P James: Devices & Desires

'Highly unlikely, but Uncle is never happy unless every stone is explored and every avenue thoroughly upturned. I've put together some details and the Identikit just in case. As you know, we've had a couple of sightings. And I've let Rickards know that you'll be on his patch. Remember Terry Rickards?'

'I remember.'

'Chief Inspector now, apparently. Done all right for himself in Norfolk. Better than he would have done if he'd stayed with us. And they tell me he's married, which might have softened him a bit. Awkward cuss.'

Dalgliesh said: 'I shall be on his patch but not, thank God, on his team. And if they do lay hands on the Whistler, why should I do you out of a day in the country?'

'I hate the country and I particularly loathe flat country. Think of the public money you'll be saving. I'll come down – or is it up? – if he's worth looking at. Decent of you, Adam. Have a good leave.'

Only Cummings would have had the cheek. But the request was not unreasonable made, as it was, to a colleague his senior only by a matter of months and one who had always preached co-operation and the common-sense use of resources. And it was unlikely that his holiday would be interrupted by the need to take even a cursory glance at the Whistler, Norfolk's notorious serial killer, dead or alive. He had been at his work for fifteen months now and the latest victim – Valerie Mitchell wasn't it? -was his fourth. These cases were invariably difficult, time-consuming and frustrating, depending as they often did more on good luck than good detection. As he made his way down the ramp to the underground car park he glanced at his watch. In three-quarters of an hour he would be on his way. But first there was unfulfilled business at his publishers.

The lift at Messrs Heme & Illingworth in Bedford Square was almost as ancient as the house itself, a monument both to the firm's obstinate adherence to a bygone elegance and to a slightly eccentric inefficiency behind which a more thrustful policy was taking shape. As he was borne upwards in a series of disconcerting jerks Dalgliesh reflected that success, although admittedly more agreeable than failure, has its concomitant disadvantages. One of them, in the person of Bill Costello, Publicity Director, was waiting for him in the claustrophobic fourth-floor office above.

The change in his own poetic fortunes had coincided with changes in the firm. Heme & Illingworth still existed in so far as their names were printed or embossed on book covers under the firm's ancient and elegant colophon, but the house was now part of a multinational corporation which had recently added books to canned goods, sugar and textiles. Old Sebastian Heme had sold one of London's few remaining individual publishing houses for eight and a half million and had promptly married an extremely pretty publicity assistant who was only waiting for the deal to be concluded before, with some misgivings but a prudent regard for her future, relinquishing the status of newly acquired mistress for that of wife. Heme had died within three months, provoking much ribald comment but few regrets. Throughout his life Sebastian Heme had been a cautious, conventional man who reserved eccentricity, imagination and occasional risk-taking for his publishing. For thirty years he had lived as a faithful, if unimaginative husband and Dalgliesh reflected that if a man lives for nearly seventy years in comparatively blameless conventionality that is probably what his nature requires. Heme had died less of sexual exhaustion, assuming that to be as medically credible as puritans would like to believe, than from a fatal exposure to the contagion of fashionable sexual morality.

The new management promoted their poets vigorously, perhaps seeing the poetry list as a valuable balance to the vulgarity and soft pornography of their best-selling novelists whom they packaged with immense care and some distinction as if the elegance of the jacket and the quality of the print could elevate highly commercial banality into literature. Bill Costello, appointed the previous year as Publicity Director, didn't see why Faber & Faber should have a monopoly when it came to the imaginative publicizing of poetry, and was successful in promoting the poetry list despite the rumour that he never himself read a line of modern verse. His only known interest in verse was his presidency of the McGonagall Club whose members met on the first Tuesday of every month at a City pub to eat the landlady's famous steak and kidney pudding, put down an impressive amount of drink and recite to each other the more risible efforts of arguably Britain's worst poet ever. A fellow poet had once given Dalgliesh his own explanation: 'The poor devil has to read so much incomprehensible modern verse that you can't wonder that he needs an occasional dose of comprehensible nonsense. It's like a faithful husband occasionally taking therapeutic relief at the local cat-house.' Dalgliesh thought the theory ingenious but unlikely. There was no evidence that Costello read any of the verse he so assiduously promoted. He greeted his newest candidate for media fame with a mixture of dogged optimism and slight apprehension, as if knowing that he was faced with a hard nut to crack.

His small, rather wistful and childish face was curiously at odds with his Billy Bunter figure. His main problem was, apparently, whether to wear his belt above or below his paunch. Above was rumoured to indicate optimism, below a sign of depression. Today it was slung only just above the scrotum, proclaiming a pessimism which the subsequent conversation served only to justify.

Eventually Dalgliesh said firmly: 'No, Bill, I shall not parachute into Wembley Stadium holding the book in one hand and a microphone in the other. Nor shall I compete with the station announcer by bawling my verses at the Waterloo commuters. The poor devils are only trying to catch their trains.5

'That's been done. It's old hat. And it's nonsense about Wembley. Can't think how you got hold of that. No, listen, this is really exciting. I've spoken to Colin McKay and he's very enthusiastic. We're hiring a red double-decker bus, touring the country. Well, as much of the country as we can in ten days. I'll get Clare to show you the rough-out and the schedule.'

Dalgliesh said gravely: 'Like a political campaign bus; posters, slogans, loudspeakers, balloons.'

'No point in having it if we don't let people know it's coming.'

'They'll know that all right with Colin on board. How are you going to keep him sober?'

'A fine poet, Adam. He's a great admirer of yours.'

'Which doesn't mean he'd welcome me as a travelling companion. What are you thinking of calling it? Poets' Progress? The Chaucer Touch? Verse on Wheels – or is that too like the WI? The Poetry Bus? That has the merit of simplicity.'

'We'll think of something. I rather like Poets' Progress.' 'Stopping where?'

'Precincts, village halls, schools, pubs, motorway cafes, anywhere where there's an audience. It's an exciting prospect. We were thinking of hiring a train but the bus has more flexibility.'

'And it's cheaper.'

Costello ignored the innuendo. He said: 'Poets upstairs, drinks, refreshments downstairs. Readings from the platform. National publicity, radio and TV. We start from the

Embankment. There's a chance of Channel Four and, of course, Kaleidoscope. We're counting on you, Adam.'

'No,' said Dalgliesh firmly. 'Not even for the balloons.'

'For God's sake, Adam, you write the stuff. Presumably you want people to read it – well, buy it anyway. There's tremendous public interest in you, particularly after that last case, the Berowne murder.'

'They're interested in a poet who catches murderers, or a policeman who writes poetry, not in the verse.'

'What does it matter as long as they're interested? And don't tell me that the Commissioner wouldn't like it. That's an old cop-out.'