Fear to Tread

by Michael Gilbert

  Is this Liberal-Democratic England? Or are there neo-Nazis in this country as well?

  The letter was signed, M. Pride, and was addressed from the Augean Club, Pall Mall.

  What a scandalous thing, thought Mr. Wetherall, as he stoned a stewed prune and manoeuvred it into his mouth. He was becoming very adroit with his left hand. What a shocking thing.

  It wasn’t until he had finished his coffee and was getting up to go that it occurred to him that the letter might have something to do with him.

  He sat down again and re-read it. There was nothing in it to show. The letter was undated, and the latest, he supposed, that the paper could have received it would have been the beginning of that week. It said: “last week a police sergeant—”

  He cut out the letter and put it into his wallet.

  He dismissed it from his mind; but it must have stayed in his subconscious and troubled his thoughts, for in the course of a single lesson on eighteenth-century history he managed to allot the Drapiers Letters to Junius and Mrs. Fitzherbert to Charles James Fox.

  As he was getting ready to go home that evening Colonel Bond came through on the telephone. He was as soldierly and cryptic as usual, but Mr. Wetherall thought he detected a suggestion that it would be a good thing if the two of them had a quiet talk before committee on Friday.

  “We might manage it tomorrow,” said Mr. Wetherall doubtfully. “I’m very busy at the moment.” Almost the last thing he felt in need of was a quiet talk with Colonel Bond.

  “I think we should have a word. People are talking.”

  “What about?”

  “Can’t explain over the telephone. Committee’s at twelve on Friday. I’ll be there at eleven thirty.”

  “Oh, very well,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  When he got home the first thing his wife said was: “He’s moved.”

  His mind full of Sergeant Donovan, Mrs. Fitzherbert and Colonel Bond, he stared at her.

  “I felt him this morning. Just after you’d left the house. He gave a little kick.”

  “Good heavens!” said Mr. Wetherall.

  “It’s called quickening.”

  “I’d no idea. I mean, I didn’t realise they moved at all until they—er—came out.”

  “Good gracious, yes,” said his wife. “He’ll turn and kick now until the last week.”

  Mr Wetherall absorbed the information in silence. It had not been brought home to him before that there was a third party actually in existence; a person who could be talked about as if he were alive; a person who would have to be taken into account with the hundred and one other confusing factors in his daily existence.

  “There’s a letter from Major Francis. Such a nice letter. He wishes we could all go out and see him. His daughter’s had a second child. There’s a bit about the Winnipeg floods, but he’s all right, because he’s on high ground.”

  Mr. Wetherall read the letter, and when he had finished it he folded it up and put it in his wallet, where it lay alongside the cutting containing the letter of Mr. Pride of the Augean Club.

  II

  Anyone who did not know Mr. Wetherall might have supposed that the episode was closed.

  His bruises were fading. His hand, though still out of action, was comfortable. The medical attention had been paid for by the State, though there was still a cleaner’s and a tailor’s bill, perhaps a couple of pounds which would have to come out of his pocket. Most men would have accepted Superintendent Huth’s verdict and would have written the thing off to experience.

  “To one beating-up of moderate severity – forty shillings.”

  Not Mr. Wetherall.

  At twelve o’clock on the following day, the Thursday, he took a bus over Waterloo Bridge and got off it at the Aldwych. Then he walked past the Law Courts and Temple Bar, into Fleet Street.

  It was not the offices of the Kite he wanted, because he turned north off Fleet Street into one of those seventeenth-century courts which have remained almost unchanged since the boy Pepys lived there with his father the tailor, and went to Church at St. Bride’s. Successive blocks of offices have grown up round them, but have not destroyed them. Rather, they have preserved them, as Pliocene and Oligocene growths might encrust and protect a genuine Jurassic deposit.

  In Hoopmakers Court, up two break-neck flights of stairs, lay the office of Messrs. Bertram & Moule, Solicitors and Commissioners of Oaths, whose sole surviving partner, Mr. Bertram, was Mr. Wetherall’s man of law.

