The Burning Issue of the Day

by T E Kinsey

  ‘I am,’ she replied.

  ‘This i’n’t no post office, “my lady”,’ he said as he held up the paper.

  ‘No, I’m well aware of that,’ she said.

  ‘In that case would you kindly tell your correspondents not to treat it as one?’ He handed over the paper, which turned out to be a telegram.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’re most kind. I shall pass on your comments.’

  ‘You do that,’ he said. ‘Door’s that way.’ He returned to his work. I wondered if any branch of the justice system employed men to work on their reception desks who actually enjoyed meeting members of the public.

  Once we were safely outside in the grey February chill, Lady Hardcastle opened the telegram.

  ‘Tum-te-tum, la-de-da-de-dee, diddly-whippet,’ she said as she read it.

  ‘More code?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s from Dinah Caudle – I told her we’d be here this morning. She says that if we can be at the offices of Messrs Churn, Whiting, Hinkley, and Puffett on Corn Street by half past eleven, we can join her as she interviews Mr Redvers Hinkley for her newspaper.’

  ‘Why would we wish to do that?’ I asked.

  ‘Unless she has mistakenly divined some sort of fondness on our part for Corn Street, then I presume that the notebook has given up the name Hinkley.’

  ‘To judge by the firm’s name, it would seem he’s a senior partner in something or other,’ I said. ‘Exactly the sort of chap Brookfield would go after.’

  ‘I believe he’s a property developer,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘Ben has mentioned him, I’m sure of it. Buys up land, builds things on it, sells it all on at great profit – that sort of carry-on.’

  ‘Just the type of thing Brookfield was interested in,’ I said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I’m sorry to be dashing off so rudely, Georgie, dear, but if we’re to be at Corn Street by half past eleven and looking well kempt and carefree we’d better get our skates on.’

  ‘I perfectly understand. Go. But do let me see how you start this wonderful device. I shall be speaking to Ben about it this very evening.’

  Once we had reequipped ourselves with mufflers and goggles, I gave Lady Bickle a brief lesson in starting the Rover’s engine. She waved us off as we headed back towards the Gloucester Road and our appointment in the city.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t poke this particular hornets’ nest with your stout poking stick,’ said Dinah Caudle as we entered the stone-fronted office building together. ‘Hinkley is a sight more canny than Crane and he won’t startle nearly so easily. It’s also – and I can’t emphasize this enough – it’s also vitally important to me that I don’t give him cause to slam the door in my face for good. Brookfield was on to something with this chap and if he’s not responsible for the arson I’ll have a chance to skewer him with another story later. But I’ll get the best possible results if I can keep talking to him right up to the moment the newspapers start landing on people’s breakfast tables.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I shall be church-mouse-like.’

  ‘You can be Lady Summerford again.’

  ‘That makes me Nelly Maybee,’ I said. ‘With two e’s.’

  She just looked at me and shook her head.

  Mr Hinkley’s personal secretary was a harassed-looking man in his early thirties with spectacle lenses like polished glass pebbles. His moustache was as frayed as his coat sleeves, and his fingers as ink-stained as his shirt sleeves. He looked up from his work and blinked slowly. He offered no word nor even a smile of greeting.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Miss Caudle. ‘I am Miss Caudle, of the Bristol News. I have an appointment to see Mr Hinkley at noon.’ She looked at the clock on the wall at the precise moment its hands ticked to midday.

  ‘I shall tell him you’re here,’ said the secretary without making any effort to rise to do so. ‘Might I enquire as to the identity of your . . . companions?’

  ‘These are Lady Summerford and Miss Maybee. With two e’s. They are associates of mine from the newspaper.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said, and slowly unfolded himself from his chair. He walked stiffly, and with a slight limp, towards the large double doors that I now presumed to be the portal to his master’s lair. With a flunky’s flourish, he opened both doors just wide enough to admit his gangly body and then closed them behind him.

  We waited.

  After a few moments, he reappeared and beckoned us towards him.

  ‘Mr Hinkley will see you now,’ he said, and threw open both doors to bow us in.

