The Sinking Admiral

by The Detection Club

  Oh God! She remembered thinking how badly she needed a knight in shining armour when she had first to face that horrible man Fitz, the author of this book in which she had invested so much. Or perhaps not the author. He had ‘discovered’ it, so he claimed, and it was vital to the credibility of the book that that was its official provenance. The story that Fitz had ‘found’ the manuscript under a flagstone in the Admiral Byng’s cellar was unlikely, but not impossible, and Ianthe for one was determined to believe it. Perhaps he had been moving a barrel of his famously thin beer, or burying his dog, when he had tripped over it. It really didn’t matter. Fitz had found the manuscript, and Ianthe was going to make it a bestseller.

  They had decided to call the book, Dragon Hoard, but Ianthe still wasn’t sure if that was rather too obvious a title. She had checked online and discovered that there were quite a few books already in print called Dragon Hoard, but, as she kept reminding herself, there was no copyright in titles. What made her book special was that not only was it a good read – underneath the flowery language there was ripping yarn – but there was also the hint – no, it was more than a hint – the definite assertion that beneath or at least in the grounds of the Admiral Byng there was treasure. She imagined the pub besieged by treasure hunters all carrying a copy of the book – like that one about the golden hare – Masquerade she thought it had been called. That had been one of publishing’s great successes, and she was certain this could be something similar. The searchers wouldn’t find anything, but Ianthe was sure that sales of the book would be enormous. It was a pity the pub could only boast a couple of rooms for the treasure seekers to stay in, and they were squalid, as she had reason to know, but no doubt villagers could be persuaded to put up some of the enthusiasts.

  Fitz could have ruined all this with a few ill-chosen words. When she had spoken to him a week ago on the telephone – a very bad line – he seemed to have lost interest in the whole business. He had been quite rude to her. He had said he had more urgent things to think about than ‘the bloody book’. Fortunately, half-cut, Fitz had signed a piece of paper Ianthe had scribbled on when he had first given her the manuscript. She didn’t quite know if the document was legal, but she had intended to tell everyone she had a contract, and remind Fitz what he needed to do to honour it.

  Fitz, she had reckoned, was her one way out of the cul-de-sac she had got into with the two men in her life – her husband and her boss – and she was determined to take it. She had to stop Fitz telling the world the book was all bollocks, a modern pastiche rather than the medieval manuscript it claimed to be. If she judged his character correctly he was perfectly capable of blowing the whole thing apart. He could say there was no treasure, that there never had been a treasure, that he had invented the whole thing himself. She had thought it very important that she should make it to Crabwell and stand by Fitz when he said what he needed to say ‘on camera’, and if she had to sleep with Ben to make him include the piece in his programme she would, but that shouldn’t be necessary. Anyway, she still had the vague idea that she’d been to bed with Ben before, when they were at uni.

  She had felt confident that she could trust Ben to recognise a scoop when he was handed it on a plate. He would see the attraction in being the first to reveal the location of buried treasure. It was what Barry would describe as ‘a win–win situation’. After all, it was in Fitz’s interest as much as hers that the book should be a bestseller. She knew he was very short of ‘the readies’, as he phrased it. And Ben ought to be grateful. Who wanted to watch a boring documentary on the decline of the English pub? But a treasure-hunt… that was something else. So why was she so uneasy?

  Her mind had been full of such thoughts as she approached Crabwell. She sighed as she turned the Beetle off the main road, narrowly missing a cyclist, who swore at her. She gave him two fingers, but not with much conviction. She had a lot on her mind. If the stuff about the book and Fitz’s attitude to it wasn’t bad enough, Jerry, her husband of almost a year, had hinted he knew about her ill-advised one-night-stand – it wasn’t even that – with Barry after the Christmas party. But how could he possibly know, she wondered, assuming Barry hadn’t told him?

  She pursed her lips and drove over a pedestrian crossing without seeing the woman with the pram. And Barry could have. That was just the sort of swinish trick he might play on her, telling her husband what he had no right to know. Come to think of it, she thought the post boy, Kevin, might have seen something, but he wouldn’t have told anyone, would he? He was a pimpled kid with a red nose and big ears who looked longingly at her boobs. She must remember to be nice to him. But not too nice. She didn’t need any further office entanglements.

