Read Online Murder Most Merry by ed. Abigail Browining - Free Book Online Page A

know that was what it was, not at first. I thought it was a finely bound limited edition. Because the manuscripts are all kept on that shelf, you know, and this one wasn’t. And it hadn’t been on the table a few minutes earlier, either. I knew that much. So I assumed it was a book someone had been leafing through, and I saw it was by Cornell Woolrich, and I didn’t recognize the title, so I thought I’d try leafing through it myself.”
    “And you found it was a manuscript.”
    “Well, that didn’t take too keen an eye, did it? I suppose I glanced at the first twenty pages, just riffled through them while the party went on around me. I stopped after a chapter or so. That was plenty.”
    “You didn’t like what you read?”
    “There were corrections,” she said disdainfully. “Words and whole sentences crossed out. new words penciled in. I realize writers have to work that way, but when I read a book I like to believe it emerged from the writer’s mind fully formed.”
    “Like Athena from the brow of What’s-his-name,” her husband said.
    “Zeus. I don’t want to know there was a writer at work, making decisions, putting words down and then changing them. I want to forget about the writer entirely and lose myself in the story.”
    “Everybody wants to forget about the writer,” Philip Perigord said, helping himself to more eggnog. “At the Oscars each year some ninny intones, ‘In the beginning was the Word,‘ before he hands out the screenwriting awards. And you hear the usual crap about how they owe it all to chaps like me who put words in their mouths. They say it, but nobody believes it. Jack Warner called us schmucks with Underwoods. Well, we’ve come a long way. Now we’re schmucks with Power Macs.”
    “Indeed.” Haig said. “You looked at the manuscript, didn’t you, Mr. Perigord?”
    “I never read unpublished work. Can’t risk leaving myself open to a plagiarism charge.”
    “Oh? But didn’t you have a special interest in Woolrich? Didn’t you once adapt a story of his?”
    “How did you know about that? I was one of several who made a living off that particular piece of crap. It was never produced.”
    “And you looked at this manuscript in the hope that you might adapt it?”
    The writer shook his head. “I’m through wasting myself out there.”
    “They’re through with you,” Harriet Quinlan said. “Nothing personal, Phil, but it’s a town that uses up writers and throws them away. You couldn’t get arrested out there. So you’ve come back East to write books.”
    “And you’ll be representing him, madam?”
    “I may, if he brings me something I can sell. I saw him paging through a manuscript and figured he was looking for something he could steal. Oh, don’t look so outraged, Phil. Why not steal from Woolrich. for God’s sake? He’s not going to sue. He left everything to Columbia University, and you could knock off anything of his, published or unpublished, and they’d never know the difference. Ever since I saw you reading, I’ve been wondering. Did you come across anything worth stealing?”
    “I don’t steal,” Perigord said. “Still, perfectly legitimate inspiration can result from a glance at another man’s work—”
    “I’ll say it can. And did it?”
    He shook his head. “If there was a strong idea anywhere in that manuscript, I couldn’t find it in the few minutes I spent looking. What about you. Harriet? I know you had a look at it. because I saw you.”
    “I just wanted to see what it was you’d been so caught up in. And I wondered if the manuscript might be salvageable. One of my writers might be able to pull it off, and do a better job than the hack who finished Into the Night .”
    “Ah,” Haig said. “And what did you determine, madam?”
    “I didn’t read enough to form a judgment. Anyway, Into the Night was no great commercial success, so why tag along in its wake?”
    “So you put the manuscript...”
    “Back in its box,