The Tumbled House Page 4

  Paul Whitehouse said: “ I’ve suggested to Mr Marlowe that he would be best advised to write a reply—for The Times or one of the influential weeklies—answering these calumnies. He’s in a strong position so far as most of the charges are concerned. I would be glad to vet it for him to see he doesn’t overstep the mark.”

  “Moonraker being alive, eh,” said Don, “and liable to cut up rough if insulted?”

  “Well, editors have to live according to the law. But it seems to me you could write a thoroughly well-reasoned and convincing reply proving to the satisfaction of every sensible person that this article is a complete fabrication.”

  “I can’t prove it as easily as all that. This gutter crawler has spent some time collecting his sweepings. It would take time to get chapter and verse for a full reply, especially for this stuff about the book. Perhaps I could do it, but why should the onus of proof be on me when it should be on him!”

  Mr Doutelle said: “ I see exactly how you feel. But I agree with Mr Whitehouse that a retaliation through the Press is by far your best defence. And of course, you may not be alone. Your father’s reputation stood high. There will be other reactions besides yours.”

  The Hanover Club was full of men when Don got there. Obviously The Gazette article was a topic of conversation, but he didn’t encourage it by going into the bar. Instead he went straight up to lunch and sat at one of the round tables between a Professor of Biology and an elderly literary critic. At a small table in a corner Don saw Roger Shorn lunching with his son and a well-known publisher called Bartlett.

  After a few minutes of desultory talk the professor said. “I see the Muckraker has been at it again.”

  “You get The Gazette?”

  “No, I was told about it this morning. Very distressing for you.”

  “You don’t know who he is?”

  “Moonraker? No. You should be able to find out. This club knows everything. I suppose you don’t know, Casey?”

  “Moonraker?” said the literary critic. “It was Bryan Hooker until he was killed in that airplane crash eighteen months ago. I don’t know now. I’ve lost touch with the cesspools.”

  After a pause the professor said: “ I knew your father well when he was chairman of this club. In this decadent society in which we live, integrity is a hard thing to equate: given the wrong accent it quickly excites ridicule and suspicion of cant. The best thing I can say about your father is that with him the accent was never wrong. He was my idea of an honourable man.”

  “Not Brutus’s.”

  “Not Brutus’s. I was on the committee with him for four years. I played bridge with him. We often talked together.” The professor peered at his young companion. “ How much does this mean to you, Marlowe? I have no sons, but if I had, I suspect they would not esteem me highly.”

  “That’s fair to no one.”

  “But isn’t it broadly true?”

  Don ate for a moment or two before he answered. “ No, I don’t think so.”

  “I’m glad you don’t think so—and rather relieved.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m never quite sure with the younger generation—-and you seem very representative, if I may say so. Or perhaps you hide your seriousness under an agreeable flippancy, and the unperceptive mistake it for the whole man.”

  Don was pursuing his own thoughts. “I must say it wouldn’t shatter me—though I’d be surprised of course—if it turned out he’d had a mistress in Balham and another in Tooting. He was a widower; he had his own life to live. What I am very sure of is that he was moral in the more important sense of being scrupulous and unmean. I’m absolutely sure he wouldn’t have allowed anything to touch his integrity in a court of law. And it wasn’t in his nature to steal someone else’s work and pass it off as his own.”

  “Quite so.”

  “One surely resents lies about the most unlikable character. But that doesn’t arise here. I liked him and I thought most other people did.” Don contracted his brows. “ Of course I saw too little of him, but we were both busy; you know what sort of life a successful silk leads. And then when he retired I was just in the process of getting married. The personal tie was never compulsive, but it was always there.… In an odd contradictory way it has got closer in the last few months, since he died.”

  “That too happens sometimes,” said the professor, peering back into his own distant past.

