Page 44 of Hoodoo House
Declan and Charlie stepped into the reception room. Sinclair Yamada stood by the office door.
“Sinclair. It’s good to see you again.” Declan walked up to him and shook his hand.
“Can I get you a coffee?” Charlie asked.
“No. That’s okay. I got here early and had one at the café downstairs.”
“Why don’t we sit out here?” Declan suggested, indicating the couches across from Charlie’s desk. “It’s more comfortable than my office.”
Sinclair sat down, then nervously asked, “What have you found? Did you get the computer?”
Declan said, “Before we get into that, I need to ask you a few questions. It appears that you haven’t been completely honest with us, Sinclair.”
Yamada scowled. “About what?”
“Well for starters, Mrs Cameron said that you argued with Malcolm Tull on the day before he died. Is there a reason you didn’t tell us that?”
“I didn’t think it was important. You already knew he was blackmailing me.”
“Is that what you argued about?” Declan asked.
“Yes. As I told you, he had threatened to reveal the sex tape to my employer.”
Declan stared Yamada down. “Anything else you’d like to share?”
“I can tell you he was in a mean mood, and he had clearly been drinking when we fought. What’s this about?” Sinclair snapped.
Declan ignored the question and continued, “It seems that neither Tull nor his predecessor actually wrote much for your company. We were wondering why you would keep them on?”
Declan watched Sinclair carefully. He seemed uncomfortable with the question. He shifted a bit, removed his hands from his pockets then stuffed them back in again. He got up, walked over to the window and stared out at the street below.
“Have you discovered something that I don’t know about?” Yamada asked.
Declan continued in a cool tone, “We found the computer. And it did have your sex video on it and also what appears to be the copy of the latest manuscript. You said Tull was writing a book, but there was something in the opening chapters that seemed familiar to Charlie here. At first he thought it might be a spoof ofThe Heart’s Shadowseries. Is there anything you’d like to tell us, Sinclair?”
Yamada turned his head to the side, then made his way back to the couch and collapsed into it. “Nobody was supposed to have access to the manuscript. You shouldn’t have read it.”
Charlie interjected, “Oh we didn’t read much. However, when I checked it against the otherHeart’s Shadownovels, the characters were the same. But this book…it was more like erotica.”
“Well, I guess there’s no getting around it. You need to know the truth.”
“And that is?” Declan probed.
Sinclair glowered at him. “After Marjorie Ellis finished writingThe Offal House, she had an…emotional upset, let’s call it. I wasn’t around of course. It was well before my time. She went totally off her rocker just before she finished the third book,The Heart’s Shadow, which was to be the first in a series.”
He shifted his gaze to his hands.
“So,” he continued, “there was Mount Temple Press with an author who had a huge hit, a miss and a potential money-making series. Only apparently, she wasn’t able to cope with the pressure. The solution was to bring in a ghostwriter to complete the task. That was Thomas Pritchard. This of course was after Marjorie Ellis had fled to Portugal. Thomas had been a correspondent of Miss Ellis’. When the publisher asked if she would be amenable to having someone else write under her name, she said that she had read his book,The World Before Time, and liked his writing. I don’t know what she was thinking. It was his only book. Like I said, she was off her rocker. But she suggested he would be an acceptable replacement and against all odds, it turned out all right.”
“So, she agreed to step aside and let someone take over her characters?” Declan asked.
“From what I was told, she knew she couldn’t handle the stress of writing to the tight deadlines that were asked for. Her first book took ten years, the second, four. Mount Temple Press wanted a new novel at least once per year. She gave up complete control of the series and agreed to the setup of the foundation in exchange for a percentage of all future sales of books containing her characters. It worked in everyone’s favour.”
“So, Pritchard and Tull both wroteThe Heart’s Shadownovels?” Declan asked.
“Yes.”
“And nobody knows they aren’t written by Marjorie Ellis?”
