by Tom Sharpe
‘It was a showhouse, part of the American heritage. People used to come up from Boston just to look at it.’
‘I was thinking of Mrs Hutchmeyer,’ said MacMordie. Hutchmeyer looked at him nastily.
‘I might have expected that from you, MacMordie. At a time like this you have to think about sex.’
‘I wasn’t thinking sex,’ said MacMordie, ‘she was a remarkable woman characterwise.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Hutchmeyer. I want her memory embalmed in books. She was a great book-lover you know. I want a leatherbound edition of Pause O Men for the Virgin printed with gold letters. We’ll call it the Baby Hutchmeyer Memorial Edition.’
‘I’ll see to it,’ said MacMordie.
*
And so while Hutchmeyer resumed his role as publisher Sonia Futtle lay weeping on her bed in the Gramercy Park. She was consumed by guilt and grief. The one man who had ever loved her was dead and it was all her fault. She looked at the telephone and thought of calling Frensic but it would be the middle of the night in England. Instead she sent a telegram. PETER DEAD PRESUMED DROWNED MRS HUTCHMEYER DITTO POLICE INVESTIGATING CRIME WILL CALL WHEN CAN SONIA.
15
Frensic arrived in Lanyard Lane next morning in fine fettle. The world was a splendid place, the sun was shining, the people would shortly be in the shops buying Pause and best of all Hutchmeyer’s cheque for two million dollars was nestling happily in the F & F bank account. It had arrived the previous week and all that needed to be done now was to subtract four hundred thousand dollars commission and transfer the remainder to Mr Cadwalladine and his strange client. Frensic would see to it this morning. He collected his mail from the box and stumped upstairs to his office. There he seated himself at his desk, took his first pinch of snuff from the Bureau for the day and went through the letters in front of him. It was near the bottom of the pile that he came upon the telegram.
‘Telegrams, really!’ he muttered to himself in criticism of the extravagant hurry of an insistent author and opened it. A moment later Frensic’s rosy view of the world had disintegrated, to be replaced by fragmentary and terrible images that rose from the cryptic words on the form. Piper dead? Presumed drowned? Mrs Hutchmeyer ditto? Each staccato message became a question in his mind as he tried to cope with the information. It was a minute before Frensic could realize the full import of the thing and even then he doubted and took refuge in disbelief. Piper couldn’t be dead. In Frensic’s comfortable little world death was something your authors wrote about. It was unreal and remote, a fabrication, not something that happened. But there, in these few words unadorned by punctuation marks and typed on crooked strips of paper, death intruded. Piper was dead. So was Mrs Hutchmeyer but Frensic accorded her no interest. She wasn’t his responsibility. Piper was. Frensic had persuaded him to go to his death. And POLICE INVESTIGATING CRIME robbed him of even the consolation that there had been an accident. Crime and death suggested murder and to be confronted with Piper’s murder added to Frensic’s sense of horror. He sagged in his chair ashen with shock.
It was some time before be could bring himself to read the telegram again. But it still said the same thing. Piper dead. Frensic wiped his face with his handkerchief and tried to imagine what had happened. This time PRESUMED DROWNED held his attention. If Piper was dead why was there the presumption that he had drowned? Surely they knew how he had died. And why couldn’t Sonia call? WILL CALL WHEN CAN added a new dimension of mystery to the message. Where could she be if she couldn’t phone straightaway? Frensic visualized her lying hurt in a hospital but if that was the case she would have said so. He reached for the phone to put a call through to Hutchmeyer Press before realizing that New York was five hours behind London time and there would be no one in the office yet. He would have to wait until two o’clock. He sat staring at the telegram and tried to think practically. If the police were investigating the crime it was almost certain they would follow their inquiries into Piper’s past. Frensic foresaw them discovering that Piper hadn’t in fact written Pause. From that it would follow that … my God, Hutchmeyer would get to know and there’d be the devil to pay. Or, more precisely, Hutchmeyer. The man would demand the return of his two million dollars. He might even sue for breach of contract or fraud. Thank God the money was still in the bank. Frensic sighed with relief.
