The Progress of a Crime Page 3

  The tall doctor came in and stood listening. “Save it for the police, Joe,” he said to Pickett. “You do your talking to them, they’ll want to hear it. In the meantime the less said the better.”

  Joe Pickett thrust out his lower lip, but said nothing. Conversation died as the doctor glared round at them.

  “Can you say anything about the cause of death?” Hugh Bennett asked.

  “You saw he’d been stabbed, didn’t you? Nothing more to say. There’s been enough trouble here to-night, talk will only make more.”

  He was back just after eight-fifteen. The Gazette’s main entrance was in the High Street, a bit of redbrick Victorian Gothic, but the reporters always used the dingy back way in through Cressiter Lane. He squeezed past great rolls of paper and went up an iron staircase. A lamp of low wattage shone dimly on the tiled walls, making the corridor look more than usually like the entrance to a public lavatory. He passed Editor Private and Gentlemen and went in the door that said Reporters’ Room.

  “Well, cock,” Lane said, “got your story written?”

  The way to treat Lane, he knew, was to answer bullying joviality with bullying joviality, to say that if he was in such a hurry he could write the story himself. Somehow, though, he stood too much in awe of Lane to say anything like that. So now he made some equivocal, some vaguely placatory reply, which indicated his sorrow that he hadn’t performed the impossibility of writing the story on the way back in the taxi.

  “Pull your finger out and get to it. The Express first. For them no sex angle.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “There’s always a sex angle. Lift the stone and sex crawls out from under. Then the Mail, Mirror, Banner, Chronicle, Herald. Five hundred words each. Then the Telegraph and The Times, couple of hundred each. Then the agencies. All right?”

  “What shall I do for us?”

  Lane was smoking another of his small cigars. He looked over the top of it like a wild pig about to charge. “A thousand.”

  “With a by-line?”

  The glare of the pig’s little eyes grew dangerous, then creases showed round them. “With a by-line. Do the Express and Mail and I’ll give a hand with the others myself.”

  It was half-past eleven when they had finished, and he felt limp. There was a rule against bringing drink into the office, but Lane unlocked a drawer of his desk, and produced a bottle of whisky. Michael had come in after watching a local amateur dramatic society perform The Years Between, and he shared in the whisky that Lane poured into tooth-glasses.

  “Here’s to journalism, and to the blooding of this young feller-me-lad,” he said. “You get it easy here, sitting on your backsides half the day. This is just a glimpse of what work’s like. When I was on the Express before the war, every day we used to…”

  Michael made a face as he sipped his whisky. He and Clare and one or two of the others said that Lane had never worked on a London paper in his life, but Hugh Bennett did not believe them. The two of them left at about midnight, with Lane’s final instructions ringing in his ear about telephoning the B.B.C. and I.T.A. regional offices in the morning. “And don’t forget the follow-ups for the news agencies,” he had shouted as they were going down the stairs.

  It had been a deeply significant evening, and the word “blooding” seemed to have its special rightness, for he really did feel as, he imagined, the young boy must feel who is blooded after seeing the killing of his first fox. As they walked through the city’s deserted centre to the flat in Pile Street that he shared with Michael Baker, he could not understand why Michael also was not excited. Instead, he talked about a young girl in the play.

  “Her name’s Jill Gardner. I talked to her afterwards, took her out for a cup of coffee. She can’t act, but she’s a poppet, a perfect poppet.”

  Michael had a particular terminology for girls. He divided those who interested him into mares and poppets. A mare, according to Michael, was a high-stepping high-class altogether superior and mettlesome young creature, hard to get and inclined to demand a great deal of money and attention when got, but really well worth the trouble and expense. A poppet, on the other hand, would be in appearance much softer and more pneumatic, a snub-nosed blonde perhaps or a rather lush, sprawlingly friendly big girl. A poppet wouldn’t expect to be taken to a good restaurant, or to occupy the most expensive seats at the cinema. Poppets were for every day, Michael would say, mares were an occasional week-end treat. The great majority of women who were not mares or poppets, including all women over thirty, Michael classified as cows or bitches.

