The Franchise Affair (21 page)

It was still early for mid-morning snacks and the chintz and old oak of the Rose and Crown lounge was deserted except for Ben Carley, who was sitting by the gate-legged table at the window reading the
Ack-Emma
. Carley had never been Robert's cup-of-tea—any more than, he suspected, he was Carley's—but they had the bond of their profession (one of the strongest in human nature) and in a small place like Milford that made them very nearly bosom friends. So Robert sat down as a matter of course at Carley's table; remembering as he did so that he still owed Carley gratitude for that unheeded warning of his about the feeling in the countryside.

Carley lowered the
Ack-Emma
and regarded him and the too-lively dark eyes that were so alien in this English Midland serenity. “It seems to be dying down,” he said. “Only one letter today; just to keep something in the kitty.”

“The
Ack-Emma
, yes. But the
Watchman
is beginning a campaign of its own on Friday.”

“The
Watchman!
What's it doing climbing into the
Ack-Emma's bed?”

“It wouldn't be the first time,” Robert said.

“No, I suppose not,” Carley said, considering it. “Two sides of the same penny, when you come to think of it. Oh, well. That needn't worry you. The total circulation of the
Watchman
is about twenty thousand. If that.”

“Perhaps. But practically every one of those twenty thousand has a second cousin in the permanent Civil Service in this country.”

“So what? Has anyone ever known the permanent Civil Service to move a finger in any cause whatever outside their normal routine?”

“No, but they pass the buck. And sooner or later the buck drops into—into a—a—”

“A fertile spot,” Carley offered, mixing the metaphor deliberately.

“Yes. Sooner or later some busybody or sentimentalist or egotist, with not enough to do, thinks that something should be done about this and begins to pull strings. And a string pulled in the Civil Service has the same effect as a string pulled in a peep-show. A whole series of figures is yanked into action, willy-nilly. Gerald obliges Tony, and Reggie obliges Gerald, and so on, to incalculable ends.”

Carley was silent a moment. “It's a pity,” he said. “Just when the
Ack-Emma
was losing way. Another two days and they would have dropped it for good. In fact they're two days over their normal schedule, as it is. I have never known them carry a subject longer than three issues. The response must have been terrific to warrant that amount of space.”

“Yes,” Robert agreed, gloomily.

“Of course, it was a gift for them. The beating of kidnapped girls is growing very rare. As a change of fare it was beyond price. When you have only three or four dishes, like the
Ack-Emma
, it's difficult to keep the customers' palates properly tickled. A tit-bit like the Franchise affair must have put up their circulation by thousands in the Larborough district alone.”

“Their circulation will slack off. It's just a tide. But what I have to deal with is what's left on the beach.”

“A particularly smelly beach, let me say,” Carley observed. “Do you know that fat blonde with the mauve powder and the uplift brassiere who runs the Sports Wear shop next the Anne Boleyn? She's one of the things on your beach.”

“How?”

“She lived at the same boarding-house in London as the Sharpes, it seems; and she has a lovely story as to how Marion Sharpe once beat a dog half to death in a rage. Her clients loved that story. So did the Anne Boleyn customers. She goes there for her morning coffee.” He glanced wryly at the angry flush on Robert's face. “I needn't tell you that she has a dog of her own. It has never been corrected in its spoiled life, but it is rapidly dying
of fatty degeneration through the indiscriminate feeding of morsels whenever the fat blonde is feeling gooey.”

There were moments, Robert thought, when he could very nearly hug Ben Carley, striped suits and all.

“Ah, well, it will blow over,” said Carley, with the pliant philosophy of a race long used to lying low and letting the storm blow past.

Robert looked surprised. Forty generations of protesting ancestors were surprised in his sole person. “I don't see that blowing over is any advantage,” he said. “It won't help my clients at all.”

“What can you do?”

“Fight, of course.”

“Fight what? You wouldn't get a slander verdict, if that's what you're thinking of.”

“No. I hadn't thought of slander. I propose to find out what the girl was really doing during those weeks.”

