Publish and Be Murdered by Ruth Dudley Edwards

the extravagance of this party always pisses me off. Look at that.’ He gestured towards one of Lady Amanda’s uniformed waitresses, who was tempting a nearby group with a tray of blinis, while behind her stood another, carrying a silver jug of punch. ‘Presumably the Papworth estate has to pay extra to have pretty ones.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ said Amiss. ‘I can’t imagine Lady Amanda Gascoigne ever contemplated hiring anyone plain.’
    ‘Last fucking straw,’ said Piers Papworth. ‘Us adding to the ill-gotten gains of the bloody Gascoignes,’ and with a nod he elbowed his way through a gaggle of critics and disappeared into the crowd.
    Lord Papworth shrugged resignedly. ‘Sorry, Robert. It’s not that Piers doesn’t appreciate what you’ve done. It’s just that he won’t be satisfied until The Wrangler operates at a profit.’
    Amiss looked over his shoulder. ‘In that case, he’d better take a contract out on Willie.’
    ‘Don’t tempt him. Or me, for that matter. I’m finding his political line harder and harder to take.’
    ‘You’re not alone. You could probably share the cost of the hitman with several others.’
    ‘I take comfort from that thought.’ He looked around him covertly. ‘A word in your ear, Robert. Is Willie drinking a lot?’
    ‘Why do you ask?’
    ‘I had the most peculiar phone call from him last week. Raving about all of you. Yet when I alluded to it a few days later he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. Obviously I said I must have been mistaken and didn’t push it. Chap had clearly forgotten all about it.’
    ‘There have been a few incidents of that kind. Henry and I have had two or three such calls.’
    ‘Keep an eye on it, will you? It’s bad enough having the deputy permanently soused without having the editor making abusive drunken phone calls. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I hope tonight goes all right. Now, if you’ll forgive me…’
    As Lord Papworth took off, Amiss’s arm was gripped firmly and he was pulled into a corner by Baroness Troutbeck.
    ‘What do you want, Jack?’
    ‘Shut up and listen.’ The focus of her attention was a tall, angular thirtysomething in an expensive fuchsia suit, with thick gold jewellery on her ears and neck, a huge diamond on her right hand and hair so big, blonde and expensively cut as to have walked straight off the set of a Hollywood soap opera. She was made up to match: the fuchsia lipstick and matching talons were alarming in their stridency. In a harsh Australian accent with American overtones, she was mesmerizing Wilfred Parry, the willowy young academic and part-time Wrangler literary editor, whom Amiss had come to loathe
    Parry’s credentials as a promising member of a famous English department required him to hide his true instincts by dressing up the traditional in obfuscatory cant and making it seem original in a world of post-structuralists, postmodernists and post-revisionists. He was, in Amiss’s view, striving to be the first post-fogey – a position that allowed him to dress, think and share the prejudices of fogeys while maintaining a position of ineffable academic and intellectual superiority.
    The baroness was watching enraptured. Amiss quickly saw why.
    ‘So you’re devoting your life to books,’ said the fuchsia woman to Parry. ‘I think that’s great. I think that’s really great. I think books are wonderful. I love books. Books are my companions, books are my friends. Friends are good too, friends are great. And when your books are your friends, you’ve always got friends. Don’t you agree with me, Wilf?’
    ‘Yes,’ he stammered.
    Amiss – who had never seen Wilfred Parry at a loss for the word that would illustrate his cleverness – chortled inwardly.
    ‘Now have you got any poems about friendship that are your particular favourites?’
    ‘Nothing comes to mind,’ he said defensively.
    ‘Come on, come on,’ she said. ‘A bloke like you must have lots at your fingertips.