‘I’m afraid not. But, if you are interested, Miss Sanders could tell you—our receptionist. She makes a note of every visitor.
Chapter 4
Verso
NIGEL GOT BACK to Angel Street just before the main door of Wenham & Geraldine was shut. He had glanced through the evening papers on the tube: one carried a review of Time to Fight mentioning but not quoting its strong criticisms of Sir Charles Blair-Chatterley; another had a news-story about the injunction and the withdrawal of the book, followed by a brief account of the trouble in the Colony after General Thoresby had been superseded as O.C. the troops there. The third made no mention at all of the book or the impending libel action.
The gipsyish Somerville graduate was at her desk in the reception room. Nigel, who had decided that he could not ask her for the information he wanted, in his role of specialised reader, said straight out:
‘Mr. Geraldine tells me you keep a record of all visitors to the office, Miss Sanders.’
‘That is so.’
‘Would you please tell me who came in during the afternoon of 23rd July and the morning of 24th July.’
The girl looked mystified, and a little distressed. ‘I’m not sure if—I mean—’
‘Ring Mr. Geraldine and ask him if it’s all right for you to give me the information.’
She did so, then took out from a drawer a large leather-bound book and turned over the pages—rather slowly, as if she were also turning over some problem in her mind. ‘The 23rd July, you said? Here we are. Afternoon. General Thoresby, Mr. Leeson-Williams, Miss Miles …’ She recited a list of some dozen names. ‘24th July. Mr. Ainsley, Miss Miles, Mr. Bellison. Mr. Smith, Mr. Ritchie, Mrs. Vane, Miss Holloway, Rev. Dowle. That’s up to midday on the 24th.’
Nigel had noticed an almost imperceptible pause between the names of Bellison and Smith, but made no direct comment on it. ‘That’s all, is it?’ he asked.
‘That’s all.’ Her eyes met his with a bold, level look, as she dropped the book back into the drawer. If she had any curiosity about Nigel’s odd request, she refrained from showing it.
Nigel thanked her, went out of the room, rang for the lift, took it up to the first floor, quietly got out and came down the stairs.
‘Left my evening papers here,’ he said, as he entered the reception room again. Miss Sanders, taken by surprise, had no time to conceal the leather-bound book or the ink-eraser. Colouring furiously, she resisted for a moment his attempt to take the book from her; then, with a shrug, yielded it.
Not looking at the book, Nigel asked, ‘Why were you rubbing out Cyprian Gleed’s name?’
‘I wasn’t doing anything of—’
‘That’s not very bright, for a First in History.’ Nigel opened the book at 24th July, exhibiting, between the entries of ‘Mr. Bellison’ and ‘Mr. Smith,’ the half-erased name of Miss Miles’s son.
‘Who the hell are you?’ the girl angrily exclaimed. ‘An efficiency expert or something? It’s absolutely intolerable—’
‘Why were you rubbing out Cyprian Gleed’s name?’
‘I refuse to tell you.’
‘Just don’t like the name? I’m not surprised.’
This provocation had the desired effect. The girl blurted out, ‘Cyprian is— If you must know, he came to see me privately. The firm doesn’t encourage followers during office hours, and I didn’t want you to go tattling to the partners about it, as you seem to be some sort of spy.’
‘If it was a private visit, and such visits are frowned upon, it’s strange you should have entered his name in the book at all.’
Miss Sanders flushed again. ‘It becomes quite mechanical,’ she said.
‘Even with “followers”?’
‘You’re foully offensive!’
‘It was your word, not mine. How long was Mr. Gleed in the building, do you remember?’
‘He was in this room the whole time,’ the girl protested.
Nigel made no comment on the wording of her reply.
‘Do you remember the exact time? No, for heaven’s sake don’t lie about it. Presumably Mr. Smith and Mr. Bellison had appointments, and that would fix the time Cyprian Gleed arrived.’
‘He came in around half-past ten, I think, and stayed for—no, I can’t remember—it wouldn’t have been very long. And now, what is all this about?’
‘My dear girl, you know quite well what we’re talking about.’
‘Cyprian is a man of absolute integrity.’
