Wooden Margin

At eight o’clock on a February evening in 1998, Wilf Camm had locked the shutters of his book stall and was counting the till for a second time when he found the envelope.

It had been pushed beneath the coin tray, where no customer could have reached it. Four brass keys lay inside, each tagged with a stamped number. Beneath them was a thin sheet that looked typed until Wilf held it beneath the bare bulb.

8 P.M. — WRENFORD GAZETTE. ENTRY KEY UNDER PRESSROOM STEP. 9 P.M. — COMPOSING ROOM. THIRD BOARD. 10 P.M. — HAWTHORN HOUSE. SCULLERY. 11 P.M. — PRESSROOM. DO NOT BE LATE.

Wilf was forty-three, and most people took him for a mild fellow because he sold old books and wore cardigans with elbow patches. They did not know how much a damaged letter could tell him. The capital G on the page had a chipped lower stroke. The commas sat jammed against the word before them. Whoever had made the list knew lead type, and had set it with a particular sort of impatience.

Nineteen years earlier, Wilf had seen that same impatience at work.

The Gazette stood three streets from the market, condemned and waiting for demolition. Its front doors had been chained shut, a white council notice pasted crookedly to the grimy glass. Wilf went round through the alley, past the blocked loading bay and the old pressroom extension. The cracked stone step was still there.

Under it waited a blackened little key.

The side door admitted him with one reluctant click.

Inside, the building smelled of wet plaster, old ink, and rusting machinery. His torch found rows of cabinets, broken composing benches, and the hulking press beneath its canvas sheet. A man stood beside the proofing table.

“Wilf,” Pascoe Trewin said. “I wondered which of us would get here first.”

Pascoe had once been a Gazette reporter, back when he had written council columns with enough sparkle to make a drainage dispute sound scandalous. At thirty-six, he still had the polished look of a man who could make an apology seem like an invitation.

“You were expecting me?” Wilf asked.

“Stanislav telephoned at seven. Asked me to collect a private file.”

“Stanislav Cawley sent you into a condemned building at night.”

Pascoe spread his hands. “He has never had much respect for good sense.”

The explanation slid from him easily, like receipts from a desk drawer. Wilf did not believe it, though he could not yet say why.

His torch found a sheet of proof paper caught beneath a metal galley. He eased it free.

The date at its top was 14 February 1979.

GORDON MELLOR, PRESS FOREMAN, CHALLENGES SAFETY REPORT.

Gordon’s name sat halfway down the page in hard black letters. Wilf remembered him as a broad man with nicotine-stained hands and a habit of calling everybody “sunshine,” even when he was furious. Three days after that report was prepared, Gordon vanished. The Gazette printed that he had left town after an argument. Stanislav had called it regrettable but unsurprising.

Wilf had known better.

At twenty-four, delivering an invoice to the editor’s office, he had watched Stanislav lift lines from a proof and replace them himself. Gordon’s warning had disappeared. In its place came the lie about a quarrel and a journey north.

Wilf studied the fresh page, then the list from his pocket. The same crowded commas. The same chipped G. The same fussy spacing after every m.

Pascoe came nearer. “You know that type?”

“I know the hand that set it.”

Pascoe’s easy manner slipped, just for a moment.

“Cawley?”

Wilf folded the proof sheet and tucked it inside his coat. Outside, the town clock began counting toward nine.

“We start with the third floorboard,” he said.

The composing room lay above the pressroom, reached by a narrow iron stair that complained under Wilf’s shoes. Pascoe came behind him without any of the cheerful noise he had made downstairs. The building had settled into its night noises: pipes ticking, rain worrying at a broken pane, some loose piece of metal knocking now and then in the yard.

At the landing, Wilf found the room by memory more than sight. He had been there often enough in 1979, fetching invoices and returning corrected bills. Back then the cases of letters had stood in ranks beneath the windows, each drawer labelled in a printer’s hand. Now most were empty. Dust lay over the benches, grey as mill flour.

“The third board,” Pascoe said.

“You can count.”

“I can. I was allowing for the fact that you enjoy being right.”

