Skelton had known Stanley Cotterell since school. He was a year younger and had a weak heart, something to do with scarlet fever. Along with Skelton and a few others, he’d been excluded from PE and some of the more rigorous sports, instead sitting in what was delicately called ‘cripples corner’ where, while the more able boys chased a ball around a muddy field or jumped over a vaulting horse, they were supposed to play chess (not draughts) or read an improving book.
Cotterell had gone on to become a solicitor with a practice in Camden Town three doors away from a chop house that worked such magic with a saddle of lamb that people found the taste and texture haunting their dreams. Old men on their deathbeds had been known to say, ‘I 120married a good woman, had seven healthy children,’ then, pausing to give due weight to the capstone of this life well lived, added, ‘and I had lunch at the Camden Town chop house. Twice.’
‘I was wondering if I might pick your brains,’ Cotterell said when they’d put in their orders and been provided with sherry.
‘A legal matter or a personal one?’ Skelton asked. ‘Because I should warn you that I’m no good at personal. Particularly if it involves feelings.’
‘No, it’s legal. Well, sort of. A divorce.’
‘You’re getting divorced?’
‘No, no. Gwen and I couldn’t be happier. It’s a client. A chap called Higgins. Thinks his wife is having an affair with Reverend Hucks, Vicar of St Claire’s in Kentish Town.
‘And is she?’
‘Yes. But she denies it vehemently, as does the vicar. I actually know the vicar quite well. Fine man. Utterly respectable, but quite besotted by Mrs Higgins. Poor chap. Never known anything like it before. First love at his advanced age.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Seventy-six.’
‘And the woman?’
‘Mrs Higgins is, I think, a little older. Seventy-seven or eight.’
Skelton looked to make sure they weren’t overheard. ‘And this affair has a … physical dimension?’ 121
‘My secretary was going into Maples on the Tottenham Court Road and saw them, together, canoodling, coming out of the Grafton Hotel in mid-afternoon.’
‘Was he wearing clerical garb?’
‘Mufti.’
‘And how old is the husband?’
‘Eighty-two. He’s devastated, of course, and determined to get a divorce. He says there’s no future in the marriage.’
‘But …’ It didn’t need spelling out. ‘So, he wants to divorce on the grounds of adultery, but the wife would oppose, and the husband has no actual proof that relations have taken place? Would a private detective …?’
‘Well, obviously, but if proof were to be obtained the reputation of the poor Reverend Hucks would be dragged through the mud. He’d most likely be defrocked. The shame would kill him. He is a very nice chap.’
‘I see.’
‘There is another difficulty. You see Mrs Higgins has something of a reputation for raciness. She first made a cuckold of Mr Higgins when they were on honeymoon in Eastbourne in 1881 and has maintained a prodigious record for infidelities ever since. And I could probably find former lovers who’d happily confess to their indiscretions and appear as co-respondent, but then Mr Higgins would have to know about the others.’
‘And he doesn’t?’
‘Not a glimmer. Probably the only person from Kentish Town to Kilburn who doesn’t. Fifty years and the business 122with the vicar is the first time he’s harboured any suspicion at all.’
‘So, there’s a danger that, if he did find out about the others, the shock would …’
‘Kill him, yes.’
The meat came and, for a while, both were transported to a corner of culinary heaven where the only utterance possible is ‘Mmmmm’.
The joint was wheeled around on a trolley and from time to time the waiter would arrive and offer seconds. Skelton and Cotterell both went for thirds, then had jam sponge and custard.
‘I came into the law,’ Cotterell said, over coffee, ‘because I thought everything would be cut and dried. I thought the law was a book of rules. Like the rules of snakes and ladders. But it isn’t at all, is it? It’s no more cut and dried than ordinary life. Less so in many ways because other people’s problems are so much more complicated than one’s own. And the other thing is, justice, in practice, is so often horribly unfair, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Skelton said. ‘Anybody who comes into the law thinking it has anything at all to do with fairness or right and wrong is in for a terrible disappointment. It’s got to the point where I’ve started wondering why we bother having trials at all when the toss of a coin would serve the cause of justice just as well, if not better.’ The coffee came with tiny biscuits. ‘What are these called?’
‘I don’t know. They’re sort of almondy, aren’t they? Should we ask for some more?’ 123
‘We’d be mad not to. Here’s an idea. Tell the old man, Mr Higgins, that you have hired a private detective and that he has listened at doors and looked through keyholes and has ascertained that the Vicar of St Claire’s is offering Mrs Higgins nothing more salacious than spiritual guidance and the discussion of Bible passages.’