To take his mind off the dreadful possibilities inherent in the telegram he went through to Sonia’s office and looked in the filing cabinet for the letter from Mr Cadwalladine authorizing Piper to represent the author on the American tour. He took it out and studied it carefully before putting it back. At least he was covered there. If there was any trouble with Hutchmeyer Mr Cadwalladine and his client were party to the deception. And if the two million had to be refunded they would be in no position to grumble. By concentrating on these eventualities Frensic held at bay his sense of guilt and transferred it to the anonymous author. Piper’s death was his fault. If the wretched man had not hidden behind a nom de plume Piper would still be alive. As the morning wore on and he sat unable to work at anything else, Frensic’s feeling of grievance grew. He had been fond of Piper in an odd sort of way. And now he was dead. Frensic sat miserably at his desk looking out over the roofs of Covent Garden and mourned Piper’s passing. The poor fellow had been one of nature’s victims, or rather one of literature’s victims. Pathetic. A man who couldn’t write to save his life …
The phrase brought Frensic up with a start. It was too apt. Piper was dead and he had never really lived. His existence had been one long battle to get into print and he had failed. What was it that drove men like him to try to write, what fixation with the printed word held them at their desks year after year? All over the world there were thousands of other Pipers sitting at this very moment in front of blank pages which they would presently fill with words that no one would ever read but which in their naïve conceit they considered to have some deep significance. The thought added to Frensic’s melancholy. It was all his fault. He should have had the courage and good sense to tell Piper that he would never be a novelist. Instead he had encouraged him. If he had told him Piper would still be alive, he might even have found his true vocation as a bank clerk or plumber, have married and settled down – whatever that meant. Anyway, he wouldn’t have spent those forlorn years in forlorn guest-houses in forlorn seaside resorts living by proxy the lives of Conrad and Lawrence and Henry James, the shadowy ghost of those dead authors he had revered. Even Piper’s death had been by way of being a proxy one as the author of a novel he hadn’t written. And somewhere the man who should have died was living undisturbed.
Frensic reached for the phone. The bastard wasn’t going to go on living undisturbed. Mr Cadwalladine could relay a message to him. He dialled Oxford.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got some rather bad news for you,’ he said when Mr Cadwalladine came on the line.
‘Bad news? I don’t understand,’ said Mr Cadwalladine.
‘It concerns the young man who went to America as the supposed author of that novel you sent me,’ said Frensic.
Mr Cadwalladine coughed uncomfortably. ‘Has he … er … done something indiscreet?’ he asked.
‘You could put it like that,’ said Frensic. ‘The fact of the matter is that we are likely to have some problems with the police.’ Mr Cadwalladine made more uncomfortable noises which Frensic relished. ‘Yes, the police,’ he continued. ‘They may be making inquiries shortly.’
‘Inquiries?’ said Mr Cadwalladine, now definitely alarmed. ‘What sort of inquiries?’
‘I can’t be too certain at the moment but I thought I had better let you and your client know that he is dead,’ said Frensic.
‘Dead?’ croaked Mr Cadwalladine.
‘Dead,’ said Frensic.
‘Good Lord. How very unfortunate.’
‘Quite,’ said Frensic. ‘Though from Piper’s point of view “unfortunate” seems rather too mild a word, particularly as he appears to have been murdered.’
This time there was no mistaking Mr Cadwalladine’s alarm.
‘Murdered?’ he gasped, ‘You did say “murdered”?’
‘That’s exactly what I said. Murdered.’
‘Good God,’ said Mr Cadwalladine. ‘How very dreadful.’
Frensic said nothing and allowed Mr Cadwalladine to dwell on the dreadfulness of it all.
‘I don’t quite know what to say,’ Mr Cadwalladine muttered finally.
Frensic pressed home his advantage. ‘In that case, if you will just give me the name and address of your client I will convey the news to him myself.’
Mr Cadwalladine made negative noises. ‘There’s no need for that. I shall let him know.’
‘As you wish,’ said Frensic. ‘And while you’re about it you had also better let him know that he will have to wait for his American advance.’
