The Crime Writer Read online

  ‘Friend of mine,’ Pat replied carefully. ‘Ronnie. He knows this village. English quietude. Cottage was rather a good price at three thousand five hundred pounds.’ (Was that crass, she immediately thought. Would a girl of her type think it bad manners to talk about money?) She added quickly: ‘Ronnie said it would be, you know, good for working. I have two books to write: one a novel, one a sort of “how to” book. Matter of fact, three books as I always keep a cahier, a notebook, too . . .’

  And none of them going well, she might have added. The back door from the kitchen slammed shut and both women jumped.

  ‘Delivery boy,’ Pat said, swallowing the Scotch in her tea mug and trying to avoid fidgeting, in case the leather chair she was sitting in made a lewd noise.

  Smythson-Balby sipped her tea and suddenly grimaced, obviously finding the sludge of leaves at the bottom (Ronnie had not been able to find a tea-strainer among her boxes, though Pat did possess one). As she leaned forward her silky blouse fell open a little and she clutched distractedly at the neckline.

  ‘So, this will be your – tenth crime novel, is that correct? And you had been living in . . . New York and then travelling in Venice and Paris, Europe for many years, is that right, but wanted to set this one in England?’

  ‘Suspense novel. One of the books I’m writing here is called Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction. Not crime. Not detective fiction. As I mentioned on the telephone, I don’t happen to like the term “crime fiction”. Dostoevsky wrote suspense stories – that is, stories where there is felt to be a threat of imminent violence or danger. I don’t feel ashamed of the category.’

  Smythson-Balby smiled, but she did not apologise.

  ‘Is the one you’re writing now your tenth novel, then, or the eleventh? I like to get these things right,’ the young woman said.

  ‘Tenth,’ Pat replied, but warily. What was behind the question? Was the girl smarter than she looked?

  ‘It seems safe to say – I hope you won’t be offended – that you’re better known in Europe, rather than your native America. Any thoughts on why your books might sell better in Europe, Miss Highsmith?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  Next she’ll be asking me where I get my ideas from.

  Smythson-Balby had her notebook open and was now reading from it.

  ‘A lady called Margaret Marshall called your work “unpleasant, unnatural and unsavoury”. She says that your criminals often get away with the crimes they commit and there is rather too much – too much relish on your part in describing their thoughts of murder, the deviant things your protagonists want to do. She even suggested in her last review that perhaps you admire your famous anti-hero rather too much . . . and the policemen in your novels, the forces of law and order, are always depicted as weak and toothless. Evil, she says, prevails in the novels of Patricia Highsmith. What would you say to this, Miss Highsmith?’

  ‘I’m sure Miss Marshall is a fan of Miss Christie and Ngaio Marsh. Let her go ahead and read their novels.’

  Smythson-Balby looked at her keenly, as if expecting more.

  ‘I don’t happen to – I don’t care to read the implausible fantasies of simpering ladies where everyone in the parlour is equally capable of committing a deadly murder, whether an eighty-year-old duchess or a sweet-natured stable boy.’

  ‘“Implausible fantasies of simpering ladies” . . .’ Smythson-Balby murmured as she wrote, using the squiggles of shorthand. To disguise what was really being written?

  ‘Not a fan, I take it? Of the Golden Age writers, I mean?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve sworn off them.’ Pat hoped this might deflect her, but no, Smythson-Balby was waiting for a full reply.

  Pat took a slug of whisky. ‘They’re nothing great. The only thing Agatha Christie did that interests me is go missing for a few days. Fake her own death. She obviously planned to punish Archie – her husband – since he was the one who would get turned in for it and he’d been playing around. But then she decides to duck out and get herself discovered in Harrogate. That’s the closest she’s come to conjuring up a real crime in her life.’

  There was a pause while Smythson-Balby wrote this down.

  ‘Matter of fact, I don’t happen to give two hoots for Miss Christie.’ Pat took another swig of the Scotch, longing to be able to shut up.

