The Great Pursuit

Chapter 17

In a cabin in the Smokey Mountains Piper held the same opinion about Pause. He sat out on the stoop and looked down at the lake where Baby was swimming and had to admit that his first impression of the novel had been wrong. He had been misled by the passages of explicit sex. But now that he had copied it out word for word he could see that the essential structure of the story was sound. In fact there were large sections of the book which dealt meaningfully with matters of great significance. Subtract the age difference between Gwendolen and Anthony, the narrator, and eradicate the pornography and Pause O Men for the Virgin had the makings of great literature. It examined in considerable depth the meaning of life, the writer's role in contemporary society, the anonymity of the individual in the urban collective and the need to return to the values of earlier, more civilized times. It was particularly good on the miseries of adolescence and the satisfaction to be found in the craftsmanship of furniture-making. 'Gwendolen ran her fingers along the gnarled and knotted oak with a sensual touch that belied her years. "The hardiness of time has tamed the wildness of the wood," she said. "You will carve against the grain and give form to what has been formless and insensate."' Piper nodded approvingly. Passages like that had genuine merit and better still they served as an inspiration to him. He too would cut against the grain of this novel and give form to it, so that in the revised version the grossness of the bestseller would be eliminated, all the sexual addenda which defiled the very essence of the book would be removed and it would stand as a monument to his literary gifts. Posthumously perhaps, but at least his reputation would be retrieved. In years to come critics would compare the two versions and deduce from his deletions that in its earlier uncommercial form the original intentions of the author had been of the highest literary quality and that the novel had subsequently been altered to meet the demands of Frensic and Hutchmeyer and their perverse view of public taste. The blame for the bestseller would lie with them and he would be exonerated. More, he would be acclaimed. He closed the ledger and stood up as Baby came out of the water and walked up the beach to the cabin.

'Finished?' she asked. Piper nodded.

'I shall start the second version tomorrow,' he said.

'While you're doing that I'll take the first down into Ashville and get it copied. The sooner Frensic gets it the sooner we're going to light a fire under him.'

'I wish you wouldn't use that expression,' said Piper, 'lighting fires. And anyway where are you going to mail it from? They could trace us from the postmark.'

'We shan't be here from the day after tomorrow. We rented the cabin for a week. I'll drive down to Charlotte and catch a flight to New York and mail it there. I'll be back tomorrow night and we move on the day after.'

'I wish we didn't have to move all the time,' said Piper, 'I like it here. There's been nobody to bother us and I've had time to write. Why can't we just stay on?'

'Because this isn't the Deep South,' said Baby, 'and when I said Deep I meant it. There are places down Alabama, Mississippi, that just nobody has ever heard of and I want to see them.'

'And from what I've read about Mississippi they aren't partial to strangers,' said Piper, 'they are going to ask questions.'

'You've read too many Faulkners,' said Baby, 'and where we're going a quarter of a million dollars buys a lot of answers.'

She went inside and changed. After lunch Piper swam in the lake and walked along the shore, his mind filled with possible changes he was going to make in Pause Two. Already he had decided to change the title. He would call it Work In Regress. There was a touch of Finnegans Wake about it which appealed to his sense of the literary. And after all Joyce had worked and reworked his novels over and over again with no thought for their commercial worth. And in exile from his native land. For a moment Piper saw himself following in Joyce's footsteps, incognito and endlessly revising the same book, with the difference that he could never emerge from obscurity into fame in his own lifetime. Unless of course his work was of such an indisputable genius that the little matter of the fire and the burning boats and even his apparent death would become part of the mystique of a great author. Yes, greatness would absolve him. Piper turned and hurried back along the shore to the cabin. He would start work at once on Work in Regress. But when he got back he found that Baby had already taken the car and his first manuscript and driven into Ashville. There was a note for him on the table. It said simply, 'Gone today. Here tomorrow. Stay with it. Baby.'

Piper stayed with it. He spent the afternoon with a pen going through Pause changing all references to age. Gwendolen lost fifty-five years and became twenty-five and Anthony gained ten which made him twenty-seven. And in between times Piper scored out all those references to peculiar sexual activities which had ensured the book's popular appeal. He did this with particular vigour and by the time he had finished was filled with a sense of righteousness which he conveyed to his notebook of Ideas. 'The commercialization of sex as a thing to be bought and sold is at the root of the present debasement of civilization. In my writing I have striven to eradicate the Thingness of sex and to encapsulate the essential relationship of humanity.' Finally he made himself supper and went to bed.

