The newsroom of the Daily Herald was a maelstrom of noise and activity. Fifty typewriters set up a deafening cacophony of clacking keys and harried journalists called back and forth through a fug of cigarette smoke.
Langham sat on a swivel chair across the desk from Dick Grenville, filled his pipe from his tin of Capstan’s Navy Cut and listened to the review editor’s predictable monthly tirade against the standard of publishing in general and the woefulness of crime writing in particular. It was the price Langham paid for being the Herald’s resident crime fiction reviewer.
‘I mean, some of the stuff they put out these days. … Listen to this.’ Grenville snatched a hardback from a tottering pile on the desk, opened it and read the description on the front flap. ‘Another adventure featuring Tommy and Suzie Rogers – not forgetting their canine accomplice Bonzo – sees the intrepid trio thwart the evil doings of international jewel thieves. The fun begins when Bonzo …’ He snapped the book shut in disgust. ‘Need I go on? How does this drivel see the light of day?’
Grenville sat back in his chair and glared at Langham as if he were solely responsible for the dire state of the genre. The editor resembled less a literary type than an officious town clerk, with his high, starched collar and impeccably snipped toothbrush moustache.
Langham gestured with his pipe. ‘I’ll give that one a miss.’ He pulled the pile of hardbacks from the desk and sorted through them.
Grenville said, ‘Why not cover it, Langham? Give it the pasting it deserves.’ Grenville paused, then said, ‘And if you don’t mind my saying, I think you’ve been rather kind of late. I recall your pieces from years ago, when you had real teeth. If something was bad, you said so. These days you dismiss a shocker with a few bland platitudes.’
‘Perhaps I’m becoming kinder in my old age.’
‘Well, how about reinvigorating your pieces with some real venom? If a book’s bad, then say so, and state why it’s so bad.’
Langham ignored the editor and concentrated on selecting four titles. The fact was that he had become kinder of late; or at least less inclined to dish out cutting criticism. Nowadays he was loath to make enemies, not so much because he feared earning retribution in the competing review pages for his own novels, but because he thought that most writers – despite Grenville’s assumptions otherwise – were actually trying their best. The only time he allowed his spleen full ventilation was when he came across a lazy novel obviously hacked out by a writer who should have known better.
Grenville leaned forward, squinting at him over his half-moon spectacles. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, Langham, what on earth happened to your head?’
‘Oh, this,’ Langham said, touching the bandage that looped around his neck, partly concealed by the turned-up collar of his overcoat. ‘I was coshed by a blackmailer while delivering a ransom demand on behalf of a friend.’
Grenville snorted. ‘You’ve been writing too many Sam Brooke yarns, Langham. More likely you fell down the steps of a public house, hm?’
‘Are you accusing me of inebriety, Grenville? Perish the thought!’
‘Speaking of which …’ the editor began.
‘Inebriety?’
‘No, Sam Brooke,’ Grenville said. ‘The early titles were put out before the war by Douglas and Dearing, weren’t they? Did you know an editor there – Max Sidley?’
‘He edited my first three,’ Langham said. Sidley was an editor of the old school, a classical scholar with the sagacity and unruffled manner of a sleepy owl.
‘Well, the poor blighter topped himself yesterday. Can’t say I blame him, some of the titles Douglas and Dearing made him work on. It must have been more than his good taste could tolerate.’ He pointed across the room to the editor’s office. ‘Nigel Lassiter’s in there now, delivering the obituary.’
‘He killed himself?’ Langham said, shocked. He’d last met Sidley just after the war, but had always harboured a fondness for the man who’d bought his first novel and thus set the course of his subsequent career.
‘He was seventy-five and still wielding the blue pencil. Poor sod should have got out years ago. A salutary lesson to us all.’
Langham squinted at Grenville, wondering if corrosive cynicism was a requisite for the post or the result of editing other people’s tired copy.
‘I’ll take these four,’ he said, slipping the books into his briefcase and standing. ‘When do you need the piece?’
