A Murder of Magpies (4 page)

Finally. “Hello!” said Kit, in a startled voice. He always answers that way—as though the phone is a wonderful toy that will bring him endless good things. As of course it will, for someone who lives on gossip.

“It's me.”

“
Well,
where have you
been
?” Kit talks in italics.

I ignored this insult to my intelligence. “What's up?”

“God, I don't even know where to begin. Alemán's family have been stirring again.”

“Stirring?”

“You know, not talking directly to me—they haven't done that since I started researching—but dropping hints to people: ‘I hear Kit Lovell, poor thing, has signed a big contract for this book, and isn't turning anything up,' or ‘Did you hear that Kit had to go dry out at that place in California?' Basically, the full range, from I've got nothing, to I'm mad, a lush, doped to the eyeballs, or possibly all four.”

“What's the harm? Basically, they know you've got the goods and they're scared. But they can't do anything about it. Can they?”

“No, of course not. Vernet can refuse me access to their shows, but not having reviews in the
Sunday News
is more damaging to Alemán's replacement, and Vernet, than it is to me. In fact, having to look at that awful boy's awful stuff would damage me more. How he got through fashion college I'll never know, although I know
exactly
how he got his job, and doesn't he hate me for that.”

Kit knows everything about everyone. Sometimes I'm glad my private life is so dull, because the thought of him passing on any juicy bits, making them juicier as they do the rounds, is too terrible—and he likes me. What he does to people he doesn't like doesn't bear thinking about.

“Ki-it.” It's not easy to keep him focused. “They can't do anything, Vernet are doing themselves more harm than they're doing you. What's the problem?”

“Someone's been in my house.”

“What? What do you mean? You were burgled?”

“No, that would be straightforward. Someone's been here, but nothing is missing. You know how when you live alone a place just has a smell, almost an aura?”

I'd have disputed this flight of fancy, if he weren't also right.

“I came in, and it was different. I thought I was being imaginative, but I looked around, and the place had been searched. Tidily, but searched all the same. A drawer I never shut entirely, because the handle is loose, was closed. The cushions were plumped up, the way I always do them, but two of them were reversed, which I wouldn't do. Things that no one who isn't tidy would notice, or no one who lives with someone else. But I'm tidy and alone.”

I'm the same. When you live by yourself you have an unconscious expectation of how things will be. When that expectation is disrupted it's very noticeable.

“Did you call the police?”

“Oooh, what a
splendid
idea.” He slid into a falsetto. “‘Officer, someone broke into my house, leaving no visible signs, turned all my cushions over and
pouf
! Vanished.' Sam, I'm camper than a row of pink tents. How seriously do you think they'll take my cushion trauma?”

Camper than an entire Boy Scouts' jamboree, actually. “Hmm. But even if they don't take it seriously, at least there'll be a record if you are burgled later.”

“Which they then won't take seriously because I'm the queen with the chintz fixation.”

“All right, all right. Was anything taken?”

“No, but there's nothing here. I'm camp, not a fool. All the notes for the book are at my solicitor's.”

“Any way of finding out who your sources are from a phone book? Old phone bills?”

“My phone book was with me, and you know I never keep bills.”

I do. I've never met anyone like Kit. He claims never to have opened a bill since he left university. His bank pays them, and he isn't interested in finding out if he's being overcharged, or someone is racking up bills on a stolen card number. I'm fascinated, but he's not bankrupt yet, so I guess it works for him.

“I don't understand. Do you think his family did this? Would they even know how?”

“No, not the family. But don't forget that Vernet is plenty worried—money-laundering allegations will not exactly float their corporate overlords' boat. And the police who allowed themselves to agree that it was an accident aren't going to be thrilled.”

“You think the
police
broke in?”

“Grow up, Sam, would you? What do you think, that the police spend their shifts saying ‘Evening all' and helping old ladies across the street? The French police covered up a murder. The people involved in the cover-up probably don't even know why, but it's not the kind of thing they want the world to know. And the people actually profiting from the system won't be much happier. Even if they've lost their front man, the method was good, it worked—they don't want that exposed.”

I paused.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked testily. “You know I'm right.”

“I'm sure you are.” I was pacific. “It's just—this sounds so melodramatic, but then so does burglary by the police, and money laundering, and—” I was babbling. I pulled myself together. “A CID inspector came to T and R this morning.”

“He did? What for?”

In passing, I longed to challenge Kit's automatic assumption that the visitor had been a man, but he had been, and anyway this was not the time. “He was investigating the death of a motorcycle courier. A hit-and-run, except all of his deliveries were gone. I was on his schedule. I told him I had no way of knowing who might be sending me something, but now the hard copy of your manuscript seems a likely candidate.”

There was a silence. Then, “It sounds possible, doesn't it.”

“Will you ask your typist to let me have the details of what she sent, and when? I'll pass it along.”

He made noises that indicated he was going through his phone book to get her number.

“In the meantime, the burglary: Where does this leave you?”

“Us, honey, us. We need to get this book out fast. Once it's published, the horse has bolted, there's no point in closing the stable door.”

“Us?”
I squeaked. I sounded like Kit talking to the police, but my falsetto was involuntary. “What do you mean, ‘us'?”

“Whoever it is wants to stop publication. I don't think they care how. If they can find out who my sources are, and get them to recant, that will be the best way, because it will kill off the rumors. If they can't, and can just frighten me—or you—into abandoning publication, that would be fine, too.”

“Kit, wait a minute. I do women's fiction. I do the occasional frock book with you, and the odd biography. This is not what I'm used to.”

“Well,” he said, sounding grim and not at all amusing now, “you'd better
get
used to it.”

