Richard Crashaw
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Dame Beatrice read her photocopy of Lost Parenthesis with more concentrated attention than she usually accorded to works of fiction; in fact, by the time she began the third chapter she was inclined to think that here was part of an autobiography rather than a slightly over-written piece of purely imaginative prose.
This impression was heightened by the fact that the narrative was told in the first person singular and that the writer, somewhat irritatingly, took himself very seriously indeed.
Not risking a disclosure of his true profession, Palgrave had described himself as a young interne and, although parts of the story appeared to have been plagiarised (whether the author realised it or not) from other and better writers, there was no doubt that he had done his homework by consulting non-fictional works on medicine, the law and morbid psychology.
The theme of the book was blackmail. The hero had found himself involved with a woman patient described as a few years older than himself. He had yielded to her charms to the extent of providing her with a baby whom, at her instigation, he had subsequently murdered.
On the strength of this (Dame Beatrice thought) unlikely episode, since to procure an abortion for the woman in these conscienceless days would have been a simpler and far less dangerous proposition that the calculated infanticide of a being already delivered from the womb, the mother black-mailed the young medico, bleeding him so mercilessly that he had seen fit to drown her.
This had happened on holiday and here the author had taken further risks. Under fabricated names, Saltacres and Stack Ferry were well, although over elaborately, described, and the characters, to anybody who knew the originals, were all too plainly not only Palgrave himself, but his acquaintances, including Miranda, Adrian, Morag and the dead Camilla.
The latter, indeed, appeared in several roles, or so it seemed to the percipient reader. She was both the predatory blackmailer and the hoydenish teenager. She also appeared to be a kind of Siamese twin of the apparently idolised (by the author) heroine, whom the first-person hero ended by marrying.
Incidents which Dame Beatrice knew of only by hearsay, such as the misappropriated car, the moonlight bathes, the bohemian set-up at the Saltacres cottage and the coincidental arrival at the cottage of Morag and Cupar Lowson (here renamed Nancy and Shaun McBride) would mean little, she thought, to readers who had never taken a peep behind the scenes, but might act like dynamite on anybody who had the facts which lay behind the incidents described in the book.
On the other hand, the descriptions of the various characters and the actions and motives attributed to each were so mixed and mingled and, in the reader’s view, often so impulsive and contradictory, that it was unlikely that any one person would have been able to identify herself or himself as a personage portrayed in the book.
‘No truth, no libel, I imagine,’ said Dame Beatrice, handing the script to Laura. ‘See what you make of it. Knowing as much as I do, and a good deal more which I surmise, I do not feel that I have brought an open mind to my perusal of this work. You, I trust, will do better.’
‘Doubtful,’ said Laura. ‘By this time I expect you’ve told me much of what you’ve found out, and you know what my mind is like — it is apt to fill in gaps. Is the book, as a book, worth reading?’
‘There, again, I can hardly tell. It is the book of an inexperienced author, but the story might interest some people and it is well, if somewhat elaborately, written.’
‘But you wouldn’t put it on your library list?’
‘As a contribution to my study of morbid psychology, perhaps I would.’
Laura took a couple of evenings to read the script. When she returned it. she said,
‘Could be hot stuff if you equated yourself with one or two of the characters, I suppose. That’s if you could get yourself disentangled from the various ladies involved. Naturally I’ve tried to sort out Camilla St John from Miranda Kirby from Morag Lowson from any of Camilla’s girlfriends, but it can’t be done, and the same goes for Palgrave himself, Adrian Kirby, Lowson, and the various medicos who, I suppose, are composite portraits of the schoolmasters Palgrave knew. Quite the nastiest bit of work seems to be Palgrave himself, as the book is written in the first person. In any case, the plot is wildly improbable.’
‘It can’t be, you know,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘if somebody thought it so probable that he or she went to the length of poisoning the author. I think I will show the book to Ferdinand.’
‘A man – the only one – who really terrifies me. If ever I am had up for serious crime, I pray I don’t come up against him.’
‘Oh, he is usually defending. He says it is far more fun than prosecuting and a great deal more difficult, too, because the prisoner usually has done it and to convince a jury that he has not, is a task of some magnitude.’
Sir Ferdinand read the book and asked what he was supposed to do about it.
‘Could it lead to the murder of the author?’ his mother enquired.
‘Only by the critics. Is this the arsenic victim?’
‘Yes, indeed. It is all mixed up with that other case in which I was involved, the death by drowning at Saltacres.’
‘As I see it, the main theme of the story is blackmail. The death of the girl seems to have been incidental to the main plot.’
‘Yes, but, by inference, the hero drowned her.’
‘On the assumption that, as has been so glibly and yet somewhat truly said, each man kills the thing he loves. How much, and to what an unfathomable extent, writers are the products of the age into which they are born! Kipling would have been twice as good had he lived at the present day; Shakespeare less than a quarter as great, had he come on earth a century or so later than he did.’ He cocked an eye at Laura, but she refused to be drawn into contention.
‘So you see no reason why Palgrave should have been murdered?’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Oh, yes, I do. Somebody saw something in the story which threatened him.’
‘Him?’
‘Or her, but as the book is written in the first person by a man and, very obviously, from a man’s point of view, I am inclined to think that “him” is the operative word. The book, in fact, may well be Palgrave’s confession, and his death, in spite of what the police think, may have been an expiatory suicide.’
‘I might agree, if he had not also been responsible for trying to get the book suppressed. That seems to me extraordinary in the face of his letter to me.’
‘Somebody who, like you, has read the script, may be his murderer, then.’
‘And that would include me, as I first saw the book before Palgrave died. He wanted me to give it my blessing, as I think I told you. But I am still at a loss. His letter which accompanied the script hardly seems to me to contain a request that an author who wanted to suppress his book would make.’
‘I wonder what his first book was like,’ said Laura. ‘Any use to get hold of a copy and compare them? Means the public library, I expect. It will be out of print by now, no doubt, and we don’t even know who his publishers were, do we?’
‘Mr Pinfold will know,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘He will have taken possession of all Palgrave’s papers. It may be helpful to read his first book, although very few first novels do anything except give some clue to the author’s opinion of himself, for most must, of necessity, be autobiographical.’
‘Palgrave’s second book is that, too, in a manner of speaking, as I think we are agreed,’ said Ferdinand. ‘I wonder whether a talk with his publishers would be helpful?’
The publishers were cautious, though courteous when she visited them, and did not attempt to offer any help in suggesting a reason for Palgrave’s death.