‘That would be a terrible lie.’
‘Do you have any particular objection to lying?’
‘To clients? No.’
‘It would put the old man’s mind wonderfully at ease and allow him to live out his few remaining days in peace. You’d probably have to get Mrs Higgins to collude with the lie. Would she do that?’
‘I think she’d do anything to protect Hucksy.’
‘The vicar? Is that what she calls him?’
‘Just speculating.’
‘Mr Higgins is eighty-two. Average life expectancy for a man is sixty, so he’s effectively been living on borrowed time for twenty-two years. Is he a well man?’
‘Not particularly. He’s had a lot of trouble with gallstones.’
‘There you are, then. You’d probably only have to sustain the lie for a couple of years at the outside. And even if he lives until he’s eighty-five or ninety, he’ll most likely be gaga and won’t know the difference.’
The almondy biscuits arrived and they talked of other matters.
124Edgar was out when Skelton got back to 8 Foxton Row, and since the afternoon’s business – reading some nonsense and writing some other nonsense – could be delayed interminably, he decided to devote an hour or so to dozing, first in one of the low chairs, then, when that proved unsatisfactory, on the rug with his head beneath his desk, with a chair and a table carefully placed to aid his standing when his doze was done.
There was a knock at the door. Skelton tried to ignore it, hoping the knocker would assume he was out and go away, but it came again more insistently. A voice, that of Eric, one of the errand boys whose stupidity was on its way to becoming a Foxton Row legend, said, ‘Mr Skelton, Mr Rosthwaite is downstairs waiting to see you.’
Quietly cursing and making full use of the chair and the table, Skelton pulled himself to his feet and found the appointments book, meticulously kept by Edgar. There was no mention of a Mr Rosthwaite.
He opened the door. Eric was standing on one foot, like a flamingo.
‘I’m not expecting a Mr Rosthwaite,’ Skelton said.
‘He asked if you was in, sir,’ Eric said, ‘and I told him you was in ’cos I seen you come in.’
‘As I’m sure Mr Hobbes has told you a thousand times,’ Skelton said, ‘if someone asks whether I’m in, you should say, “I’ll check”, then you come up here and you ask whether I’m in, and I’m never in unless I specifically say I’m in. Now, is that understood?’
It wasn’t, but Eric nodded just as if it was. 125
‘Did Mr Rosthwaite give a first name?’ Edgar asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What was it?’
‘Lord.’
Lord Rosthwaite, the sixth richest man in England, was a meat importer who was rumoured to have traded with the enemy during the war. He had bought his peerage from Lloyd-George for £70,000 and when Alfred Harmsworth threatened to expose the sale in the Daily Mirror, Lloyd-George promptly ennobled Harmsworth, too, making him Lord Northcliffe, and the story went away.
‘Did he mention what he wanted to see me about?’
‘Said it was very private.’
‘Better show him up, I suppose,’ Skelton said. ‘And ask Mr Hobbes to come up if he’s back yet. And, when you’re sure Lord Rosthwaite has gone, bring tea and biscuits. Not before. Remember, unexpected visitors, be they peers of the realm or His Majesty the King himself, do not get tea and biscuits.’
Skelton filled and lit his pipe.
Another knock. Eric ushered in the visitor, left the room and fell downstairs. When he reached the bottom, there was a short pause before he called, plaintively, just in case anyone was interested, ‘I’m all right.’
Rosthwaite was a hairless man with oversized ears and eyes so small they might not have been there at all. He carefully closed the door that Eric had left open and took Skelton’s hand into both of his as if claiming ownership. It 126was not a tight grip, but it was persistent.
‘Mr Skelton,’ he said, ‘it is a pleasure and a privilege to meet you.’
The accent suggested a la-di-da lower-middle-class home near Liverpool and a very minor public school that had failed to knock the rough edges off.
Skelton tried to rid himself of the double handshake while simultaneously coaxing Rosthwaite into a chair.
Rosthwaite would not be moved. ‘The matter about which I’d like to speak with you is of an intensely personal nature.’
Skelton nodded, understandingly. Rosthwaite sat, took out his cigar case, extracted one of Hermann Upmann’s finest, cut the end with a blade attached to his match case lit it, and sucked at the thing like a baby at the bottle. Then he leant forward and, in a half-whisper, said, ‘It’s about this Denison Beck business. You probably already know I’ve been taking his treatments for the past year or so. And you’ve probably realised that if word of my condition were to come out in court and reach the press, the effect on the stock market, not to mention Britain’s relations with the Empire, could be devastating.’
