Publish and Be Murdered

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  As Amiss murmured consolatory words, Lambie Crump waved a dismissive hand. ‘Absolutely nothing to worry about, Ricketts. Albeit briefly discomfited, Mr Amiss suffered no more than a small abrasion.’ As the wailing continued, Lambie Crump became visibly irritated. ‘Pull yourself together, Ricketts. There is no time to waste. My taximeter cabriolet is due in five minutes.

  ‘Now, Mr Amiss is coming to help me. He will be manager of the journal. And you will, of course, give him every assistance you can.’

  ‘Honoured, sir,’ said Ricketts. ‘It will be a privilege. I can promise you my best endeavours, which I have always tried to give the ladies and gentlemen of The Wrangler.’

  Amiss resisted the impulse to pat Ricketts on the head. Instead, he bowed. ‘I am most grateful to you, Mr Ricketts. I look forward to a happy collaboration.’ As they left, he was relieved that although Ricketts was palpitating with deference, at least he had not dropped to his knees.

  ‘Awfully sorry,’ said Lambie Crump, whose boredom with his present duties was palpable, ‘but it truly is necessary to hasten. Perchance you can introduce yourself around the place on Monday.’

  ‘Just one thing,’ asked Amiss. ‘Which will be my office?’

  Lambie Crump clapped his hand to his head. ‘Good heavens,’ he said. ‘Alas, while that is a fair question, it is not one to which there has been time to give attention.’ For a moment he looked nonplussed, then he smiled seraphically and laid a hand on Amiss’s shoulder. ‘Surely that can be left to you, my dear chap. I’m sure you can sort something out. After all’—his smile widened—‘is that not precisely the kind of thing you’re here to deal with?

  ‘Now, will you be so kind as to excuse me? Can you show yourself out?’

  ‘If you don’t mind, Willie, I’ll hang on and have a little chat with Mr Ricketts about practicalities.’

  ‘Rather you than me, dear boy,’ And waving a languid farewell, Lambie Crump disappeared.

  ***

  By now Ricketts was busily back at work. ‘Mr Ricketts,’ said Amiss gently. ‘Could we have a word?’

  ‘Excuse me just one moment, sir, or I’ll lose count.’ For the next three minutes, Ricketts continued his task of laboriously counting the contents of a carton of pencils. Then he looked up. ‘That’s right, sir. They’ve sent the right amount. You always have to check, you know. That’s what Mr Flitter always said: “Take nothing for granted.”’

  ‘Do they use a lot of pencils here?’

  ‘Well, I keep the consumption in check, sir. Some of the ladies and gentlemen have no idea of economy. Why, I’ve known Mr Potbury to ask for as many as four pencils in a week. I have to remind him that they don’t grow on trees, you know—pencils.’

  ‘You operate strict economies here, then, Mr Ricketts?’

  ‘I do, sir. I keep a very tight eye indeed on my ladies’ and gentlemen’s requisites.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Oh, there’s paper and there’s pencils and then there’s steel pens—though mind you, that’s not a difficulty since I’m the only one who uses them now. We had a bit of a to-do a long time back about biros. The last editor, God bless him, he didn’t hold with them. Said it was an affront to decency to have them in the building. Fountain pens or steel pens only, he decreed. Or pencils, of course. But then, sir, you know how it is. It’s called progress, I suppose. We had to give in in the end, just like with those machines the typewriting ladies use.’

  ‘So you dispense biros freely now, do you?’

  Ricketts giggled conspiratorially. ‘I can see you are a one, Mr Amiss. “Freely” indeed. That’s not what Mr Flitter trained me to do, I can tell you. There’s not one item goes out of this room that’s not accounted for.’

  ‘So you are a master of stock control, Mr Ricketts.’

  ‘I don’t go along with that fancy language, Mr Amiss. I just count my pencils. That’s what Mr Flitter said was my job. And when they ask for one too quickly, I go looking for the one that’s missing.’

  He looked grave. ‘And I can tell you it’s the same about copies of The Wrangler itself. If you let them get away with it there would be rampant waste. They’d be leaving them all round the place or giving them away for nothing. Ladies and gentlemen with brains are all the same, sir. Not much common sense, if you’ll forgive my saying so. You have to keep an eye on them or you wouldn’t know what they’d be up to.’