  Mr Redvers Hinkley was standing behind a desk large enough to sleep a family of four. I’d seen dozens of ‘Hinkleys’ over the years. Big men in expensive suits who were all smiles and bonhomie, quick to welcome you and put you at ease, and just as quick to stab you in the back – metaphorically or, in one unpleasant case, literally – when you stood between them and their ambition.

  ‘Ladies,’ he said, spreading his arms in welcome. ‘Do come in and make yourselves comfortable.’

  He indicated three high-backed chairs that had been arranged facing the expansive plateau of leather-topped desk. We sat.

  ‘Can I offer you some tea, perhaps?’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, that would be most welcome,’ said Miss Caudle.

  Hinkley nodded over our heads and we heard his secretary close the door. ‘Now, then, Miss Caudle,’ said Hinkley, ‘you I remember from the Mayor’s New Year Ball. But your charming friend . . . I’m sure I should have remembered meeting her.’ He looked down at a piece of notepaper in front of him. ‘Lady Summerford, is it?’

  ‘It is, Mr Hinkley,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘We moved to Bristol late last year. Perhaps you know my husband, Sir Philip? Were you by any chance at the boxing match last Tuesday? The twenty-fifth. You might have seen him there.’

  ‘Sir Philip Summerford,’ mused Mr Hinkley. ‘No, can’t say it rings a bell, and I’m afraid I was working late all last week so I missed the fight. What line is Sir Philip in?’

  ‘He’s retired now,’ she said. ‘But he used to run a tea plantation in Assam.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ he said, his interest evaporating. If this Sir Philip Summerford was no longer active in the world of business or politics, he was of no use to Hinkley and no further effort would be expended on knowing anything about him.

  ‘Lady Summerford is learning the tricks of the trade,’ said Miss Caudle. ‘She wishes to write articles for the newspaper and so I’ve taken her under my wing, as it were.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. This was something he could understand. ‘So this newspaper business is your little hobby, then, is it? A little something to keep you out from under your husband’s feet during the daytime? Jolly good, jolly good. I must say, if I retired I’d have to find something for my wife to do to get her out of the house.’

  We all smiled and nodded politely.

  ‘And you, Miss . . . Maybee with two e’s?’ he said, eyeing my uniform. ‘How do you fit into all this? Not many journalists of my acquaintance take their servants to work with them.’

  ‘I assist Lady Summerford,’ I said. ‘Sometimes it can be handy to have someone to fetch and carry for you.’

  Precisely on cue, the secretary returned bearing a tea tray, which he set down on a side table. He poured tea and distributed cups while we talked.

  ‘Well, then, Miss Caudle,’ said Mr Hinkley. ‘What little story are you writing this time? Surely it’s not time for another mayoral ball. My poor bunions have barely recovered from the last one.’

  ‘No, Mr Hinkley, it’s not a society story. It’s more of a . . . how shall we say . . . more of a social story this time. I understand your firm is behind the proposed development of the new commercial buildings on Thomas Street. I was hoping to write about the rejuvenation of the area and the coming of new jobs. It will be a boon to the immediate area. And the city as a whole, for the matter of that.’

  ‘
That old fraud Tapscott down at the Bristol News has got women writing business stories now, eh? What a way to run a newspaper.’

  ‘As I say, Mr Hinkley, I’m covering it more from the social angle. How it will benefit the community – change lives for the better – to have these exciting new business premises opening up in what, you would have to admit, is an otherwise rather rundown area.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘That makes a good deal more sense. Never met a woman yet who understood commercial matters, but families . . . well, that’s another thing entirely. It’s the way women’s brains work, d’you see? It’s like a machine in a factory. You wouldn’t expect to be able to make pencils with a machine designed to pump water out of a mine, would you? It’s the same with the brains of men and women. Women’s brains are made by the Good Lord to raise children and run households. It’s common sense.’

  We meekly nodded our understanding of this profound truth and smiled our gratitude to the great man for vouchsafing it to us.