‘First thing Friday. And remember, do inject a soupçon of venom, hm?’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
He was threading his way through the tightly-packed desks when a stentorian summons sounded above the clatter of typewriters.
‘Donald! Hold on, old man!’
He paused by the door while Nigel Lassiter exaggeratedly mimed jogging the last few yards and arrived panting before him. He was a tall man in his fifties, running to fat from the good life provided by two-dozen best-selling titles, the proceeds of which afforded him a big house in Islington, a yacht in the south of France and a table at the Ivy perpetually reserved in his name.
‘Just the man. You busy?’
Langham held up his case. ‘Just collected some review copies.’
‘Still churning out the column?’ He clapped Langham on the shoulder, his breath stinking of drink.
‘Well, it does keep the wolf from the door.’
‘You still with that pretentious old queer, Elder?’ Lassiter asked.
‘I know you had your differences,’ Langham said, ‘but Charles is a good man.’
Lassiter laughed without humour. ‘Differences? You’d have “differences” if he’d dumped you as he dumped me back in ’thirty-nine. Biggest mistake of his career – not that I’m worrying! Anyway,’ he went on, ‘how’re the Sam Brooke books doing these days?’
Langham pushed open the door, inviting Lassiter through before him. He followed and emerged into dazzling sunlight.
‘I’ll forever be a stalwart of the mid-list, Nigel. But I can’t complain.’
Lassiter paused on the busy pavement, lit up his habitual Pall Mall cigarette, and blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘Well, that’s what I want to chat to you about. A business proposition.’
Langham was surprised. ‘Business?’
‘Over a drink?’ Lassiter looked at his watch. ‘Three, dammit … How about Tolly’s? Charge through the nose but I’ll stand the pints.’
‘An offer I’d be a fool to refuse.’
They crossed the road and cut across Leicester Square. Lassiter peered at Langham’s bandage. ‘Looks nasty. What happened there?’
‘Stupid accident. I fell down the front steps the other day. And before you ask, I was sober.’
They turned down a narrow alley to Lassiter’s Soho drinking club, a subterranean dive sandwiched between a cheap Italian restaurant and a Chinese laundry.
‘Grenville told me about Sidley,’ Langham said.
‘Just delivered the copy of his obit. Ghastly business.’
They descended a flight of greasy steps and pushed through into a twilit corridor. Lassiter signed them in and led the way to a small room packed with dedicated afternoon drinkers.
Tolly’s was the haunt of indigent artists and writers, every square foot of the walls plastered with gaudy canvases traded for drinks in lieu of cash. The effect was claustrophobic and somewhat disorienting, Langham thought, a little like being trapped inside the nightmare of a crazed abstract expressionist.
Lassiter pushed his way to the bar. The only beer on offer was bottled Double Diamond or Guinness. Langham opted for the latter while Lassiter ordered a double whisky.
They found a table near the bar. Lassiter called out over the din of chatter and raucous laughter, ‘Fortuitous bumping into you, Donald. Just read your latest.’
‘Oh, dear …’
‘Don’t be so modest, man. I loved it. Had heart.’ He swallowed his drink, accounting for almost half the short.
‘Well, cheers,’ Langham said, hoisting his Guinness.
Lassiter stubbed out his first cigarette and lit up a second. ‘How many have you done now?’
‘Twenty-two mysteries, twenty of them featuring Sam Brooke.’ He didn’t own up to the early westerns.
‘Feeling jaded?’
Langham shook his head. ‘Miraculously, I’m still enjoying the job.’
‘Then you’re a better man than me.’ Lassiter’s broad, meaty face looked pensive. ‘How do you do it, Donald? I mean, keep up the enthusiasm? Your latest … Bloody hell, it was as fresh as your first. The writing … crisp, sharp. I could tell you loved writing it.’
Langham shrugged. ‘I did. I do. Each book is different.’
‘But bloody hell … Twenty books about the same private detective?’
‘Ah, but the trick is to introduce major new characters which Sam can bounce off in every book; learn things about himself as he works on the mystery.’
