A Piece of Justice

Book 0: Imogen Quy Mysteries

by Jill Paton Walsh

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Booker shortlisted author Jill Paton Walsh returns with the second Imogen Quy mystery.

Biography is usually a safe profession. Even rather sedate. But more than one biographer has found that writing about the late great mathematician Gideon Summerfield leads to a hasty retreat. Or something more deadly....

Imogen Quy, the coolly competent college nurse at St. Agatha's College, Cambridge, first notices the pattern when her enthusiastic lodger Fran becomes the latest Summerfield biographer. Before she realises how deadly the Summerfield secret is, Fran's life is in danger. And Imogen may be next....

Release date: November 24, 2011

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 240

Sample

‘Where's the repeat?’ asked Imogen Quy. She was sitting surrounded by scraps of fabric, patterned and plain in a rainbow of colours, spread all over the floor. Pansy Whitman and Shirl Nichols were sitting in her armchairs, and the three of them were passing the pattern book to and fro. They were a quorum of the Newnham Quilters’ Club, setting out to make a quilt to be raffled just before Christmas for the Red Cross funds. A little pleasant disagreement was afoot. Shirl wanted an elaborate pattern, involving piecing curves; Pansy wanted bright colours and easy shapes. Both of Imogen's friends liked quilts made with different blocks, put together on a grid with plain borders separating one from the next. Imogen liked patterns that overspilled, running across the entire surface of the work. There were many patterns like this; one block merged with the next, so that the patterns shifted as you looked, part of one block completing squares or diamonds in the next. They had lovely traditional names: ‘Lost Sail’, ‘Compass Rose’, ‘Drunkard's Path’, ‘Delectable Mountains’, ‘Blazing Star’, ‘Homeward Bound’, ‘Barn-raising’ ...

Shirl was suggesting one called ‘Pumpkin Patch’, all curved seams. Pansy was pointing out how easy to sew was a pattern called ‘Birds in the Air’.

‘So boring, Pansy,’ Shirl said.

‘Not if we make it in lovely colours,’ said Pansy.

‘It's supposed to be special,’ said Shirl. ‘It won't raise lots of money if everyone thinks they could jolly well make it themselves.’

‘They won't think that, whatever else,’ said Pansy. ‘People can't sew these days. They're all too busy taking doctorates and working in the City. They can't so much as darn a sock. And as for cooking – putting ready-meals in the microwave is too much for some I know!’

‘Nearly everyone in the Quilters’ Club is ancient!’ said Shirl, agreeing. ‘The whole art will die out soon.’

‘Craft,’ said Pansy.

‘What?’

‘It's a craft, not an art.’

‘Oh, Pansy, don't!’ said Shirl. ‘Such a cop-out. Why isn't it an art? Just because women do it?’

‘No,’ said Pansy. ‘That is ... well ...’

‘What do you think, Imogen?’ said Shirl.

‘Sorry,’ said Imogen. ‘I wasn't listening, I'm afraid. I was trying to find the repeat in this one.’ She showed them a page of the pattern book. It was covered with outlines of patchwork patterns – elaborate networks of lines, making a mesh of shapes all over the page. Somewhere in the mesh was an area that repeated; that was the block. You made however many blocks were required for the size of the proposed quilt, and sewed them together. Once sewn together they made patterns larger than themselves, which flowed in and out of adjacent blocks, danced and dazzled and pleased the eye.

The pattern Imogen was studying was called ‘Coast o’ Maine’. It had a flowing curved wavy look to it, although it was made only of triangles and squares.

‘Here,’ said Shirl, running a pencil line round an area of the diagram. The moment she isolated a square of the mesh Imogen could see how the whole page was made just of this pattern, repeated. The second row was offset by half a block, making it harder to see.

‘Hey, that's nice!’ said Pansy, looking over her shoulder. ‘What about making that one?’

