Plot It Yourself

“The suffering publisher!” Amy Wynn cried, her nose twitching. Mortimer Oshin had a comment too, and four of them were speaking at once. I didn’t try to sort it out for my notebook.

Wolfe raised his voice. “If you pleasel You started it, Mr Harvey. If the interests of author and publisher are in conflict, why a joint committee?”

“Oh, they’re not always in conflict.” Harvey was smiling, not apologetically. “The interests of slave and master often jibe; they do in this situation. I merely mentioned en passant that the author gets stuck. We deeply appreciate the co-operation of the BPA. It’s damned generous of them.”

“You were going to outline the situation.”

“Yes. In the past four years there have been five major charges of plagiarism.” Harvey took papers from his pocket, unfolded them, and glanced at the top sheet. “In February 1955, McMurray and Company published The Colour of Passion, a novel by Ellen Sturdevant. By the middle of April it was at the top of the fiction best-seller list. In June the publishers received a letter from a woman named Alice Porter, claiming that the novel’s plot and characters, and all important details of the plot development, with only the setting and names changed, had been stolen from a story written by her, never published, entitled ‘There Is Only Love.’ She said she had sent the story, twenty-four typewritten pages, to Ellen Sturdevant in November 1952, with a note asking for suggestions for its improvement. It had never been acknowledged or returned. Ellen Sturdevant denied that she had ever seen any such story. One day in August, when she was at her summer home in Vermont, a local woman in her employ came to her with something she said she had found in a bureau drawer. It was twenty-four typewritten sheets, and the top one was headed, ‘There Is Only Love, by Alice Porter.’ Its plot and characters and many details were the same as those of Ellen Sturdevant’s novel, though in much shorter form. The woman, named Billings, admitted that she had been persuaded by Alice Porter to search the house for the typescript-persuaded by the offer of a hundred dollars if she found it. But, having found it, she had a pang of conscience and brought it to her employer. Mrs Sturdevant has told me that her first impulse was to bum it, but on second thought she realized that that wouldn’t do, since Mrs Billings couldn’t be expected to perjure herself on a witness stand, and she phoned her attorney in New York.”