In the morning he was up early and at his table on the stoop. In front of him the first page of his new ledger lay blank and empty waiting for his imprint. He dipped his pen in the ink bottle and began to write. 'The house stood on a knoll. Surrounded by three elms, a beech and a...' Piper stopped. He wasn't sure what a deodar was and he had no dictionary to help him. He changed it to 'oak' and stopped again. Did oak have horizontal branches? Presumably some oaks did. Details like that didn't matter. The essential thing was to get down to an analysis of the relationship between Gwendolen and the narrator. Great books didn't bother with trees. They were about people, what people felt about people and what they thought about them. Insight was what really mattered and trees didn't contribute to insight. The deodar might just as well stay where it was. He crossed out 'oak' and put 'deodar' above it. He continued the description for half a page and then hit another problem. How could the narrator, Anthony, be on holiday from school when he was now twenty-seven. Unless of course he was a schoolmaster in which case he would have to teach something and that meant knowing about it. Piper tried to remember his own schooldays and a model on which to base Anthony, but the masters at his school had been nondescript men and had left little impression on him. There was only Miss Pears and she had been a mistress.

Piper put down his pen and thought about Miss Pears. Now if she had been a man...or if she were Gwendolen and he was Anthony...and if instead of being twenty-seven Anthony had been fourteen...or better still if his parents had lived in a house on a knoll surrounded by three elms, a beech and a...Piper stood up and paced the stoop, his mind alive with new inspiration. It had suddenly come to him that from the raw material of Pause O Men for the Virgin it might be possible to distil the essence of Search for a Lost Childhood. Or if not distil, at least amalgamate the two. There would have to be considerable alterations. After all tuberculotic plumbers didn't live on knolls. On the other hand his father hadn't actually had tuberculosis. He had got it from Lawrence and Thomas Mann. And a love affair between a schoolboy and his teacher was a very natural occurrence, provided of course that it didn't become physical. Yes, that was it. He would write Work In Regress as Search. He sat down at the table and picked up his pen and began to copy. There was no need now to worry about changing the main shape of the story. The deodar and the house on the knoll and all the descriptions of houses and places could remain the same. The new ingredient would be the addition of his troubled adolescence and the presence of his tormented parents. And Miss Pears as Gwendolen, his mentor, adviser and teacher with whom he would develop a significant relationship, meaningfully sexual and without sex.

And so once more the words formed indelibly black upon the page with all the old elegance of shape that had so satisfied him in the past. Below him the lake shone in the summer sunlight and a breeze ruffled the trees around the cabin, but Piper was oblivious to his surroundings. He had picked up the thread of his existence where it had broken in the Gleneagle Guest House in Exforth and was back into Search.

When Baby returned that evening from her flight to New York with the copy of his first manuscript now safely mailed to Frensic & Futtle, Lanyard Lane, London, she found Piper his old self. The trauma of the fire and their flight had been forgotten.

'You see, what I am doing is combining my own novel with Pause,' he explained as she poured herself a drink. 'Instead of Gwendolen being...'

'Tell me about it in the morning,' said Baby. 'Right now I've had a tiring day and tomorrow we've got to be on the road again.'

'I see you've bought another car,' said Piper looking out at a red Pontiac.

'Air-conditioned and with South Carolina plates. Anyone thinks they're going to come looking for us, they're going to have a hard time. I didn't even trade in this time. Sold the Ford in Beanville and took a Greyhound to Charlotte and bought this in Ashville on the way back. We'll change again farther south. We're covering our tracks.'

'Not by sending copies of Pause to Frensic, we aren't,' said Piper, 'I mean he's bound to know I haven't died.'

'That reminds me. I sent him a telegram in your name.'

'You did what?' squawked Piper.

'Sent him a telegram.'

'Saying what?'

'Just, quote Transfer advance royalties care of First National Bank of New York account number 478776 love Piper unquote.'

'But I haven't got an account...'