Lassiter listened silently, staring down at his drink. ‘I’ve just finished my fortieth thriller, Donald. Between you, me and the gatepost, it’s sheer baloney. Every sodding day was a chore. Woke up thinking, Christ, do I really have to hack out another thousand words of this meaningless run-around?’
Langham shrugged. ‘How about taking a break? You’re not short of a bob or two …’
Lassiter laughed; a sound utterly without humour. ‘Good idea. Only trouble is, I’m contracted to my publisher for another three of the wretched things. They take me three months to write, another couple of months to rewrite, and then I have some time off to recover my sanity. Christ, I’ll be at it for another two years.’ He rose to his feet, leaned over to the bar and called out, ‘Another double in this one, Rosie!’ Then he slumped back down beside Langham, rocking the precarious table. ‘I had a nightmare the other night. All I could hear was someone reading out my prose … It was just: “He said, she said, he nodded, she opened the door and ran, he was aware of his heartbeat as he raised the gun …” Jesus Christ! I awoke in a sweat, terrified. Think it was my subconscious, telling me something.’ He twisted his mouth around another slug of whisky and looked at Langham. ‘How do you do it, Donald? How do you wake up in the morning and face another ruddy day at the typewriter?’
Langham shrugged. ‘We’re different people, Nigel. I …’
Lassiter focused on him blearily. ‘What do you mean by that? “We’re different people”. I know that, man! But what do you mean?’ He was tipsy, and a note of aggression had entered his studied Oxbridge tones.
Langham wondered how to explain what he meant without depressing, or insulting, the man. ‘I think it’s something to do with our backgrounds, Nigel. I left school at sixteen. I never made it to university. To me, writing books was always something other people did, people with an education. So when I began writing and getting published … well, I didn’t think it my right … And I still don’t.’
Lassiter held up a fleshy hand. ‘Stop. I know what you’re saying. You’re saying … I’m privileged, Winchester, Oxford and all that. I tossed off my first novel when I was twenty-two and it did well, and since then it’s always come easily. And now I’m still cranking them out without care or concern, and I hate myself for doing it … hate my lack of integrity. Is that what you’re saying?’
Langham frowned. ‘Well, I wouldn’t phrase it quite like that.’
Lassiter stared at him. ‘And you know what?’ he said. ‘You’re exactly right. Spot on. Comes easily because it always has, and in consequence it means nothing to me … Nothing. Christ, I need another drink.’
‘Let me get these.’
‘You’re a gentleman and a scholar, old man.’
Langham took the empties and escaped to the bar. Only when he was easing himself back through the press of bodies did he recall what Lassiter had said about a business proposition. What on earth had he meant by that?
A depressing thought dawned. What if Lassiter wanted him to write the next Nigel Lassiter title?
He slid Lassiter’s whisky across the table and sat down. ‘You mentioned something about a business proposition?’
‘And so I did! Old brain’s grinding to a halt.’ Lassiter leaned back and regarded him. ‘Occurred to me the other day, reading your latest … I had an idea.’
Here it comes, Langham thought. How do I say that I’m quite happy writing my own books, and really don’t want to ghostwrite the latest ‘Nigel Lassiter’?
Lassiter leaned forward and said with the maudlin sincerity of a seasoned drunk, ‘Why don’t we – you and I, Donald – why don’t we collaborate?’
Langham’s heart sank. If anything, the thought of collaborating with Lassiter was even more dreadful than the idea of writing a ‘Lassiter’ novel solo. ‘You mean, write a book together?’
Lassiter guffawed. ‘Not together! Not together as such, Donald. Christ, it’s hard enough living with my wife these days. The thought of shacking up with another writer … no offence meant. What I mean is, I use Sam Brooke in my next book, and you use my detective, Sergeant Hamm? They make guest appearances, as it were. Work together on a case.’
Langham felt relieved. He considered the idea, and it had mileage. The publicity would do his sales no end of good. That was, of course, if Lassiter really meant what he was saying and it wasn’t just some drunken notion forgotten with the onset of his hangover in the morning.