‘Good. Then why need you get into such a state? A man of integrity would never have played that trick with Time to Fight’—Nigel held up the proof copy—‘to get his own back on the firm for their refusal to back his literary magazine. Would he?’
‘Everyone misjudges Cyprian,’ said the girl miserably. ‘If they’d only give him a chance—’
She took off her spectacles and began polishing them vigorously: her eyes looked bleared and strangely naked.
‘Well,’ said Nigel, smiling as he handed her back the leather-bound book, ‘I must be about my sinister business. Cheer up. All is not lost. Not yet, anyway.’
Nigel plodded upstairs to Stephen Protheroe’s room. Stephen gave him a preoccupied glance, then buried his head again in the typescript he was reading. He appeared to read with his nose, which hovered over the pages like a humming-bird hawk-moth, darting down now and then as if to smell the author’s style, twitching and sniffing frequently. After sampling thus several pages of the book, he exclaimed ‘Faugh!’ scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper, attached it to the typescript, and looked up at Nigel again.
‘They say that every man has one good book in him. They are wrong. Where’ve you been?’
‘Talking to people. Mr. Bates, for instance.’
‘And what was he buzzing in your ears?’
‘He said you were present when he sent Time to Fight to press.’
‘If he says so, no doubt I was. Why?’
‘Well, he couldn’t have tampered with the proof: you’d have seen him.’
‘But I told you he wouldn’t have done it. Bates is a bore, but not otherwise flagitious.’
‘There’s a difference between “wouldn’t” and “couldn’t.” If, as he claims, you took the proof into his room and stayed there talking while a covering note was written and the proof wrapped up, your evidence clears Bates.’
‘Good. Then I’ll give that evidence.’
‘But do you actually remember that it was so?’ asked Nigel patiently.
‘Too long ago. But I’m sure Bates is right. He is totally devoid of imagination and therefore he could not have imagined it.’
With this, Nigel had to be content. Stephen’s eye was already straying towards another typescript.
‘Did Miss Miles’s son visit her that morning?’ Nigel asked.
‘That young clot? May have, for all I know. He was infesting the office last summer.’
‘You don’t happen to have a note of the date his proposition was turned down?’
‘No. I’ll ask.’ Stephen dialled a number on the internal telephone. ‘Arthur? Stephen. What date did you and Liz turn down young Gleed’s horrible scheme for a literary mag? You had a final meeting with him, didn’t you? … 21st July. Thanks.’ Stephen turned back to Nigel. ‘21st July. Sinister coincidence, eh? Oh, I forgot. Ryle said he’d like a word with you when you got back.’
Nigel left the little man, his gnome-like head floating in a pool of yellowish light from the unshaded bulb, and went down to Basil Ryle’s room. The junior partner was at his desk, conferring with a depressed-looking middle-aged woman.
‘Just one moment, Strangeways. Take a chair.’ Ryle handed the woman an advertisement pull. ‘This was yours, Miss Griffin? Look at it again. Do you really think any living soul is going to be attracted to the book by this advertisement? “A charming novel about young love, in an East Anglian setting.” Sets the blood on fire, doesn’t it? Fills one with seething curiosity.’
‘Well, I’m
sure I—’
‘We pay £25 for the space. If it doesn’t catch the reader’s attention, we might as well give the money to a Home for Lost Dogs.’
‘What about ‘a broad on the Broads’?’ suggested Nigel.
Miss Griffin received the suggestion unsmilingly. ‘I don’t think Mr. Geraldine would care for—’
‘We’re not selling the book to Mr. Geraldine,’ Ryle broke in. ‘We’re trying to sell it to a lot of dopes, who’d much rather be looking in at television. Wait a minute—what’s the heroine’s name? Helen. It would be. “Nelly or Telly”? Something on those lines? No. They’d choose Telly every time. I’ve got it—“The tale of a Suffolk Helen who broke all hearts.”’
‘But actually, Mr. Ryle—’
‘I dare say she didn’t. But 90 per cent of novel readers are women, and 99 per cent of them would like to think they leave a trail of broken hearts behind them. All right, Miss Griffin.’
Miss Griffin retired, with a look that suggested the breaking of heads rather than of hearts.
