The Awful Truth About the Herbert Quarry Affair

by Marco Ocram

  Until those words my audience had been silent. I had been at the center of every intent gaze. Now various expressions of disgust and dissent animated the features of my characters. It was Elijah Bow, the self-assured industrialist, who voiced the thought shared by all around the dinner table…

  “And I suppose, Mister Ocram, you are about to explain how you have brilliantly deduced one of us was responsible for framing your friend.”

  I waited for the ensuing chorus of chuckles to die out.

  “No Mister Bow,” I said, mentally twisting the waxed points of my moustache. “I am about to explain how you have all been responsible for framing my friend.”

  The stir caused by my earlier remarks was now intensified tenfold. I saw Chief McGee reaching for a revolver I imagined to be hidden in the pocket of his dinner jacket, but Como had seen it too and had already stood and drawn his own gun.

  “Don’t anybody move!” commanded Como. “Let’s hear what Mister Ocram has to say.”

  I nodded my thanks and continued my exposé, inventing it on the spot as I spoke.

  “It was clear to me that Herbert could not have murdered his tragic young lover. I have known Herbert for many years. I know him as a boxer knows his coach. I know of his Buddhist convictions. I know he is incapable of such a violent crime.”

  I paused to let the more sophisticated of my readers admire my use of anaphora, and to let the less sophisticated of my readers look up the word to see what it meant, until various grunts and tics of impatience from among my guests prompted me to move on…

  “So, I set about discovering who else might possess the combination of opportunity, means, and motive to kill Kellogg and incriminate Quarry. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the story I have uncovered…

  “Exactly a year before Lola Kellogg was brutally slain, Marcia Delgado leaves Clarkesville County Lunatic Asylum for the first time in nine years. You, Professor Sushing, take pity on the beautiful young woman whose obsession you have studied for the previous three thousand two hundred and eighty-five days. You use your influence to get her a job at Clarkesville County Hospital, a hospital to which you have been a generous benefactor. You have no specific aim in mind, but a general hope that her return to the community might catalyze some new revelation about Herbert Quarry, some new revelation you might use to your advantage in your long standing vendetta against my friend and mentor.

  “Gradually Marcia is re-assimilated into Clarkesville society. Most weeks, she visits the nail bar, a venue as popular for its gossip as for its exquisite nail varnishes. There, one afternoon three months ago…”

  I switched to flashback mode to nurture the interest of my yawning readers.

  Marcia is waiting for her appointment. She has arrived early, and quickly becomes bored with the tattered magazines she has read on countless visits. She looks at the other clients undergoing treatment. One is an expensively dressed woman whom Marcia recognizes as Mrs. DeVere—a well-known figure in town, but a new visitor to the nail-bar. As Mrs. DeVere is prepared for a pedicure, Marcia sees a birthmark on the sole of her right foot, a birthmark just like one she has seen on Scoobie McGee’s young daughter Jenny.

  Marcia’s thoughts race. Gossip had been flying in Clarkesville for years about Jenny McGee’s family and the Kelloggs. Some said Jenny was Kellogg’s love child. Others that Lola was the result of a tryst between Scoobie and Mrs. Kellogg. Still others said both children had been born through sperm donation. Marcia knew enough about the gossip to wonder about Mrs. DeVere. Who could she be? She must be related to Jenny McGee in some way, but how?

  Determined to know, Marcia decides to follow as Mrs. DeVere leaves the nail-bar. The receptionist shouts ‘What about your appointment?’ But Marcia has already turned the block in Mrs. DeVere’s wake.

  Marcia sees Mrs. DeVere get into a Rolls Royce, a distinctive car anywhere, but especially in Clarkesville. Marcia quickly unlocks her own car and follows the Rolls through the lazy Clarkesville traffic. Mrs. DeVere drives smartly out of town onto the N66 heading north. Marcia checks her mirror, then joins the N66 a couple of cars behind.

