The Crack In the Teacup

by Michael Gilbert

  “How do you know someone had been through it?”

  “Because they’d taken a lot of the letters out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely sure. We number our letters as we file them. All the earlier ones were missing – the personal ones, I guess. What was left was just the official ones, from the printers, and our London agents, who did the registration.”

  “And from what was left,” said Ann, slowly, “you couldn’t get any idea who had actually formed the company?”

  “As a matter of fact, I wasn’t able to look all that closely. Just as I was getting started, he came back.”

  “Mr. Mentmore came in?”

  “Yes. Just had time to stuff the file back. Of course I had a story ready for him, about Mr. Parsons wanting a file and thinking it might be in his cupboard, etcetera.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He just grunted.”

  “I think you did brilliantly,” said Ann, but she said it in such abstracted tones that her companion looked up sharply.

  “You don’t think there’s going to be trouble over this, do you?” she said.

  “No, of course not,” said Ann. “And if anyone does get into trouble, it mustn’t be you. You must say that I talked you into it. I’ll take the blame.”

  “I wouldn’t like to get the sack over it,” agreed Molly.

  At about this time, Morgan was summoned by buzzer into Mr. Grey’s presence. He found the Chairman of Greyslates dissolving a fat white tablet in a glass of water.

  “My stomach,” he explained. “It’s been playing hell with me lately. When my doctor gave me these tablets he said, ‘I don’t suppose they’ll do you much good, but they may take your mind off things.’”

  “I should get a better doctor,” said Morgan.

  “There aren’t any. The National Health Service has killed medicine in this country. To get proper attention you have to go to Germany or America. They understand insides there.” He finished his drink, made a face, and said, “We’ve got to do something about the Barhaven project.”

  “What’s happening now?”

  “There’s a local press campaign. It’s getting up a lot of steam.”

  “I don’t reckon much by local newspapers.”

  “Local newspapers can be very effective in local elections. It only needs a very small swing in public opinion. The Barhaven Gazette has got a circulation of around twenty thousand. That’s a fleabite by Fleet Street standards, but it goes into the homes of a few thousand voters at this particular election, and if it sways a quarter of them, the Independents will be out of power, and the Progressives will be in.”

  “We can’t take any chances on that,” agreed Morgan.

  “There was a man who was very useful to us, when we had the same sort of trouble – do you remember – in that Walthamstow development.”

  “I remember him.”

  “It was you who got in touch with him.”

  “Yes,” said Morgan. He didn’t sound very happy about it.

  “It occurred to me that he might be useful here.”

  “It’s a long time since I’ve had anything to do with him.”

  “But I expect you could locate him again.” Mr. Grey looked sharply up at Morgan.

  “I could try. The only thing is, I seem to remember that he was a bit rough.”

  “I don’t remember being told anything about that.”

  “There was no official report. It was just—”

  “I thought he was most co-operative.”

  “Yes,” said Morgan. “He was certainly co-operative.”

  He had shot his bolt, and knew it.

  “There’s not a lot of time,” said Mr. Grey. A small drop of moisture had escaped from the corner of his dead eye, and was running down his cheek.

  “I’ll do some telephoning this evening,” said Morgan.

  “The file had been tampered with?” said Anthony.

  “That’s right.”

  “By Mentmore?”

  “Presumably.”

  “And fairly recently.”

  “I should guess so. It was an old file, and by rights it should have been stowed away down in the basement, but Mr. Mentmore had brought it up and put it in his own cupboard. And seeing it was still on top of the files there, it can’t have been there long. You know how quickly things sink to the bottom – in an office when they’re not looked at.”

  “It’s extraordinary,” said Anthony.

  “He must have a guilty conscience, don’t you think, if he goes to the trouble of tearing all the letters out of one of his own files, just in case someone happens to look inside—”

  “I think he must.”

  “Isn’t there any other way – I mean – it doesn’t seem right. Here’s this bit of land, right in the middle of the development. Someone’s sitting pretty. They ought to be forced to tell us who it belongs to.”

  “Who ought to be forced?”

  “These Carlmont people. The ones whose names are on the Register.”

  “They’re only nominees.”

  “Isn’t there some way we could force them to come out into the open?”

  “I suppose,” said Anthony, slowly, “that if we could show some legal cause, we might get an order of the court directing the nominees to disclose the true names—”

  “Oh, order of the court! I didn’t mean anything legal. That’d take donkey’s years, and they’d block it every time. I meant some other short cut.”

  “Had you any ideas—?”

  “Well, someone must have typed those letters that old Mental threw away—”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “It hardly seems possible, but that’s what they call Mentmore in the office. As I was saying, if we could get hold of his secretary – Molly’d know who she is – and loosen her up – stand her a few gins—”

  “I don’t really think—” said Anthony.

  “We’ve put our hand to the plough, now. We can’t turn back.”

  “There’s a limit,” said Anthony, “and getting the secretary of the senior partner of another firm of solicitors drunk in order to learn his secrets is beyond the limit. A long way beyond. Yes, Arnold? What is it?”