  She regretted the ‘Barry incident’, as she called it in her mind, but it hadn’t really been her fault. She had been drunk and upset about Jerry wanting to go to some bloody Chelsea game instead of taking her out to dinner. She was sure Jerry loved Chelsea more than her. He had almost been late for their wedding, glued to the TV, which he said was more important than being on time for the short walk to the altar. Or ‘the short walk to the executioner’s block’ as he had once amusingly described it to his mates. Barry had taken her into his office ‘to discuss her figures’ he had said with a smirk. She had cried on his shoulder about Jerry’s selfishness, and he had been sympathetic at first. Then he had kicked the door shut and told her he knew how to cheer her up.

  He had been forceful – well, quite rough now she came to think about it – and he hadn’t used a condom. She’d not even enjoyed it. The telephone on the desk had nearly broken a vertebra in the small of her back. When she had protested, he had told her he liked phone sex, and his breath when he laughed had smelt of cigarettes and beer. That was sexual harassment, wasn’t it? Since then he had hardly looked at her, even when she had worn her shortest skirt and positively offered herself to him. She had heard he was shagging that secretary – the one with absurdly yellow hair and blood-red nails – so maybe that was why he had lost interest in her.

  The first time she had been to the Admiral Byng, she and Jerry had been on honeymoon – a poor substitute for the week in Venice he had promised her. At the last moment there had been some Chelsea match he just had to be at with his mates. So he had wheedled her into agreeing to postpone going away until… well, until it was too late. One of Jerry’s mates had recommended the inn at Crabwell, and very reluctantly she had agreed, but, predictably in her view, it had been a disaster.

  The weather had been awful, and the bed had been so uncomfortable Jerry thought he had got a hernia. They had spent a truly horrible three days and nights at the Admiral Byng, and had quarrelled the whole time. The sheets were damp, and Jerry said the beer was bad, but the locals were so awful they had just had to get drunk to blot them out. And then Fitz had found out she was a publisher and that was when he had made his commercial proposition to her. He had shown her the beer-stained manuscript he said he had found several years back, and she had seen when she read a few pages in bed with Jerry snoring beside her that it might be worth taking seriously.

  Ianthe had been doubtful at first – was it just a competent pastiche or the real thing? But Fitz had spun her such a good yarn about the Knights Templar and how the Treasurer of the Order had been exiled in Britain that she had been quite swept away. According to Fitz, the Treasurer had been a pal of Richard I – the Lionheart. Anyway, Sir Gilbert Fyzeman (as he was called) had ended up in a small castle on the coast long since demolished. It was all rather vague, but according to Fitz the treasure had been inherited – or was it stolen? – by some pirate or other and he had retired to the Admiral Byng, where he had stashed his ill-gotten gains. Ianthe liked the phrase ‘ill-gotten gains’, but in truth the treasure was not particularly ill-gotten if Fitz’s story was true. Fitz hadn’t actually found the treasure on his property, despite many years looking for it in a desultory way – ‘desultory’ had been his word. It was probably all nonsense, of course, but people loved the idea of tr
easure, didn’t they? Look at the success of the National Lottery.

  She had been exhausted when she reached the Admiral Byng that Monday evening. Her Beetle, normally so reliable, had broken down ten miles from Crabwell, and she had had to wave down a nice young man in a Morgan who had fixed things. He had said it was a sprocket – or was it a dirty plug? – she wasn’t sure, but she had liked him and his Morgan. The long and short of it was that they had sex – very uncomfortably – under some dripping trees – the back seat of neither car being suitable for that sort of caper.

  They had agreed to meet the next day ‘for a drink’, but she quickly forgot about her knight in shining armour when she finally pushed open the door of the Admiral Byng and demanded food and, more importantly, drink. There were not so many people in the bar because it was late and filming for the day was over. And Ianthe was too exhausted to be fazed by the fact that those present included a group of Viking re-enactors.

