Beginner's Luck Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/paulsomers

  Contents

  Paul Somers

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Paul Somers

  Beginner's Luck

  Paul Somers

  Paul Somers is the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908–2001). He was born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to Moscow from 1942/ 5, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC’s Overseas Service.

  After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – which have included Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

  Paul Somers was a founder member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association.

  Chapter One

  The day I started work as a reporter on the London Daily Record was my first day as a newspaperman anywhere, and I felt pretty scared as well as excited when, just before eleven o’clock, I presented myself at the office in Fleet Street. But I needn’t have worried. Blair, the News Editor, couldn’t have been more friendly and considerate. He introduced me to one or two other members of the staff who were around and then, shortly before twelve, he put me in the charge of an elderly reporter named Furnival, a man with a slow drawl and charming Edwardian manners, who would “show me the ropes.” We were to go out to Hampshire together and do a story about the drought, which was supposed to be bad there. The first thing that happened was that Furnival drew ten pounds from the cashier. “The essential preliminary to any story,” he said, as we crossed the road to El Vino’s for a glass of sherry. We had two glasses, and then he said there was no point in breaking our necks so we might as well have lunch at the Cheshire Cheese before we started. We had steak pie and some excellent claret, and Furnival talked of the days when Fleet Street still had dignity and reporters came to work in top hats and frock coats and leader writers wrote their columns with a bottle of port at the elbow. After we’d banqueted, he suggested we should collect his car and so avoid the discomfort of public transport. We took a cab to his delightful home in Putney, where he introduced me to his wife and showed me round his walled garden. About three, he got out an ancient car, and we set off at a leisurely pace for deepest Hampshire. We stopped for tea at an old-world inn around five, and there was still no sign of any story. Afterwards we went along to the village that Blair had mentioned and called on a smallholder and a couple of cottagers and Furnival asked if there was a drought and they said there was a bit of a water shortage and Furnival listened with attentive sympathy for a few moments and then said we’d have to be getting back. He dropped me off at an Underground station, and said I needn’t bother to do anything about the story as he’d phone it from home. Next morning there was a bright quarter of a column in the Record about the Hampshire drought. I couldn’t think where he’d got it all from, and decided that I couldn’t have been listening properly. Anyhow, it had been a most pleasant outing.

  On the second day I was given my first solo assignment—a Ladies’ Archery Tournament in Kent. Blair said, “I expect you’ll want some money,” and wrote out a chit for five pounds, which I cashed on my way out. I supposed there’d be a day of reckoning some time, but no one had mentioned that yet. I drove down in my Riley and lunched on the way and arrived at the field in good time for the start. The competitors were picturesquely costumed and there was a lot of green sward and dappled shade and everything looked most attractive. The secretary of the club welcomed me with enthusiasm—I seemed to be the only reporter from a national paper—and readily gave me all the information I wanted. I watched the tournament from a comfortable deck-chair in the company of a pretty girl who was dressed like Maid Marian and who talked knowledgeably of “golds” and “perfect ends” and “Hereford Rounds” and got me the names of the winning team when it was all over. We had a slap-up tea in a marquee, and afterwards I retired to the car and composed a careful descriptive piece and phoned it. When I opened the Record next morning I found it hadn’t been used—but I wasn’t too depressed. I’d made a start, and I felt I was going to like reporting very much indeed.

  On the third day I was on the four o’clock turn, and for the first time I met the Night News Editor, a man named Hatcher. He was thin, grizzled and fiftyish, and he had an abrupt, parade-ground manner that took me straight back to Catterick. He barked “Who the devil are you?” when I went in to report to him, and snorted when I told him, and said if he wanted me he’d let me know. For the next four hours I sat on my bottom doing nothing. I was just beginning to feel very hungry when Hatcher rushed out of the News Room in a state of bloodshot excitement yelling, “Curtis!—fire!—Whitechapel High Street!” I got a taxi to Whitechapel High Street. There was a light drizzle falling. As far as I could make out, the fire was in an upper floor of a block of shops. There were a lot of fire engines and police cars and ambulances outside, and hundreds of people standing around watching. The smoke was thick in the street and the traffic congestion was pretty bad. I waved my Press pass at a policeman and tried to get nearer the scene but he told me to stand back. He seemed very harassed. I tackled a sergeant, but he wouldn’t let me through, either. I didn’t seem to be very successful with policemen. I tried to sneak through the cordon unnoticed but the sergeant spotted me and threatened me with arrest for obstruction. From where I was I couldn’t see a thing because of the smoke. I started to question some of the bystanders, and presently I found a man in a house opposite who was able to help me. He said the fire was in a furrier’s shop and the furrier had been taken to hospital with bad burns. I got the name of the furrier from him, and felt very cheered. I wrote out the story under a lamp, and phoned it, and went back to the office. Hatcher greeted me with “You’re a bloody fine reporter!” and thrust a bit of agency copy at me. The agency said that the fire had been at a pawnbroker’s and that three small children had been rescued by fire-escape. “Couldn’t even get the bloody place right!” Hatcher said disgustedly. “Why don’t you check your facts? Do you realise if your story had gone into the paper, that furrier would have been after us
for damages?” He tore my copy into small pieces, threw the bits on the floor, and barked “Good night!”

