Sunday 7 June 2015

Hats Off!

It was a popular and influential myth that the work of a private eye was glamorous, involving high stakes on the gambling table of life: the unfaithful mistress; the missing husband and the company shares; mistaken blackmail fraud. 

The reality was much more mundane, much more grounded in everyday life: a missing pet; tenants looking to trail a landlord; a company owner wanting to know just what happened on their factory floor. When cases were lean, the level of mundaneness rose.

When people had no other choice they hired C. Card; when private investigators had no other choice they took hat cases.

By the twentieth of March, 1963, Bellamy ‘Bell’ Hesketh opened his third hat case. The instructing letter informed him brightly that said hat “might have been placed on a chair in the Majestic or given to the cloakroom of Harold’s near the Grand Arcade.” Such a narrow search area focused on the two opposing corners of Leeds city centre.

Bell mused on the last time he and Fletcher had money enough to go out. Harold’s was a new establishment on him, and the commission for this hat wouldn’t warrant a visit for pleasure. Being a private investigator had seemed such a vital peace-time role, the wage was the least vital.

‘If this continues we shall be paying the bank with letters,’ Bell aimed his comment at Fletcher, his partner.

Without looking up from his book, Jacques Fletcher paraphrased: ‘Business is very poorly, if this continues you will end up in the poor house.’

They were quiet for a moment, Bell thinking of lost property offices, Fletcher contemplating Dylan Thomas. Only one of their trains of thought offered any hope of finding an essential truth about humans’ existence in a cruel universe. Had they shared their thoughts they would have agreed it was with the Welshman.

‘You’ll visit me, won’t you, Fletcher, why, you’ll be there with me.’

‘I am too handsome for the poor house, if you end up in there expect my letters from Belgium.’

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