Anything For a Quiet Life

by Michael Gilbert

  “I’ve looked at the dates of the three incidents,” he said, “and I noticed that the trouble at the French restaurant was a fortnight before the others. I don’t know a lot about food poisoning, but it did seem to me that it would have been very difficult to get hold of the bacillus and introduce it into the food that Madame Laurenceau was cooking. I wondered whether FSP might have seen that the food poisoning was a good starting point for a campaign and built on it.”

  “If that’s right,” said Sabrina, “isn’t it equally possible that the black beetles really were in the Fooderie store? I don’t trust these quick-service places.”

  “The offal didn’t arrive of its own accord in that fish restaurant.”

  “Might have been a crowd of boys who had a grudge against the proprietor.”

  “No,” said Claire. “It’s a regular campaign. Those weren’t the only three incidents. The others weren’t quite so dramatic, that’s all. Customers getting up and shouting the odds about dirty plates, people refusing to eat what was put in front of them and throwing it on the floor. It doesn’t take much to give a restaurant a bad name.”

  “It’s happening, all right,” agreed Sam. “And I know who’s doing it. Louie the Nose and his boys. Mostly they work on the racecourse. Did you hear about that jockey that doubled on them? Broke both his legs and dumped him in the stall with this horse. Then threw stones at the horse till he got really wild and finished the jock off. Crafty, you see. When they found the body they thought he must have gone into the stall and been attacked.”

  “I don’t call it crafty,” said Claire. “I call it filthy.”

  “Well, they’re not a nice crowd,” agreed Sam mildly.

  “What I find it very difficult to believe,” said Sabrina, “is that a company like World Wide would employ these sort of tactics. They’re a huge international consortium. I believe the ultimate control is either German or American. Surely they’re much too big—”

  “I thought about that,” said Jonas. “They are big and efficient. They operate on a regional basis. The lot that sells down here would be the South-Eastern Group. Now suppose this group had been doing rather badly in comparison with the other groups in this country. The local regional boss – I’ve met him and didn’t like him much – a man called Claude Schofield, he feels he’s for the chop unless he can organise a dramatic turn round. So he gets hold of the top man in FSP—”

  “Carl Fredericks,” said Claire.

  “A boyfriend of yours?” suggested Sabrina.

  “Not on your nelly. He’s fifty and he’s got an expensive stomach and three chins. I think Jonas is right. And I’ll tell you why. Claude and Carl are golfing buddies. Suppose one day on the golf course Claude says to Carl: ‘Get your FSP reps busy selling my stuff and I’ll cut you in for a private commission. Say ten per cent on any increase in sales.’”

  “You’re right about one thing,” said Jonas. “World Wide are the sort of big organisation who wouldn’t hesitate to sack a regional boss if his figures were bad.”

  Claire said, “And that would be particularly unfortunate for Claude, as I heard – only a rumour, mind – that he’s been badly dipped lately at the races. If he couldn’t pay the bookies, he might find himself being trampled on by a racehorse.”

  Jonas finished his tea. He said, “It’s an unpleasant business. I’m glad we’re not directly involved and I hope we shan’t be.”

  On the following morning, which was a Friday, this hope was dashed with the arrival of Aneurin Williams. The first impression was a shock of white hair, bristling white eyebrows and a pair of light blue eyes. The next was an ensnaring Welsh tongue, the voice of an orator from the valleys. When Jonas understood what Mr Williams wanted him to do he said ‘No’ and went on saying it until he realised that he was making no impression on his visitor.

  “It’s a simple thing. It just needs a man of your authority, Mr Pickett.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “None of the other lawyers in this town are of any use. Not the least use. It requires a man who speaks with authority.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “All that is necessary is for you to explain the law to Chief Superintendent Whaley.”

  “Suppose he doesn’t believe me?”

  “He will believe the law, as expounded by you.”

  “Just let me get this straight,” said Jonas. “The police have forbidden you to hold your meeting tomorrow.”