  He was warming to his theme. ‘I’ve kept my foot down—just like Mr Flitter did. Twenty-two copies come into this building and no more. That’s one each for the staff and two each for the editor and Mr Potbury, just in case they have to give the extra away to someone important.’ Ricketts emitted an arresting sound, which was made by blowing sharply down his nose while his lips were compressed. It indicated, as far as Amiss could see, a statement that once again the forces of order had overcome those of anarchy.

  ‘Mr Ricketts, I need help.’

  ‘You want me to issue you, sir, with pencil and paper?’

  ‘More than that. I need a room.’

  Ricketts looked at him incredulously. ‘I’m sorry, sir. But they’re all full. They all have their uses, you see.’

  ‘But if I am to work here, Mr Ricketts, I must have an office.’

  Seeing the aghast expression on Ricketts’s face and his hand clutching at his chest, Amiss intervened swiftly. ‘Now, Mr Ricketts, I’m sure everything is as it should be and we’ll find some way out of this that won’t upset anybody or anything. Why don’t you take me around the building and show me all the rooms, what is kept where and so on. Then we’ll see if there’s any little corner I might squeeze into.’

  Ricketts’s agitation began to wane. ‘Just as long as you’re not thinking of changing things, sir.’

  ‘Rest assured, Mr Ricketts, that just like Mr Burke, I’m against making changes for change’s sake. I won’t be doing anything that doesn’t make us all happier.’

  Looking at him half with alarm and half with a burgeoning trust, Ricketts left his desk and tottered towards the door.

  ***

  The rooms unoccupied by people were certainly full. One was entirely devoted to bound copies of The Wrangler, another to spares, which Ricketts, Flitter and their predecessors had gathered up every week and preserved. Then there were rooms full of Georgian and Victorian furniture, presumably displaced by the modernizing process of the 1960s, and even a whole room devoted to broken furniture, which Ricketts explained would be repaired when the editor thought it a good idea.

  Amiss made no comment on anything except to grunt reassuringly every time Ricketts assured him that this or that room was sacrosanct. ‘No one here likes anything to change, Mr Amiss,’ was Ricketts’s parting shot. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Amiss. ‘Now don’t worry about anything, Mr Ricketts. You’ll hardly know I’m here.’

  Where would we be, he reflected, without the humane lie?

  ***

  ‘Though hardly a great proponent of revolution myself,’ Amiss reported to Rachel that evening, ‘I found myself badly in need of someone who wasn’t completely reactionary. The only one who seemed a possible candidate was the young door-opener, Jason, whose taste in reading material at least was contemporary. I requested Miss Mercatroid to allow me to borrow him for a couple of minutes and took him outside for a brief walk. Having ascertained that he was bright and bored I arranged to meet him in a pub after hours.

  ‘“Can I wear me normal clothes, or must I go like this?” he asked.

  ‘My heart bled for him. I think I’d sooner wear a frock in a pub than go dressed like that. So he turned up in his tracksuit and trainers and we had an amicable couple of pints, and he’s coming in at the weekend to help me make a nest for myself by Monday.’

  ‘Won’t that give the organization a corporate heart attack?’

  ‘No
one will care except Ricketts, and I know how to fix him. I’ll tell him it was that or move in with him. The territorial implications of that should do the job.’

  Chapter Six

  Amiss sat in his office on Monday morning, delighted with what he and Jason had accomplished. Though modest in size, the room was magnificently furnished. The removal of spare Wranglers to the back of the room housing bound Wranglers had freed up quarters with ample room for a fine Georgian desk with a green leather top of the kind he had always coveted, a Victorian leather armchair, a wooden filing cabinet that was not too unsightly and a few portraits of Wrangler-approved luminaries to remind him what his politics were supposed to be. He had had a shock halfway through Saturday morning, when Lambie Crump, wearing a perfectly foul pair of yellow corduroy trousers and an orange tweed jacket, hurried down the fire escape past the window of the room they were raiding. But Jason had explained that there was nothing sinister about this: it was merely Lambie Crump’s preferred route to the outside world from his flat. ‘Off to breakfast, probably. And then to shoot things.’