‘I like the idea, Nigel. I think it’d work.’
‘You do? Excellent. Let’s meet up later this week, over lunch – and I’ll try to go easy on the old booze.’
Langham raised his glass. ‘Let’s do that.’
‘Capital, Donald! I think this calls for a celebratory drink.’ He swayed to his feet and bought another round.
When he eased his bulk back down, Lassiter said, ‘Must admit I’ve been hitting the old bottle of late. The last novel was a bastard, and then yesterday I heard about old Sidley.’
Langham nodded. ‘As I was telling Grenville, he was my very first editor.’
‘I worked with him just before the war,’ Lassiter reminisced. ‘Douglas and Dearing bought the three collaborations I did with Frank Pearson. Remember old Frankie?’
‘I met him a few times. Wasn’t he with Charles Elder for a few books in the thirties? Prickly customer, I recall. He rather fell out with me over a review I did of one of his books.’ It was one of the acerbic reviews Grenville had alluded to earlier.
‘“Prickly” hardly describes the man,’ Lassiter said. ‘We got on fine in the early days – the mid-thirties, that’d be. We were both youngish, ambitious, interested in the same kind of fiction.’
‘How did you come to collaborate?’
‘Don’t get me started!’ Lassiter laughed and took a gulp of whisky. ‘Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time – like many a marriage, and look how most of them end up!’ He fell silent, gazing into his glass. ‘I liked Frankie, back then – before we fell out.’
‘What happened?’
Lassiter shrugged. ‘Frankie had energy. Came up with ideas ten a penny, and they were often good ones. What he lacked was human empathy. His characters were cardboard cut-outs totally subservient to his convoluted plots. He thought that plot, twists, cliffhangers … he thought they alone kept the reader hooked.’ He belched. ‘’Scuse me … My argument was that readers would … would only engage with a story if they believed in the characters, if they empathized with the human element. Make your characters real, believable, sympathetic, and you’ve got the reader. They’ll keep turning the pages.’
‘Let me guess. It was his idea to collaborate, right?’
Lassiter nodded. ‘I was doing reasonably well. I’d sold three books to Hutchinson’s and they were selling OK. Frankie … well, he’d sold a few to Hubert and Shale, a third-rate outfit whose books went straight into the lending libraries. They sank without a trace and Frankie was despondent. Over a few pints one night I tried to tell him, tactfully, where I thought he was going wrong. The upshot was that he suggested we write a crime novel together. He’d do the plot, I’d do the character sketches and we’d take it in turns to do the writing.’
Langham took a mouthful of Guinness. ‘It worked?’
Lassiter puckered his liverish lips. ‘Up to a point. The novel – though I say so myself – was better than anything he could have done alone, but not up to what I’d been doing until then. I hope that doesn’t sound arrogant. Wasn’t meant to.’ He shrugged. ‘But it’s true. It was a second-rate book. I was amazed when Max Sidley took it for Douglas and Dearing.’
‘Frankie must have been pleased. How did it do?’
‘He was, and the book did well enough for Sidley to want two more … Which I was loath to commit to. Truth be told, I did it for Frankie. He needed the money and the kudos the books gave him in the publishing world. So we did two more, each one worse than the last.’
‘Let me guess – Douglas and Dearing didn’t want a fourth?’
Lassiter shook his head, a distant look in his eyes. ‘That’s just the thing, they did. The books sold reasonably well and Sidley approached us for another one. I’ll never forget the meeting with Frankie when I told him I didn’t want to do another collaboration. He looked like a puppy I’d just kicked in the balls.’ He shrugged. ‘Fact was, my own books were taking off, the advances on the collabs weren’t that great, and career-wise it just wasn’t a good move for me to churn out these potboilers.’
‘How did Frankie react?’
‘How do you think? Distraught, then angry. He got raging drunk and it would’ve ended in a fight if I hadn’t legged it.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I saw him once or twice after that, just before the war. He did the fourth book alone. Apparently it was appalling.’
Langham said, ‘I think that might have been the one I slated in the Herald.’
