and then flog it as your own work?'
'Coming from you, that's a dirty crack,' said Piper. 'I do all my own writing in my study. Down here I teach my students how to write. Not what.'
'How? You teach them how to write?' He picked up a bottle of ink and shook it. The sludge moved slowly. 'Still on the evaporated ink, I see.'
'It gives the greatest density,' said Piper but Frensic had put the bottle down and turned back to the door.
'And where's your study?' he asked. Piper led the way slowly upstairs and opened another door. Frensic stepped inside. The walls were lined with shelves and a big desk stood in front of a window which looked out across the drive towards the river. Frensic studied the books. They were bound in calf. Dickens, Conrad, James...
'The old testament,' he said and reached for Middlemarch. Piper took it brusquely from him and put it back.
'This year's model?' asked Frensic.
'A world, a universe beyond your tawdry imagination,' said Piper angrily. Frensic shrugged. There was a pathos about Piper's tenseness that was weakening his resolve. Frensic steeled himself to be coarse.
'Bloody cosy little billet you've got yourself here,' he said, seating himself at the desk and putting his feet up. Behind him Piper's face whitened at the sacrilege. 'Curator of a museum, counterfeiter of other people's novels, a bit of blackmail on the side and what do you do about sex?' He hesitated and picked up a paperknife for safety's sake. If he was going to put the boot in there was no knowing what Piper might do. 'Screw the late Mrs Hutchmeyer?'
There was a hiss behind him and Frensic swung round. Piper was facing him with his pinched face and narrow eyes blazing with hatred. Frensic's grip tightened on the paperknife. He was frightened but the thing had to be done. He had come too far to go back now.
'It's none of my business, I daresay,' he said as Piper stared, 'but necrophilia seems to be your forte. First you rob dead authors, then you put the bite on me for two million dollars, what do you do to the late Mrs Hutch '
'Don't you dare say it,' shouted Piper, his voice shrill with fury.
'Why not?' said Frensic. 'There's nothing like confession for cleansing the soul.'
'It isn't true,' said Piper. His breathing was audible.
Frensic smiled cynically. 'What isn't? The truth will out, as the saying goes. That's why I'm here.' He stood up with assumed menace and Piper shrank back.
'Stop it. Stop it. I don't want to hear any more. Just go away and leave me alone.'
Frensic shook his head. 'And have you send me yet another manuscript and tell me to sell it? Oh no, those days are over. You're going to learn the truth if I have to ram it down your snivelling '
Piper covered his ears with his hands. 'I won't,' he shouted, 'I won't listen to you.'
Frensic reached in his pocket and took out Dr Louth's letter.
'You don't have to listen. Just read this.'
He thrust the letter forward and Piper took it. Frensic sat down in the chair. The crisis was over. He was no longer afraid. Piper might be mad but his madness was self-directed and held no threat for Frensic. He watched him read the letter with a new sense of pity. He was looking at a nonentity, the archetypal author for whom only words had any reality, and one who couldn't write. Piper finished the letter and looked up.
'What does it mean?' he asked.
'What it doesn't say,' said Frensic. 'That the great Dr Louth wrote Pause. That's what it means.'
Piper looked down at the letter again. 'But it says here she didn't.'
Frensic smiled. 'Quite. And why should she have written that? Ask yourself that question. Why