From the way that Rosthwaite was practically squirming with embarrassment, it was not difficult to deduce that his ‘condition’ was, more than likely, spermatorrhoea-related, or perhaps something even more embarrassing that Skelton preferred not to think about. While he found it ludicrous to believe that even something he preferred not to think about could have any bearing on ‘Britain’s relations with the 127Empire’, he accepted it was exactly the sort of thing that a self-important captain of industry like Rosthwaite would take for granted.
The smoke from Skelton’s pipe had a cleaner, bluer quality than that from Rosthwaite’s cigar, which was grey and dense.
‘I should point out,’ Skelton said, ‘that, as yet, I have not had sight of a list of Mr Beck’s patients nor the conditions for which they were being treated.’
Rosthwaite’s sigh of relief came out as a cumulonimbus of cigar smoke.
‘But I expect to in the next day or so.’
Some of the cloud was sucked back in again.
‘But I can rely on your discretion?’ Rosthwaite said.
‘My discretion or lack of it is really neither here nor there,’ Skelton said as gently as possible. ‘A man’s on trial for manslaughter. He could go to prison for the rest of his life. I’m briefed to defend him. It is my job to conduct that defence as effectively as I possibly can, and while I can assure you that, in the normal course of events, I would never expose any information which might cause dismay or embarrassment, I might not have much choice in the matter. If it came to it and I was sure that mentioning your name and condition would make a substantial contribution to Mr Beck’s defence, I’d be duty-bound to do it.’
‘But surely—’
Before Rosthwaite could start banging on about the stock market and the Empire again, Skelton said, ‘The thing is, you see, the statue on top of the Old Bailey, the statue of 128justice with the scales in one hand and the sword in the other is blindfold to indicate that justice – regardless of the effect that it may or may not have on reputation, on share prices, on country or empire – can show no fear or favour.’
Rosthwaite carefully touched the ash of his cigar against the edge of the ashtray and, when it didn’t fall off, let it be.
‘Needless to say, I am in complete agreement with you, Mr Skelton,’ he said. ‘Right is right and wrong is wrong and never the twain shall meet, and I know as well as you do that British justice is revered throughout the world, and rightly so. Although, to be pedantic on a small matter, I don’t think the statue on top of the Old Bailey is actually blindfold.’
‘Isn’t she? I thought she was.’
‘No, sometimes similar statues are, but I don’t think the one up there is.’
‘I must remember to look next time I’m up that way.’
Rosthwaite smiled. ‘Dickie Matthieu told me the legal fees involved in that patent brawl he had a couple of years ago had practically ruined him.’
Skelton had had nothing to do with the Matthieu case but knew it all the same. Matthieu had manufactured some new sort of drill or lathe some aspect of which had already been patented by Bruce and Laidlaw of Warrington. The case had dragged on for the best part of a year.
‘He told me that a top man working on a case like that could expect to end up with two or three thousand pounds.’
Skelton had a horrified inkling where this might be leading. 129
Rosthwaite had lost his embarrassment. He was never embarrassed when he was talking about business. ‘Now, despite what the papers say, you’re not really in the top league, are you, Mr Skelton? Not yet. So, what do you make? In a year?’
‘I don’t see how that could possibly have any relevance to—’
‘Presumably your chambers takes a cut of your fees, and your clerk and then there’d be no end of expenses. So, what do you end up with? Five thousand? Ten thousand? It’s a hell of a good screw but all the same, it’s not first class on the Île de France is it? Or your own suite at the Grand Hôtel des Bains? Every little helps and an extra thousand pounds can help a lot.’
‘Lord Rosthwaite—’
‘It’s not as if I’m asking for the world, is it? Just keep my name out of things and—’
‘Lord Rosthwaite, I think we should end this conversation now.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘Obviously what you propose is absolutely out of the question and I should by rights report you to the police.’
Rosthwaite smoked his cigar, waiting, perhaps, for Skelton to make a counter-offer.
‘Under the circumstances,’ Skelton continued, ‘I think it would be better if both of us pretended that this conversation never took place.’
‘Of course,’ Rosthwaite said. He stood. ‘Don’t worry, I 130can find my own way out. And, as you say, this conversation never took place.’
