A Thirsty Evil

Book 40: Murder Room

by P.M. Hubbard

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Ian MacKellar seeks out Julia. He discovers her on a farm she runs, where she maintains her younger brother and sister. But his obsessive pursuit of Julia becomes stymied by members of her dysfunctional family. The action unfolds in a West Country English village by a dark pond in the secluded woods near Julia's family home. And it is below the surface of that pond that tragedy awaits ...

Release date: July 14, 2013

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 256

Sample

I sat opposite her in a train for a couple of hours, and we neither of us said a word to each other the whole time. She was the only woman I have ever really wanted. For the
matter of that, she still is. I suppose she may always be. I hope not, because it does not seem to be much good now. But I do not like the look of things.

When the train got in, I simply let her go. I had to. I have not got any of the approved opening gambits, and you cannot just tell someone that she is the only person you have ever really
wanted. At least, I suppose you could, if you were drunk enough or had that sort of nerve, but I doubt, even so, whether it would be very convincing. Someone was there to meet her, an older woman.
It could have been her mother, but I did not think so, and I know now that it was not. The woman who came to meet her was in excellent taste, just as her own clothes and baggage were in excellent
taste. There was nothing wrong with her at all that I could see. They got a porter without any trouble, or perhaps the older woman had got him before the train came in, and the three of them went
off together through the barrier. I took my cases out and followed them, but by the time I was through, I could not see her anywhere, and I just went on where I was going. That could have been the
end of it, but in fact it was only the beginning.

By rights it should have been the end, because it was all the world to a brass farthing that I should never see her again, and I did not look for her. I did not know how to set about it, and I
am not the sort of man who puts advertisements in the paper, or not that sort of advertisement. I dislike cliches intensely. It was pure chance that I did see her again. Even that might not have
mattered, only she recognised me. Something must have got through to her, even in the train. She did not smile, not quite, but she looked at me with a sort of slightly amused curiosity. I do not
know how I looked at her, I suppose the same way I had looked at her in the train, because I still felt the same about her. She was with a man this time, not her husband, because she wore no ring,
but certainly not a relation. He was different in every sort of way. I did not like the look of him at all.

We were at a publisher’s party, but that did not mean a thing. You see all sorts of people at publishers’ parties. She might not have anything even remotely to do with books. She
certainly did not look like a writer, or not like a writer at a publisher’s party. She was not playing any sort of part at all, just being mildly amused. Now that I could watch her, it
occurred to me that she might have looked at me like that merely because I was part of the party. All the same, I was certain that she had recognised me. I thought she had probably just come along
with the man she was with. He could be a writer. He looked capable of anything. There was no doubt she was with him. She did not seem to know anybody else. She moved round with him, talking to
whoever he talked to, but not talking much to anyone. He talked all the time.

I watched the men she talked to, wondering whether they felt the same about her as I did. I did not think on the whole they did. She was not at all the standard centre of excitement. There was a
quality of peace in her, and peace does not go down big at a party, least of all a publisher’s party. I wanted desperately to hear her voice, but it was next to impossible to hear what anyone
said, let alone the way they said it.

I got hold of Penelope and asked her who the man was. She looked worried for a moment, because it was her job to know who people were. Then she said, ‘Oh, I know. A man called Canning.
Friend of Alastair’s.’ Alastair was one of her bosses, but it is all Christian names in publishing.

I said, ‘What does he do? Write?’

She looked doubtful again, but shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘He’s not one of ours, anyway.’

‘Who’s the woman with him, then?’

She made no bones about this at all. ‘Haven’t the faintest idea,’ she said. ‘Just someone he brought with him.’ The thing was, she was not particularly interested
either, and it did not seem to occur to her that I should be. Nobody seemed to see what I saw. If it had been an obvious man-trap, Penelope would have known all about her by now and probably
offered to introduce me. As it was, I just nodded, and Penelope darted off to tell somebody else whatever it was they wanted to know. She was a busy little woman, and a mine of information.

