The Herring in the Library (22 page)

The best way to tell what a writer is thinking is to read their books. But I had foolishly returned the relevant MS half-read. My life as an agent has been singularly without
regrets, but in this case I now realized I had been over-hasty I urgently needed to find out how that novel had ended.

It was the work of a moment to slip into WH Smith at Victoria and locate a copy
of Abandoned!
by Felicity Hooper. I wasn’t sure whether the curvy but slightly
dishevelled young lady on the front cover was supposed to be modelled on La Hooper when she was just a chit of a girl – but I rather suspected that it was. I flicked quickly to the end, but
the heroine was just sitting on a cliff-top, reflecting on the fact that things could have gone worse. I worked backwards looking for the murder of a rugby-playing tosser and – bingo! –
somebody was being taunted and then pushed off Folly Bridge into the swirling floodwaters below.
‘One arm, encased in the sleeve of a Balliol rugby jersey, rose briefy above the foam, then
I saw nothing except the powerfully f owing Isis. “Bobby!” I exclaimed.’

‘Are you planning to pay for that or just read it?’ asked the assistant in the nasal tones of South London.

‘Worth every penny,’ I said, slapping a fiver on the counter (the book was, inevitably, on special offer).

‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ confided the assistant, handing me my change. ‘I’ve read all her books. Did you know she’s signing copies of
her new best-seller at our shop down the road this afternoon? You should go along.’

‘I might just do that,’ I said.

It looked like a pretty average book-signing. There was no queue of any description in front of the small table at which Felicity Hooper was sitting. A sign propped up close
by featured her photograph and quoted (under the banner
‘Praise for Felicity Hooper’)
some of the more enthusiastic reviews for earlier work. She was slowly and dutifully
autographing a pile of books that would later go on the shelves with a label saying
‘Signed by Author’.
Excellent – I would be able to get her full attention. I approached
the table like a silent but deadly nemesis and thrust the book under her nose.

‘Who should I put that it’s to?’ she asked, glancing up. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

She gave me a look as though I was a complete arsehole.

‘I was just passing,’ I said. ‘I thought I would get you to sign my copy
of Abandoned!
I did
so
enjoy it – especially the bit just before
the end.’

One of the conventions of a book-signing is that you have to sign the books, even for complete arseholes. She shrugged and was scribbling her name when I said: ‘I’d
also like you to write a line from the book.’

Book collectors like their ‘signed, lined and dated’ copies, so she expressed no surprise but just replied: ‘Which line?’

I opened the book close to the end. ‘I thought this bit, where you say:
“You pillock, did you really think I’d let you get away with that
?”
It’s just before she pushes him off the bridge.’

‘He overbalances and falls. He’s drunk. She doesn’t kill him – though she does blame herself. There’s not really any need for her to feel guilty.
One useless man fewer in the world – no great disaster. Anyway, if that’s what you would like me to write, it’s your book.’ She applied her pen to the page and started
writing the quotation.

‘Is that what you said to Robert?’

‘To Robert?’ She stopped writing and looked up at me.

‘In the library.’

‘By the time I got to the library, Robert was dead. I didn’t say anything to him as far as I remember.’ She put down the pen and looked me in the eye.

‘The second time you went to the library that evening, maybe, but not the first time,’ I said.

‘What doyou mean?’

‘Did you take the rope with you or was it there already?’

‘I think you’ll find it’s
Cluedo
in which the weapons are randomly scattered through the house. Elsie, I went to the library once in my life and once
only. Are you implying that I killed Robert?’ She looked round the shop. It was almost empty, but this clearly wasn’t the type of conversation writers, or their publishers, want
overheard by paying customers.

‘Didn’t you kill him?’ I asked. No point in beating about the bush, I always say.

‘Why should I?’

‘He abandoned you.’ I put a lot of emphasis on the word ‘abandoned’. I indicated the cover of the book in front of us in case she missed the point.

‘Yes. You can stop tapping the book like that – I do get the literary allusion.’

‘You were pregnant.’

‘I was on the pill. I wasn’t that stupid.’

‘You had an abortion.’

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘I’ve read the book.’

‘I know. I sent you the manuscript.’

‘It is clearly based on your own experiences.’

