Helen McCloy
Two-Thirds of a Ghost
A Dr. Basil Willing Mystery
“One of the most enjoyable whodunits of this or any season. Reason: Its gorgeous satire on the book publishing business and the people in it or on the fringes.”—Columbus Dispatch
“Cleverly complex.”—Kirkus Reviews
Amos Cottle was a valuable property—a first-rate novelist who produced four best sellers in four years. He had to be protected. From himself (he was an ex-alcoholic). And from his wife (she was a gold-digging siren and she spelled trouble). His publisher and his agent thought Amos’s problems were solved when they clawed the beautiful Vera out of his hair and shipped her off to Hollywood. But they were wrong. For there came a night when Vera returned. That was the night Amos had to have a drink. It was too bad he never lived to sober up.
Dedication: To Joan Vaczek
St. Swithin Press
First published by Random House, 1956
Copyright by Helen McCloy
Cover art by Milton Glaser
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-927551-25-7
CHAPTER ONE
More than one glance followed Meg Vesey through the dusk as she stepped across Madison Avenue. Tall heels foreshortened her feet like little hoofs and made her tread delicately as a doe. Flakes from the light snow flurry frosted her furs and the Christmas packages in her arms. Her chin was firmly rounded in profile and luscious as ripe fruit. Her mouth was a little wide, but it seemed to smile even in repose. Her eyes were her real beauty—a clear, sparkling hazel-brown, large and well set, darkened by long, black lashes. Her make-up was light. You could see the petal-pink freshness the cold wind brought to her cheeks.
At 58th Street she passed under a brightly lighted marquee into a dim, hushed lobby. “Good evening, Mrs. Vesey!” The doorman had a smile for her and she didn’t have to give the elevator man her floor.
Her glance strayed to a tabloid someone had left on the elevator bench. Something moved behind her eyes. Her face congealed, losing color.
“Charles, is this your paper?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“May I borrow it?”
“You can keep it, Mrs. Vesey, I’m through with it.”
“Thank you, Charles.”
Even her voice had changed. It was dull and withdrawn now.
She left the elevator and rested her packages on a hall table while she took a latchkey out of her bag. The door opened into a vestibule glowing softly with shaded lamps. Voices and laughter came through another door, but she turned in the opposite direction.
The room she entered was a study. Against a background of dove-gray walls and olive-green upholstery, there stood a desk, a typewriter, filing cabinets and bookcases, all new, bright and efficient-looking. But any functional grace the room might have had was spoiled by its wild disorder. It had the same effect on the beholder as a pretty, young girl in sluttish disarray.
Newspapers and cigarette ashes were a drift across the floor. A doll, its wig half torn from its head, sprawled nude and abandoned on the sofa. A box of crayons had spilled on the window sill. A puppy’s tooth marks scarred the leg of a charming little footstool and a cat’s claw’s had ripped dangling threads from the silk brocade of an armchair. A cigarette had burned out on the mantelpiece, leaving a brown oval under its cylinder of ash. The open dropleaf of the desk was an inchoate mass of typescripts, recording tapes, letters and cardboard folders stamped Augustus Vesey, inc., Authors’ Agents. Beside the telephone, a sheet of handsome, engraved writing paper was scrawled with doodles and cryptic messages in some private shorthand: “Call Tony? NY op 2 for West Coast after 8 London will call back.” Evidently Gus had been home for lunch.
Meg sighed. She knew from long experience that it would take just about thirty minutes to make the room anywhere near presentable again. At this moment she didn’t have thirty minutes.
She tossed her packages on the sofa, cast aside hat, coat and gloves. She swept the carbon script of a TV show off the nearest chair and dropped into it. She took tortoise-shell spectacles out of her bag and looked at the tabloid.
There was a photograph, but it was impossible to tell if Vera had changed greatly in the last four years. The smudged print showed only a faint blur of pale hair and a sharply pointed chin.
The news was in the printed matter.
STARLET FIGHTS STUDIO
Beverly Hills, Calif., Dec. 12. Special Beauteous Vera Vane, fabulously successful starlet on the Catamount lot, threw aside the glittering promise of stardom in pictures today for love’s sweet sake when she broke with the studio over a clause in her new contract requiring that she remain in Hollywood for the next three years.
“My place is with my husband,” said gorgeous Vera, at a press conference this morning, with tears in the great blue eyes that have won the hearts of millions of movie fans throughout the civilized world. “Hollywood’s glitter is just that—glitter and nothing more. Movie people are a bunch of phonies. I’m taking the plane east on Sunday and, in future, I’m just going to be a homebody and cook for my husband in a little farmhouse in Connecticut. Any of you boys know a good recipe for corned beef and cabbage?”
When asked if she intended to have a family, Miss Vance answered promptly: “Of course I’d like to. Who wouldn’t?”
Miss Vane’s husband is Amos Cottle, author, who skyrocketed to fame four years ago with his best-selling war novel, Never Call Retreat. His latest book, Passionate Pilgrim, has a religious theme. The couple separated three years ago, but neither has remarried.
A representative of Catamount Studios told newsmen today that Miss Vane’s option had been dropped because she and the studio were unable to come to an agreement on salary.
Meg let the paper fall from her hands. After a moment, she crossed the room to the desk. Her address book was not in the proper pigeonhole. Polly, who was just learning to print capital letters, had doubtless appropriated it as an exercise book. Maddelena, who functioned as both cook and nurse, wouldn’t think of objecting to anything Polly did. So Meg had to ask Information for Amos’s number.
After a few minutes, she heard his phone ringing in ice-bound Connecticut, but there was no answer. She put the phone back in its cradle.
She found her box of notepaper on the floor, but there was no sign of a pen anywhere. She sat down at the typewriter and began to type furiously, words tumbling off the keys almost as fast as the thoughts whirling through her mind.
Dear Amos,
I