I circulated cautiously in their direction. I knew I might not be able to get into the conversation. I did not think Mr Canning was a man to waste words on anyone he did not know. But at least I
might get near enough to hear her talk, when she did talk. The peak of the party was past, and the noise was a bit less deafening now. I had not got far when I knew she had seen me coming. As I
say, she was no man-trap, but she did not miss much. Every now and then we looked at each other, just for a moment, and then the amusement went out of her face. What replaced it was not hostility,
but a sort of gentle speculation. Everything she did was gentle, as if the peace inside her left no need for violence.

When I was quite close to them, Mr Canning button-holed David Stringer. I did not know David well, but we did know each other, and I moved up on the other side of him. I could hear Mr Canning
very clearly now, and his voice went with the rest of him. It was quick and confident and penetrating, and he asked questions all the time. I wondered if he was a lawyer of some sort. He was asking
David about money. Writers think about money almost the whole time, and when they talk among themselves, that is what they talk about mostly, but they do not like coming across with figures. If
they are asked questions, they become vague and if necessary evasive. David was being evasive now. Anyone would be with Mr Canning, the more so as he would not be an easy man to evade. I thought if
he was a lawyer, he would be a barrister, not a solicitor.

Unless it is a meeting of souls, a conversation at this sort of party has a fairly fixed life-cycle. There is always the moment when one person or the other takes his eyes away from the person
he is talking to and looks round the room to see what else is on offer. The thing is to do it first, but not too obviously. It is disconcerting to catch the other person doing it. It did not take
David long to reach this point with Mr Canning, and he did not take much trouble to conceal it. Mr Canning would not be strong on the sensibilities, his own or other people’s. David was a
good deal taller than Mr Canning, and was talking down to him, at least in a physical sense, but now he lifted his head, quite deliberately, and looked round him, and the first eye he caught was
mine. As I say, we did not know each other well, but his face lit up as if I owed him a fiver. His motives were purely selfish, of course. It could not occur to him that I actually wanted to meet
Mr Canning. It did not even seem to occur to him that I might want to meet Mr Canning’s companion. There was this same incomprehensible inability to see what I saw. All he wanted was to get
out, but he wanted it very badly. He said, ‘Hullo, Mac,’ and I said, ‘Hullo there, David,’ and we smiled at each other like long lost brothers.

Mr Canning was looking at me now. He was looking at me in a sharp, penetrant sort of way, as if the very fact that he did not know anything about me was an attraction to him. David said,
‘You don’t know Mr Canning. This is Ian Mackellar.’

Mr Canning and I acknowledged each other. I looked at his companion, and she looked at me, but he did not introduce us. I do not think he was introducing her to anyone. He did not seem to have
any manners at all. She had something plain and dark on, and next to no make-up. It all looked to me as faultless in its way as what she had been wearing in the train. I know very little about
women’s clothes, but I was sure hers were expensive. We looked at each other quite deliberately, as if there was no one else in the room. So far as I was concerned, there was not, in fact.
Then we both smiled and nodded, very slightly, like two friends who meet at a stranger’s party and exchange private signals. Mr Canning had asked if I was a writer too.

I took my eyes from hers just when she was starting to look amused again. I said, ‘In a way, yes.’ In fact my first book had had just enough life in it to allow them to take my
second, and my second was barely afloat.

Mr Canning said, ‘Mackellar? I don’t think I know the name. Should I?’

I said, ‘The cadet branch. The head of the family calls himself Strathairn. He makes biscuits.’

This pleased him, not because I had said it, but because he knew where he was now. He nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And you write books?’

‘Of a sort.’

David said, ‘They’re not bad, in fact. But he’s young yet. I must be going, I’m afraid.’ He nodded to Mr Canning and patted me lightly on the shoulder. He was
barely a year older than I was, but he had written six or more, including a couple of sellers. He moved off towards the door, but was not half way there when he got into conversation with someone
else I did not know. I did not know most of them.

Mr Canning said, ‘What sort?’

‘Novels.’

He nodded again. He nodded each time he added a fact to his collection. He said, ‘Not as much money in them as in biscuits?’

