He spent the next day reading for review.
It was almost four o’clock and he was coming to the end of the third of the four novels, having polished off the first two and typed up the reviews. The second book had been a shocker – in every sense – and he’d ended up skim-reading the last hundred pages. If he finished the third book this afternoon and did the review, then began the fourth book and read all evening, he might just be able to file the reviews within the deadline of noon tomorrow. After that he had a weekend in the Suffolk countryside with Charles – and more importantly, Maria – to look forward to.
He set aside the book he was reading and thought about Maria. He wondered if he should ring her, perhaps suggest dinner tonight – and to hell with the deadline – or if that might seem too presumptuous. He was still deliberating when the phone rang. He leapt from his chair, hoping that this might be Maria now, pre-empting him.
‘Donald? Nigel here.’
‘Oh …’ He tried to conceal his disappointment. ‘Nigel, good to hear from you.’ He recalled Nigel Lassiter’s suggestion that they should collaborate, and assumed that that was what he was calling about.
‘Not interrupting the old muse am I, Donald?’
‘Of course not. I’m between books at the moment.’
‘Lucky swine. I’ve just started the latest with sod all – I said sod all – idea where it’s going.’ The way he slurred his words suggested to Langham that he’d been hitting the bottle a bit early. ‘But I s’pose I’m lucky.’
Langham humoured him. ‘Lucky?’
‘Lucky,’ Lassiter repeated. ‘I could be dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Dead as in stone cold. Deceased. Kicked the bucket. D.E.A.D.’
‘Ah …’ He assumed, then, that Lassiter had heard about Gervaise Cartwright.
Lassiter continued, ‘He shouldn’t have done it, Donald. I mean, what makes someone do something like that?’
‘Sorry, Nigel, I’m not with you,’ Langham said. ‘Like what?’
‘Kill yourself. Take your own life. SUI … shit, I’ve forgotten how to spell the bloody word. I mean, what makes you throw yourself under a train? That’s serious. No messing about. That’s no cry for help. That’s “Right, let’s get the job done”.’
‘Nigel …’ Langham said with forbearance, ‘what on earth are you talking about?’
‘Horrible thing is, it happened a fortnight ago and I’ve only just heard about it. We were talking about him the other day and he was already stone cold dead.’
‘Talking about who?’ Langham dredged his memory, to no avail.
‘You know, Frankie Pearson. The hack. Little Frankie. The snivelling little shit I collaborated with on three dreadful potboilers and then kicked in the balls. That Frankie.’
‘He’s dead?’ Langham said stupidly.
‘As the proverbial. Poor little bastard threw himself under the London train down in Kent. Didn’t stand a chance. Meant business.’
‘God, they’re dropping like flies …’
A pause. Lassiter hiccupped. ‘They are?’
‘I heard last night – Gervaise Cartwright was murdered on Sunday.’
‘Cartwright? The Hangman?’ Lassiter laughed. ‘Well, the shit had it coming to him. But Frankie …’ He stifled what sounded like a sob. ‘Poor Frankie.’
Langham said, as tactfully as he was able, ‘But I thought you didn’t like Frankie Pearson?’
‘I didn’t, Donald. Frankie was an annoying little twerp and he couldn’t write to save his life … but that isn’t the point. I felt sorry for him, d’you see? I feel … I feel I let him down, back before the war. Maybe I should have gone on collaborating with him, helped him to build his name up. But I was only thinking of number one.’
‘You shouldn’t blame yourself.’ Langham had a sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t he said something similar last week when Lassiter had admitted feeling guilty over the method of suicide chosen by old Max Sidley?
‘Christ, Donald. Frankie had a hell of a time of it lately. He was dossing in a flea pit of a bedsit down in Hackney. Churning out cowboy books for Hubert and Shale at twenty quid a throw and no royalties, thank you very much. No wonder he wanted to end it all. I was talking to his agent earlier today, Dorothy Crawley. She rang to tell me about what’d happened. And guess what? She told me that she only kept Frankie on her books because no other agency would touch him. She felt sorry for him. Poor sodding Frankie.’
Langham glanced across the room to where his book was beckoning. ‘That’s terrible, Nigel. Tell you what, let’s meet sometime next week? Have a pint, talk about the idea you mooted the other day?’
‘The idea?’ Lassiter sounded perplexed.
‘About our using each other’s detective?’
‘Oh, that. Yes, yes … But what I actually rang you about, Donald … Dorothy Crawley has arranged a memorial service for Frankie in the morning. Saint Mary’s Church, Clerkenwell.’
