Dead Dames Don't Sing Page 2

  Kiley shuddered. “Over my dead body.”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to go to the actual lecture. It’s the reception afterwards we’re interested in.”

  “We?”

  “Sherry and canapés, Jack. What’s not to like? I’ll come along, introduce you to Alexandra. She’s sure to be there. After that you’re on your own.”

  Standing on the corner of Royal College Street and Camden Road, traffic pouring past, they kissed then went their separate ways.

  Back home, Kiley opened the bottle of ten-year-old Springbank a client had recently passed over in payment, together with a premium ticket for the Chelsea-Spurs game, twelve rows up, level with the half-way line. The match had been a bruising, bad-tempered encounter, twelve players booked, nine from Spurs, Chelsea coming back from two goals down to draw. As was always the case when Kiley watched soccer nowadays, part of the time was spent wishing he were out there on the pitch, the rest thankful that he was not. The leg that had been broken in two places in only his second game of the season for Charlton Athletic—his last as a professional and just a few days short of his thirty-first birthday—still gave him gyp when the weather turned. The whisky was much easier to take. Settled in his one easy chair, Kiley opened the envelope Daniel Pike had given him, smoothed out the pages and began to read.

  It was one of those streets that seemed to run on forever: no beginning, no end. Windows peering down at me as I walked. Doors locked and barred. The only sound of footsteps were my own. As I went slowly forward, shadows appeared on either side, closing in around me until I could barely see the ground beneath my feet or my breath upon the fetid air. And then I heard it. Cheryl’s voice. Small, lonely, more than a little off key. The last time I’d seen her: the last but one, had been a small club in Soho, the Bouillabaisse, an after-hours hang out for musicians, wide boys, users, and spades. The O of her mouth, the way her hand caressed the microphone then stroked her thigh. The breast that slipped a little too carelessly from her dress.

  Cheryl.

  I struggled myself awake, awash with sweat, breaking my recurring dream. It couldn’t have been Cheryl’s voice I heard, I knew that all too well. I had seen her, stretched on the slab, skin cold as the marble beneath her naked body.

  Dead dames don’t sing.

  Arranged around a six-story glass tower designed by Colin St. John Wilson—an oasis of a kind between two main-line railway stations and flush almost against the heavily polluted Euston Road—the British Library houses some 170 million books, manuscripts, maps, prints and more, ranging from the world’s earliest printed book, the Diamond Sutra, and two copies of the Magna Carta, to the manuscript of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, a gift from a consortium of American bibliophiles “in recognition of Britain’s courage in facing Hitler before America came into the war.”

  The nearest Kiley had got previously to the front doors had been the café in the piazza and he was disappointed to discover the lecture and ensuing reception were in the adjacent Conference Centre rather than the Library proper. Kate guided him through the crowded foyer towards the Bronte Room, where sixty or so assorted literary types were taking advantage of the opportunity to air a little superior knowledge. Giving the sherry a miss, Kiley settled for some sparkling mineral water from a previously undetected spring deep beneath the Malvern Hills and a bite-sized sliver of Serrano ham wrapped around a small finger of asparagus.

  “There she is, Jack,” Kate said quietly over his shoulder.

  Alexandra Pierce was wearing a sheer black shirt that hung loose over a fitted purple skirt, a pair of New Balance trainers, suede superimposed with a bright red N, on her feet. She was just turning away, glass in hand, from the man to whom she’d been talking, evidently bored with his company.

  Kate moved in fast. “Alex, hi … I don’t know if you remember me?”

  Alexandra swiveled round and looked at Kate with narrowed eyes. “Remember you, sure. You spent a few thousand words making me look trivial in print. How could I forget?”

  “I liked your pictures, though.”

  “Yes.” A grudging smile. “Yes, you did. And who’s this?”

  “This is my friend, Jack. Jack Kiley, Alexandra Pierce.”

  Kiley held out his hand.

  “I’ve heard about you. You’re Kate’s bit of rough.”

  He pulled his hand away, untouched.

  “I thought you and Jack should have a little talk,” Kate said. “It seems you’ve got something in common.”

  “Really? I can’t begin to imagine what that might be.”

  “I’ll let Jack explain,” Kate said and walked away.

  Something akin to a smile played at the corners of Alexandra’s mouth. “So, Jack. Do tell.”

  “Your father’s manuscript,” Kiley said. “The one you’re negotiating to sell. For now, let’s say, in part at least, you’re negotiating through me.”

  She took his business card and, with barely a second glance, slipped it from sight.

  At Alexandra’s suggestion, they went one block east to the brasserie in the St. Pancras Grand. The price of her champagne cocktail and Kiley’s bottle of craft beer would have kept a family of four in basic groceries for a week; he was careful to pocket the receipt against expenses.

  “Tell me, Jack, just how long have you been in the rare book business?”