 

3

I was lying in wait for Miranda the next morning. I was anxious and unhappy, and I didn't see why I shouldn't spread that around. Miranda eventually came tripping in at twenty past ten, and although I try not to sound like her mother, this time I couldn't stop myself.

“Is that new?”

She smiled radiantly and flicked the fifth piercing in her ear, which had a silver skull hanging from it. “Good, isn't it?”

I moved on hastily. “Do you want to get your hands dirty with a little editorial work?”

Her radiant smile turned into a beam. Assistants spend most of their lives checking proofs and keying in schedules.

“Here's Breda's new book.” I ignored her instinctive recoil. “Now, Breda hasn't been twenty in a long time. Maybe she never was. The evidence isn't in yet. I want you to go through the manuscript and suggest amendments for everything you think is inappropriate for her characters. Change the places that they go to to the kind of places girls that age would go to; fix the language to bear some resemblance to the way people that age actually talk; make the clothes right—basically, make it plausible.

“If it's at all possible, work on the title, too. We really can't publish a book called
Toujours Twenty-one
. Hell, I can't even bring myself to say it in public.” I can't, either. That's why I think about it as “Breda's book.” If I had to say
Toujours Twenty-one
too often, I'd come out in a rash.

Miranda was less radiant, but still hopeful. “You want me to do a serious edit?”

“Yep. Then I'll go out to Galway to see her, pass off everything you've done as my own work, while at the same time subliminally suggesting that these were all ideas she'd had and discarded. Your name won't be anywhere near this as far as she's concerned—she can't ever know that—but I'll see that you get the credit here.”

She looked at the manuscript. “It might be more helpful to my career if no one knows.”

“It just might at that. Do fifty pages and let's talk it through.”

I left her poking at the pile of paper with a black-polished fingernail and went to call Breda. “Sorry I've been so long, but you know what it's like.…” She didn't, but wouldn't say so. “I've read the manuscript, and I love it.” I crossed my eyes and stuck my tongue out. There's nothing like a little editorial gravitas. I went on, in my perkiest aren't-we-all-having-fun voice. “I thought, since it's a departure for both of us, maybe instead of sending you my notes, I should come out to Galway and we can go over things at a more leisurely pace.”

“You think that's necessary.” It wasn't a question.

I held on to the perky singsong. “Not necessary, but a nice excuse for me to get out of the office and come and see you.” Breda is much too polite to say that she might not want a visit. “I've got a lot on here, and even though the manuscript won't take me any time—” well, it wouldn't take
me
any time—“I'm not going to be able to get away for about ten days. The plus is, I'll then have some jacket artwork for you to look at, too.” I sounded like a kindergarten teacher promising extra biscuits if the little bastards would only lie down for nap time.

Breda was dubious but civil, as I'd known she would be, and assured me with beguiling insincerity that she'd love to have me stay for a few days. We settled on a date at the end of the following week and I hung up. Miranda didn't have much breathing space, but Breda's new book was not exactly the sort of thing you wanted to linger over. I'd try to clear some time for her, so she could get a decent run at it.

*   *   *

I spent the rest of the day with routine tasks—a pleasure after the last couple of days. I also e-mailed Robert Marks at Selden's, the solicitors Timmins & Ross used, to outline the questions Kit's book threw up. I explained the situation, the manuscript, and Kit's phone call last night. At least Kit was right about one thing. The phone rang almost before I'd hit
SEND
.

“His
cushions
?”

“Look, I know you've never looked at your sofa in your life—I'm sure you can't tell me what color it is.”

There was an embarrassed silence.

“See? Your wife does that, and your children and their friends spend so much time sprawled all over it that you wouldn't know if the cushions had been plumped that morning or even that century. But it's not like that if you live alone.”

Now the silence was a pitying one, thinking about sad people like me and Kit who didn't live in Virginia Water, have a wife to buy our sofas, and a large family to sit on them.

“You'll have to trust me on this, Robert, truly. Kit could tell. He wasn't imagining things.”

“Even if he wasn't.” He didn't want to deal with people who knew about sofa cushions. That's why he'd gone into the law, for God's sake. “Even if he wasn't, I don't understand why we're discussing this. If the book's a problem, make it go away—reject it, or whatever it is you do, for not being good enough.”

“We could, of course,” I said, keeping a hold on my temper, but only just. “We would then have to pay Kit the full amount of the advance—there are no contractual grounds to cancel, as he has plenty of evidence to counter any libel claims. We knew from the beginning it would present problems, and the contract reflects that. He has a good agent, so we won't get away with just saying it's bad, we'd have to say why, and we can't do that because it is every bit as good as the four books of his we have already published perfectly successfully.”

“Really, who can be the judge of that?”

“His agent. Who will never sell us another book. And she and her company represent nearly ten percent of the authors on our list.” I really didn't want this man's views on literature. I was beginning to think I didn't even want his views on the law. “On top of that, the newspapers are already circling, hoping for a serialization deal, which will be huge. Serial has been terrible recently, profits are down, our standard bestseller”—Breda—“isn't delivering this year. Do you want me to have to tell the board we're throwing this kind of money away on your advice?”

Robert didn't. I didn't, either. Neither would David. So we were going to be brave because we were all too cowardly to be anything else.

*   *   *

Kit and I were meeting for lunch to discuss marketing and publicity. Sandra, the publicist who has looked after Kit's books, had drawn up some preliminary plans and wanted to see what he would do and what he wouldn't. Kit wasn't difficult, it was just that as a fashion journalist he was away an awful lot—two weeks of prêt-à-porter and two weeks of couture shows every year in Paris; then Milan, men's and women's, one week each; and New York, another week.