“That impression,” Lanching said, “seems remarkably general in these parts. Perhaps there’s an amorous side to Clive’s nature that shows up only in the clear air of the country. Our vision is clouded by cynicism and gin.”
Becket, to whom these remarks seemed to have been particularly addressed and who looked very cross, was just opening his mouth to speak when Grail appeared in the doorway. He had just quiffed a hank of his soft hair attractively over one side of his brow with the little nursery brush he kept always in an inner side pocket for that purpose. He looked even more likely than usual to be on the point of calling for volunteers in his audience to come out for Jesus. In the event, however, he said merely: “That was Richardson. The prelim is set and it’s already gone into the early editions.” He pulled one of the chairs away from the table and sat, his long, thin legs crossed and his head on one side in an attitude of dreamy abstraction while he delicately plied a toothpick.
Birdie spoke to him. “Have they used all the stuff you sent? As you sent it?”
“Naturally. My copy stands as it goes. Always.” The toothpick moved to a further site.
“In that case...” Becket suddenly set his chair with a crash upon its full complement of legs and sat upright himself for the first time since finishing his meal. “In that case, let’s hope that we collect some better evidence than we’ve managed to root out so far. These bloody people are lynchers. I’m bloody sure of it.”
Grail turned up his calm, martyr’s smile. “Well, now; isn’t that a nice incentive for you all.” He paused, as if to enjoy their discomfiture, then said: “Don’t despair. I bring you good news. Richardson says that the Kuwait film has now reached the office. They are getting a print sent up here as soon as they can. Won’t that be a jolly job for us?” It was Birdie now who was receiving the full benefit of the smile.
“Christ!” Becket lit a cigarette with such furious haste that it immediately went out again. He drew on it twice, then threw it in his coffee. “I’d have thought we’d got a bit past that stage of getting a thrill.”
The outburst left Grail looking genuinely perplexed. He soon recovered, however.
“My dear Bob, I’m sorry. No one who knows you would suggest for a moment that you are in need of puerile stimulus of that order. My promise is not of vicarious sex, but of that very evidence the lack of which you were deploring just now.
“I have—no, we have—set up in tomorrow’s edition the skeleton from the, ah—what is it again?—ah yes, Flaxborough—the skeleton from the Flaxborough cupboard; but next week, if, as I am confident you will, you do your work well, those bones will be clothed in flesh—in identifiable flesh. And then let’s see who talks of lynching, eh?”
Chapter Five
The Mayor of Flaxborough enjoyed a number of privileges appropriate to his office, including a pair of ornamental lamp standards outside his red brick semi-villa in Birtley Avenue, but he received his Sunday newspapers with no more ceremony than other citizens; like them, he came downstairs in his pyjamas and collected his weekend reading in person from where it had been tossed disrespectfully and sometimes inaccurately in the vicinity of his front door.
Thus attired, and displaying that humpy, trundley disposition peculiar to Sunday awakenings, Alderman Charles Hockley looked more like a hippopotamus than ever as he stood at his porch and blinked the tiny eyes that seemed perpetually in peril of disappearing for good.
He bent and assembled the papers in some sort of order before scooping the pile under one arm. Only as he turned and re-entered the house did something he had seen register sharply on his consciousness. He dumped the load of newsprint on the hall table, rapidly sorted through it, and pulled one paper free.
It was the Sunday Herald. And heading the last two columns of the front page was a picture of an everyday street scene in an ordinary English town. Or so it would have appeared to an ordinary reader. But Alderman Hockley stood in special relationship to the town depicted. He was Mayor of it.
And yet... Could this be Flaxborough, this row of small shops on one side of a market place, these stalls, this familiar-seeming hotel? Mr Hockley read the astonishing legend, or manifesto, or whatever it was, beneath the photograph; stared at the incredible headlines; and once again scrutinized the picture.
Yes, it was Flax, all right. Not a doubt of it. There was Semple’s music shop. And the Farmers’ Union offices. And a dead clear likeness of old Peters crossing the road by the whelk and winkle stall.
But no mention of the name of the place.
“Margaret!” The cry that issued in a raucous Scots accent from the twenty-one stone frame of Alderman Hockley sounded like a summons to quit a burning building before the roof fell in, but in fact he had raised it without even the effort of taking his eyes from the paper.
From upstairs came a muffled and somewhat indifferent acknowledgment. The mayoress was used to her husband’s offstage alarms.
“The ratepayers’ll be up in arms when they read this!” declared the mayor at the same pitch. He moved on into the kitchen, still scanning Mr Grail’s tantalizing promises of “a full and frank exposure of this quiet little town’s Club of Shame”, and put the kettle on.
Mr Hockley, whose continued enjoyment of the defunct title of alderman was due, in his special case, to its having become a sort of good-humoured tribute to his bulk and pomposity, had emigrated to Flaxborough from his native Glasgow some forty years previously. He now was head of a timber firm that made his family so much money so easily that he was able to devote his full time and not inconsiderable energy to public benefaction.
This took several forms. He sat, for instance, on a whole clutch of committees that had been laid by the Town Council, the Conservative and Unionist Association, the Dogs at Sea Society and sundry other zealots in the canine interest. He was one of the Grammar School governors and the vice-chairman of the League of Friends of Flaxborough Hospital. He also was a leading member of one of those bands of emigre Scotsmen who gather once a year in every English town to mourn, in whisky, sheepgut and oatmeal, their sufferance of prosperity in exile.
Charlie Hockley, moreover, was an indefatigable champion of worthy causes in an individual capacity. He was a generous subscriber to charity and needed to be subjected to only the sketchiest of pleading to be convinced of some fraud, injustice of imposition, and thereupon to “speak out”, as he termed it, without further investigation. This quixotic impulsiveness had led, more than once, to embarrassment, such as that which resulted from his “speaking out” against the severity of a prison sentence recently imposed by the Flaxborough Bench, quite forgetting that he himself had presided on that occasion in his mayoral capacity as chief magistrate.
Mr Hockley’s imaginary allies in his forays were those very ratepayers whom he had invoked a few moments previously; worthy, if choleric citizens who spent their lives in a constant state of readiness to take up arms.