Derby Day

Author:D J Taylor [Taylor, D J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horse Racing, Sports & Recreation, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781409042082
Google: l-A7PFD35uAC
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-06-02T07:00:00+00:00

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Mr Masterson had the reputation of a thorough man, but he became aware, as he went about his tasks, that his thoroughness was of no help to him. Mr File, found by his parlour fire in Clerkenwell, was extremely courteous, but that was all he was, declared himself absolutely in retirement, seeing no one and utterly forsaking the associations that had previously brought him to Captain McTurk’s notice, and was supported in this view by his wife, who declared that Mr Masterson was cruel coming to browbeat folks as had been lying in bed of a quinsy this past fortnight with never a thought for anything beyond it.

‘What about that fellow Pardew?’ said Mr Masterson, thinking to spring the name on him unaware, but Mr File was ready for him. ‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘I had thought I might be spared this. Really, you know, when one is’ – there was a church over the way from Mr File’s bow-window, and if he did not actually gesture at it he gave Mr Masterson to understand that it was there he knew his duty to lie – ‘when one is, well, I shan’t say any more about it, but, well, it is hard, you know.’ Mr Masterson knew that he was dealing with a hypocrite, but somehow he could not bring himself to say so, with the subscription card from the Distressed Housepainters’ Guild lying there on the mantelpiece to rebuke him.

‘I think Pardew had better look out for himself,’ Mr File suggested to his wife when Mr Masterson had gone.

‘I never did like that Pardew,’ Mrs File volunteered, who was perhaps not very genteel.

‘Maybe not. But I think he had better look out for himself.’ And Mr File went to the church on the next Sabbath and sang the hymns in a very loud voice.

Having no luck with Mr File, Mr Masterson took himself to a stationer’s in High Holborn. Here he had better fortune, for the stationer not only recognised the weave but gave him the address of the firm in Kennington that manufactured it. The paper was of a very superior kind, he learned, in a conversation with the firm’s director. They took pleasure in supplying half a dozen shops in Mayfair and in Kensington and Brompton beyond it. Indeed, there was a move to colonise Fulham and Putney too, as the wives of the clerks who lived there wrote confidential letters to their friends just like grand ladies in Grosvenor Square. And Mr Masterson knew that his enquiry could take him no further, that he could probably compile a list of every stationer in the West End and the City, but that a record of their customers, not to mention samples of their customers’ handwriting, would probably be beyond him.

All this plunged Mr Masterson into a thoroughgoing ill-humour. He had sent his agents out into the highways and byways of London – into Hoxton jewellers’ shops, and discreet little emporia in the Pimlico Road – all those

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