  “They have purported so to do.”

  “And you say they’ve no right to stop you.”

  “It’s not I who say it. It’s the law. I have studied the decided cases. As, no doubt, you also will have done.”

  “All right, I’ll have a word with my partner, who knows a lot more law than I do. If she supports you, I’ll speak to Whaley. Not that it’ll do a blind bit of good. The police have a lot of latitude in matters like this.”

  With that, Aneurin Williams had to be content. He would have liked to have gone on talking, but Jonas was firm.

  Sabrina, when consulted, said, “He’s right. In theory, that is. A public meeting can only be stopped by the authorities if they can show that there’s a likelihood of disorder resulting. The normal case is where one lot announce a meeting and their opponents promptly decide to hold a meeting in the next street.”

  “Fascists and Communists.”

  “That sort of thing. Of course there’s nothing like that here. But the police do have a pretty wide discretion and I can’t see the local bench opposing them.”

  Jonas thought about the local bench and could only agree.

  “I suppose I’d better have a word with Whaley. I warned Williams that it would do more harm than good. If I could have fixed it up quietly with Jack Queen, I might have got somewhere.”

  Chief Superintendent Whaley was large, courageous, thick-skinned and obstinate. Like an articulate rhinoceros, said Claire, who had once danced with him at a tennis club social. His disapproval of Jonas dated back to the early days of Jonas’s arrival in Shackleton. He received him and listened to him with formidable politeness.

  He said, “I know Claude Schofield. We get all our Christmas supplied from the World Wide stores in Brighton. I’ve often told him he ought to open a branch here.”

  “I’m surprised he hasn’t,” agreed Jonas.

  “This other man, Fredericks. I’ve never heard of him. Who is he?”

  “Carl Fredericks runs Food Sales Promotion. It’s an advertising agency, with a lot of representatives who go round finding markets for their clients’ goods.”

  “I see. And your idea is that Fredericks is getting a personal rake-off from Schofield and using some of it to pay for muscle to back up his salesmen.”

  “It’s not my idea. It’s the idea of a number of hotel and restaurant owners who’ve had visits from these people.”

  “And you say they’ve been threatened.”

  “No,” said Jonas unhappily. “That’s just what they’re careful not to do. They simply drop hints. It’s what happened last year in Brighton that’s scaring people here.”

  “Yes. I had a word with Chief Superintendent Maxted about that. There’s been some pressure-selling there, no doubt. He thinks it may have been exaggerated. In any event, Shackleton isn’t Brighton. We haven’t had any trouble here yet.”

  “Not yet,” said Jonas. He could see that the rhinoceros was heading down a fixed track to a predetermined end and that no arguments were going to stop him.

  “What we don’t want to do is to stir up trouble here before we’ve any cause to do so. That puts us in the wrong.”

  “And you think that a public meeting to discuss the matter is going to cause trouble?”

  “In the ordinary way, perhaps not. But we’ve had some experience of Mr Williams. You know him, I expect.”

  “He’s elected himself as my client. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I see.” Whaley looked at Jonas thoughtfully. “I’ve told him we can’t
have the Saturday afternoon traffic in the High Street disrupted. It’s difficult enough to keep the traffic moving as it is. If he insists on holding the meeting in spite of my warning I shall get my men to disperse it. If Williams resists, they’ll have orders to bring him in. I hope they won’t have to arrest you, too, Mr Pickett.”

  This was said without a smile.

  “I hope so, too,” said Jonas. “I’ll go along now and tell my client what you’ve said. If this afternoon’s meeting is going to be cancelled, there isn’t a lot of time to do it.”

  Jonas went straight round to the Everdene Hotel. As he went he was cursing Aneurin Williams and cursing him wholeheartedly. The last thing he wanted was a feud with the police. It did neither him nor his clients any good. He hoped, without much confidence, that the Welsh crusader would listen to reason.