  The interview with the publisher had gone pretty well and Roger Shorn had just bought coffee and brandies in the bar. The publisher thought he could find room for Michael in two or three weeks’ time. Interpreting the things unsaid, Roger realised that what at present was being offered his son was employment as a junior clerk. It wouldn’t do as a permanency but it would be a beginning. A junior partnership was the thing Roger had in mind, but mention of a sum of six thousand pounds had somehow got itself intruded into the discussion, and Roger knew he had no hope whatever of raising this.

  Presently the publisher excused himself, the other two resumed their seats and Roger ordered two more brandies. When they came he said: “Well, I think that’s fixed. We’ll settle the details next week. But of course don’t expect too much to begin.”

  Michael sipped his brandy. “ I suppose there’s a technique in stamp-licking. I wonder if one should go to a night school for a course.”

  Roger stared at his handsome son, at the jet-black hair worn long, at the sensitive eyes, at the brooding mouth which suddenly could flash its white and lovely smile. His love for his son was in a sense a serious modification of his own sophisticated beliefs; it was a weakness but an amiable one, and one that he indulged quite consciously, with a half-raised eyebrow of irony at his own irrationality. Michael could go a long way. In spite of his occasional quirks of temperament, people liked him, fell quickly under his spell. Perhaps he would make an influential marriage. What fools men were when they were young, not realising the importance of that.

  “Let me buy you another brandy,” said Michael. “ Just as a celebration.”

  “You can’t. You’re not yet a member of this club.”

  “From what I shall earn at Bartlett and Leak it doesn’t look as if I shall ever be able to afford to become one.”

  “It’s a beginning. It’s better than nothing.” For once Roger spoke sharply. “ Don’t imagine I’m a millionaire, Michael. I’ll do everything I can to make your life tolerable during the next year or so—including paying three months’ rent of the flat we saw this morning—but don’t imagine I can subsidise you any further.”

  Michael said thoughtfully: “I don’t at all want to seem ungrateful. I think it’s really that I wanted a different sort of job. You know I’m not interested in the literary world.”

  “You soon will be. I can do a lot for you as time goes on.”

  “In publishing, you mean?”

  “Yes, my dear boy, or something like it.” Roger stubbed out his cigar. “I have to go now. D’you want to stay on here?”

  “No, I’ll come with you.”

  As they moved out of the bar they met Don Marlowe coming in. Don said: “Can you stop a minute, Roger?”

  Michael said: “I’ll meet you at the door, Dad,” and walked on.

  Roger’s pale eyes went with interest over his friend’s face. “Have you been reading The Gazette?”

  “In Philadelphia nearly everybody reads The Bulletin,” said Don. “Do you know who Moonraker is?”

  “No. The Gazette, as I needn’t tell you, isn’t one of The Sentinel group. Personally, I’m very sorry about this.”

  “How can I find out?”

  “About Moonraker? I don’t know. The editor might tell you but I doubt it.”

  “Who is the editor?”

  “A man called Warner Robinson.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Scarcely by sight.” Roger hesitated and then patted Don’s arm. “Look, this isn’t the place to exchange confidences. I wish I could come back with you; I looked for
you in the bar before lunch. But as a friend I would advise that this is a case in which one should proceed carefully.”

  “For any special reason?”

  “Well, it looks to me very much like an editorial job. That is to say the editor has approved and accepted responsibility. So there’s a good deal of weight behind it. The whole thing is probably exaggerated, but I should think they must feel they have something fairly substantial to go on.”

  “I think they’ve got nothing substantial to go on.”

  Roger shrugged. “Try to see this in its perspective, Don. Debunking is a disease of civilisation. Modern man likes to think: ‘ I’m no good, but neither is my neighbour’. Every eminent personality has it coming to him sooner or later. The trouble with this, of course, is that it is not sooner, when he could defend himself, or later, when no one would care.”

  “Do you know the editor well enough to fix a meeting between us?”

  “It wouldn’t be any use. Ride the storm, don’t fight it out. You’ll certainly do no good by beginning a vendetta against a six-million-pound combine; it’s heads they win, tails you lose. Write them a letter if you want to, though they probably won’t publish it.”

