Back in the Green Room Francis poured himself a large glass of white wine. It was only four thirty, but what the hell, it had been a long day. And he had done it, got through his talk in one piece, despite some outright rudeness and a couple of tricky questions. His queue at the bookshop afterwards hadn’t been enormous, but it was perfectly respectable and, he couldn’t help but notice, longer than Virginia Westcott’s. Oh god. Here was Laetitia again. Now he couldn’t keep the bloody woman away from him.
‘Francis. That was terrific. It’s the kind of event that makes me glad I do this festival.’
Francis was aware of Dan Dickson, sliding quietly past. But not so quietly that Laetitia hadn’t spotted him. ‘Dan, Dan!’ she cried. ‘Do come and meet Francis Meadowes.’
Dickson stopped in his tracks. Close up, hailed like this, the celebrated iconoclast looked almost shy. He probably liked this sort of forced introduction as little as Francis did. But that’s what women like Laetitia were put on the planet to do. Oil the wheels.
‘Francis has just done the most wonderful talk about, well, the history of crime-writing really.’
‘The Amateur Sleuth,’ said Dan. ‘I was there.’
‘Oh were you?’ said Francis.
‘Very informative, mate. I knew that Holmes had a French antecedent, but I didn’t know about the Oriental roots. Or realise there was anything in the Arabian Nights.’
‘Ja’far ibn Yahya, the first fictional detective.’
‘Diverting questions …’ Dickson raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘What about that “coconut” woman!’ said Laetitia. She waggled her fingers into quote mode, protecting herself from any taint of political incorrectness. ‘What was she on? I’m surprised you were so nice to her.’
‘I was just wondering whether I’d been a bit mean. Making her say what she meant like that.’
‘So not. Don’t you think, Dan?’
Dickson shrugged. ‘I guess it’s up to Francis how offended he wants to feel.’
Laetitia laughed, a trifle uncertainly.
‘I was more interested in the other questions,’ Dickson continued. ‘They were desperate to know about Bryce, weren’t they?’
‘I was ready for that.’
‘So we noticed. You were marvellously obstructive.’
‘I’m sorry you didn’t say more,’ said Laetitia.
‘There’s a police investigation going on,’ said Francis. ‘I can hardly start adding my own suspicions to the mix.’
Laetitia’s mobile trilled – a snatch of hip hop. ‘Sorry, guys, got to get this. But I’m coming back. Yes, Rupert,’ she said, as she marched off across the tent.
‘Murdoch, d’you think?’ said Dickson.
Francis chuckled. ‘She is quite something, isn’t she?’
‘A legend in her own Green Room.’ There was a pause, as Dickson lowered himself onto the tatty armchair vacated by Laetitia. ‘So you do have some suspicions?’ he said. ‘About Bryce?’
Francis met his gaze. Close up, Dan had fine, frank eyes; chestnut brown irises, ringed with a thin line almost as dark as his pupils. It really wouldn’t do to share his private thoughts with ‘dickson’, would it? And yet he was flattered, and tempted.
‘How well did you know him?’ he countered.
‘Bryce? I’ve known him for years.’
‘Don’t tell me you were at Cambridge with him?’
‘I was at the other place, mate. For my sins.’ Francis did his best not to laugh out loud. Dickson’s image was hardly Oxbridge, but why would it have been? The tweedy whiff of elitism didn’t sell books these days. Dickson had wisely cultivated a much more streetwise vibe, even if he talked about ‘the other place’ in private. ‘But we were both knocking around London in the Eighties,’ Dan went on. ‘Bryce was a ubiquitous figure. Supposedly working on his magnum opus while contributing reviews to this or that little publication.’
‘And what happened to the magnum opus?’
‘Never appeared. Bryce claimed he never submitted it. Anyway, by then he’d found his métier as a critic, tearing into established names. He was used by more and more editors, got a little gig on the Indie when it started, carried on writing reviews while teaching media studies, finally scored the Lit Ed’s job on the Sentinel. He’s been there ever since, growing ever more papal in his pronouncements.’
