Sweet Poison

by David Roberts

  8

  Verity’s Monday

  ‘You did what?’ said Edward, frankly appalled. ‘You embroiled the Bishop in a bar-room fight, asked him if he had murdered General Craig, and then invited him to write for your beastly rag?’

  ‘I thought you would be pleased,’ said Verity. ‘I have been following up leads. You have been doing nothing but taking women out to disorderly houses. I wish I had pointed out to Tommie that his punching that Fascist on the chin proved my point about tribal warfare,’ she added meditatively. ‘Oh well, perhaps better not.’

  It was eight o’clock and Edward was sitting up in bed eating his lightly boiled egg, toast and marmalade when the telephone had rung. It was Verity. Without pausing to inquire after his knee, she regaled him with the whole story of her day’s adventure. Edward had to admit she appeared to have been a more successful sleuth than he, and it rather got up his nose.

  ‘Yes, and I haven’t finished yet.’ Verity’s voice came over tinny and shrill through the instrument. ‘Guess what?’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Edward wearily. ‘You’ve been invited to write for The Times.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Verity admiringly, ‘that’s jolly clever of you. As a matter of fact not The Times but the New Gazette.’

  ‘Lord Weaver’s paper?’ said Edward, sitting up in astonishment.

  ‘Well, practically. Apparently he was so impressed with my enterprise in getting that scoop, he wants to meet me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This afternoon at two in his office.’

  ‘And you think he is going to offer you a job?’

  ‘Yes – well, what else can it be?’

  ‘I expect,’ Edward said with heavy irony, ‘rather than offer you a job he is going to shut you up. Don’t you realize he controls the whole press except for rags like yours which no one takes seriously except a few cranks and no one reads except a few other cranks.’

  Verity, swallowing her annoyance at this put-down, said, ‘They all used my story about the General’s death. Anyway, how could Weaver stop me from digging the dirt? He can’t control the whole press. Surely the New Gazette’s competitors would be delighted to print what he refuses to.’

  ‘Oh, you innocent young thing,’ said Edward patronizingly. ‘I grant you that if we are talking about some story about a horse which may or may not win the Derby, or the inside story of Lady Snooty’s affair with Lord X, or even new fashions from Paris, there’s real competition for the big story, but when it comes to politics they work as a cabal. If the PM tells them not to print some story, they don’t, and when I say they I mean all of the proprietors. They all want their peerages or at least their private dinners at Number Ten. It just wouldn’t be playing the game otherwise. And if some rogue paper like your precious Daily Worker gets hold of something they shouldn’t, they will all gang up and suppress it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Rubbish it – make fun of it – deny it – blackmail – do whatever they need to do. It’s a rough world out there, kiddo, and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘Oh, you men,’ said Verity scornfully, ‘always so scared of getting into a bit of trouble. Well, even if you are right, I will at least have a chance of asking him if he saw anything suspicious when General Craig died. After all, that’s bound to be the subject on the agenda.’

  Edward was silent for so long Verity said, ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m still here. I’m just thinking. There are some questions I’d like to ask Lord Weaver myself but I can’t discuss them with you over the phone. Would you have time to meet for lunch today?’

  ‘Not really,’ she retorted but, relenting, said, ‘There’s a pub in Fleet Street, the Goat and Grapes, do you know it?’ Edward said he did. ‘Well, let’s meet there for a drink – at twelve thirty, say.’

  ‘All right,’ Edward said, aware that this girl he had dismissed at first meeting as a little piece of fluff had once again taken charge.

  ‘Oh, and don’t be late,’ she added. ‘It’s all right for the idle rich but some of us have to work for world revolution. I expect you are still in bed, aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ lied Edward, ‘I’ve been up for hours,’ but Verity had already rung off.

