No fear or favour

Hugh Bridges, walking somewhat painfully and very disconsolately in worn clothes and old shoes over hard pavements on a cold December afternoon in London, did not appear to be a fruitful source of blood money to any prospective blackmailer. He was a schoolmaster, fifty-eight years old, kindly and inefficient and of very small means. His wife, whom he adored, was a permanent invalid and his only real happiness in life lay in looking after her. It was when with her that he was able to use the only talent in which he excelled. He was a good reader and nothing gave the couple more pleasure than when they could enjoy together the English classics read by him. He was no actor and no orator and, though he might have obtained a position as an announcer with the BBC (where his abhorrence of the intrusive 'r, so popular with some announcers, would have pleased at least one listener) he never thought of the idea. He had been educated to be a schoolmaster and a schoolmaster he became, good neither at the teaching nor the disciplinary side of his career, but accepted by pupils and colleagues as a friendly member of the staff though one of very small value.