‘Oh, authors are the queerest lot of people in the world. You’d be amazed at what we and their publishers have to put up with. I talked the letter over with my father and we decided to take no action for a week or two in the hope (and full expectation, I may add) that Palgrave would change his mind. By the time (as we’d heard nothing more) we had decided to write to him regretting his decision, hoping he had changed his mind and would instruct us to go ahead and send the book to Kent and Weald, we had the news that he was dead, so nothing further has been done, of course.’
‘That is very interesting. May I see his last letter to you? As I told you when I asked for this interview, I am accredited to the Home Office and am accustomed to working in co-operation with the police.’
‘Of course you may see his letter. The police have seen it and were surprised not to find an answer to it from us, but all we did was to telephone him. Our call was never answered except by his landlady. He was never at home during our office hours.’
‘He was dead, of course, by the time you wrote to him.’ She took the letter which young Mr Peterhead had extracted from a filing-cabinet. ‘I see that this is not dated. You would not remember what the postmark on the envelope was?’
‘I’m afraid not. I remember that the letter came by second-class post, though.’
‘Was that unusual?’
‘Yes, under the circumstances. That is why I remember it. One would suppose that if he didn’t want us to send his book to Kent and Weald he would either have telephoned or told us by first-class post. There would have been very little time to lose if he really wanted us to suppress the book and not let K and W have it.’
‘He could have written direct to the publishers himself, I suppose, though, asking them to return the book to him when they had received it from you.’
‘It does all seem a bit mysterious, because of course he could have done that.’
‘I would like to submit this letter to a handwriting expert, together with any other signatures of Mr Palgrave’s which you may have. It might also be interesting to find out whether this letter and the others were typed on the same machine.’
‘How about fingerprints?’ asked young Mr Peterhead, entering into the spirit of the thing with interest and considerable zest.
‘Useless, I fear. None of the fingerprints on this letter will be on record, with the exception of my own.’
‘Yours?’ The young man looked astonished and disbelieving. Dame Beatrice spread out a yellow claw.
‘There are times when mine have to be distinguished from those of the felons whose fraudulent documents I am called upon sometimes to handle,’ she explained. ‘I would like to repeat a previous question in slightly different words. I think I may receive a more significant answer from you this time. Now, Mr Peterhead, what was your reaction when you first read this letter? Granted, as you say, that authors are kittle cattle, what did you think of Palgrave’s request?’
‘As you see, it was not so much a request as an order. We were astounded. As a whole, authors are proud of their work and extremely jealous that it shall be appreciated by others to the extent that they appreciate it themselves. The point at which an author begins to think his stuff is no good, and wonders why he ever committed himself to writing it, is about two-thirds of the way through. By the time he’s got over that hurdle and finished the book, he’s convinced that the world has produced another genius and that his book is a masterpiece.’
‘And Palgrave, in that sense, was not noticeably different from the norm?’
‘Definitely not, I would say. We couldn’t understand his reactions. We concluded he was tired, that’s all. We knew he had had trouble, at the beginning, in getting down to the book, and, of course, he was combining authorship with another very demanding job.’
‘Schoolmastering is what you make of it,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘The better the author, the worse the schoolmaster, perhaps.’
‘Then Palgrave wasn’t too bad a schoolmaster,’ said the literary agent. Dame Beatrice clicked her tongue and Peterhead laughed, but they both came back to the matter in hand when she said:
‘Well, perhaps you will mark this letter in some way so that you will know it again when I return it. I will give you a receipt for it, of course. There is one other small matter. The police have found a receipted bill from a typewriting agency for a top copy and two carbon copies of Palgrave’s book. There is also a receipted bill for two photo copies. We think we can account for all of these. Only one item seems to be unaccounted for. We have not found Palgrave’s own manuscript or typescript from which the other copies must have been made.’
‘Wouldn’t he have kept it by him?’
‘Apparently not. We can trace the other copies. He kept one, two of his friends have theirs and one came to me, but of the original copy there is no sign.’
‘In a safe deposit somewhere?’
‘I hope not. If it is, my theories may be useless. One other point, and I daresay it is not of the least importance: Palgrave seems to have typed all his letters to you. Is that not so?’
‘Yes, indeed it is. Like the one in your hand, all his letters to us were in typescript apart from the signature.’
‘But his novel was typed by an agency, yet he himself had a typewriter.’
‘Oh, that’s not unusual. Some of our authors like to send in a professional-looking copy and others shy away from the labour of making a fresh draft of a whole novel when they have finished the book. There is nothing extraordinary in the fact that Palgrave went to an agency. For one thing, a lot of people hate the fiddling business of dealing with carbons. I suppose it
‘Thank you, but that does not clear up my small point. I feel he is unlikely to have destroyed his own typescript. It must be somewhere, but we have not found it. Ah, well, now to get this signature examined.’
The tests took a little time, but the result of them justified her theories. Two handwriting experts who often found themselves on opposite sides in trials for forgery were for once in positive agreement. The evidence afforded by a comparison of the agents’ letter with the other letters supplied to Dame Beatrice was equally satisfactory. The signature on the withdrawal letter was not by the same hand as the signatures on three letters which had been sent to the publishers, neither had this key letter which forbade publication of the novel been typed on the machine the police had found in Palgrave’s lodgings.
‘So now,’ said Dame Beatrice to Laura, ‘to the telephone to get the police to track down the missing copy.’
‘As it’s the original draft which is missing,’ said Laura when Dame Beatrice had telephoned, ‘it seems to me it wouldn’t hurt to have me go along to that typing bureau – the police will have found the address among Palgrave’s things – and find out whether perhaps they know what happened to the original script. They must have had it to make the copies he ordered.’
‘Oh, I have told the police that I have no doubt as to who has the original draft. Mrs Lowson has it. There is every reason why she should have been sent that special very personal copy of the novel. I only hope she enjoyed reading it more than we did.’
‘Would she have recognised herself?’
‘There’s the telephone!’ said Dame Beatrice. The call was from Adrian Kirby. The police had just left his flat. They had asked for the Lowsons’ Lancashire address. He had had no option but to disclose it. He hoped he had done right. He had been alone in the flat because Miranda was at the art school.
Dame Beatrice, to whom Laura had handed the receiver, reassured him. She knew why the police wanted to get in touch with the Lowsons, she said. They were trying to trace a copy of Palgrave’s book. Somebody who must have read it had been attempting to suppress it.
‘But that implicates Miranda and me,’ said Adrian.
‘And Laura Gavin and my son and myself, not to mention a fellow teacher to whom Mr Palgrave had lent a copy, and, of course, anybody who may have been shown a first draft of the novel before it was retyped, or even one of the typists at the agency,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘All the same, I shall ring up the Lowsons and warn them to expect a visit from the police.’
‘I cannot prevent your doing that, but I advise against it.’
‘The Lowsons are our friends and there is little Camilla’s death to consider. Miranda and I have talked and talked about that. One of us who was at the cottage that night must have carried Camilla’s suitcase to the dunes and tried to hide it there so that it would appear that she had gone off with somebody else and left us. It must have been taken out of the cottage after her death, not before. There would have been no need to remove it while she