  Through a haze of tobacco smoke, Edward saw Verity waving to him from a corner. The Goat and Grapes was a favourite haunt of Fleet Street journalists and was packed as usual at this time of day – or rather at this and all times of the day the licensing laws permitted. As the only lady in the room, with the exception of a slatternly woman behind the bar, one might have expected Verity to have been the object of male admiration but this was not the case. She had been ignored at the bar and every one of the male clientele had offered not chivalric aid but studied indifference at her plight. As far as they were concerned she did not exist. Predictably, she was seething with indignation. ‘Do you know,’ she said, before he was even seated, ‘they would not serve me at the bar. I almost exploded but I didn’t want to be thrown out till you arrived. And not one of these “gentlemen”,’ she gestured scornfully at the men around, ‘stood up for me. I’m fuming.’

  ‘Oh gosh, yes, I suppose they see this as a gentlemen’s club – members only and all that sort of thing. I’m afraid you are trespassing.’

  ‘Well, it’s all bunkum.’

  ‘Why don’t we go elsewhere?’

  ‘I haven’t got the time. Just get me something ladylike – a gin and lime or something – and then let’s swap notes.’

  Edward came back from the dingy bar weaving between tables and stools, his hands in the air as if in surrender, bearing a pint for himself and gin for Verity. Verity went over everything she had learned from Cecil Haycraft but in the end it did not seem to amount to very much. She listened intently as he in turn told her about his evening in the Cocoanut Grove.

  ‘And you think there is something fishy about the club? You’re not just pipped at being left in the lurch by Hermione?’

  ‘Please, Verity,’ Edward expostulated, ‘think better of me than that. Hermione is a little monster but I’m still worried that someone is using her for their own ends – Charlie Lomax for one.’

  ‘Could it be dope?’

  ‘I think it might be but I have no proof. In fact we still have no proof of anything at all. There is one other thing though – two things really. The egregious Captain Gordon, the club’s genial host, volunteered the information that the club belonged to Lord Weaver. That’s why I wanted to talk to you before you saw him.’

  ‘Golly, why on earth would he want to own a place like that? I mean, if it got out that he owned the club it would do his reputation no good at all.’

  ‘Quite, and it makes no business sense. It doesn’t chime in with his other business interests.’

  ‘Unless he is making money from dope and the club is just a front?’

  ‘Yes, that had crossed my mind but it seems so unlikely. He’s rich enough as it is and he would lose everything if he were ever revealed to be a dope pedlar. No, I think the answer could be a woman. The cabaret was this stunning American girl who could sing like an angel. In fact, she was much too good to be entertaining a few deadbeats and jackasses in a tinpot West End club.’

  ‘So?’ said Verity. ‘Maybe this girl you were so smitten with was not as good as you thought.’

  ‘Oh, I imagined she sang Cole Porter like . . . like a smoky-voiced angel, did I?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Verity, annoyed with herself for caring one way or the other.

  Edward said calmly, ‘Anyway, I think the explanation of her appearing in Weaver’s club is that she is his mistress. Captain Gordon almost said as much.’

  ‘Gracious!’ Verity exclaimed. She was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t see how I can ask him that – if he has a mistress singing in a night-club.’

  ‘Of course not, but you will be listening to what he does say with a different ear. He might say something which would mean nothing to you unless you knew about
the club.’

  ‘What was the girl’s name again? Oh, and describe her to me properly.’

  ‘She is called Amy Pageant. She is much taller than you, about five foot ten, black – no, brown hair – it was difficult to tell. She was under quite bright lights but they alter colour so much. She had a wide mouth, big eyes and –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Verity sulkily. ‘I get the picture.’

  ‘You’re not jealous, surely?’ Edward teased.

  ‘I am certainly not jealous. There is nothing to be jealous about, but no girl likes having some other girl described with lip-smacking relish by the man she is having a drink with.’

  ‘I thought we might have gone to the club tonight so you can see her for yourself.’

  ‘Sorry, no can do,’ said Verity firmly. ‘There’s a lecture at the Parton Street bookshop I said I’d go to.’

  ‘Is that that poetry bookshop in Bloomsbury?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Verity, surprised. ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘I once knew a girl who took me there. She thought she was an intellectual.’