‘I'll go along with that,’ said Shirl. The pattern looked much harder to piece than it was; it seemed to have curves running through it. Shirl couldn't bear to be seen doing anything easy.

‘Right,’ said Imogen. ‘Colours next. You start, I'll make some coffee.’

Choosing fabrics for the blocks was an intriguing process. Every time she did it Imogen started out picking up tastefully blending scraps, in soft harmonising colours. The three friends wielded scissors, cutting sample shapes, and laying them together to see what the stitched block would look like. The carefully chosen prints and plains in gentle harmony always looked dull. Pretty, and boring. The fact was, patchwork was a folk art – it didn't like being used in good taste – ghastly good taste was the expression that came to mind. Pansy might be lazy about sewing curved seams, but she had a wonderful eye for colours – clashing, unlikely colours that talked to each other across the grid of shapes, that looked bright and accidental. That wonderful ‘found’ look of old quilts, that Imogen loved, that spoke of need, and thrift, and using what you had to hand, the very absolute opposite of going into Laura Ashley and buying bits specially cut up and chosen to tone with each other, needed some daring to imitate. Reaching over Imogen's pleasant, ordinary looking choice of colours, Pansy tried a square of orange cloth, printed in scarlet blotches, alongside the dark red central star, removing the lilac that had been Imogen's first guess.

‘Hmm,’ she said, tilting her head. ‘No ... perhaps ...’ She swapped one of the soft blues for a bright turquoise, completely out of key with the other colours. It looked lovely. They sipped their coffee, and contemplated the result. Before the two friends left, they had worked out a yardage for a big double quilt, and cut out the templates from thick art-shop card. Next week they would cut out the fabric, sort it and distribute it to the members of the Quilters’ Club for sewing into blocks. Imogen was always surprised at the large number of club members who liked to be given the block worked out, and cut out. All they had to do was the sewing. The fun of choosing and designing had all been greedily gobbled up by Shirl and Pansy and herself. Of course, anyone who wanted to could come to the planning session; the others must really truly prefer just to sew. And they were a good lot; kindly, unassuming, hard-working women, ready to make jam, or sew for any good cause; to arrange flowers in churches, to shop for neighbours, to baby-sit, to feed cats for absent friends. Salt of the earth sort of people. Heads down sort of people, reluctant to take credit.

Here in this modest little suburban corner, within easy walk of the centre of Cambridge the contrast, Imogen reflected, was not so much between housewives and women with doctorates – half the housewives were women with doctorates. It was a question of how people saw what they did. Of what counted for credit, so to speak. And one way or another, simple skills – domestic skills, the ability to make comfortable beds, and arrange rooms pleasantly, to preserve fruits in season, and make the little back gardens grow flowers and tomatoes and beans, to bring roast beef to table perfectly done at the same moment as perfectly done roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding: all these abilities were disregarded; taken for granted by those who had them, not thought of as achievements worth crediting oneself with. Not taking credit for the altogether more arcane skills required for the quilt was part of the culture. Best not even call it an art. ‘Craft’ was more like it, Imogen reflected, in more ways than one.

Imogen settled in her breakfast room, with her sandwich lunch, and the newspaper propped on the water-jug to keep her company. She didn't need to go in to work that day, because the college didn't need her much during the long vacation; it was in the short hectic terms – the Michaelmas term began next week – that college nurses like Imogen were worked off their feet. The newspaper was supposed to help Imogen not worry by keeping her mind off Frances Bullion, her lodger. Not that it was up to Imogen to worry about Fran; she was not a relative, and she had a mother of her own in the Midlands somewhere, whose duty it was, one supposed, to provide all the necessary worry about Fran. Imogen wasn't old enough to worry about Fran; Fran must be twenty-two or so, and Imogen was only a dozen years older. But Imogen, whose own life had been sidetracked by a disastrous love affair some years back, and who would have had children of her own by now if life had gone according to plan, had plenty of unused affection locked away carefully, and Fran had somehow come in for a share of it. Entitled or not, Imogen just did worry about Fran. Nothing in the newspaper was nearly interesting enough to stop her.

