Death of an Author by Lorac E.C.R

Author:Lorac, E.C.R.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2023-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter IX

When Chief Inspector Warner called on Mr. Marriott at his office the next morning, he found the publisher looking as exasperated as a man can be. Warner smiled down pleasantly at the older man, observing the pile of newspapers which lay tossed on the floor by Marriott’s desk.

“Good morning, sir. I should think your advertisement department must be sitting back and smiling happily. The Press seems to have done you well,—notices highly eulogistic in fact.”

Marriott’s face was a study. “I have been in the publishing business for thirty years,” he replied, “and this is the first occasion when I have regretted the fact. Advertisement! My dear Inspector, the whole thing is simply nauseating! I believe in advertising books on their merits, but for this firm to be made the target for the cheapest form of notoriety, to be plastered across every contemptible rag, to be mobbed by every Tom, Dick and Harry from the gutters of every provincial Fleet Street…” Having tied himself into an inextricable knot of clauses, Marriott gave up his sentence in despair and thumped the desk with a clenched fist. “I am a reticent and decent-minded man,” he groaned, “and this orgy of sensationalism is nothing less than revolting to me!”

“Oh, come, don’t feel so bitter over it,” said Warner. “The printers will have to work overtime getting out new impressions of Lestrange’s works to meet the demands of a voracious public… besides, you know, we were very careful to safeguard your dignity. You’ve noticed that there is no mention of the fact that Langston’s accepted Miss Eleanor Clarke as the author of The Charterhouse Case.”

Marriott’s face flushed, but he replied with dignity.

“That was thoughtful of you, Chief Inspector. The whole story is a mystery which it is beyond my power to fathom, but I’m not going to admit that I was a fool, even though I’ve been made a fool of—handsomely! I still abide by my previous opinion,—that nowadays you can’t tell a man’s writings from a woman’s. We have a bias—I acknowledge it—a tendency to regard any powerful and thoughtful piece of writing as emanating from a man’s mind. We took it for granted that Lestrange was a man, until that remarkable young woman came here and made hay of all our theories…” Marriott leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at the bookcase opposite to him. “I was born in 1874,” he said, apparently irrelevantly. “I have seen three eras, the Victorian, the Edwardian and the post-war, and I’ll tell you this. There is hardly a single conception of my youth which hasn’t had to be modified to fit the manners of today. Women! In my youth, there were two categories, the virtuous and the non-virtuous. The first knew very little about men; in a woman’s presence we ordered our speech, our manners, our actions, to suit certain conventions. We didn’t swear, we didn’t get drunk, we didn’t discuss our mistresses in the society of women. Nowadays the girls swear as

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