Answer in the Negative
Henrietta Hamilton
About the Author
Henrietta Hamilton was an English writer known for her crime-solving husband-and-wife duo, Sally and Johnny Heldar. She was previously published by Hodder and Stoughton.
Also By Henrietta Hamilton
The Two Hundred Ghost
Death at One Blow
Answer in the Negative
A Night to Die
This edition published in 2020 by Agora Books
First published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton 1959
Agora Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS
Copyright © Henrietta Hamilton, 1959
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Chapter One
‘More coffee, darling?’ asked Sally Heldar.
‘Yes, please. It seems particularly good tonight.’
‘Because we don’t always have it,’ said Sally, thinking of the price. She refilled Johnny’s cup, returned it to him, and sat comfortably back in her chair.
The house was quiet after a busy day. It was a little Regency house in St Cross Square — a peaceful Bloomsbury backwater which had somehow escaped transformation into offices and private hotels. The flat which Johnny had found after the war had been very adequate until they had tried to get Peter into it too. After that they had moved, and the house held the twins and Nanny quite comfortably as well. It was, conveniently, a quarter of an hour’s walk from Heldar Brothers’ shop in the Charing Cross Road.
The fire was burning well. They had turned out the wall lights and were sitting under the softer glow of the standard lamps. The light fell kindly on the little Adam mantelpiece, the flowered chintzes and the Persian rug, the old rosewood and mahogany pieces which they had inherited from Mark Mercator, who had died by violence four years before. The room was extraordinarily peaceful, and when the front-door bell rang Johnny said wearily, ‘Oh, damn!’
But it was no use pretending they weren’t in. Anyone who knew them at all knew that there was always someone here in the evening, because of the children. Johnny got up and went out of the room.
A minute or two later Sally heard voices on the stairs. She listened, recognised the second voice, and relaxed just before Johnny opened the door again.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s only Toby.’
‘I hope you mean that kindly.’ Toby Lorn looked small and slight beside Johnny. But he was well up to the middle height and by no means puny, though he was always too thin. His hair was dark and smooth, and his cheeks a little hollowed below his horn-rimmed spectacles. He looked tired, as usual. But he smiled and limped forward and kissed Sally affectionately.
‘We’re delighted to see you, Toby,’ she said. ‘Have you eaten? There’s plenty in the kitchen.’
‘Yes, I’ve eaten, thanks, Sally.’
‘Would you like coffee, then — there’s lots left — or will you give Johnny an excuse for a drink?’
Johnny looked at Toby’s tired face. ‘Have mercy on me,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the whisky. Sit down, won’t you?’
Toby thanked him and sat down on the sofa, straightening his left leg unobtrusively in its calliper. Toby was the young stepbrother of Peter Lorn, who had been at Porterbury and Magdalen with Johnny and had been killed at one of the Rhine crossings. Young Peter had been called after him. Johnny had found Toby after the war, an unhappy, sensitive sixteen-year-old, recovering slowly and without much enthusiasm from polio, debarred from most public school activities, his father recently dead and his mother clearly not much use to him. Johnny had pulled him through with infinite patience, exercised a certain amount of remote control while he was at Oxford, and seen him into Fleet Street. He was twenty-nine now, still over-sensitive under a professional armour of cynicism — few people guessed that he was the son of a country parson — but standing strongly enough on his own feet and doing pretty well.
Johnny came back with a tray and helped Toby and himself from the decanter and the syphon. They said, ‘Cheers,’ drank, and settled down again, and for a quarter of an hour or so the room was very quiet. Toby had plenty of conversation when it was needed — with strangers he was apt, like some other newspapermen, to be a slightly feverish conversationalist — but with the Heldars he could relax. Sally, watching him unobtrusively, saw the lines on his forehead smooth themselves out a little. She wondered again if his evening meal had consisted of sandwiches and remembered the bleakness of his flat.
Presently he put his tumbler down and turned to Johnny.
‘I’m afraid I really came,’ he said, ‘because I wanted to consult you.’
Johnny raised an eyebrow. ‘Rare book? Manuscript?’
‘No. I don’t want to consult you as an antiquarian bookseller; I was thinking of your other capacity.’
‘Oh,’ said Johnny cautiously. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve had a murder in Fleet Street.’
‘Nothing so interesting, I’m afraid. It’s merely a poison-pen in the office.’
Johnny’s nostrils twitched a little. ‘Not very nice,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for you. But poison-pens are rather outside my experience, Toby.’
‘I know — at least, I was afraid you’d say so. But will you listen to the story?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Thank you.’ Toby paused to collect his thoughts, and then began.