  That was the third day.

  Chapter Two

  I was in a pretty dejected frame of mind when I got to the office next morning. I positively slunk into the Reporters’ Room. I glanced at the correspondence rack, where official communications were always put, half expecting to find a memo from Blair giving me a week’s notice. With relief, I saw that my pigeon hole was empty. However, my blunder of the previous night hadn’t passed entirely without comment. It was the custom among the Record’s reporters to use the woodwork around the pigeon holes for making topical cracks about each other, usually scurrilous. The technique was to snip suitable words from newspaper headlines and cunningly paste them together. Until now, the space around my pigeon hole had been bare. Now it wasn’t. Someone had pasted up, MAN SUED BY ANGRY FURRIER. The night staff had obviously been enjoying itself.

  I reported to Blair, who glanced up from a sea of papers, grunted, and returned immediately to his work. I went back into the Reporters’ Room. It was a large, airy room, separated from the News Room by a glass partition. There were fifteen or twenty desks, each with a typewriter and a few drawers; half a dozen piles of telephone directories and reference books; some desk telephones; and a lot of waste baskets. At the end of the room, where the shorthand writers sat, there was a battery of telephone booths. So far, the only occupant of the room was a man named Martin, who was going through the morning papers with a blue pencil marking stories that might be worth following up. He was a quiet, studious-looking man with thick horn-rimmed glasses, who seemed to spend part of his time as a reporter and part as Deputy Assistant News Editor. He had two distinct personalities, according to which job he was doing. To-day, the reporter seemed uppermost. He gave me a friendly smile.

  “I hear you had your baptism of fire last night.”

  “I fell flat on my face,” I said ruefully.

  “Well, it’s a position we’ve all been in.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. Very upsetting, but good for the soul! I shouldn’t worry—there’s always a to-morrow in this job.”

  I felt grateful.

  After a few moments two more reporters came in, both of whom I’d met before—a woman named Mabel Learoyd, grey, spinsterish, very much the “old hand,” and Jack Lawson, one of the crime specialists, a slim, pallid man of thirty or so with a rather knowing air. He was followed almost at once by another man, a stranger to me, who turned out to be the Chief Reporter, Fred Hunt. He’d been away all the week on an out-of-town story.

  Martin said, “Fred, meet the new boy—Hugh Curtis.”

  Hunt gave me a shrewd look, and nodded. He was a dark, handsome, immaculately-dressed man, exuding vitality and confidence. He took some brushes from a drawer and began to polish his shoes, though they were already mirror-bright. “I heard about you,” he said, and paused. “You wouldn’t be any relation of Sir Jocelyn Curtis, would you?”

  “I’m his son,” I said, in as neutral a tone as I could manage.

  “Friend of the Chairman, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  Hunt regarded me for a moment in gloomy silence. Then he turned to Lawson and said, “Seen any good fires lately, Jack?”

  “I hear there was a big one in Whitechapel last night,” Lawson said. “At a furrier’s, I’m told.”

  I smiled rather sheepishly.

  Martin said, “It’s your turn to buy the coffee, Fred.”

  “What, when I’ve been away all week? Not on your life! Curtis can buy it—he’s probably rolling, anyway.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” I said. I dialled the canteen and ordered five coffees. Mabel Learoyd asked for hers black, with a vanilla ice and a packet of charcoal biscuits. “I’ve a touch of indigestion,” she explained.

  There was a short lull in the talk. Presently the News Room door opened with a bang, and a perky youth came out, whistling softly between his teeth, and gave Hunt a cutting. “Mr. Blair thought you might like to see this,” he said.

  Hunt took the cutting between his finger and thumb as though it were contaminated and dropped it into the waste basket with scarcely a glance. “Now why would he think that …? Ah, here’s the coffee! Morning, Phyllis! Have a good time last night, Phyllis?”

  The waitress said, “None of your lip!” and passed the cups around.

  Lawson looked up from a copy of the Courier he was reading. The Courier was the Record’s chief rival. “I say, Fred—do you see Mollie Bourne’s got herself mixed up in a story again? That girl doesn’t report the news, she makes it!”

  “What’s she been up to this time?”

  “Dined with Alonzo just before he caught that plane last night.… Drove him to the airport! What a woman!” Lawson picked up his coffee cup and gave me a nod of acknowledgment as he drank. “I suppose you haven’t run into Mollie Bourne yet, Curtis, have you?”

