A Press of Suspects Read online

  “Oh, it’s only a small affair. Mr. Ede, Mr. Munro, Mr. Cardew and Mr. Hind.”

  Jessop’s gloom deepened. To ask Cardew and not him was a deliberate snub. Cardew was only the Diplomatic Correspondent. Surely, in the absence of a Foreign Editor … He sensed a conspiracy.

  The inner door suddenly opened and Nicholas Ede appeared, beckoning Jessop with a crooked forefinger. He looked very cool in a semi-tropical cream suit and seemed unruffled by his stormy interview with Iredale.

  “Oh, Miss Timmins,” he said, “you might ring my wife, will you, and tell her I’ll be about half an hour late. Break it to her nicely!”

  “Of course,” said Miss Timmins, resisting an impulse to shake her head at the way he always got behindhand with his engagements.

  “Now then, Jessop,” said Ede, switching on an attractive smile and immediately switching it off again, as though it were current not to be wasted. “Come in, will you?” His voice was rich and fruity. He held the door with an expensively-shod foot and then let it close on its spring.

  Jessop preceded him into the empty room—Iredale had evidently left by the other door. Ede walked quickly past him to his private shower room—one of the directors’ post-war installations—and turned off a dripping tap. It was his only sign of irritation. Then he sat down behind his outsize desk, adjusted the framed photograph of his wife as a reminder that he must keep this interview short, and lit a cigarette. “Have a chair, my dear fellow,” he urged, surprised to see that Jessop was still standing. He waved the Assistant Foreign Editor to a soft capacious seat and scrutinised him for a moment in silence.

  Nicholas Ede was younger than Jessop; actually he was not quite forty, but his short pear-shaped figure and heavy shoulders suggested a much older man. Massive horn-rimmed spectacles half concealed the alertness of his eyes, and only when one was close enough to observe the smoothness of the skin above an unusually dark jowl did his comparative youth become obvious. He had been precocious in childhood and brilliant in his academic generation, and so far in his life had had no reason to suppose that he could not succeed in whatever he attempted. His whole manner and bearing gave an impression of self-confidence and strength. Yet he was genuinely kind-hearted, and the charm of manner that the envious derided in him was not entirely the cultivated attribute they suggested. He was sincerely interested in almost everyone he met—for a short time. Like Lord Melbourne, he preferred the company of any new person, for half an hour, to that of the dearest old friend. He was often strongly attracted to people, but he rarely allowed himself thoroughly to dislike anyone. The nearest he got to it was being bored. This was the feeling he tried to throw off as he looked at the man before him.

  “Well, now,” he began, “let’s get to business. I asked you to come and see me because I thought it was time we had a discussion about your future on the paper.”

  “Oh, yes?” murmured Jessop. Now that he was actually in the presence of authority his resentment had ceased to be articulate. He felt insignificant, buried in that vast chair before the genial, self-assured Ede. He massaged the palms of his hands with the tips of his fingers, nervously restless. His mouth felt dry. Ede knew him as a conscientious worker and a first-rate technician, but at that moment he looked definitely unimpressive.

  “Yes,” Ede went on smoothly, “I’ve been giving a good deal of thought to the matter. Of course, now Lambert’s gone one obvious possibility is to appoint you Foreign Editor.” He saw Jessop wince at the implication of the sentence and hurried on. “Perhaps you ought to know that Lambert strongly urged your claim before he left. He was certain you’d do the job very well, and I think you would. All the same …” He paused, searching for the right words.

  Rage welled up inside Jessop, till he felt he would choke. He was going to be passed over again. He wanted to protest, to urge his title, to recall his lifetime of devoted efforts for the paper, to bang the desk as Iredale had done—but no sound came.

  “Let me put it like this,” said Ede. “You’ve certain obvious recommendations for the post. You’ve shown yourself an excellent administrator and desk man. You’ve managed to keep on good terms with all your foreign correspondents …” he switched on a rueful smile, “… which is more than I seem able to do!” The smile took Jessop into his confidence, the confession sought to put him at his ease. “You know your stuff: I don’t suppose there’s anyone in Fleet Street with a better theoretical grasp of the international situation than you have.” He paused. “All the same, I think a Foreign Editor should have something more than an academic knowledge of affairs. He ought to know something at first hand of the countries he’s dealing with. Don’t you agree?”

