Two minutes later, Mr Chubb was squatting in carefree communion with his dogs while half a mile away a telephone rang at 15 Tetford Drive, the home, but not the refuge, of Detective Inspector Purbright.
“This is the mayor speaking, Mr Inspector. About this article in the Herald. You might find this hard to believe, but ten people—ten ratepayers—have called at my house already this morning and asked what’s being done about it.”
Purbright slipped three fingers over the mouthpiece and half whispered, half mimed to his wife: “It’s Rob Roy. The town’s up in arms again.” Ann Purbright resignedly went back to the kitchen and removed a pan of half-cooked rashers and kidneys from beneath the grill.
One man only in the entire town there was who could be said to be eagerly expectant of a call from Alderman Hockley. That was Josiah Kebble. And although it was almost noon, Mr Kebble’s brandy and water hour, before the spreading telephonic wave of mayoral indignation reached the editor’s house, he received the confidence that more than thirty ratepayers (many of them professional men) had called in person upon Mr Hockley to urge action, with an air of spontaneous surprise and sympathy that was altogether gratifying.
The truth was that Mr Kebble, like many another newspaper editor, fed his readers, whenever possible, upon such tasty or exciting sentiments as he could induce some public figure or other to express. He was, in a sense, a professional opener of other men’s mouths, yet would have modestly disclaimed any skill in the matter, holding that so many notable members of the community were permanently agape with their own opinions that a reporter had only to listen, select and record.
“This is a terrible slur on the town’s good name,” declared Mr Kebble, eyeing his drink against the light from the window. He appeared very happy despite the lamentable tidings.
“Aye, you’re right there, Jossie. And I don’t intend to let it rest; you can be sure of that.”
“Of course, as mayor...” Mr Kebble took a sip of his brandy and water, giving silence a chance to prime Hockley’s expectancy.
“Aye?”
“I’d have thought that, as mayor, you are in a very special position to put these London scandal-mongers in their place.”
“You think so?”
“The readers will certainly think so,” declared the editor of the Citizen, ex cathedra.
Mr Hockley stroked his dewlap reflectively. No doubt about it: Kebble was a good man, a first-rater. “A strong statement—an official statement. From the mayor.” The effort of composition deeply furrowed Hockley’s brow. “You know—refuting the, the what, the lies—no, the distortions, the outrageous...”
Mr Kebble took aim with the notion he had been fashioning ever since his eye had fallen delightedly upon Grail’s story in the Herald.
“May I,” he interrupted, “put forward something rather unconventional, Mr Mayor? Something, if I may say so, that is just your style?”
Mr Hockley, had he possessed any latitude in the matter of expansion, might be said at that moment to have swelled.
“That’s exactly what I like, Jossie,” he declared. “The unexpected. The one right in the belly. Heh?” The high Caledonian cackle of glee came oddly from his huge, swarthy face. Hearing it, even without the benefit of seeing the face, Mr Kebble winced and reinforced himself with another swig of brandy and water.
“I take it that the town isn’t wrong in looking on you as a sportsman,” he went on.
“No-o-o—oh, no, no. Not wrong at all. Not at all, Jossie. Make no mistake about that.”
Mr Kebble grunted approbation. “Mind you,” he added, with the air of a bookie offering ridicuously long odds on a certain winner, “this could land you with the hell of a lot of publicity—national publicity. You might not care for that, even if the town did benefit as a result.”
The mayor slipped immediately into his hand-on-heart manner. “All I want, Mr Editor—and you can take it from me that I’m not one for the bull and the flannel—you know that, don’t you?—aye, you know that fine. All I want, I say, is for this wicked pack of nonsense in the paper to be taken back. Denied. Refuted. An apology’s what I want. And it’s what I’m going to get, make no mistake about that. I dare this fellow—what’s his name again?...”
“Grail.”
“Aye, Grail—I dare him to show his face here while I’m mayor of this town. He needn’t think I’m too old to do a bit of horse-whipping.”
“What I had in mind,” said Mr Kebble, thoughtfully, “did happen to be something in the nature of a direct personal challenge. The public like that sort of thing. It gets through to them much better than official statements.”
“Fine, old friend! Fine! I’m game. I’ll challenge him, all right, make no mistake about that. Look, what do you say to coming round here so that we can work something up. Heh? You’re better at words than I am. And they’ll need to be good for this little job! Heh?”
It was not far from the editor’s house to the mayoral residence. He went by bicycle. Mr Kebble rode a cycle with as much panache as a squire might ride his hunter. Instead of field gear, though, he wore his unvarying costume of leather-elbowed tweed jacket, trousers like twin bags of oatmeal and the editorial waistcoat whose host of pockets accommodated useful equipment that ranged from a portable balance for weighing fish to a goldsmith’s touchstone. His hat, a carefully preserved relic of journalism in the zo’s, was a stiff, creamy-grey felt, high-crowned and broad of brim, which perched far back on his head to give full display to the round, pink, mischievously amiable face.
The mayor, still in his dressing gown, was waiting hospitably at his front door. He helped Mr Kebble dismount and propped his bicycle against one of the ceremonial lamp standards.
They went together to the somewhat overblown room with feathery furnishings in pale blue and gold that Mrs Hockley still called the lounge but which her husband, more readily adaptable to protocol, designated the Mayor’s Parlour.
Mr Kebble made himself comfortable at once, sinking into a divan like a quicksand trimmed with blue grass. Alderman Hockley, still too agitated to sit, spent some time fussing to and from a drinks cabinet with two empty glasses in his hands. His main difficulty, it seemed, lay in persuading himself that Kebble really had asked for brandy in preference to Scotch whisky. “Are you poorly, Jossie?” he kept asking.
The point at last was settled.
“Cheers,” said Mr Kebble. The ride had given him a thirst.
The mayor raised his glass with a flourish. “Here’s to our little town, aye, and may its good name soon be restored.”
The editor concealed behind a patient, round-faced grin his dislike, developed over a long career of reporting public dinners, of what he called “wind-and-piss sentiments”.