As Rosthwaite left, he turned and winked.
Skelton relit his pipe, wondering what was meant by the wink. Then it dawned on him.
Edgar came in with the tea, a tin of biscuits and the afternoon post. ‘Sorry, I was delayed. What did Lord Rosthwaite want?’
‘He was one of Beck’s patients. Some problem he doesn’t want people to know about.’
‘Ah,’ Edgar said. ‘I would imagine at least half of Beck’s clientele were there to do with downstairs business.’
‘He tried to bribe me not to mention his name during the trial.’
‘That’s very naughty,’ Edgar said.
‘Which is exactly what I said, except – I think there may have been a terrible misunderstanding.’
‘In what way?’
‘I said, “I think it would be better if we both pretended this conversation never took place,” and I think he thought …’
‘Oh, dear. Well, as long as you don’t actually act on his suggestion, or take his money, there’s no harm done. Although I suppose we could report the matter to the police, except that he’ll deny it and it’ll be his word against yours and he’ll bring the matter up in the House of Lords and then all hell will break loose.’
‘Did Aubrey manage to get hold of Beck’s client list?’ 131
‘I’m not sure. I’ll give him a call and get him to send it over if it’s arrived.’
‘By the way,’ Skelton said, ‘I told Rosthwaite the statue on top of the Old Bailey is blindfold. It is, isn’t it?’
‘I haven’t looked for ages. I know she’s wearing a crown and looks as if she’s about to topple over backwards, but I can’t remember a blindfold.’
Edgar opened the biscuit tin and found that somebody had snaffled all the ginger nuts so, to compensate, took two petit beurres.
‘You never told me what you think, by the way,’ he said.
‘What about?’
‘The cocktail cabinet. Now that you’ve seen it in the flesh.’
‘Well, it’s not really my field, is it?’
‘All the same, I’d value your opinion.’
‘I don’t know anything about furniture, and I’ve got no taste.’
‘Exactly, I’d like to gauge its effect on the untrained eye.’
‘It’s … a … lovely bit of wood. Beautiful grain.’
‘It’s rosewood,’ Edgar said. ‘The dark parts are, anyway. The lighter parts are bird’s-eye maple. And, of course,’ he had the catalogue to hand, turned to the picture of the cabinet and pointed out some of the ornamental features, ‘these parts are Bakelite.’
Skelton looked. ‘The crevices between the pointy bits,’ he said.
‘What about them?’
‘They’re very deep.’ 132
‘Y-yes.’
‘Be a bugger to dust.’
Edgar reclaimed the catalogue, perhaps a little more roughly than was necessary. ‘I have telephone calls to make,’ he said, and swept majestically out of the room.
The post contained the usual Wednesday letter from cousin Alan.
c/o The Chaundler Fund, Princess Street, Manchester Monday, 17th November 1930
My dear cousin Arthur,
I really did not know how busy busy could be before the last few days. I realise that you spend a lot of your time rushing about the country. Whenever I read about you in the newspaper you are one minute at the Warwick Assizes and the next minute in Winchester and then you are doing something or other in Durham or Norwich, as well as all the travelling from Lambourn to London and back and forth and to and fro, so you will know all about what it has been like for us.
We had a very successful four nights in Colne Workingmen’s Institute. Since then we have been having one-night bookings in some of the smaller towns. Our band changes its personnel practically every night depending on who is available and whom we meet along the way. One night we had four 133trombones, accordion, banjo and clarinet. The only fixed entity is Ron, the clarinet player, whom I think I might have mentioned in a previous letter.
Ron (his surname is Liptrot) is a milkman but until quite recently he was in the army, playing his clarinet with one of the Lancashire regimental bands. They train them well in the army. His sight-reading is near miraculous. I asked how he had become so proficient and he told me that you had to be a good sight reader in the army because they put you on a charge for playing a wrong note, send you to prison for two wrong notes and if you make a real blunder, like coming in a bar late or making a squeak with your reed, they put you up against a wall and shoot you. This, I know from my own experience, is probably not that much of an exaggeration.
I was taught to drive in the army by a dreadful martinet by the name of Sergeant Howells. Whether you got it right or wrong, his method of instruction was to shout obscenities into your ear. I cannot imagine the firing squad was ever far from his mind. He pushed poor Gethin Hughes out of the driving seat of a Vauxhall staff car while it was bowling down a hill at about thirty miles an hour just because Gethin made a noise changing gear. Luckily Gethin only suffered a slight injury to his wrist from where he had bent his hand backwards breaking his fall, but he could easily have hurt himself badly or even been run over. 134
Well, to get back to Ronald Liptrot. As well as being able to sight-read anything you put in front of him, he can also play authentic-sounding jazz and improvise ‘hot’ solos. This makes him very popular with the younger crowd.
