Our Jubilee is Death (12 page)

Afterwards he decided that it was a ridiculous and exaggerated phrase, but at the time he thought Poxton stopped as though he had been shot.

“Who you talking to?”

“Blackmailing again?” said Carolus coldly.

“Who are you?”

“I'm not the Law, luckily for you. Hand over that packet.”

“Who? … Oh, you're the amateur detective, are you? Hoping for a cut?”

“What an incredible fool you are, Poxton. Do you want to go inside again? Hand over that packet.”

“What——packet?”

“Must we go through all this? The packet that wretched woman's just given you.”

“Not bloody likely!”

“You must know that I've got the number of every note in the lot and every one is marked. You wouldn't have spent six before you were picked up.”

This seemed to impress Poxton.

“The lousy bitches,” he said. “Is the Law in on this?”

“No. But they're going to be. Hand it over.”

Carolus could not see the man's eyes, but he could almost hear his thoughts. Make a dash for it? Draw a chiv and silence Carolus for good? Brazen it out? Give in? It was probably the idea that the notes were useless which made him decide on the last.

He pulled a packet from his pocket and silently held it out.

“Now what had you got on them?”

“If I tell you that, will this go no farther?”

Carolus considered this. It was against his principles to let a blackmailer go free, but he badly wanted his information.

“What has happened tonight will go no farther,” he said. “But I can't answer for the past. If you had any hand in the death of Mrs Bomberger or her burial here I'm not guaranteeing you any immunity. Nor will I try to cover you for not giving your information to the police. I will only give you my word that I will not expose you as a blackmailer on the strength of what you've done tonight.”

“That'll do for me.”

“What had you got on anyone, Poxton?”

“You want the truth?”

“Of course. Don't stall.”

“All right. I'll tell you. Nothing. Sweet Fanny Adams.”

“Nonsense. Even the Secretary wouldn't hand over money …”

“I'll tell you what I did. Read the case in the paper. Then used my loaf. Rang them up. Said I'd been having a walk along here that night and had seen everything. Everything, I said. Well, it stood to reason, didn't it? Someone must have brought her down here and buried her. I'd no idea who it was, but I guessed someone in that household had something to hide. It worked like a charm. I went up to see them one evening. They hadn't got any money there then, but they've managed to raise it. Five hundred nicker in one-pound notes.”

With sick disappointment Carolus supposed that the man was telling the truth.

“You weren't even here that night?”

“I was in bed and asleep. I don't know from Adam who buried the woman or why. I know nothing about it.”

Carolus looked at the man and felt a nausea and anger.

“Tell you what,” Poxton said, “I've got to have a few quid to pay my digs. I promised it tomorrow.”

“I'll ring up Mrs Salter in the morning and tell her that I'll be responsible for what you owe, but only if you're out of this town by eleven o'clock. If you're wanted for anything in connection with the case, the police can pick you up when they like.”

He left Poxton and started to walk towards the rocks where Priggley was waiting. He turned to see Poxton hurrying on towards Blessington.

“All we know from that,” he said disgustedly, “is what we knew already—that someone at Trumbles has a good deal to hide. I think I'm going to be sick.”

“Poxton or disappointment?”

“Both.”

“To think,” said Priggley as they started for home—“to think that we've played beach football for nothing.”

G
EORGE
S
TUMP
, the famous and successful publisher, had not been given his nickname of ‘Gobbler' Stump for nothing. He looked like a turkey-cock, with the same red face and floppy jowls, the same sharp nose and the same fixed rare-blinking stare of very round eyes. He was, moreover, a gobbler by nature. He gobbled up authors whom he thought worth while and gobbled the profits from their books; he gobbled up some excellent wines and gobbled down enormous lunches with his business associates. He had gobbled up Lillianne Bomberger when she was an unknown writer and found her the most indigestible though profitable thing he had ever gobbled in his life.

Carolus had left him to simmer uncomfortably at the Palatial Hotel, a rather dingy brick building near the station at which Lillianne had always booked him rooms when he was coming down. George Stump believed this to be a deliberate step to keep him in his place, the sort of thing Lillianne Bomberger was in the habit of doing. She did not pay his hotel bill, of course; the inference of her choice was that he would not wish and should not be able to afford the best.

Carolus had passed the Palatial several times, but had deliberately avoided an interview with the publisher. He felt that Stump would eventually volunteer information and then be more communicative than if Carolus went and pleaded for it.

On the day after his failure to learn anything worth while from Poxton Carolus received a short note.

Dear Deene,

I believe you are a friend of my partner William Agincourt and that you are amusing yourself by investigating
the death of Lillianne Bomberger. I don't know whether any information of mine can assist you but if you care to try, do come to dinner tonight at about eight and I will rake my memory.

Yours sincerely,

George Stump.

“Thank you for your kindness in offering me dinner and information,” Carolus wrote back. “But I regret to say I'm already engaged this evening. Some other time, perhaps? I am sorry to have no telephone here.”

This had the very effect he hoped. At four o'clock that afternoon Stump rang the bell at Wee Hoosie and was shown by an unsuspecting Mrs Stick into the crowded and stuffy front room.

“I was coming this way,” said the publisher. “So I thought I'd look in and see when you're coming to dinner.”

“Very kind of you,” said Carolus.

“One day next week?”

“Delighted. Yes.”

“Tuesday?”

“Thank you. Suits me splendidly.”

Stump made no move from his chair.

“I understand you're going to have a book by my headmaster Hugh Gorringer on your Spring List.” Carolus was being maddeningly irrelevant.

“Yes, yes.
The Wayward Mortar-board,”
said Stump hurriedly.

“Will you do well with it, do you think?”

“Quite safe, that sort of book. Couple of thousand copies. Old boys and that. Nothing like Bomberger.”

