Short Story

Für die Reporterin Julie Haydock ist es der beste Auftrag ihres Lebens – aber wer profitiert wirklich von ihrem Treffen mit der berühmten Schriftstellerin?

“The house of G. Clavering”

Julie Haydock knew this would be a day she would never forget. She had been looking forward to it for months, or even longer, depending on where she set the marker. One could say her excitement began almost 20 years earlier, when — while still a reporter for her high-school newspaper in Glenville, Ohio — she read G. Clavering’s The Suspicion of Eleanor. Now, here she was in Europe, driving through the twisting mountain roads toward Cortigna in her rented BMW cabriolet, the wind in her hair, on her way to interview the reclusive author.

Getting this interview was a real coup. It had taken Julie a year and a half of carefully worded airmail correspondence to build up the author’s trust.

“You’ll never get it,” her editor at New York Life magazine, Garson Paul, had said when she proposed the idea of an interview with the mysterious best-selling author of suspense fiction.

Julie had written to Clavering, presenting herself at first only as a reader and alumna of the same college in New York as Clavering had gone to. Later, she also revealed that she wrote for New York Life and suggested the interview. To her surprise, the author agreed.

G. Clavering was known to be eccentric and, despite international success, had never ever given an interview. Julie had read every one of Clavering’s novels and followed the author’s career since The Suspicion of Eleanor. She had also read the unauthorized biography, written by a now deceased friend of Clavering’s — the biographer having disappeared under mysterious circumstances,

Julie had later learned when she tried to contact her.

The life of G. Clavering was surrounded by mystery. The early years were clear enough: born in Oklahoma, educated in New York, an internship at the New York Examiner. Then the Oscar-winning film adaptation of Eleanor, which made Clavering one of the hottest names in the world of publishing.

With The Suspicion of Eleanor, Clavering had reinvented the genre of modern suspense fiction. It was after the tremendous success of that debut novel that G. Clavering’s vita became less clear.

The author moved to Europe, publishing a best seller every year but never staying in one place for long. First, she had several consecutive addresses in and around London, but then there were moves to ever smaller villages on the continent: a farmhouse in Agindeau, and then, for tax purposes, the final move across the border to the secluded mountain village of Cortigna.

It was here that G. Clavering had built the house that insiders called “The Bunker,” above the village on the side of a mountain. Clavering had commissioned the respected architectural firm of Ankermann & Söhne in Merzan for the design of the brutalist house, which stood in such dramatic contrast to the traditional chalets of the village.

“Clavering House” was U-shaped but had square corners, with the bottom of the U looking toward Cortigna and the inside facing the mountainside directly in front of it. For anyone looking at it from the outside, “Clavering House” had no windows, making

the house look like a fortress. The inside of the U consisted entirely of glass windows. The house, therefore, looked in on itself but sent clear signals to the outside world that visitors were not welcome.

Julie was thinking about the rumors she had heard and read about “The Bunker,” and the increasingly bizarre behavior of its famous resident. Some reports told of a vast underground library, tunnels, wine cellars, and cheese caves — others spoke of a collection of medieval weapons.

According to what Julie had learned in her research, the author was said to have only one or two close friends. In an interview, Clavering’s editor, James Gilbert Styneman, had said he stopped having personal contact with the author after a business meeting in a London restaurant years earlier.

“Clavering had come to the restaurant in Mayfair with a bag of leeches and set them free on the table — and I quote — ‘So they can take part in the meeting, because they’re not only friendlier parasites, but also better editors,’” Styneman had explained.

It was only Clavering’s literary genius and marketability that made Styneman put up with the author’s strange behavior. After the meeting in the restaurant, however, all dealings were by phone or airmail.

Julie suspected that the rumors and such stories were mostly exaggerated. The typewritten letters Clavering had sent her could not be described as warm, but they were, well, normal. Julie could not imagine the author of the letters being quite the scary eccentric that Clavering was said to be.

The BMW was now in second gear, slowly making its way up the snakelike mountain road toward “Clavering House.”

“The Bunker,” she thought. Julie felt a nervousness in her stomach. Or was it fear? She found the entrance to the narrow driveway between the tall hedges and pulled in. Hidden 100 meters around the corner, “The Bunker” came into Julie’s view.

She collected her handbag, and her case with the Dictaphone, her old Pentax camera, and notepads.

Julie stood in the driveway, still some distance from the house, looking at the imposing and forbidding structure.

She was just about able to find the outline of the door in the concrete wall. Taking a few seconds to collect herself and calm the excitement that had been building up to this moment, she rang the bell and waited.

The door opened.

That evening, after Julie had returned to her hotel in Merzan, she phoned Garson Paul in New York. “I got it!” she said. “In the bag. It’s perfect. In fact, I’m going back tomorrow to discuss some ideas Clavering has for a guest column in the magazine and to get more photos in better light.”

That night, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, she and her editor went to bed extremely pleased with the promise of publication. An interview to rock the literary world.

The next day, Garson Paul waited to hear back from Julie Haydock, but the call never came. He waited and waited. A week later, Julie’s rented BMW was found off the side of a cliff in a quiet valley 36 kilometers outside Merzan. There was no trace of the reporter or her belongings.

Julie Haydock never made it to New York, nor did her interview or photos. In fact, she was never heard from again.

The following spring, G. Clavering’s latest novel, The Elimination of Emily, topped the best-seller lists and was praised by critics the world over as the author’s best work to date.