  ‘Of course,’ said Miss Caudle. ‘Which is why I’m concentrating on a different aspect of the story. What will the new premises be used for, for instance? And how many jobs will be created?’

  ‘Well,’ he began, settling back in his chair and folding his hands across his waistcoat, ‘it will be mainly office buildings, but with some light industrial facilities for handling and processing imported goods from the docks for onward transportation by railway. The site is ideally located between the city’s docks and its main railway station at Temple Meads.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Miss Caudle, ‘that’s good. So you’ll be able to employ some of the men who have been put out of work as the city docks decline in favour of Avonmouth. How wonderful.’

  ‘I think you misunderstand, Miss Caudle. We’re merely a firm of investors and developers. We shan’t be employing anybody other than to build the new properties. It will be up to our tenants to decide whom they employ.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. But you do think that the development will benefit the nearby communities?’

  ‘All our developments benefit the whole city,’ he said grandly. ‘That’s what we do here at Churn, Whiting, Hinkley, and Puffett, we enrich the city and the people in it.’

  Miss Caudle continued in this vein for some minutes more, trying to draw Mr Hinkley into saying something, anything, of substance about the new development. Every attempt was met with the same bland platitudes. Still, she made her notes and smiled at his attempts at joviality, until eventually she politely drew the interview to a close.

  ‘That wasn’t quite as illuminating as I’d hoped,’ said Lady Hardcastle once we were back out on the street.

  ‘Softly, softly, catch the monkey,’ said Miss Caudle. ‘It was an excellent start.’

  ‘We’ve presumed that Mr Hinkley is the subject of the next section of Mr Brookfield’s notebook,’ I said. ‘Is it something to do with the Thomas Street development?’

  ‘Mum’s the word for the moment,’ said Miss Caudle, tapping the side of her nose. ‘Walls have ears and all that. We must find somewhere to sit and chat.’ She looked about. ‘I’d suggest Crane’s but you’ve rather queered the pitch there. Even if dear old Oswald isn’t in residence, the staff will undoubtedly recognize us. There will be earwigging and nose poking.’

  ‘We passed a café on St Nicholas Street the other day when we were looking for somewhere to leave the motor car,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘I know it,’ said Miss Caudle. ‘It’ll do nicely. You can treat me to lunch again, although it’ll be nothing so luxurious as last time. Faggots, mash, and carrots is more their level.’

  ‘It sounds perfect,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘What say you, Armstrong?’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said, almost convincingly.

  We turned on to St Nicholas Street and found the café. It was small, but busy, and would serve as a perfect venue for our discussions. As threatened, faggots and mashed potatoes was the most appealing dish on the menu. No carrots were offered.

  ‘Tell all, then, Miss Caudle,’ said Lady Hardcastle once the meals had been ordered. ‘What has Hinkley been up to?’

  ‘Before we get to that,’ said Miss Caudle, ‘I need to rant to someone about bloody Christian’s bloody notebook, and you’re the only people I can tell.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Is the transcribing not going well?’

  ‘Oh, the text is easy enough to follow now that you’ve worked out his system. It’s time consuming but mostly straightforward. No, what’s frustrating me is the chaotic disorganization of the man. When I began, I presumed, or at least hoped, that the notes would be arranged according to some sort of system. Each story in its own section, you see? But not our Christian, oh no. His notes are a stream of consciousness. He wrote down every thought that crossed his mind, in the order he thought it. There’s no structure to it. We hop from the beginnings of the Crane investigation to some rambling thoughts about card schools and gambling debts, then on to Hinkley. Interspersing all this are random sentences that mean I know not what. I’m not sure we’re going to get the full picture on anything until I’ve worked my way through the whole wretched mess, and even then it’s going to be like completing one of those new jigsaw puzzle things. In the dark. With pieces missing.’

  ‘You seem to be doing a grand job so far,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘We already know that Crane might have wanted him out of the way. And now you have something on Hinkley . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Hinkley. It’s just half a story at the moment, which is why I don’t want to spook him yet. According to Brookfield’s notes, there’s something shady about that Thomas Street deal but I haven’t yet managed to establish what. He’s written “council” in the margin in plaintext on several pages, not just these ones, so my intuition is that he might have found some corrupt goings on at the city council.’

