Read Online The Circle by Peter Lovesey - Free Book Online Page B

and Naomi, green fingers linked with gimlet eyes, not a pairing he expected. He could imagine the look she was giving the speaker.
    In a clever attempt to divert her, Blacker said, 'And did you submit a script, madam?'
    "The Sussex Witchcraft Trials.'"
    'Oh, I remember. Admirable. Timely, too. Right now there's a blossoming of interest in the occult.'
    'Did you read it?'
    'Enthralling. Meticulously researched. I was unaware such things happened in this peaceful part of England.'
    'What things?'
    'Well, the witchcraft.'
    'The witchcraft didn't happen. That's the whole point of the book. They were innocent women.'
    Blacker made a clucking sound. 'But of course.'
    'Are you sure you read it?' Naomi was beginning to sound like a witchfinder herself.
    'Absolutely'
    'They were the seventeenth-century counterparts of the district nurse and the pharmacist.'
    'Thank you for making the point so clearly. I can see splendid opportunities here for television interviews with nurses and pharmacists asking them if they've ever thought of themselves as witches. Oh, I like it. We must speak more about this book,' Blacker said, grabbing another script and turning the pages. 'I thought these poems were highly original. Who is Thomasine?'
    A hand waved just in front of him.
    'Poetry, to be candid, is not a big seller. However . . . these, I thought, may well be worth developing. Wry, thought-provoking, evocative and - if I may be so bold -sometimes sensuous. It's a winning combination. Have you been published before?'
    'Only in my school magazine,' Thomasine said, 'and I was up before the head when she read it.'
    There was some laughter at this.
    'Saucy stuff, then?'
    'That wasn't how the head put it.'
    'Didn't she spot your potential?'
    'No. She thought some boy had.'
    More laughter.
    This was becoming Thomasine's show, and Blacker smiled, but without real amusement. 'I'll say this. Properly edited, pruned of a few excesses, your poems could do rather well. A tweak here, a spot of fine-tuning there. We'd need to be selective. Not all of them work so well as the best, but neither did Wordsworth's. I would envisage a series of slim volumes on various themes.'
    'Suits me,' Thomasine said.
    He picked up another script. "The Snows of Yesteryear". An extraordinary project, taking a group of moderately well-known people with nothing more in common than their surname, and recounting their lives in detail. I have to say that it gripped me from the beginning. There's a touch of Lytton Strachey about this concept. Yet the author must be excessively modest, because he or she doesn't disclose his or her name.'
    Maurice the chair said, 'She's our secretary, Miss Snow.'
    'How fitting. I should have guessed.'
    Miss Snow hadn't looked up from the minutes she was taking.
    'Have you read the Strachey book, Eminent Victorians, Miss Snow?'
    She shook her head without raising it.
    'Then I can recommend it. He casts his net a little wider than you, but his refusal to be impressed by the famous folk he writes about is worth examining. It is clear that you know your subjects intimately, yet one has to be careful not to turn it into hagiography. Are you familiar with the term?'
    A voice - not Miss Snow's - said, 'Lives of the saints.' It was Anton.
    'Thank you. Actually I was addressing Miss Snow.'
    'She's writing everything down,' Anton said. 'She can't take the minutes and talk to you at the same time.'
    'I see. Well, kindly take this down, Miss Snow. With some judicious rewriting, more light and shade, a little irony here and there, I would expect to market this book as a breakthrough in biography, a whole new approach. I can see it getting reviewed in all the upmarket papers.'
    She nodded her appreciation.
    He reached for another script. He wasn't wasting time. 'Ah. The work of fantasy.'
    'Tudor's autobiography?' Thomasine said, and there were more suppressed laughs.
    'I think not,' Blacker said. 'This is a major work of the imagination by someone who calls himself