‘Well, Douglas and Dearing dropped him like a hot coal after that one. He did a dozen or so crime novels for some fly-by-night outfit … even scribbled during the war – he was exempt from military service on account of his eyesight or something. Wrote romances and school stories to keep body and soul together.’
‘What’s he doing these days?’
‘Still scribbling, would you believe? He does westerns for the people he started with in the thirties, Hubert and Shale. Potboilers, believe me.’ He fell silent, then looked at Langham as if wondering whether to tell him something. ‘I bumped into him about three, four years ago in a pub in Camden. Didn’t look well. He’d hit the bottle in a big way. Made my drinking look amateur by comparison. I tried to be friendly, offered to buy him a drink for old times’ sake. But he wasn’t having any of it. Would’ve attacked me if he hadn’t been legless.’
‘Poor Frankie …’
‘And then yesterday … hearing about old Max Sidley, it brought it all back. Jesus!’ he exclaimed. ‘The damned thing is, Donald, the stupid thing is, I feel so damned guilty.’
‘About Frankie?’ He started to reassure Lassiter that he shouldn’t burden himself with guilt over something he had done – with all justification – almost twenty years ago, but Lassiter interrupted: ‘No, not about Frankie, damn him! About old Max.’
‘Max Sidley? I don’t see …’
Lassiter sighed, drained his whisky and said, ‘Do you know how he did it? How he killed himself?’
‘Grenville didn’t say.’
‘The poor man took a hand-held electric drill and pressed …’ He mimed holding the tool to his ear.
Langham winced. ‘Good God,’ he said, then shrugged. ‘But why the guilt?’
‘Because,’ Lassiter said, ‘that was exactly the method I devised in Murder Will Out, the first book I did with Frankie. We needed to get rid of one of the minor characters, so I thought up a gory suicide. How the hell was I to know old Max would remember it and use it twenty years later?’
‘Exactly,’ Langham said forcefully. ‘You weren’t to know. Nothing could have stopped Max from killing himself, if that’s what he wanted. If he hadn’t done it in the way you described, he would have found another way. Nigel, every time we put pen to paper we can’t worry that people might copy whatever death we describe. We’d never write a word.’
Lassiter looked up from his drink. ‘I know, I know. It’s irrational. But … but nevertheless I feel … guilty is the only word for it. Poor old Max.’
‘When did you last see him?’
Lassiter thought about that. ‘A month ago at a publishing do at the Douglas and Dearing offices. He seemed fine, for someone knocking on seventy-five.’
‘Not at all depressed?’
‘Not at all. As bright as a button, extolling the virtues of some young new writer whose first novel they’d just acquired. So when I heard about … Well, it knocked me sideways.’ He smiled, sadly. ‘I did the obit as a tribute. Hell, I put more work into it than I did my last novel – and I know, that isn’t saying much.’
Langham smiled. ‘Would you like another drink?’
Lassiter looked at his watch. ‘Christ, it’s almost five. Better not, old man. Wifey’ll be wondering where the hell I am. I’m like this.’ He mimed thumbing a drawing pin into the tabletop.
‘How is Caroline these days?’
Lassiter winked. ‘I complain, but I shouldn’t. She keeps my feet on the ground, keeps my alcohol consumption under control, damn her. Bless her. I’d better be on my way. Lovely seeing you, Donald. And I’ll be in touch about the collab, OK?’
‘I’ll look forward to that.’
‘Oh – you’re going to the Crime Club dinner next week, I assume?’
‘Forgotten all about it,’ Langham said. ‘But yes, I haven’t missed one for years. I’ll be there.’
Lassiter saluted, climbed unsteadily to his feet and wended his way through the crowd towards the exit.
Langham remained at the table, half a glass of Guinness before him. He’d finish his drink, then find a phone box and ring Charles to see if the blackmailer had written with his next demand.
Five minutes later he drained his glass and pushed through the crowd, climbing the steps into the fresh air like some troglodyte creature emerging from hibernation. He had the typical light-headedness, and the odd sense of being removed from reality, common after an afternoon session.