  “It’s Mr. Mentmore to see you, sir. And he says it’s urgent.”

  Anthony looked at Ann, who looked back at him.

  “You’d better clear out,” he said. “I’ve got a feeling we’re in for trouble.”

  Arthur Mentmore was angry, but it was a controlled and dishonest anger, which had been stoked up to prearranged temperature, and kept there, with intent to hurt.

  “Yesterday afternoon,” he said, “I found one of the girls in my office rummaging among my private files. She said that one of my partners had asked her to look for a document.

  “I happened to speak to that partner, and he denied it, completely. So I had another word with the girl. I questioned her—closely.” Mentmore’s formidable eyebrows came together in a frown. “In the end, she told me an extraordinary story. So extraordinary that I could hardly believe it.”

  He’s worked this all out, thought Anthony. It’s exactly like a closing speech for the prosecution.

  “—She said that she was examining one of my files at the suggestion of your secretary.” When Anthony said nothing at all, he repeated, “At the suggestion of your secretary. Would you care to comment on that?”

  “Why should I?”

  “It calls for some comment, surely.”

  “I don’t see it,” said Anthony. “All you’ve done is to pass on to me something your secretary said to you about my secretary. It’s kind of you to take the trouble but I don’t really see that I’m called on to say anything.”

  Mr. Mentmore’s face darkened. He was getting really angry now, not pretending.

  “I don’t imagine,” he said, “that your secretary would do this on her own initiative.”

  “That shows you haven’t met her. She’s an extraordinarily in
dependent girl.”

  “If you insist on treating this outrageous breach of professional etiquette as a joke, I shall have no alternative but to report it to the Law Society.”

  “I don’t think the Law Society has any jurisdiction over secretaries, but by all means try it, if you like.”

  Mr. Mentmore drew in a hissing breath.

  “I am only too well aware,” he said, “that there is bad blood between your firm and ours. If I may say so, the fault for that lies more with your father than with me.”

  “W—will you kindly leave my father out of it.” Anthony was annoyed to find the stutter coming back.

  “Some of the remarks he has addressed to me in open court exceeded the bounds of civility usual among professional men.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” said Anthony, getting to his feet, his glasses glinting dangerously. “I told you to leave my father out of it—”

  “Nothing personal—”

  “You can say what you like about me, or my secretary. We’re here, and we can take care of ourselves. But if you mention my father again, I shall have the personal pleasure—” he advanced towards Mr. Mentmore, who shuffled a pace or two backwards—“of kicking you downstairs.”

  “I don’t think there’s any point in prolonging this discussion.”

  “I don’t think there is. Good day to you.”

  “My goodness, you were splendid,” said Ann. Her eyes were shining. “Old Mental looked as if he was going to swallow his false teeth.”

  “Do you mean you were eavesdropping?”

  “I can always hear anything you say in here.”

  “Can you, indeed,” said Anthony. He felt strong, masterful and confident. He took half a step towards her, and said, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, and now seems as good a time as any. Blast you, Bowler. What do you want?”

  “It’s a telephone message, sir, from the doctor. It’s your father. He’s dead.”

  The old man’s eyes were full of tears.

  Chapter Seventeen

  After the Funeral

  When he tried to think about it afterwards, Anthony could recall very little of the period between his father’s death and the funeral on Monday afternoon. The weather broke. It was the only wet spell in that hot, dry summer. He remembered the slanting rain outside the windows, as he talked to the undertaker, the wet laurels in the vicarage garden when he walked round to discuss the funeral arrangements with the vicar and the great drops of rain which hung from the points of umbrellas as they stood at the graveside. He remembered a feeling of outrage that strangers should be treating his father like that, and a feeling of astonishment that he should have possessed so many unknown relatives, mostly female and elderly, and all distressingly kind. But nothing was distinct. It was like the time when he had fallen off his bicycle at the age of eight and had concussion. Time marched erratically, sometimes very fast, sometimes very slowly. Reality was enshrouded in a damp mist.

  On Monday evening Doctor Rogers, who had been looking after his father and had called to pay his condolences, took one glance at Anthony, and went out into the hall to fetch something from his bag.

  “Have you been sleeping?” he said.

  “Not very well,” Anthony admitted.

  “You’re going to sleep tonight,” said Doctor Rogers. “Take three of these, in warm milk, when you’re actually in bed.”

  When Anthony woke up on Tuesday morning the sky was blue and life was back to its normal pace and colour. He could still feel a dull ache, where a vital piece of his past life had been amputated, but it was the sort of ache which he would learn to put up with. He decided to go to the office.

  Ann was standing beside the desk slitting open envelopes. She said, “A lot of these are about your father. I’ve answered yesterday’s batch in your name. I don’t suppose you want to look at them, do you? There wasn’t a grain of genuine sympathy in a bushel of wish-wash. Oh, and there was one particularly nauseating one from old Mental. I tore that one up.”

