Publish and Be Killed

A Tessa Crichton Mystery

Anne Morice

• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781914150326
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

'I don't give much for Baba's chances. Her days as an authoress must be numbered.'

It is well known that the celebrated playwright, Sheridan Seymour, had three children by his mistress. The copyright to his plays was left to his legitimate daughters, but over the years Baba, the youngest, has gained sole control.

Now Sheridan's work is enjoying a popular revival on the West End stage. Baba is rich and planning to write a biography of her father, promising salacious revelations.

When Tessa Crichton is asked to help prevent the biography's publication, she needs no encouragement. With all of her customary curiosity she burrows deep into the family secrets. But she is brought to a halt by the disappearance of a family member, identified as the body found in a burnt-out house - but who reappears from an impulsive visit overseas.

So who died in the fire?

Publish and be Killed was originally published in 1986. This new edition features an introduction and afterword by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

'A light hand, an engaging ease, and an inventive mind: all welcome qualities in the writing of crime novels.' Financial Times

'What makes her such good company - and the whole point of Miss Morice's book is to converse, as it were, with Tessa Crichton - is not her deductive skill but her shrewd eye and quick tongue for people and situations.' Daily Telegraph

TWELVE

‘How about a trip to the seaside?’ I suggested at breakfast.

‘Which one?’

‘Well, I wasn’t proposing to cross the Channel. Brighton might be a good place. You used to love going to Brighton before you got stuck into your rut.’

‘Won’t it be rather crowded in August?’

‘Everywhere’s crowded in August, including Roakes Common at present. Besides, we needn’t actually mingle. We can look at the sea and snuff up the breezes from our window table in some rarefied restaurant. After that, we’ll drive along until we find a nice, secluded beach where you can paddle.’

‘You seem to have some very antiquated ideas about the south coast. You would need to drive a hundred miles before you found anything resembling a nice, secluded beach. There are ribbon developments along every inch of it from Folkestone to Bournemouth.’

It is usually best to take one step at a time with Toby, so I did not break it to him that this was precisely why I had chosen it as our destination.

Explanations followed during the journey, however, a move which was forced on me by his incessant complaints about the time it was taking to get there.

‘I simply cannot make out where you have been for the last twenty years,’ he grumbled, as we joined the queue of cars at a level crossing. ‘Don’t you realise that they have built all sorts of motorways which take you to Brighton with the speed of light? Nobody with a grain of sense would go through Redhill any more.’

‘Yes, I do realise. I just wanted to get my bearings.’

‘For Brighton?’

‘Among other places. Incidentally, there was a turning to Chillingford about five miles back, so I’ve got that more or less placed in the lay-out. It was getting a bit late to make a detour then, if we’re to be in time for that lunch we’ve promised ourselves, but we might take it in on our way home.’

‘What a frightful idea! May I ask what other horrors you have in store?’

‘Only one other that really matters, but it may take time and involve a modicum of subterfuge.’

‘That would not surprise me. Does it have anything to do with that ghastly wig you’re wearing?’

‘It is rather hideous, I admit, but it has to be red, you see. That’s the one thing most people notice right away and remember ever afterwards. When I’m wearing my outsize sunglasses too, which I fully intend to do, so it’s lucky there’s plenty of glare, I hope to be practically unrecognisable.’

‘To whom?’

‘Anyone who might conceivably have seen me on stage or screen, or heard about me from some spy. I thought you could pretend to be my stepbrother. That should put them even further off the scent because, if there’s one thing my public does know about me, it is that I haven’t got a stepbrother.’

‘And, after all that, could you please explain who it is you expect to be fooling with this nonsense?’

‘Oh, good! Here comes the train at last. Now perhaps we can move.’

‘It may be all nonsense,’ I admitted when we had done so, ‘and perhaps it won’t lead to anything, but I hate unfinished business and I thought I’d have one last shot at solving some of these riddles.’

‘And which one have you earmarked for today?’

‘Well, it’s like this, you see, Toby. I’ve met almost all the living characters in this drama, which has now been rumbling on for about fifty years, but there are two omissions. One is Dodie, who is now plastered in Denmark and will have to wait. The other, who I’d been afraid would remain for ever inaccessible, is Tom.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Tom Lampeter, Laura’s brother and the only male, so far as is known, of the Seymour issue. He may have no part to play at all, he may not even know that Baba is writing a book which will contain documented proof that his mother was a cheat and a harlot and that he is not Sheridan’s son, after all. On the other hand, perhaps he does know, in which case I would guess that he is none too pleased about it. In fact, he would probably view it with even less favour than the rest of them.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I suspect that he is already an embittered man. Sheridan left him a lot of money, you know, and he lost every penny financing his own plays, if you can believe such a thing?’

