A Murder of Magpies by Judith Flanders Read Free Book Online

didn’t lock. Publishers are an honest bunch—or at least we’re all aware that none of us has anything worth stealing. Whatever the case, petty pilfering has never been a problem and since manuscripts are not intrinsically valuable, and we have so many, and so many copies of each one, nothing is ever locked up, or even put away. The usual filing system with manuscripts is much like David’s with everything: pile them up until they topple over. They’re not exactly gold bullion. Sandra’s office is particularly loaded. As well as copies of each manuscript that was being published, she had proofs, presenters, or sales folders, and finished books. And, being Sandra, all of this went back for the entire time she’d been with the company. My office is much emptier, as about every six months or so the clutter and dust irritate me into getting a bin liner and throwing out everything that has already been published.
    Much emptier. Much easier to find things.
    I was edgy, and I was also now cross. It was one thirty, and Kit was half an hour late, which was excessive, even for him. I wanted to sort out the publicity and get back to the office for a three-thirty meeting. I tried calling him at home, but there was no answer. There was no point in trying his mobile, as although he carried it he usually forgot to turn it on, and he doesn’t know how to access his voice mail. He’d asked me to answer it a couple of weeks ago when he was driving, and I discovered he had messages going back six months, none of which he even knew were there.
    The waiter came over to ask what name the bill should be in. He looked at Sandra, which was understandable. She was standard publicity issue, which meant blonde, pretty, and black-lycraed. I intervened. Sandra was used to paying for all her authors. “Lovell,” I said, smiling brilliantly at him, “Kit Lovell.” If Kit was going to be late, he could at least pay for it.
    Sandra and I went and had lunch in the Groucho’s restaurant at two, also on Kit’s bill. Apart from leaving increasingly irritable messages, there really wasn’t any choice. By three when he hadn’t still hadn’t shown up, we went back to the office.
    I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or worried. Kit sounds flighty, but I’ve always found him totally professional. He’d never have got as far as he has if he was as much a butterfly as he pretended. I figure it was a persona he had assumed when he was young, as a cover for insecurity, and now it was second nature. But he’d never stood me up before. If he is going to change his plans, which he does frequently, he always rings, or gets a message to me somehow. In fact, he usually claims that it’s me who does the standing up, a charge I no longer bother to deny, because it gives him such pleasure.
    So where was he? I’d called Miranda, in case he’d thought we were meeting at the office, but she’d said she’d worked at her desk on Breda’s book throughout lunch, and he’d neither rung nor appeared. There wasn’t much I could do. I could hardly start phoning hospitals and the police because someone’s missed a meeting. Even I, with all my mothering instincts toward my authors, know that.
    Mothering. Hell, I hadn’t called my mother back yesterday. My parents had divorced years ago, and my father has a second family in Canada, where we’d spent part of my childhood. He and I are civil, but not close. Helena, on the other hand, lives, in mothering terms, absolutely on my doorstep, or, as she calls it “just around the corner,” in St. John’s Wood, and we are as close as two people who had lives that are totally incomprehensible to each other can possibly be.
    I don’t really understand how my mother lives her life, much less why. From time to time I consider the possibility that she is really two people, or perhaps a Martian. The Martian