‘A memorial service?’ Langham said. ‘I’m surprised she found a church that’d conduct a service for a suicide.’
Lassiter grunted. ‘Well, she had to ring round a few places. Eventually found Saint Mary’s, talked the parson round with a hefty donation to his organ restoration fund … Where was I? Oh, yes. Dorothy – she was having trouble drumming up customers, as it were. Y’see, old Frankie had no family. Not a soul. Only child, parents dead, no aunts or uncles. And the poor sod had no friends, come to that. So I thought I’d go along, let bygones be bygones, pay my last respects, say sorry and all that. And I was wondering – seeing as how you knew Frankie – if you’d come along. Swell the ranks kind of thing.’
‘Ah …’ Langham quickly tried to think of a convincing excuse.
‘For me,’ Lassiter wheedled. ‘Just to make up numbers so it doesn’t look too pathetic.’
Langham sighed. ‘What time?’
‘Eleven, Saint Mary’s.’
If he got the bulk of the fourth book read tonight and in the morning, and rushed off the review before eleven, he could attend the service and deliver the copy to the Herald just after midday.
He sighed. ‘OK, Nigel. I’ll be there.’
‘Good man!’ Lassiter said. ‘Frankie’ll be looking down on you.’
More likely looking up, Langham thought. ‘I seriously doubt that, Nigel. See you in the morning.’
He replaced the receiver, returned to his book, and hurried through the last thirty pages.
He was sitting at the Underwood an hour later, having just finished the two-hundred-word review, when the phone rang. He moved to the hall, praying that it wouldn’t be Lassiter again, even more lachrymose and maudlin over the death of the man who, in life, he’d detested.
‘Donald?’
‘Maria! I’ve been thinking about you.’
‘You have? You’re kind, Donald. I was wondering … Charles seems a little, how do you say, “under the weather” today. I think everything is on top of him all of a sudden. I thought it might be nice if we took him out for an early drink, and then go on for dinner.’
So much for getting the last book read tonight, but there was no way he was going to pass up the opportunity of seeing Maria. ‘That sounds wonderful. What time?’
‘Say six – would that give you enough time?’
‘I’m on my way.’
He washed and changed into his best suit, then left the flat and drove to Pimlico.
He bought a bunch of daffodils at the florists and presented them to Maria when he entered the outer office.
‘And they’re for you, not the office,’ he told her.
‘Oh, how lovely!’ She buried her face in the blooms and emerged looking radiant. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘How are you feeling today?’
‘I’m fine, but a little worried about Charles. I think he’s been dwelling on what might happen when …’
‘Have you told him we’re taking him out on the town?’
‘He’s upstairs changing right now. He’s excited. Shall we go up?’
Charles was adjusting a flamboyant yellow bow tie in a full-length mirror, turning this way and that to better admire the effect. He was dressed in a silver-grey suit and, sporting a carnation, looked the epitome of haute couture.
‘My boy, Maria is a veritable treasure to suggest an outing. Now come and regale me with the doings of the world in order to lighten my mood.’
Langham sat on the arm of the settee while Charles made minor adjustments to his attire. Maria belted herself into her mackintosh and secured a tiny hat on the side of her head with three lethal-looking pins.
‘Well, I’ve just heard today that Frankie Pearson took his own life a couple of weeks ago.’
Charles turned, his big face a picture of theatrical shock. ‘No! Frankie? Frankie Pearson?’
‘I’ve just had Nigel Lassiter on the phone for twenty minutes, giving me the gory details. Frankie threw himself under a train in Kent.’
Maria pulled a face. ‘Did I know him?’
‘Before your time, my dear,’ Charles said. ‘He was once one of my authors, before drink got the better of him and the quality of his work became so bad that I was left with no option but to suggest a parting of the ways. It was rather sad, Donald, because I felt responsible for introducing him to the writing game in the first place.’
‘So you’re to blame!’ Langham said.
‘Mea culpa!’ Charles pressed fingers to his chest. ‘It’s a long story, and I shall bore you with it over drinks. Are we ready?’
They descended to the street and Charles inserted himself into the rear of the Austin, the process somewhat akin to the genie’s emergence from Aladdin’s lamp – only in reverse, and accomplished with less finesse.
‘Where to?’ Langham asked.
‘Claridge’s,’ Charles declared, ‘and the drinks are on me.’
Langham drove into the West End and fifteen minutes later they strode three abreast and arms linked into the cocktail lounge. Charles ordered pink gins and led the way to a table beside a window.
‘Now I do recall threatening you with a story,’ he said as they settled into their seats.
