Minute for Murder

by Nicholas Blake

  Ingle had come out with this last revelation after one of those long, silent pauses for incubation, or self-examination, which contrasted so oddly with his normal brisk and breathless manner. Nigel’s heart warmed to the little chap. He decided to become outrageously personal.

  “And because, having moved heaven and earth to get into the Armed Forces, and been turned down every time on your medical, you thought the next best thing you could do was to work yourself to death here?”

  Brian Ingle was petrified for a moment with the Englishman’s embarrassment at such intimacies. Then he unexpectedly thawed.

  “Oh, nonsense. That applies to all of us, anyway. No, the fact is I have all the creative writer’s equipment, except creativeness. Curiosity, exuberance, spiritual stamina—the whole paraphernalia. But I can’t invent. So I became a crit—a book-reviewer. So now I write flaming captions: the photographs supply the invention, the ideas; I just embroider on them.”

  It would have been Nigel’s turn to be embarrassed, if he had been capable of such a reaction. His habit of regarding human behaviour with absolute detachment, never colouring it with his own emotions and prejudices, prevented this, however.

  “You ought to get married,” he pursued.

  Another of Ingle’s pregnant and interminable silences followed. He seemed to be studying the suggestion, an abstracted look in his brown eyes, from every possible angle. Or perhaps he was merely embarrassed again.

  “‘Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth’?” he replied at last. “Perhaps you’re right. Trouble is, I have rather a high standard that way. Unlike my novel-reviewing, the high-brow boys would say,” he added with a wry twitch of the mouth.

  He seemed to be on the point of further disclosures when the door blew open as though a bomb had exploded in the passage, and Pamela Finlay, Nigel’s assistant, rushed in.

  “Morning, all! Sorry I’m late, Strangeways. Been at the dentist. Pheugh!—what a fug!”

  She strode past Nigel, papers fluttering off the desks behind her, so that the long narrow room resembled a permanent way in the wake of an express, and flung open the double window. Standing at the window, she inhaled vigorously and sketched a few deep-breathing exercises. Brian Ingle was trotting about the room, picking up papers.

  “I really think I must buy one of those sticks with points on the end that park-tidiers have,” Nigel remarked mildly. “I should quite like to be a tidier of parks.”

  “Here are your Vallombrosa leaves, Miss West-Wind,” said Brian coyly.

  “Vallom——? Oh, the high-brows at it again. Shelley, huh? T’chah! Well, to work!”

  Miss Finlay tore off her coat in a frenzied manner, as though it was the shirt of Nessus, plumped down at her desk, and glared at the papers on it.

  “Brian and I were discussing marriage,” said Nigel. “In our high-brow way.”

  “The stroke’s not on,” said Miss Finlay decisively.

  “Not on?”

  “Not on. That is, if you’re referring to Ingle’s prospects. She wouldn’t have him. And I may say, Ingle, if you knew what’s good for you, you’d thank your stars she won’t. It beats me how men——”

  But Brian Ingle, colouring deeply, had snatched up his captions and photographs from Nigel’s desk and scuttled from the room.

  “The tactlessness of women makes my blood run cold,” said Nigel presently.

  “Oh, bosh! Why can’t you men ever look facts in the face?”

  Pamela Finlay plunged at the internal telephone, and proceeded to conduct one of her celebrated dual-conversation turns.

  “Three five nine three . . . Everyone knows that Our Blonde . . . Hallo, Three five nine three? Bloggs? Mr. Strangeways’ assistant speaking. Where are those proofs? The Far East series, number four . . . is a human limpet, and it’s not Ingle she’s fastened to . . . But you promised them yesterday. . . . However much he may be stuck on her . . . Come clean, Bloggs! Have the proof-readers started on it yet? . . . What he needs is the mother type . . . Oh, they’ve nearly finished? I’ve heard that one before . . . not the courtesan. Anyway, Our Blonde is faithful after her fashion. . . . I know you’re busy; so are we: the dead-line for the printers is the 15th. Mr. Strangeways must have those proofs by midday sharp. If necessary, I shall come and fetch them in person.”