Making coffee she confronted the worry head on. Frances so desperately wanted to be an academic. What Cambridge ineffably called a ‘don’. She had got to know Imogen as an undergraduate at St Agatha's, where Imogen worked as college nurse, and although the little flat in the top of Imogen's comfortable house in Newnham was not usually let to someone from St Agatha's, Imogen had happily made an exception for Fran when she stayed on at Cambridge doing postgraduate work. In one way things fell out luckily for Fran. She was interested in the relationship between biography and autobiography, as the subject for her dissertation. And Cambridge had just established a new chair in Biography – the History Faculty had refused to have anything to do with it, and it was under the aegis of the English Faculty – and Professor Maverack, the appointed first incumbent, had agreed to supervise Frances. The problem was money. Fran didn't have any.

She had, of course, a minimal grant. It left her short of nearly everything. Imogen couldn't afford to do without the rent, even if Fran would have accepted that. She had, without Fran's knowledge, lowered it somewhat – she had wanted Fran as a tenant, wanted for once someone that she liked, whose company would be an advantage. She did her best to feed Fran, giving her dinner several times a week, while still trying not to feed the two undergraduates from Clare College who rented her two spare bedrooms, and whose unauthorised raids on the refrigerator made catering difficult.

A helpful professor would find teaching for his graduate students, to organise some earning power for them. But the Biography chair was new, Professor Maverack was new. He hadn't developed a network of contacts yet. Frances had struggled through the previous term without any earning power except doing a night duty on the petrol pumps at the garage on the Barton Road. This morning she had gone to see Professor Maverack to tell him that she didn't think she could continue indefinitely without some kind of teaching work. This interview would be complicated by the fact that Fran didn't like Professor Maverack. She hadn't told Imogen that, Imogen just knew. And Imogen was afraid she would draw a blank, and decide to throw it all up and get a job in an office somewhere. Imogen's own chance at getting qualified as a doctor had slipped through her fingers, and that made it much more painful for her to contemplate the same sort of thing happening to someone she cared for.

Not that Josh – the nearest thing Fran had to what used to be called a boyfriend – was anything like the sort of danger that Imogen's lover had been to her. Far from telling Fran to abandon her career, and devote herself to looking after him, Josh was given to putting his feet up on the fender, swinging back in the battered armchair, and hoping Fran would cut out a dazzling path of public achievement, and be able to support him while he minded the babies. Neither his own PhD nor Fran's seemed likely to come unstuck because of him. Imogen liked Josh.

She had abandoned the newspaper, with its thrilling headlines about glass panes falling out of the History Building, and had returned to contemplation of the patchwork block to try to stop worrying over the whole Frances saga yet again, when the front door slammed behind someone, and Frances herself called, ‘Yoohoo! Imogen!’ from the hall.

How seldom is worrying about someone justified! Fran came bouncing in, dropped her bag of notebooks on the floor, and collapsed in the armchair in Imogen's breakfast room, smiling happily.

‘It's all right,’ she said. ‘He's got something for me.’

‘Wonderful,’ said Imogen. ‘Terrific, Fran! What is it?’

‘A little spot of ghosting,’ said Fran. ‘Quite well paid. Do you think I can do it? Whoo, hoo, haunt, haunt ...’

‘Fool,’ said Imogen fondly. ‘Now have a mug of coffee and tell me about it.’

‘Well,’ Fran began, turning on Imogen that clear-sighted, grey-eyed gaze of dauntless candour of which the owner was presumably unaware, ‘there's this publisher who's after him. And he's far too busy himself. But he doesn't want to turn him down in case he's useful later ...’

‘Stop!’ said Imogen. ‘Slow down. Start again.’