  It was with a feeling of real achievement that Amiss left Ricketts, who had taken only half an hour of reassurance to come to terms with this new dispensation, and set off to the Monday morning editorial conference to which Lambie Crump had graciously invited him.

  Henry Potbury, looking sober, was already there, as were Wilfred Parry and Phoebe Somerfield. During the next few minutes there trickled in a well-known philosopher of extreme right-wing views, a backbench Tory MP and notorious gossip who specialized in writing amusingly of the vulgarities of his colleagues, and a very young woman who was simultaneously so good-looking and clever and had a mind so well furnished as to make Amiss feel old and jealous.

  The main subject was law and order and disagreement was profound, though expressed with extreme courtesy: opinions ranged between those of relative moderation (zero tolerance of crime, more rigorous discipline in schools, boot camps) to those of the philosopher, who was keen for the reintroduction of the stocks, as well as corporal and capital punishment. Lambie Crump sat there with an urbane smile and for most purposes let them fight it out. At the end, he summed up fluently enough and went for the middle path. However much one might abhor the New Labour government, he announced, the fact was that on this issue they were making sense and should be encouraged. Miss Somerfield was charged with writing the leader.

  Amiss enjoyed himself. The proceedings reminded him of evenings at Oxford when the more pretentious of his colleagues began showing off in the Junior Common Room. With the exception of the philosopher, who indulged in an anti-immigrant rant, and Henry Potbury, who got angry about some misdemeanor of the foreign secretary’s, he detected little passion among the participants. Phoebe Somerfield spoke only to skewer flights of fancy with well-aimed statistics, while the others seemed happily engaged in a familiar intellectual exercise: they fenced with each other and occasionally scored a point, but for most purposes they were almost in a ‘Look-at-us-aren’t-we-clever?’ conspiracy.

  At midday Tozer arrived with champagne and the meeting broke up. The Tory MP disappeared with Henry Potbury; Phoebe Somerfield, who seemed to have been allocated at least a third of the work, scuttled off, while the others stood round sipping and gossiping. Amiss was introduced to Clement Webber, the philosopher, and the clever and beautiful Amaryllis Vercoe. When Webber heard the word ‘manager’, he gazed at Amiss incredulously and said, ‘So they’re letting the technicians in now.’ Unable to think of an appropriate reply, Amiss decided to leave. As he opened the door, he heard Amaryllis Vercoe asking, ‘Where’s Dwight?’ and Lambie Crump replying shortly that he was damned if he knew.

  ***

  Amiss headed for the administration corridor, knocked on the first door and followed the instruction to enter.

  ‘May I introduce myself?’

  The circulation manager, who was listlessly opening a pile of envelopes with a silver paperknife, looked up and smiled wanly. ‘Come in.’

  He put down the knife, winced, extended his arm to its full length and opened and shut his fist a couple of times.

  Amiss stood in front of his desk. ‘You’re George Naggiar, aren’t you? I’m Robert Amiss. Just starting today as manager.’

  Naggiar pushed back his chair and stood up gingerly. As he straightened himself he emitted an ‘ouch’, inhaled sharply through his teeth and grimaced with pain. ‘Sorry. Knee’s bad today.’

  Amiss put out his hand, but Naggiar shook his head. ‘Afraid I can’t shake hands. Bit of a problem with my right arm. But do sit down.’

  Amiss looked at the solitary chair, whose seat was covered with envelopes. Naggiar waved at it carelessly. ‘Just put the stuff on the floor.’

  Amiss obeyed, sat down and contemplated his host, who with another grimace resumed his seat.

  ‘I was sorry to miss you on Friday when Mr Lambie Crump took me around to perform the introductions,’ said Amiss.

  ‘Yes, that was too bad. I was at the hospital.’

  ‘Your knee or your arm?’ asked Amiss sympathetically.

  Naggiar looked amused. ‘Oh, no. Neither of those on Friday. That was my ulcer. It was playing up a bit and I had to talk to the consultant about whether we should go for laser treatment. But he reckons I should play it carefully, not exert myself too much, avoid anything stressful and it’ll settle itself down again.’