Carley looked amused. “Just like that” he said, commenting on this simple statement of a tall order.

“It won't be easy and it will probably cost them all they have, but there is no alternative.”

“They could go away from here. Sell the house and settle down somewhere else. A year from now no one outside the Milford district will remember anything about this affair.”

“They would never do that; and I shouldn't advise them to, even if they would. You can't have a tin can tied to your tail and go through life pretending it isn't there. Besides, it is quite unthinkable that that girl should be allowed to get away with her tale. It's a matter of principle.”

“You can pay too high a price for your damned principles. But I wish you luck, anyhow. Are you considering a private inquiry agent? Because if you are I know a very good—”

Robert said that he had got an agent and that he was already at work.

Carley's expressive face conveyed his amused congratulation at this swift action on the part of the conservative Blair, Hayward, and Bennet.

“The Yard had better look to its laurels,” he said. His eyes went to the street beyond the leaded panes of the window, and the amusement in them faded to a fixed attention. He stared for a moment or two and then said softly: “Well! of all the nerve!”

It was an admiring phrase, not an indignant one; and Robert turned to see what was occasioning his admiration. On the opposite side of the street was the Sharpes' battered old car; its odd front wheel well in evidence. And in the back, enthroned in her usual place and with her usual air of faint protest at this means of transport, was Mrs. Sharpe. The car was pulled up outside the grocer's and Marion was presumably inside shopping. It could have been there only a few moments or Ben Carley would have noticed it before, but already two errand boys had paused to stare, leaning on their bicycles with voluptuous satisfaction in this free spectacle. And even while Robert took in the scene people came to the doors of neighbouring shops as the news flew from mouth to mouth.

“What incredible folly!” Robert said angrily.

“Folly nothing,” said Carley, his eyes on the picture. “I wish they were clients of mine.”

He fumbled in his pocket for change to pay for his coffee, and Robert fled from the room. He reached the near side of the car just as Marion came out on to the pavement at the other side. “Mrs. Sharpe,” he said sternly, “this is an extraordinarily silly thing to do. You are only exacerbating—”

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Blair,” she said, in polite social tones. “Have you had your morning coffee, or would you like to accompany us to the Anne Boleyn?”

“Miss Sharpe!” he said appealing to Marion, who was putting her packages down on the seat. “You must know that this is a silly thing to do.”

“I honestly don't know whether it is or not,” she said, “but it seems to be something that we must do. Perhaps we have grown childish with living too much to ourselves, but we found that neither of us could forget that snub at the Anne Boleyn. That condemnation without trial.”

“We suffer from spiritual indigestion, Mr. Blair. And the only cure is a hair of the dog that bit us. To wit a cup of Miss True-love's excellent coffee.”

“But it is so unnecessary! So—”

“We feel that at half-past ten in the morning there must be a large number of free tables at the Anne Boleyn,” Mrs. Sharpe said tartly.

“Don't worry, Mr. Blair,” Marion said. “It is a gesture only. Once we have drunk our token cup of coffee at the Anne Boleyn we shall never darken its doors again.” She burlesqued the phrase in characteristic fashion.

“But it will merely provide Milford with a free—”

Mrs. Sharpe caught him up before he could utter the word. “Milford must get used to us as a spectacle,” she said dryly, “since we have decided that living entirely within four walls is not something that we can contemplate.”

“But—”

“They will soon grow used to seeing monsters and take us for granted again. If you see a giraffe once a year it remains a spectacle; if you see it daily it becomes part of the scenery. We propose to become part of the Milford scenery.”

“Very well, you plan to become part of the scenery. But do one thing for me just now.” Already the curtains of first-floor windows were being drawn aside and faces appearing. “Give up the Anne Boleyn plan—give it up for today at least—and have your coffee with me at the Rose and Crown.”

“Mr. Blair, coffee with you at the Rose and Crown would be delightful, but it would do nothing to relieve my spiritual indigestion, which, in the popular phrase, ‘is killing me.' ”

“Miss Sharpe, I appeal to you. You have said that you realise that you are probably being childish, and—well, as a personal obligation to me as your agent, I ask you not to go on with the Anne Boleyn plan.”

