Murder Must Advertise (22 page)

Mr. McAllister.
Group-secretary to Dairyfields, Ltd., under Mr. Smayle. Absent all afternoon on visit to dentist. (Witness: Mr. Tompkin's register.)

In the Studio:

Mr. Barrow.
At British Museum, studying Greek vases with view to advertising display for Klassika Corsets. (Witness: Mr. Barrow's time-sheet.)

Mr. Vibart.
Supposed to be at Westminster, making a sketch of the Terrace of the House of Commons for Farley's Footwear. (“The feet that tread this historic pavement are more often than not, clad in Farley Fashion Footwear.”) Absent 2.30-4.30. (Witnesses: Mr. Vibart's time-sheet and the sketch itself.)

Wilfred Cotterill.
At 3 o'clock complained of nose-bleeding and sent to lie down by himself in the Boys' Room, the other boys being told to leave him alone. Completely forgotten by everybody till 5 o'clock, when he was discovered, asleep, by the boys going in to change their tunics. Alleged that he had slept through the whole of the excitement. (Witnesses: All the other boys.) Wilfred Cotterill was a small, pale, excitable child of fourteen, but looking much younger. When told what he had missed he merely remarked “Oo-er!”

A very creditable piece of work on Ginger Joe's part, thought Mr. Bredon, if we may continue so to call him during office-hours, but leaving much room for further inquiry. His own investigations were not going too well. In his search for Darling Special Pencils he had been brought face to face with the practical communism of office life. The Copy Department preferred 5B or even 6B drawing-pencils for writing its roughs, and was not much interested in Darling's product, except, of course, Mr. Garrett, who had been drawing up a little panel for display in Darling's advertisements, calling attention to the generous offer of the pencil. He had two specimens, and four, in various stages of decay, were found in the typists' room. There was one on Mr. Armstrong's desk. Mr. Hankin had none. Mr. Ingleby admitted to having thrown his out of the window in a fit of temper, and Miss Meteyard said she thought she had one somewhere if Mr. Bredon really wanted it, but he had better ask Miss Parton. The other departments were even worse. The pencils had been taken home, lost, or thrown away. Mr. McAllister, mysteriously but characteristically, said he had no less than six. Mr. Wedderburn had lost his, but produced one which he had bagged from Mr. Tallboy. Mr. Prout said he couldn't be bothered; the pencil was a silly, gimcrack thing anyway; if Bredon really wanted a propelling pencil he ought to get an Eversharp. He (Mr. Prout) had never seen the thing since he'd had it to photograph; he added that for a first-class photographer to spend his life photographing tin pencils and jelly cartons was enough to drive any sensitive person to suicide. It was heart-breaking work.

In the matter of his own address, Bredon did get one piece of information. Mr. Willis had asked for it one day. Discreet questioning fixed the date to within a day or so, one way or another, of Chief-Inspector Parker's unfortunate encounter on the stairs. Nearer than this, Miss Beit (the telephonist, who also presided over the office address-book) could not go. It was all rather unnerving as well as exasperating. Mr. Bredon hoped that the assailant would have been sufficiently alarmed by the failure of his first attempt to forswear blunt instruments and violence for the future; nevertheless, he developed a habit of keeping a careful look-out for following footsteps whenever he left the office. He went home by circuitous routes, and when engaged on his daily duties, found himself avoiding the iron staircase.

Meanwhile, the great Nutrax row raged on with undiminished vigour, developing as it went an extraordinary number of offshoots and ramifications, of which the most important and alarming was a violent breach between Mr. Smayle and Mr. Tallboy.

It began, rather absurdly, at the bottom of the lift, where Mr. Tallboy and Miss Meteyard were standing, waiting for Harry to return and waft them to their sphere of toil above. To them, enter Mr. Smayle, fresh and smiling, his teeth gleaming as though cleaned with Toothshine, a pink rosebud in his buttonhole, his umbrella neatly rolled.

“Morning, Miss Meteyard, morning, morning,” said Mr. Smayle, raising his bowler, and replacing it at a jaunty angle. “Fine day again.”

Miss Meteyard agreed that it was a fine day. “If only,” she added, “they wouldn't spoil it with income-tax demands.”

“Don't talk about income-tax,” replied Mr. Smayle with a smile and a shudder. “I said to the wife this morning, 'My dear, we shall have to take our holiday in the back garden, I can see.' And I'm sure it's a fact. Where the money for our usual little trip to Eastbourne is to come from, I don't know.”

“The whole thing's iniquitous,” said Mr. Tallboy. “As for this last budget–”

“Ah!
you
must be paying super-tax, old man,” said Mr. Smayle, giving Mr. Tallboy a prod in the ribs with his umbrella.