‘I think I’d better explain the set-up first. As you may or may not remember, we’re called the National Press Archives. We’re a fairly new concern — we only opened six months ago. The Loughbridge Commission on the Press was largely responsible for our foundation, and the Treasury put up part of the money. The object of the exercise was to provide easy access to newspaper cuttings and pictures — photographs and old prints and engravings and so on — for Fleet Street and authors and business firms, and indeed almost anyone. The Fleet Street agencies deposit their stuff with us as soon as its immediate news value has worn off. We make no charge for letting people see a picture or a cutting, but we take a minimum of thirty shillings for any picture which is reproduced. We don’t own any copyrights — the agencies didn’t want to give them up — so a percentage of the charge goes to the owners. The Archives are divided into two departments, known locally as Feelthee Peex and Comic Cuts, with a Negative Department as a subsidiary to Peex.
‘We’re housed in the new Echo building in Fleet Street. It’s a little large for the Echo, so they let some of it to us. Peex and Cuts are on the sixth floor, which is the top, and we have basement-room for negatives and messenger boys. You don’t want to keep negs in the same place as pix; it’s putting all your eggs in one basket, because there’s always a risk of fire.’
‘I’m putting all my negs in one basket,’ murmured Johnny outrageously, with a hint of the Fred Astaire tune.
‘Darling, really!’ said Sally, and Toby groaned.
‘Sorry,’ said Johnny. ‘Couldn’t resist it. Go on.’
Toby went on. ‘All our printing, and photo-statting of cuttings, is done by
the Echo’s dark-room — on a business footing, of course. Also, we are allowed to use the Echo’s very excellent canteen.’ He paused and lit a cigarette.
‘So far, the Archives have proved a reasonably successful experiment. But we’re not an altogether happy office, principally because we’re a mixture of Fleet Street and Civil Service. The Archivist — the man who runs the whole thing — is a Civil Servant. His name is Lionel Silcutt, and the story goes that he was swaddled in red tape at birth. He means extremely well, and he’s really rather a nice man. But he can’t get on with the present head of Comic Cuts, who is a pure-blooded newspaperman and Irish at that — a man called Michael Knox.’
‘The man who wrote for the Sunday Reflector?’ asked Johnny.
‘The same. To my mind he made the Reflector — he’s a brilliant writer and a brilliant controversialist — and the circulation has dropped since he left. He’s an infuriating creature, but Fleet Street will put up with almost any eccentricities in a man who can really write, and I don’t think they’d ever have sacked him. He had a stupendous row with his editor about six weeks ago, knocked him down, and walked out. At that time his predecessor in the Archives, who was another dyed-in-the-wool Fleet Street type, had just handed in his resignation because he couldn’t get on with Silcutt. Michael thought he’d like the job because he’s writing a book and he wanted regular pay and hours which would leave him time for it — and easy access to pix for it. I’m not quite sure why Silcutt thought he would like Michael, but Michael was recommended by James Camberley. It was generous of Camberley, because Mike had just been slating him a bit in the Reflector. He’s very seldom wrong about a man, and I’m inclined to think still that Mike may have got something — something for us, I mean. He’s still on his month probation — everyone has to do that — and I wouldn’t be surprised if Silcutt gave him a bit longer. To return to the general set-up — I seem to be wandering a bit — he has eight assistants and three typists under him.
‘The head of Feelthee Peex is me. I can take it — more or less — because I’m something of a hybrid. I came to Fleet Street partly because I was still reacting against a clerical background, and I still like the free-and-easiness of it. But a year or so ago I began to react the other way and hanker after discipline and regular hours. So I took this job when it came along, and on the whole I like it. I temper it with the odd bit of newspaper work. I have a staff of eleven assistants and three typists. I am also — rather embarrassingly — set over the Negatives Department. The staff there consists of Miss Quimper and four assistants — no typists; they have very little typing and our girls do it for them. Miss Quimper is a problem. To begin with she’s well over fifty and I have no right to be set over her. She also reminds me vividly of a very devout and strong-minded church-worker of my childhood who wanted to hear dear Tobias’s catechism every time she came to tea. But the real trouble is that she was in the old Evans’s Picture Library for over thirty years, and although she’s extremely sound in her way she’s got immovably set in it. Her methods are very horse-and-buggy and really quite impracticable, but she won’t modify them, and when thwarted she bursts into tears.’
‘My poor Toby,’ said Sally. ‘How very upsetting for you!’
‘There is nothing more embarrassing,’ said Toby, ‘than making a woman cry. It makes one feel like a monster. To continue, however.’
But he didn’t continue at once. He hesitated for a moment or two. Then he said a little abruptly, ‘There’s one other person of importance. A man in Peex called Frank Morningside. He’s neither fish nor fowl — neither Civil Service nor Fleet Street — but several other people on the staff are in the same position and don’t find it a handicap. He went to a grammar school and a provincial University. A lot of other people went to a grammar school and no University at all, and neither they nor we find it a cause of embarrassment. But Morningside has all sorts of peculiar ideas about public-school types. He was just too young for the war, and did his National Service without distinction, as far as anyone knows. Then, when he’d taken his degree, he taught for several years, and came to this job from that, because he wanted a change. Or possibly because his last job was at a prep school, and he couldn’t cope with the brats.’
