Friends in Low Places by Simon Raven

Author:Simon Raven
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2015-04-05T14:00:00+00:00

Mark Lewson, though undeniably second-rate in his chosen profession, was subject to flashes of inspiration. He was, and always had been, hampered by incompetence, fecklessness, captious changes of plan and negligence in their execution; but he was seldom short of good ideas. In the case of des Moulins letter, it occurred to him that if he could get more than one party to bid for it he might also get more than one party to pay for it; and with this firmly in mind he paid a call on Somerset Lloyd-James, taking with him a photostat copy of the original document.

To Somerset the letter was just what he had been waiting for, the answer to his most fervent prayers, in Westminster Cathedral, the Brompton Oratory, Farm Street, and on his knees by his own little bed, for the last month. Here was matter to compromise several leading members of the Cabinet and in particular the party’s Dean of Discipline, Sir Edwin Turbot. With this letter in his possession he could demand anything he wanted short of a dukedom, and Sir Edwin, pastmaster of ways and means, would be compelled to devise a formula to see that he got it. There could be no question now of Sir Edwin refusing his support over the candidature for Bishop’s Cross; and that was only the beginning.

But clearly there were dangers and difficulties: for a start, was the original document genuine? The photostat was impressive; the contents of the letter were consistent with everything he knew or suspected about the Suez affair; but even so, it was not beyond Mark Lewson to have got the whole thing up himself. What was it Jonathan Gamp had once said? “My dear, he’s famous for cheques.” Just so; if cheques, why not letters?

“You know Max de Freville?” Mark said.

“I’ve played at his parties.”

“He put me on to this. Why not ring up and check with him?”

“He can’t know it’s genuine any more than I can.”

But Somerset, clammy with excitement, was anxious to believe, and on re-examining the text he found something which convinced him, if not that the original was beyond suspicion, at least that here was a gamble worth making. For the letter purported to be written by a cosmopolitan Israeli of German birth; it was in English; and in two respects the English, otherwise excellent, betrayed a weakness common among those to whom German is their native tongue. In the first place, there was a pedantic tendency to write ‘shall’ where ‘will’ would have sounded more natural: ‘I shall not claim to understand quite why, but it seems that the Cabinet Minister, Sir Edwin Turbot . . . Secondly, and far more convincing, was a confusion of subjunctives: ‘If the Prime Minister would go’ for ‘if he were to go’ (or ‘went’); and if your Government would wish (wished) to provide such co-operation, it could swiftly make this plain.’ It was of course possible that these errors had been deliberately planted by Lewson, but Somerset doubted this: had the thing been a forgery, the fake errors would have been cruder.

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