For part one of the arrival of T.S. Eliot in my Imaginary Writers’ Room, click here. With the affectionate thanks of the author to W.G. for helping to consider the committee and to A.W. for his Michelangelo comment on part one.

“Who is it?” said Daphne du Maurier.

“Oh, do not ask ‘Who is it?’ Let him in to make his visit,” I blurted out.

T.S. Eliot blushed. “You remember ‘Prufrock,'” he told me as he walked past Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and came into the Imaginary Writers’ Room in my mind. “But a visit?”

“Just being poetic,” I said quickly. “You may stay as long as you like. I want more poetry around here,” I said.

Conan Doyle fidgeted. “But Margaret, your detective story… your essays!” he said.

“I’m no giving them up, Mr. Chairman — Arthur,” I said, smiling with what I hoped looked like determination. “But the poets remind me about using words consciously, lovingly even.”

With that glint in Robert Burns’ eye, I saw Arthur’s logic in having a separate side of the table for ladies. Agatha Christie glared at Burns better than I could.

“Have I not shown you the value of precision with words?” said Arthur.

“Yes, of course you have,” I said. “Come at once if convenient,” I began.

“If inconvenient, come all the same,” Arthur and Agatha finished the famous message along with me — and, I was surprised to note, so did T.S. Eliot.

“You know that story, too!” I said to Eliot. “Until lately, I thought it was just ‘The Final Problem’ that you liked.”

Arthur sighed. “Do we need to go over this waterfall again, Margaret?”

I tried to smile — it was fresher than asking about well-trodden ground — but ‘The Final Problem” and its waterfall have always struck me as powerfully sad stuff. “Arthur,” I said helplessly, “I think we do if Tom’s going to stay. And I want him to stay.”

“You don’t want me to come and go from the room?” said Eliot.

“No, it’s the writers’ room, after all,” I told him. “If you’re going to come and go, talking of Michelangelo –“

Ah, good, I had him smiling with another reference to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

“The Imaginary Artists’ Room is over by my other ear,” I said. “I’m not sure Michelangelo is there very much. I mostly just let the Impressionists hang out. After all, it’s so close to the French area of my memory.”

“Ah, I’ll stay here then,” said Tom. “It seems a congenial spot for those of us who love words.”

“Margaret has seen to that,” said Daphne, “from the very first sentences that invited us all in.”

“You and your first sentences,” I said affectionately. “Why, if I could get back that one I was drafting last night –“

Agatha Christie patted my arm and said “Now, Margaret, don’t get Daphne going about ‘last night’ sentences again.” Her face fell. “Last night and again. Oh dear.”

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” said Eliot. “I should make a lot of new memories here for Margaret.”

“It’s not exactly my choice — you just all make yourself so much a part of my mind that I want you to have a special space here, in my imagination,” I said, pointedly looking all around the room. “But yes, music has been important for teaching me more about Tom’s poetry.”

“Oh, not the cats,” said T.S. Eliot.

“Yes, ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,'” I said.

“You’ve read it?” said Eliot.

“I own it,” I said. “Of course, cat-loving friends in my life made sure of that. But how could you leave Grizabella out of things?”

The committee members nodded to each other. They can hear what goes on in the music room — and between my ears generally.

“I was attracted to ‘Prufrock’ and ‘The Waste Land’ as a sad teenager,” I began.

“Now, Margaret, don’t be redundant,” said Arthur gently.

“As a teenager,” I continued, “I’d have loved to find ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night,’ but I just found it before you got here,” I told Eliot.

“You did?” he said, a little uncomfortable.

“Oh, everything’s being saved now, whether the author likes it or not,” I told him.

“I thought the rhapsody wouldn’t fit with the poems about the cats,” he said. “But someone else made sure it did.”

“And turned it into ‘Memory,’ ” I said.

“At least it distracted you from the thievery,” said Arthur in a growly voice.

“What thievery, Arthur?” I said

“Borrowed one of my better phrases, from before I killed off… him,” he replied.

“The Napoleon of Crime,” I said, right along with T.S. Eliot and Agatha Christie.

“That Macavity of yours — the name even sounds similar to Moriarty,” said Arthur. I suspected that his offended pose was just that, a pose.

“He was meant to, Mr. Chairman,” said Eliot. “In tribute.”

“Tribute? To Moriarty?” Arthur started to rise from his chair.

“To you, right, Tom?” I said.

“Right, Margaret,” said T.S. Eliot. “Why, I wrote an essay about him — and you, Sir Arthur — in 1929.”

” ‘Sherlock Holmes and His Times,’ “ I said. “Oh, I had fun finding that one.”

Arthur gave me a suspicious smile. “His times, not mine?” he said.

“You must admit they were different,” I said quickly.

“Well, settle in, Mr. Eliot, and we’ll have a long talk,” said Arthur.

Robert Burns slid his chair over and Louis Stevenson abandoned the sofa for once, settling in on the men’s side of the table.

Oh, this was going to be the source of a great new memory. A new day had begun.

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