  The office of Bertram & Moule was arranged with a simplicity which itself reflected a bygone age. It consisted of an outer room, an inner room, and a passage. The passage was so full of black boxes that it was impassable, but since it led nowhere, this hardly signified.

  In the outer room, at a high desk, sat a young man who typed and dispatched the letters, drew up and delivered the bills, kept the accounts, answered the telephone and brewed the tea.

  In the inner room Mr. Bertram practised the law.

  He looked like a gangster. Not the big one, with the machine-gun, but the small, cheerful one who holds open the door of the big-shot’s car.

  He listened, in silence and without visible surprise, to Mr. Wetherall’s story. Occasionally he closed his eyes. They were his most remarkable feature, set deep in his head, behind countless protecting folds, involute and overlapping as the petals of a rose; and in the middle, when you had lost your way among the bordering ridges and creases, like the treasure at the heart of the labyrinth, a pair of remarkably bright grey eyes.

  “What are you going to do?” he said at last.

  “Really,” said Mr. Wetherall, “that’s what I’ve come to ask you.”

  “I thought you might have some general idea. Do you want to have a go at the police for failure to do their duty?”

  “Oh, no. That wasn’t my idea at all. I just thought that if the police wouldn’t prosecute these men, I could.”

  “Technically, yes. On the other hand it wouldn’t be easy if the police were against you. But there would be nothing to prevent you starting a civil action against them.”

  “Then let’s do that.”

  Mr. Bertram cogitated.

  “It would be unusual,” he said. “We’d have to serve them personally with the writ. I suppose it could be done. If you got a court to believe you, you might even get awarded damages. They wouldn’t be easy to collect. Have they got any property?”

  “A lot more than I have, I should think. They all go round in silk shirts and with gold cigarette-cases.”

  “That wasn’t quite the type of property I had in mind,” said Mr. Bertram. “It would be a matter of delicacy to levy a distress against either of the articles you mention. Incidentally, do you know their names and addresses?”

  “One is called Whittaker. Red Whittaker.”

  “Is Red his Christian name?”

  “Really,” said Mr. Wetherall irritably, “I don’t know. That’s the trouble with you lawyers. You do nothing but make difficulties. Do you mean to tell me that a man can come up to me in the street and assault me, and I can do nothing about it.”

  “If the person who assaults you is a respectable citizen, with a proper name and address, there is, of course, a great deal you can do about it. If he is a person of the—ah—lower or criminal class, your remedies are less accessible.”

  “Well, I expect you know,” said Mr. Wetherall wearily. “It seems so monstrous and illogical that I’m prepared to believe it’s correct.”

  As he got up to go he added: “By the way, do you happen to know a Mr. Pride?”

  “Pride. Yes. The name is familiar.”

  “You belong to the Augean, don’t you.”

  “Of course. I knew I’d heard it. Marshall Pride. A tiresome little man. He’s always writing to the papers. I trust he’s not a friend of yours.”

  “Far from it,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I just happened—”

  “You remember the Hoop case? That was Pride.”

  “Not well,” said
Mr. Wetherall, reseating himself. “What was it?”

  “He’s no client of mine,” said Mr. Bertram cheerfully, “so it’s no breach of confidence. It was in all the papers, anyway. Pride wrote a letter which was published by the Hoop. It accused Collet—you may remember Collet. He’s not an M.P. but he is, or was, a leading light in industry and trades unionism—of a lot of things that were nearly but not quite criminal. Disloyalty, tale-bearing, sucking-up to his chiefs, allowing bribery in his own department – and, I believe, for good measure it threw in personal immorality as well. It was cleverly written and wrapped up in a lot of high-sounding stuff and it was published under the usual heading – ‘The editor accepts no responsibility for the views expressed’ – and so on. But as a matter of fact it was fairly well-known that the bosses of the Hoop had been gunning for Collet for a long time.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Wetherall. “They used Pride as a stalking horse. What happened next?”