  After a twenty-minute drive too tedious to relate in detail, the Rolls sweeps majestically through elaborate gates Marcia knows to be the entrance to Elijah Bow’s lavish property. Marcia pulls her car into some bushes and follows on foot. She sees the Rolls halt by a block of garages. Mrs. DeVere swings her legs out of the car then climbs out. A man appears from the end of the garage block, squeezing a chamois leather. Mrs. DeVere tosses keys to the man, then heads into the house. Intrigued, Marcia follows as close as she dares, hiding behind the shrubs in the garden. Seeing Mrs. DeVere through a large window, she creeps up to it and peers within.

  Mrs. DeVere is by the fireplace at the far side of the room. She kicks off her heels and drops her hat on a table. She removes her earrings and places them in a small box on the mantelpiece. And then… Marcia can hardly believe her eyes… Mrs. DeVere takes off a wig to reveal a short mannish haircut. Now Marcia understands. Mrs. DeVere is Elijah Bow.

  Marcia utters a gasp of surprise, a gasp stifled by a huge hand clamped over her mouth while powerful arms enfold her body. Bluther Cale has grabbed her from behind and carries her bodily into the house as if she weighed no more than a beach ball.

  Powerless to resist, Marcia finds herself dropped on her feet in the very room into which she had been peering moments earlier. Elijah Bow, still in the dress of Mrs. DeVere, speaks angrily:

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “I found her vnooping through the window,” says Bluther Cale.

  “Snooping,” says Bow. “What do you mean by snooping?” he asks of Marcia. “Don’t you know I could have trespassers shot?”

  “I’m sorry Mister Bow,” wails Marcia. “I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was Mrs. DeVere.”

  “Well, now you know I am Mrs. DeVere. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  In a panic Marcia blurts out all she knows. About the birthmarks on the feet of Mrs. DeVere and Jenny McGee. About thinking Mrs. DeVere must be related to Jenny McGee. About following Mrs. DeVere to see where she lived. “Honestly, Mister Bow,” she wails. “I wouldn’t have done it if I had known it was you. I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry.”

  “You have no need to be sorry. You have actually done me a favor. However, you must not mention a word of what you have learned to anyone unless I instruct you otherwise. If you fail to be discreet, I have the money and the connections to have you returned to the lunatic asylum. Do I make myself understood?”

  “Oh yes, yes, Mister Bow,” Marcia kneels and clasps her hands in supplication at the billionaire’s feet. “Please don’t send me back!”

  “Then do as you are told. Return to Clarkesville and act normally until you hear from me again. Go!”

  I stared at Marcia Delgado. “That was how it happened, yes?”

  She dropped her gaze into her lap, a sure sign of guilt.

  “So, ladies and gentlemen, that is how Elijah Bow learns that Jenny McGee is his other love child. Staggering news, you will understand. However, not as staggering as what follows. For Bow had never known about his birthmark. It was on the sole of his foot, by his heel, an area of his body he would never normally see. With the help of a mirror he examines it, and his blood runs cold. For one thing is certain, he has never seen such a birthmark on the foot of his beloved Lola.”

  I decided to pause at this point to allow Como and the readers to reflect on the momentous importance of the revelation—everyone else around the table already knew about it, of course.

  “So, Mister Bow,” I looked him in the eye as I spoke, “you now knew that the girl to whom you had left your fortune in a binding contract with the Kelloggs was not your biological daughter after all. It took you three weeks to figure out how it had come about and decide what you were going to do. Three weeks during which you recalled the fire at the County Hospital maternity wing, the fire just after Lol
a was born. Three weeks during which you examined press records and found that one mother and one baby girl had died in that fire. Three weeks in which you guessed it was your daughter who had perished, and somehow the Kelloggs ended up with another baby, the baby of the woman who had died in the fire. Three weeks in which you and your expensive lawyers confronted Marge Downberry, who admitted she had given the other baby to the Kelloggs…”

  “I did, I did, I did,” wailed Marge from the other end of the vast dining table. “I did, and I would have done it again too.”

  There was now a touch of defiance among her tears. I continued her story…

  “Yes. You found that Frances Kellogg’s daughter by Elijah Bow had perished in the fire, asphyxiated in the deadly fumes. Frances Kellogg, the young woman to whom motherhood had meant everything, had tragically lost her baby girl within hours of giving birth. You couldn’t bear to see her suffer, so you switched another baby girl, one born shortly beforehand, one passably alike to the real Kellogg baby, one whose mother had also perished in the fire and would grow up an orphan. At a stroke you were able to fix two ruined lives, and your instinct for good overrode your professional code of midwifery ethics.