  She was aware of a quickened heartbeat and a strange feeling, as if someone was trying to peel away her skin, edging a little palette knife between her and the outside world. This always happened in interviews. Despite what the interviewer thought – she was invariably described afterwards as taciturn or difficult – she was unable to be anything other than bracingly truthful: to say whatever came into her head. She could feel the words as they surfaced and the simultaneous instruction: Jesus, don’t say that! But the necessary filter was not there and say it she would, as if in defiance of herself. A curious, tragic honesty and one she was sure no one appreciated. And, at any rate, the devil with Smythson-Balby! Imagine repeating that Margaret Marshall quote to her and expecting no reaction.

  ‘Do you happen to know how many murders actually occur in English villages?’ Pat found herself saying. ‘Wait – I had figures somewhere for ’sixty-three, let me look . . .’ She fiddled through her scribbled notes, under the craning gooseneck lamp.

  ‘Approximately three hundred. I’ve counted them, using newspaper reports . . .’ She sat back down and nodded towards another of her opened boxes beside the sofa, where the newspapers were stashed; the notes in her hand she had recovered from the top of the box. ‘Not that many, is it? And how many of the murderers were beautiful middle-class ladies, or old ladies using poison, or educated gentlemen killing for complex and puzzlingly well planned “motives”? Hey, guess what – not one!’

  She could feel herself growing a little swimmy with the whisky but she couldn’t cut it out. ‘Violence is not an act, it’s a feeling. Some people give in to it – others never feel it. Most of the murders committed here in England last year were as they are every year, everywhere – sordid, spontaneous, ugly. Often not planned at all. Hoodlums. Young bums. Punks, child molesters, creeps. And who do they kill? You think we’re all equally likely to be the victim of a murder? Think again. Murder comes from places of intense hatred and anger, not “cold-blooded calculation”. Cold-blooded! The favourite phrase of crime writers, who know nothing.’

  Smythson-Balby continued with her brisk smile.

  ‘Most victims are known to their killers. Most are wives, girlfriends, children or buddies. Not everyone is capable of murder, not at all. That’s a phoney idea. Capable of thinking of it, wanting to, of course. But doing it? That’s something else. The ultimate crime, a boundary very few people cross, and yet if you read Christie or Ngaio Marsh and the rest, you’d believe all were capable of it with impunity. That’s the lie being pulled. And I object to it.’

  ‘You speak as if murder were an accomplishment,’ Smythson-Balby said, with a bright stare.

  Pat took a breath. ‘A murderer is cursed with aloneness. Forever. Once he’s committed this – ultimate anti-social act, he’s condemned to a lifetime spent in terror of being found out. But perhaps he longs to tell all, to boast, because his crime took some kind of courage or daring – certainly a lack of care for convention. Not everyone is capable of murder because most people are not brave and are afraid of breaking society’s rules. What goes on in the mind of a man who has killed somebody? Matter of fact, I am interested in that.’

  She cursed herself again. Why couldn’t she hold her tongue? The Scotch was probably not helping but she craved a top-up just now and the mug was empty. She stood up to fetch her cigarettes from the kitchen table. Pausing before offering the packet to her, Pat noticed as she came back into the room how the girl gave off a powerful perfume, musky and nervous, and the smell of newly washed hair. Her hair was long, silky and the colour of horse-chestnuts, snatched up into a ponytail high on her head, leaving her neck exposed, the backs of her ear-l
obes presenting little tips of gold pierced earrings. Her blouse was rusty-red silk and must have shrunk, or been bought too small: there were spaces gaping between buttons that seemed to make the girl self-conscious. An extravagant bosom that aimed at her, like two juggernauts. The young woman accepted a cigarette from the packet, and Pat hesitated before going to light it for her. Instead she gave her the gold lighter, too, and sat back down in the leather armchair.

  After a quick pull on the cigarette the girl handed back the lighter and said, in a slightly smoky, warmer voice: ‘You said man just then. I’ve noticed the women don’t commit murders in your novels. Are women incapable of murder?’

  ‘They’re capable. Ha! But they have fewer opportunities. And they have – well, most of them do – the nuisance of their sensitivity to others. This ability to feel sorry for whoever would be on the receiving end. Empathy. Sensitivity. Imagination. Whatever. They can’t stay in their own feelings long enough to go through with it . . .’

  The young woman smoked thoughtfully, then wondered what to do with her ash. Pat leaped forward, sweeping some snails out of a saucer to offer it to her. She pocketed the snails. She knew Smythson-Balby had seen her do that, but tactfully pretended to be scribbling.