  “I suppose so,” said Jessop dully.

  “Good. That’s my view, too. So for the time being—nothing is ever permanent, of course, particularly in Fleet Street—for the time being, as I say, I’m going to put Cardew in charge of the Foreign Room. He’s knocked about quite a bit at conferences, and it won’t hurt him to sit on his backside and sort copy for a while. In fact, it’ll steady him up a bit. And we’ll take you off the leash. How would you like a foreign assignment, just for a year or so? A roving commission, if you like.”

  Jessop moistened his dry lips. So that was the plan: to brush him aside, to send him off somewhere where he’d be forgotten. “The idea had never occurred to me,” he said slowly. “I—I think perhaps I’m a bit too old to start foreign reporting.”

  “Old?” Ede shook his head vigorously. “Not a bit of it! On the contrary, your experience should be a great advantage—it will give balance to your dispatches, and you won’t be so likely to go off the deep end as some of your colleagues.” The memory of his talk with Iredale evidently still rankled. “What I suggest is that you make a start by flying to Malaya for a couple of months. As you know, we’ve been without proper coverage there since poor old Eversley was ambushed, and the situation’s boiling up into something pretty big. After that, you could spend a few months in Indo-China and Burma on your way home.” He smiled. “A tour of the trouble-centres—the dream of every newspaperman. It should be most interesting for you. What do you say?”

  Jessop’s face had become more like parchment than ever, and he seemed to be having difficulty in swallowing. “Is this an instruction, sir?”

  “Good heavens, no, my dear fellow.” Ede was all charm. “It’s an offer—an opportunity. Most men in the office would give their ears for it. It’ll widen your horizon, give you self-confidence, and probably equip you to do a first-class job in the office later on. Frankly, Jessop, I think it’ll be the making of you. Of course, if you feel the whole thing’s too much for you to undertake …” his full lips pouted in reflection, “… well, I suppose there’s no alternative but for you to carry on with your present job, under Cardew. It’s up to you entirely.”

  “Eversley …” began Jessop, and stopped, uncomfortably aware of Ede’s piercing look. “Eversley …”

  “Eversley had bad luck. That’s not likely to happen again. Still, there’s no point in going out if you feel nervous about the job.” Ede glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Anyway, think it over. And let me know by the end of the week what you decide, will you?”

  He got up—the interview was over. He walked with Jessop to the outer door, his plump hand resting lightly on the older man’s shoulder. “I can tell you this—I wouldn’t mind the chance of going myself!” He gave Jessop a smile of dismissal. “Good-night.”

  “Good-night,” muttered Jessop, closing the door behind him with unintentional violence and almost putting his head in again to apologise. Ede returned to his desk, frowning a little, and rang the bell for Miss Timmins.

  Chapter Three

  The Saloon Bar of the Crown was large enough to accommodate a considerable part of the Morning Call’s editorial staff, and this evening it appeared to be doing so. Bill Iredale, still fuming after his interview with Ede, decided that the crowd at the far end of the long curving counter was excessive and selected
a quiet spot near the door for his cooling-off process.

  Iredale was a big man in his middle thirties, with strong irregular features that had a rugged East Anglian glower when in repose. He had been born in Great Yarmouth the day World War I started. His father, skipper and part-owner of a North Sea trawler, had wanted him to grow up tough; his mother, a school-teacher until her marriage, had wanted him to grow up educated. Always independent, and eager to find adventure in his own way, he had compromised by going to London at eighteen and getting himself a job as a cub reporter on a suburban newspaper. At twenty-one he had chanced to meet Edgar Jessop, then reporting for the Morning Call, at an exhumation, and the contact had brought him an opportunity on the same paper. Reporting had given him all he asked of life until World War II broke out, and then he had been accredited as a war correspondent at his own urgent request. He had covered the early campaigns in Africa, been transferred to Russia during the middle years, and towards the end of the war had been switched to the Far East. Since then he had been constantly on the move, building up a sound reputation in a Fleet Street that he rarely saw.

