“Like I said, sir. I toned it down.”
“In what way? I don’t call a reference to...to ‘hairy-armed mystery playboy’ toning down.”
“Well, I didn’t write anything about her taking her clothes off.”
“What!”
Leaper shuffled. Then he looked Kebble in the eye and said defiantly: “I’m sorry now I hushed it up. Things like that ought to be exposed.”
Kebble opened his mouth, shut it, and began carefully tearing Leaper’s copy into small pieces. “Never,” he said, when the last had fluttered into the waste paper basket, “never do that again.” He breathed deeply and pondered the chance of Leaper’s ever appreciating the enormity of libel. The odds against, he decided, were astronomical.
“Leonard...just tell me what happened. I’d rather like to know.”
Leaper told him. By the time he had finished, Kebble was aglow and making little popping sounds. This disconcerted Leaper, who saw nothing amusing in a situation that his Fleet Street mentors would have treated with a proper blend of innuendo and self-righteousness.
“It’s all quite true, sir,” he protested.
Kebble raised a hand and pouted. “My dear boy, I don’t doubt it for a minute. Hilda Larch was always a little unpredictable. Like her mother.” He smiled fondly over his distended waistcoat, as if gazing down the years.
“You really don’t want me to write anything, then?”
The editor gave a start. “My God, no! Not a word in writing. Listen...”—he pointed to the machine room door and lowered his voice—“they’ve only to see a bit of paper with words on that somebody’s left about and they’ll set it. I have to watch them like a hawk. I think they come back at night, foraging. Haven’t you noticed the queer things that get in the paper sometimes? It was half a page of an old seed catalogue once. It had blown in from the street. The proof-reader should stop them, of course. But he’s too frightened. They’ve got him at their mercy in that little box of his.”
Leaper received the information in silence.
“So mind,” Kebble wound up, “don’t ever forget to clear your desk before you go home, or Bullock and his bloody crew’ll board it.”
That evening there was a meeting of the General Purposes Committee of Chalmsbury Town Council.
Councillor Pointer was in the chair and he awaited with some apprehension a question that he knew was going to be asked under ‘Any Other Business’.
It was Councillor Linnet, a truculent little man without teeth, who put it.
“Mr Chairman,” he began, the wind of public-spirited purpose whistling through his gums, “everybody in the town is getting very alarmed and anxious about all these explosions. They’re dastardly, Mr Chairman; there’s no question about that. Now what I want to know is what is being done in regard to putting whoever’s responsible under lock and key.”
The brief speech won a murmur of approval. At least six of the ten members present had already discussed the matter among themselves in the card room of the Mariners’ Club and decided on a vigorous joint bombardment of Chief Inspector Larch’s father-in-law.
Trying to assess the probable strength of his enemies as he glanced quickly round the chamber, Pointer saw that he had no chance of frustrating them with an outright refusal to accept Linnet’s question.
“I’m not sure,” he said carefully, “that this committee is competent to discuss the matter, is it? The detection of crime is the province of the police.”
Councillor Linnet was ready for this. “Come now, Mr Chairman,” he retorted, “public safety is involved in regard to this. We may not be a watch committee but we have every right to chivvy the police if we think they’re not being efficient in regard to protecting our rate-payers.”
“How do you know whether the police investigations are proceeding efficiently or otherwise?”
Linnet gave the ceiling a ‘hark-at-him’ grin. “We don’t need to have second sight to know that. There’s not been an arrest in regard to this business. And there should have been by now. I want to know what the police are doing.”
“The point with me, Mr Chairman,” put in a venerable gentleman with a white quiff and a dewlap, Alderman Haskell by name, “is that these terrible bombs, or whatever they are, are going off on public property. You’re quite right when you say it’s a job for the police; we all know that. But these aren’t what you might call private crimes. They’re a danger to everybody, like road subsidence and rickety buildings and all that sort of thing. We as a committee can’t just stand aside while the town’s being blown to bits.”
“We could,” suggested Councillor Pointer, “ask the police to let us have a report. Confidentially, of course. Would that...er?” He looked from face to face. Alderman Haskell nodded and one or two others looked blank but the Linnet faction rumbled scepticism and its leader returned to the attack.
“No, Mr Chairman, I don’t think it would. I have my reasons for saying that, mind, but I don’t want to go further in regard to them while the Press is here. I’m going to move that we go into closed committee.” Linnet looked across to where Mr Kebble was seated at a small table and made a not unfriendly grimace. Kebble acknowledged it with a wink and a curious two-fingered salutation from behind the shelter of his notebook.
“I second that,” called out Councillor Roger Crispin. “Not,” he added, “that I approve of ‘Iron Curtain’ tactics in this council, but I’m prepared to believe that Councillor Linnet has good grounds for wanting privacy.”
There was a brief silence while the chairman looked questioningly at each in turn of those members who could usually be depended upon to take the opposite line to anything sponsored by Messrs Linnet and Crispin. On this occasion they remained unresponsive.
“All those in favour?” Councillor Pointer asked tonelessly. There was a murmur of assent. He turned towards Mr Kebble and gave him a faint smile of dismissal.
Kebble pocketed his four pencils, picked up his notebook and made for the door. More than one of the watching committeemen felt something of the embarrassment of the after-dinner speaker who arrests the denouement of a dirty story during the slow departure of a waitress.
Then cigarettes and pipes were lighted, someone having noticed that nine o’clock had brought the expiry of the standing order against smoking. Councillor Linnet again addressed the chair.
“Now that we can speak plainly, I’ll come straight to the point in regard to this bombing business. A whole lot of people have told me—they’ve stopped me in the street, rung me up at the shop, called at my home even—they’ve told me that they think the police here in Chalmsbury haven’t made an arrest because somebody—I repeat, somebody—doesn’t want an arrest. A certain name’s been mentioned a good deal, but I don’t propose to repeat it here. I think the chairman will have a fair idea of what I’m...”
“Oh, no, he hasn’t,” growled Pointer, “and I think you’d better explain that insinuation before you say any more.”
Linnet rolled his head from side to side. “Now, Mr Chairman, don’t go off with the idea that I’m getting at you personally. I’m dying to do my duty in regard to the public interest and if it’s got to be said that Chief Inspector Larch is a member of your family, so to speak, then it’s got to be said, that’s all. I was only hoping that you might be in a special position to help us understand what’s going on.”