'You have now, honey. I opened one for you and made the first deposit. One thousand dollars. Now when Frensic gets that birthday greeting '

'Birthday greeting? You send a telegram demanding money and you call that a birthday greeting?'

'Had to delay it somehow till he'd had time to read the original of Pause,' said Baby, 'so I said he had a birthday on the 19th and they're holding it over.'

'Christ,' said Piper, 'some damned birthday greeting. I suppose you realize he's got a heart condition? I mean shocks like this could kill him.'

'Makes two of you,' said Baby. 'He's effectively killed you...'

'He did nothing of the sort. You were the one to sign my death certificate and end my career as a novelist.'

Baby finished her drink and sighed. 'There's gratitude for you. Your career as a novelist is just about to begin.'

'Posthumously,' said Piper bitterly.

'Well, better late than never,' said Baby, and took herself off to bed.

The next morning the red Pontiac left the cabin and wound up the curving mountain road in the direction of Tennessee.

'We'll go west as far as Memphis,' said Baby, 'and ditch the car there and double back by Greyhound to Chattanooga. I've always wanted to see the Choo Choo.'

Piper said nothing. He had just realized how he had met Miss Pears/Gwendolen. It had been one summer holiday when his parents had taken him down to Exforth and instead of sitting on the beach with them he had gone to the public library and there...The house no longer stood on a knoll. It was at the top of the hill by the cliffs and its windows stared out to sea. Perhaps that wasn't such a good idea. Not in the second version. No, he would leave it where it was and concentrate on the relationships. In that way there would be more consistency between Pause and Work In Regress, more authenticity. But in the third revision he would work on the setting and the house would stand on the cliffs above Exforth. And with each succeeding draft he would approximate a little more closely to that great novel on which he had been working for ten years. Piper smiled to himself at this realization. As the author of Pause O Men for the Virgin he had been given the fame he had always sought, had had fame forced upon him, and now by slow, persistent rewriting of that book he would reproduce the literary masterpiece that had been his life's work. And there was absolutely nothing Frensic could do about it.

That night they slept in separate motels in Memphis and next morning met at the bus depot and took the Greyhound to Nashville. The red Pontiac had gone. Piper didn't even bother to enquire how Baby had disposed of it. He had more important things on his mind. What, for instance, would happen if Frensic produced the real original manuscript of Pause and admitted that he had sent Piper to America as the substitute author?

'Two million dollars,' said Baby succinctly when he put this possibility to her.

'I don't see what they have to do with it,' said Piper.

'That's the price of the risk he took playing people poker with Hutch. You stake two million on a bluff you've got to have good reasons.'

'I can't imagine what they are.'

Baby smiled. 'Like who the real writer is. And don't give me that crap about a guy with six children and terminal arthritis. There's no such thing.'

'There isn't?' said Piper.

'No way. So we've got Frensic willing to risk his reputation as a literary agent for a percentage of two million and an author who goes along with him to preserve his precious anonymity from disclosure. That adds up to one hell of a weird set of circumstances. And Hutch hears what's going on he's going to murder them.'

'If Hutchmeyer hears what we've been doing he isn't going to be exactly pleased,' said Piper gloomily.

'Yes but we aren't there and Frensic is. In Lanyard Lane and by now he's got to be sweating.'