  He still liked the life. Nothing gave him more satisfaction than to fly to a country that was new to him and start from scratch to find out all he could about it. He did any job that came his way, and if hot news were wanted he gathered it up and sent it, but the superficial never attracted him. What he liked best was to spend time in a place, to soak himself in atmosphere, to master the background, to mix with the people and get all angles on the problem. The more complex and controversial the local situation, the more he enjoyed probing it. When he had got his facts, nothing would stop him reporting them. He had no sense of mission, but he was proud of his craft. He was realistic, obstinate, human and remarkably honest, and he did his job without fuss, unless fuss were necessary.

  He had just taken his first long pull at the soothing pint when Katharine Camden walked into the saloon. He had never seen her before, but from Edgar Jessop’s description he felt pretty sure it was she. As she passed him he called out “Hi!” on a sudden impulse. She looked back, and he pushed forward a stool in a gesture of invitation. “I’m Bill Iredale. Will you join me in a drink?”

  Katharine hesitated for a moment, and though she would have preferred to plunge into the anonymous din at the far end of the bar; then, with a smile, she accepted. She was a tall, good-looking girl of about twenty-six, pale-skinned, with soft dark hair drawn into a large knot at the nape of her neck. A little black hat was set jauntily on the back of her head, but her light grey suit was almost Quakerish in its simplicity. Taking her in with a practised eye, Iredale saw that she had a superb figure, wide-shouldered and slim-hipped, with long legs and neat ankles. Just the kind of figure that appealed to him. He liked her face, too, with its small straight nose and large grey-green eyes. All the same, he wasn’t in the mood to make concessions on that account. The world was full of attractive women, and the others hadn’t messed about with his dispatches. He said “What’ll you have?” in a curt voice, as though he were offering her a choice of weapons.

  Katharine sensed trouble. She accepted a cigarette from the rather battered packet he extended to her, and fitted it carefully into an onyx holder. “Gin and something, please. French, I think.” She perched gracefully on the stool, blew out a cloud of smoke, and prepared to resist aggression. “Why am I singled out for this honour?”

  “I thought you might put me wise about the Outward Islands,” said Iredale, handing her her drink. “It seems you are an authority.”

  She surveyed him coolly. She’d heard a lot about him, and people who knew him seemed to like him, but at the moment she couldn’t think why. Certainly he wasn’t bad to look at. His eyes were a little too old and wise for a man of his years, as though they had seen things that weren’t good to see, but they were the deepest blue. White crowsfeet fanned from their corners where the sun of the Outward Islands had failed to penetrate. There was a glow of health about his brown skin and his thick brown hair.

  “Aren’t you being rather childish?” she said coldly. “I can understand your feeling annoyed about those articles, but why take it out on me? I was given a job to do, and I did it.”

  “I’ll say you did. You really threw yourself into it, didn’t you? That piece of yours positively bubbled with righteous indignation. What did you write it with—boiling pitch?”

  “Is there anything wrong with having feelings?” The grey-green eyes flashed. “It’s obvious you haven’t any. ‘Shoot the so-and-so’s down’—that seems to be your attitude to the problem. Not exactly constructive, is it? I thought we were supposed to be progressive on this paper.”

  “We’re supposed to be reporters,” said Iredale shortly, “and that means sizing up a situation as it is, not dreaming it up from old clippings in a sentimental haze.”

  “Is it sentimental to suggest that negro sugar workers are being exploited when it’s obvious that they hardly earn enough to keep body and soul in close proximity, let alone together?” Katharine was indignant. She had done some lengthy research into labour conditions in the Outward Islands, helped by a Royal Commission report.

  “The time to dwell on that,” said Iredale, “was before the riots began or after they were over, not in the middle of them.”

  “Jam yesterday, jam to-morrow?”

  Iredale gave an exclamation of impatience. He hadn’t meant to get into this squabble with a girl he’d never seen before, and he had an uncomfortable feeling that she was making him sound pompous and overbearing. “How long have you been a reporter?” he asked more amiably.