Wilf crouched beside the long central table. The boards ran lengthways, warped at their edges. He counted from the wall: one, two, three. The third had a newer nail at one end, bright once upon a time, now filmed with rust.

Pascoe produced a penknife.

“Always carry one?” Wilf asked.

“Journalistic habit.”

“You haven’t been a journalist for six years.”

“Then call it a bad habit.”

The blade slipped under the board. Together they eased it up. A stale draught rose from the gap, carrying damp wood and the sour residue of old ink.

Something metal knocked beneath.

Pascoe reached down first, then stopped. “Your discovery.”

Wilf did not thank him. He lay flat, pushed his arm into the blackness, and found a cold rectangular object wrapped in oilcloth. It came free with a scrape against the joist.

It was a steel index case, the sort the Gazette had used for filing names and addresses. Its lid bore a scratched label: MELLOR, G.

For nineteen years, Gordon Mellor had been a story people spoke around. A man who had gone north. A man who had drunk too much. A man who had made enemies. Wilf had heard every version in the pub, at market, in the back room of the old stationer’s. Seeing the name there made each excuse look cheap.

The key marked 9 turned in the lock.

Inside lay cards, each stained at the corners from handling. Gordon’s handwriting filled most of them: dates, safety complaints, press repairs delayed, orders signed by Stanislav Cawley. Beneath the cards sat a folded receipt.

Wilf opened it carefully.

HAWTHORN HOUSE STORES, it read at the top. 14 FEBRUARY 1979. One paraffin can. One box of household matches. Cash sale.

The signature at the bottom was Vernon Sibley’s.

Pascoe gave a low sound through his teeth. “Well.”

Wilf remembered Vernon as the Gazette’s night caretaker: narrow shoulders, careful hands, a man who apologised when other people trod on his feet. He had locked up after the staff went home. He had said, when Gordon disappeared, that he knew nothing.

“A receipt proves he bought paraffin,” Pascoe said. “Nothing more.”

“At Hawthorn House.”

“It says Hawthorn House Stores. That shop served half the district.”

“On the night Gordon vanished.”

Pascoe looked toward the windows. “You’ve already decided he did it.”

“No.” Wilf put the receipt beside the cards. “I’ve decided someone wants me to decide that.”

He took out the 1979 proof sheet and turned it over. The blank side was yellowed and rough beneath his fountain pen. He wrote, in a tight bookseller’s script:

Stanislav lied; Pascoe has a reason; Gordon never left; take nothing on trust.

Pascoe read it upside down.

“You could have put ‘Pascoe may have a reason.’”

“I have met you before.”

“That was cruelly fair.”

Wilf folded the sheet once more, but Pascoe caught sight of a pencilled address on the last index card.

Hawthorn House, north entrance. Scullery access via kitchen yard.

“You know that place?” Wilf asked.

Pascoe’s hand left the card.

“Everybody knows Hawthorn House.”

“Everybody knows it has a front drive and a collapsing roof. You know its back route.”

Pascoe met his eyes then, and the polished fellow from the pressroom was gone. There was a tiredness there Wilf had not expected, something old and poorly mended.

“I covered the fire there in ’91,” Pascoe said. “I went in through the yard because the fire brigade had the front blocked.”

“That is a very quick answer.”

“You asked a very plain question.”

Before Wilf could press him, the telephone rang downstairs.

They both stood still. The sound came again, shrill and absurd in the abandoned building.

Pascoe said, “That’ll be for you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m the one Cawley already spoke to.”

They went down together. The phone sat on the editor’s old desk, its black receiver dusty except for the cradle. Wilf lifted it.

“Mr Camm,” Stanislav said.

His voice had not altered much. It was still smooth, still careful, each word polished before it left his mouth.

“You have found the material, I trust.”

Wilf looked at Pascoe. “You know where I am.”

“I know where you must be. Go to Hawthorn House. Be there by ten.”

“And if I don’t?”

A pause came down the line, neat as a ruled margin.

“Then you will lose your chance to learn what became of Gordon Mellor.”