  Fitz had greeted her with a sheepish look and mumbled something about needing to ‘have a few words’ with her after she had eaten her omelette. And she’d had enough problems getting that omelette. ‘The kitchen is closed,’ she’d been told. Huh. She’s had to really bang on about her status as a resident of the Admiral Byng to that bar manager, Amy Walpole – a dreary stick insect of a girl who needed to wash her red hair – or maybe it was meant to look like that – some sort of fashion statement…?

  Amy hadn’t endeared herself to her late-arriving guest either by apparently chatting up Ben Milne. And then Ben had hardly seemed to remember Ianthe, which was a bit insulting, especially if she had slept with him at uni (but then again she wasn’t sure she had). He seemed much more interested in Amy, which was even more insulting. Ianthe had taken an immediate dislike to Amy. The bar manager seemed to her bony, drab, and distressingly ‘bucolic’ (a word she had learned only the week before in a pub quiz), and for the life of her, she could not see what Ben saw in her.

  Ben was, however, interested in the Dragon Hoard book when she mentioned it, and asked if she had a proof copy he could read. Tired and rather drunk after a couple of pints of Fitz’s very strong scrumpy, the Old Baggywrinkle – she told him all about it. How it was going to be a huge bestseller and so on. Fitz kept on trying to change the subject, looking ever more embarrassed.

  Ianthe had produced a proof of the book from her bag and put it on the bar counter for Ben to have a look at, but to her annoyance she heard Amy say she’d take it ‘to read in bed’. The bar manager added that she suspected the whole story was just Fitz’s fantasy. Bloody woman.

  By that point Ianthe had very much wanted to go to bed herself, but, remembering how beastly uncomfortable the bed was, she decided to stay up for another drink or two. As a resident she could go on drinking until she collapsed comatose, but Fitz wouldn’t let her. He said he had something he needed to get off his chest, and persuaded her to come up to his office on the first floor – the Bridge, he called it, as though he was on a pirate ship. Why Fitz needed an office was anyone’s guess. Ianthe looked around as she followed Fitz up the stairs. No one seemed to have noticed their departure. Amy was busy washing glasses, and Ben was deep in conversation with the Viking re-enactors. She continued up the stairs, lured by the Admiral’s promise that he had ‘lots more booze up there’.

  So it was that Ianthe – her brain fuddled by drink, sex and weariness – learned in the Bridge that Fitz was going to prevent her publishing his book. She was so appalled she could hardly muster enough energy to protest. He said he had had ‘pangs of conscience’, though Ianthe was certain he wouldn’t recognise a conscience if it hit him in the face. The book was a fake, he told her. He had knocked it off on long wet winter nights a few years back, never really intending to publish it. Although he hardly watched television, he had somehow become fixated by a series full of swords and dragons, and had believed he could write something equally fantastical. But he had never meant for it to be taken seriously. He declared he couldn’t live with all the lies and deceit that would follow its publication. Yes, he had wanted the money when they first discussed the manuscript, but his circumstances had recently changed for the better. Besides, there were some things more important than the commercial imperative. He wanted to make his peace with the world.

  ‘But there’s a contract!’ Ianthe protested weakly. ‘We have gone so far we can’t go back now,’ and, ridiculously, the dent in Barry’s Prius came into her mind.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ianthe, but I have decided. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘That’s not all there is to it, Fitz. I’m going to make sure you honour our agreement. I mean it, Fitz. I mean it.’

  The following morning, the Tuesday – Ianthe had no distinct memory of going up to bed and undressing – she woke up stiff and cold with the most appalling headache. She stumbled across the passage to the toilet to be violently sick.

  ‘You are disgusting,’ she told the ravaged face that looked back from the mirror. ‘You are nothing but a whore and you drink far too much. You are always being taken for granted by men and you have to snap out of it.’

  She wished she could remember how the previous evening had ended. There was a lurking guilt inside her, a sense of shame, as if she had done something she’d come to regret, but she couldn’t piece together the details. She had a nasty feeling Ben Milne might have been involved, but she couldn’t remember how. She recalled having the thought at some point during last night’s confusion of crossing the narrow landing and knocking on his door, though she had no recollection of putting the plan into action. Surely if she had gone to bed with him, she would have remembered that…? Oh dear.