‘Wait for his American advance? You’re surely not suggesting …’
‘I am not suggesting anything. I am merely drawing your attention to the fact that Mr Hutchmeyer was not privy to the substitution of Mr Piper for your anonymous client and, that being the case, if the police should unearth our little deception in the course of their inquiries … you take my point?’
Mr Cadwalladine did. ‘You think Mr … er … Hutchmeyer might … er … demand restitution?’
‘Or sue,’ said Frensic bluntly, ‘in which case it would be as well to be in a position to refund the entire sum at once.’
‘Oh definitely,’ said Mr Cadwalladine, for whom the prospect of being sued evidently held very few attractions. ‘I leave the matter entirely in your hands.’
Frensic ended the conversation with a sigh. Now that he had passed some of the responsibility on to Mr Cadwalladine and his damned client he felt a little better. He took a pinch of snuff and was savouring it when the phone rang. It was Sonia Futtle calling from New York. She sounded extremely distressed.
‘Oh Frenzy, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘it’s all my fault. If it hadn’t been for me this would never have happened.’
‘What do you mean your fault?’ said Frensic. ‘You don’t mean you …’
‘I should never have brought him over here. He was so happy …’ she broke off and there was the sound of sobs.
Frensic gulped. ‘For God’s sake tell me what’s happened,’ he said.
‘The police think it was murder,’ said Sonia and sobbed again.
‘I gathered that from your telegram. But I still don’t know what happened. I mean, how did he die?’
‘Nobody knows,’ said Sonia, ‘that’s what’s so awful. They’re dragging the bay and going through the ashes of the house and …’
‘The ashes of the house?’ said Frensic, trying desperately to square a burnt house with Piper’s presumed death by drowning.
‘You see Hutch and I went out in his yacht and a storm blew up and then the house caught fire and someone fired at the firemen and Hutch’s cruiser tried to ram us and exploded and we were nearly killed and . .’
It was a confused and disjointed account and Frensic, sitting with the phone pressed hard to his ear, tried in vain to form a coherent picture of what had occurred. In the end he was left with a series of chaotic images, an insane jigsaw puzzle in which, though the pieces all fitted, the final picture made no sense at all. A huge wooden house blazing into the night sky. Someone inside this inferno fending off firemen with a heavy machine-gun. Bears. Hutchmeyer and Sonia on a yacht in a hurricane. Cruisers hurtling across the bay and finally, most bizarre of all, Piper being blown to Kingdom Come in the company of Mrs Hutchmeyer wearing a mink coat. It was like a glimpse of hell.
‘Have they no idea who did it?’ he asked.
‘Only some terrorist group,’ said Sonia. Frensic swallowed.
‘Terrorist group? Why should a terrorist group want to kill poor Piper?’
‘Well, because of all the publicity he got in that riot in New York,’ said Sonia. ‘You see when we landed …’
She told the story of their arrival and Frensic listened in horror. ‘You mean Hutchmeyer deliberately provoked a riot? The man’s mad.’
‘He wanted to get maximum publicity,’ Sonia explained.
‘Well he’s certainly succeeded,’ said Frensic.
But Sonia was sobbing again. ‘You’re just callous,’ she wept. ‘You don’t seem to see what this means …’
‘I do,’ said Frensic, ‘it means the police are going to start looking into Piper’s background and …’
‘That we’re to blame,’ cried Sonia, ‘we sent him over and we are the ones—’
‘Now hold it,’ said Frensic, ‘if I’d known Hutchmeyer was going to rent a riot for his welcome I would never have consented to his going. And as for terrorists …’
‘The police aren’t absolutely certain it was terrorists. They thought at first that Hutchmeyer had murdered him.’
‘That’s more like it,’ said Frensic. ‘From what you’ve told me it’s nothing more than the truth. He’s an accessory before the fact. If he hadn’t …’
‘And then they seemed to think the Mafia could be involved.’
Frensic swallowed again. This was even worse. ‘The Mafia? What would the Mafia want to kill Piper for? The poor little sod hadn’t …’
‘Not Piper. Hutchmeyer.’
‘You mean the Mafia were trying to kill Hutchmeyer?’ said Frensic wistfully.