  “Thank you,” said Anthony. “You deal with all that sort of thing. If there’s anything really personal, let me see it.” He turned gratefully to the other pile and started dictating an answer to a mortgagee bank which was getting uppish about unpaid interest.

  After half an hour of this he said, “The town seems to be covered with posters this morning. I didn’t stop to read them.”

  “It’s a rash of electioneering. It burst out all over on Monday morning. ‘Vote for Honest Jack Crawford. The man you can Trust.’ ‘Lincoln-Bright Washes White.’”

  “When’s polling day?”

  “Friday week. The Progressives are having a monster meeting in the Winter Garden on Saturday, and the Independents are holding an open-air rally on the West Pier on Sunday. Life won’t be worth living until it’s over. Sit tight, and I’ll get you some coffee.”

  As she got up to leave the room the sunlight from the window turned her hair into a coronet of gold and she looked so young and untroubled that he wanted very much to get up and put his arms right round her and say, “I love you, I love you, will you marry me?” only at this moment Mr. Pincott wandered into the room and sat down in her chair.

  “I haven’t bothered you before this,” he said, “but I think there are one or two things we shall have to settle.”

  “I suppose so,” said Anthony.

  “You realise,” said Mr. Pincott, unconscious of the sacrilege he had committed by depositing his shiny sponge-bag trousers and baggy black coat in a chair recently consecrated by radiant youth and innocence, “you realise that you are now the controlling partner in this firm.”

  “I hadn’t thought much about it.”

  “Your father held 40 per cent of the shares. I had thirty-five and you had twenty-five. Under your father’s will, all his property goes to you.”

  “I suppose that’s right,” said Anthony. “I can’t see that it’ll make any practical difference. We’re still partners.”

  “It won’t make any difference to the running of the firm,” agreed Mr. Pincott, removing his glasses and polishing them with a clean white handkerchief from his top pocket. “It will simply mean that a larger share of the profits will go to you.”

  “If you think that’s unfair, we could always rearrange it.”

  “That wasn’t in my mind at all,” said Mr. Pincott with a slight smile. “I should think very poorly of myself if I tried to take advantage of a sad occasion like this to cajole more money out of you. My intentions were the reverse. I have long felt that general practice was not my line. I should like you to consider releasing me from the terms of our partnership deed. Not immediately, of course. Say, at the end of the year.”

  “You want to retire at the end of the year?” said Anthony, blankly.

  “Not retire altogether. I have my clerkship to the Foreshore Commission, my Archidiaconal work, and my secretaryship of the Chamber of Commerce. Those are personal appointments, and I should hope you would have no objection to my continuing with them.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I realise it will mean a great deal of added work and responsibility for you. You will have to think seriously of taking in a partner. Possibly two. There is scope for three working partners in this practice.”

  “How does one set about finding a partner?”

  “One can always advertise in the Law Society’s Gazette. I have noticed a section there, ‘Partnerships Required’. Mostly they seem to be looking for partnerships with prospects. I should have thought there were any amount of prospects in Barhaven.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Anthony.

  The surprises of the morning were not over. Mr. Pincott had scarcely departed when Ann poked her head round the door and said, “Mr. Southern’s in the waiting-room. He says, not to worry if you’re busy. He’ll go away and make a proper appointment. But as he was passing—”

  “No. Ask him in,” said Anthony.

  “I di
dn’t mean to butt in,” said Southern. “I imagine you’re up to the eyes in work. I didn’t come to the funeral. I’m sorry. I couldn’t face it. Particularly in the rain.”

  “I wish I could have dodged it,” said Anthony. “All those terrible women.”

  “We’re all frightened of death,” said Southern. “That’s why we dress it up. To try and propitiate it. However, I didn’t come in here to philosophise. I came in to pass on a piece of news. James Sudderby, so my spies tell me, has hinted that he’d like to give up his job as Town Clerk.”

  “Why on earth—?”

  “He says he’s getting too old for it. Which is nonsense. He’s younger than me. He also says he wants to give more time to his archaeological and natural history studies. But that, I suspect, is an excuse.”

  “Why do you think, then?”

  “He was looking a very worried man when I saw him yesterday. And when someone in their middle fifties looks worried, I usually jump to the conclusion that they’ve had some bad news from their doctor.”

  “I suppose that might be it.”

  “That’s only surmise. What I really came in to say was that if Sudderby does mean to give the job up, quite a few people think that you would be in line for it.”

  “Me!” said Anthony. “Really—I hardly—it’s very good of you, but—”

  “It’d mean leaving private practice, I agree. But it’s quite a well-paid job. And it wouldn’t end there. If you made a success of it, as I’m sure you would, you could move on after a few years to a bigger place. Experienced Town Clerks are in short supply. There’s no saying where you might finish. The Town Clerk of Birmingham gets a higher salary than the Lord Chief Justice. Did you know that?”

  “It isn’t just money,” said Anthony. “There are personal complications. I won’t bore you with them—”

  “Think it over.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Anthony. “Before you go, there is one thing—”

  He opened the drawer of his desk and took out a jeweller’s box with an elastic band round it.