The Great Pursuit

'Miss Futtle isn't another woman. Not that sort of other woman. She's a literary agent. We do business together.'

'Naked on a yacht in the middle of a mini-hurricane you do business together? What sort of business?'

'We weren't doing business on the yacht. It was a social occasion.'

'Kind of thought it was. I mean naked and all.'

'I wasn't naked to begin with. I just got wet so I took my clothes off.'

'You just got wet so you took your clothes off? Are you sure that was the only reason you were naked?'

'Of course I'm sure. Look, no sooner had we got out there than the wind blew up...'

'And the house blew up. And your cruiser blew up. And Mrs Hutchmeyer blew up and this Mr Piper...' Hutchmeyer blew up.

'Okay, Mr Hutchmeyer, if that's the way you want it,' said Greensleeves as Hutchmeyer was pinned back into his chair. 'Now we're really going to get tough.'

He was interrupted by a sergeant who whispered in his ear. Greensleeves sighed. 'You're sure?'

'That's what she says. Been up at the hospital all day.'

Greensleeves went out and looked at Sonia. 'Miss Futtle? You say you're Miss Futtle?'

Sonia nodded. 'Yes,' she said. The police chief could see that Hutchmeyer had been telling the truth after all. Miss Futtle was not a little lady, not by a long way.

'Okay, we'll take your statement in here,' he said and took her into another office. For two hours Sonia made her statement. When Greensleeves came out he had an entirely new theory. Miss Futtle had been most cooperative.

'Right,' he said to Hutchmeyer, 'now we'd like you to tell us just what happened down in New York when Piper arrived. We understand you arranged a kind of riot for him.'

Hutchmeyer looked wildly round. 'Now wait a minute. That was just a publicity stunt. I mean...'

'And what I mean,' said Greensleeves, 'is that you set this Mr Piper up for a target for every crazy pressure group going. Arabs, Jews, Gays, the IRA, the blacks, old women, you name it, you let them loose on the guy and you call that a publicity stunt?'

Hutchmeyer tried to think. 'Are you telling me that one of those groups did this thing?' he asked.

'I'm not telling you anything, Mr Hutchmeyer. I'm asking.'

'Asking what?'

'Asking you if you think it was so goddam clever setting Mr Piper up for a target when the poor guy hadn't done anything worse than write a book for you? Doesn't seem you did yourself or him a favour the way things have worked out, does it?'

'I didn't think anything like this...'

Greensleeves leant forward. 'Now I'm just telling you something for your own good, Mr Hutchmeyer. You're going to get the hell out of here and not come back. Not if you know what's good for you. And next time you dream up a publicity stunt for one of your authors you'd better get him a goddam bodyguard first.'

Hutchmeyer staggered out of the office.

'I need some clothes,' he said.

'Well you're not going to get any back at your house. It's all burnt down.'

On a bench Sonia Futtle was weeping.

'What's the matter with her?' said Hutchmeyer.

'She's all broken up with this Piper's dying,' said Greensleeves, 'and it kind of surprises me you aren't grief-stricken about the late Mrs Hutchmeyer.'

'I am,' said Hutchmeyer, 'I just don't show my feelings is all.'

'So I noticed,' said Greensleeves. 'Well you'd better go comfort your alibi. We'll send out for some clothes.'

Hutchmeyer crossed to the bench in his blanket. 'I'm sorry...' he began but Sonia was on her feet.

'Sorry?' she shrieked, 'you murdered my darling Peter and now you say you're sorry?'

'Murdered him?' said Hutchmeyer. 'All I did was...'

Greensleeves left them to it and sent out for some clothes. 'We can forget this case,' he told the lieutenant, 'this is Federal stuff. Terrorists in Maine. I mean who the hell would believe it?'

'You don't think it was the Mafia then?'

'What's it matter who it was? We aren't going to get anywhere to solving it is all I know. The FBI can handle this case. I know when I'm out of my depth.'