  Don telephoned his friend Alan Rice. “Alan, d’you know the editor of The Sunday Gazette?”

  “Robinson? He’s not a buddy of mine but I know him, yes. Why?”

  “Do you think you could arrange it that I meet him?”

  “You mean casually? Over a drink or something?”

  “I’d prefer it that way.”

  “It is to do with this article about your father?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause at the other end. “ Why not just phone him and ask to see him in his office?”

  “I don’t think he’d play. He’d probably trunk I’d be bringing a horsewhip.”

  “And wouldn’t you?”

  “Not the first time.”

  There was another pause. “Don, I might be able to fix something, but it won’t help me with my own editor if he learns I’ve been arranging a rough-house for Warner Robinson. Dog doesn’t eat dog.”

  “There won’t be a rough-house.”

  “Also, my dear fellow, as a word of advice, you’re just starting your own career. The Gazette has long fingers if you get at cross with them.”

  “It seems I already have.”

  “Not necessarily you. Your father I suspect was on their White List.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Don’t you remember the references in his book to sections of the Press? And once or twice he was outspoken in court before he retired. I’m only guessing, but The Daily Gazette was pretty sneering in its obituary.”

  “I didn’t see that.”

  “But you never know with newspapers like The Gazette. All for sensation. They can be quixotically generous as well as vilely vindictive. In a month, having got this off their chest, they may bring out some terrific boost for Don Marlowe the young conductor.”

  “When we meet I’ll tell them what they can do with their boosts.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Don considered the scrawls and scribbles on the printed telephone instructions. “Give me an idea where I might find Robinson. He can’t travel to and from his office in a sealed container.”

  “He doesn’t.…” There was another pause. “ Do you know the Red Boar Club in Fleet Street? He usually lunches there.”

  “Are you a member?”

  “Yes. I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take you in and then after a few minutes I’ll leave you there. That’s the best I can promise.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to create a riot. Tomorrow?”

  “It’s as good as any other day, I suppose.”

  “Thank you very much, Alan. You’re a real friend.”

  “I’m not at all sure about that.”

  Chapter Five

  The Red Boar Club was nearly opposite the Law Courts, but its clientele was almost exclusively of the Press. The bar and the main dining-room were down sixteen steps in a converted cellar. Here the temperature was a uniform seventy-eight winter and summer, and tobacco-smoke hung in cirrhus clouds about the room. You broke through them going down the steps like a plane coming in to land.

  Alan Rice led the way to the bar and elbowed enough room to order a couple of Martinis.

  Don said: “Do you often come here?”

  “Well, a couple of times a week. Hullo, Charlie, back safe, I see.… One doesn’t come for the quietude or the air-conditioning.”

  “What does one come for?”

  “Best steaks in London. Company. We journalists are a gregarious lot. And we thrive on noise. Not like you musicians. Cheers.”

  “What do you suppose musicians thrive on?”

  “Well, noise of a different sort. He’s here.”

  “Which one?”

  “At the table at the end. Talking to Joseph Halliday. You know, the chief reviewer of The News.”

  Don stared under the smoke and between the jostling waiters at two heavy, well-groomed middle-aged men not dissimilar in looks who were talking over their food.

  “Which is which?”

  “The bloke in the blue suit is your prey. We’ve picked a bad day.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he often sits in isolation. Fred, I thought that was a good spiel of yours last night. I bet the paper sold like bread.”

  While Rice involved himself in discussion Don watched the table in the corner. Behind him two men were talking about a coup which had cleaned up the news last week. It sounded a pretty underhand piece of work but they spoke of the writer with bated breath, as if he had achieved something not noticeably inferior to the Choral Symphony. Twenty minutes passed and then Joseph Halliday got up and nodded to Warner Robinson and left his table.

  Don tapped his friend on the shoulder. “Thanks, Alan. This lets you out.”

  Alan glanced swiftly at Don and then across the room. “O.K. O.K. You don’t mind if I don’t wait for you, do you?”