  ‘You want to be careful whom you mention “intuition” to,’ I said. ‘People might start to think Crane and Hinkley are right about women’s brains.’

  ‘Those great bumbling oafs and their theories about my brain,’ she said.

  ‘Is it merely a coincidence, do you think,’ I wondered, ‘that Thomas Street has come up again? The shop fire was on Thomas Street, too, don’t forget.’

  ‘It’s more likely that Christian started poking his nose in because the proposed development was on his doorstep. Something obviously struck him as a bit dodgy. He was sometimes apt to see conspiracies where there were none, but he was right more often than he was wrong.’

  ‘You admired him, didn’t you?’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘A great deal. He was honest and principled. A good man. I often suggested he should go into politics and sort out the rot from the inside, but he just laughed.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Have you ever thought of standing for the council?’

  ‘Me?’ laughed Miss Caudle. ‘Not a chance. I can do a great deal more mischief with my pen then I ever could playing politics.’

  The food arrived and talk turned to other matters.

  ‘How did your visit to the gaol go?’ asked Miss Caudle between mouthfuls.

  ‘As disheartening as visits to gaols always are,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Miss Worrel isn’t coping at all well. From the look of her, she’s not sleeping properly. Nor eating, if my guess is right.’

  ‘I thought that was their speciality, the suffragettes.’

  ‘Not eating? They do it as a deliberate gesture of defiance, yes. But this is different. She seems to be losing the will to fight. And Suffragette HQ, or however they style themselves, seem to have washed their hands of her, so she’d get no praise and support from them if she did starve herself. It’s only her friends in the local branch who are standing by her.’

  ‘Do you think she did it?’

  ‘I really don’t,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I had a scientist’s open mind before, but now I’ve met her I’m sure of her innocence.’

  ‘Then I’ll redoubl
e my efforts to make sense of Brookfield’s ramblings,’ said Miss Caudle. ‘I’m convinced that the answer is in there somewhere. It must be.’

  After dinner that evening we sat together in the drawing room sipping brandy and contemplating the crime board. Dinah Caudle had furnished Lady Hardcastle with a photograph of the late Christian Brookfield, from which she had produced a lovely sketch for the centre of the web of connections. Now that we had met Lizzie Worrel, she was able to produce a sketch of her, too, but of a lively and smiling Lizzie, not the pale, sad, hopeless one we had seen in that grim cell.

  ‘And here’s Redvers Hinkley,’ she said, pinning up the last of the day’s drawings and linking it to Brookfield, and Thomas Street.

  ‘How does the betting stand now?’ I asked.

  ‘I should say the odds on Lizzie Worrel are lengthening by the day,’ she said. ‘I know we’re staying well clear of intuition, but she does seem by far the least likely candidate. No one knew Brookfield was dead when she was arrested, for a start. If she were the arsonist and had done it in the name of the WSPU, she’d have claimed responsibility at once and yelled her defiance as they dragged her to the Black Maria. Once she learned of the man’s death, she’d have been racked with guilt and remorse. I saw none of that, did you?’

  ‘None at all,’ I agreed. ‘Fear, hopelessness, and bewilderment, but no guilt.’

  ‘So we’re agreed that she’s the outside bet at the moment, then. As for these others. Hmm. Crane has motive, but no visible backbone. Let’s see what Inspector Sunderland has to say about his movements. And Hinkley . . . He’s an oily, self-important idiot but that’s still not a crime, despite all the letters I’ve written to our MP. He claims to have been working late on the night of the fire. I know that doesn’t mean much, but it’s easy enough to check. And we’re not yet sure what his motive might be because we don’t know what Brookfield thought he was up to.’

  ‘Bribery would be my bet,’ I said. ‘He seems the type. Miss Caudle was pressing him on the Thomas Street development and there were those unexplained “council” references in the notebook.’