Publish and Be Murdered (4 page)

‘Oh, it will have to do,’ said Lambie Crump impatiently. ‘Can you continue now? Have you pulled yourself together?’

‘Yes, I’m OK now. Sorry for collapsing like that, Willie. It was a bit of a shock.’

‘Well, as long as you’ve stopped bleeding, we can recommence.’

‘Yes, I think it’s stopped. It was just a nick.’

‘Good, good. Let’s get on now.’

‘Just before we do, Willie. What exactly happened?’

‘Oh, didn’t you pick that up? Ricketts was throwing a dart at Lloyd George just as the door opened, and unfortunately he missed the old reprobate completely and hit you instead.’ He neighed. ‘An amusing instance of mistaken identity,
n’est pas
?’

Amiss, who was feeling slightly queasy, tried not to sound querulous. ‘Still not with you, I’m afraid. Firing a dart at Lloyd George?’

Lambie Crump sighed. ‘Ah, me. Of course, I haven’t yet explained the playroom to you. Come along and see it now.’ He neighed. ‘It’s safe now, I think, but just in case, I’ll go ahead of you.’

‘Excuse me, sir. You might wish to replace the dart.’ Tozer presented Lambie Crump with the offending article, now wiped clean of Amiss’s blood, and bowed as they left the dining room and moved into a room of modest size, wallpapered with portraits and photographs. Most were riddled with holes.

‘We puncture our enemies here,’ explained his host. ‘Our founder thought it a valuable form of catharsis.’

Amiss easily identified Napoleon, Gladstone and – just beside the door – Lloyd George. ‘Willie, why is Lloyd George the largest target? Because of what he did to the House of Lords?’

‘And death duties. Worst damage ever done to the landed interest.’

As Amiss tried to place a balding man with a large double chin, Lambie Crump explained: ‘Charles James Fox. One of our chief villains.’

‘Because he was in favour of the French Revolution and fell out with Edmund Burke?’

Lambie Crump nodded approvingly. ‘Precisely. Among other offences. Such as believing the people were right.’

‘And is that Bismarck?’ asked Amiss hesitantly.

‘Correct. Up there beside the Kaiser, Hitler and Chancellor Kohl. We’re not too keen here on imperialistic Germans. Or imperialist anyone else for that matter.’

‘Except us, I presume,’ offered Amiss.

‘Well, yes. Obviously of course except us. And the United States, if they’d do it properly. But they’re simply not up to it. Look at Vietnam. No idea how to run that war.’

Amiss, who had little time for armchair generals, moved to another wall. ‘Not much here from the early part of the century, is there? I see Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair along with a couple of Liberals, but I can’t see anyone from the first half of the century except Lloyd George.’

‘We’ve replaced them,’ said Lambie Crump. ‘We keep the nineteenth-century portraits for reasons of tradition, but you don’t get people wishing to vent their feelings on Asquith these days. You’ll find several pockmarked portraits in the attic which have been replaced by these blown-up photographs of our more recent enemies.’ He neighed. ‘There are some areas where modernity has its place, you know. One cannot afford to be slack in identifying contemporary scoundrels.’

‘There aren’t yet many holes in that photograph of our present government.’

Lambie Crump shook his head. ‘I fear Ricketts and – just very occasionally – Henry Potbury are the only members of staff who now keep up this tradition. Potbury usually misses, and it has to be admitted that Ricketts is rather mired in the past. Apart from Lloyd George, whom his predecessor taught him to hate, he mostly aims his darts at Clement Attlee.’

‘So this place no longer fulfils its traditional purpose, which I presume – on the Japanese principle – is of stress relief.’

‘Come again?’

‘I understand Japanese companymen relieve their feelings by throwing missiles at pictures of their seniors.’

‘Really. Can’t comment on that.
The Wrangler
isn’t very interested in the Nipponese. Or in Chinamen for that matter. Oriental preoccupations seem so… so… grubbily materialistic these days, don’t you think?’

He looked put out. ‘What you have just said assists in making the playroom idea repellent as well as increasingly pointless. One must confess that were it not for Ricketts one would be tempted to close off this room. It has been rather an irritation to have to rule on whether it is appropriate to instal a blown-up picture of the entire Liberal Democratic Party, selected Conservative apostates or if our venom should be concentrated on New Labour. Ricketts doesn’t have a lot of initiative in these matters, you understand. Besides, it makes us appear predictable in our politics, and whatever my colleagues may think, it is my view that we should maintain an open mind.’

