Publish and Be Murdered (9 page)

‘So what’s on your mind?’

‘I think Willie’s finally gone potty.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Rang me up six sheets to the wind last night, raved at me for about five minutes about the iniquities of Dwight Winterton, whom he described as a treacherous kike, told me I was a drunken oaf and made some disparaging reference to you as the northern fellow who counts the spoons.’

‘How…?’ asked Amiss.

Potbury snorted. ‘How was I sober enough to know this? Because my ferocious Aunt Hortense was staying last night, that’s why, and fear of her tongue always reduces my alcohol intake by about eighty per cent.’

‘That wasn’t my question. I wanted to know how you identified me as the chap who counts the spoons?’

‘Because you are really when it comes to it,’ said Potbury in a reasonable tone. ‘Not a bad description of you, at all, if I may say so.’

‘So how did you respond to all this?’

‘There wasn’t really time to say much. I expostulated a couple of times, but the flood just continued.’

‘Doesn’t sound very like Willie.’

‘No, he’s usually pretty ept at keeping his temper. But I’d say the general praise for that piece of Dwight’s he tried to spike last week sent him to the bottle.’

‘Kike’s a bit much, though. I wouldn’t have put him down as anti-semitic’

‘Scratch Willie and you find a shit.’

‘And what had I done to upset him?’

‘Oh nothing, it was just because you, along with Dwight, had had a pat on the back from m’Lud Papworth. If there’s one thing Willie can’t stand, it’s Charlie Papworth saying anything nice about anyone else.’

‘But why was he ringing you to carry on about it?’

‘Who else has he got, my dear boy?’

‘Mrs Willie?’

‘Come on, surely you know that Mrs Willie – or rather, to be precise, the Honourable Mrs Willie – departed airhead held high several years ago because she couldn’t put up with Willie’s insufferable superciliousness, sexlessness and God knows what else. Knowing how loudly and widely she complained about him within the smart set, those whom he would consider eligible haven’t exactly been queuing up to succeed her. It’s not, after all, as if he were rich or well connected.’

‘Is there no little Lambie Crump?’

Potbury shuddered. ‘Oh, really. What an unpleasant thought. Can’t you see it? Blond ringlets and a lace collar.’ He pulled himself out of the chair. ‘Drink later? Something I’d like to talk to you about at leisure. And I’ve got something to knock off before lunch.’

‘Sure. I’ll call in during the afternoon.’

A full-scale row was in progress as Amiss put his head around the door of the midden shared by Marcia and Ben.

‘Rubbish, it’s Robert Peel.’

‘You silly old woman!’ screamed Ben. ‘How often do I have to tell you your knowledge of the nineteenth century is so bloody ’opeless as to be a national scandal. That was never said by Robert fuckin’ Peel. It was said twenty bleedin’ years later by Benjamin shaggin’ Disraeli.’

A tennis ball flew from Marcia’s desk and whizzed by Ben’s ear. ‘You’ve got amnesia again, you stupid bugger.’ Marcia’s voice rose to a screech. ‘Don’t you remember in Gash’s biography where it says that…’

Amiss was so used by now to the passion and inordinate length of these exchanges that he had learned to barge in. ‘Good morning, Marcia. Good morning, Ben,’ he said suavely, and the altercation stopped immediately as they greeted him warmly. He walked gingerly along the narrow path that wove between the massed paper columns. ‘May I sit down?’

They nodded.

Amiss perched himself on a pile of magazines that looked solid enough to serve as a temporary seat. ‘I’ve been thinking…’

They eyed him warily, but without hostility, for despite all their initial shock at the boldness of various of his past suggestions, they had come to accept that he was on their side and that the quality of their lives had improved since his arrival.

‘You need more room.’

Marcia perked up considerably. ‘We’ve always thought that. Are you thinking of giving us a bigger office?’

‘Steady on, Marcia. We have to dwell in the realms of the possible. I’m just thinking of making this bigger by getting – ’ He stopped hastily, recognizing that he’d almost put his foot completely into it. ‘…by moving some of our archives from out of your way and hiring you some help to sort out the papers.’ Drowned out by a crescendo of protest, but with a calm born of experience he sat quietly until the soprano and basso profundo drew to a close.

‘I quite see what you’re concerned about, and you can be sure…’

The phone rang and Marcia answered. ‘It’s Willie, Robert. He wants an urgent word.’

‘Talk to you later,’ said Amiss. ‘And remember, there’s nothing to worry about.’

