Cat Among the Herrings Read Online Free PDF Page B

this business. ‘Say I’m looking forward to it with excitement,’ I said.
    ‘Is that irony?’
    ‘You’re learning.’
    I looked at her, standing there, so eager to please anyone in any way.
    ‘Just in passing,’ I said, ‘did you mean it when you said it’s important to let rejected writers down gently?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘No, really.’
    ‘Yes, really.’
    ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Just checking.’

CHAPTER FIVE
    ‘So, did you investigate my murder?’
    I looked at Tom blankly for a moment. I had just been emphasising again the synopsis and three chapters thing and the importance of following Elsie’s directions to the letter. In particular I had been explaining that, while Elsie would never rule out anything on a technicality if it looked likely to make her money, failure to observe her instructions at the outset would never be entirely forgotten. It would be stored away, in a safe, dry place, for Elsie’s future use. He might expect, perhaps many books into their relationship, to receive an arch observation that he’d never been able to count up to three. But Elsie rarely killed an author who might still have a book or two in them, and I didn’t think that could be what the threat referred to.
    ‘ Your murder?’ I said. ‘You mean …’
    ‘My ancestor. John Gittings. I said I thought it would make an interesting subject for a book.’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. I wondered if by ordering another round I could change the subject, but our glasses were both almost full. The problem is that people imagine all sorts of incidents will make an interesting subject for a book, but most won’t. The thing that is so amusing encapsulated in two hundred words quickly palls when expended to seventy or eighty thousand, just as the startling headline in the paper – ‘Scandal Hits Chichester Council’, say – often promises very much more than it is able to deliver. The trick for the fiction writer is to take the mundane, the everyday, and write it so that it grips the reader’s attention. Most real-life murders are depressingly similar. Tom had said himself that his ancestor’s death had appeared motiveless. Just one of several thousand murders between 1837 and 1901. A golden age in some respects – Sergeant Cuff, Mr Whicher, Sherlock Holmes. But in other respects not so much …
    ‘So, you think you can use it?’ Tom asked, for some reason misinterpreting my guarded silence as wild enthusiasm.
    I sighed. This was, after all, his own family. I had to show a bit of polite interest. ‘Why don’t you tell me a little more about it?’ I said.
    Tom nodded and took a preparatory sip of beer. Then, in a practised manner that owed perhaps to his being a reporter, he began. ‘OK. Well, my ancestor, if an uncle can properly be called that, was found stabbed to death in the Herring Field – that’s a parcel of marshy land down by Chichester Harbour, where in the distant past they smoked herring. Or so the story goes. Possibly they did just that – it’s not much use for anything else. These days, it’s used for nothing at all. He – my ancestor – was found face down inthe long grass. A fisherman’s knife was discovered close by, in a pool of stagnant water, blade uppermost, half hidden in a patch of reeds.’
    He paused and looked at me.
    ‘OK so far,’ I said. ‘The stagnant water with the blade sticking out of it is a nice touch – a sort of Excalibur moment. Were there any suspects apart from this Lancelot that you referred to?’
    ‘Lancelot – Robin’s ancestor – was the owner of both the field and the knife. He never denied either fact, but said he had missed the knife the previous day. He thought he might have dropped it on the village green while he was mending his nets. He hadn’t been to the Herring Field for about a week, so he couldn’t have left it there.’
    ‘It wasn’t entirely cut and dried then?’ I asked.
    ‘No, it was the herrings that were cut and dried …