Fran began her tale again. The gist of it was that there was a publisher – a well-known one, Recktype and Diss, who had approached Professor Maverack to complete a biography for them. They were desperate for it; it was already announced in their autumn catalogue and they needed it by August next year at the latest. They would pay a large advance. Maverack himself was too busy to do it in the time – he was working on his inaugural lecture, and had research of his own in progress. On the other hand the goodwill of Recktype and Diss was not to be sniffed at; scholarly biographies did not sell like hot cakes exactly, and Maverack could see himself approaching them to publish work of his own sooner or later. He would like to oblige them if he could. All the materials for the project had been assembled by an author who was unable to complete it. So the Professor proposed that Fran should write the book – it might even be useful for her in her own dissertation actually to have written a biography herself – and he would look it over and put his name to it. Of course, every penny of the advance would be Fran's. End of money problems. Everyone happy.

‘But Fran, if you are going to write it, shouldn't your name be on the title page?’ asked Imogen.

‘Recktype and Diss wouldn't have it. They want a famous name on it, or it wouldn't sell at all. Wouldn't get serious reviews. He's promised to put my name on it somewhere – share the credit. Frankly, Imogen, getting a share of the credit for a project with his name on it won't do me any harm at all.’

‘And in return for doing all the work ...’

‘I get all the money.’

‘You didn't say who this biography is of?’

‘Gideon Summerfield. He's a mathematician of some kind. He's about to get the Waymark Prize.’

‘I've heard of Gideon Summerfield,’ said Imogen.

‘Clever you. That's more than I had.’

‘He used to be a tutor at St Agatha's. Retired before you came up. He's dead now, surely.’

‘The prize is posthumous.’

‘But the biography is urgent?’

‘The publishers expect the announcement of the prize to stir some interest. They had it all organised; started in good time. They put it in their catalogue. Someone called Mark Zephyr was doing it for them.’

‘I get the picture,’ said Imogen. ‘You do this for them. It solves problems. It pays well, it puts you in the professor's good books ...’

‘I'm taking you out to dinner to celebrate,’ said Fran happily. ‘Let's go to that nice pub at Sutton Gault. But I must fly now, there's a lecture I want to hear.’ She jumped up, and gathered up her books and notebooks. ‘If a large box arrives for me, it will be the papers from Mark Zephyr. It's coming from the publisher's office by courier.’

As she left, Imogen called after her, ‘Fran, why didn't Mark Zephyr finish the job?’

‘He died,’ yelled Fran from the front door, letting it slam behind her.

Urgency in the editorial department of Recktype and Diss did not translate very easily into urgency in the post-room, and it was three days before the papers for Fran's great project arrived. Imogen was cycling home when she saw the van blocking the narrow roadway between the parked cars, outside her own front door. She put on speed, and dismounted with a screech of brakes, just as the driver had given up knocking and waiting, and was about to drive off again. Imogen unlocked her front door, and he staggered up the path with a very large box, in a very battered state. It was bound up with string, and coming apart at all four corners, and clearly from his manner of carrying it very heavy. When Imogen asked him if he could possibly take it upstairs, he mentioned his heart. Imogen sympathised, and offered some beer money, whereupon the driver took several steps towards the stairs. Imogen wondered whether to tell him now, or when he reached the upstairs landing, that the destination of the box was the top flat, but before he had heaved himself and his burden more than three steps up from the hall, the box disintegrated.

String snapped, corrugated cardboard tore open, and bundles and sheets of paper thumped and fluttered everywhere. The driver cursed, and began to seize the fallen stuff, and thrust it back through the holes in the package. Imogen stopped him – Lord knows what confusion and destruction he was wreaking – and gave him some beer money anyway. Then she closed the door on him, made some coffee, and began to try to sort out the confusion herself.

It wasn't easy. Imogen pulled out the leaves of her dining-room table, to have room to spread things out. There was a stack of four stout box files labelled ‘From Mark Zephyr’. Imogen put these unopened at one end of the table. Then there was a brown box, the kin. . .