was already heightened by the weather (short sleeves again today), even before anything official was announced at Aubrey’s. Those men on early finishes would be in the bars by lunchtime, and the rumours would be there for any to hear and pass on. Passions may soon rise. Though if these fears and feelings were present in the men and women Grey passed on his walk this morning, they were not yet pressing at the surface.
He passed the mock half-timbered building at which his friend was landlord, and which of course offered its own opportunities for people-watching, were it after midday and so open to the public; even then it seemed, as evidenced earlier that week, that hardly anything of real interest ever occurred in Britain’s public houses before darkness fell; it taking the extended consumption of alcohol, the drawing in of evening, and the threat of time being called to force the really dark and twisted stuff up out of the depths of the nation’s psyche.
Bounding right past the Young Prince Hal, Grey carried on the short distance it took to arrive at the Royal Hotel. He entered the reception it shared with the Club that occupied part of its ground floor, not even needing to show his membership card now the experienced receptionist knew him from repeated visits. ‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ she called as he opened the heavy brown doors, he smiling in return as he vanished from the outside world and into that secret realm of still and muffled silence.
Despite the main room being lined by high windows, through which at this time of day light poured as if in solid shafts, he couldn’t shake the idea of it being a somehow hidden, subterranean place. The dark-stained wood of the other three walls, which absorbed what light did not remain hanging in the space of the high-ceilinged room, supported this notion; while the quiet and purposeful way the members spoke to one another seemed to embody the manner of secrets being shared — these rooms retained something noble and lost to the outside world.
Grey was hardly at the threshold of the main room though, before the ever-attentive steward Parris was there to whisk him one of the smaller spaces to its side. This in itself was not unusual, when arriving for an intimate dinner say, or a private business conference (for the club was here to cater for all such occasions) but what was unusual was the steward remaining once Grey had been seated in his green leather armchair, he himself on this occasion being the subject of the meeting.
‘Thank you for coming, Inspector,’ he began, a man of sixty if you were being charitable, and to whom manners and decorum were as vital to life as air and water. ‘I took the liberty of bringing tea — I remembered you tend not to drink when here earlier in the day; but I can fetch you something else if you’d prefer? On the house, of course.’
‘Oh no, that’s very kind.’ Grey would leave the silver pot awhile before pouring for fear of scalding his lips. ‘You spoke to my colleagues just now?’
‘You have very polite staff, Inspector,’ began Parris as if praising a rival establishment’s dining room complement. ‘I don’t know where you find them.’ The man, himself sitting now, seemed eager to unburden himself. Grey saw him as a messenger, he hoped, bearing words of great import. Yet there was also a reserve about him, perhaps a counter desire to retain his secrets, fearing that to reveal them would break a confidence, perhaps one held only by and for himself.
‘Inspector,’ he resumed, ‘I watched your broadcast just now, on the little screen I keep on in the kitchen,’ (the idea of the club retaining so modern a device as a television quite startled Grey.) ‘and I was moved to hear about the young man who you reported as not having returned home, and of his family waiting for news of him.
‘And as it saddened me, Inspector, to think of the poor boy’s family at such a time, so it also reminded me of something, something that I hope you will, as a good Clubman and a respecter of our traditions, treat with the proper regard.’
Grey was a lover of tradition and of respect amongst peers, but all this sworn secrecy toward the sayings and doings of fellow Clubmen could become wearisome. He had assumed in his induction that the pledge to this effect was little more than a formality, and so it had proved in practice, with there being little discussed between the men and women in these rooms that couldn’t have been talked of just as freely had he bumped into them instead in any bar or restaurant. But Grey persisted with it for Parris’ sake.
‘Perhaps,’ continued the man, ‘it would be simpler if I just left this book with you,’ he leaning to reach from beside his chair a leather bound volume, obviously secreted in preparation for their meeting, ‘and allowed you, Inspector, to draw your own conclusions from its pages.’