‘What do you mean, Gash?’ Ben was already shouting, as Amiss opened the door. ‘It’s all in Blake’s
Disraeli
, if you’d ’ave ’ad the wit to look at it before makin’ such a prat of yourself by attributin’…’

Amiss closed the door softly and left them to it.

Lambie Crump looked commendably well for a man who had been at the bottle the night before. And, to Amiss’s relief, he did not appear to be nurturing a grievance. In fact, he sounded ingratiating.

‘Ah, Robert, how kind of you to come so quickly. You know Lady Troutbeck is coming to luncheon today?’

‘Yes, indeed, Willie.’

‘Alas, something has come up that makes it impossible for me to see her. Albeit it is not possible to explain what it is, it can be intimated to the baroness that the matter concerns people not a million miles removed from Downing Street.’

‘Do you mean you’re cancelling? She won’t take that well.’

‘No, no. No such thing. Just that it will be necessary for you to be the host on this occasion. And to deal with the tedious practicalities of her column.’

‘What column?’

‘Ah, me, one has so much on one’s mind that these things sometimes slip it. Lady Troutbeck and I happily coincided at the opera the other night and agreed that she should become a columnist.’

Amiss clutched his hair. ‘You cannot be serious. She’s to the right of Attila the Hun.’

Lambie Crump looked at Amiss in bafflement. ‘You defame a remarkable woman. The Duke of Ormerod, whom she was accompanying, told me that she is an outstanding educational thinker and has proved to be a great modernizer at St Martha’s.’

‘Yes, but…’

Lambie Crump put his palms together, rested his chin on the tips of his fingers and looked grave. ‘It seems you dislike the baroness.’

‘No, no. Of course not. Actually, I’m very fond of her.’ Lambie Crump sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘Well then, can you enlighten one as to what particularly is perturbing you?’

‘Jack Troutbeck,’ said Amiss, with heavy deliberation, ‘is fine in her place. By which I mean somewhere she either owns or which is big enough to accommodate her.

‘At St Martha’s, her benevolent tyranny has made the college a resounding success. And in the House of Lords – which has proven historically that it can cope insouciantly with even the barking mad – she causes no problems at all. I just have a feeling that involving her in an enterprise this size would be rather like inviting Moby Dick to come for a dip in one’s garden pond. At the very least, you might reasonably expect a considerable amount of displacement.’

Lambie Crump had lost interest. ‘Look, Robert, one is faced with this hush-hush business, and as well it’s press day. You must yourself resolve your esoteric fears. Lady Troutbeck is to be a columnist – not a member of staff – so the analogy with Moby Dick does not apply. Just make sure she knows one has been called away on affairs of state. Keep her happy, tell her all she needs to know and give a gentle steer on our ethos and all that.’

Amiss rose. ‘The term “gentle steer” in the context of Jack Troutbeck is singularly inappropriate. However, I will do the best I can.’

‘Splendid, splendid, splendid. Just my idea of what a magazine office should be like.’

‘You mean two centuries out of date.’

‘I mean redolent of a great past and in no way disfigured by the fripperies of a less gracious age.’ She peered at the slightly threadbare Persian rug on which Amiss had lain bleeding a few months previous. ‘Ah, very good, very good. I want one of those. What’s more, I would very, very much like that refectory table in place of the decrepit piece of Victoriana we have in St Martha’s as our high table at present.’ She sighed. ‘Why can’t I have everything I want?’

Amiss ignored her. ‘Over there you will see a portrait of our founder.’

‘Ah, splendid. Seymour Spragge himself. What an excellent old boy. I remember with keen pleasure an essay of his on the perils of paying too much heed to the clamouring of the ignorant – a subject to which I propose to address myself in a series I’m thinking of doing on why all constitutional change is bad.’ She beamed. ‘I’m going to enjoy being a columnist, stirring things up and getting the lefties fuming.’ She put her head on one side. ‘What do you think, Robert? Is this a good moment for a piece on why all liberals are boring?’

‘Thanks. That includes me.’

‘Not in essentials, dear boy. As you well know, you’re a Tory at heart, yet you pathetically insist on draping around you the tatters of your childhood liberalism to hide the glorious body of your true faith. Now summon that chap with the champagne and show me some more defunct editors.’

‘I don’t think for one moment that your views will be acceptable to Willie, especially the way he’s been drifting of late,’ said Amiss over coffee and brandy, and in the baroness’s case, a fat cigar.