“Don't do that,” said Mr. Tallboy.

“Tallboy needn't worry,” said Mr. Smayle, with a rallying air. “He's got more money than he knows what to do with. We all know that, don't we, Miss Meteyard?”

“He's luckier than most, then,” said Miss Meteyard.

“He can afford to chuck his quids over the office, fifty at a time,” pursued Mr. Smayle. “Wish I knew where he gets it from. Daresay the income-tax authorities would like to know too. I'll tell you what, Miss Meteyard, this man's a dark horse. I believe he runs a dope-den or a bucket-shop on the sly, eh? You're a one, you are,” said Mr. Smayle, extending a roguish forefinger and jabbing it into Mr. Tallboy's second waistcoat button. At this moment the lift descended and Miss Meteyard stepped into it. Mr. Tallboy, rudely thrusting Mr. Smayle aside, stepped in after her.

“Here!” said Mr. Smayle, “manners, manners! The trouble with you, old man,” he went on, “is that you can't take a joke. No offence meant, I'm sure–and none taken, I hope.”

He clapped Mr. Tallboy on the shoulder.

“Do you mind keeping your hands off me, Smayle,” said Mr. Tallboy.

“Oh, all right, all right, your Highness. Got out of bed the wrong side, hasn't he?” He appealed to Miss Meteyard, being troubled by an obscure feeling that men should not quarrel before ladies, and that it was somehow up to him to preserve the decencies by turning the whole thing into a joke.

“Money's a sore point with us all, I'm afraid, Mr. Smayle,” replied Miss Meteyard. “Let's talk about something jollier. That's a nice rose you've got there.”

“Out of my own garden,” replied Mr. Smayle, with pride. “Mrs. Smayle's a wonder with the roses. I leave it all to her, bar the digging and mulching, of course.” They emerged from the lift and signed their names at the desk. Miss Meteyard and Mr. Smayle passed on through the ante-room and turned by common consent to the left up the stair by the Dispatching. Mr. Tallboy shouldered past them and took a lone and frosty course down the main corridor to ascend by the iron staircase.

“I'm reelly very sorry,” said Mr. Smayle, “that Tallboy and I should have indulged in anything approaching to words in your presence, Miss Meteyard.”

“Oh, that's nothing. He seems a little irritable. I don't think he likes that little upset of his with Mr. Copley to be talked about.”

“No, but reelly,” said Mr. Smayle, lingering at the door of Miss Meteyard's room, “if a man can't take a harmless joke, it's a great pity, isn't it?”

“It is,” said Miss Meteyard. “Hullo! What are all you people doing here?”

Mr. Ingleby and Mr. Bredon, seated on Miss Meteyard's radiator with a volume of the
New Century Dictionary
between them, looked up unabashed.

“We're finishing a Torquemada cross-word,” said Ingleby, “and naturally the volume we wanted was in your room. Everything always is.”

“I forgive you,” said Miss Meteyard.

“But I do wish you wouldn't bring Smayle in here with you,” said Mr. Bredon. “The mere sight of him makes me think of Green Pastures Margarine. You haven't come to dun me for that copy, have you? Because don't, there's a good fellow. I haven't done it and I can't do it. My brain has dried up. How you can live all day with Margarine and always look so fresh and cheerful passes my understanding.”

“I assure you it's an effort,” said Mr. Smayle, displaying his teeth. “But it reelly is a great refreshment to see you copy-writers all so cheerful and pleasant together. Not like some people I could name.”

“Mr. Tallboy has been unkind to Mr. Smayle,” said Miss Meteyard.

“I like to be agreeable with everybody,” said Mr. Smayle, “but reelly, when it comes to shoving your way past a person into the lift as if one wasn't there and then telling you to keep your hands off as if a person was dirt, a man may be excused for taking offence. I suppose Tallboy thinks I'm not worth speaking to, just because he's been to a public school and I haven't.”

“Public school,” said Mr. Bredon, “first I've heard of it. What public school?”

“He was at Dumbleton,” said Mr. Smayle, “but what I say is, I went to a Council School and I'm not ashamed of it.”

“Where's Dumbleton?” demanded Ingleby. “I shouldn't worry, Smayle. Dumbleton isn't a public school, within the meaning of the act.”

“Isn't it?” said Mr. Smayle, hopefully. “Well, you and Mr. Bredon have had college educations, so you know all about it. What schools do
you
call public schools?”

“Eton,” said Mr. Bredon, promptly, “–and Harrow,” he added, magnanimously, for he was an Eton man.