  Warner Robinson was scooping out some Blue Stilton when Don reached his table. He had a square rather distinguished face on which the skin hung loosely as if it had a slow puncture. But there was nothing deflated about the way he looked at Don as he moved to take the other chair.

  “This is a reserved table.”

  “I’ll not occupy it more than a minute or two. You are Mr Robinson, aren’t you?” Don was speaking as quietly as the noise allowed.

  Robinson stared at him with ferro-concrete eyes and then went back to digging out the Stilton. “ What do you want?”

  “My name is Marlowe. Don Marlowe.”

  Robinson put the spoon back in the cheese. A waiter infiltrated through to take it away. “ That doesn’t mean much to me.”

  “I’m a musician. My father was Sir John Marlowe. He died in January.”

  Robinson looked behind his visitor and snapped his fingers. “ No butter.”

  “Oh, sorry, sir.”

  Don said: “On Sunday your paper carried an article by Moonraker. You must know about it. It attacked my father. As he isn’t here to defend himself, it’s up to me to do something about it. But I can do very little while I don’t know Moonraker’s real name. Will you give it to me?”

  The butter came and Robinson spread it on a biscuit. Then he cut a piece of the cheese and put them both into his mouth. In silence Don watched the efficient jaws until everything was gone. So an unsatisfactory sub-editor would be disposed of.

  “Moonraker is just a name.”

  “You probably know who wrote it on Sunday.”

  “I do. But as editor I take responsibility for my staff.”

  “Do you mean you wrote it yourself?”

  “No, I do not.”

  Don waited while Robinson finished his cheese. His teeth clicked once or twice but he made no attempt to continue the conversation.

  Don said: “I never quite understand what basic fuel a man
uses who writes an article like that under a nom de plume and stays skulking behind his editor afterwards.”

  “Lack of schoolboy honour, eh?”

  “No, I should have thought just plain lack of guts.”

  “Well, it’s a matter of opinion.”

  “Can I ask you as a particular favour to tell me who wrote that article?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “I’m bound to find out sooner or later.”

  “I don’t think you are bound to do anything of the sort. Nobody knows it outside my office. It will do you no good to learn it.”

  Don breathed out to cool his anger. “ I wonder if you’ll publish a letter from me answering the statements Moonraker has made.”

  “Send it in if you wish. It will receive consideration.”

  “But nothing more?”

  “It depends what you say.”

  “Coffee, sir?”

  “Please.”

  “I don’t understand you,” Don said. “You profess to your readers a high standard of fair play. A ‘clean’ outlook on sex, stand by the little man, down with bureaucracy, show the flag. That right?”

  “In your present mood, Mr Marlowe, you couldn’t be wrong.”

  “But columns like Moonraker’s ooze with slimy pus. Under the ‘healthy’ outlook there’s a sort of gangrene. What do you get out of it, you and your staff and your readers?”

  Robinson looked up at Don with his wet cement glance. “Are you a member here?”

  “No.”

  “Then I must ask you to leave. But before you go, since you ask, I’ll tell you that my policy and the policy of my paper is determined by a board of directors who don’t view their responsibilities lightly. Their policy, if you are interested, is to give the maximum freedom of expression, and the maximum salaries, to a few top-rank journalists, who are allowed to pick and choose their subjects without dictation from me and under the general aegis of the newspaper. That complete protection could not be given them if they all wrote under their own names. They would be subject to the interference and boycott of every little pettifogging Tom, Dick and Harry who happened to read some offence into their articles. If you ask what I and my staff and my readers ‘ get’ out of such a policy, I can only tell you that we get the satisfaction of knowing we speak without fear or favour, deflating a reputation if we think it over-blown, or, equally I would point out, drawing the attention of the world to a man who in our opinion has been overlooked. Our three and a half million readers rely on our honesty; they know we are not influenced by friends at court or intimidated by big names. They know where they are with The Sunday Gazette and more and more of them buy the paper every week. Now, good day to you, Mr Marlowe.”