  The threat evidently sufficed. Miss Finlay slammed down the receiver while it still cackled unconditional surrender, and resumed the other branch of her conversation.

  “. . . After her fashion. Which means one man at a time. And that’s all it does mean. She was supposed to be engaged to Charles Kennington when he was working here. And the moment he left, she was off with Jimmy. I admit she’s given him a long run. Maybe he’s got under her skin. But it doesn’t stop her treating all the rest of you males to that enigmatic, come-hither-if-you-dare look, now and then. And you all fall for it. Poor little Ingle. T’chah! The fact is, she can’t help it. Give her that.”

  “Well, well, well,” commented Nigel.

  “Go on, say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “Say I’m jealous. Of course I am. Any healthy woman would be. The whole of this floor buzzing with eligible males, and all of ’em buzzing round Nita. Shocking maldistribution of the basic commodities.”

  Miss Finlay’s boisterous laugh rattled the partition walls, already much shaken by the blast of V-bombs. The usual minatory knocking sounded from the Deputy Director’s room next door.

  “Including Fortescue?” asked Nigel.

  “Oh, he’s a deep one, is old Hark’ee.”

  “What I was thinking is—how little we all know about each other. Of course, the place has always been full of gossip. But it never meant much: there was no malice in it, no deep curiosity really. We’ve been working too hard to have strong personal feelings. Or at any rate, we’ve repressed them, in the interests of making an efficient Division, and helping to win the war; and because blitzes breed a certain tolerance for one’s fellow-blitzees. But now everything has slacked off, don’t you think all those repressed personal feelings are going to rise to the surface? In fact, haven’t they begun to, lately?”

  “You mean, the Division has been getting bloody-minded?”

  “Some of us, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Let me think.”

  Miss Finlay was one who commonly suited the action to the word. She knitted her brow, buried her large, fresh-complexioned face in her hands, ran her fingers through her frizzy mop of hair.

  “I’m trying to remember—of course, it was the Thursday before last. It was my turn for lunch-time duty at the Divisional Call Point. Well, I’d just sat down at the telephone with my knitting, when the D.D. poked his nose through the door and said I could scat; he’d be in his room all lunch-time and would answer any calls. I thought it a bit odd. Hark’ee doesn’t usually go out of his way to pamper the lower grades. Well, I nipped back in here, and I footled about a bit; and then, just as I was going over to the canteen, I heard a sort of shindy blowing up in the D.D.’s room. Him and—you’d never imagine who. Give you two guesses.”

  “General Eisenhower.”

  Pamela Finlay let out one of her bawls of laughter.

  “Don’t be an ape! It was that twerp, Billson.”

  “Hark’ee slanging Billson? Nothing odd about that. We all do. Have to keep the Permanents in their place.”

  “No, what was funny was that Billson seemed to be making the running. You know how correct he is. Deferential attitude to senior officers and all that. Well, he didn’t sound at all deferential. Of course, I couldn’t hear much of what they said, through this wall. But the tone of the voices sounded like blue murder. Billson’s especially. I ought to have a blister on my ear still, the way I pressed it to the wall. I did hear Billson say, ‘This is the last chance I’ll give you.’ And a bit later Hark’ee, very coldly, ‘You’re in a cleft stick, Billson, and you know it,’ and then something about ‘Go to the dogs, for all I care.’ I got the impression tha
t Billson was threatening the D.D. and the D.D. sort of bouncing him off good and hard.”

  “What fun! Anything else?”

  “Just the name ‘Prince.’ It seemed to crop up quite often.”

  “Oh, lord! Back to Nita again.”

  “Yup. And that was all. Except, when I was just toddling off to the canteen, Billson shot out of the D.D.’s room and swept past me with such a look on his face as you never saw.”

  “What sort of look?”

  “Absolutely furious. No, furious isn’t quite the word.” Pamela Finlay tousled her hair, as though searching in it for the mot juste. “Desperate. Like a sheep at bay,” she brought out triumphantly. “So what do you make of all that?”

  “Simple. Billson discovers the D.D. is having an affair with Nita. Attempts to blackmail him. The D.D. retorts smartly that Billson is in a cleft stick, as he (the D.D.) knows for a fact that he (Billson) has a family of no less than eight illegitimate children by Nita.”