  ‘Well, you can come if you want to, I suppose, and then I can tell you how I got on with Weaver. It’s at six thirty.’

  ‘That gives us plenty of time to have dinner after and then go on to the Cocoanut Grove.’

  ‘No can do, I told you. After the lecture we are all going out together.’

  ‘Who’s “we”? Oh, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.’

  ‘Cripes, look at the time,’ said Verity. ‘I’ve got to go. See you tonight.’

  She pushed her way out – a diminutive figure in black – almost tipping a paunchy man in tweeds into his pint as she did so. He looked up angrily and Verity smiled sweetly and went on out – a sparrow among crows, Edward caught himself thinking.

  Verity shot up to the top floor in a gleaming metal cage under the direction of a uniformed attendant – an ex-soldier by his bearing – who clanged open the doors when the elevator finally came to rest with all the élan of a lion tamer baring his chest to the lion. On her way up Verity had briefly glimpsed through the elevator grille a world of toil, men hurrying from one room to another with harassed expressions on their faces; the shrill sound of telephones ringing and typewriters clacking provided appropriate musical background though, beneath it all, there was the suggestion of thunder rumbling. In the basement somewhere, a great beast snored.

  However, this was all a world away from the floor on to which she was now deposited. Here there was light, space and quiet. If there was an air of urgency in the hurried walk of a crisply dressed secretary it was suppressed and sank into the great Persian carpets that lay upon the floors. Through the huge plate-glass windows of this spanking new building, the Weaver Building no less, Verity glimpsed a breath-taking panorama of London. Here, on the tenth floor, lived God, it all seemed to proclaim – if there was a god of newsprint. Verity had no time to absorb more than a fleeting impression of this brave new world before she was ushered by a young woman, immaculately coiffured and dressed in what seemed to Verity to be the height of fashion, into an outer office where several other young women were click-clicking away at typewriters. Her escort knocked at another door and she was shown into a spacious office which she took at first for Lord Weaver’s own sanctum. She was soon disabused. A woman of unguessable age and magisterial proportions topped by iron-grey hair sculpted into some kind of a bun rose from a substantial desk to greet her with a wintry smile.

  ‘Miss Browne? I am Miss Barnstable. We spoke on the telephone. The Chairman will see you immediately.’

  Miss Barnstable seemed rather to resent the fact that Verity was not going to have to cool her heels for several hours before getting to meet the great man, as was usually the lot of lesser mortals, and at the same time impressed and curious as to why this little girl – almost a child – should command her master’s interest.

  Verity nodded, and Miss Barnstable knocked on the door which separated her from her lord and waited for the abrupt ‘Come!’ before turning the door handle. Lord Weaver was revealed rising from behind a vast mahogany desk. Outlined against a great expanse of window, he was undiminished. He appeared to Verity to be big enough in every sense not to be dwarfed by his surroundings but she was still inclined to laugh. She understood the theatre of it: she and all Lord Weaver’s visitors were to be put in their place by the press lord’s rich yet austere surroundings.

  ‘My dear Miss Browne, or may I call you Verity?’ He took the cigar out of his mouth and thrust forth his hand. ‘Miss Barnstable, will you bring Miss Browne some – tea? Coffee?’

  ‘No, nothing, thank you, Lord Weaver,’ she said.

  There had been so much going on when she had met him at Mersham Castle and she had been so flurried by breaking into a dinner-party of distinguished men – hard as she tried to disguise it – that she had not appreciated how physically formidable he was. A great bear of a man with a small head and that extraordinary round face lined with deep creases and crevices, like a turnip, she thought irreverently. His bright penetrating eyes beneath bushy eyebrows bored through her leaving her feeling naked, but it was not an unpleasant feeling. He was, she thought, one of those men whom stupid people called ugly but who were in fact supremely attractive to women they chose to fascinate. Thinking about it afterwards, she decided that where the handsome man so often put himself in competition with the beauty of the woman, a man like Weaver delighted in being something of a monster and instinctively divined the vulnerability that lay behind the mask of even the professional beauty.