And Frensic was. The arrival of a large packet mailed in New York and addressed Personal, Frederick Frensic, had excited his curiosity only mildly. Arriving early at the office he had taken it upstairs with him and had opened several letters before turning his attention to the package. But from that moment onwards he had sat petrified staring at its contents. In front of him lay, neatly Xeroxed, sheet after sheet of Piper's unmistakable handwriting and just as equally unmistakably the original manuscript of Pause O Men for the Virgin. Which was impossible. Piper hadn't written the bloody book. He couldn't have. It was out of the question. And anyway why should anyone send him Xeroxed copies of a manuscript? The manuscript. Frensic rummaged through the pages and noted the corrections. The damned thing was the manuscript of Pause. And it was in Piper's handwriting. Frensic got up from his desk and went through to the filing cabinet and brought back the file now marked Mr Smith and compared the handwriting of Piper's letters with that of the manuscript. No doubt about it. He even reached for a magnifying glass and studied the letters through it. Identical. Christ. What the hell was going on? Frensic felt most peculiar. Some sort of waking nightmare had taken hold of him. Piper had written Pause? The obstacles in the way of such a supposition were insuperable. The little bugger couldn't have written anything and if he had...even if he quite miraculously had, what about Mr Cadwalladine and his anonymous client? Why should Piper have sent him the typed copy of the book through a solicitor in Oxford? And anyway the sod was dead. Or was he? No, he was definitely dead, drowned, murdered...Sonia's grief had been too real for disbelief. Piper was dead. Which brought him full circle to the question, who had sent this post-mortem manuscript? From New York? Frensic looked at the postmark. New York. And why Xeroxed? There had to be a reason. Frensic grabbed the package and rummaged inside it in the hope that it might contain some clue like a covering letter. But the package was empty. He turned to the outside. The address was typed. Frensic turned the packet over in search of a return address but there was nothing there. He turned back to the pages had read several more. There could be no doubting the authenticity of the writing. The corrections on every page were conclusive. They had been there in exactly the same form in every annual copy of Search for a Lost Childhood, a sentence scratched neatly out and a new one written in above. Worst of all, there were even the spelling mistakes. Piper had always spelt necessary with two cs and parallel with two rs, and here they were once again as final proof that the little maniac had actually penned the book which had gone to print with his name on the title page. But the decision to use his name hadn't been Piper's. He had only been consulted when the book had already been sold...

Frensic's thoughts spiralled. He tried to remember who had suggested Piper. Was it Sonia, or had he himself...? He couldn't recall and Sonia wasn't there to help him. She had gone down to Somerset to interview the author of Bernie the blasted Beaver and to ask for amendments in his opus. Beavers, even voluble beavers, didn't say 'Jesus wept' and 'Bloody hell', not if they wanted to get into print as children's bestsellers. Frensic did, several times, as he stared at the pages in front of him. Pulling himself together with an effort, he reached for the phone. This time Mr Cadwalladine was going to come clean about his client. But the telephone beat Frensic to it. It rang. Frensic cursed and picked up the receiver.

'Frensic & Futtle, Literary Agents...' he began before being stopped by the operator.

'Is that Mr Frensic, Mr Frederick Frensic?'

'Yes,' said Frensic irritably. He had never liked his Christian name.

'I have a birthday greeting for you,' said the operator.

'For me?' said Frensic. 'But it isn't my birthday.'

But already a taped voice was crooning 'Happy Birthday To You, Happy Birthday, dear Frederick, happy Birthday to you.'

Frensic held the receiver away from his ear. 'I tell you it isn't my bloody birthday,' he shouted at the recording. The operator came back on the line.

'The greetings telegram reads TRANSFER ADVANCE ROYALTIES CARE OF FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF NEW YORK ACCOUNT NUMBER FOUR SEVEN EIGHT SEVEN SEVEN SIX LOVE PIPER. I will repeat that. TRANSFER...' Frensic sat and listened. He was beginning to shake.

'Would you like that account number repeated once again?' asked the operator.

'No,' said Frensic. 'Yes.' He grabbed a pencil with an unsteady hand and wrote the message down.

'Thank you,' he said without thinking as he finished.

'You're welcome,' said the operator. The line went dead.

'Like hell I am,' said Frensic and put the phone down. He stared for a moment at the word 'Piper' and then groped his way across the room to the cubicle in which Sonia made coffee and washed the cups. There was a bottle of brandy there, kept for emergency resuscitation of rejected authors. 'Rejected?' Frensic muttered as he filled a tumbler. 'More like resurrected.' He drank half the tumbler and went back to his desk feeling little better. The nightmare quality of the manuscript had doubled now with the telegram but it was no longer incomprehensible. He was being blackmailed. 'Transfer advance royalties...' Frensic suddenly felt faint. He got out of his chair and lay down on the floor and shut his eyes.

After twenty minutes he got to his feet. Mr Cadwalladine was going to learn that it didn't pay to tangle with Frensic & Futtle. There was no point in phoning the wretched man again. Stronger measures were needed now. He would have the bastard squealing the name of his client and there would be an end to all this talk of professional confidentiality. The situation was desperate and desperate remedies were called for. Frensic went downstairs and out into the street. Half an hour later, armed with a parcel that contained sandals, dark glasses, a lightweight tropical suit and a Panama hat, he returned to the office. All that was needed now was an ambulance-chasing libel lawyer. Frensic spent the rest of the morning going through Pause for a suitable identity and then phoned Ridley, Coverup, Makeweight and Jones, Solicitors of Ponsett House. Their reputation as shysters in cases of libel was second to none. Mr Makeweight would see Professor Facit at four.