“Rugby,” suggested Mr. Ingleby.

“No, no,” protested Bredon, “that's a railway junction.”

Ingleby delivered a brisk left-hander to Bredon's jaw, which the latter parried neatly.

“And I've heard,” Bredon went on, “that there's a decentish sort of place at Winchester, if you're not too particular.”

“I once met a man who'd been to Marlborough,” suggested Ingleby.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” said Bredon. “They get a terrible set of hearty roughs down there. You can't be too careful of your associates, Ingleby.”

“Well,” said Mr. Smayle, “Tallboy always says that Dumbleton is a public school.”

“I daresay it is–in the sense that it has a Board of Governors,” said Ingleby, “but it's nothing to be snobbish about.”

“What is, if you come to that?” said Bredon. “Look here, Smayle, if only you people could get it out of your heads that these things matter a damn, you'd be a darn sight happier. You probably got a fifty times better education than I ever did.”

Mr. Smayle shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said, “I'm not deceiving myself about that, and I'd give anything to have had the same opportunities as you. There's a difference, and I know there's a difference, and I don't mind admitting it. But what I mean is, some people make you feel it and others don't. I don't feel it when I'm talking to either of you, or to Mr. Armstrong or Mr. Hankin, though you've been to Oxford and Cambridge and all that. Perhaps it's just because you've been to Oxford and Cambridge.”

He struggled with the problem, embarrassing the other two men by his wistful eyes.

“Look here,” said Miss Meteyard, “I know what you mean. But it's just that these two here never think twice about it. They don't have to. And you don't have to, either. But the minute anybody begins to worry about whether he's as good as the next man, then he starts a sort of uneasy snobbish feeling and makes himself offensive.”

“I see,” said Mr. Smayle. “Well, of course, Mr. Hankin doesn't have to try and prove that he's better than me, because he is and we both know it.”

“Better isn't the right word, Smayle.”

“Well, better educated. You know what I mean.”

“Don't worry about it,” said Ingleby. “If I were half as good at my job as you are at yours, I should feel superior to everybody in this tom-fool office.”

Mr. Smayle shook his head, but appeared comforted.

“I do wish they wouldn't start that kind of thing,” said Ingleby when he had gone, “I don't know what to say to them.”

“I thought you were a Socialist, Ingleby,” said Bredon, “it oughtn't to embarrass you.”

“So I am a Socialist,” said Ingleby, “but I can't stand this stuff about Old Dumbletonians. If everybody had the same State education, these things wouldn't happen.”

“If everybody had the same face,” said Bredon, “there'd be no pretty women.”

Miss Meteyard made a grimace.

“If you go on like that, I shall be getting an inferiority complex too.”

Bredon looked at her gravely.

“I don't think you'd care to be called pretty,” he said, “but if I were a painter I should like to make a portrait of you. You have very interesting bones.”

“Good God!” said Miss Meteyard. “I'm going. Let me know when you've finished with my room.”

There was a mirror in the typists' room, and in this Miss Meteyard curiously studied her face.

“What's the matter, Miss Meteyard?” asked Miss Rossiter. “Got a spot coming?”

“Something of the sort,” said Miss Meteyard, absently. “Interesting bones indeed!”

“Pardon?” said Miss Rossiter.

“Smayle is getting unbearable,” grumbled Mr. Tallboy to Mr. Wedderburn. “Vulgar little tick. I hate a fellow who digs you in the ribs.”

“He means no harm,” rejoined Mr. Wedderburn. “He's quite a decent sort, really.”

“Can't stand those teeth,” grumbled Mr. Tallboy. “And why must he put that stinking stuff on his hair?”

“Oh, well,” said Mr. Wedderburn.

“I'm not going to have him playing in the cricket match, anyhow,” pursued Mr. Tallboy, viciously. “Last year he wore white suede shoes with crocodile vamps, and an incredible blazer with Old Borstalian colours.”

Mr. Wedderburn looked up, rather startled.

“Oh, but you're not going to leave him out? He's quite a good bat and very nippy on the ball in the field.”

“We can do without him,” said Mr. Tallboy, firmly. Mr. Wedderburn said no more. There was no regular cricket eleven at Pym's, but every summer a scratch team was got together to play a couple of matches, the selection being entrusted to Mr. Tallboy, who was energetic and had once carried his bat out for 52 against Sopo. He was supposed to submit a list of cricketers for Mr. Hankin's final decision, but Mr. Hankin seldom questioned his selection, for the sufficient reason that there were seldom more than eleven candidates available to choose from. The important point was that Mr. Hankin should bat third, and field at mid-on. If these points were taken note of, he raised no further objections.