‘Frankie Pearson,’ Maria reminded him.
‘Ah, yes, Frankie … Now this was in the days of yore, way back in the late twenties, if I remember rightly. Probably before you were even born, Maria. I can’t recall first meeting Frankie – he was a hanger-on to a group of tearaways I knew while at Oxford, though Frankie hadn’t schooled anywhere with distinction. I think we rather patronized him. He was still wet behind the ears, and barely out of his teens – and not, I repeat not – the nasty little cad he turned out to be in later life. If truth be told, and my memory is to be trusted, I do think he was rather sweet.’
Langham smiled to himself. Sweet did not describe the jaded, washed-up hack, running to fat and vindictive, he’d known just after the war.
‘He was bisexual – a sexual opportunist, I thought of him at the time – with neither the guts to commit to our side, nor the decency to settle down with a good woman. He was full of braggadocio about his conquests, but with little hard evidence. I felt rather sorry for him, and decided to play cupid.’
‘You said you introduced him to writing?’
‘I’m coming to that, dear boy. Do curb your impatience. I introduced him to Nathaniel De Silva and to the writing game in one fell swoop.’ Charles sipped his drink, declared it divine, and continued, ‘I was in thrall to Wilde and Bosie and Swinburne at the time, and I harboured the desire to pen immortal lines myself. I swam in literary circles and paddled at the feet of the greats. I also knew a lot of pretenders and literary dilettantes. Nathaniel was one such, a sweet child of Jamaican extraction who was quite devoted to me. When I suggested he bestow his favours upon Frankie, he fell to the task like a man possessed. They had a torrid affair, so I heard; quite torrid. Frankie was besotted; Nathaniel less so, and it ended in tears. They had a blazing row when Nathaniel informed Frankie that their affair was over, and in the ensuing mêlée Nathaniel pulled a knife and ran it through Frankie’s midriff. The affair was hushed up and Nathaniel fled the country. Frankie made a full recovery and sported a horrendous scar, rather like a starfish, just under his ribcage, which he was forever wont to exhibit when in his cups.’
‘But how,’ Langham asked, smiling to himself, ‘did this introduce him to writing?’
‘Oh, you doubt my skill as a raconteur, my boy? I am coming, somewhat circuitously I must admit, to the meat of my story. You see, Frankie had always fancied himself with the pen, but had shown little talent for any genre. It occurred to him, in his hospital bed, that he might use his experiences and write a purple tale of skulduggery and knife crime. And I must admit the resulting shocker did, while admittedly a potboiler, show promise. I was starting the agency around this time – this was back in ’twenty-eight – and took Frankie on as one of my first clients, more I think now through a sense of duty than with any expectations of fostering his literary talents. In the end I was proved correct. Each book he produced was far worse than the last one, and the day came when enough, as they say, was enough, and I told Frankie straight that his latest effort was unpublishable. I think I also added that he would be better suited to less cerebral work.’
‘He should have taken your advice,’ Langham said, ‘though one or two of his books in the thirties were OK.’
Charles peered at him over his pince-nez. ‘Your judgement shows the same failings as your reviews, Donald. You are just too kind.’
Maria said, ‘Do you know why he took his life, Donald? He left a note?’
‘Nigel didn’t say. He did mention that Pearson was living in squalor towards the end, drinking too much and churning out cowboy books.’
‘A sad final chapter to a sad life,’ Charles said.
‘Anyway, the reason Nigel rang was to twist my arm to go to Frankie’s memorial service in the morning. I said I’d attend, to make up the numbers.’ He looked at Charles. ‘I don’t suppose …?’
‘Do you know,’ said Charles, ‘I think I might just do so. It will take my mind off things, and I might bump into a few old faces.’
‘From what Nigel said about the likely attendance, we might be the only faces there. Frankie didn’t have many friends towards the end.’
‘All the more reason to attend,’ Charles said gravely. ‘Now, who is for another drink?’
While Charles swanned off to the bar, Maria moved her chair closer to Langham’s. She took his hand and smiled into his eyes. ‘Thank you for the flowers, Donald. I’ve been meaning to ring you, but I’ve been so busy in the office.’
He squeezed her hand, wishing they had the evening to themselves.
‘I’m looking forward to the weekend at Charles’s,’ she said.
‘I’ll pick you up around eleven on Saturday morning. We could always stop somewhere for lunch.’
‘That would be magnificent.’
They pulled apart as Charles approached with the drinks, and his agent proposed a toast. ‘To friends!’ he declared.
‘To friends,’ they laughed.