  With an effort, he dragged back his mind from dreams of fame. “Does that mean you want me out of the flat to-morrow night?”

  “I don’t work that fast.” But Michael was pleased. “I told you I’d only taken her out for a cup of coffee. But she’s coming round to-morrow evening. You ought to meet her.”

  The flat was above a greengrocer’s shop. It contained a living-room, a bedroom with two single beds, a bathroom and a kitchenette, and it was cheap. It was because there was only one bedroom that Hugh had to be out of the way when Michael entertained his poppets and mares.

  He was brushing his teeth when Michael said something about Far Wether. “What? What’s that?”

  Michael, torso bare, was washing. “I said it’s only money. Don’t think it’s anything else.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Michael’s long, thin, weakly handsome face was serious. “Don’t start thinking it’s a golden chance for the boy reporter. It’s just a chance to make money on the linage. Very nice too.”

  “Do you think the nationals will send people down?”

  Michael rubbed his back with a loofah. “Very unlikely. They’ll leave it to their stringers down here. And don’t expect Grayling to fall on your neck and give you an Oscar.” He imitated the editor’s slightly squeaky voice. “The Gazette is a family paper, Bennett, this is not the sort of story we want to make a big feature. Now there’s a very interesting story here about an old lady of a hundred and fourteen who’s watched her first television programme and says it isn’t as good as the magic lantern. Will you go out and cover that, please?”

  They both laughed. But before he went to sleep that night Hugh Bennett indulged himself in a fantasy about a London editor reading the Gazette story, calling in his secretary, and saying: “Send a note to this young man Hugh Bennett. Say I’ve read his piece and ask if he can make it convenient to call in and see me sometime during the next week.” Before the interview could take place he fell asleep.

  5

  The story was read by night editors and news editors, and most of them found it interesting up to a point. They liked the Guy Fawkes aspect and the bit about Squire Oldmeadow, but were rather disappointed by the fact that it was a killing apparently more or less unintended, carried out by a gang of boys. Several of the papers rang up Mrs. Corby, whose unemotional and, as it seemed on the telephone, almost uninterested, reaction didn’t encourage them. It was a front-page story for one or two of them, but not a story which seemed likely to have any interesting follow-up. For a heading, they all used variations on the obvious theme of “The Guy Fawkes Murder.”

  In the Banner the story was featured prominently, but on an inside page, under the heading “Death Strikes at Guy Fawkes Party.” The story came up for discussion at the Friday morning conference.

  “It’s got some l-l-life in it, this one,” said the little news editor. “Squire of v-village, bonfire night, burning in effigy. A f-features man could make something of it. Someone like George Grady.”

  The features editor countered quickly. “George is pretty busy the next couple of days, covering the Old Tymes Toy Show and the Guided Weapons Conference.”

  “It needn’t be George,” the news editor said. “After all, this is crime. It could be F-Fairfield.”

  They both looked at Edgar Cr
awley, who sat at the head of the table with a neutral expression. Edgar Crawley was editor of the Banner, but he was something more than that, he was a kind of pipeline to the Banner’s proprietor, Lord Brackman.

  Edgar Crawley was not at all the kind of editor about whom Hugh Bennett had been dreaming. He had won a scholarship from a grammar school to Oxford, and there had taken a first in history. He had written a small book on the Congress of Vienna while in his early twenties, and had occupied a fairly important post in the C.O.I. during the war. He had come to the attention of Lord Brackman by an article in which he suggested ways of forging trade links between Britain and the Soviet Union after the war. This was a theme dear at that time to Lord Brackman’s heart, and Crawley moved from writing pamphlets for the C.O.I. to writing leaders for the Banner. Few people had all the qualities required for successful leader-writing on the Banner, the mental and verbal flexibility, the moral indignation quickly assumed and as quickly cast aside in favour of sheer down-to-earth commonsensical practicality, the ability to condescend towards experts in twenty different areas of commerce, politics and art. Lord Brackman always read the leaders in the Banner with great attention, and although perhaps he could not have written them himself, knew perfectly what he wanted them to say. He had recognised in Edgar Crawley a man almost invariably capable of saying it.

