Death of an Editor by Lesley Grant-Adamson

Author:Lesley Grant-Adamson [GRANT-ADAMSON, LESLEY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Stuart Pascoe lived in a spacious house not far from Canterbury Cathedral with a garden that swung down to a river. He had regretted refusing to talk to Rain and rung Eliot to say so. It was not, he said as he ushered Rain into his richly furnished sitting room on Wednesday afternoon, as though he had done anything with which to reproach himself, the fault lay entirely with the MacQuillan people.

He polished his pebble glasses on a handkerchief, a little diversion before he embarked on the full story. Rain settled into a chintz armchair and listened, not rushing him although much of what he had to say appeared irrelevant.

The drive to Kent had been a difficult, slow journey hampered by the volume of tourists who poured on and off the cross-Channel ferries. From London to Canterbury the traffic was solid and the fumes that built up in the car made her head ache. Canterbury itself came as a disappointment. She mourned the loss of medieval buildings, cleared to provide what planners called a shopping complex, and was shocked by the dullness of the modern architecture.

Somewhere there was a photograph of her as a small child standing outside the cathedral with the aunt who had brought her up and taken her one day to visit it. Her mind drifted back to that occasion while Pascoe was talking and she was recalled sharply when she realized he had put a question. He wanted to know whether she would like him to make her a cup of tea or whether they might wait until his wife returned from a committee meeting. Rain chose to wait and Mrs Pascoe arrived soon after, plump and pink.

Rain had never thought about Pascoe being married, having a life beyond the Post. Yet if she had she would have imagined for him someone like Mrs Pascoe, someone who gave an instant impression of being a first-class housekeeper (the house was immaculate, everything well chosen and highly polished) and combined energetic work for her local community with a modest reticence about herself. Mrs Pascoe provided tea and a little nicely judged conversation before leaving Rain and her husband to their talk.

‘I’m afraid you’ll think I’m rambling rather,’ Pascoe apologized.

‘Not at all,’ Rain said quickly, deducing she had been looking bored.

‘But you see it’s all quite germane. What happened before MacQuillan came had a considerable effect on what he did later. It’s important for you to know the ways in which Martin Ayling tried to save the paper and to protect its future if he had to sell.’

As she did not want to reveal how much Shildon had reported, she had to sit again through the complicated story of the sale of the lease. Naturally, Pascoe did not stress incompetence or negligence, the admission was more delicately made. And then he swept on with an account of the several attempts to buy the paper, culminating in MacQuillan offering more money and more guarantees about the way it would be run.

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