His words were loaded with an understanding of shared confidence; yet as for the book itself, Grey recognised it as nothing more deserving of his ‘regard’ than the club’s register for signing in guests, a volume he had scrawled over many times himself as Rose’s drinking partner in his pre-membership days. Still, Parris spoke of it as one might upon presenting the Magna Carta in the British Library’s reading room.
‘Even a member wouldn’t get to study this book so closely or in private, as I am allowing you to do now. I know you probably have the right to seize it anyway, should you wish, but I do hope that is not deemed necessary, and that this volume can be kept safely within these walls where it belongs.
‘You take as long as you need, Inspector, and please leave the book here when you are finished. I’ve marked it at a certain page. I hope you appreciate the trust I, and by proxy every Clubman, am placing in you here in letting you study these records.
‘Right, I will be going back to my duties. Do call if you need anything; but please Inspector, don’t place me in a delicate situation by asking me anything more about what you may read in the book — I am already violating every Clubman’s privacy by letting you see it.’ And those were his final words as, with a smile and a fraternal pat on the arm, Parris was off, exiting to the sucking sound of a heavy door levering back into its cushioned frame, and leaving Grey alone in the wainscoted room.
The subterfuge infuriated Grey, who wished Parris had simply told him what he thought he knew. Had he allowed his respect toward the steward to allow him to demur from demanding a straight answer? Maybe, but he was locked now in this child’s game of turning over cards without knowing what second card he was looking for.
Grey had rarely been in these smaller rooms, he having little business of the sort that required them, nor the secretive nature or proclivities that may benefit from them. He had certainly never been in here alone, and it was suddenly eerie. He poured and sipped his drink, the cup hard to control with its minute handle, and clanking noisily as he put it down on the saucer. He moved the heavy volume toward him across the leather-topped table, opening it with a tremendous crack of its spine. ‘What is it, Parris?’ he whispered to the walls, ‘What’s so important here?’ Before, like a reader on Jackanory, taking up the book and seeing what story was to be told.
A list of dates and names was all he saw though, no text to narrate: only recent dates, and mostly the names of members he knew. The markered page was the current one, nearly at its foot now, and covering perhaps the past week and a half. The two names beside each date and time, written in their owner’s hand, were those of the Clubman in question and the guest they were signing in — the solitary Clubman or they who only spoke with other members would never need the book. So Parris meant an outsider’s name to be noticed? Starting at the top Grey worked his way down.
Just a ledger then, Grey pondered, and not even a very interesting one at that: no note of what took place in the rooms or even the purpose of the booking, but merely the names taken on the door. There were hints of carrying on though even in this Spartan archive, should you wish to look for it, he thought, a scanning of the names listed soon bringing up a local tradesman alongside that of a woman who, even before he had read her name, he presumed to be the young assistant he had not recently seen the man without. And the building being a hotel after all… perhaps there were stories here?
He had been given a sensitive record in the strictest confidence, and all he could think to do was look for the dirt. He was sure this said something about human nature though, and decided not to beat himself up about it too much. Out of interest, he flipped to the front page — and was disappointed to see it only showed dates no older than nineteen ninety-six — what a fraud, he thought, hoping perhaps for something reaching back to the days of the War and the Aerodrome when this had been an Officers’ Club.
‘It’s hardly the Domesday book,’ he heard himself mutter absurdly to the wooden walls, as turning again to the most recent entries, he minded to knuckle down to his search.
Reading through the markered records, Grey saw that on the previous Tuesday Mr Foy the bank manager had signed in another local figure of his acquaintance, a hardware retailer with a string of wood yards, meeting perhaps to sign off the quarterly accounts? Foy’s name jumped out again; as did those of other personages, appearing with more or less likely meeting partners. Here were the Aubreys, Mr A. A. signing in Mrs S. last Friday night. And here he was again on Saturday, meeting with a man who shared his name with a brand of popular electronics — another
