Deadline (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  ‘About half an hour.’

  ‘Oh,’ he pursed his lips, ‘which paper were you with before that?’

  ‘Er …’ Bognor thought of telling the truth and then decided against it. It would prove troublesome. Besides there was plenty of time for it to come out later. ‘I spent a bit of time with the Winnipeg Eagle’ he said. ‘But I’m not really a lifelong journalist. More a jack of all trades.’

  ‘And how did you come to the notice of Lord Wharfedale?’

  ‘Lord Wharfedale spreads his net very wide,’ said Bognor elliptically and then noticed that Gringe was looking very censorious, not to say suspicious, not, indeed, to say disbelieving. ‘My late father was a friend of his,’ he said quickly. ‘They knew each other in Capetown way back. And so when I found myself penniless and destitute I naturally wrote to him for a job. And here I am.’

  They had arrived at the fifth floor and were walking along the path which the late St John Derby had taken to his death the night before. This floor, Bognor observed, merited a carpet, though not of the same prodigious depth as that on the tenth. Mr Gringe paused outside the Samuel Pepys office.

  ‘Not a very South African name, Bognor?’ he ventured.

  ‘Well nor’s Wharfedale come to that,’ said Simon. ‘we’re Sussex actually. The Sussex Bognors … no?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Gringe, distinctly icily, ‘I think not.’ He opened the door and showed him in.

  It was, Bognor admitted, a comfortable office. It contrasted very favourably with his own dungeon at the Board of Trade. For a start there were windows, quite large ones, and although there wasn’t what you might call a view to be obtained from them, and although it wasn’t possible to see the sky from them, they still let in natural light. Most of the desks were arranged opposite each other against the walls, leaving the centre of the room free for movement, but one, which from the array of telephones on it and the mousey young woman behind it he judged to be the secretary’s was just inside the door. Another, larger and more leathery than the rest, was separated from the main room by a glass screen. Its size and segregation proclaimed it a leader’s desk and therefore almost certainly the property of the late St John Derby. The rest of the room was taken up with a standard assortment of wall maps, noticeboards with tasteful literate collages and graffiti, a colour television set and a Victorian umbrella stand. Ranged along the top of the bookcases, which contained such standard works of reference as Whitaker, Who’s Who, Wisden and Burke’s Peerage and on top of the filing cabinets were row upon row of empty champagne bottles. All this Bognor took in if not at a glance at least in a fairly brisk gaze, but it was the people who interested him.

  His arrival had clearly interrupted something. The inhabitants of the room were all frozen in mid-gesture, like characters in a film when the projector jams. The universal appearance of guilt and embarrassment made it quite clear that they had been discussing Mr Gringe. Mr Gringe, who looked as if he realized this and was far from flattered at the thought, turned flamingo pink and coughed.

  ‘Er … Molly, um … gentlemen,’ he said, ‘this is our new colleague, Simon Bognor. He joins us today and does so …’ here his voice assumed a grave portentousness, ‘at Lord Wharfedale’s personal instruction. He’ll use my desk, since of course, well that is when we’ve moved some of Mr Albany’s effects I shall naturally, well …’

  Bognor stood and smiled inanely at no one in particular. It was Molly Mortimer who rescued the situation from its increasing ambiguity.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, holding out a hand which jangled with bangles and had long elegant fingers with long elegant painted nails. ‘I’m Molly Mortimer, the ritual Samuel Pepys Lady. Every column has to have one to appease the women-in-media lobby. They’d much rather not of course.’

  She was wearing a musky scent in such quantities that Bognor who had a poor nose for such things noticed and found it attractive. In a few years she would be over the hill, he thought, but just now she was in the middle of an Indian summer, somewhere around forty with good bones and no flab and just the right amount of make-up skilfully applied. The crisp white blouse was cotton but expensive, the scarlet skirt was a modest length but flared just enough to suggest excellent legs. Her auburn hair might have been helped with the bottle but not over much and her face showed enough lines to make it interesting in the right places, but not enough to do more than hint at a modicum of age or depravity. Bognor shook the hand with just the beginnings of enthusiasm.

  ‘I’d better introduce the others,’ she said, ‘since Eric, poor darling, is so lacking in the conventional social graces. This,’ she indicated a chubby degenerate in tweeds, ‘is Milborn Port, or if the battle in which he has been engaged with the Pope to prove the legitimacy of his claim to the baronetcy is successful, Sir Milborn Port.’

  ‘Everyone calls me Milly,’ confided Mr Port, whose handshake was limp and clammy. ‘Much easier than Milborn.’

  ‘Milly and Molly,’ said Simon facetiously, but no one even smiled. They had obviously heard it before.

  ‘Bertie Harris,’ continued Miss Mortimer, ‘son and heir to the Wharfedale riches and for that matter the Wharfedale rags.’

  Bognor looked at the lean handsome face and the tall elegant figure and tried to detect a family resemblance. Not easy. As so often with the sons of the extravagantly self-made Bertie had acquired a social manner which was quite at variance with his father’s rough diamond behaviour. It was father’s fault for having sent him to Eton and Trinity.

  ‘How do you do?’ asked Harris, expecting the answer ‘How do you do?’ and rolling the words into one.