‘In my latest novel, the heroine wins the Badminton Horse Trials. I’m not claiming anyone’s mounted me with a whip and bridle.’

‘But this was your first. All writers put their own experiences into their first book. It’s like dogs returning to their own vomit, but slightly less
uplifting.’

‘I was a physio in Oxford. That’s about it for autobiographical content. Oh, and I do actually like Liebfraumilch, an authentic bit of seventies detail.’

‘No pregnancy?’

‘No pregnancy.’

‘No abortion?’

‘Difficult without the pregnancy.’

‘You had the opportunity to murder Robert.’

‘Yes, but I opted for a pee instead. I’d do the same again.’

‘Huh! So you say.’

‘You never give up, do you?’

‘No.’

‘God, Elsie, you get on my tits. Would you like me to sign them for you?’

I turned round. A customer was politely hovering, two new hard-backs in hand.

‘Yes, could you sign them, please? Could you make this one out to “Darren”. He’s my boyfriend. I don’t read your books myself. The other
one’s for my mother. She doesn’t read you either but she does like signed books – you’d be amazed at the rubbish she’s got.’

Felicity Hooper smiled weakly and handed me back my copy of
Abandoned!
As I was leaving the shop I checked the signature. It read:
‘For Elsie. You pillock.
Felicity Hooper.
’ Well, that should sell for more than a fiver on eBay.

Twenty-three

On the Tube back to Hampstead, I glanced at my new purchase from time to time and reminded myself of the basic plot – a girl seduced and betrayed by a rugby-playing
bounder who later meets a sticky end. As I had suspected – not really all that autobiographical then. Perhaps however it was, quite coincidentally, somebody else’s story? I knew that
Jane Smith was a former, but much more recent, girlfriend of Shagger’s. Had I been barking up the wrong tree? Was it Jane Smith who harboured the murderous grudge and had a bit of rope she
wouldn’t need again?

I knew the Smiths lived in Crawley. Possibly they were back from their autumn break, or whatever it was. The online phone directory gave eighteen people called ‘
G
Smith’
in the Crawley area. Most of them were in that evening and I had pissed off thirteen people by the time I got lucky.

‘Hello,’ said a voice that I recognized as Jane Smith’s.

‘Elsie Thirkettle here,’ I said, as I hadn’t on thirteen previous occasions.

‘Oh,’ she said.

Then there was silence. Guilty conscience?

‘I thought I’d give you a call,’ I said.

‘Is there some news? About Robert’s death, I mean.’

‘In a sense,’ I said. ‘You see, Jane, I know all about you and Robert.’

‘Yes, I told Ethelred,’ came back the urgent whispered reply. I guessed that Gerald might be in the next room.

‘Yes, but I know
all
about you and Robert,’ I said. ‘Not just the bit you told Ethelred.’

Another silence. Somebody was trying to work out what to do.

‘What do you want?’ she hissed down the line.

‘Meet me tomorrow,’ I said.

‘Where?’

‘Crawley.’

‘Whereabouts exactly?’

‘Somewhere we can talk in private. Your place if Gerald won’t be around.’

‘Fine. My house. Around ten then.’

‘So that Gerald will be at work?’

‘That’s when Scott has his nap.’

I confirmed the time. She gave me directions. I’d clearly struck gold. Now all I had to do was work out what it was I might know about her that Ethelred didn’t.

The Smith place was a comfortable Georgian detached residence on the outskirts of town, with a large garden. A number of trees, already beginning to look a little autumnal,
peered over the wall. In the eighteenth century, some Crawley merchant had announced that he had made it in this world by putting together a large brick collection and turning it into the ultimate
statement of solidity and respectability: classical, double-fronted, perfectly symmetrical, glowing smugly in the September sunshine. Heavy curtains with rose silk linings arced across upper
corners of each gleaming window. The brass door knocker shone.

Though Scott would scarcely be walking yet, a large and colourful climbing frame was already in place in an otherwise tranquil and tasteful setting. I caught a glimpse of a
paddling pool away under the trees. It seemed very likely that the rose beds would in due course be replaced by a trampoline and the pergolas by goalposts. This already had the feel of a kingdom
ruled by a small and demanding tyrant.

