Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery by G.M. Malliet Page A

tomorrow,” Ruthven said, naturally taking charge. Years of planning redundancies and squelching union organizers had given him the edge in any situation calling for hypocrisy or doublespeak. He smoothed a hand over the top of his head, as if it still held an unruly growth of hair that had constantly to be tamed into submission. “Although I certainly wish the old man well, I am sure we all arrived here with similar agendas of trying to dissuade him.”
    “You wish him well, do you?” said Albert, from his roost on Sarah’s bed. “That’s rich. And when did you first notice this altruistic side of your nature coming to the fore?” Sarah, watching him throughout dinner, had noted that his intake of food had been diluted by alcohol at the rate of about seven ounces to one morsel of food. He seemed to be looking around even now for more reinforcements. Something would have to be done about Albert.
    “But it’s obvious to me that for all the good we’re doing, we may as well leave tonight,” Ruthven went on, ignoring him. “There’s no hope of influencing this … course he’s set himself on. He’s clearly infatuated with the woman. Worst of all, I can even see why.”
    “She is rather charming, isn’t she? Flirtatious in that rather old-fashioned way,” said Sarah. “The kind who I imagine makes a man feel the center of the universe. Some women seem to have that sort of appeal all their lives.”
    George, who could seldom see the charm in any woman over thirty, grunted.
    “On the way down here, we had talked of going to him en masse to see if we couldn’t persuade him out of the idea,” said Sarah, forgetting that Ruthven was to have been excluded from that course. George and Albert glared at her.
    “And I gather I was to be left out,” picked up Ruthven. “Not that I don’t understand your reasoning,” he said, “and not that I hold it against you”—although he made a mental note to hold it against them when it was more convenient—“but surely you see everything’s changed now? Look, there is nothing we can say or do against this woman that would have any effect except to make him more pig-headed in his determination to go through with it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was doing it for the publicity value. But he’s not.”
    George, who was sure he understood all about publicity, perked up at this.
    “What makes you say so?”
    “Two reasons. He doesn’t need the publicity to sell his books. He hasn’t given an interview in years—at least not one where he wasn’t pulling the interviewer’s leg the whole time—and it’s never stopped his books from spurting to the top of the best-sellers list. Everyone wants the newest Miss Rampling for Christmas—the irony, yes, yes, we all know that better than anyone, but that’s how it is. In the season of good will, his murderous little books sell themselves.”
    “The other reason?” asked Sarah.
    “The other reason seems nearly impossible, but as Miss Rampling would say, in her muddled way: ‘What isn’t impossible, once all the real impossibilities are excluded, must be the truth.’”
    “You’ve actually read his tosh, then?” said Albert.
    “Since it’s one day going to be my tosh, you can bet I have.”
    George, Sarah, and Albert exchanged glances. Not any more, it’s not.
    “Anyway,” Ruthven went on. “I think the real reason is the old fool is in love—or in such a state of extreme infatuation as makes no difference. Because the kind of publicity he will receive from this is of the kind even he would blanch at—and, as I’ve said, of a kind he doesn’t need, anyway. But it’s an occupational hazard, I’d guess, in his case.”
    “You’re talking riddles,” said Albert. He wanted to go in search of the nearest liquor cabinet, but the whirling room when he attempted standing defeated him.
    “You do realize who she is, don’t you? Her maiden name was Mildenhall but her married name was Winthrop.”
    He