“That
is blackmail,” Mrs. Sharpe remarked.

“It is unanswerable, anyhow,” Marion said, smiling faintly at him. “We seem to be going to have coffee at the Rose and Crown.” She sighed. “Just when I was all strung up for a gesture!”

“Well, of all the nerve!” came a voice from overhead. It was Carley's phrase over again but held none of Carley's admiration; it was loaded with indignation.

“You can't leave the car here,” Robert said. “Quite apart from the traffic laws it is practically Exhibit A.”

“Oh, we didn't intend to,” Marion said. “We were taking it round to the garage so that Stanley can do something technical to its inside with some instrument he has there. He is exceedingly scornful about our car, Stanley is.”

“I dare say. Well, I shall go round with you; and you had better step on it before we are run in for attracting a crowd.”

“Poor Mr. Blair,” Marion said, pressing the starter. “It must be horrid for you not to be part of the landscape any more, after all those years of comfortable merging.”

She said it without malice—indeed there was genuine sympathy in her voice—but the sentence stuck in his mind and made a small tender place there as they drove round into Sin Lane, avoided five hacks and a pony that were trailing temperamentally out of the livery stable, and came to rest in the dimness of the garage.

Bill came out to meet them, wiping his hands on an oily rag. “Morning, Mrs. Sharpe. Glad to see you out. Morning, Miss Sharpe. That was a neat job you did on Stan's forehead. The edges closed as neat as if they had been stitched. You ought to have been a nurse.”

“Not me. I have no patience with people's fads. But I might have been a surgeon. You can't be very faddy on the operating table.”

Stanley appeared from the back, ignoring the two women who now ranked as intimates, and took over the car. “What time do you want this wreck?” he asked.

“An hour do?” Marion asked.

“A year wouldn't do, but I'll do all that can be done in an hour.” His eye went on to Robert. “Anything for the Guineas?”

“I've had a good tip for Bali Boogie.”

“Nonsense,” old Mrs. Sharpe said. “None of that Hippocras blood were any good when it came to a struggle. Just turned it up.”

The three men stared at her, astonished.

“You are interested in racing?” Robert said, unbelieving.

“No, in horseflesh. My brother bred thoroughbreds.” Seeing their faces she gave her dry cackle of laughter, so like a hen's squawk. “Did you think I went to rest every afternoon with my Bible, Mr. Blair? Or perhaps with a book on black magic. No, indeed; I take the racing page of the daily paper. And Stanley would be well advised to save his money on Bali Boogie; if anything in horseflesh ever deserved so obscene a name that animal does.”

“And what instead?” Stanley asked, with his usual economy.

“They say that horse sense is the instinct that keeps horses from betting on men. But if you must do something as silly as betting, then you had better put your money on Kominsky.”

“Kominsky!” Stanley said. “But it's at sixties!”

“You can of course lose your money at a shorter price if you like,” she said dryly. “Shall we go, Mr. Blair?”

“All right,” Stan said. “Kominsky it is; and you're on to a tenth of my stake.”

They walked back to the Rose and Crown; and as they
emerged from the comparative privacy of Sin Lane into the open street Robert had the exposed feeling that being out in a bad air-raid used to give him. All the attention and all the venom in the uneasy night seemed to be concentrated on his shrinking person. So now in the bright early-summer sunlight he crossed the street feeling naked and unprotected. He was ashamed to see how relaxed and seemingly indifferent Marion swung along at his side, and hoped that his self-consciousness was not apparent. He talked as naturally as he could, but he remembered how easily her mind had always read the contents of his, and felt that he was not making a very good job of it.

A solitary waiter was picking up the shilling that Ben Carley had left on the table, but otherwise the lounge was deserted. As they seated themselves round the bowl of wall-flowers on the black oak table Marion said: “You heard that our windows are in again?”

“Yes; P. C. Newsam looked in on his way home last night to tell me. That was smart work.”