At five to four Frensic, armed with a copy of Pause O Men for the Virgin and peering dimly through his tinted glasses, sat in the waiting-room and looked down at his sandals. He was rather proud of them. If anything distinguished him from Frensic, the literary agent, it was, he felt, those awful sandals.

'Mr Makeweight will see you now,' said the receptionist. Frensic got up and went down the passage to the door marked Mr Makeweight and entered. An air of respectable legal fustiness clung to the room. It didn't to Mr Makeweight. Small, dark and effusive, he was rather too quick for the furnishings. Frensic shook hands and sat down. Mr Makeweight regarded him expectantly. 'I understand you are concerned with a passage in a novel,' he said.

Frensic put the copy of Pause on the desk.

'Well, I am rather,' he said hesitantly. 'You see...well it's been drawn to my attention by some of my colleagues who read novels I am not a novel-reader myself you understand but they have pointed out...well I'm sure it must be a coincidence...and they have certainly found it very funny that...'

'That a character in this novel resembles you in certain ways?' said Mr Makeweight, cutting through Frensic's hesitations.

'Well I wouldn't like to say that he resembles me...I mean the crimes he commits...'

'Crimes?' said Mr Makeweight taking the bait. 'A character resembling you commits crimes? In this novel?'

'It's the name you see. Facit,' said Frensic leaning forward to open Pause at the page he had marked. 'If you read the passage in question you will see what I mean.'

Mr Makeweight read three pages and looked up with a concern that masked his delight. 'Dear me,' he said, 'I do see what you mean. These are exceedingly serious allegations. ',

'Well they are, aren't they?' said Frensic pathetically. 'And my appointment as Professor of Moral Sciences at Wabash has yet to be confirmed and, quite frankly, if it were thought for one moment...'

'I take your point,' said Mr Makeweight. 'Your career would be put in jeopardy.'

'Ruined,' said Frensic.

Mr Makeweight selected a cigar happily. 'And I suppose we can take it that you have never...that these allegations are quite without foundation. You have never for instance seduced one of your male students?'

'Mr Makeweight,' said Frensic indignantly.

'Quite so. And you have never had intercourse with a fourteen-year-old girl after dosing her lemonade with a barbiturate?'

'Certainly not. The very idea revolts me. And besides I'm not sure I would know how to.'

Mr Makeweight regarded him critically. 'No, I daresay you wouldn't,' he said finally. 'And there is no truth in the accusation that you habitually fail students who reject your sexual overtures?'

'I don't make sexual overtures to students, Mr Makeweight. As a matter of fact I am neither on the examining board nor do I give tutorials. I am not part of the University. I am over here on a sabbatical and engaged in private research.'

'I see,' said Mr Makeweight, and made a note on his pad.

'And what makes it so much more embarrassing,' said Frensic, 'is that at one time I did have lodgings in De Frytville Avenue.'

Mr Makeweight made a note of that too. 'Extraordinary,' he said, 'quite extraordinary. The resemblance would seem to be almost exact. I think, Professor Facit, in fact I do more, I know that...provided of course that you haven't committed any of these unnatural acts...I take it you have never kept a Pekinese...no. Well as I say, provided you haven't and indeed even if you have, I can tell you now that you have grounds for taking action against the author and publishers of this disgraceful novel. I should estimate the damages to be in the region of...well to tell the truth I shouldn't be at all surprised if they don't constitute a record in the history of libel actions.'

'Oh dear,' said Frensic, feigning a mixture of anxiety and avarice, 'I was rather hoping it might be possible to avoid a court case. The publicity, you understand.'

Mr Makeweight quite understood. 'We'll just have to see how the publishers respond,' he said. 'Corkadales aren't a wealthy firm of course but they'll be insured against libel.'

'I hope that doesn't mean the author won't have to...'

'Oh he'll pay all right, Professor Facit. Over the years. The insurance company will see to that. A more deliberate case of malicious libel I have never come across.'

