Everything in Its Place

The Saltmarsh Sentinel was printed in a long, low building behind the fish market, and it smelled of hot lead, damp paper and the sweetness of old ink. The editor was a short, damp man in a green eyeshade, with a wedding ring cut into the finger and a way of saying ‘between ourselves’ that meant the opposite. He did not ask you to sit. He asked, instead, whether you took sugar.

“I’d like to see what you set on Friday morning,” you said. “Before the police surgeon. Before anyone, really.”

He sighed and lifted a long strip of paper from a spike. The galley was damp, black and unmistakable: FALL AT THE CANNERY: A TRAGIC ACCIDENT, and beside it, in a second column, STRIKE LEADER’S THREAT RECALLED. In the margin, in blue pencil, someone had written 6.40.

“Mrs Ward rang at half past six,” said the editor. “Before the constable had finished his tea. A man would be a fool to wait for the police, Dr Voss. The police tell you what happened. The Chamber tells you what it means.” He turned the strip a degree in the light. “Mr Crane held eight per cent of this paper. I don’t say it mattered. I say it’s in the accounts.”

“You printed the threat before the body was cold.”

“I printed what the town already thought.” He did not seem insulted. “I don’t make people believe things. I couldn’t afford to. I sell them what they were going to believe on the way to the shop, and they pay me for the courtesy.”

Jonah, at your shoulder, breathed: “Althusser. Ideological state apparatus.” The editor looked at him with polite alarm, as at a dog that has spoken. “I’ll have to take your word for it,” he said.

It was not a conspiracy. That was the chilling part. It was a telephone call, and a habit, and a headline that was going to be written either way.