‘I don’t know what I mean,’ said Sonia, ‘I’m telling you what I heard the police say and they mentioned that Hutchmeyer had had dealings with organized crime.’
‘If the Mafia wanted to kill Hutchmeyer why did they pick on Piper?’
‘Because Hutch and I were out on the yacht and Peter and Baby …’
‘What baby?’ said Frensic, desperately incorporating this new and grisly ingredient into an already cluttered crimescape.
‘Baby Hutchmeyer.’
‘Baby Hutchmeyer? I didn’t know the swine had any …’
‘Not that sort of baby. Mrs Hutchmeyer. She was called Baby.’
‘Good God,’ said Frensic.
‘There’s no need to be so heartless. You sound as if you didn’t care.’
‘Care?’ said Frensic. ‘Of course I care. This is absolutely frightful. And you say the Mafia …’
‘No I didn’t. I said that’s what the police said. They thought it was some sort of attempt to intimidate Hutchmeyer.’
‘And has it?’ asked Frensic, trying to extract a morsel of comfort from the situation.
‘No,’ said Sonia, ‘he’s out for blood. He says he’s going to sue them.’
Frensic was horrified. ‘Sue them? What do you mean “sue them”? You can’t sue the Mafia and anyway …’
‘Not them. The police.’
‘Hutchmeyer’s going to sue the police?’ said Frensic, now totally out of his depth.
‘Well first off they accused him of doing it. They held him for hours and grilled him. They didn’t believe his story that he was out on the yacht with me. And then the gas-cans didn’t help.’
‘Gas-cans? What gas-cans?’
‘The ones I tied round his waist.’
‘You tied gas-cans round Hutchmeyer’s waist?’ said Frensic.
‘I had to. To stop him from drowning.’
Frensic considered the logic of this remark and found it wanting. ‘I should have thought …’ he began before deciding there was nothing to be gained by regretting that Hutchmeyer hadn’t been left to drown. It would have saved a lot of trouble.
‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked finally.
‘I don’t know,’ said Sonia, ‘I’ve got to wait around. The police are still making inquiries and I’ve lost all my clothes … and oh Frenzy it’s all so horrible.’ She broke down again and wept. Frensic tried to think of something to cheer her up.
‘You’ll be interested to hear that the reviews in the Sunday papers were all good,’ he said, but Sonia’s grief was not assuaged.
‘How can y
ou talk about reviews at a time like this?’ she said. ‘You just don’t care is all.’
‘My dear I do. I most certainly do,’ said Frensic, ‘it’s a tragedy for all of us. I’ve just been speaking to Mr Cadwalladine and explaining that in the light of what has happened his client will have to wait for his money.’
‘Money? Money? Is that all you think about, money? My darling Peter is dead and …’
Frensic listened to a diatribe against himself, Hutchmeyer and someone called MacMordie, all of whom in Sonia’s opinion thought only about money. ‘I understand your feelings,’ he said when she paused for breath, ‘but money does come into this business and if Hutchmeyer finds out that Piper wasn’t the author of Pause …’
But the phone had gone dead. Frensic looked at it reproachfully and replaced the receiver. All he could hope now was that Sonia kept her wits about her and that the police didn’t carry their investigations too far into Piper’s past history.
*
In New York Hutchmeyer’s feelings were just the reverse. In his opinion the police were a bunch of half-wits who couldn’t investigate anything properly. He had already been in touch with his lawyers only to be advised that there was no chance of suing Chief Greensleeves for wrongful arrest because he hadn’t been arrested.
‘That bastard held me for hours with nothing on but a blanket,’ Hutchmeyer protested. ‘They grilled me under hot lamps and you tell me I’ve got no comeback. There ought to be a law protecting innocent citizens against that kind of victimization.’
‘Now if you could show they’d roughed you up a bit we could maybe do something, but as it is …’
Having failed to get satisfaction from his own lawyers Hutchmeyer turned his attention to the insurance company and got even less comfort there. Mr Synstrom of the Claims Department visited him and expressed doubts.
‘What do you mean you don’t necessarily go along with the police theory that some crazy terrorists did this thing?’ Hutchmeyer demanded.