Nanowrimo Winner

[Total Word Count: 40,647]

Things have quietened down at Behemoth following the big excitement of Kevin’s presentation. Kevin himself is away this week. I’ve got three different projects I need to work on, but none of them has a deadline nearer than the end of next week. I think I might be a bit of an adrenaline junkie: I certainly can’t take very seriously a deadline that is over a week away.

Earlier on, John Sopert the Director called me into his office – a proper office, this one, with a full-sized desk and everything. Sopert is one of those immensely dignified people who are frightfully nice even though they are obviously amazingly posh.

“Thanks for coming – nothing to worry about, John,” he said, with an air of affected bonhomie, “This isn’t – ahuh! – a crisis meeting or anything. Perhaps that’s disappointing, actually? We all love a bit of crisis management around here, don’t we? I keep saying to my managers, I want more completer/finishers, er, guys: give me a few completer/finishers. But they never do. Anyway, no; this is just a chat. It’s always been my intention to keep up with our younger execs, but I’m afraid it’s a policy more honoured in the breach than the observance. But you’re my guinea-pig, John. I’m going to try to have quarterly chats with all of you in future.”

“OK,” I said, inanely, bonhomising back at him to the best of my ability.

“How do you feel about last week?” he asked, looking at me keenly.

“Well, I’m quite happy really, I mean obviously it’s frustrating when you can’t convince people,” I began,

“Oh, I wouldn’t say we weren’t convinced,” he interrupted, “I enjoyed the presentation. I thought it was illuminating. And you made a good contribution. Certainly. No, I wouldn’t say we weren’t convinced, John.”

“Well, I mean, it’s a shame we didn’t get the go-ahead on the winter strategy,” I said cautiously, and waited to see whether he would insist that, in a very real sense, we had got the go-ahead. Just not the go-ahead to do anything. But he merely raised his eyebrows in a ‘well-let’s-not–jump-to-conclusions’ style.

“But I enjoyed doing the presentation, and obviously it was a valuable learning opportunity for me.”

“Ahuh,” he agreed, “yes.”, as though I’d put my finger on a rather obscure but tremendously important point. “Yes, indeed.”

“I’m still convinced that my analysis of the seasonality is basically right, “ I said cautiously, “But I’m looking forward to helping to develop the strategy in other ways.”

“Good, good. You’re a promising young man, John,” he confided, “Personally, I think you have some definite potential. But at times, you know, it’s a bit difficult to know what to make of you.”

“Really?”

“Ahuh. At times you seem very reserved, lost in your own thoughts, you know, just going through the motions. I don’t quite know how to put this, but there are times – I hope this doesn’t seem negative – when it almost seems as if you aren’t very interested in what you’re doing.”

“Gosh.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. And then, on other occasions, you know, you sort of come out with guns blazing.”

“Do I?”

“Oh yes, blazing. Look at that time you made the point about, what was it? De minimis. Quite right, of course. But you see, I wasn’t even there, but I’ve still heard all about how passionate you were.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“We like passion. I’d go so far as to say we need our young execs to be passionate. If you’re not passionate, where’s the future of Behemoth? No, I like the passion. But sometimes too much?. A bit of aggression is good. In this world, John, you won’t get anywhere without a bit of aggression. But you have to know how to moderate it, you see. You have to – what was that phrase? You have to know how to dance the dance, if you follow me.”

Oh bugger.

“I think I do.”

“That said, I do believe, myself…” (…in spite of what everyone else says…) “… that you’ve got real potential. Now John. Kevin has suggested to me that you might be ready for a manager interview. I must ask you – do you think you would like to go in for that? Do you feel ready?” He looked at me intently, as though great matters hung on my response.

“Yes,”, I replied, trying not to show what a stupid question I thought it was, “Yes – I think I am ready.”

“Good. Good. Well, I think you’ve got real potential.” he declared.

He sat back in his chair and looked at me steadily. Time passed. The silence began to get oppressive.

“Er, I…” I said,

“Thanks for dropping in.” he interrupted, sitting forward suddenly. And the chat was over.

Things were quiet back at my desk. Kevin was away for a week, so there was no-one to badger me, and not much real work to do. I found myself waiting impatiently for someone to send me an email. I surfed the net negligently, picking up an interesting site about self-publishing which I nevertheless couldn’t be bothered to read. I copied the address for later. Then I took to fiddling with a copy of a spreadsheet charting advertising spend for six different products.

Twelve o’clock. A bit early for lunch, perhaps, but then it saves queuing. I wandered out, got a Pret sandwich from round the corner, and brought it back to my desk. While eating the sandwich, I ran up a completely meaningless three dimensional chart out of the data from the spreadsheet, and then changed the colours and values so it looked like a model landscape – a flat blue area with yellow sloping up from it, then green, brown, and on top of the solitary sharp peak, a touch of white.

It always annoys me the way people always leave two blank sheets when they use Excel. It’s because the default is three sheets (used to be more, I think) when you start a new file, and most people round here are at best only dimly aware that those tabs lurking at the bottom indicate other sheets which can be deleted, named, selected, copied and all the rest. You could actually stick some text in a big text box on page 2, and no-one would ever read it.