He hurried across Leicester Square, found a phone box and got through to the agency. Seconds later Maria answered. ‘Donald, where have you been all day? I’ve been phoning your flat again and again.’
‘Something’s happened?’
‘This morning another letter arrived. This time he wants even more money.’
Langham swore. ‘How’s Charles taking it?’
There was a hesitation at the other end of the line. ‘Badly, I’m afraid. Please, could you possibly come over? He’s been asking for you.’
‘I’m on my way.’
‘Thank you so much, Donald.’
As he stepped from the phone box and made his way across the square to where his car was parked, he tried to see a way out of this for Charles. The fact was that his agent was in a double bind: he couldn’t go to the police for fear of prosecution and a prison sentence – and if he didn’t accede to the extortionate demands of the blackmailer, then the result would be the same. Charles was not short of the odd thousand or two, he suspected, but his resources were finite.
He eased his Austin into the busy flow of traffic going north on Charing Cross Road, then turned along Oxford Street and headed west. The traffic was light today, and in due course he pulled into a parking space across the road from the agency.
The door to the street was unlocked, but when he reached the door to the outer office he found it barred. He knocked, and seconds later Maria let him in. She had a strand of jet-black hair nervously nipped into the corner of her mouth, and only when he stared did she remember herself and remove it, self-consciously.
‘I closed the office just after the letter arrived,’ she explained. ‘Charles was so very upset. He said he couldn’t possibly concentrate on work. I’ve been with him all day. Thank you for coming.’
‘It’s the least I could do. Where is he?’
‘In his rooms …’ She indicated the stairway and followed him up.
Charles was pacing the sitting room, waving a sheet of paper before him. Even in distress he had the look of a seasoned thespian hamming it up. ‘Thank God you’re here, Donald! Five hundred! Would you believe it, the wretch wants five hundred!’
‘Let me see …’ Langham crossed the room and took the letter.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Maria asked.
‘A brandy for me, my dear,’ Charles said. ‘Make it a double.’
‘I’m fine,’ Langham told her. He took the letter to the window and angled it into the light.
Dear Charles,
It was a rather foolish thing for you to do, allowing a man to do a lady’s job now, wasn’t it? Your messenger deserved that cosh on the head. This time, you will do the delivering. I want five hundred in used ten-pound notes. Follow these instructions to the letter and the judiciary will be none the wiser. Tomorrow, Tuesday the 15th, take your Bentley and drive down to the village of Chalford in Sussex. From there follow the lane to the village of Hallet. A mile out of Chalford you will pass a derelict farm building on the right, and a hundred yards further on, to your left, you will see the opening to a field, barred by a gate. Stop there at two p.m. exactly, get out of the car and leave the money in an envelope propped against the gatepost. This done, return to the car and drive back to London. I have no need to stress that you should come alone.
Langham read the note for a second time. He looked across at Charles, who was regarding him with tear-filled eyes.
‘The envelope?’
Charles passed him a long manila envelope identical to the others. This one also bore a Streatham postmark.
‘What should I do, my dear boy?’
‘Can you get hold of the money by tomorrow?’
‘Just about, though it will clear out my current account. I have funds, of course, investments … But this just cannot go on! Where will it end, Donald? My nerves are shattered.’
Maria passed Charles a brandy. Langham took Charles’s elbow and guided him across to a settee before the hearth. His agent flopped into the seat, sloshing the brandy, and closed his eyes in an expression eloquent of despair.
‘Do you have a gazetteer of Sussex?’ Langham asked.
Charles waved a languid hand. ‘In the bookshelf, bottom shelf.’
Maria fetched the road atlas and passed it to Langham, then sat on the edge of an armchair, stockinged legs crossed, watching him.
Charles wailed, ‘I have half a mind to hand myself in now, confess all, make a clean breast of the situation and trust in the inherent fairness of my country’s legal system.’
Langham eyed him sceptically. ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, Charles. The “inherent fairness” you speak about will see you sent down for a year or more.’
‘And the alternative? Allow the cad to bleed me dry?’