  He found a worried boy in the front desk at the hotel. The boy said, “Dad’s not here. He went out about half an hour ago.”

  “Have you any idea where he went, or why?”

  “He doesn’t tell me much. I think it was a telephone call he had. He said it was important.”

  “Does he know that the police have put a stopper on his meeting?”

  “Yes. He knew that. Whaley had been on to him earlier this morning. What he said, as he was going out, was that if everything went as he thought it would, there might be no need for a public meeting after all.”

  Jonas thought about it. It didn’t make a great deal of sense. He said, “I’m going back to my office now. When your father turns up, ask him to give me a ring.”

  The boy said, “You’re going to advise him to play along with the police – I hope.”

  Jonas gathered that he didn’t approve of his father’s crusading. Jonas said, “I most certainly am.”

  He waited patiently, first in his office and then in his flat, until past two o’clock, but the telephone remained silent. It meant missing his lunch, but this troubled him very little. He often ate nothing between breakfast and dinner.

  At half past two he wandered down to the Town Hall. There were quite a few people collected round the steps, but Williams was not there and no one seemed to know what to do.

  Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, thought Jonas. Then Whaley appeared, pushing his way through the crowd. He climbed the steps. No need for a loudhailer. His booming voice carried quite clearly.

  “I’ve told your organisers that if they persist in holding this meeting they will be breaking the law. There’s no objection to your meeting later, at a more suitable place. But not here and not now.”

  Jonas wondered what would have happened if Williams had been there. As it was there was no real resistance. People started to drift away. Whaley came down and climbed back into the police car.

  Shortly after two o’clock on that same afternoon Dr Abrahams, who was the police doctor, had passed through the pier turnstile accompanied by his sons, Pete and Jim. Pete was dancing with excitement. He said, “Hurry, hurry. We don’t want to miss the train.” They dragged their father through the crowd like two small tugs towing a liner.

  “Plenty of time,” said the doctor. “The amusement arcade’s only just opened.”

  In spite of Pete and Jim’s urging, when they arrived at the ghost train there was already a queue. There were two small girls in the charge of an old lady and a teenaged girl who was trying to control three small boys and a large dog. The rest were unaccompanied children.

  The doctor and his sons got the last carriage to themselves. There was a toot, the lights went out and the train plunged into the tunnel.

  Dr Abrahams observed the effects with interest. He thought they had been rather skilfully arranged. There were three set-pieces, each one accompanied by appropriate noises-off. The first was the graveyard. It was hung with skeletons which jiggled their arms and legs in time with the tolling of a bell. The children in the carriage ahead of them screamed in joyful unison.

  Pete and Jim were silent, but entranced.

  Next they arrived at the infernal zoo where there were animals with electric eyes, gaping jaws and a background of banshee howling. The last cavern was, in some ways, the most effective. It was the tomb. In a ghastly green light, to an accompaniment of moaning and sobbing, human heads were displayed projecting through holes in the backcloth: distorted, moronic and leering.

  Dr Abrahams was interested to observe that the screaming of the children in the carriages ahead had now a more genuine ring. As their own carriage swung into the third cavern he ceased thinking about this. There was something much more urgent on his mind.

  As soon as the train stopped he took out some loose change, gave it to Pete and Jim and said, “I’ve got something to do. Get along to the slot machines. I’ll join you there.”

  His sons looked surprised, but scampered off.

  The track of the ghost train was circular and operated in both directions so that departures and arrivals could be handled from the same point. The proprietor was getting ready to let in passengers for the return trip when Dr Abrahams stopped him.

  He showed him his police card and said, “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to shut up shop. I’ll telephone the police if you insist, but there’s no time to waste.”

  The effect of this pronouncement on Cyril Aylett was unexpected. There was none of the bluster and protest that Abrahams had anticipated. Instead, he seemed to shrink. It was as though most of the air had been let out of him. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  “Quick,” said Abrahams. “Turn out all the comic effects and switch on some proper lighting. You can do that, can’t you?”