  “And so it remained your secret, and your secret alone until one day you are visited by Elijah Bow, a man you have known only as one of the two major benefactors to the Clarkesville County Hospital. Bow had guessed the truth, and now with a mixture of bribes and threats he gets it from your own mouth. You show him the photographs of the babies’ feet, and he knows for sure: Lola is not his biological daughter. Some weeks later he thanks you for your honesty by buying a house in which you can retire, a house in Assumption Springs, close enough that he can keep an eye on you but far enough to take you out of the Clarkesville gossip machine.”

  I now turned to Bow.

  “Which leaves you, Mister Bow, with a problem. How can you now stop all your wealth being left to Lola Kellogg—a cuckoo in your genetic nest—and instead ensure it is passed to Jenny McGee, your one surviving offspring?

  “But a man like Mister Bow never has a problem for long. Mister Bow is resourceful. He has friends at City Hall. Contacts. Backstairs influence. He could not have become a leading industrialist with billions in public contracts without knowing his way around, without buying-off officialdom from time to time. Naturally he knows Chief McGee…

  “So, the Chief is invited to Bow’s ranch. Over a whiskey or two, Bow is disarmingly frank. The story comes out. McGee’s family stands to inherit billions, but for one small problem: Lola.

  “Bow doesn’t know it at the time, but McGee has his own reasons for wanting rid of Lola. Some weeks earlier, you, Quimara Tann, had gone to see McGee…”

  Quimara Tann had barely slept for a week. All she could think about was how that slime-ball Quarry had left her beautiful daughter in the lurch for that young slag Lola Kellogg. Quimara’s dreams of celebrity lay in tatters. Pedophiles like Quarry shouldn’t be free on the streets; they should be locked up.

  Eventually she stoked her indignation to the point where she had to take action. She marched into Clarkesville County Police HQ and told the desk sergeant she needed to see ‘whoever is in charge here.’ The sergeant went into a back room and phoned Chief McGee. There was a woman in reception demanding to see him. Seemed bananas but was a real looker. Send her up, said his chief.

  Quimara Tann was escorted to Chief McGee’s office where she found herself confronted by a large, capable-looking man in his early sixties who was appraising her with a bold stare.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs.…”

  “Tann, Quimara Tann.” Quimara held out a hand which the Chief shook.

  “What can I do for you Mrs. Tann?” asked the Chief, helpfully adding another nineteen words to my book.

  “I’m here to report a pedophile.”

  Quimara Tann told Chief McGee all that had happened, omitting few details, and showed him various incriminating documents she had stolen from Herbert’s study. McGee was prepared to believe all she said. Rumors about Quarry and young girls had been rife, and here at last was solid evidence.

  He thanked Mrs. Tann and told her he would investigate as a matter of urgency. He shook her hand as she left, holding on to it for a good few seconds more than necessary. Mrs. Tann thought she had found a champion who would help get that bastard Quarry locked up where he belonged.

  “But things didn’t go as you’d planned, did they Chief? You got Lola in for a chat, and she outfoxed you. Show me what Herbert Quarry makes you do, you said. And she showed you alright—in your own office, then threatened to expose you as a pedophile if you exposed Quarry. When your wits returned you figured it out. You found Lola and told her her threats were empty, there was no concrete proof, it would be her word against yours, the word of a wayward girl against that of a police chief. But that was your first mistake, McGee, telling her there was no proof. Your second mistake was helping her get proof. Over the next few days she was a repeat visitor at police HQ, needing to tell Chief McGee her story. Then the blow falls. Lola tells you she’s got proof after all—she’s pregnant, and you’re the father.”

  McGee shifted in his chair, his face taut with rage at my accusation.

  “There you were, Chief McGee, worrying how to solve your problem with Lola, when the richest man in Clarkesville intimates he wants your help to do away with her, and offering his entire fortune to your family in return.