Langham looked up from the gazetteer. ‘The only incriminating things the blackmailer has in his possession are the photographs, am I right?’
‘Does he need anything else, my boy – a signed confession, perhaps? Donald, Donald, what else does he need? The wretched photographs are evidence enough!’
‘Hear me out, Charles. It occurred to me earlier that it would be to our advantage if we could find out who’s blackmailing you.’
‘You’re making rather a habit of stating the obvious without the foundation of logic, Donald. Forgive me, but I am at my wits’ end!’
Maria said, ‘What do you suggest, Donald?’
Langham looked from Charles to Maria. ‘I intend to be there when the blackmailer picks up the money. I’ll follow the motorbike, or whatever vehicle he’s using this time. I have contacts who can loan me a pistol—’
‘But what if he himself is armed?’ Maria exclaimed.
Langham recalled the sensation of something cold being held to the back of his head, and what the bomb site kids had said, but refrained from telling Maria.
‘I can look after myself,’ he said. ‘The only way we can defeat the blackmailer is to find his copies of the photographs, along with the negatives, and destroy them. And the only way to do that is to confront the …’ He was about to say ‘bastard’, but stopped himself. ‘… the blackmailer.’
‘Donald, Donald …’ Charles said. ‘I don’t like this one bit! The risk at which you are placing yourself … and all because I was weak and foolish.’
‘Let’s consider it research for the next book, Charles.’
He found the page showing the roads and lanes of East Sussex, and after a minute located the village of Chalford. Maria came and joined him on the settee, leaning against him and peering at the page. Langham indicated the village, and the lane to Hallet.
He said, ‘You, Charles, will approach from the north, leave the envelope, and continue until you come to the A22, from where you’ll drive back to London.’
Maria said, ‘You said you would be “there”, Donald. But where is “there”? What if the blackmailer sees you?’
‘I intend to arrive an hour or so earlier and park in the derelict farm mentioned in the blackmailer’s letter.’
Maria interrupted. ‘But how do you know you can see the gate from the farm? What if you cannot?’
‘I don’t have to see the gate, do I? All I have to see is the motorbike passing—’
‘If he does arrive on a motorbike this time—’
‘—either having picked up the envelope, or about to pick it up,’ he went on. ‘Then I drive from the farm and follow him.’
‘I think it will not work out,’ Maria said. ‘Too much could go wrong. If you do not react fast enough, or you fail to see the motorbike or whatever …’
He smiled. ‘Well, what do you suggest?’
She pursed her lips and tipped her head to one side as she regarded him. ‘Now, if there were two cars,’ she said, ‘stationed here, and here’ – she indicated points at each end of the lane – ‘then one of us would be bound to see the motorcyclist – or whatever – passing at the appointed time. Then we follow at a distance when the blackmailer picks up the envelope. That way we cannot fail.’
He stared at her. ‘We?’
She was indignant. ‘Do you think we cannot drive in France?’
‘Are you sure you want to get mixed up in this?’
She shrugged. ‘Do you think me incapable? Did you know that French women, and for that matter English women, fought for the Resistance in my country?’
‘There is something I haven’t mentioned,’ Langham said a little sheepishly. ‘The blackmailer was armed.’ He told them about the gun being held to the back of his head.
Maria’s lips were firm with resolve. ‘I will merely follow the motorcyclist to see where he goes. I will not confront him.’ She looked to Charles. ‘Will you make Donald see sense, please?’
‘My friends,’ Charles said, reaching out and grasping their hands, ‘I feel as if I have been transported to the pages of a Bulldog Drummond adventure. My head spins and my heart swells at the thought of the lengths to which you, my dears, would go to save my considerable bacon … I would plead with you to allow me to go alone, but I fear my pleas would fall on deaf ears. Am I right?’
Maria looked at Langham and laughed. ‘Right,’ they said in unison.
Fifteen minutes later, after arranging the details of their expedition to Sussex, Maria looked at her wristwatch and excused herself. She had an errand to run for her father, she said, and was meeting him for dinner later that evening.