  Aylett nodded. He pulled out a notice which said ‘Closed for Temporary Repairs’, led the way inside the turnstile, disregarding the protests of the waiting children, and turned two switches. Then he led the way into the tomb. The glaring overhead light had stripped it of all its mystery. Three of the projecting heads could now be seen as rubber masks. The fourth, though it was painted with the round eyes, white cheeks and fat red lips of a clown, was human.

  Dr Abrahams ripped down the backcloth. Aneurin Williams had been lashed to the framework of metal girders with his head projecting through the screen. Abrahams said, “Knife. Or scissors. Don’t waste time.”

  Aylett scuttled away. The doctor worked on the gag which had been fastened into Williams’s mouth. He had it out by the time Aylett came back with a knife. The doctor glanced at it, but made no move to take it. He was looking at the gag, a fat wad of cloth, with strings attached. It had been chewed into rags and was wet with blood and saliva.

  Aylett said, “Oughtn’t we to get him down?”

  “Too late,” said Abrahams. “He’s dead. Been dead some little time. Telephone the police. I’ll wait here.”

  Chief Superintendent Whaley was not easily moved, but for all his stolidity he was shaken. He said, “Your idea, doctor, is that Williams choked himself trying to chew that gag out.”

  “When a proper autopsy has been made,” said Dr Abrahams cautiously, “I think it will show that the actual cause of death was suffocation. Equally, it might have been shock. He wasn’t a young man.”

  “Painting and powdering his face – I suppose they meant it as a joke.”

  Dr Abrahams said, “A bad joke, that went wrong.” He, too, was upset.

  “Do you think Aylett was in it?”

  Dr Abrahams thought about it. As a professional man he disliked jumping to conclusions. He said, “The way he reacted when I spoke to him demonstrated that he knew there was something wrong. When he realised that Williams was dead—well, that was quite a different matter. He nearly passed out.”

  “The ghost train is his outfit. There was a dead man in it. He can’t sidestep that. We’ll pull him in for questioning.”

  “I wish you could have pulled him in right away to stop him talking. Too late now.”

  Whaley grunted agreement. Like all policemen, publicity was something he heartily disliked.

  “One thing di
d occur to me,” said Abrahams. “You remember that business at the fish restaurant in Brighton. The people who did it took a photograph and sent it to the press. If the object of this operation was to make Williams look a fool, mightn’t they have done the same thing here?”

  “You think it’s the same people?”

  “I’d think so, yes.”

  “I’ll have a word with Maxted about it. He told me he thought the muscle behind the Brighton episodes came from the racecourse. Well, he can attend to that. I’m going to shake down Aylett. He’s the man in the middle.”

  Jonas was saying much the same thing to Sabrina. He enjoyed discussing problems with her because she almost always took the opposite view to his and argued it tenaciously. He called her his favourite No-woman.

  He said, “Aylett is the key to this.”

  “I don’t follow that,” said Sabrina. “Didn’t the boy at the hotel tell you someone had telephoned his father to arrange a meeting?”

  “Correct.”

  “The idea being that some sort of compromise could be arranged. They’d lay off Shackleton if Williams abandoned his campaign.”

  “Right again.”

  “Well, Aylett couldn’t do anything like that. He wasn’t in a position to make such an offer.”

  “I didn’t suggest it was Aylett who telephoned. Fredericks must have done that. On the other hand, the last thing he was going to do was come anywhere near Shackleton. I’ve no doubt he spent the morning parading round Brighton establishing a series of beautiful alibis for himself. No, no. He’d simply have warned Aylett that Louie’s boys were coming and that he was to hide them in the ghost train.”

  “How would they get into the arcade? It’s locked until two o’clock.”

  “No problem. There’s a back entrance, on a lower level of the pier where the public aren’t allowed to go. If they dressed as workmen and kept their eyes open, they’d slip in easily enough.”

  “And what was Aylett supposed to do when Williams turned up?”