  “Five years.”

  “The cushty jobs—or as it came?”

  “The whole works,” she said, with a touch of pride.

  “Then you ought to know by now that the world’s a pretty rough place. When I got out to Port Sargasso, the rioters had just burned a native policeman alive and fired about ten thousand acres of sugar-cane. They were led by a Bible-punching fanatic in an advanced stage of V.D. and it was as plain as daylight that the situation would soon be out of hand. Dawson Munro should have ordered extra police to the trouble spots and given instructions that they were to shoot to kill. I know that doesn’t solve the economic problem, but once you let a murderous mob get on the rampage there’s no other way.”

  Katharine seemed unconvinced. “Surely there’s such a thing as meeting them half-way?”

  “If you meet them half-way when they’re in that mood they knock you on the head. And that’s exactly what happened. Munro left things too late because he’s a sloppy wishful thinker who believes you can make the world behave itself by kindness. Result—a planter’s family was murdered; and then, of course, there was far more shooting than there need have been. If my first dispatch had been published when it was sent, and as it was sent, it’s just possible that someone might have prodded Munro into action while there was still time. Instead, the story was passed to you with a lot of namby-pamby instructions and you turned it inside out, and the very morning our readers were having a good cry about the poor downtrodden natives old Clinton’s household was wiped out with cutlasses.”

  Katharine weighed that up. “Is it because his family was wiped out or because I altered your story that you’re so riled?”

  Iredale looked at her, and a slow smile spread across his dark face like the coming of daybreak. “I have my pride,” he said.

  Katharine was disarmed. “They ought to have trusted you,” she admitted. “You were on the spot. All the same, what should I have done? Ede gave me instructions himself, and there was plenty of material to support his line. I could hardly have refused to write the article, and it seemed rather a break at the time.”

  “Sure,” said Iredale. “Let’s forget it. What about another drink?”

  “My round,” said Katharine, tapping on the counter. “Anyhow, you’re not going to resign over it?”

  Iredale grinned, and the white crowsfeet disappeared. “If a foreign correspondent resig
ned every time he thought he’d had a raw deal he’d soon get St. Vitus’s dance. I’ve had a thundering good row with Ede and now I suppose it’ll blow over. I’ve just been bidden to lunch with Munro to-morrow, anyway, so he obviously believes that relations will be patched up. Now let’s talk about something else. How did you get into this racket? Fleet Street’s no place for a nice girl like you.”

  “My God, aren’t you patronising! Do I look as though I’ve taken any harm?”

  Iredale contemplated her with critical detachment. “No, but you will.” He glanced across the saloon to where Joe Hind, the News Editor, was drinking with the crowd. Hind’s tones of loud good-fellowship carried easily across the bar. One of his flabby white hands rested possessively on the shoulder of a pretty girl. Iredale frowned as he looked. “Seriously,” he said, concentrating again on Katharine, “it’s a bad life for a woman. Too little sleep, too much gin, too long on your feet. In a few more years your skin will get coarse and your eyes bleary and you’ll suffer so much from indigestion that you’ll have to live on peppermint and bismuth. I’ve seen it happen again and again.”

  She laughed. “What a dreary prognosis!”

  “You’ll see! Anyway, how did you come to join the paper?”

  “It was during the war,” Katharine told him. “You were in Russia at the time. I used to read your dispatches and envy you like hell. I was studying law at Oxford, but one evening I happened to be in town—it was during the Christmas vacation—and there was a rather bad raid. I took shelter in a basement. There were several people down there and of course we started talking. One of the men turned out to be a very important fellow on the Morning Call—our own Joe Hind, no less. He was short of reporters and he offered me a job, there and then. I accepted there and then—and Oxford knew me no more. It was rather a blow for the family. My father’s a K.C., and he had ambitions for me.”

  “Called to the wrong bar, eh?” Iredale shook his head. “Hind’s certainly a fast worker—he always did fancy himself as a talent scout. As a matter of interest, did he make a pass at you while you were actually in the shelter, or did he wait till later?”