In the end Hutchmeyer, dressed in a dark suit that didn't fit him properly, and the still inconsolable Sonia were driven to the airport and took the company plane to New York.

They landed to find that MacMordie had laid on the media. Hutchmeyer lumbered down the steps and made a statement.

'Gentlemen,' he said brokenly, 'this has been a double tragedy for me. I have lost the most wonderful, warm-hearted little wife a man ever had. Forty years of happy marriage lie...' He broke off to blow his nose. 'It's just terrible. I can't express the full depths of my feelings.'

'What about this Piper?' someone asked. Hutchmeyer drew on his reserves of deep feelings.

'Peter Piper was a young novelist of unsurpassed brilliance. His passing has been a great blow to the world of letters.' He paraded his handkerchief again and was prompted by MacMordie.

'Say something about his novel,' he whispered.

Hutchmeyer stopped sniffling and said something about Pause O Men for the Virgin published by Hutchmeyer Press price seven dollars ninety and available at all...Behind him Sonia wept audibly and had to be escorted to the waiting car. She was still weeping when they drove off.

'A terrible tragedy,' said Hutchmeyer, still under the influence of his own oratory, 'really terrible.'

He was interrupted by Sonia who was pummelling MacMordie.

'Murderer,' she screamed, 'it was all your fault. You told all those crazy terrorists he was in the KGB and the IRA and a homosexual and now look what's happened!'

'What the hell's going on?' yelled MacMordie, 'I didn't do...'

'The fucking cops up in Maine think it was the Symbionese Liberation Army or The Minutemen or someone,' said Hutchmeyer, 'so now we've got another problem.'

'I can see that,' said MacMordie as Sonia blacked his eye. Finally, refusing Hutchmeyer's offer of hospitality, she insisted on being driven to the Gramercy Park Hotel.

'Don't worry,' said Hutchmeyer as she got out, 'I'm going to see that Baby and Piper go to their Maker with all the trimmings. Flowers, a cortège, a bronze casket...'

'Two,' said MacMordie, 'I mean they wouldn't fit...'

Sonia turned on them. 'They're dead,' she screamed. 'Dead. Doesn't that mean anything to you? Haven't you any consciences? They were real people, real living people and now they're dead and all you can talk about is funerals and caskets and '

'Well we've got to recover the bodies first,' said MacMordie practically, 'I mean there's no use talking about caskets, we don't have no bodies.'

'Why don't you just shut your mouth?' Hutchmeyer told him, but Sonia had fled into the hotel.

They drove on in silence.

For a while Hutchmeyer had considered firing MacMordie but he changed his mind. After all he had never liked the great wooden house in Maine and with Baby dead...

'It was a terrible experience,' he said, 'a terrible loss.'

'It must have been,' said MacMordie, 'all that loveliness gone to waste.'

'It was a showhouse, part of the American heritage. People used to come up from Boston just to look at it.'

'I was thinking of Mrs Hutchmeyer,' said MacMordie. Hutchmeyer looked at him nastily.

'I might have expected that from you, MacMordie. At a time like this you have to think about sex.'

'I wasn't thinking sex,' said MacMordie, 'she was a remarkable woman characterwise.'

'You can say that again,' said Hutchmeyer. 'I want her memory embalmed in books. She was a great book-lover you know. I want a leather-bound edition of Pause O Men for the Virgin printed with gold letters. We'll call it the Baby Hutchmeyer Memorial Edition.'

'I'll see to it,' said MacMordie.

And so while Hutchmeyer resumed his role as publisher Sonia Futtle lay weeping on her bed in the Gramercy Park. She was consumed by guilt and grief. The one man who had ever loved her was dead and it was all her fault. She looked at the telephone and thought of calling Frensic but it would be the middle of the night in England. Instead she sent a telegram, PETER PRESUMED DEAD DROWNED MRS HUTCHMEYER DITTO POLICE INVESTIGATING CRIME WILL CALL WHEN CAN SONIA.