Jane Smith ushered me into the sitting room and offered me a drink, treating me with the sort of tight-lipped politeness you normally accord a potential blackmailer.

‘I’m not here to blackmail you,’ I said, wishing to clear that one up straight away. ‘I just want to know why Robert died.’

‘Well, I didn’t kill him,’ said Jane, doing her own bit of clearing up. ‘I’m not some sort of strangler or poisoner.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ I said, putting down my half-finished mug of hot chocolate. ‘But you did have a strong motive.’

‘I told Ethelred that I’d had an affair with Robert. It’s in the past. It’s not a secret. Gerald knows all about it.’

‘Not
all
about it,’ I said. I had no idea where this was all going, but blundering ahead with no clear plan often works quite well in my experience.

‘How much do you know?’ she asked.

‘Everything?’ I suggested.

Jane Smith made a noise that went: ‘Ha, ha [sharp intake of breath], waaaaah!’ Derisive laughter to uncontrollable tears in roughly four point two seconds. So, my
technique was working then.

She applied copious snot to my proffered hanky and then added: ‘You are a complete moron and you are way off track, but I’ve got to tell somebody or I’ll go mad.’

I nodded. Neither of us wanted her to go mad.

‘It all started when I was Robert’s secretary. You get to see your boss a lot as a PA. You work late together. He said he saw more of me than he did his wife. You
have lots of excuses to be together. Nobody thinks anything of it if you go off to conferences together.’

I raised my eyebrows momentarily. That last statement was taking naivety one stage further than usual, but I let it pass.

‘One thing led to another as they say. He took me out to dinner. We . . . slept together. I got pregnant.’

‘You didn’t take precautions?’

‘I must have forgotten . . . I can be so stupid . . . when I told Robert I thought he would be pleased.’

‘Pleased?’ My eyebrows wouldn’t go quite high enough to express my views about this one, so mere words had to suffice. Even then, I could only manage two.
‘Bloody hell,’ I said.

‘We
loved
each other. This was
our
child.’

‘And he was pleased?’

‘No.’ She pouted and continued: ‘He asked me who else I had told, then he arranged for me to go to a private clinic that afternoon.’

‘For an abortion?’

‘No, for a pizza and fries.’

‘That’s probably a joke?’

‘Yes, that’s a joke,’ she said. She turned and looked out of the window. We could just see the bright red upright of one corner of Scott’s future
climbing frame. It really was an eyesore. ‘They said that they thought I could still have more babies but . . .’

‘They’d screwed up?’

‘Gerald and I tried to have children. He’d always wanted children. He really, really wanted children of his own. Maybe that was what attracted me to him after . . .
Robert. We tried to have children for a long time. Then we adopted Scott.’

‘Does Gerald know about the abortion?’

‘I can’t tell him . . . I just can’t . . .’

‘Were you afraid that Robert would tell him?’

‘Gerald said that he had had a strange phone call from Robert a while back. He’d been asking about a girl he’d got pregnant and who’d had to have an
abortion and who might sue him.’

‘And you thought he was asking advice about you?’

‘That would be weird, wouldn’t it? Asking Gerald for legal advice in case I sued him? No, I don’t think it was quite that. I think it was Robert trying to find
out whether I had told Gerald anything. When Robert worked out I hadn’t he just let it drop. That was what Gerald couldn’t understand – why it was so important one minute and not
at all important the next. But I knew what was going on as soon as Gerald told me.’

‘And that was that?’

‘Yes,’ she said. She returned my well-used hanky. ‘I don’t think I need that any more. Thank you.’

She gave me her strong-independent-woman look – the one I’ve seen so many of my friends give shortly before asking for the hanky back.

There was, however, still an unanswered question. It’s tricky accusing somebody of murder when you’ve got a pocket full of their snot, but I looked her in the eye
and said: ‘Nevertheless you had a motive. You must have wanted that bastard dead?’

‘I loved him,’ she said.

‘That doesn’t rule out murder.’

‘But Scott does,’ she said. ‘Scott rules out murder. Do you think I would take that sort of risk when I have Scott? I
loved
Robert. I
love
Scott.’

‘You said “I” rather than “we”. About Scott, I mean, not Robert obviously.’