  ‘Miss Marshall says you don’t like women much. Your women characters might not commit the murders but they all come to a grisly end. I believe she called you a . . . misogynist.’

  ‘Ha! Miss Marshall is a women’s libber, then? A bra-less wonder. The men in my novels rarely fare better.’

  Smythson-Balby smiled then. A full mouth and a little gap at the front between the teeth. She finished her cigarette and screwed the end into the saucer.

  ‘May I ask you about your working habits? How about describing for me an average day?’

  The day was bleeding away, and all these hours talking about writing when she could be doing it. Pat drew on her cigarette, then sighed in a showy way and said nothing.

  ‘And what is it that you’re writing while you’re here?’

  ‘It’s bad luck to talk about the novel one is writing. Like opening the oven on a soufflé. Pouf. It’s gone.’

  ‘Just a hint?’ The frisky ponytail swung optimistically.

  ‘It’s about a woman who believes she’s being followed. A prowler of some sort. A voyeur. Perhaps a rejected lover. Someone from her past. She might be a little paranoid about it. Perhaps she’s imagining it . . . she can’t be sure. She receives letters from him, not threatening but meaningless, troubling. She’s afraid . . .’

  This wasn’t the novel she was working on. It was a lie. She trailed off, finished her cigarette, drained a tiny dreg of Scotch in her mug. At last the young visitor seemed to get her point, and suddenly sat up, alert, glancing at her watch.

  ‘Well, that’s terrifically helpful, thank you,’ Smythson-Balby said, snapping the cap on her fountain pen. ‘I’ve enough to be going on with.’ She stood up.

  Ronnie’s comment suddenly came back to her. Was the damned girl a biographer, really, writing a longer piece for some other publication, not the short article for the local paper they’d agreed? There was a sizzle in the room. Smythson-Balby’s pupils were dilated and her cheeks a little flushed as she tugged at the rust-coloured blouse, re-tucking it into the waistband of her skirt. Either she was nervous, or excited, or it was something else; Pat couldn’t tell. She remembered the feeling yesterday, and it wasn’t the first time, either, of being watched. And although the girl was in front of her, and fooling around, pretending to be putting fountain-pen and notebook into a small, schoolgirl kind of satchel, Pat had exactly the same feeling again now.

  Christine Keeler, Pat thought suddenly. That’s who she looks like, or would do, if she were a darker brunette, naked, with booted legs astride a chair.

  ‘You don’t have a television set?’ the younger woman asked, nodding towards the empty wall beside Pat’s leather chair – faded rosebud wallpaper, yellow on blue, lightly stained by smoke. Pat had gone to fetch Smythson-Balby’s short fur coat from the chair in the kitchen.

  ‘I plan to rent one. In Ipswich.’

  The ponytail swung free of the fur collar of the coat: an expensive-looking black jacket that was rather conservative, a little too old for her, compared to the yellow boots and silky blouse. ‘Oh, perhaps I could offer you a lift? I have my car here and I noticed there wasn’t one parked outside . . .’

  It was just an excuse, Pat knew, for Smythson-Balby to question her further, to get more unguarded comments out of her while they pretended to be idly chatting, both staring straight ahead at a dead squirrel on the road or the wobbling ass of a village mailman passing on his bicycle. The scrutiny wasn’t yet over: she should refuse. But it had started to have possible compensations – she could use a ride, and Ronnie could never offer her one since he’d refused to learn to drive – and as she watched Smythson-Balby fasten her furry jacket around that pointed English bosom, she wondered at what point, if any, the younger woman might begin to suspect what the compensations were.

  ‘Yes, a ride, thank you . . .’ she conceded, and Smythson-Balby finished sweetly with ‘And we can continue chatting in the car.’

