Free Cat Among the Herrings by L. C. Tyler Page B

but readers are busy people and they conversely may not have time to meet you.
    Fourth, if you are going to express admiration for the writers I already represent, do try to spell their names correctly. You might also try looking at Amazon rather than making a wild guess about the sort of thing that they write. And of course, you should not assume that because I represent writer X I really want somebody else exactly like him.
    Fifth …
    ‘Sorry – are you writing to accept an author?’
    ‘Why would you think that?’
    ‘It was just that you looked quite happy.’
    ‘There is always satisfaction in a job well done. As you may discover yourself one day. As for accepting Ms Green, I would rather be stranded on a desert island with nothing to read but that manuscript we enjoyed so much yesterday.’
    ‘The one I had to go to the post office to collect because the author hadn’t put any stamps on the envelope?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘The egg and chips diet book?’
    ‘Precisely. Three hundred and sixty-five variants on egg and chips, one for each day of the year. And with no trace of irony. So he may not quite understand my reply saying that it was well worth paying for.’
    ‘I could do you a standard rejection letter. It would save you so much time. We used to have them at Francis and Novak. The letter just said that we loved the book but that we didn’t think we were the right agency to represent it. Sometimes we added a nice PS.’
    ‘Wouldn’t that just give the writers encouragement?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘So … why would you want to do that exactly?’
    ‘Because it’s a nice thing to do.’
    ‘Nice?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You think you should be nice to writers?’
    ‘Yes, don’t you?’
    Sometimes you know it’s going to be just too much effort to explain something properly.
    ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘But only if all else fails. I’m off now, anyway. Ethelred is expecting me, and I don’t want todisappoint him, poor agentless little lamb. A few days by the sea await me.’
    ‘Wrap up warm,’ said Tuesday. ‘The weather forecast is for wind and rain. Are you planning wintery walks on the beach? I always think you need a dog for that.’
    ‘I’ve got a writer,’ I said. ‘That’s almost as good.’
     
    ‘It’s quite a big house,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten.’
    Ethelred put my tea on the table in front of me, next to the biscuits. ‘Not as big as some,’ he said.
    ‘Lucky you inherited that money a few years ago,’ I said. ‘I doubt that your royalties would have paid for that conservatory. Not with your last agent. What was her name – Janet something …?’
    ‘My royalties are fine,’ he said.
    ‘The two books that she placed have sold well, then?’
    ‘You can look them up on Nielsen.’
    ‘I have. I just wondered if you were planning to lie about it. It was a bit of a mistake switching to her, wasn’t it?’
    ‘My earlier books didn’t sell that well either,’ he said.
    ‘As I know to my cost,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve had to calculate fifteen per cent of nothing. I meant more from the point of view of mixing business with pleasure. Sleeping with your agent. I doubt if there actually was that much pleasure, of course.’
    ‘I have no complaints,’ he said, trying to look daggers, a thing that he has never done that well.
    ‘I didn’t mean from your point of view,’ I said. I took a ladylike sip of tea and selected another Jammy Dodger.
    ‘Elsie, have you come here just to insult me? And there’s no need to pretend to be thinking deeply about thatquestion. When you were my agent I had to put up with all of your snide remarks, but I don’t any more.’
    ‘Not even in return for my assistance in solving a murder for you?’
    ‘There is no murder to be solved. And if there were, which there isn’t, I wouldn’t be asking for your help.’
    ‘But you did ask.’
    ‘No, I didn’t.’
    ‘Tuesday said that you’d told her