Langham saw her to the door and watched her hurry down the stairs.
Charles sighed. ‘Now, my dear boy, I demand you join me in a drink! And I will not take no for an answer.’
Langham accepted a shot of whisky and sat back on the settee.
Charles narrowed the folds of flesh around his piercing blue eyes and squinted at Langham. ‘It is only when one finds oneself in extremis, shall we say, that one learns the true nature of not only oneself, but also of those around one. You are proving a true ally, Donald.’
Langham smiled and sipped his whisky. ‘It’s the least I could do.’
‘But may I ask, my dear boy, why are you going to such lengths? I have friends of long standing who would throw their hands in the air, run a mile, and let me stew in the juices of my own making.’
Langham thought about it. ‘You’re a friend, Charles, and what’s happening here is appalling. It’s bad enough that some twisted hypocrite is threatening you like this. But what truly angers me is the system that allows him to do so.’
Charles detonated a derisive laugh. ‘The system! But such has always been the case, and when will it change? And before you spout that we need a change of government, let me say that the problem goes much deeper than the prejudices of those in power. There will be no change until the people of this benighted land see me and my kind as fellow human beings, not some minority to be mocked and derided. Mark my word, there will be no change before the end of the century!’
Langham gestured with his glass. ‘I think it’ll come sooner than that.’
Charles sighed. ‘I am fifty-five this year, Donald, as old as the century, and I have been waiting most of my adult life for the decriminalization of homosexuality … I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.’ His face took on a wistful aspect. ‘I’ve had a good life, Donald. Winchester was bliss, and Oxford a happy continuation. Odd to say, but it didn’t occur to me then that I was in a minority. Good Lord, we were all at it! What hedonistic times those were, after the war and into the twenties.’ He finished his drink with one swallow and poured himself another. ‘It was only later, when I came down from Oxford and dipped my toes in the muddy waters of publishing that I first encountered the prejudiced and petty-minded piranhas, if you will allow me the somewhat far-fetched piscine metaphor.’
Langham smiled, sank into the cushions and gestured that such oratory was eminently permissible. When Charles was in full flow, his mellifluous eloquence was more than a little entertaining.
‘I learned to pull in my horns, ahem, as it were, and practise circumspection. In the circles in which I swam, my secret was open. I surrounded myself, and still do, with those of like mind and similar persuasion, writers and actors who, if not actually active, then are open-minded enough to accept me and my kind.’
‘And then something like this happens.’
‘I have found reserves of strength within me enough to withstand whatever slings and arrows are cast my way.’ He looked sheepish. ‘Even if I was in a bit of a flap earlier.’
Langham laughed. ‘That’s the spirit.’ He finished his drink and glanced at his watch. ‘I must be off. I’ll call around here at eleven tomorrow and we’ll go through what we have to do.’ He regarded Charles. ‘You’ll be all right tonight?’
‘I have a dinner engagement with friends at eight, dear boy. I shall be sparkling and eloquent … and I might even get a little squiffy.’
Langham laughed and clapped Charles’s meaty shoulder. ‘You do that. I’ll see myself out.’
‘Bless you, dear boy.’
As he drove home slowly through light traffic Langham considered eating that evening at the nearby Lyons’ Corner House, but the thought didn’t appeal. When he arrived at his flat he made himself a cheese sandwich and ate it accompanied by a bottle of Worthington’s best bitter while listening to the Third Programme on the wireless: a talk by a writer recounting his travels in Argentina.
Later he sat in his armchair, switched on the standard lamp and sorted through the titles he’d selected at the Herald that morning. He chose what looked to be the best of the bunch, a classic whodunit by a writer whose novels he’d enjoyed in the past. He was ten pages into it when he realized that his attention was drifting: he’d taken in nothing of the opening scenes. He set the book aside and contemplated what tomorrow might bring, and then found himself thinking back to Maria seated beside him on the settee, her elegant legs crossed, emanating a heady perfume of powder and eau de cologne, a vision of beauty and sophistication in her twinset and pearls.