Toby broke off again. The lines were back in his forehead, and he was concentrating hard — making a sharp effort of some sort. When he spoke again every trace of cynicism had gone from his voice.
‘There’s nothing wrong with him. He has no vices — I’m quite sure of that. He doesn’t drink — except beer; he doesn’t smoke, and his life is wide open to anyone who cares to look. He’s intoler— he’s very smug. He has no sense of humour, but that isn’t his fault. He’s very good indeed at his job — very steady and methodical. He also has a superb visual memory, which is a great asset in a place like ours. We’ve taken over a lot of old pix and negs from Evans’s and one or two other picture libraries — mostly unidentified stuff salvaged during the Blitz — and he’s very clever at spotting well-known people and places in them. He wants to syndicate a sort of “Myself when Young” series — Churchill in a sailor-suit, and Lloyd George in golden ringlets, and so on. The typists call him the Memory Man. There is no doubt that he’s an admirable person. There is no doubt that he’s a very irritating one, too. But that’s no reason for writing him filthy letters.’
There was a short silence. Then Toby went on again, his voice tired now, as if his effort had been a little too much for him.
‘It started in a perfectly harmless way, about a month ago. Someone left a rude rhyme on his desk. It was typed on a torn-off piece of office paper. It was quite funny, but not all that clever, and not all that rude either. I can’t remember it now. Morningside didn’t see the joke. Then he received another, slightly more ribald, but still quite mild, and he was definitely annoyed. And then other things began to happen — silly, irritating things. Someone patronised a joke shop — there’s one quite near us, incidentally, in St Barnabas’ Lane. Morningside would find blobs of ink on the pix he was going to send out, and they’d turn out to be tin. He opened his desk drawer one day, and one of those snakes on a spring shot out. He plays squash one evening a week and brings a suitcase to the office with a pair of shorts and a sports shirt. One evening when he changed at the courts, he found itching powder in the shorts. And there were other things of the same kind. All very prep school. Meantime the rude rhymes continued and got ruder.
‘I should have explained that Morningside has a small private office off Peex. So have I, and so have our typists, and we’ve always locked our doors at night. Our stuff isn’t intrinsically valuable, but it would be tiresome and sometimes impossible to replace. The cleaners come in the morning, and they get duplicate keys from the Echo porters’ room downstairs. But until this business started not even Morningside, who is extremely conscientious, thought of locking his door when he went to lunch, or when he left his office for a few minutes during the day. But when the persecution got really tiresome, he began to do that. It was hideously inconvenient for everyone else, because clients came in for pix which were in his office, and his telephone rang and no one could answer it, and we wanted his reference books, and so on. But it didn’t last long, because it wasn’t worthwhile. When his office was locked by day nothing happened. But the things began to happen by night. There was no sign of interference with the lock, so we assumed that the joker had acquired a key. The porters were questioned at once and said that to the best of their knowledge no one but the cleaners had ever had the duplicate. But it seemed quite possible that someone else — almost anyone else — had had it long enough to take an impression, or even to have a new key professionally cut. The porters’ room isn’t continuously occupied. Since they were questioned one of them has always carried it on him, except when the cleaners have it, but that isn’t much good now.
‘These investigations were made because Morningside complained to Silcutt. He might have come to me, but he thought I might be responsible for his trouble
s. Silcutt decided, reluctantly, that he’d better take action. He discussed it with me, and I agreed. We were both inclined to think that either the younger typists in Peex or, more likely, the messenger boys were responsible for the kid-stuff. Silcutt saw the head typist — a nice woman called Mrs Beates — and the two girls, Pat and Pam, who are a little apt to be at the bottom of any trouble. As soon as they understood it was serious, Pat and Pam admitted the two original rhymes. But they persistently denied all knowledge of the rest of it, and Silcutt was satisfied that they were telling the truth. I thought so too. He then saw the boys. There are four of them. Two are probably innocent. The third was christened — or at least registered — Gordon Parston but is known as Teddy because he is a Teddy Boy. He’s a crazy mixed-up kid and a hot suspect, and the fourth boy is a buddy of his and easily led. Neither of them would admit anything, but there was a strong presumption of guilt.
‘But it wasn’t as simple as that. The boys might well be playing about with itching powder. But they were certainly not responsible for the written stuff. It had improved in literary quality, if in nothing else, and was undoubtedly the work of an educated person. Morningside realised that, and thought it was probably Michael Knox’s or mine. Or else’ — he hesitated a moment, and then went on in a carefully flat voice — ‘Selina Marvell’s. She’s my principal assistant in Peex, and what Morningside would classify as a public-school type. She was also engaged to him recently, and he turned her down — I wouldn’t know why. But he thought she might be writing the stuff out of spite.’
So that was it, thought Sally. Toby was in love with this girl with the charming name. That was why he had made his painful effort to be fair to Morningside; he hadn’t wanted his portrait to be distorted or obscured by jealousy. He was carrying his passion for integrity in writing over to this story — and probably to his own emotions.
Answer in the Negative Page 1