I nodded.

'Not that morning. It was the hairy beetroot on duty.'

It was a good enough description. Sergeant Wilkins weighed considerably over twenty stone, and had a complexion that ranged from deep red on his cheeks to purple at the end of his nose. Even standing up made him wheeze with effort, and going out on the beat was so far beyond his abilities that he had long since been confined to the desk by sympathetic colleagues. According to the regulations he should have been dismissed as unfit for duty, but the police always look after their own. Wilkins was a sort of saint, universally liked even by the criminals whose cases he processed day after day. The sort who looked as though each crime was a personal disappointment. Normally a more helpful and accommodating person could not be found.

But that day Wilkins had refused to let him see the book and merely read off a couple of entries. 'Nothing else today,' he said heartily. When a very loud, violent, singing drunk was dragged in by the feet a few minutes later, Wilkins had wheezed over to the door to see what was going on, and Hozwicki had quickly spun the book round to have a look. He only had a few seconds, but it was enough: '2.45: 379 to St James's Square. Body found. Refer to Mr Henry Cort FO.'

'Refer what?'

Hoswicki shrugged.

'Henry Cort?'

Another shrug.

'FO?'

He shrugged again. Annoying habit.

'So why no story?'

'I was curious, so I went to the morgue, and they confirmed it. A body had been brought from the Charing Cross Hospital, identified as Ravenscliff. I went back to the office, and started to write it up. Just a holding story, as I was going to get it to the desk then go out and get some more information. I also told the editor, so he could get the obituary ready.'

'And?'

'And nothing. I went back to St James's Square to start knocking on doors,' I wrinkled my nose here; Hozwicki was fond of this sort of vulgarity in reporting his stories, 'but before I could get anywhere one of the runners found me, and told me I was wanted back in the office.'

It happens; it had happened to me often. All newspapers then had their runners, a collection of lads who congregated in the main entrance waiting to earn a penny or two carrying messages. They were often remarkable boys, dirty and cheeky, but the best were exceptional and knew London like the backs of their hands. They would cross town at amazing speed, hanging on to the backs of buses, running; I even saw one going down Oxford Street on the roof of a taxi once, waving insolently to bystanders.

'So back I went,' Hozwicki continued, 'and was given a dressing down by the day editor. I was not to waste my time on the death of someone so stupid that he had fallen out of a window.'

He paused and looked at me. I didn't respond, so he went on. 'How did he know he had fallen out of a window, eh? Someone had talked to him about it.'

'Do you know who?'

'All I could find out was that a very proper-looking man had arrived in the office a couple of hours previously, and talked to him for about half an hour. Even my short account of Ravenscliff's death was then removed from the paper, and ten minutes after he left, the runner was sent off. The story was squashed, and when it did appear, it wasn't written by me.'

'Who did write it?'

He shook his head. 'Not someone who works for the Telegraph,' he said. 'I did ask the editor later, but he brushed it aside. "Sometimes you just do as you are told," he said. But I think he was referring to himself, as much as to me.'

I finished my beer and thought about that. I was sure that Hozwicki was telling me the truth; he seemed positively pleased to share his indignation. Obviously editors are wayward people; everyone knows that. They drop stories on a whim, or to do personal favours, or because of the owners. It happens all the time. But normally you can see why, even if you don't approve. Why sit on a fairly straightforward story?

'Wait a minute,' Hozwicki said, 'What do I get in return for this?'

'Nothing yet,' I said cheerfully. 'Except my thanks.'

He scowled.

'And my promise that when I have something to give in return, you will have it. Think of it as an investment,' I said. 'It may diminish to nothing; it may pay rich rewards in due course.'

I saluted him, and left, walking up the fug-filled steps into the open air of Fleet Street, so fresh after that dingy basement it made me feel dizzy for a few moments.

CHAPTER 8

I would have liked to have hopped onto an omnibus and gone straight to St James's Square to ask questions of Lady Ravenscliff. I had quite a few to put to her. But it was six o'clock and I had an appointment with Franklin. I was back in Chelsea by seven, and ready to go. Franklin, unfortunately, was a slow and methodical eater. Normally this did not bother me, but that evening the habit drove me to distraction.

Our evening routine was invariable. At around seven-thirty all four of Mrs Morrison's boys would assemble in the little dining room, dark and gloomy, lit only by spluttering gas light, and waited while the clank of pans rose to the climax that heralded the arrival of our evening feast. Conversation varied at these meals, sometimes animated, sometimes non-existent. Occasionally we would dine en grand seigneur, and dally over our tea afterwards. I could always win an audience by describing the latest murder; Brock would compete for attention with an account of a meeting with the artists he didn't really know. Mulready could clear the table by reciting some verse of an experimental hue. Only Franklin said little, for no one was really interested in the movements of the markets or the reception of a South American bond issue, even though the coupon might have been set substantially below par. He spoke a language far more foreign than criminals or artists or poets, one which few cared to learn.

Dinner that evening was a mutton chop apiece, potatoes and (a particular treat) Brussels sprouts rather than cabbage, although it was difficult to tell the difference by the time they were served. Next there was Tapioca pudding, which produced a chorus of applause from the artistic types, whose childish tastes were, perhaps, an essential part of their lives. The conversation was not animated. Brock wished to begin a discussion on whether there was going to be a war with Germany or not, and seemed to think that I, as a newspaper man, would have a special insight into the thinking of the Foreign Office on the subject.

His was not an abstract concern in the fate of nations, although as it turned out he was right to be interested. For the war was the making of him when it came. He became a war artist, and what he saw so changed the way he painted that it thrust him to the forefront of the new generation which came to prominence when it finished. The bleakness which made him unpalatable in those sunny days before the conflict started was perfectly attuned to the mood that prevailed during it, and gave him a clarity that eluded him when he lived with us in Chelsea.

No, he had come up with this project for a gigantic portrait of the crowned heads of Europe, a scheme for which he was so totally unsuited that I did not know whether to wonder at his impudence or at his lack of reality. He wished – he, John Praxiteles Brock – to summon every monarch, from Tsar Nicholas to the Kaiser, from King Edward to the Emperor of Austria, and every last kinglet of Scandinavia and the Balkans, to sit together to be painted by him. Presumably not in the dining room of 17 Paradise Walk, Chelsea.

It was a scheme so lunatic in conception that, naturally, we all encouraged him enthusiastically and he spent days doing little sketches, using photographs from newspapers in lieu of the real thing. It kept him busy and happy, and I still don't know whether there was really any grain of seriousness about it. I think not, for although he was unrealistic, he was not totally insane. But the project took on a life of its own, and everything that happened in the world would be related back to it. He became a great supporter of the French monarchists, as he did not see how he could fit a republican president into a portrait of kings. He profoundly disapproved of Russian revolutionaries, and was outraged when the King of Portugal was assassinated, thus robbing him of a subject who had been noted (until his unfortunate death) for his handsome figure.