  ‘Please sit down, won’t you?’ He showed Verity to a big leather armchair which almost swallowed her up and sat himself down in one opposite her. ‘It is so kind of you to spare me the time, Verity, particularly as I felt I could not very easily explain over the telephone why I desired to meet once again.’

  ‘I imagined it was to reprimand me for reporting General Craig’s death in the Daily Worker,’ said Verity disingenuously.

  Lord Weaver smiled. ‘I understand your father is D. F. Browne?’

  ‘Yes, that is correct.’

  ‘A remarkable man. We know each other slightly, of course. This is a small world and though we deplore each other’s principles I certainly admire his willingness to back his opinions with his pocket-book.’

  ‘You mean that the Daily Worker will never make a profit?’

  ‘Well, yes, I do, but for a man like your father who despises the profit motive, that may be a good thing.’

  ‘I don’t think my father will ever have to square his conscience for making money from his beliefs. He is one of the few truly principled men I have ever met.’

  ‘And you, Verity, may I ask if you consider yourself to be principled?’

  ‘I do, yes, Lord Weaver. As a member of the Communist Party and as a journalist, I regard it as my duty to reveal the corruption endemic in the capitalist system.’

  ‘And what was there corrupt at Mersham Castle? The only person there when General Craig died we know to have been lying is yourself.’

  Verity blushed but refused to lose her temper. ‘I admit to having employed a mild subterfuge to gain entrance to the castle. I had the idea of showing how irrelevant is the life led by the Duke of Mersham to the situation this country finds itself in.’

  ‘And when you found yourself a witness to a suicide or horrible accident you did not hesitate to use it to further your career.’

  ‘I have no need to apologize to you. I have and had no personal animosity towards either the Duke or the Duchess. It is true I was, involuntarily, their guest but that cannot excuse me from reporting the truth. I am not a friend of theirs nor did they think I was. It happened I found myself a witness to the violent death of a man who I believe was in a small way responsible for the deaths of many young men on the Western Front. I reported that death – all information which as you are aware will or certainly ought to become public knowledge at the inquest. I may as well say I intend to continue
to report on General Craig if I turn up anything of interest in my investigations.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I may add, Lord Weaver, that I am not convinced that the General did die by accident or even by his own hand. Have you considered he might have been murdered?’

  Weaver was taken aback. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, it’s not easy to mistake a cyanide capsule for a small round pill.’

  ‘You mean his morphine tablets?’

  ‘Yes. I am told that the cyanide capsule was probably glass which has either to be broken into liquid or in the mouth and it would have been a different size and shape from his other pills. The General took the cyanide when he drank his port. If it were an accident, the General must have been drunker or less in control of himself than he appeared.’

  ‘I assumed he committed suicide,’ said Lord Weaver heavily.

  ‘In front of all of you, at the Duke’s table? I don’t think so. He was a private man. In any case, he knew he had only a few weeks to live.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He had cancer.’

  ‘I see,’ said Weaver. ‘I did not know that. Do the police know this?’

  ‘I am sure they do, but I am not in Inspector Pride’s confidence.’

  Lord Weaver said, ‘I still think you are wrong about it not being suicide. You see, he had a strong reason to kill himself – at least I guess he would think so. In fact, I went to the castle to try and reassure him he had nothing to worry about but before I could talk to him the poor man was dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why might he have killed himself?’

  Lord Weaver was silent for a moment then he said, ‘Did you read our obituary of the General?’ Verity nodded. ‘It was anonymous, of course, but perhaps I could introduce you to the gentleman who wrote it. I am afraid at my insistence he was obliged to leave out certain events in the General’s life.’ He went to his desk and pressed a bell.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Miss Barnstable through the intercom.

  ‘Ask Mr Godber and Mr Archer to come to my office, please.’ Verity stiffened. Godber was the editor of the New Gazette and she did not fool herself that he would welcome being taken from his desk to meet her. Weaver turned back to Verity. ‘Would it be unreasonable of me to ask you to regard any information I give you in this room as confidential?’