‘The trouble with this firm is advertising in a sort of well-bred undertone, like a butler offering red wine or white.’ Basil Ryle ruffled his mop of ginger hair, and suddenly looked very young indeed. ‘Well, how’ve you been getting on?’
Nigel gave him a censored account of his interview with General Thoresby and a fuller one of the talk with Mr. Bates.
‘You can count Bates out, I think.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Ryle bit his nails. He seemed jumpy: no doubt, being a live wire, he would. ‘But what about clues? Fingerprints, I mean? Handwriting? I’d have thought that’s the first thing you’d be after.’
‘I’ve asked one of the handwriting experts at Scotland Yard to look at the proof this evening. He’s a friend of mine. But one word, written twice in block capitals, isn’t likely to get us anywhere. Fingerprints? The proof copy will be covered with them, for one thing. Besides, do you think the partners will let me fingerprint everyone in the building?’
‘Why not?’
‘Including Miss Miles?’
‘Millicent? How does she come into it?’
Ryle’s tone was sharp. Under stress, a slight coarseness could be heard in his vowels. Provincial boy, from lower middle-class parents, who has made good—that accounts for the way he throws his weight about with subordinates like Miss Griffin, thought Nigel: he’s touchy, and will need careful handling. He studied for a moment the red-haired young man, who had tilted his chair back against the wall—the neat, dark suit, the soft collar and tie rumpled.
‘Miss Miles had a motive for doing it: two motives, actually.’
‘Motive? Come off it.’
‘She had been humiliated in public, during the war, by General Thoresby. And this firm has refused to reprint some of her novels.’
‘You call that a motive?’
‘For an egotistic and vindictive woman it could be.’
Basil Ryle pushed himself from the wall, the front legs of his chair coming down with a bang. ‘You set up as a professional judge of character, do you?’ he dangerously began. ‘Now see here—Yes, what is it?’
An attractive blonde had entered the room.
‘Your letters, Mr. Ryle.’
‘Oh, damn the letters!’
‘You said you wanted them to go off by the six o’clock post. It’s five to six.’
Basil Ryle started signing a sheaf of letters in a folder on his desk. ‘You want to meet the boyfriend at six, I suppose.’
This bit of badinage sounded curiously artificial and unconvincing, as though he had learnt it from a correspondence course. The blonde secretary was looking down at Ryle’s head in a maternal, almost intimate way. He’s all thumbs where girls are concerned, thought Nigel, yet they feel an attraction.
‘“Colophon” has only one “1,” Daphne. All right, I’ve altered it … Here you are. Run along, and don’t let him take any liberties.’
‘Good night, Mr. Ryle.’
When the girl had left, Basil Ryle fidgeted with the pulls on his desk, then jerked out, ‘You free for a bit? Let’s go and have a drink. I’m sick of this office.’
They left the building, silent now and with only one or two passage lights burning, by the side door. The night air was clammy-cold, but Ryle inhaled it vigorously.
‘That’s more like it,’ he said; then, cocking his head towards the Thames, ‘never thought I’d want to see a river again. My dad was a welder on Tyneside. One of the casualties of the Slump. Just rotted quietly away. Poor old Dad.’ In the lamp-light, as he glanced up at the elegant façade of Angel Street, his face wore a pleased, incredulous look, as though he could hardly believe yet in the fortune which had brought him here. ‘My dad was a great reader. Plenty of time for it, too, after 1930. And the Public Library was warm. But you can’t eat books.’
He led Nigel into the private bar of a small pub, tucked away between Angel Street and the Strand. ‘Not many know of this place. We can have a quiet talk.’ The bar was indeed empty; and with its high-backed settles and cheerful fire, it had a countrified feel. Ryle ordered a double whisky and chaser for himself, Hollands for Nigel.
‘Millicent Miles,’ he said abruptly. ‘You know her well?’
‘I only met her today.’
‘Well, I do. And I’m telling you, she’s a greatly misjudged woman. She had a rough time when she was young. Like me. It scars you. It’s all very well for a highbrow like Protheroe to turn up his nose at her books. Of course, they’re escape stuff—’
‘Escape from what?’