‘Only with immense difficulty.’

‘They were all utter flops, but that didn’t deter him, so he must have believed in them himself. Knowing that type of swollen-headed imbecile, I expect he put their failure down to bad casting, spiteful critics, or any old reason except the true one. So I imagine it might really destroy his last pathetic illusions to discover that he had no talent, for the very obvious reason that there wasn’t a drop of Seymour blood in his veins.’

‘Yes, indeed, but would you mind explaining what all this has to do with our spending the day in Brighton?’

‘It’s probably a fifty-to-one shot, but it happens to be a name that has cropped up more than once just lately and each time linked in some way with the Seymour/Lampeter saga. When Derek first told me about his wife’s family he said that her uncle Tom had joined some evangelical sect who were based near Brighton. That made no impression at the time, but for some reason the memory was stirred when Robin was telling me about the routes this unknown woman who impersonated Dodie Watson might have taken to get to Mallings. Thinking it over afterwards, I remembered that he’d said that from Redhill, which is the nearest mainline junction, there are branch lines to various places along the coast to the east and west of Brighton. So that was the second time it had come up.’

‘Personally, I find the link fragile, to say the least.’

‘So did I at that stage, but hang on a minute because last night, when I was talking to Laura, she mentioned something which set the same wheels turning again. That was before she had her funny turn and, if your theory about that is true, it could have been what brought it on.’

‘What could? I have lost the thread again.’

‘A little throw-away remark, which on reflection she may have wished unsaid. I was trying to draw her out, which was uphill work, and one of the subjects I ploughed into was her stay in the country. She said it wasn’t real country, just a nasty little bungalow town on the south coast.’

‘And not far from Brighton?’

‘Better than that. She said it was called Beachclyffe. Last night, after you’d both gone to bed, I looked it up on Robin’s map and guess what? It’s about midway between Brighton and Bognor. As I say, it’s just possible that was her reason for staging the attack. She wanted to avoid the risk of being needled into any further indiscretions. She’d have heard by then from Angie, if not from Derek, that I’ve taken it on myself to delve about in their family affairs, to find a way to stop Baba rocking their boats, but who’s to say how far she trusts me? Furthermore, she had no way of telling whose side Steven was on and it was his offer to drive her home, you remember, which brought about an instant recovery.’

‘But suppose she had been staying with her brother, what’s wrong with that? And why the hell should she mind your knowing?’

‘Who can say? But when I invented a pretext to find out the name of the people she’d been staying with, she shut up like a clam and more or less indicated that I might try minding my own business. So either she’s very secretive by nature or else she has something to hide, in which case I thought it might be amusing to find out what it is.’

‘Oh, I see! Such as she and her brother having set fire to a house under the mistaken impression that their half-sister was in residence?’

‘That would do nicely. No need to remind you that this sojourn at the seaside did coincide with the fire at Mallings.’

‘So what are you proposing to do? Wander up and down Beachclyffe, knocking on every door to enquire whether Mr Thomas Lampeter is at home? Or perhaps you mean to seek out the headquarters of the evangelist group and get his address from them? What do they call themselves, by the way?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘Doesn’t that pose a problem?’

‘Not at all. It may end with our being shown over half a dozen fairly unattractive houses, but that is bound to provide insights and entertainment of a kind and none of them is likely to be large, so it shouldn’t take long.’

‘Now what are you talking about, I wonder?’

‘The fact that most of the obstacles have already been smoothed away by something else which came out of my conversation with Laura. She said the owners hadn’t bothered to keep up the garden because they were hoping to sell the place.’

‘Can it be that you mean to call at all the local estate agents and enquire whether they have a property on their books in the name of Lampeter?’

‘No, I don’t think we want to be quite so open about it as that and anyway we don’t know for certain that he still uses that name. My idea was to drive around, making a note of bungalows with a For Sale board outside, eliminating the non-starters and then taking the rest in order of merit.’

‘What does merit mean?’

‘Well, for a start, it has to be modern and packed in among a lot of others of the same ilk. It must have a small, neglected garden and be at least one mile from the sea. That should whittle it down enough to complete the job in a couple of hours, at the outside.’

‘And, having whittled, what then?’

‘Oh, do stop niggling, Toby. They’re not likely to be the sort of places that can only be viewed by appointment, so why don’t we just say that we happened to be passing and wondered if we might take a look round? That’s another reason why it might be a good idea if you were my stepbrother. You haven’t got a wife, you see, so you’ve brought me along to look at things from a woman’s angle. If the owners are not at home, of course, we shall have to fall back on the agent, but in either event our story will be the same. Are you game?’