  “Twenty-four hours, give or take.”

  There was a smudge of lipstick, faint, against the edge of her glass.

  “And the other business?”

  “Which business is that?”

  “The detective business.”

  “A lot more than twenty-four hours.”

  “And do you always get your man?”

  “I think that’s the Mounties.”

  “How about the women, Jack, do you always get those?” Her little finger grazed the back of his hand.

  Like Marlowe when he first encountered Carmen in The Big Sleep, Kiley had to fight the inclination to tell her to grow up and behave.

  “Let’s talk about your father’s manuscript, shall we?”

  “Very well.” There was a flinty edge to her voice as she leaned away. “What exactly do you want to know?”

  “Exactly? That’s easy. Is it for real? And is it yours to sell?”

  “Yes, it’s real. And as soon as Daniel gives me an assurance we have a deal, he can see the rest for himself. As for being mine to sell, my father’s wishes were clear. Any future royalties from his published works were to be shared equally between my sister, Frederica, and myself.”

  “And Frederica’s quite happy for this sale to go ahead?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Surely if she’s entitled to a half share . . .?”

  “She’s entitled to nothing.”

  “But your father’s wishes …”

  “Were related to his published works and published works alone.”

  “And this …”

  “Has never been published and most likely never will be.”

  “But if it were …”

  “Were, I like that, Jack. Correct use of the subjunctive. My father would have approved. A stickler for that kind of thing. Slept with a copy of Fowler’s Modern English Usage beside the bed. But you, Jack …” The corners of her mouth hinted at a smile. “Scholarship boy, were you? Something of the sort? Passed the eleven plus? Grammar school?”

  “But if it we
re published?” Kiley persisted.

  “If it were, we might have to look at the situation again. For the present, however, the manuscript is mine and mine alone. To do with as I see fit. And Daniel Pike’s to sell as long as he shows some urgency in the matter. Otherwise I will see it’s put out to auction and he can take his chances. All right, Jack? All clear now?”

  Tossing back her head, she finished her cocktail in a single swallow.

  “There’s still the question of the manuscript itself,” Kiley said. “Pike’s not going to make a move until he’s certain the rest of it actually exists.”

  Alexandra smiled. “As soon as he tells me he’s prepared to go ahead, in terms mutually agreed, I’ll have the remaining pages couriered round for him to examine. Until then it remains in my possession, safely under lock and key.”

  She did that little thing again with her finger on the back of his hand.

  “You’d be welcome to come and take a peek, Jack. Just to assure him it’s all really there. Though I’ll need to do a little background checking of my own beforehand. Business cards like the one you gave me, they don’t prove a thing.”

  Kiley wrote a name and number on a coaster and passed it across.

  “Detective Chief Inspector at New Scotland Yard. He’ll vouch for me. Just give him a call.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that,” Alexandra said, rising smoothly to her feet. “Assuming it all checks out, I’ll be in touch.”

  The suggestion of a smile and she was gone, half the men in the bar turning their heads to watch her go, the other half pretending not to. Kiley stayed where he was long enough to finish his India Pale Ale then hopped on the tube a few stops north to Tufnell Park.

  According to the Wikipedia page devoted to Alexandra’s older sister, Frederica, for a while she’d followed in her father’s poetic footsteps: a chapbook, Silvering the Light, published by Slow Dancer Press when she was barely out of her teens; Instruments of the Dance, published two years later by Enitharmon, was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Since then, silence. Kiley wondered if her muse had withered and died or was somewhere in hiding.

  Monday morning, Frederica was in plain sight in her office on the upper floor of the Poetry Society building in central London where she was Assistant to the Director. As offices went, Kiley thought, it was better than most. Slim volumes neatly arranged on the shelves, back issues of The Poetry Review, posters on the walls. A view out across the lesser streets of Covent Garden.

  Frederica was taller than her sister by several inches and almost fifteen years older, sensibly dressed in a faded green button-through cardigan and beige knee-length skirt. Brown hair gathered up with black ribbon. The merest hint of make-up around the eyes.

  Her handshake was quick and firm. “I have a meeting in twelve minutes, Mister Kiley.”

  He appreciated that degree of accuracy. “Not to waste any time, then, your sister’s claim …”

  “To have discovered an old manuscript of my father’s …”

  “Precisely.”

  “You’ve met my sister?”

  “Briefly, yesterday.”

  “Long enough to be in her thrall, I dare say, but not enough to learn that she’s a fantasist pure and simple. If those aren’t contradictions in terms. But a fantasist, Mister Kiley. Or to put it more simply, a liar. And as such so convincing that much of the time I don’t suppose she knows herself what is true and what is false.”

  “And the manuscript …”

  “Is false. A figment of my sister’s over-active imagination.”