The only problem is that, because of the milkman’s hours, he falls asleep a lot. He has to get up at three o’clock in the morning, you see, to cycle to the depot by four. Then he has to load his cart and feed his horse and whatever else it is they have to do. Even though he has usually finished his round by eleven or twelve o’clock, he still has two hours of work to do back at the depot before he can go home. Then, by the time he has had something to eat, had a wash and changed his clothes, it is time to get on his bicycle to get to wherever it is we are playing. He lives in Nelson, which is only half an hour or so by bike from Colne, but since then we have played in Accrington, Oswaldtwistle, Bacup and Todmorden, all of which are more than an hour’s ride for him up and down terrible hills. I cannot imagine what his journey home in the pitch-black and the cold must be like.
So, it is hardly surprising that he falls asleep a good deal. It makes not a jot of difference to his playing. He is so proficient that he can play perfectly well when he is half-asleep or indeed half-awake, but sometimes you do have to listen out for the times when the clarinet drifts away to be replaced by snores. A good jab to the 135shoulder with the end of my banjo usually does the trick. Point at where you are in the music as soon as his eyes are properly open and he is off, bright as ever, until the next time.
The nearest we came to disaster was when, during a particularly loud passage performed by trumpet and trombone (played for that night in rather staid fashion by a plumber and his mate) we missed the snores until it was too late. I turned just in time to see his clarinet fall to the floor. Luckily, the army also taught him how to make running repairs to the instrument with bits of string and rubber bands, so he had it playing again before the end of ‘O’Brien is Tryin’ to Learn to Talk Hawaiian’.
In light of your comments in your last letter about your dreadful experience at the Lord Mayor’s Show, by the way, I asked if, during his time in the army, he had ever had the experience of playing his clarinet while riding a horse. He said he had not but was willing to give it a go on Clarence his milkman’s horse and report back. I told him not to go to any trouble because it was not really very important. I hope that was all right.
Well, to get to the bigger picture. The grand plan of the whole venture, as outlined by the Chaundler Fund for the Promotion of Moral Hygiene, is to educate young women in the ways of the world in order to keep them from a descent into sin. And this has become the theme of the preaching element, which, 136along with the dancing and singing, is incorporated into every one of our meetings.
In the past, as I am sure you are aware, I have always taken care of the preaching, announcements and general chivvying of the audience. Norah takes care of the music, writing out the arrangements and so forth but is generally content to stay ‘out of the limelight’.
Speaking in public comes to me naturally and has done ever since the angels first came to me when I was a lad and I began to spread the message of Jesus’ joy.
Although I have never had the privilege of seeing you in court, I have read accounts of your oratory in the newspapers and wonder if it is not a gift that runs in the family – although from the praise you garner I can only assume that if I am blessed at all then you must be thrice blessed.
When we embarked on our new mission as ‘Moral Hygienists’ for the Chaundler Fund, however, it felt wrong for me to be preaching to women and girls about women’s temptation and women’s sin. I am not even sure that I could address the subject at all. Not with any authority. Apart from the matter of my gender, I am a stranger to romantic love, having never really had time for it. I am not saying that serving God precludes matrimonial thoughts – only a Roman Catholic would believe such a thing – and neither would I disparage courtship and marriage. But it is 137like making ships in bottles. I can see the attraction – the sense of achievement must be wonderful – but I have never been tempted to have a go myself.
So, we decided that Norah should do the preaching, not only because she is a woman but also because she was once engaged to that awful man Owen Pritchard from the enamelware factory who cruelly abandoned her not three months before the wedding day because Gwen Richards was having his baby. Norah knows what it is to have loved and to have lost. With Owen Pritchard, I believe that she even strayed momentarily towards the stinking gutters of iniquity, although I hasten to add that she never came anywhere near close enough to risk tumbling in.
The trouble is that she has always had a terror of public speaking. She flusters easily, you see, and lives on her nerves. I have always believed that this would be on account of her artistic temperament. You only have to hear her play the piano accordion or sing to know she is artistic, so it stands to reason that she would have the temperament to go with it.