  The room quaked with the blast of Miss Finlay’s laughter. Angry knocking again sounded from the next room. The telephone rang.

  “For you,” said Miss Finlay.

  The voice of Harker Fortescue’s secretary said:

  “The Deputy Director presents his compliments, and requests that Mr. Strangeways should buy a silencer and fix it on his assistant. Also, he wants to see you after coffee. Message ends.”

  Not long afterwards, the rumbling of trolley wheels at the far end of the passage was heard, and a voice dismally wailing, “Coffee! Coffee!”

  Miss Finlay gathered up two cups and hurled herself out of the door.

  Nigel sipped the beverage known in the Ministry of Morale as coffee. It did not improve with the years—an almost colourless liquid, which might have been brewed from a compound of acorns, dish-cloths and wormwood. Miss Finlay, who cherished a mild, motherly affection for him, was in the habit of slipping two or three lumps of sugar from a private store into his cup; but they did little to palliate the bitter draught.

  “What I was thinking of,” said Nigel dreamily, “was higher up.”

  Miss Finlay knitted her brow in an agony of concentration, like a child trying to do a difficult sum in mental arithmetic.

  “Yes, higher up still,” Nigel pursued. “Jimmy himself is showing signs of wear and tear, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Don’t move at such dizzy levels myself.”

  “Of course, after six years one might expect it. But I don’t get the impression that it’s just ordinary war-weariness.”

  Nigel fell silent. He was thinking. Jimmy’s got amazing stamina; he kept us all going through the worst of it. He put the machine together and supplied the lubricant—his tact is quite incredible—never puts a foot wrong in dealing with his staff—and what a heterogeneous, awkward lot of chaps we are! But lately I feel he’s been losing his grip—not losing it, perhaps, but having to drive himself to keep it. Distrait at times. Has to wrench his mind back to the business on hand. Not quite so quick and confident when there’s a decision to be made. A bit irritable, and that’s the strangest thing of all in a man who’s always been so even-tempered. Well, maybe it’s just reaction after the strain. The war’s nearly over: we shall be disbanded in six months’ time with any luck; and then he can go back to his old job and take things easy. He’s a good chap. I’ve got really fond of him.

  Five minutes later, Nigel went next door to the Deputy Director. Harker Fortescue, as usual, was telephoning. He flipped a cigarette at Nigel, who plumped down in the luxurious leather arm-chair intended for the use of only the most distinguished visitors, and patiently waited. He studied, more attentively than usual after Miss Finlay’s queer little story, the bald head, the dyspeptically-hollowed face, the cold and fishy eye of his immediate superior. The façade was familiar; it told him nothing new to-day. He had realised long ago that it was a façade. Beneath the carefully cultivated, managerial manner, the brusqueness, the impersonal drawl of the voice, at this moment all concentrated upon the discomfiture of whoever it might be at the other end of the line, there was undoubtedly, however much some of the staff might take leave to doubt it, a human being.

  Nigel had discovered this human being in the course of the bad years, when he and Fortescue toiled together, night after night, in a dour attempt to keep abreast of the ever-growing work commissioned from the Division by other Ministries.

  Sooner or later, often after midnight, they would repair to the canteen, staggering with weariness, and Nigel would consume a trayful of spam, pickles, bread, buns and blancmange, while Fortescue toyed with a glass of milk. It was during these collations of the small hours that Fortescue revealed his secret passion. For years and years, with the zest and maniac pertinacity of a small boy autograph-hunting, he had collected—not autographs, not stamps, not china, not furniture, not matchbox lids, nor rare moths; but what he called “my feelthy peectures.” These were not filthy pictures in the accredited sense of the term. They were snapshots of the great, the famous or the notorious, caught in ill-considered or mercifully oblivious poses—pictures taken for the most part before the advent of that universal leveller, the “candid camera.” His search for such treasures had taken him all over the world: he attended auction sales and combed old junk shops to buy photograph albums. He possessed an ancient film-still showing Tolstoy brusquely rejecting a bouquet offered by his simpering wife: he possessed a snapshot of Landru being arrested; another of Dame Melba taken from behind in the act of driving her opponent’s croquet ball into a shrubbery; another of an Archbishop, celebrated for his powerful sermons on asceticism, about to stuff his mouth with a huge forkful of caviare. He claimed—and Nigel was not altogether prepared to contest it—that the clou of his collection was a snapshot, taken by some icy-nerved aide-de-camp, of Hitler chewing the carpet.