“Nothing?”

“Sales, I meant. In dealings—well, now you suggest it, yes. There is a little something similar in the way they write … wrote to us. A little self-importance, perhaps.”

Carolus smiled.

“Sad about Bomberger,” said Stump, evidently determined not to let the name slip.

It was the first time Carolus had heard that adjective used about the novelist's death, and he felt it to be the merest hypocrisy.

“Very sad. You won't get rid of Gorringer so easily.”

“Get rid of?
What an unfortunate thing to say!”

“I meant that Gorringer will outlive us all. You'll find yourself publishing
Murmuring Labours,
a sequel to …”

“I hardly think so,” Stump snapped. “Look here, Deene, are you going to find out the truth about this thing?”

“With luck, yes.”

“I should like to be of any help I can.”

“I don't know that there is much I need bother you with.”

“I knew her very well.”

“Oh yes?”

“Damn it, I ought to. She was with us for twenty-three years.”

“I understand she was leaving you?”

“Who told you that? It's nonsense. She threatened to leave us every two months. This was a little more serious, but it would have come to no more than the other times.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It began nearly a year ago, when her last book came out,
Dying Violets.
We'd given it a very clever dust-jacket which was just what the trade wanted. Bit sensational, but a seller. Bomberger saw it and screamed. Literally, in my office. She wanted a design of actual dying violets, half-dead flowers. Can you imagine it? How would anyone buy a book with faded flowers all over it?”

“I should have thought that if they wanted a book with that title they wouldn't have minded the picture.”

“But it's not titles that sell books, Mr Deene. No one remembers titles. Well, as I say, Bomberger wanted violets just as the book was going into print. I told her it was
impossible. She said she'd take the book away from us. I said that was impossible, too, because she'd signed the contract. She swore she'd take her next novel to Peter Davies. I said she bloody well could. Let him have her, I said. I was sick of it. ‘See if Peter Davies'll give you violets on your dust-jacket,' I said. Well, that's how it began. We'd had rows before, but they'd always been patched up. This time I sent her a big bunch of violets, but she sent them back.”

“What happened about the dust-jacket?”

“I kept ours on.”

“So she failed to get her own way. That was dangerous.”

“Of course it was. We've had nothing but trouble since. She was a fiend about advertisements. She'd measure the type in which her name was printed and scream blue murder if she found Frances Parkinson Keyes or someone in larger letters. Bomberger was one of those authors whom you don't need to advertise. She sold herself. But we had to waste thousands on every book she did. Can you imagine advertising Bomberger in
The Times Literary Supplement?
That's what she wanted. But what could we do?”

“Get rid of her.”

“That's what I decided to do, but Agincourt wouldn't have it. ‘She's the goose that lays the golden eggs,” he said. Let me tell you what happened. She sent us her next,
The Flower of Death.
She had to because we had an option. But I saw from the first that she was determined to make it impossible for us to publish it. She kept the proofs two months, then sent them back hacked to pieces. She turned down three jacket designs I sent her and demanded one by Augustus John or Francis Bacon. She disagreed with every publication date we proposed. Of course she had no legal right to do any of this, but we had always given her plenty of rope. Finally I decided to go ahead as we wanted and let her leave us. Peter Davies could have her for all I cared, though I'd never wish the Bomberger on anyone, even another publisher.

“When publication date approached she asked me to
come down to Blessington and talk things over. What else could I do?”

“You could have gone abroad.”

“I honestly thought she wanted to make it up. And there's no doubt about it, she did sell. So I came down. I found not only that she hadn't relented, but that she was going to try to get her past books away from us, too. I didn't see how she could because I'd kept them all in print. But you never know what lawyers can do with contracts. We fought like a cat and dog for two or three consecutive days. She started calling me Mr Stump, though I'd been George to her for years. ‘Mr Stump,' she would say, looking down her nose in that self-satisfied way that made you want to strangle her …”

“Did it?”

George Stump pulled himself up.

“You know what I mean. ‘Mr Stump, I do not expect gratitude. I do not expect you to remember that your firm would have been bankrupt years ago but for me. I do not ask for special consideration. I only wish to have the courtesy which any novice being published by you might expect. You say that you will not give a publication party for the book at Kew, and raise ridiculous objections like the unwillingness of the authorities of the Royal Botanical Gardens to close their gates to the public for the occasion. Have you asked them, Mr Stump, before dismissing my modest suggestion?' And so on. I thought I should go off my rocker.

“Then a funny thing happened. Peter Davies turned her down. Said he wouldn't have her at any price. I heard this from the Secretary Alice Pink. Lillianne Bomberger became a half-starved tigress. She almost flew at me when I saw her next day. She did not tell me why, but she was no longer even a moderately sane woman. So I took advantage of it and told her that we should publish
The Flower of Death
just as we liked and when we liked and did not want any more novels from her. That was about three
days before her death. I was sorry for the people round her, then.”

“But you stayed here?”

“Yes. I've told you things almost like this had happened before. I believed she'd come round.”

“You went to see her?”

“Certainly not. I waited.”

“You didn't go to see her on her last evening alive?”

“Oh, that. Yes, but I never saw her. I went up there at about a quarter to ten, when I thought she might be a bit mellow. Pink came to the door and said she had orders not to let me in.”

“Which route did you take to Trumbles?”

“I went by taxi. The inland road.”

“And back the same way?”

“No. I'd dismissed the taxi. I had to walk back. Why? You surely don't suspect me of having anything to do with her death?”

“Which way did you walk back?”

“Along the sands.”

“Did you meet anyone from the house?”

“No.”

“Anyone you knew by sight?”

“No.”

“What time did you get back to your hotel?”

“Must have been around eleven.”

“Anyone see you come in?”

“I don't remember. Don't think so.”