  “Collet slammed down writs for libel against Pride, and the editors of the Hoop and the printers and everybody. There was a technical defence – the newspaper said it had printed the letter in good faith and as a matter of public interest – but Collet got reasonable damages against Pride and the paper. The Hoop paid all the damages. Collet faded out of public life – and Pride bought a new car.”

  “Do you happen to know him?”

  “Personally? No. I see him at the club. I don’t like him enough to want to take it further. He’s the sort of man you instinctively suspect of having a big, locked cupboard in his bedroom, full of dirty books.

  “You don’t make him sound very pleasant.”

  “He’s popular enough – if popularity means being asked to every wedding and every cocktail party for fear of what he’d say if you left him off the list.”

  “If I wanted to meet him, could you manage it?”

  “I expect so.” Mr. Bertram looked as surprised as his face ever allowed him to look. “I could fix it through Duxford – he’s one of his circle.”

  “It was just a thought,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.”

  When he got home that evening he found a letter from Alastair Todd waiting for him. It was a short letter, with a bulky enclosure, which turned out to be a sort of report. There was no indication of whom it was addressed to, and it started without preamble.

  “The Double Four is an odd set-up. The saloon bar is quite a normal sort of place, I thought. The only really remarkable thing about it is the whisky, which is scotch, all branded types and the supply unlimited. After a bit of hinting I was even able to buy a bottle to take away. Price forty-five bob. I half thought it would turn out to be vinegar and water, but it wasn’t. No, sir.

  “The barmaid in the saloon bar is called Ethel, and she’s rather a honey. At the moment she’s my cover story for visiting the place so often, but if things go on as they are I shall soon be promoting her to the front page.

  “The private bar really is private. There’s no fancy-diddle about this. If you go in you’re turned out. I tried it the first night and the two Flash Alfs already there simply sat and stared at me as if I was something that had strayed in out of the comic supplement – and no one would make a move to serve me with a drink. I’m not thin-skinned about that sort of thing, but after a bit I saw the point and withdrew. The next day I got there bright and early and went in whilst it was still empty. Annie – the proprietress – (trix) I’m coming to her in a moment – shoved her head round the partition and said, quite politely: ‘Not in there, sir, if you don’t mind. Plenty of room in the saloon. We keep that one for club members.’ Grossly illegal, of course, though I fancy it’s done in quite a lot of these back-street pubs, only not often so openly.

  “Well, there it is. If we’re looking for the headquarters of a mob, this could be it. I should have thought a trifle public for the hatching of schemes and the disposal of swag. Particularly if we’re looking for a food stealing racket. You could no doubt slip a bundle of pound notes over the counter as you paid for your drinks, but not a side of bacon.

  “I’ve had four sessions in there so far. Lunch and evening on Tuesday and lunch and evening on Wednesday. No one seems to find such persistence surprising. Why should they? I’d go there for the whisky alone. With Ethel thrown in, it’s a walkover”As I said, after a bit of a false start (I leaned over too quickly and spilt her gin into her lap), we’re getting on famously. I’m afraid I’m not the first man in her life. Only last month a commercial traveller, who had been coming there regularly every evening for a month, ‘offered for her’. He was a nice gentleman, steady income, and ever such good manners (he never upset her gin). But she had to turn him down in the end, on account of what he travelled in. I haven’t been able to get out of her what this was, but I have my suspicions.

  “Last night was my most successful to date (I’m not talking about Ethel, now, my eye’s back on the job). It’s not possible to see into the private bar direct, but I got wedged up at one end of the saloon bar and there was one of those looking-glass advertisement contraptions on the shelf that gave me a bit of a view. It was too messed up with gilt lettering to be much use, but I got occasional glimpses, and round about nine o’clock I saw a big, red-faced, red-haired man who looked as if he could have been one of your pals. Circumstances didn’t permit of spotting spots in eyes, but I think it was him all right. He had a younger, black-haired type with him and that seemed to match up, too.”