‘Too true. I’m going to give him a few bad nights.’

‘Presumably you hid from him the fact that you’re an appalling old reactionary.’

‘Certainly. Once we spotted him, Bertie and I conspired to keep it quiet that I’m’ – she wagged her finger at Amiss – ‘a libertarian, not a reactionary. In fact, Bertie was the one who suggested the column.’

‘What exactly do you mean when you say you’re a libertarian?’

‘That I’m in favour of people having the liberty to do anything that gives them pleasure unless it does harm to other people.’

‘Hah! I’ve never noticed you exercising that self-denying ordinance when you’re parking illicitly, throwing your weight around on motorways or generally getting your own way at other people’s expense.’

The baroness smirked. ‘I’m different.’

Amiss sighed. ‘My philosophy of life is that once expressed by the Eton schoolteacher who on seeing a boy peeing over the gallery on to his schoolfellows below, asked: “Where would we be if every boy did that?” ’

‘Jolly good philosophy,’ said the baroness. ‘All for it. Doesn’t apply to me, though. I work on the principle that the other boys won’t do that, so I can.’

‘So that explains why you admit to having enjoyed opium but are against legalizing drugs?’

‘Exactly. I’m in favour of drugs for me because I’d know how to use them.’

‘Just you?’

‘Come, now. I’m not that unreasonable. People like me would be OK. But you don’t think I’m in favour of making drugs available to just anybody, do you?’

‘Seems rather an elitist argument?’

‘Of course it’s an elitist argument, you idiot. I’m an elitist.’ She jabbed him in the chest. ‘You’re all right most of the time, Robert, but you really do have ferocious attacks of priggishness. You’ve been away from my direct influence for too long.’

Amiss changed tack. ‘So what will the Troutbeck column be about, then? Turning the clock back at the millennium?’

‘You really are too simple-minded, my boy. I’m not against change per se. Like Wellington, I believe that one has to accept it when there is no choice.’ She brooded for a moment. ‘Though sometimes I wonder if he wasn’t perhaps a little precipitate when it came to Catholic Emancipation.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, you needn’t practise being preposterous on me. It’s wasted.’

‘You think I don’t mean it, don’t you?’ She laughed triumphantly. ‘I really do believe that all change is bad. Except, of course, when it is change I want.’

‘Because what is good for you is good for the nation.’

‘Precisely. You’ve got it in one.’

‘So what will your column be recommending?’

‘Oh, the usual: abolishing the blasphemy laws, legalizing prostitution, withdrawing from the European Union, hanging on to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland whether they like it or not.’

‘I’m surprised you don’t want to take the Republic of Ireland back into the United Kingdom.’

‘Oh, I’d like that ideally, of course,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But it’s just not possible to move in and take them over these days, I’m afraid. They’d kick up a terrible fuss. Sometimes games aren’t worth candles. Though it would definitely be the best for everyone. Their trains haven’t run on time since we left and we need them to liven us up.’

‘Will you be dealing with reform of the House of Lords?’

‘Reform indeed.’ She snorted. ‘These buggers are trying to destroy us. Certainly I’ll be touching on that. I’m thinking of leading a campaign to recapture the powers of the Lords stolen from them by Lloyd George in nineteen twelve.’

Amiss stood up. ‘I think I’ve had as much as I can stand of your political views, Jack. And so will Willie when he sees the first column. He’ll refuse to print it.’

‘No, he won’t. He was so besotted after the performance Bertie and I put up that he agreed to give me a free hand. We’ll draw up the contract now and you can get him to sign it this afternoon.’

‘He won’t, if I tell him what you’re really like.’

‘But you won’t. You’d hate to spoil the fun.’ She stubbed out her cigar and pushed back her chair. ‘OK. To business.’

‘How the hell will she find the time?’ asked Rachel.

Amiss stopped chopping onions and laid down his knife. ‘How much time do you think it takes to be a columnist?’

‘I don’t know, but presumably it’ll take her a half day or so every week to write the article and then, of course, there’s the reading and thinking time and the rest of it.’

‘When I was trying to deter her I pointed that out, so she took a particular pleasure in proving me wrong. Having mentioned that Ben used to take copy before we acquired a fax, she announced breezily that she much preferred to dictate and would now do so. It was all done in twenty minutes. Of course I’d forgotten that when she was in the civil service she was notorious for dictating blistering memos off the top of her head.’