Keep It Quiet

by Richard Hull

  Of course, I might adopt the simple method of forcing you to resign. That would be useless for two reasons. Firstly, the Committee, led by that pompous fool Laming, would only go and appoint an equally stupid and incompetent man, over whom I should have no control. Which brings me to my second reason. I enjoy power. I shall like watching your ineffective attempts to avoid my grasp. I like watching people squirm and wriggle. It will be amusing to sit quietly in the background, and by a steady pressure, bring you and, through you, the Club, the staff, and the members where opportunity offers, to a state of doing what I require.

  Power, let me tell you, is only really attractive if applied anonymously. To your simple mind that may seem to mean that I enjoy it only when it is freed from responsibility. That is not true. From now on I shall be entirely responsible for the real management of the Club, and the joke will be that only you – and perhaps one other – will know that such a person as I exists, and even you will not know who I am. By the way, I hope you will struggle a bit. The only fear I have is that my fun will be spoilt by a too ready acquiescence.

  Ford shivered involuntarily. Whoever this man was, and whatever reason he had for thinking he had some hold over him, he must be a madman, the sort of insane person who enjoyed cruelty for its own sake. He had read about such people, but he had always thought that they did not really exist. He turned back to the letter.

  But I see I have not yet told you why you are going to do what you are told. The reason is given in one word, and I will give myself the pleasure of typing it in capitals on a sheet all to itself.

  With nervous fingers Ford turned over the page. In the middle all by itself was the one word.

  morrison

  Ford sat down heavily. His whole office seemed to be whirling round. It was not until some minutes had elapsed that he was able to get himself a glass of water from a bottle on a side table, and go on reading.

  There, now. That was fun, wasn’t it? I wish I could have been with you when you read that and had seen what you did. If you were standing up, I am sure you sat down quickly. If you were sitting down, you probably jumped up. And then you took a drink of water. You see, I know you quite well. By the way, I think you had better start by taking that water-bottle away. It is quite out of place in an office.

  Ford fidgeted uneasily. He hoped he would not have his minor little comforts removed in this way. Soon the fellow would be telling him not to wear his old coat in the office.

  But to return. What of the late lamented? (By the way, I think a little more sympathy would not have been out of place.) Of course I know a very great deal of what has been happening. But not, you may be relieved to know, everything. For instance, which of you murdered him? Did you do it yourself? Somehow I don’t think – if you will excuse such a vulgar expression – that you have the guts. Still, you had a good deal of provocation, and so did all the rest of the staff. Any of them might have poisoned him, though not, I agree with you, with perchloride of mercury. There are, as I think you are beginning to discover, objections to that. Or was it that quarrelsome, tiresome man, Pargiter? Did you know he was in the library earlier in the evening? Or that venial doctor?

  He, by the way, is the ‘one other’ to whom I referred just now. It is only fair that he should know. I cannot imagine how you induced him to fall in with your little plan, he seems a sensible fellow. In fact I tell you candidly that I advise you to show this to him, both in fairness and because frankly he will keep you straight.

  However, as you see, there are still some details I have to find out. Don’t worry. I shall find them. But meanwhile I think I had better receive a message from you which will show that you are going to have the sense to do what you are told, and I think I have hit on rather a happy way for you to send it. The other day I heard an elderly and respected member of the Club (wouldn’t you like to know if I am either?) complaining that fried curled whiting was never on the menu. A simple taste, quite easy to satisfy; and yet it is typical of you that you did nothing about it. So, as a sign, next Thursday there will be fried curled whiting for dinner. Just like that. You will remember, won’t you?

  P.S. Don’t forget the water-bottle.

  In a violent passion Ford put down the letter. So this was what Anstruther’s silly schemes had led him to! To be the victim of a blackmailer! A low-down creature who was capable of blackmailing the secretary of his own club!

  Well, it was quite easy! All he had to do was to ignore the letter and let the brute do his worst. He triumphantly put the water-bottle on to his desk. Let the fellow take a good look at that next time he came in! With a convulsive gesture of his fat hands he seized the letter with the intention of tearing it up, but, just as he had it firmly gripped, he stopped. After all, supposing he wanted to prove blackmail, wouldn’t it be advisable to have his evidence?

  Sitting down once more at his desk, he re-read the missive. Suppose he was to be brave and call in the police, and ask for protection against a blackmailer? Well, he would have to start admitting rather a large number of things, and certainly his correspondent was right; he would have to tell Anstruther first. Even if the doctor agreed, there was a further difficulty. From whom was he to be protected? That was a problem which had to be thought out, and rather carefully too. It would certainly mean losing his job if he accused the wrong man.

  But after all, did it amount to blackmail? The writer of the letter was not demanding money with menaces, which Ford vaguely believed was the approximate definition of blackmail. He was not even trying to extort any property or valuable thing. He could imagine the scene in court.

  ‘And was he attempting to blackmail you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To obtain a valuable thing?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘And that thing was?’

  ‘A fried curled whiting.’

  Laughter in court in which his lordship and the jury joined heartily. No, it would not do at all. He would probably find himself under restraint as a lunatic.