‘So were you pissed off by that review?’ Francis asked. ‘I wouldn’t have blamed you.’
‘Of course I was! I mean he wasn’t content just to trash Otherworld, was he? Which I’ve spent five years on. He had to go for my entire oeuvre. The thing that gets me is that so much of his bile is about him. He can’t do it himself, so he has to keep taking it out on the rest of us who are at least trying. It’s pathetic. Was pathetic, I should say.’
‘So you don’t regret his passing?’
‘His passing. Very quaint, Francis. When to all appearances you seem to think he’s been rubbed out. Actually I’m going to be honest and say I don’t. Obviously I feel sorry for his nearest and dearest, though the truth is he’d managed to piss most of them off too. But professionally speaking, I’m afraid he’d become a Grade A shyster. He was just so destructive – to the culture. Week after week, putting people off this or that struggling author, making them feel good and clever about being philistines. Until the only thing his public were going to be allowed to read was Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad or possibly Bryce-frigging-Peabody himself.’
‘What about his women?’ Francis asked.
‘What about them? If they were stupid enough not to see what he was like, more fool them.’
‘As far as I can gather, he had a long-term partner and a girlfriend and dumped both of them simultaneously when he met Priya.’
‘The “Asian babe”?’ Dickson didn’t need to use his fingers to make the quotes; his rich, ironic tone did all the work for him. ‘You really are quite the amateur sleuth yourself, aren’t you? I’m afraid I’m not that up to speed on Bryce’s complex private life these days. But yes, what I heard on the grapevine was that the incumbent doxy found out she’d been binned at some dinner party, when someone said, “Have you heard the news about Bryce Peabody? He’s left his partner for a younger model.” She thought it was her, and then freaked out when she discovered the truth: that she’d been out-younger-modelled.’ Dickson cackled throatily.
‘So what about his long-term partner?’ Francis asked innocently. ‘Did you know her too?’
‘I’ve known Scarlett for years.’
‘Well?’
‘You really are quite something, aren’t you?’ Dickson paused and stretched. For a moment Francis thought he was going to get up and walk off. But then he seemed to think the better of it. ‘I doubt whether it’s possible for anyone to know Scarlett very well,’ he said. ‘There’s a basic standoffishness at her core. Even Bryce struggled, poor fellow.’
‘But he stayed with her, none the less?’
‘He did.’ Dickson yawned noisily. ‘Always a mystery what motivates people in relationships, don’t you find? My guess is that despite all his infidelities, she offered some kind of basic security. But you can’t discount the children either. He did love those little girls – and why wouldn’t he? Have you met them?’
‘I haven’t met Scarlett.’
‘I speak as a man too selfish to get involved in the rearing of another generation, but there is something entrancing about them. Bright, funny, beautiful – the kind of children you’d dream of having, if that was your dream. As for Scarlett, although she did endlessly complain about Bryce, she always lit up in his company. She could also be very jealous. In a way you perhaps shouldn’t be if what you’d agreed to was an open marriage …’
‘An open, common-law marriage?’
Dickson’s grin acknowledged the absurdity. ‘But look, if you went round there at weekends, which I did on a couple of occasions, it felt like a perfectly normal family scene: kids running around, Mum and Dad bickering over the Sunday roast, everyone getting pissed together. But then, come Monday, they went their own way. You’d see Bryce in the Groucho with the latest starstruck student or sub. The word was that Scarlett reciprocated; and for a while I think there was a reasonably serious man. But it was like a lot of these situations. You got the feeling that the bloke had the best of it, really.’
‘And where is she now? Still in the family home?’
‘In London she is, yes. But if you mean right now, she’s up here too. Out at their cottage with the children. I saw her yesterday, at the Michael Rosen gig. She didn’t make mine, sadly. Otherwise, who knows, she might have pitched in.’