The drawing room at Wenham Hall smelt of mildew, and the furnishings felt cold and unaired. The sunlight streaming in through the two tall windows was full of dust motes, and in one corner an unused vacuum cleaner of ancient pattern leaned abandoned against the panelled wall.

In all probability the room had not seem such a large or lively gathering of people since the late Earl’s distant youth. A small deputation from the local police, headed by D.I. Cuffley, sat in a group at one side of the hearth; Mr Popplewell, the late Earl’s solicitor, was ensconced on the sofa in solitary splendour; and three sombre-looking members of the Pasholme family, now the presumed heirs, kept their own counsel in the rear. A number of local creditors, elderly villagers and former servants who considered themselves to have an interest in the estate, were scattered about the room on dining chairs brought in from the next room. There was even one of Lady Jane’s many cousins standing by the window, a dignified lady called Lettie Durbridge, holding a brochure with a rocket on the cover.

“I’m very grateful,” said Lady Jane, standing before the imposing Adam fireplace, “to you all for agreeing to come here today. I have made certain discoveries which I should like to share with you.”

A thrill of expectancy ran round the room.

“First of all, who poisoned the fourth Earl of Wenham? We’ve established now beyond reasonable doubt that there should have been no-one else in the house that night. There are no signs of forced entrance, and in any case, how would an intruder force the Earl to drink from a glass which visibly contained hemlock leaves?”

“We’ve also established that the Earl was seen by Sergeant Derrick down by the pond earlier that evening. This is the only place near Wenham where water hemlock is known to grow. The only possible conclusion is that the Earl put the hemlock in his own drink. Suicide? Possibly, but death from water hemlock is quite unpleasant, not a likely method to choose, unless the victim had confused it with the hemlock concoction which Plato describes as being responsible for the death of Socrates. We know, moreover, that the Earl was in the habit of drinking whisky infused with mint. The balance of probability is that in the absence of his faithful manservant, the Earl simply made a tragic mistake.”

“But the Earl’s children presumed he had been murdered, and by someone he trusted to prepare his nightcap. In their minds, it could only have been one of their number. If it were the eldest, then he too surely deserved the same fate; if it were a younger sibling, he or she would surely seek to eliminate the elder claimants. The game was on.”

“We now know how at least three of the Earl’s children were responsible for the deaths of one or other of their siblings, and how the so-called Wenham wolf-pack destroyed itself through a campaign of internecine murder.”

“ Who then, is to blame for the death of Fenella, the last member of the family and probably the only one innocent of murder herself? The mystery is compounded by the fact that all the probable beneficiaries, the natural suspects, are dead. The Pasholme cousins were all far from the scene until today and all have alibis.”

“However, I have discovered that the Earl had another son.”

There was a shocked murmur, and surprised glances were exchanged. Only Oliver Mordaunt, the artist, looked unsurprised.

“Two years ago,” explained Lady Jane, “Oliver here discovered his dead mother’s diary. From this, and from papers he found with it, he uncovered for the first time the secret of his own paternity. The Earl had embarked on the seduction of Miss Mordaunt his mother, at that time the village school-teacher. In order to have his wicked way with Miss Mordaunt, an honest and virtuous woman, the Earl had secretly gone through a bogus marriage ceremony with her. Mr Dundas, a friend of the Earl who was somewhat in his debt at the time, played the part of a priest on the occasion, something he now regrets. He has described the Earl’s scheme in a letter written from Eastbourne, where he now lives in retirement.”

D.I. Cuffley rose unsteadily to his feet.

“Oliver Mordaunt,” he said, “ I arrest you for the…”

“Just a moment, please,” interrupted Lady Jane. “Oliver investigated the circumstances very thoroughly and he discovered that what the Earl intended as a bogus marriage, intended only to overcome young Miss Mordaunt’s scruples, was in fact legally valid under an old statute intended to protect young women against just this kind of deception. I am satisfied that his conclusion is correct. It follows that he was always the legal heir: the Earl was a bigamist and his other children were in fact, bastards.”

A hubbub broke out: D.I.Cuffley remained uncertainly on his feet.

“Excuse me!” said Lady Jane, and order gradually returned. “It follows that Oliver had no financial motive for killing his illegitimate half-siblings. All he had to do was come forward with the documents he had discovered, and he would be the heir. It may seem strange that for two years he failed to do so. Indeed, he failed to do so even when the Earl died, and the supposed heirs arrived. Could it be, Oliver, that you resented the way your mother had been treated? Did you plan a grand humiliation for the false Fidgetts? And when they started to kill each other, did you decide to stand by and let it happen, rather than bring their murderous aim to bear on you? Did you, in fact, enjoy the sensation of having your revenge, a bloody revenge, without lifting a finger?”

Oliver was unmoved. His lip curled slightly, he raised one eyebrow, and replied:

“Schadenfreude is not a crime, Lady Jane.”

And then, atrociously, he smiled.

OK, gentle reader, I realise writing at work is a stupid risk, but another thousand words is something I can well use at the moment. At 35,000 words, I still have ground to make up, although as ever my main problem isn’t lack of words but lack of plot. With the climactic scene I’ve just made a start on, Wenham is practically complete, with 15,000 still to come. I pasted in the address of the stuff about self-publishing and emailed the spreadsheet to my home email. Just to be on the safe side, I deleted the original copy of the spreadsheet altogether.