‘Oh, I suppose so, though I must confess that the only part I care for in this role in which I’ve been cast is not having a wife. I’m not at all sure that I see myself as a stepbrother who would contemplate living in the sort of place you have described. However, I have no doubt that you will do the talking for both of us, so there’ll be no need to wear myself out trying to make it convincing.’

I shall skate rapidly over the first part of our afternoon’s adventures, because failure is best forgotten and nothing turned out as I had hoped. For one thing, Beachclyffe did not fit in with my preconceived notion of how it would look. It covered a much bigger area and its buildings seemed to have been thrown up in such a hurry as to deprive it of any form or pattern in which to carry out our research on a scientific basis. We found only two houses which fitted the bill in all respects, but the annoying part was that for each of those we may have missed half a dozen others by going round in circles. At one point we found ourselves driving down the same depressing little mud road for the second time in ten minutes, when it should by rights have been at least half a mile away.

Toby by this time was wavering between pleasure at being able to point out the absurdity of my optimism and the fear of overdoing it, lest, taunted into defiance, I should insist on carrying on until the stars appeared in the sky.

In fact, I was nearer to capitulation than he had realised and offered a compromise.

‘Okay, Toby, indulge me for just five more minutes. Let us go back to Holmbushe, which as we now know must be in the road parallel to this one. It is not so mean and scruffy-looking as Laura’s description had prepared me for, but at least it’s for sale and the lawn looks like a daisy field.’

‘And that will really be the last?’

‘Word of honour. If we draw a blank there I’ll drive straight up to the main road and all the way back to Beacon Square, without a single stop.’

The doorbell was answered as the last chime died away, which I took to be a good omen, and the man who answered it provided further crumbs of encouragement. He was tall, thin and stooping, with wispy straggling hair and a matching beard. This, combined with the fact that the interior was dingy and poorly lighted and I still had my sunglasses on, made it difficult to judge whether he bore any resemblance to known members of the Seymour/Latimer clan. He was the right age group, though, and he had the right sort of nervous and defeated manner.

‘Oh . . . er . . . are you looking for someone?’ he asked, backing away as he spoke.

‘Not exactly,’ I replied, embarking on the prepared speech for the third time. ‘My name is Price, by the way, and this is my stepbrother. He’s looking for a little holiday cottage, not too far from the sea. We’ve seen round one or two places, but nothing we liked, and when we saw the board outside we wondered if you’d mind showing us over. If it’s not inconvenient, that is.’

‘It’s not inconvenient,’ he replied in a sad voice, ‘but I’m afraid you’ll be wasting your time. I doubt if it’ll suit you. Still, come inside, if you’d like to.’

He led us through the narrow, cramped little hall and then into a small, square room overlooking the daisy field, where he remained standing just inside the door.

Among other cheap-looking furniture it contained two armchairs, with a table between them laid for tea, and leaning back in one of them was a woman who was also tall and thin, with wispy, colourless hair.

‘We saw your car go by twice,’ she said in an amused and painfully familiar drawl, ‘and we wondered how long it would take you to find us.’

‘Oh, hello!’ I said, removing the sunglasses and trying not to sound as silly as I felt. ‘Fancy seeing you! I expect you’ve met Angie Petworth, haven’t you, Toby?’

‘How did you know it was us?’ I asked a few minutes later.

‘Recognised your car. It was parked outside the shop for several hours, if you remember, and I had plenty of time to stop and stare while you were making up your mind.’

‘All the same, it was clever of you,’ Toby said. ‘It is quite a popular model, I understand.’

‘I expect the truth is,’ I suggested, ‘that you were expecting us?’

‘Not both of you and not so soon, I admit. So few cars venture down this road, though, that it becomes noticeable when the same one passes twice in half an hour.’

‘Did Laura warn, you that I might be coming?’

‘Would you like some tea?’ Tom asked in his mild and diffident way. ‘I was just about to make it.’

‘You would be quite safe in saying yes,’ Angie assured us. ‘He is far more domesticated than I am and he makes better tea, so they tell me.’

‘I am feeling domesticated myself,’ Toby informed us, ‘so I shall accompany him, if I may? And perhaps you would also be so kind as to direct me ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page/About the Book
• Contents
• Introduction by Curtis Evans
• ONE
• TWO
• THREE
• FOUR
• FIVE
• SIX
• SEVEN
• EIGHT
• NINE
• TEN
• ELEVEN
• TWELVE
• THIRTEEN
• FOURTEEN
• FIFTEEN
• SIXTEEN
• SEVENTEEN
• EIGHTEEN
• Afterword
• About The Author
• Titles by Anne Morice
• Copyright