“Looks after the actual printing process. I do all the overseeing and planning — layout, bookbinding — Davina has been a tower of strength to me. A university press is extremely specialized, even has a look. C.U.P. is purple calf with gold print, and some volumes are still exquisitely tooled. Now we do a line of textbooks for undergraduates in subjects as disparate as physics and English, we put them out cheaply, but they still look like purple calf — imitation. We keep the price right down and the look right up.” Max shrugged. “Gold-edged pages? We hardly do that any more, it’s a sop for snobs.”
“Snobs like Dr. Tinkerman?”
Max sneered. “He was going back to all gilt edges.”
“What does Ivan do?” Abe asked.
“Ivan’s our traveler. Visits the great university bookstores from coast to coast, as well as other stores catering for the university press market. He monitors competing prices, and also attends all the wholesale shows where we might find new materials, paper, advances in ink and typesetting. Though the wholesale shows are more important, he also mans our booth at the A.B.A. each year.”
“A.B.A.?”
“American Booksellers’ Association convention. That and the Frankfurt Book Fair in West Germany are the two major trade publication shows each year, but they’re important for us too.”
“Did you like John as a person, sir?”
“I think I would have, had we had more time together. He was so like Martita! We’re comfortable, Lieutenant, the money is no compensation for losing a son twice over.”
“How did Mrs. Emily Tunbull regard him?”
“Actually she never met him, but I guess she hadn’t been enthusiastic about his reappearance. She was convinced John would cut Ivan out, and that she didn’t like.” Max frowned. “I heard a weird story from Davina — that Emily told her she knew about some suspicious events that had been going on for a year. When Davina tried to pin her down, she shied away. That’s Em!”
“How do you mean, ‘that’s Em!’?”
“Always full of mysterious accusations. When Martita was my wife, Em was so new to us that we didn’t wake up to what kind of mischief-maker she was, so we tended to believe her stories. Well, not any more, Lieutenant, not any more!”
“Mrs. Davina Tunbull told Sergeant Carstairs that John Hall had physically attacked her during the dinner party.”
“Oh, Vina, Vina!” Max cried, clenching his hands into fists and raising them heavenward. “That,” he said grimly, “is typical Davina. She fantasizes that every personable man who meets her tries to make love to her.” Suddenly his exasperation vanished; he grinned. “Stick around, Lieutenant, and she’ll do it to you.”
“I wasn’t aware you were aware of her failings, sir.”
“By the time Davina and I married in May of 1967, I had her summed up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m nuts about her, but I know all her tricks too. For instance, she had the hots for Jim Hunter, who never so much as noticed her on that level. That only made her try harder, until I told her what a fool she was making of herself. Vina is my wife, and I have very good reason to be sure that she’s faithful to me. But at the same time, she has to throw out lures to other men.”
“You’re remarkably perceptive, Mr. Tunbull.”
“That’s why our marriage will last. I’m an ideal husband for Davina — authority figure as well as lover and father.”
Abe changed the subject. “How do you think C.U.P. will go with Dr. Geoffrey Chaucer Millstone as Head Scholar?”
Max’s face lit up. “Fantastic! Better than Don Carter, in many ways. I envision more and more titles in the sciences, though he won’t forget the humanities. Moving with the times is the hardest task an academic publisher faces, especially the concept of cheap, soft cover texts for undergraduates. I predict a wonderful and fruitful collaboration,” said Max. “I mean, Chauce understood why we did that twenty-thousand print run.”
“What did he understand about it?” Abe asked, curious for a new slant on an old conundrum.
“Bestsellers move like lightning,” said Max, “and we’re not geared to producing them at Tunbull Printing. To have twenty-thousand in reserve ready to go is what gives us a fighting chance to keep supply up to demand.”
“That,” said Abe, relieved, “makes perfect sense.”
“Publication Day will be upon us in no time,” Max said.
“And when is Publication Day?”
“Undecided, but I’m guessing around the beginning of April.”