  Taking a cigarette from his case, he struck a match and decided to think the thing over.

  ‘Supposing’, he remarked to the water-bottle, ‘I give the fellow a little rope in the hope that he will hang himself? Or rather commit himself. Supposing that I use the time in finding out who he is and spying on him while he is spying on me?’ He chuckled and lit another match, the first one having burnt his fingers. ‘What sport it would be to see the engineer hoist with his own petard!’

  Whenever Ford indulged in a quotation, which was distressingly frequently, it was never quite apposite and never quite accurate.

  ‘Well, anyhow,’ he went on, ‘my mind’s made up. To appear to yield and really to be “bold, bloody, and resolute”. But all the same, I think I had better make it clear that he is not to wipe his boots on me as if I was the door mat.’ He picked up the house telephone and talked to the chef. ‘That you, Benson? Look, two or three people have been complaining to me that they never have whiting for dinner. Yes, I agree, a beastly fish. However, always humour them. Give it to them on Thursday, will you? What? Ordered already? Look here, I’m sorry, but I’ve practically promised it to them. Put it into the Club dinner as another alternative, but don’t, on any account, make it fried curled whiting. Fried fillet of whiting, please.’

  At the other end Benson was looking puzzled. It was unlike the secretary to interfere with his arrangements. In the opinion of the chef the secretary would do much better to mind his own business, namely acting as a dummy safety valve to which members could complain, while he and the steward got on with the job. As for fried fillet of whiting, it never looked well, he protested.

  But to his surprise Ford was quite adamant. There was to be whiting for dinner on Thursday and it must be filleted.

  Hughes, temporarily off duty from the library floor, chancing to pass by, was quite surprised to find the chef actually grumpy. It was so unusual that he stopped to ask him what the trouble was.

  ‘Here’s the secretary
trying to run the Club!’

  Hughes smiled. ‘Well, after all, old boy!’

  ‘Oh, I know, but he shouldn’t interfere with the food. Especially not with the details. I don’t so much mind his saying we must have whiting on Thursday if he must go and promise people things, but when he says it’s got to be fried fillets, it’s going beyond his province.’

  ‘Fried fillets of whiting,’ murmured Hughes. ‘I wonder why? I thought I heard Pargiter – you know, one of my beauties in the small dormitory – saying he wanted a curled whiting.’

  ‘Well, there you are. Now don’t you hang about gossiping in my place any longer.’

  The chef started pressing some spiced beef with more vigour than tenderness.

  7

  Thursday’s Dinner

  The members’ dining-room of the Whitehall Club was known as the coffee-room, a phrase faintly redolent of the age of Dickens. As the members of the Whitehall Club would have dissolved themselves as an institution rather than allow smoking in their coffee-room, and as the coffee stage of any meal usually synchronises with a desire to smoke, the coffee-room might almost be said to be so termed because coffee was never served in that room alone.

  When he was first appointed, the Committee had told Ford that he was expected to take most of his meals there, so that he might see from personal experience how things were being run – for the Committee very rightly considered that if the food, and especially if the drink was right, nothing else would matter so very much.

  Ford never really liked it. Not that he was not made welcome. Grumblers such as Morrison, curmudgeons such as Pargiter, who managed to imply that he ought really to feed in the servants’ hall, were rare, and their behaviour was not approved of by the rest of the Club. After all, most of the members, though they might be a little difficult about their own pet grievances, were perfectly rational about everybody else’s, and were even ready to sympathise with Ford’s troubles. Most of them liked Ford, though secretly or openly they expressed the opinion that there were better club secretaries. Still, he was always amiable and obliging. They admitted that he had a devil of a job, while privately considering that they could do it a great deal better themselves. Meanwhile, as a companion, they had nothing against him – a bit dull, perhaps, no more.

  But what Ford himself disliked so much was the feeling that when he dined there he was still on duty, that everything that went wrong was his fault and must be corrected by him. He would sit there worrying until he had spoilt his own digestion and made all the staff nervous. Of course, if anything went seriously wrong, he never noticed it.

  On this particular Thursday night his nerves seemed to be worse than ever. The head waiter was nearly in despair. He hurriedly moved to the other end of the room two of the younger waiters, who had only just been promoted from the ranks of the pages. They would probably do the wrong thing anyhow, but they had better not be put off by the sight of Ford fidgeting. He went up to the carver quietly.

  ‘Apparently what’s biting him is the fish. He keeps on looking up whenever anybody has any served, as if the end of the world had come.’

  ‘The fish? Well, I passed some remark to Benson about the fish this evening and nearly got my head bitten off. It seems the old man ordered it himself.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t seem to like it now he’s got it. And he’s still looking at everybody else’s. Try to serve it so that it looks well.’

  The carver looked at him pityingly. How could you serve fillet of whiting except, so to speak, flat?

  Round the rather gloomy coffee-room with its massive cut-glass chandeliers, originally designed to hold candles and now looking rather out of date, dinner was proceeding quietly. Most of the members who were dining there that night did so frequently, did so normally, in fact, if there was no reason for being elsewhere. Gradually, as the years had passed on, they had slipped unconsciously into regular habits, not perhaps entirely from their own choice, but as a result of a steady pressure from the staff.