‘Has it always just been darts?’ asked Amiss, who was inspecting what seemed to be very large holes in Napoleon’s head.

‘Used to be bullets. At one time the entire staff used to have shooting competitions in here. But sometime in the nineteen thirties there was a distressing incident when one assistant editor inflicted an unpleasant flesh wound on a colleague: it was never clear whether it was deliberate or not. After that bullets were replaced by a more plebeian but safer alternative.’ He neighed uproariously. ‘Come to think of it, you should be grateful for that.’

Amiss, whose ear continued to throb, managed a weak smile.

4

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‘We have a very small editorial staff,’ explained Lambie Crump, as they walked down the stairs. ‘Apart from hoi polloi, there are only four. Most of our journal is written by outside contributors, but we do have on the staff a political editor – my deputy – an assistant editor, a part-time literary editor and a kind of odd-job woman. The others you need to know about now, I suppose, are my secretary, Sabrina Trustier-Stomp, who is away at the moment, Marcia and Ben, Miss Mercatroid, whom you’ve met, Miss Grumshaw, the supervisor of the typewriters and Josiah Ricketts, at whose hands you suffered just now and with whom you’ll be working closely; but more of that another time.’ If he was aware of Amiss’s horrified reaction, he gave no sign of it.

As Lambie Crump stopped at the end of the corridor, he announced portentously: ‘Now here is my deputy, Henry Potbury, our distinguished political editor.’ He opened the door and together he and Amiss contemplated the form of the room’s incumbent, who was sprawled across his desk apparently dead. Amiss’s momentary alarm was dispelled by Lambie Crump’s heavy sigh, which alerted him to the more mundane reality that Potbury was in a deep sleep.

After a loud greeting from Lambie Crump, Potbury twitched and grunted and finally struggled to an upright position. He gazed at his visitors blearily. Amiss realized that he was drunk. ‘Henry Potbury, our senior and most valued editor. Indeed, one should say’ – Lambie Crump never lost the opportunity to be portentous, thought Amiss – ‘a man whose unparalleled devotion to the mind of Burke has been more than inspirational. One might go further and describe Henry as the lodestar of
The Wrangler
for some thirty years now, a man whose quality of thought has always transcended…’

As he paused to find the
mot juste
, Amiss observed that the recipient of this elegant bouquet seemed unimpressed. And as Lambie Crump continued with ‘…all vulgar corruptions…’ Potbury slowly slipped down into his chair and fell once again into a deep sleep. Within seconds he was snoring.

Lambie Crump looked at him with distaste. ‘Alas, in some respects my colleague adheres too closely to the customs and practices of the eighteenth century in which he is so at home.’ He set his lips primly. ‘One accepts that if we are traditionalists, we must live with tradition. And while as his editor, one might wish for Potbury to have the virtues of the past without its vices, that is perhaps a touch unreasonable.’ He sighed. ‘Let us proceed to one of his more temperate colleagues.’

‘Ah, here is Wilfred Parry.’ An exquisite youth in a white suit looked up from his Georgian desk and laid down his fountain pen. ‘Good afternoon, Willie.’

‘One is always sorry to interrupt, Wilfred, but you will, I know, wish to meet Robert Amiss, who will be joining us on Monday to tidy us up a bit.’

‘In what sense?’

‘Management, administration, that sort of thing.’

Parry’s eyes swept over Amiss in the manner of a busy duchess being presented with a new housemaid. ‘Hello.’ He turned towards Lambie Crump. ‘I’m writing what I hope you will feel is a rather inspired dissection of Tottman’s latest. Thought it might make a good lead for next week.’

‘Splendid, splendid,’ said Lambie Crump, showing no more interest in the downfall of Tottman than Parry showed in the rise of Amiss. ‘In a bit of a hurry. Must move on.’

‘Any chance of a word later?’

‘Doubt it, Wilfred. Doubt it. Have to disappear early. Rather hush-hush weekend, don’t you know.’

‘Wilfred’s keen,’ he explained to Amiss as they proceeded down another corridor. ‘But it is possible to be too keen. Sometimes one has the feeling he has little or no understanding of the constant strain on someone in my position.’ He opened another door. This time he did not usher Amiss in, having clearly taken the view that it would be foolish to try to circumnavigate the stacks of newspapers, magazines and other paper debris that covered almost the entire floor.

