Blood Brothers

All of the dower house chimneys appeared to be working. He remembered the kitchen had been cheerful, not echoing, the parlor welcoming, not forbidding, and the occupant…well, he’d been thinking about her all night.

He cast a longing glance over his shoulder as he drove past—and noticed a discreet little sign at the end of the dower house drive.

B&B FULL BREAKFAST £15. DINNER AT EXTRA COST.

He smiled. “Well, now why didn’t she mention that?”

Fixing the Buckworthy Gazette would best be accomplished, Gabe had decided by lunchtime, if he simply lobbed a bomb into the building, blew up the whole place.

Unfortunately that solution was out of the question.

“I say we set fire to it, throw ’em out on their ears, and start over,” he told Earl when the old man rang up later that afternoon. “The place is falling down around their ears, and they don’t give a rat’s ass. There’s not a computer in the building. The printing press looks like it came over on the Mayflower—”

“We didn’t go on the Mayflower,” Earl reminded him. “We’re still here.”

“And they’re still probably using the same damn one! I swear I saw a pen with a quill. I’m surprised there’s a telephone.”

“There wasn’t,” Earl said cheerfully, “last time I was there.”

“When was that?” Gabe wanted to know. “Last week?”

“Tut-tut,” Earl admonished. “Sarcasm won’t get you anywhere with these people. They are fixtures—”

“You can say that again.” Made of stone, if Gabe’s first impression was accurate.

They had all assembled in the main room when he arrived—two reporters, a receptionist-cum-tea-lady, the printer and the office manager all lined up in a row and bowed and scraped and tugged their forelocks when he’d come in.

He’d been appalled, but, taking a page from Randall’s book, had very firmly told them that things were about to change, that they were going to make a profitable paper out of the Gazette and he was going to tell them exactly how to do it.

“Yes, Mr. McBride.”

“Quite so, Mr. McBride.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. McBride.”

“We need a computer,” he told the office manager, Percy Pomfret-Mumphrey, a man as pompous and fussy as his name.

“A computer?” Percy squeaked.

“Software,” Gabe went on relentlessly. “We’ll need a database. A spreadsheet. We’ll want to enter the subscription list. The advertisers. We can look into offset printing,” he told John the printer. “And we need an answering machine,” he told Beatrice the receptionist who let the phone ring fifteen times—he’d counted—while she poured everyone a cup of tea.

“Offset printing?” John the printer wrinkled his nose.

“An answering machine?” Beatrice didn’t look as if she’d ever heard of one.

“Oh my, no.” Percy spoke for them all. “We can’t.”

“Why not?”

Percy gave a simple shrug of his shoulders. “We’ve never done it that way before.”

Famous last words.

“They’re completely resistant to change,” Gabe complained to Earl. “If it hasn’t been done that way, it won’t be done that way, can’t be done that way!”

An answer phone, Beatrice had told him, would hurt people’s feelings. “They’ll think we don’t want to speak to them.”

“You think they don’t get that idea when you don’t answer the blasted phone now?”

“They know I’m busy. They’ll ring back.”

To do offset printing would offend the Fuge brothers, John the printer had said. The Fuge brothers came every Wednesday and helped with the typesetting. “They’ll think they aren’t needed,” John told Gabe. “We wouldn’t want that.”

“Whose feelings would the computer hurt?” Gabe had asked.

“No one,” Percy said. “But we haven’t the electricity to handle it. Blow a fuse, we would. Shut everything down. Wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

“It wouldn’t take any more juice than an electric typewriter,” Gabe argued, then realized that they were all staring at him. He looked around. There were no electric typewriters, only manuals.

“We’re traditional here, you know,” Percy said. “We’ve a history to uphold. The Buckworthy Gazette is An Institution. The journalistic equivalent of Stanton Abbey, if you will!”

Well, that Gabe could certainly agree with. There was a hell of a lot of rising damp in the employ of the Buckworthy Gazette, too.

What would Randall do?

He could, of course, ask. But he wasn’t about to call Randall and admit ignorance.

“Well, things are going to change. I want all of you in my office for a meeting at three to discuss how we can turn this paper around.”

They all stared. Then they began to shake their heads.

“Something wrong with three?” Gabe inquired with deadly calm.

“We always have tea at three,” Beatrice said. Everyone nodded.

Gabe sucked in a breath. “Bring the pot. I’ll have coffee. Black.”

“We don’t have coffee.”

“Then that’s the first thing we’ll change.”

The day went downhill from there.

They didn’t have meetings on Tuesdays, Percy informed him.

“Well, we’re having one today,” Gabe said. “And if you don’t want to come, I suggest you start cleaning out your desk.”

There was a collective gasp.