Free Death of a Mystery Writer by Robert Barnard Page A

Shall we come? . . . Dr. Leighton? All right, I’ll tell Surtees to make you something. Good-bye, Mum.”
    He put down the telephone. “He’s dead,” he said. He looked at Bella, whose eyes once more were overflowing. “Mum’s coming back now with Dr. Leighton.”
    Bella seemed about to sink down into a chair and crumple up. Terence took her hands, held them tight.
    â€œDon’t break down, old girl,” he said. “Think of Mum. We two’ll be all right.” But when she looked at him there was distrust in her face.
    They were disturbed by a noise from near the door. Mark, deep in his armchair, first grunted, then rubbed his eyes, and then opened them, looking ahead blearily and uncertainly.
    â€œWhat time is it?” he said. “Why are you still up?”
    He saw the decanters in the open cupboard, and focusing his eyes on them he began to struggle to his feet.
    â€œArise, Sir Mark,” said Terence contemptuously.

CHAPTER VI
Mourned by His Family . . .
    Barbara Cozzens really rather enjoyed the morning after her employer’s death. She was a tower of strength in a crisis, she felt—without, naturally, pushing herself forward or intruding where she was unwelcome. Her unflappability and her excellence at coping were qualities which had not been called on the previous evening: indeed, if she had not slipped down to the kitchen after she heard the ambulance drive away, she might not have known that her employer was even ill. Once down there, she had allowed Mrs. Moxon to administer coffee, and they had stayed on chatting in whispers (though why in whispers in that enormous kitchen with no one remotely near to overhear them she would have been at a loss to explain). Surtees, with their encouragement, went backward and forward periodically to the study, ostensibly to clear away the coffee cups and glasses. When he brought the news of Oliver Fairleigh’s death, the two ladies had both said “No!” Then they had all switched to brandy and begun to discuss their futures.
    This morning she sat at the desk where Sir Oliver only a few hours before had opened presents and dispensed liqueurs, dealing with inquiries and setting in train arrangements for the funeral. The death had been too late for the Sunday papers, but had been broadcast on the eight o’clock news. The secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association phoned her official sympathy, as did some fellow detective writers: there was little grief, but much tact. She spoke to Gerald Simmington, Sir Oliver’s editor atMacpherson’s, and (circling round the subject in the manner of those who are being worldly at a time when they feel they ought to be spiritual) they agreed how fortunate it was that Murder Upstairs and Downstairs had been finished before the tragedy of the night before.
    â€œBecause I certainly didn’t know the solution myself,” Miss Cozzens confided. “And the public wouldn’t have been very interested in an unfinished detective story, would they? After all, it’s not as though he was Dickens . . .”
    As Miss Cozzens sat at the desk, conspicuously coping, her thoughts turned to her own future. They were helped in this direction by Cuff, who sat at her feet, but kept making sorties round the room, whining wheezily and looking bewildered. Cuff knew things were different, and Miss Cozzens faced up to the changes in her own life too. Perhaps she regretted them less than Cuff did. Of course, first she would have to stay on for a few weeks here, perhaps a few months, for she knew more about Sir Oliver’s literary and business affairs than anyone in the house and she would be needed—or “indispensable” as she put it to herself. After that—a holiday, a late holiday, a real Indian summer, in Greece, or southern Italy, or perhaps the West Indies. Then a new job. It would have been nice to have a change from