Stone's Fall

I realise that I have said little about my own life in my account. Partly this is because I wish to tell the story of Lord Ravenscliff, but mainly because I have little enough to say. Life as a reporter involved long hours; often enough I failed even to get back to my lodgings for dinner, and I frequently had to be up and out before Mrs Morrison had even begun to prepare breakfast. Lunch and dinner were eaten in pubs or taverns; my circle of acquaintanceship, outside my fellow lodgers and reporters, was limited. I briefly attended a reading group of worthy socialists, who would get together to discuss texts on the evils of capitalism, but I missed so many of the meetings, and so rarely had the time to read the books we were meant to be talking about, that I gradually let this drop.

I had no family nearby; my parents lived in the Midlands and I was the only member of the family to leave the town of my birth. I think I was the first of innumerable generations to stray more than ten miles from the centre of Coventry. We were not close; my wish to try my luck in London was perfectly incomprehensible to them. So it had been to me; I did not know why I wanted to leave so much. All I knew was that, if I stayed, I would end up like my father, working as a clerk in an office, or like my brothers, spending their lives in the factories and workshops of that city because they did not dare to do anything else. I do not relish adventure, but that prospect so terrified me that I was willing to swallow my fears. When I left school I worked for a year or so on the local newspaper and convinced myself that I was good at it; better still, I convinced others for long enough to get a reference. Armed with this and five pounds given to me by my father – who understood better than I then realised why I did not wish to be like him – I caught the train to London.

It took two months and nearly all my money to get my first job, working on the social anouncements page of the Chronicle. I later moved to football, the obituaries and after nearly two years finally had my piece of luck. The crime reporter was more of a drunk than was average, and he was entirely unconscious on the pavement outside the Duck when the first of the Marylebone murders took place. I volunteered to stand in for him, and McEwen agreed. In my desperation – such chances come very infrequently – I nearly said, 'Let me go, Cox is drunk again.' That would have damned me. Instead, I robustly denied all knowledge of the poor man's whereabouts, and said that I was sure he was out on a story. I would fill in until he returned.

And so I did, as he never did return. McEwen did not need me to tell tales. He knew perfectly well what Cox was working on and his patience finally snapped.

I did a good job; a very good job, dare I say it, considering my inexperience. I was told to continue until a proper replacement was found, but one never was. Eventually editorial interest faded, and I continued as acting crime reporter for another year until someone remembered that I was not supposed to be doing the job at all. Then I was promoted, given a proper position, and told to keep going.

That had been five years previously. I had dreamed of being a reporter on a London newspaper and I was one. My ambitions for life should have been satisfied. But, however splendid a job may seem when one does not have it, it rarely stands up to close acquaintanceship. I was beginning to get bored with the life, and even to find murder most foul just a little tedious. But I had not yet fixed on a new goal to fire my ambitions once more. That, quite apart from the money, was why I had taken up Lady Ravenscliff's offer with so little hesitation.

As far as the matter of Ravenscliff was concerned, I needed to look through his office with care. Perhaps the papers were there after all. Perhaps some diary or letter would provide all the information I needed, and solve the matter in a few seconds. I doubted it; his widow wasn't so helpless that she couldn't find that herself, and she had good reason to look carefully. I knew already that most of the papers were financial in nature and that I could spend days looking at them, with every possibility that I would miss the vital clue even if it was there. So I decided to recruit Franklin.