It is not merely a matter of her preferring to stay ‘out of the limelight’, it could be said that she has been actively afraid of the limelight.
One thing you have to say about my twin sister is that, for all her nerves and artistic temperament, she has never been short of gumption. She agreed with me that it would not be right for me to stand up and 138speak to young women about love and prostitution and so forth, and since there was no other woman available, and since she has never been known to shirk her duty, she announced that she would do her best to overcome her fears and give it a go.
She prepared hard, wrote out her sermon and committed it to memory. She practised it in the Eccles and though I did not say anything about it, because the last thing she needed was any species of discouragement, it was a dull and lifeless thing that she was doing to which I feared the young women would pay no heed.
Worse still, I feared that they would jeer.
When it came to it, I could see that she was white with fear. Throughout the opening number she was shaking so much that every note she played was a quavering trill.
Well, the time came and it could not be put off. With halting step, she made her way to the lectern and spread out the words she had prepared. She stumbled and mumbled her way through the first sentence. Then she made the mistake of looking out at the sea of glowing faces (we like to do something vigorous, like a one-step, before the sermon, so they are ready for a rest). Poor Norah attempted the next sentence but stammered so much she could not utter so much as a single word.
Cautiously I approached, ready to take over, 139but she heard my footfall and gave me such a look – determination mixed with outrage that I should think of intervening. As I say, she does not lack gumption.
I stood still and waited. The audience grew restive. Norah looked up at the ceiling, perhaps in prayer, then she looked down again at the words she had written, pushed them aside and, in a voice rich and strong, spoke, without notes, for ten or fifteen minutes.
I tell you, I almost wept with pride and joy at my sister’s glory.
She had those young women in the palm of her hand, speaking their language, never being preachy or pious, but peppering her discourse with jokes and pertinent observations. And when it came to the end, those young women clapped and cheered more enthusiastically than any congregation has ever done for one of my sermons. She, too modest to take a bow or even make a nod of acknowledgement, quietly strapped herself into her accordion and counted us into ‘There’s A Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder’ which we played with such brio that everybody in that room had to dance. They could not help themselves.
The spirit had taken her.
It is a feeling I know well. When I get up to preach, I never have a thought in my head. Deliberately so. If I think about what I am going to say it never 140comes out right. So, I make my mind a blank and let the spirit take me. Then the words come and the sentences and the thoughts and the ideas and the jokes one after another. At the time it seems effortless. Only afterwards do I realise how much it has taken out of me. Sometimes I have to have a lie down.
I have read accounts of the remarkable speeches you make in court and wondered if it is the same for you. Do you prepare or do you just let the spirit take you? You might not believe in the spirit, of course. I know you have doubts about religious matters, and I respect that, so perhaps you have a different name for what I call ‘the spirit’.
After the dance in Todmorden last night, we began to say our goodbyes to Ron the clarinet-playing milkman because we were off to Rochdale, which, by bicycle, must be a good two or three hours from Nelson.
Ron said there was no need for goodbyes because he was coming with us.
I told him not to be so daft. By the time he got home in the morning he’d have to be off starting his milk round. He’d never have time to sleep or eat.
He said he was giving up his milkman’s job. Again, I told him not to be so daft. Though the Chaundler Fund pays for our petrol and food, I cannot imagine they would happily stump up the extra for a clarinet player. And besides, the Eccles is crowded enough 141with just Norah and myself always bumping into each other. There certainly is not room for a third person.
Ron told us not to worry. As an old soldier (he must be all of twenty-five) he knew how to fend for himself.
I could not deny him, and he is certainly a useful addition to our little orchestra, but it is a worry what he means by ‘fending for himself’ and I hope that it does not mean stealing chickens and eggs from coops and vegetables from allotments and fields as I believe that soldiers are sometimes wont to do.
As I say, we are off to Rochdale tomorrow. I have been told that the Co-Operative movement was started there by the Rochdale Pioneers. I would imagine there will be quite an impressive shop, so that is something to look forward to.
Since we are moving around so much, it will be best to use the above address when you write. The Chaundler Fund will know where we are from day to day and be able to forward your letters.
I am ever yours faithfully in the joy of Jesus,
Alan.
Edgar came back.
‘I got on to Aubrey,’ he said. ‘He’s spoken to the police. They say they seized all the paperwork they could find at 142Denison Beck’s. They’ve found no client list, although they admit they’ve only had time for a cursory look.’
‘Ask Aubrey to send Rose down there. See what she can dig out.’