  That had been several years ago, years in which Crawley had moved onwards and upwards. He had learned to smile a great deal, with his lips closed, but it was a long time since anybody had heard him laugh. The fishlike tranquillity of his youth had markedly increased with the years, so that now there was something positively glaucous about the glances he darted from side to side of the table behind his thickly pebbled glasses. He spoke, mildly as always, tapping a paper that had used the story on its front page.

  “Burning in effigy and the village squire seem to be pretty well covered here. We don’t want to do it a day later, do we?”

  The news editor flinched a little. “Of c-course not.”

  “Is there another angle? Another way we can keep it going to-morrow, perhaps over the week-end?”

  “Juvenile delinquency,” the features editor said a little hesitantly. “I suppose you could say a thing like this spotlights the whole problem, these boys roaring in, killing somebody, roaring out again.”

  Crawley’s smile was well in place. “Juvenile delinquency is always with us. And then we can’t be sure that they were juvenile delinquents, can we? For all we know, these young people may be in their late twenties.”

  “You’re right,” said the features editor in a manly, independent way—rather as though he had been saying defiantly that Crawley was wrong. “You’re perfectly right.”

  “We see what comes in as a follow-up from this local reporter, then, and treat it accordingly. Is that agreed?” That was agreed.

  It was four o’clock that afternoon when Edgar Crawley picked up one of his telephones and heard Lord Brackman’s voice, a voice deep and thick as treacle, with a clearing of the throat perpetually incipient in it. “Corby,” the voice said. “Why on an inside page?”

  One of Edgar Crawley’s assets was his ability to remember names and identify them with stories. It was said of him that he could look at the news pages for ten minutes and identify every name and every story in them hours later. So he now had no difficulty in linking Corby with the Guy Fawkes murder, although he had been more commonly referred to as the Squire of Far Wether. Nevertheless, he now said interrogatively, “Corby?” This was a strategic move, designed to avoid answering an awkward question, and it succeeded.

  “Edgar.” Lord Brackman very nearly cleared his throat, and his choked voice took on a curious whining note. “I get the best journalists and I don’t interfere with them. I don’t tell them what to do, you know that. But this is a front-page story, Edgar.”

  “Yes.” Crawley’s voice expressed neither agreement nor disapproval. He amplified that single syllable by saying, “Yes, Brack.” This was the name by which Lord Brackman, a democrat, liked to be known to his staff.

  “It’s a big story, Edgar,” Lord Brackman said. “One with life in it. And shall I tell you why? Because it spotlights juvenile delinquency, Edgar, it really brings that out under the arclights, my boy, out into the forum of public opinion. That’s a terrible thing, juvenile delinquency. It’s sapping the whole foundations of British life.” Lord Brackman’s tone changed suddenly, the whine turned sharp. “What are you doing about it? What’s in hand?”

  “We hadn’t quite decided. I think Frank Fairfield.”

  “Frank is the best crime man in Fleet Street, but can he get the humanity? This is a human story. How did they get to be like this, these young boys, what sort of homes did they come from, why did they do it? Why, Edgar, why?”

  Crawley did not attempt to answer this rhetorical question, but merely said, “I think Frank can handle that side of it, Brack. If not, we’ll send a features man down.”

  “You’ve confidence in Frank for a thing like this?”

  It was against Crawley’s practice, one might almost say against his principles, ever to commit himself to such an expression of confidence. But there was no help for it. “Yes.”