  All Harker Fortescue’s holidays from the photographic agency, which he ran in peacetime, had been devoted to this eccentric hobby. It was a hobby, thought Nigel now, wonderfully characteristic of the boyishness, the twisted sardonic humour, the streak of fantasy which underlay the Deputy Director’s working façade.

  “Yes, I appreciate that,” Harker Fortescue was saying. “But it isn’t quite the point. If you want to present a complete picture of tank construction, it’s essential (a) that you do not attempt to gloss over the mistakes made in 1939-41, and (b) that you give full value to the contributions of the fighting soldier. That is basic”—(basic was a great word of Fortescue’s managerial personality). . . . “What’s that? . . . I can only say we’ve been doing this work for six years and we reckon we know something about it.” The Deputy Director’s drawl grew more pronounced: his cold eye was fixed, hypnotically glittering, upon the invisible caller. “Of course, if you want a different kind of production, Mr. Walters, if you just want propaganda for your Minister, you can always go direct to the Print Office; I believe they undertake that sort of thing. We don’t touch it here, we’ve a reputation to keep up; the public has got into the habit of expecting to hear the truth from us, within security limits of course, and our policy of giving them the truth pays good long-term dividends, I can assure you.”

  The Deputy Director swivelled his chair from east to south-east, a sure sign that the crisis was passing. Nigel thought, not for the first time, that in such telephone conversations Hark’ee resembled a sheep-dog, tirelessly coaxing, rounding, driving an obtuse, woolly-minded flock the way he wanted it to go, and occasionally snapping at an errant hoof. He was, indeed, the perfect second-string for Jimmy, with his remarkable grasp of detail and his cold pertinacity. Jimmy supplied the originality of approach, the broad outline of policy, the tact. Hark’ee contributed the logic, the ground work and the toughness.

  Harker Fortescue gently replaced the receiver. Stroking his bald head, he turned to Nigel.

  “That’s fixed him. You’d better get on with it. Prepare an Acceptance Sheet for the job. They’ll send a synopsis by Monday next. Put Billson on to a preliminary s
urvey of the photographic material. And try and keep the Art Work Unit up to your schedule this time—they’re getting slack. You’ll have to deal with Walters from now on, but I’ve broken him in for you.”

  Fortescue continued to fire off instructions, which Nigel, apparently asleep in the arm-chair, memorised. Fortescue had long ago given up the effort to make Nigel take notes: indeed, he derived a certain subtle amusement from asking Nigel to repeat, after an arduous conference, some prolix and boring contribution made to it by one of the committee—which Nigel would proceed to do with the unflattering accuracy of a dictaphone.

  “Now let’s have a look at the Project Chart,” said the Deputy Director. This was a formidable document, stretching half the length of the wall, and resembling the composite fever-chart of a five-hundred-bed hospital as seen by one of the patients in extremis.

  “Must we?” murmured Nigel.

  “What I can never get you to realise,” said Fortescue, “is that someone must keep his fingers on all the strings, otherwise we get bottlenecks. It’s your job, as head of the Editorial Unit. I’m not going to do your work for you.”

  “Since you mention bottlenecks,” returned Nigel mildly, “I must point out that that lamentable object on your wall, useful though it may be to you as a warning against delirium tremens, is inaccurate.” He strolled over to the chart and stubbed his finger against a purple ink line. “This project received approval at Ministerial level on the 17th—you’ve only brought it up to Controller level. Slipping, Fortescue, eh?”

  The Deputy Director’s mouth twitched amusedly.

  “Bring me my purple ink, chump,” he said to his secretary. “And a pen. And a ruler.”

  Before he could protract the purple line, however, the door opened and Jimmy Lake came in. Tossing a letter on to Fortescue’s desk, he gazed out of the window, hands in pockets, his back to them.