  It worked in this way. A new member would come in. He would be shown to whatever table was unlikely to be wanted by anyone else. The next time he came, without thinking, he would go to the same table. From that moment his doom was sealed. Ever after, that particular table was reserved for him, and any attempt to go elsewhere would be greeted by such obvious disappointment that he would feel unable to break away. There was even a known case of one member who found himself, to his surprise, supposed to covet a particular seat, by which he was pushed into a position of more prominence than his essentially modest nature desired. In winter it was draughty; in summer the sun was in his eyes; but there he sat three hundred days in the year for six whole years before he summoned up sufficient courage to ask to be put somewhere else. It was another four years before the waiter who had looked after that table all the time ceased to look on him as one who had lapsed unaccountably into heresy.

  With everything else it was the same. A member asked two successive nights for biscuits instead of toast, and the third night biscuits would be proudly brought automatically. It was a sign that he was known, and perhaps, too, it was the only way for the staff to while away pleasantly the rather dull hours, and maintain their personal pride that they were doing their job well. It must be sadly admitted that the younger waiters used to back their personal judgement with each other in pennies as to whether A would select jugged hare or roast beef, while the likelihood of B taking sprouts rather than marrow had been so hotly debated that sixpence had been known to change hands on it.

  On the whole this largely unconscious system worked well. People got what they wanted quickly, regularly, and automatically, without having to think for themselves, while those who insisted on variety quickly established a reputation for eccentricity which eased the monotony.

  Practically all the thirty or forty people dining that Thursday night were regular habitués, and all of them had known tastes. They were allowed, as a courtesy, to order their own dinner, but if the staff had done it for them, the results would have been almost identical. The head waiter looked round fairly happily. There were only two, perhaps three danger spots. The two newly promoted lads were in safe hands, looking after the most regular diners, men who were so constant that they would inevitably train the beginners. The chief danger was Ford (inadvertently) and Pargiter, a man whom the head waiter knew was always out for trouble. Cardonnel he expected later, but he did not so much mind about him – a precise man, it was true, given to asking awkward questions, but fundamentally kind-hearted, and prepared to make reasonable allowances if you took him the right way.

  He moved so as to be at hand if Pargiter started being troublesome, and watched him neatly removing the bones from a herring. He was glad to see that he appeared to be reasonably happy. He would have expected Pargiter to have chosen whiting, on the absence of which he had been commenting for some time. However, all seemed to be well. From where he stood he could hear anything Pargiter might say to Ford at the next table, and so, perhaps, discover why the secretary was more than usually on edge.

  ‘Let me congratulate you,’ came Pargiter’s icy voice, ‘on having at last adopted one of my unimportant suggestions.’

  ‘You mean?’ Ford walked straight into the trap and with two words gave away the fact that he had forgotten all Pargiter’s suggestions. Moreover he should have known that the Pargiters of this world are always most dangerous when most polite.

  ‘I feared you had forgotten my little wish. Merely that we should have whiting occasionally. I have, you know, asked you for it on several occasions.’ He took a little mustard sauce before continuing. ‘Yes, I see the direction of your glance. I am in fact, as you observe, eating a rather indifferent herring. I dislike herrings as a matter of fact, but having repeatedly requested the head waiter, and even, though you appear to have forgotten it, asked so distinguished a person as yourself, for fried whiting – fried curled whiting – I felt rather offended when I found that when for the first time for many months we
have whiting – it is filleted.’ He broke off for a moment and summoned a waiter. ‘I have had all I want of this’ – almost a sniff – ‘herring. Are there any vegetables tonight?’

  The head waiter, looking at Ford, saw him turn red, and then white, and then red again. To his mind the secretary ought not to be so thin-skinned as to let himself be upset by the sneers of a man like Pargiter. Everybody knew that he always went on like that, and would indeed be perfectly miserable if he had to admit that his dinner was perfect.

  ‘But now,’ went on Pargiter, ‘that we shall no longer have to pander invariably to the wishes of, I am afraid I must say, that rather unpleasant person Morrison, perhaps the desires of some of the other old members may be occasionally considered. By the way, we have been electing some very unpleasant young members recently – but I fear I bore you. I see you are unable to give me your attention at the moment.’

  ‘Not at all, sir. I was listening most carefully. A momentary touch of indigestion.’

  Through Ford’s brain was racing a problem. Was Pargiter deliberately telling him that it was he who had written the letter? If so, life would be unbearable for the unfortunate secretary! But then if he had, would he be so obvious? Would it not be more like Pargiter’s character to keep entirely in the background, or had he found it impossible not to let his victim know whose claws were going to scratch?

  Again, was it a double bluff? Supposing that Pargiter had written the letter, might he not think that Ford would assume that he would not give himself away, and therefore, that when he apparently did, the conclusion would be that it must be a coincidence, and that Pargiter could not be the man who knew too much. Besides, Ford remembered now, Pargiter had been complaining about the absence of whiting. Was it possible that it was he who had put the idea into the letter writer’s head? But then no one could ever have referred to Pargiter as a ‘highly respected member’ of the Club.