Through a haze of smoke, the room’s two inhabitants could just be seen behind the piles of paper, the coffee mugs, the tennis balls and the other assorted objects that littered their desks. Lambie Crump’s nose wrinkled in distaste at the smell of tobacco: the man was chewing on a pipe; the woman was smoking a roll-up. Both were intently absorbed in reading that week’s
Wrangler
.

‘Good afternoon, Marcia and Ben. Here is Robert Amiss, who will joining us on Monday.’

They looked up suspiciously.

‘Doing what?’ asked Marcia.

Lambie Crump waved a hand vaguely. ‘Making one’s life easier, one trusts,’ he said grandly. ‘Taking a bit of the administrative burden away. You know the kind of thing.’

As their eyes strayed back to their
Wranglers
, Marcia suddenly emitted a yell. ‘I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!’ she bellowed. ‘We should never have let him correct the proofs himself.’ She leaped to her feet, tripped over a pile of newspapers, picked herself up and stormed over to Ben, throwing the offending magazine in front of him and jabbing the top right-hand corner. ‘Look at that. Just look at that. Makes me feel positively suicidal.’

‘Oh my Gawd,’ said Ben. ‘That’s a bloody catastrophe.’ They gazed at each other in mute, shared horror.

‘What is it?’ asked Lambie Crump, sounding weary rather than apprehensive. Marcia picked up the magazine and in the sepulchral tones of a BBC newsreader announcing the death of a national icon read: ‘We could have done with less contributors with a penchant for the mawkish…’ She looked up and asked dully, ‘How could he? How could he? How could he?’ Her voice rose and she stamped her foot. ‘Fewer! Fewer! Fewer! How often do I have to tell that platinum-headed git about where to stick his misapplied lesses…?’

‘Along with his misplaced onlies,’ added Ben.

‘Oh dear, yes, yes, yes, mmm,’ said Lambie Crump, to whom they were paying no attention. ‘Must be off now, goodbye.’ As he shut the door they heard Marcia’s voice rise in hysteria. Amiss looked at Lambie Crump and raised an eyebrow. ‘These are not bog-standard coolies, you understand. It is because of them that
The Wrangler
has a reputation for being more free of errors than any similar journal here or in the United States. But that brings with it for the rest of us the penalty that an error like “Aegean” being substituted for “Augean” – which happened recently – is a tragedy sufficient to cause lamentations for days. And then, of course, there will be the hysterical reaction to the arrival on Monday of one of those letters.’

‘What letters?’

Lambie Crump sighed deeply. ‘We have a reader who has taken it upon himself for the last twenty years to read every line of the journal to check it for errors. It’s become a kind of primaeval duel between him and Ben and Marcia.

‘On a good week a letter comes saying, “ten out of ten”. When there are errors, they come listed and with references. It makes it more piquant that no one knows who the fellow is: the letters are anonymous. And he picks up factual errors as well, which are also Marcia and Ben’s responsibility. Sadly, the dear things cope badly with failure.’

He stopped. ‘Now let me think. Who’s next? Oh yes. I almost forgot.’ He doubled back on his tracks. ‘Here is Phoebe Somerfield’s lair.’

Located between Potbury’s palatial room and Ben and Marcia’s spacious midden, Miss Somerfield’s office was tiny, but tidy and apparently well organized, with rows of books, neatly stacked magazines and files, and a cabinet that was not bursting at its seams. The lady herself was in her early fifties, small, spare and bespectacled, and her typewriter was clacking busily. ‘Moonlighting again, Phoebe?’ enquired Lambie Crump genially.

‘Just something for the World Service,’ she said crisply. ‘Do you mind if I get on with it?’

‘Just wanted to introduce our new management wallah, Robert Amiss.’

She looked at Amiss without interest, but nodded politely and recommenced typing. Lambie Crump closed the door behind them. ‘Bit of a martinet, Phoebe, really. Doesn’t think of anything except work.’

‘What’s her job exactly?’

‘She edits the letters page, writes articles and leaders. Has done for donkey’s years.’

‘On what?’

‘On most things. It cannot be denied that Phoebe is versatile and industrious. But she doesn’t get out and about enough. If she’s not doing her job here she’s hammering out freelance book reviews and scripts and that sort of thing. Good girl, Phoebe. And one would miss her. But not really one of us. Doesn’t move in the places one would wish her to. Depressingly austere. And brisk.

‘Now to the administrators,’ he said as they went down the stairs.