  Swilling down copious draughts of cold water and paracetamol while clumsily dressing in her bedroom, not for the first time Ianthe Berkeley promised herself that she would never drink again. In fact, she was going to change everything in her life.

  She’d get rid of Jerry – the marriage had been a mistake, they both knew it – and she’d get a new job. With a reputation for bestsellers (which would inevitably follow the success of Dragon Hoard) she would have no difficulty. Then it all came back to her. The horror of being told by Fitz that the book in which, rightly or wrongly, she had invested all her hopes and plans for the future was not going to happen. Only – and her lips thinned and her brow furrowed – it would happen. She would make it happen, Fitz or no Fitz.

  In spite of her grinding hangover, she suddenly had a rather brilliant idea. Forget authentic medieval documents… why not publish the book as a novel? Fitz had more or less suggested that last night. It would appeal to the millions of fans of sword and dragon fantasies. She must find Fitz and see if she could persuade him to agree. It might solve all his problems of conscience – it would be fiction and no one would have to pretend it was true. It would be a bestseller – she felt it in her guts – still churning as they were.

  As long as she could retain control of book and author she would gain the kudos for bringing the firm such a big earner. She would make Mary Drew and the sales of her silly crime novels look pathetic. That was it! She would start her own fantasy list. Publish Tolkien rip-offs and dragons, dragons, dragons. She would be the dragon queen. But wait… she was getting ahead of herself. The book would need editing or rather re-writing, and it was already in proof. What would Barry say? He would say ‘yes’. He would say, ‘Ianthe, you are a genius’.

  She must be able to think straight and be persuasive. She had to make Fitz see things her way. God, she was brilliant. If Fitz did not agree she would kill him. She could manage the whole thing without him. She had a contract of sorts, vague enough to cover anything she might do to the book.

  A more outrageous thought occurred to her. If Fitz wasn’t there – whatever that meant – she could claim to have written the whole thing herself. But hold on, was she going mad? She had left a proof on the bar counter the night before, and she thought she remembered Amy picking it up. If she had read it, Ianthe would not be able to pretend any
thing. She must get it back as soon as she could without arousing Amy’s suspicions. And what about Ben? She had mentioned the book to him. She would just have to tell him a story. Tell him… God knows what, but she could do it. She knew she could. She just needed Fitz out of the way… permanently.

  But when she went downstairs to see if she could face breakfast, she found the Admiral Byng full of policemen. And she heard the news that Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons was out of the way… permanently. He had been discovered drowned.

  Over the next few days Amy was puzzled by Ianthe’s reaction to the news of Fitz’s murder. The publisher made all the right noises – expressed her shock in all the right words, but underneath Amy detected an air of triumph that made her uncomfortable. There was a smugness about Ianthe that seemed totally at odds with the tragedy that had shattered the calm of Crabwell. Was she really as shocked as she pretended? The pub and all its habitués were spinning with suspicion, speculation, and naked fear. All but Ianthe, who seemed to take Fitz’s death not just calmly, but as if it were… Amy tried to think of the right word and ended up with ‘convenient’. Fitz’s death was convenient for Ianthe, but Amy could not understand why.

  She would have to confront the publisher at some point and find out what was really going on. Fortunately on the Saturday lunchtime, Ianthe came looking for her, asking breathlessly if she could have back the proof of Fitz’s book.

  ‘I suppose you won’t be able to publish it now?’ Amy suggested as she gave it to her.

  ‘Did you read it?’ Ianthe asked, not answering Amy’s question.

  ‘I didn’t have time, but I did flip through it. I thought the bits I read were rather good – all that blood.’

  ‘Did you?’ Ianthe was comforted by Amy’s commendation. If just an ordinary bar manager could find something good in the book perhaps she was the kind of ‘huge untapped readership’ Barry was always going on about, that majority of the public disparagingly referred to as ‘the people who don’t usually buy books’. ‘Would you like to read the rest of it?’