  ‘Sounds sensible.’

  ‘So what will you be doing?’ asked Naggiar, valiantly trying to keep the boredom out of his voice.

  ‘Taking some of the burden off Mr Lambie Crump and I hope off some of the rest of you. But initially I’ll just be listening: I don’t want to be precipitate, so I thought that for the moment I’d spend a week or so getting some kind of grip on how the place runs.’

  ‘Runs? It doesn’t really run. It just jogs along.’

  ‘I’d appreciate knowing how, though.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well, for instance, I’d be grateful if you could take me through the methods by which you persuade people to become subscribers, to renew their subscriptions, how you deal with complaints procedures and all that sort of thing.’

  Naggiar looked at him in some bewilderment. ‘We don’t solicit subscribers. This is a journal with a sense of its own dignity. We simply make it possible for people to subscribe if they wish. As you will see in The Wrangler, there is a form they wish. As you will see in The Wrangler, there is a form they can fill in and send to me; then they will be sent the journal. But we don’t go in for…marketing ourselves.’

  Amiss tried not to look incredulous. ‘Fine, fine. I understand. But for a start if you could just show me how those who do apply are dealt with, it would help.’

  Naggiar looked at his watch. ‘Can’t be today, I’m afraid. Got to go to my chiropractor.’

  ‘For your knee?’

  He laughed scornfully. ‘Nothing he can do for my knee—not for either knee, if it comes to that. They’re like the dark side of the moon, my knees, my consultant says. All pitted and scarred. When they get really bad the only thing for them is bed rest. No, it’s for my back that I have to go to the chiropractor.’ He moved his shoulders about a bit and winced. ‘Otherwise I’d be a cripple.’

  ‘So you’ll be out for a couple of hours?’

  Naggiar looked surprised. ‘No, no. I go at lunchtime and can’t get back. He’s an hour and a half away, my chiropractor.’

  ‘Isn’t that very inconvenient for you?’

  Naggiar shrugged. ‘What can you do? When you find someone who understands you who then moves, you’ve no choice but to follow. But tomorrow will be all right.’

  ‘Shall I drop in about’—Amiss hazarded a guess—‘nine-thirty?’

  Naggiar laughed derisively. ‘How can I get in at nine-thirty? I can’t travel in rush hou
r. Standing’s terrible for my knees. Ten-thirty’s more realistic.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Amiss. ‘Thank you very much, I’ll be here.’

  ***

  Scudmore was a different proposition altogether. ‘Delighted to see you, my boy,’ he said as he bounded around the desk emitting bonhomie from every pore. ‘Delighted to see some young blood come into this place for once. Could do with a bit of company.’ He jabbed Amiss in the ribs. ‘Take a drink, do you?’

  ‘Oh yes. Frequently.’

  ‘Man after my own heart, eh what?’ Scudmore looked at his watch. ‘Fancy a noggin this lunchtime?’

  ‘Thanks very much. Could we perhaps combine it with work? I’m rather anxious to find out about the advertising department.’

  Scudmore emitted a jolly laugh. ‘Department? I’m the department.’ He thumped his chest. ‘I think I can truly say that every ad we get in this place is as a result of my work and my work alone. I can tell you nobody’s ever lunched for The Wrangler the way I have.’ His laugh boomed out again. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t I show you how it’s done? We’ll go off to one of my regular haunts and see if we can see any of the boys.’

  ***

  ‘What are all these?’ asked Rachel, pointing to the pile of books beside Amiss’s armchair. She removed herself from his embrace and took off her coat.

  ‘Newspaper histories culled from the London Library.’

  ‘You are taking this seriously, aren’t you? So how were your first days? Sorry I wasn’t here.’

  ‘Interesting and complicated. Tell you over dinner. Meanwhile, how did you and the minister get on in Brussels?’

  ‘Apart from the fact that he misread his brief at a crucial moment and almost gave the Commission a concession that would have added another ten million quid a year to our contribution, it went fine. He’s quite good company really when he gets off his high horse. And he is serious about what he believes in.’