  “But fifty pages …”

  “Almost certainly forged.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Mister Kiley, I was—I am—my father’s literary executor. When he knew he was dying, we sat together and went through every poem, every essay, every word he’d ever written for publication. Do you think if such a manuscript as Alexandra has described actually existed it would not, at the very least, have been mentioned?”

  “Unless it was something of which he was ashamed.”

  “In which case, it would have been destroyed, rather than being left for my sister to so conveniently discover when she was in need of another splurge in the limelight. To say nothing of spiking my guns exactly at the crucial moment.”

  “Crucial, how?”

  “A novel I’ve been working on for the past three years is about to be published by Faber and Faber.”

  “Not a crime novel, I dare say.”

  “Not, indeed. A literary novel and un-ashamedly so. Advance suggestions are that reviews will be more than positive, London Review of Books, the TLS. A profile in The Times.”

  “You don’t think your sister will be happy, then, to share in your good fortune?”

  “I think, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, the bitch would do whatever she could to prevent it. Consign me to the small print, at best.” Swiveling neatly, she scooped up a note book and a batch of files from her desk. “If you follow me down, I can point you towards the exit.”

  “It might be useful,” Kiley said on the stairs, “if I could talk to you again.”

  “I don’t think so, Mister Kiley. If you’re going to find out my sister’s an inveterate liar, you can do so all on your own.”

  Stopping only to stock up on a fresh supply of beans from the Monmouth Coffee Company shop around the corner in Covent Garden—medium roast from Guatemala, his current favorite—and then to touch base with Pike in Camden Passage, Kiley hightailed it back north and home. The moment he set foot inside the charity shop the manager beckoned him over to his cubby hole at the rear.

  “What do you want first, Jack? Good news or bad?”

  “How about the good?”

  “There is no good.”

  “Then the bad is …”

  “Terminal.”

  “The charity’s had notice to quit,” Kiley guessed.

  “Twenty-eight days.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It gets worse. Who d’you think’s taking the lease?”

  “A dog’s boutique? Carriers, accessories and doggie couture?”

  “Worse still.”

  “Not another estate agent?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “I’ll start packing my things.”

  “You never know, you might be okay.”

  Kiley shook his head. “I’m fussy about who I share space with. And besides, can you imagine the hike in rent?”

  “Come with me, Jack. Back up to Yorkshire. The Calder Valley. I never should’ve left.”

  “Not for me, I’m afraid. All that fresh air makes me giddy.”

  “Suit yourself. Oh, and there’s a friend of yours upstairs. I let her in. Didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “I didn’t even know you had a key.”

  “Just for emergencies. Fire and that. Fire and flood.”

  Kate was seated in the easy chair, which she had moved closer to the window, a fat paperback open in her lap. “Picked this up downstairs. David Copperfield. Read it?”

  “Afraid not. Just look, takes two hands to hold it. No book should be that long. There’s no need.”

  “War and Peace?”

  “My point exactly.”

  Kate’s face showed her disapproval, then changed as she sniffed the air. “Are those fresh coffee beans in your pocket, Jack, or are you just excited to see me?”

  “Just give
me a few minutes.”

  He headed off to the kitchen and Kate went back to her book.

  The coffee, when it arrived, lived up to expectations.

  “A little bird tells me you’re most likely going to be on the move again soon.”

  “Fresh fields, pastures new.”

  “Where I am now, there’s plenty room enough for two.”

  “We tried that once, remember? As I recall, we both pretty much agreed it was a disaster.”

  “There were reasons, Jack. That place was little bigger than a shoe cupboard. We were falling over one another all the time.”

  “That was the good part.”

  Kate smiled, remembering. “Where I am now’s different. Two floors up into the roof. You could have a room of your own.”

  Kiley shook his head. “This last couple of months, we’ve been getting along okay, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then let’s keep it that way. For now at least.”

  “Whatever you say.” Twisting her head around, she raised up her face to be kissed. Kissed back. One thing led to another. Music drifted up from below. Afternoon morphed into evening.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Kate said. She was standing at the window, looking down at the traffic below, the people dining at the Ethiopian restaurant across the street. “Pierce’s publisher, you don’t suppose he would have mentioned this novel to her, him, whichever it is?”

  Kiley allowed himself a quiet grin.

  “What?” Kate asked.

  “For once I got there before you. Looked in on your pal, Pike, on the way here. He thought it was a good idea too. And Pierce’s former publisher, it’s a man. Henry. Henry Swift. I’m going down to see him tomorrow.”

  “Down?”

  “Deal. On the Kentish coast.”

  Kate’s eyes brightened. “I’ll come with you. I’ve a friend in Deal.”

  “You’ve friends everywhere.”

  “The forecast is good. You should remember to take your trunks.” Kiley thought that was unlikely: the last time he’d gone swimming in the sea had been on a primary school trip to Southend when he was nine. It was too late to start again now.