According to Basil Ryle, Millicent had been the daughter of a drunken father, who went bankrupt when she was in her early teens, and a slut of a mother. Her parents quarrelled incessantly: the father’s temper was unpredictable—he would beat the small girl, then drool over her in alcoholic remorse: the mother used her as an unpaid slavey. Millicent had run away from home at the age of seventeen and got a job as a shop assistant. Her miserable and repressed girlhood had generated the fantasies which later made her the darling of the lending libraries.
‘You’ve been reading her autobiography?’ asked Nigel.
‘No. She told me all this.’ During his narration, Ryle had put down several whiskies, and the effect was beginning to tell. ‘You probably think she’s a hard-boiled number. You’re quite wrong. Underneath, she’s a damned sight more vulnerable than most of the sensitive plants of both sexes you meet.’
‘When did you first meet her?’
‘And lonely too. At one of those literary cocktail parties. Some years ago. Before I was in business on my own. I said to her, straight off, total stranger, “You look lonely.” Extraordinary—don’t know what possessed me to do it. And she said, “You’re the first man who has realised that.” I could see she’d had a rough passage with men. Don’t believe everything you’re told about her.’
‘I won’t.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I said “I won’t.”’
‘Good for you. Have another drink. No, I insist. Hollands again? … Where were we? Yes. A rough passage. Do you know, when she was nineteen a man seduced her; promised to marry her—the usual story—then left her in the muck: baby was stillborn. Oh, she’s been through the hoops. Married a stockbroker or something a year later, just to get away from poverty. That’s when she started writing. To get away from the stockbroker, if you ask me.’
‘She has a son by him, hasn’t she?’
‘Cyprian. Yes.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘A sponge.’ His drinking had carried Ryle rapidly through the animated to the melancholy stage. ‘A sponge with a beard. Sucks up her money like water.’
‘Was he very annoyed when Wenham & Geraldine turned down his project for a magazine?’
‘I expect so.’ Ryle was already uninterested in the egregious Cyprian. ‘That’s one reason why I wanted the firm to reprint some of her novels. She needs the money. She’s absurdly generous, you know: offered
to put some into my own business, but it was too late by then.’
‘But there are other reasons?’ suggested Nigel.
Basil Ryle glared at him owlishly. ‘What a damned lot of questions you ask. Like one of those Bloomsbury relics. Always probing and prodding away, as if a personal relationship was a piece of meat on a grill. You in the war?’
‘Not to speak of.’
‘I saw a crew after their tank had brewed up. Talk about grilled! You know what’s wrong with your generation? You believe in goodness, kindness, decency. Other things being equal, decency will always prevail—that’s what your lot think. It’s bloody pathetic.’
Nigel let that one go past. He got Ryle talking about his start in publishing. Immediately after the war, he had gone into an advertising firm and quickly worked his way up. Millicent Miles’s third husband was one of their clients—a wealthy, literary-minded manufacturer; he took a fancy to Basil, discovered his ambition for publishing, and found him the necessary financial backing to start a publishing business.
‘It was like a fairy-tale,’ said Ryle. ‘But it didn’t have a fairy-tale ending.’
Nigel could imagine the tough, provincial young man flattered by Millicent Miles’s interest, dazzled a bit by the world into which she introduced him. And no doubt she had kept him dangling: she couldn’t do without a string of admiring men. But how had she kept him so long? Concealed her essential hardness and egotism so long from him? He must have a soft streak in him, a romantic streak; or perhaps it was something to do with the decency he claimed to disbelieve in—a loyalty which kept his eyes shut.
Leading the conversation back to Millicent Miles, Nigel learnt that she had divorced her first husband—the stockbroker—who was now dead; her second, a neurotic racing motorist, had shot himself; the third, Basil’s patron, had divorced her a year ago.
‘She feels she is doomed never to make a go of it, never to be happy for long,’ said Ryle. ‘Poor girl. She is a girl still, you know, underneath all that camouflage.’
Oh dear, oh dear, thought Nigel, so you are in love with her; you’re to be Mr. Right and pick up the pieces and put her together again.
End of Chapter Page 5