She said, ‘They’re very good biscuits.’ No wonder I had not heard her speak before. I could only just hear her now. The Cordelia syndrome.

I said, ‘They are, aren’t they? Are you a serious eater?’

‘I like the Jubilee Creams.’

I nodded gravely. I could nod as well as the next man. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘the sixty-eight ones. A hundred years of British biscuit making. But not one of the best years, in fact.
I’m a wafers man myself. Lemon Fingers, now.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘A nice bouquet, but a bit light for me. There’s a good coffee one. I forget—’

‘That would be the Mocha Slips,’ I said. ‘I’m against a coffee flavour myself. I mean, except in coffee.’

Mr Canning was looking from one to the other of us. I do not think he moved his head at all, only his eyes. He was not a man to commit himself more than he need. He looked faintly puzzled and
resentful. I thought he was not resentful, as the ordinary man might have been, because he was being left out, but resentful because he was puzzled. There was something here he did not know, and he
could not bear that. It was not the biscuits he minded about. Anyone knows about biscuits. He said, ‘Do you two know each other?’ There was no jealousy in it at all. It was only as if
it had not occurred to him that she might know anyone.

I was not going to say a word. I just looked at her, and Mr Canning went on looking at both of us. She said, ‘We have met, yes.’

The party had suddenly gone quiet, and when I took my eyes off her, I saw that people were drifting away fast and the room already half empty. Mr Canning saw it too. He turned and made for the
door. She went after him, and I went with her. Right in the doorway he ran into Mr Charteris, Penelope’s Alastair, and they started talking. I did not hear what either of them said. I said,
‘Please can we meet some time?’

She looked at me a little doubtfully. ‘If you like,’ she said. She did not seem to understand either. ‘I’ll see if I can manage it. Can you give me a phone
number?’

I gave it to her and she nodded. She did not write it down or anything, but I knew she would remember it, just as she had remembered seeing me in the train. Then Mr Canning said good-bye to Mr
Charteris and went on out, and she went out after him. I was left facing Mr Charteris. For a moment he looked at me blankly, and then he put on his professional smile. ‘Hullo,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t seen anything of you. Been such a crowd. Always the way at these parties.’ We talked amicably for a few minutes. I still did not know at the end of it
whether he knew who I was, but he knew enough to find out. He probably asked Penelope later. I said my good-byes and went.

I walked northwards through Bloomsbury, going slowly. It was a still night, slightly foggy but not really cold. I had had enough to drink to set my mind working, but not enough to confuse the
issues. I knew pretty well what had happened to me, and I was weighed down with an enormous mixture of apprehensions. I was terribly afraid I might not hear from her, and I knew that if I did not,
there would be nothing I could do about it. In another part of my mind I was terribly afraid of what might happen if I did. There was something completely new here, and I could not cope with it at
all.

Nevertheless, for the next ten days or so I behaved very sensibly. In all physical respects I lived my normal life, which meant that I went out soon after breakfast, leaving no one to answer the
phone if it did ring. After all, you did not expect to find people at home during the day. You might try, but if there was no reply, you tried again in the evening. If the thing was urgent enough,
you might even try in the early morning, but I did not for a moment suppose that for her there was any sort of urgency in it. In the evenings I gave up all pretence of being sensible, and simply
sat over the phone. If anyone asked me, I said I was working. I was not, in fact, but then I should not have been in any case, not really working. I was in between books, and I should really have
been brooding over the next. As it was, there was only one thing I brooded about. It was only my physical life that was in any way normal.

Various people did ring up, of course, but the moment I picked up the receiver, I knew where I was with them, even if it was a woman speaking. I did not know anyone else with a voice even
remotely like hers. Jimmy rang up once, in a fairly buoyant mood. Jimmy was my agent, and a friend of mine. He was not one of the big ones, but I thought he was good. After all, he had sold a
couple of beginner’s books, and to a respectable publisher. That was good enough for me. We had not reached the point yet where he had to haggle with M.G.M. over t. . .