'Someone told me that the author, Mr Piper, has made a fortune out of the book in America,' said Frensic.

'In that case I think he will have to part with it,' said Mr Makeweight.

'And if you could expedite the matter I would be most grateful. My appointment at Wabash...'

Mr Makeweight assured him that he would put the matter in hand at once and Frensic, having given his address as the Randolph Hotel, Oxford, left the office well pleased. Mr Cadwalladine was about to get the shock of his life.

So was Geoffrey Corkadale. Frensic had only just returned to Lanyard Lane and was divesting himself of the disgusting sandals and the tropical suit when the phone rang. Geoffrey was in a state bordering on hysteria. Frensic held the phone away from his ear and listened to a torrent of abuse.

'My dear Geoffrey,' he said when the publisher ran out of epithets. 'What have I done to deserve this outburst?'

'Done?' yelled Corkadale. 'Done? You've done for this firm for one thing. You and that damnable Piper...'

'De mortuis nil nisi...' Frensic began.

'And what about the bloody living?' screamed Geoffrey. 'And don't tell me he didn't speak ill of this Professor Facit knowing full well that the swine was alive because...'

'What swine?' said Frensic.

'Professor Facit. The man in the book who did those awful things...'

'Wasn't he the character with satyriasis who...'

'Was?' bawled Geoffrey. 'Was? The bloody maniac is.'

'Is what?' said Frensic.

'Is! Is! The man's alive and he's filing a libel action against us.'

'Dear me. How very unfortunate.'

'Unfortunate? It's catastrophic. He's gone to Ridley, Coverup, Makeweight and...'

'Oh no,' said Frensic, 'but they're absolute rogues.'

'Rogues? They're bloodsuckers. Leeches. They'd get blood out of a stone and with all this filth in the book about Professor Facit they've got a watertight case. They're dunning us for millions. We're finished. We'll never...'

'The man you want to speak to is a Mr Cadwalladine,' said Frensic. 'He acted for Piper. I'll give you his telephone number.'

'What good is that going to do? It's deliberate libel...'

But Frensic was already dictating Mr Cadwalladine's telephone number and with apologies because he had a client in the room next door he put the phone down on Geoffrey's ravings. Then he changed out of the tropical suit, phoned the Randolph and booked a room in the name of Professor Facit and waited. Mr Cadwalladine was bound to call and when he did Frensic was going to be ready and waiting. In the meantime he sought further inspiration by studying Piper's telegram. 'Transfer advance royalties care of account number 478776.' And the little bastard was supposed to be dead. What in God's name was going on? And what on earth was he going to tell Sonia? And where did Hutchmeyer fit into all this? According to Sonia the police had grilled him for hours and Hutchmeyer had come out of the experience a shaken man, and had even threatened to sue the police. That didn't sound like the action of a man who...Frensic put the notion of Hutchmeyer kidnapping Piper and demanding his money back by proxy as too improbable for words. If Hutchmeyer had known that Piper hadn't written Pause he would have sued. But Piper apparently had written Pause. The proof was there in front of him in the copy of the manuscript. Well he would have to screw the truth out of Mr Cadwalladine and with Mr Makeweight in the wings demanding enormous damages, Mr Cadbloodywalladine was going to have to come clean.

He did. 'I don't know who the author of this awful book is,' he admitted in faltering tones when he rang up half an hour later.

'You don't know?' said Frensic, faltering incredulously himself. 'You must know. You sent me the book in the first place. You gave me the authorization to send Piper to the States. If you didn't know you had no right...' Mr Cadwalladine made negative noises. 'But I've got a letter here from you saying...'

'I know you have,' said Mr Cadwalladine faintly. 'The author gave his consent and...'

'But you've just said you don't know who the bloody author is,' shouted Frensic, 'and now you tell me he gave his consent. His written consent?'

'Yes,' said Mr Cadwalladine.

'In that case you've got to know who he is.'

'But I don't,' said Mr Cadwalladine. 'You see I've always dealt with him through Lloyds Bank.'

Frensic's mind boggled. 'Lloyds Bank?' he muttered. 'You did say Lloyds Bank?'

'Yes. Care of the manager. It's such a very respectable bank and I never for one moment supposed...'