  Mr. Wetherall discovered, at this point, that his left hand was shaking, and he put the paper down for a moment. “Must be getting tired,” he said. But it wasn’t that. In a sudden flash of pure intuition he had realised that the black-haired young man was the one who had broken up old Mr. Crowdy, as he lay beside the track. A pick helve or a spade, Sergeant Donovan had said. He picked the paper up angrily and went on reading.

  “My view wasn’t good enough for me to see what they were up to. They left about ten o’clock. I toyed with the idea of following them, but decided that it wasn’t the moment for heroics. It was lucky, in a way, that I didn’t because I managed to get some gen about Annie that I might otherwise have missed.

  “Annie is some girl. I don’t know when I’ve met anyone like her. She’s not what I should call easy to get on with. Her appearance is a bit off-putting and she’s got an insulting way of listening to all you have to say and then topping it off with a perfunctory laugh as if you were a child trying to amuse her with conjuring tricks. In fact, I believe I only really heard her laugh once (that was at a joke I should hesitate to repeat in any company) and it was a most extraordinary noise – like a marble coming out of the top of a full ginger-beer bottle.

  “But she’s certainly all there, and she runs that pub like a cross between a sergeant-major and a Mother Superior. The only weakness I’ve been able to detect in her is that she seems to be a soft touch for patent medicines. By means of the same useful looking-glass, I got a quick look at her private medicine store underneath the bar. From the glimpse I got of it, it was crammed with every sort of mixture and tonic and buck-you-up-oh that’s ever been sold at nine hundred per cent profit to a gullible public. Some enterprising firm must be making a fortune out of her.

  “However, as I was saying, just before closing time last night, I got into conversation with an old man. It might be more accurate to say that he got into conversation with me. He was as tight as a tick, and had obviously reached the stage where he had to tell somebody something. I just happened to be nearest so he grabbed me. In the course of a twenty minute monologue I never got as far as finding out his name or anything much about him, but I did gather that he was deeply in love with Annie, and that Annie would have nothing to do with him. Dispassionately, I couldn’t blame her. He was a seedy old boy, with a long alcoholic history written in his face.

  ‘”She’s cold,’ he said, grabbing me by the sleeve, and breathing into my face a blast of mustard pickle, whisky and senile decay. ‘Cold as a nice-b
erg. Not seckshually cold, old man – I don’t mean seckshually. Temperamentarally. Cold as a nice-berg.’ Did I know, he went on, Why her closest friends called her Icebox Annie?

  “’Because she’s cold as a nice-berg,’ I guessed.

  “’No, no. Not at all. It’s a story,’ he said.

  “And story it was. Even now I don’t know if I believe it (but the mere fact that people do believe it describes her better than I can do). It appears that once, in the early days of the Hitler war, Annie had a husband. She got tired of him, so she ‘stretched him with a bottle’. No doubt many a wife has done as much before – and then screeched until the neighbours or the police rolled up. Not so Annie. Being in the catering profession provided her with certain amenities not enjoyed by ordinary folk. She was the owner of several out-sized refrigerators, into one of which she pushed her better half. Thereafter, being, amongst her other accomplishments, a good rough butcher, she cut him up into very small parcels indeed, which she deposited, from time to time, in the swill bins set up at each street corner by a thrifty government. At the end of three or four weeks, she had only the larger bones left, and these she parcelled up and dropped off the middle of Hungerford Bridge.

  “The whole thing was, thought the boys, an extremely neat job, with the right professional touch about it. It seems to have raised her no end in their estimation – though it’s noticeable that no one has since actually volunteered for her hand.

  “I’d had about enough for one night, and shaking off old Mustard Pickle I pushed along out and went home to bed.

  “More soon.”

  Mr. Wetherall folded up the three or four sheets of typescript. The one he was reading was a carbon copy. It did occur to him to wonder who had got the top copy.

  9

  RATCLIFF LANE, S.E.

  When Mr. Wetherall arrived at the school next morning, he was surprised to find that Peggy was not there.