  “No,” I said, “who is she?”

  “Reporter on the Courier. Always getting into trouble. Always getting scoops. If you want to do well in Fleet Street, old boy, here’s a tip—keep your eye on Mollie! That’s right, Fred, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” said Hunt. “Golden rule.”

  “What’s she like?” I asked.

  Lawson leered. “Very enjoyable, I should think. Smashing redhead.”

  “She’s a damned good reporter,” Martin said, in his deputy-assistant-news-editorial voice.

  The News Room door banged again. This time the perky youth made a bee-line for me. “Mr. Blair says you’re to get a bright story out of this,” he announced, and slapped a journal down in front of me. It was the Economist.

  I looked round at the others. They were all grinning like apes.

  “I can’t read that sexy stuff,” Lawson said. “Excites me too much …! Ah, here’s old Smee—late as usual. Afternoon, Smee!”

  Smee was a big, shambling man, with a perpetually hurt look as though he’d been cruelly baited. I’d met him already. I ordered another coffee.

  Martin, blue-pencilling steadily, said, “You’re looking a bit under the weather, George.”

  Smee said, “That bastard Hatcher kept me out till three o’clock this morning. I’ll do that bastard one of these days. He’ll go too far, you’ll see.”

  “He’s all right,” Hunt said. “You’ve just got to know how to handle him.”

  “It’s all very well for you,” said Smee. “You’re never on the late turn.”

  “I used to be. The only trouble with Hatcher is that his nerves are shot to pieces. What he needs is a good bad woman.”

  “Don’t we all?” said Lawson.

  “Heart of gold, really,” Hunt said.

  “When I tear it out,” Smee said darkly, “we’ll see!” He took a sheaf of papers from his drawer and six bottles of different coloured inks and started to work on what was reputed to be a very profitable racing system.

  It was a quarter to twelve now, and judging by the activity in the News Room Blair’s preparations for the morning conference, which always took place at noon, were reaching a climax. Presently he came bustling out himself. He was a short, square man, with enormously powerful shoulders, and he bore down on us like a rather fussy bulldozer. I turned a page of the Economist and tried to seem interested in the “Active Securities.” Blair proposed an assignment to Hunt that Hunt didn’t like. Hunt addressed him as “Blair” and talked back like an equal. There was a short, testy argument. Blair had a way of saying “M’m?” every few seconds when anyone argued with him, which gave the quite erroneous impression that he was being slowly won over. In the end, of course, he had his way, and Hunt departed, grumbling. Mabel Learoyd was dispatched to a luncheon, with her charcoal biscuits in her handbag, and Smee was sent to meet a V.I.P. off a train. I was ignored. Martin went to help out at the News Desk while Blair attended conference. Lawson opened a paper-backed thriller and put his feet up. “Quiet day for crime
,” he said, winking.

  I was to remember that—later!

  The conference lasted half an hour, and then the News Room came to life again. I looked through the glass partition and saw that Blair was grinning hugely. He was usually in a better temper, Lawson said, when conference was over. After a moment he came quietly out, and approached me as though he were going to impart some tremendous secret. “Oh, Curtis,” he said, “here’s a story for you. A cannon ball’s disappeared from Lodden Castle in Sussex. You might get down there and find out what’s happened to it.”

  The symbolism wasn’t lost on me. In fact, I thought at first that he was simply pulling my leg. But when he’d gone, Lawson said, “Well, good-bye, Curtis. Into the valley of death!”

  “You don’t mean he was serious?” I said.

  “Sure he was serious.”

  “But it’s such a trivial thing. What’s the point?”

  “Yours not to reason why, old boy. Probably your penance! Anyway, why should you worry?—it’s a day out of town on expenses.”

  I closed my desk, and went and collected my hat from the stand. As I passed the correspondence rack I saw that a new headline had been pasted beside my name. This time it read: BARONET’S SON ON ARSON CHARGE.

  Chapter Three

  I was still smarting a little over my unpromising assignment as I headed the Riley for Sussex. Not that I blamed Blair, or any of them, for having a bit of fun at my expense. I’d certainly asked for it, right from the beginning. I’d gone into Fleet Street by the wrong door, the door of influence, instead of the hard, slow way via police court reporting and a local paper. I’d done it with my eyes open, accepting the risks, because after three years at Oxford and two more in the army I’d felt there simply wasn’t time to start at the bottom. I’d intended to work hard and make up for it that way; to learn quickly, and do well. Instead, I’d made a botch of things. Naturally, the professionals were gloating. All I wished was that they’d taken it out of me by sending me on another fire, in which case I doubted if any police cordon would have stopped me. This cannon ball story was not merely humiliating—it held out no hope of redemption.