  “That’s all I want to know, Edgar.” Lord Brackman’s voice changed again, taking on a high singing note expressive of human optimism. “If you’ve got confidence in Frank, that’s good enough for me. I trust my boys, I don’t tell them what to do or who’s the best man for a job. G’bye, Edgar.”

  “Good-bye, Brack.”

  Edgar Crawley sat for a few seconds after he had replaced the receiver in its cradle, looking out from his small office into the room beyond, the big room in which the features men and the star reporters and the secretaries sat in one conglomerate noisy heap, chattering away with their mouths on telephones or with their fingers on typewriters. Was he regretting the life he had chosen with its endless necessary betrayals of the personality, was he thinking back to that book on the Congress of Vienna written in the sunlit simplicity of youth? These are romantic notions, and in Crawley’s mind there was no room for such luxuries. He asked his secretary to see if the news and features editors could spare him a few minutes. When he faced them he was his impersonal fishlike self.

  “I think you said this morning that Frank Fairfield was free,” he said to the news editor.

  The features editor knew what was coming, and wondered only why he had been called in to the office. The news editor had been with the Banner only a few months, and was less percipient. “He’s got one or two things on, but nothing very important.”

  “Could he go down and cover this Guy Fawkes murder?”

  “B-but I thought—”

  “There’s a way we could do it that would make it a front-page story,” Crawley said in his gentle voice. “Supposing we used the case to emphasise the theme of juvenile delinquency. Find out who these thugs are, why they did it, what sort of homes they came from, and so on.”

  The news editor looked at the features editor, and waited for him to say that this had been his own idea. The features editor did nothing of the sort. He nodded thoughtfully, and said, “I see that. But is Frank just the man for it?”

  “If he’s briefed properly, I think yes.” Crawley put the tips of his fingers together as though he were expounding a thesis. “The way to tackle this, as I see it, is to play up both the mystery and the human interest angles. If we need to send down someone from features we will. In the meantime Frank can nose round as usual, talk to the local police and so on—he’s pretty good at that. This local boy who was on the spot, Bennett, what paper does he work for, would it be the Gazette? Frank just might get some leads from him. Will you two brief Frank together?”

  The news editor found it impossible to stay silent. “Th-this is exactly what we were talking about this m-m-morning.”

  Crawley’s face was perfectly blank. The in
telligent eyes behind the thick glasses looked straight at the news editor. “I don’t remember. If you’ll brief him, then.”

  When they were outside the news editor said, “If that doesn’t beat anything for hard neck. It was y-your idea about the juvenile delinquency.”

  The features editor was shaking his head. Another three months and Crawley will have him out, he thought. Aloud he said, “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got the story our way, haven’t we? Let’s go and talk to Frank.”

  6

  At almost the exact time on Friday morning that Edgar Crawley was calling his conference, Hugh Bennett was walking out of the reporters’ room next door into Editor Private. There he found Mr. Grayling, drinking a cup of tea. Mr. Grayling was a small nervous man with a made-up bow tie that was never quite in place. He wore shirts that, even when they were in other respects perfectly clean, seemed always to have rather dirty cuffs, and he was equipped with upper and lower sets of false teeth that in moments of excitement clicked vigorously together.

  “Sit down, Hugh. You were right at the heart of this sad business out at Far Wether last night, eh?”

  Grayling had not seen the story on the previous night, but this seemed still a painfully obvious remark. “It was a bit of luck,” he said brightly. “Lane sent me out to do a story on the fireworks. It fell into my lap.”

  “Into your lap, yes. Precisely.” Grayling was looking at the story, which he must surely have read before. “Excellent. A very well-written piece. My congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  Grayling sipped tea. His false teeth clattered. “Mr. Corby was—ah—a friend of the chairman. He was a frequent visitor to the chairman’s house.”

  “I see.” And he did more or less see, with a certain sinking of the heart. The chairman, who owned a controlling interest in the paper, was a local building contractor named Weddle, an alderman and a prominent Methodist.