, then turned back to the road before us, still grinning.
“Don’t tell me you made it,” I said.
“I did.”
“Well, well. Congratulations, Inspector. I knew it was just a matter of time.”
“Thank you, sir. For everything.”
The guards opened the gate and let us through. I waved good-bye. They didn’t wave back. When we hit the main road I decided it was time to give Root the name of my tailor.
I had my introductory chapter now, the one that sets the tone of the memoir. It wasn’t exactly the tone I’d been expecting earlier on, but you seldom get what you expect in my business.
I wrote it over the next few mornings at the mews house while Merilee slept. I worked at the dining table, with a fire crackling in the fireplace and Lulu asleep under my chair, her head on my mukluk. I wrote it in my own voice. I had to. The reader had to know what had transpired since I’d begun my collaboration with Tristam Scarr. Had to bear in mind that the story they were about to read was his own version of his life, and of history, and that there was another version. I covered that version in a final chapter that was also written in my voice. In it I detailed the murders, past and present, his attempt on my life, his confession, and his own death onstage at his coming-out party.
I didn’t think it made for dull reading, but that’s just my opinion. You’ll have to make up your own mind.
The day that I put it in the mail to New York happened to be the same day Merilee finished her run in The Philadelphia Story. It also happened to be Christmas Eve. We celebrated all of these things with Lulu at the Hungry Horse. The waiter remembered us. He didn’t have to be told to bring us a bowl of olives to go with our martinis.
Merilee seemed drained and a little down. She usually does when the curtain has just fallen on a role for the last time. That was something I understood. I felt pretty much the same way that night.
“Glad to be finished, darling?” She mustered a weary smile as we clinked our glasses.
“It was a hard one. I lost a little of myself this time. I guess that’s what happens when you lose an idol. That and you get bitter. I don’t want to get bitter. I don’t want to become someone who just sits there waiting for the bad to surface in other people. And in myself.” I drained my martini. “I keep thinking I really don’t want to do this kind of work again.”
“Go back to work on your novel. That’s what you need to do.”
“I intend to.” I caught the waiter’s eye and ordered us another round. “I miss New York. Tomorrow too soon to head back?”
She cleared her throat, looked away uneasily. “Something rather sudden has come up, actually. My agent called. I’ve … I’m taking this film role.”
I tugged at my ear. “Film role?”
“They’re already in production. In Tunisia,” she said, the words tumbling out quickly. “See, they wanted Meryl, and they thought they had her, only her deal fell through at the last minute and, well, it’s quite a plum for me, even if I’m not exactly their first choice. It’s a Graham Greene thing. Pinter adapted it. Jimmy Woods is the male lead, and the director is—”
“Feel like some company?”
She examined the tablecloth for a full minute, her lips pursed. Then she shook her head.
The waiter came with our drinks and asked if we were ready to order. Somehow the thought of rare meat wasn’t quite as appealing as it had been five minutes before. I waved him away.
“I-I need to be on my own for awhile, darling,” she began. “The past few weeks—they’ve been wonderful. Special. But something just isn’t right with me. I’ve gone from you to Zack, then from Zack right back to you again. I keep messing things up. I need to be on my own for awhile. Figure things out. No messes. I … I’ll be home in a few months, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, knowing she wasn’t coming home, at least not to me she wasn’t. What had happened between us over the past few weeks was finished. It had been London. It had been Tracy. It had been … hell, who knew what it had been. Whatever, it was done. For now.
“I’m so sorry, darling. Really, I am.”
Her green eyes were brimming now. I got lost in them.
“Don’t be sorry” I said. “We had a terrific time. We’ll have other terrific times. And we’ll have them soon. You’re mine. You always will be mine. I’m quite sure of that.” I drained my drink, glanced at Lulu in Merilee’s lap. “I’m afraid it’s going to be tough on you-know-who, though.”
“On me, too,” she said, stroking you-know-who’s ears. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
“I know I don’t. But I will.”
“So understanding,” she said, covering my hand with hers. “So very, very understanding.”
“That’s me, all right. Of course, this means you don’t get your Christmas p
resent now.”
“What?”
It was a shawl-collared cardigan sweater made out of eight-ply oyster gray cashmere. A men’s size forty-two. My size. I’d picked it up in the Burlington Arcade one afternoon, knowing it would look like a million bucks on her.
I wore it home on the plane. I figured I may as well start breaking it in right away, so it would be good and ready for her when our time came again.
The plane was nearly empty. Not many people fly on Christmas Day. Lulu didn’t stop whimpering during the whole damned flight, even though I let her eat my seafood cocktail.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Stewart Hoag Mysteries
CHAPTER ONE
ASIDE FROM THE NAME it was the usual Soho art gallery in the usual converted cast-iron warehouse down on Spring Street and West Broadway. The door was made out of steel, and I had to buzz to get in and wait out there on the sidewalk in the rain while the surveillance camera mounted over the door checked me over to see if I was their sort of person. I’m not, but I fooled them.
Inside, the wood floor was polished, the pipes exposed, the lighting recessed. A tape of some Philip Glass nonmusic was softly nonplaying. A languid clerk wearing a tight black dress and heavy black-framed Buddy Holly glasses sat at the reception desk just inside, her nose deep into a copy of Vanity Fair, which is the People magazine of pseudointellectuals and social climbers. Me she ignored.
Like I said, it was the usual Soho art gallery — aside from the name, which was Rat’s Nest.
I took off my trench coat and Borsalino and stood there politely dripping until she finally glanced up at me, then down at Lulu, my basset hound, who was wearing the hooded yellow rain slicker I’d had made for her when she got bronchitis one year. She always wears it on rainy days now. I don’t want her getting breathing problems again. She snores when she has them. I know this because she likes to sleep on my head.
“I’m looking for Charleston Chu,” I said.
“In there,” the clerk said, one lazy hand indicating the main gallery through the doorway.
We started in.
“Sir?”
The Man Who Lived by Night Page 18