Death of a Cozy Writer

“I beg your pardon?”

“He was drunk, Inspector. Three sheets to the wind; lashed up; pissed as a newt-however you wish to say it. One didn’t tend to take him seriously when he was like that. I didn’t.”

“And your father?”

“Didn’t take him seriously either, I would imagine. The dinner was the same as always, not particularly pleasant. Maybe a little worse than usual this time. Look, I’ve been over this with you, with your men. What exactly is it you want to know?”

“I want to know who would have killed your brother, for a start, and why. And your father. Greed? Hatred? I want to know what you think.”

“In Adrian’s case, unless dislike of pretentious bad taste is a motive, I don’t have any theories in particular. My father-Adrian- was a first-class phony. You’ve only got to look around you to see that. Half of this crap”-and here he waved an arm to encompass the room-“is nothing but a load of cheap reproductions. The rest, most of it, is expensive reproductions. Once in awhile he’d get hold of an honest dealer-that commode over there, for example, is genuine Louis XV, or I miss my best guess-but the rest of it is just rubbish. I tried to advise him, warn him-it drove me wild to see him spending money in that way-but he’d have none of it.”

“Surely, it was his money to spend as he wished?” asked St. Just.

The look George shot him was surly: You would think so.

“It was mine. My inheritance. Potentially,” he finished lamely. Realizing he’d just stamped “Suspect” on his own forehead, he hurried on. “Not that I could ever count on that, of course. I was out of the will as often as I was in it.”

“That was true of your siblings as well, of course.”

Oh, them.

“Yes, I suppose so.” It really was as if he had forgotten they existed. “The difference, in my case, is that I’m already well-off, you know. Pots of money of my own. I’d no need of his money. Certainly, not enough to kill him for it. You’ll have to do better than that, Inspector.”

St. Just wondered. If what his sources were telling him they suspected were true, it was a fact that George had pots of money, much of it made from selling a pharmacopoeia of illegal substances. No form, but Vice gossip was seldom wrong. They were anxious to get their mitts on him, but George Beauclerk-Fisk had proved frustratingly elusive.

Could it be George had decided it was time to go straight-and killing his father looked like a way to get the cash influx that would allow him to do so? There was a certain weird logic to it that St.

Just decided he wouldn’t put past George.

“There was also the title-”

That brought a short bark of laughter from George.

“Yes, well, the ‘Bart.’ was hereditary. And it’s mine now. But you don’t seriously think I’d kill anyone over that? Let me tell you just how valuable that title is: It was bought and paid for. You see what I mean? He was a phony, to his fingertips.”

“He bought the title?”

“You can arrange that, you know, if you have the ready cash. Some distant, elderly, impoverished relation- very, on all counts- with no direct heirs, got in touch with father some years ago. Or maybe it was the other way around. But he wanted money for an operation or some such. Father forked over-he must have borrowed the money from someone, because it was before he came into the serious cash-in exchange for being named heir to the title in the old man’s will. There were a few other potential and equally minor claimants in America, so his being British born became the deciding factor. Obligingly, the relation didn’t survive the operation.”

“I see.” St. Just regarded him. Something George was telling him, he felt, was important to the case, but he couldn’t think for the moment what it could be.

“Did you see your father often?”

George hesitated slightly before answering. St. Just detected the familiar indecision of an interviewee debating whether or not telling the truth were the best course.

“Not often,” said George. “No more often than the others.”

St. Just nodded in Fear’s direction, a nod that told Fear to put a mark by that statement for later verification. Ostentatiously, Fear licked his pencil and drew several big stars on the page. As if suddenly realizing Mrs. Romano would surely be able to put the lie to his statement, George amended:

“Oh, fairly often, I suppose, in recent years. It depends on what you mean by often.”

“You tell me, sir,” said St. Just. Sergeant Fear noticed the familiar frown forming, the one that could make St. Just’s eyes nearly disappear beneath his brows. Young George here, he felt, would do well to notice it, too.

“I made rather a determined policy to stay in his good graces, that’s all. I think the old man was lonely. It rather explains this stupid marriage, doesn’t it?”

“The marriage acted as some kind of catalyst, didn’t it? You must feel as I do that none of this would have happened but for the marriage?”

Dishonesty having failed as a policy, George made a further attempt at open frankness.

“It was part of his usual shock treatment. But we were used to it, Inspector. In a way. ‘Numbed by it’ might be a better expression.

Isn’t there an animal that eats its young? Being around him-it was like that for all of us, except Ruthven, perhaps.”

“There were bad feelings between you and Ruthven because of this-competition-your father encouraged between you.”

It was a statement rather than a question.

“There were no feelings at all, Chief Inspector. I tell you, we were simply numbed by it. Ruthven might be on top one year, but it was simply a matter of waiting my turn to catch the King’s eye.”

After fifteen minutes in which George reiterated his indifference, and his alibi for Ruthven’s murder-none of them had a verifiable alibi for the time of Sir Adrian’s death-they left George preening before a mirror.

“Alibis are a two-way street,” said Sergeant Fear as he shut the door, just loudly enough to be sure George could hear.

“With a roundabout in the middle,” said St. Just. “Yes, I realize that if George and Natasha are both lying for each other about being together, it means both have no alibi for Ruthven’s murder at all. I am glad to see you were paying close attention during your interrogation training.”

They walked farther down the hall, pausing near an alcove holding a dusty stuffed crocodile, jaws ajar, in a glass display case. St. Just shuddered and turned away.

“Interesting morsel of information about the title,” he said. “Perhaps Sir Adrian was an even bigger phony than George had sussed.”

“St. Drudmilla’s, you mean.”

“Yes. You and I know now that Sir Adrian was raised in an orphanage- the place Coffield mentioned to me-so we can discount the part of Sir Adrian’s novel where the sensitive young boy left his family behind in Wales. Looks like it was the other way around-someone abandoned him-and it was still very much a sore spot. Since St. Drudmilla’s is a home for unwed mothers, he must have flat-out purchased the title in an even dodgier deal than George believes. I doubt ‘Sir Adrian,’ as we may as well continue to call him, could have learned of some remote blood tie to the Beauclerk-Fisks-the 1976 Adoption Act hadn’t been passed at the time. How did he manage it? Forged documents-had to be. In any event, he was willing to tell the truth about other people’s secrets, but he still couldn’t bring himself to come entirely clean about his origins. He’d look a fool after so many years of passing himself off as to the manor born.

“More than that, I think that coming from a poor background was one thing, but being born on the wrong side of the sheets, to someone of his generation, was another. He would have wanted to take that one secret to his grave.”

Sergeant Fear shook his head in disbelief.

“Who would care, in this day and age?”

“Sir Adrian, apparently. No wonder he felt that nothing would do but that Natasha and George had to get married, and the sooner the better. Well, what next? The lady of the house, I think.”