  Pat checked the snails before she left. A couple had escaped along the window ledge; she would need to find lids for the containers. She felt like a heel as she had to keep putting them back, but they were getting the message. There were two more, bigger, snails on a saucer upstairs in her bedroom; bought in a market in France and smuggled in in her suitcase. The snails liked to eat – come out – only when unobserved. The fact that they seemed to know when they weren’t being watched amused her. There was a new snail in the bedroom too, and she didn’t know how it had got there. She hadn’t been nettled, only amused. A paranoid person would say someone had put it there: it was a big one, with bits of dried grass stuck to its shell and its horns out exploringly, sitting on her pillowcase. She picked it up and watched its grey underbelly flute and flower, just like an anemone, as it tried to orient itself. Bubbles of silver formed at its mouth. Then she felt sorry for it, and put it back, careful to place it in the right direction along its own jewelled trail. How simple that it had told her exactly where it was going. Sam would hate to find it there. A smile then at the thought of it: Sam’s head would rest on the pillow in only a few days’ time.

  The car was a white Anglia. Not for Smythson-Balby the three-box-shaped Ford that everyone else drove, no, this was quite the stylish number: small rear fins, chrome bumper with over-riders, chrome side-trim and hooded headlights. Touch of the 1958 Lincoln Continental about it. The cop cars round here were Ford Anglias with contrasting panels of blue or black and white; she’d heard them called ‘Pandas’ by locals. Next to the cottage was the only gas pump and village garage for miles and the car was parked on the forecourt.

  The car last night had been white, too. She asked the young woman if she’d been in the village the night before, perhaps looking for Bridge Cottage. Smythson-Balby seemed unsurprised by this question – she was putting on large black-plastic-framed sunglasses to drive, the light being bright, though the October day was cold. She said she hadn’t; Pat couldn’t see her eyes.

  The inside of the car smelt of cigarette smoke and orange peel, the strange padded-plastic fascia covers on the dashboard, and the perfume Smythson-Balby wore, which must have been very liberally applied. The bright yellow toes in her shiny boots pressed on the pedals as if it was the sexiest thing in the world to be doing, driving this foolish little car.

  They didn’t pass a mailman, only Ronnie, cycling towards the cottage. Pat hunkered down in her seat, hoping he hadn’t seen her. His silly grin seemed to suggest he had but was playing along. His sandy fair hair flapped away from his forehead, like the crest of a waxwing. The Suffolk countryside was full of waxwings, Ronnie had said, showing her a rather fine sketch he’d done, using coloured pencils to show the black mask around the eye, the pretty rusty-red of its plumage, the yellow-tipped tail. Looked like a girl she once knew
, who frequented the L bar in Greenwich Village dressed in those colours. She was disappointed that she hadn’t seen a gaudy bird or a girl like that in the tasteful Suffolk countryside. Until now.

  After a few miles Pat regretted accepting the ride. She’d promised to ring Sam at six o’clock from the telephone booth outside the cottage; what if she wasn’t back in time? She didn’t actually know how far Ipswich was from Earl Soham; perhaps it would take longer than she’d assumed. Virginia Smythson-Balby was, at any rate, a rookie driver for all her confidence. She was cocky, jerky with the gear changes, giddily swerving a couple of times on the spidery lanes and tight bends. The journalist was trying to keep up a conversation – ‘And Mr Hitchcock made a film of one of your earliest novels. What did you make of that?’ – but kept breaking off, saying, ‘Sorry, oh!’ as another driver appeared around a sweep in the road and she had to cut sharply left to pass. It wasn’t a squashed squirrel but the huge grey rump of a badger that they saw bloody and upturned at the side of the road, and as they flew past it, Pat had an unpleasant mental image of herself meeting a similar fate under Smythson-Balby’s wheel. She began to shake and fidget in her seat, the Scotch sloshing around her stomach, and at last the younger woman noticed and slowed down.

  They had passed Ronnie’s village – Debach (it wasn’t on the way but Smythson-Balby had no sense of direction and had to turn around in a tight lane) – and Pat had managed not to give herself away over it. She counted this as a small victory: if she could keep her friendship with Ronnie to herself, perhaps she could learn continence on other matters of importance, too. Her thoughts kept returning to Sam. She’d noticed that during the day when she was writing she could keep these things at bay, but as the afternoon wore on and the hour when she would speak to Sam again, hear Sam’s voice, drew closer, the thoughts loomed up more vividly. Last night there had been a dream, a horrible dream, in which she had drowned a naked Sam in the pond. But as Sam stepped out, arms dripping water and green weeds, just as Pat thought, I’ve killed her, she saw that it wasn’t Sam at all, but Pat herself who stood there.