He left the sentence unfinished. There was no need to end it. Frensic was already ahead of him. 'So what you're saying is that whoever wrote this bloody novel sent the thing to you by way of Lloyds Bank in Oxford and that whenever you've wanted to correspond with him you've had to do so through the bank. Is that right?'

'Precisely,' said Mr Cadwalladine, 'and now that this frightful libel case has come up I think I know why. It puts me in a dreadful situation. My reputation...'

'Stuff your reputation,' shouted Frensic, 'what about mine? I've been acting in good faith on behalf of a client who doesn't exist and on your instructions and now we've got a murder on our hands and...'

'This terrible libel action,' said Mr Cadwalladine. 'Mr Corkadale told me that the damages are bound to amount to something astronomical.'

But Frensic wasn't listening. If Mr Cadwalladine's client had to correspond with him through Lloyds Bank the bastard must have something to hide. Unless of course it was Piper. Frensic groped for a clue. 'When the novel first came to you there must have been a covering letter.'

'The manuscript came from a typing agency,' said Mr Cadwalladine. 'The covering letter was sent a few days earlier via Lloyd's Bank.'

'With a signature?' said Frensic.

'The signature of the bank manager,' said Mr Cadwalladine.

'That's all I need,' said Frensic. 'What is his name?'

Mr Cadwalladine hesitated. 'I don't think...' he began but Frensic lost patience.

'Damn your scruples, man,' he snarled, 'the name of the bank manager and quick.'

'The late Mr Bygraves,' said Mr Cadwalladine sadly.

'The what?'

'The late Mr Bygraves. He died of a heart attack climbing Snowdon at Easter.'

Frensic slumped in his chair. 'He had a heart attack climbing Snowdon,' he muttered.

'So you see, I don't think he's going to be able to help us very much,' continued Mr Cadwalladine, 'and anyway banks are very reticent about disclosing the names of their clients. You have to have a warrant, you know.'

Frensic did know. It was one of the few things about banks he had previously admired. But there was something else that Mr Cadwalladine had said earlier...something about a typing agency. 'You said the manuscript came from a typing agency,' he said. 'Have you any idea which one?'

'No. But I daresay I could find out if you'll give me time.' Frensic sat holding the receiver while Mr Cadwalladine found out. 'It's the Cynthia Bogden Typing Service,' he told Frensic at long last. He sounded distinctly subdued.

'Now we're getting somewhere,' said Frensic. 'Ring her up and ask where...'

'I'd rather not,' said Mr Cadwalladine.

'You'd rather not? Here we are in the middle of a libel action which is probably going to cost you your reputation and...'

'It's not that,' interrupted Mr Cadwalladine. 'You see, I handled the divorce case...'

'Well that's all right...'

'I was acting for her ex-husband,' said Mr Cadwalladine. 'I don't think she'd appreciate my...'

'Oh all right, I'll do it,' said Frensic. 'Give me her number.' He wrote it down, replaced the receiver and dialled again.

'The Cynthia Bogden Typing Service,' said a voice, coyly professional.

'I'm trying to trace the owner of a manuscript that was typed by your agency...' Frensic began but the voice cut him short.

'We do not divulge the names of our clients,' it said.

'But I'm only asking because a friend of mine...'

'Under no circumstances are we prepared to confide confidential information of the sort...'

'Perhaps if I spoke to Mrs Bogden,' said Frensic.

'You are,' said the voice and rang off. Frensic sat at his desk and cursed.

'Confidential information my foot,' he said and slammed the phone down. He sat thinking dark thoughts about Mrs Bogden for a while and then called Mr Cadwalladine again.

'This Bogden woman,' he said, 'how old is she?'

'Around forty-five,' said Mr Cadwalladine, 'why do you ask?'

'Never mind,' said Frensic.

That evening, having left a note on Sonia Futtle's desk saying that urgent business would keep him out of town for a day or two, Frensic travelled by train to Oxford. He was wearing a lightweight tropical suit, dark glasses and a Panama hat. The sandals were in his dustbin at home. He carried with him a suitcase the Xeroxed manuscript of Pause, a letter written by Piper and a pair of striped pyjamas. Dressed in the last he climbed into bed at eleven in the Randolph Hotel. His room had been booked for Professor Facit.