  “Chief McGee breaks the news to Scoobie here. At first Scoobie doesn’t want to know. He can’t believe he’s not Jenny’s father. He can’t believe Bow is. He can’t believe his uncle, the police chief, is serious about killing Lola. But blood, ladies and gentlemen, is thicker than water, and eventually the pact is sealed. Scoobie McGee will help his uncle for the benefit of his daughter, the daughter he now knows to be his by marriage alone. Lola’s fate is sealed. All that is missing is a plan.

  “And this is where you come in, Professor Sushing. One evening, you and Bow are guests at a charity gala for Clarkesville County Hospital. As the dreary formalities of the evening pass, what is more natural than the two billionaire men-of-the-world drifting together to share cigars on the terrace, to escape the babble of the ‘little people’ within. Then, quite by chance, Elijah Bow mentions Herbert Quarry. For Professor Sushing, whose inhibitions have been dissolved by a copious intake of wine, the name is a trigger for a venomous outpouring of hatred. Still smarting from the outcome of the court case, you tell Bow how your whole life had been devoted to the cause of literature, how book after book you had written had been rejected by publishers for having insufficient ‘market appeal,’ how you were sick to your very core to see bestsellers written by illiterate morons, books crammed with cliché, unnatural dialogue, mangled syntax, repellent characters, repetitive flashbacks, nauseating metaphors, redundant words, formatting gimmicks, bizarre and unconvincing plot-twists, books which for all their manifest faults were still feted by the corrupt critics, books typified by the works of Herbert Quarry. It became clear to Bow that you had a manic hatred of Herbert Quarry and all he represented, and you would do anything to see his downfall.

  “Here at last was the ally Bow needed to complete his dastardly planning. Professor Sushing was world-renowned as an expert in software techniques, leading the field in the development of quantum computing and sixth-generation programming languages. It would be a trivial matter for the Professor to implant software on the PC of Herbert Quarry, a simple matter for him to eavesdrop on every communication to and from that computer.

  “Gradually the eavesdropping revealed a picture of the affairs and intentions of Herbert Quarry and Lola Kellogg. In secret meetings at the Clarkesville Hilton, Bow, Sushing and the two McGees laid their plans. Lola would have to be killed, and to divert all suspicion a patsy must be found, a man who could be so convincingly framed for her murder that there was no possible outcome for him but a trip to the chair. And what better man than Herbert Quarry? A rich and f
amous author, a person loathed by all right-thinking men, and an alleged pedophile to boot. There would be no jury alive who would fail to convict him if the right trail of evidence were laid.

  “So, Professor, from your software labs in Nassau, you planted emails on Herbert’s computer, seeming to beg for Lola to meet him.

  “On the day of the killing, Chief and Scoobie McGee are in a patrol car together. They see Lola walking through the woods towards Herbert’s house, and they chase her on foot. Lola sees them and assumes the Chief is planning some kind of threesome with his nephew, so she takes off and runs. And this is where a complication arises. Bluther Cale. Bluther was in love with Lola and had been following her. Bluther sees Lola chased by the two policemen, so he chases after them. He sees one of the two men floor Lola with a blow. He roars with rage, the noise betraying his presence. The two policemen round on him and kill him with blows from their nightsticks. The McGees bundle Lola’s warm body into their car in an evidence bag, drive to Herbert’s house, take one of Herbert’s knives and cut up the body on the floor. They wear police-issue gloves, overshoes, and overalls to keep any of their DNA off Lola’s body and any of Lola’s DNA off theirs. After dismembering Lola’s body, they pick up Cale’s corpse. One of them drives Cale in Cale’s car, the other follows in the prowler. They get to the cliff, move Cale to the driver’s side of the seat, and push the car over the edge. They make a prearranged call to Delgado, who rings the emergency line from a public phone to report that Herbert is cutting up Lola in his study. And the rest, ladies and gentlemen, we know.”

  Elijah Bow started a slow ironic clap. “Congratulations, Mister Ocram. You have pieced it together wonderfully. We hadn’t counted on having a writer on our case. We assumed we would be dealing with the regular law enforcement agencies, but I see we made a mistake in that regard.”