Read Online Publish and Be Murdered by Ruth Dudley Edwards - Free Book Online Page A

thoughtfully began to open another bottle of claret. ‘Picture if you will – ’ he said, having tried and failed to persuade his friend to accept a refill, ‘an office in which the most modern piece of equipment is a stout manual typewriter manufactured in nineteen sixty-seven, the telephones are splendid nineteen thirties Bakelite models with circular dials and the filing cabinets are ancient and wooden and creak a lot and are jammed with yellowing dusty files so tightly packed that it requires exceptional strength to get anything in or out. Indeed, Marcia Whitaker, who is inter alia a fact-checker, has biceps that put me to shame.
    ‘In the midst of this, Josiah Ricketts, who is known as the office clerk, conducts his business along the lines that he was taught when recruited in the nineteen forties by one Albert Flitter, who had joined the paper as an office boy in nineteen fifteen, had risen to the giddy heights of office manager and had a deep reverence for doing things the way the ladies and gentlemen had liked them.
    ‘True, the phones were slightly modernized, admittedly, Ricketts was prevailed upon to allow senior members of staff to have one each and when equipment like the typewriter collapsed did perforce purchase a more or less up-to-date model, but “newfangled” was a dirty word, so with anything newfangled, Ricketts would not have to do. And the idle sods of editors couldn’t be bothered intervening.’
    ‘Goodness,’ said Pooley, absentmindedly holding out his glass for a refill. ‘But how do they communicate with printers and the rest of it?’
    ‘Essentially by recreating the postal system of long ago through the use of couriers. Until after the war, Ricketts explained to me nostalgically, it used to be possible for a contributor to post his copy at nine o’clock in the evening. It would be on the desk of the editor at eight the following morning, amendments were sent to the printers by the nine o’clock post, received by them at midday and the proof would be with the contributor by late afternoon. The major concession since then has been that the proofreader-cum-fact-checker, Ben Baines, is also available to take copy over the phone.’
    ‘Come on,’ said Pooley, ‘you’re not seriously telling me that contributors are prepared to put up with having to read their stuff out loud rather than send a fax.’
    ‘Listen, Ellis, I don’t think you understand the status of The Wrangler . They pay contributors a pittance, but in fact have no need to pay them at all. Politicians and journalists would pay to be published in The Wrangler because of the lustre of the name and the fact that anyone who is anyone on the Right has been reading it for almost two centuries. All this daftness merely adds to its appeal.’
    ‘What made anyone choose you to modernize this outfit? I mean, dammit it, you’re a technological moron.’
    ‘By the standards of The Wrangler , I’m right at the cutting edge of technology. They don’t want somebody like you, Ellis, with your Internet and websites and access to ninety-five billion pieces of worthless information that you waste your time over. They want somebody to take them by the hand slowly and gently and lead them into the mid-twentieth century. It is my skills as a communicator that are enabling me tenderly to make Marcia, Ben and the rest of the staff love gentle change. The proprietor wants to reduce his losses – not give his paper a corporate nervous breakdown.
    ‘I’ve taken as my motto a cartoon I once saw of a demonstration by the Moderate Party, who were marching down the street chanting, “What do we want? Gradual change. When do we want it? In due course.” ’
    The doorbell rang loudly and did not stop. As Amiss ran to answer it, Rachel put her hand to her head. ‘Does she have to do that?’
    ‘No,’ said Pooley. ‘But she always does.’
    ‘I quite like Jack,’ said Rachel, ‘but sometimes I wonder why.’
    The baroness entered at