  ‘Howjado?’ answered Bognor, coming dangerously close to parody. Harris noticed. Bognor noticed that he noticed, and worse still Harris noticed that Bognor had noticed that he’d noticed. Bognor gave himself a black mark and a silent reminder to be more tactful.

  ‘Willy Wimbledon,’ said Miss Mortimer. Bognor had heard of him, if only for his cricketing prowess. He had made a hundred before lunch in the Oxford and Cambridge match at Lord’s the previous summer and had gone on to play some matches for Somerset. He was, unlike any of his colleagues, young, athletic and as yet unmarked by any of the awful things that happen to journalists after the age of twenty-one.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, flashing teeth without a trace of nicotine stain.

  ‘Oh,’ said Molly Mortimer, ‘how dreadfully rude of me, I’ve forgotten our other ritual lady. Not so approved by the ladies of women’s lib I’m afraid if only because she does all the work and gets none of the money. Without Anthea Morrison I’m afraid there simply wouldn’t be a Samuel Pepys column, eh, Eric?’

  Bognor smiled and nodded at the mousey young woman behind the desk near the door. She looked very young and slightly undistinguished to be ministering to such an obviously difficult and demanding collection of people, but there was something about her which warned him not to dismiss her too readily. She smiled and nodded back.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Eric Gringe, in an obvious effort to reassert his authority, ‘that Horace Peckwater, the subeditor who looks after us, won’t be in until late afternoon. You’ll have an opportunity to meet him then. Now let me show you your desk.’ He bustled Bognor over to his desk and began to explain at great length where the stationery was kept, how to telephone to the library and find the gents. The others all went back to their own places where they read the morning papers or filled in expense claims. After about a quarter of an hour Milborn Port looked up from the Morning Star, coughed loudly, pulled out a fob watch, sighed and said to the room in general, ‘I don’t know about you chaps but I think in the circumstances I’m going to wander up the road. Anyone care to join me?’

  There was a lot of muttering. Gringe said pointedly that he was too busy. Harris, equally pointedly, that it was too early. Miss Morrison was clearly too menial to be included in the invitation. Wimbledon and Miss Mortimer agreed.

  ‘You coming, Simon?’ asked Molly as she put on a heavy kangerooskin coat and an
Hermes scarf.

  ‘Um, where are you going?’

  ‘El Vino, I should imagine. El Vino, Milly?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘OK,’ said Bognor. It was a bit early for him too. Only just after half-past eleven but he had better, he argued, fit in with the folk lore of Fleet Street and in any case the day was exceptional.

  ‘Not too long please,’ said Gringe as they left, ‘and not too much. There’s still a column to produce.’

  Outside in the corridor Molly and Willy giggled conspiratorially. ‘Granny’s being very grannyish today,’ said Willy.

  ‘It’s death,’ said Molly, ‘makes him feel important.’

  Outside in Fleet Street it was still bitterly cold and the grey light made what romantics and cynics called ‘The Street of Adventure’ look tawdry and even dull. True, the twin monoliths of the Express and the Telegraph opposite exuded a certain authority, the one raffish the other more solid and virtuous, but the rest of the newspaper offices belonged to the Methodist Recorder and the Irish Independent and a string of small provincial chains. Fleet Street itself had more cheap cafés and undistinguished pubs than national newspaper offices. The Times, the Mail, the Sun, the Mirror were all elsewhere. Only the Globe and the Telegraph and the Express with their satellites actually inhabited the street. Bognor felt a twinge of disappointment. He would have liked a street full of men in braces and green eye shades hurrying towards scoops of world shattering import. Instead he was beginning to have an impression of small men from Bromley with mortgages.

  At least El Vino was different. As the four of them barged through the narrow door Bognor was assailed as he had been on previous occasions by the unmistakable aroma of spirit, wine and cigar fumes. No beer here and not so many cigarettes, at least of the English variety.

  ‘’Morning, Miss Mortimer, ’Morning, Mr Port, ’Morning, m’Lord,’ said the stiff young man in the pin stripes and black coat behind the bar.

  ‘Bottle of Pommery in the back please, Van,’ said Mr Port as they passed through the dark passage-like room. They exchanged noisy greetings with another small group at a table. ‘That’s the Peterborough lot from the Telegraph,’ said Miss Mortimer sotto voce as they found a table in the back, which had an air halfway between that of a gentleman’s club and a railway waiting room. Already there were several drinkers crouched over bottles, mainly of champagne, though in some cases of claret or hock. Most of the men were elderly silver-haired individuals though at one table a group of younger men in striped shirts were drinking sweet sherry by the glass: ‘Advertising men,’ said Molly with disdain.

  Bognor sat down in a revolving wooden chair with Lord Northcliffe’s name carved in the back. Presently a girl arrived with four glasses and a bottle of Pommery and Greno champagne dripping with little beads of moisture. She poured some into a glass for Milborn Port who sipped and sniffed, pronounced it just right and gave her five pounds from which he took very little by way of change.

  ‘Well,’ said Molly Mortimer when all their glasses had been charged, ‘what do you think, Milly?’

  Mr Port started to look serious and then chuckled.

  ‘Rather exciting, isn’t it? I mean I’m sorry about the old boy but he’d had a good run and he was just about due for departure. Not a bad exit. I think we should drink a toast to absent friend. He’d appreciate it, and I suggest we should couple that with applause for the manner of his leaving us.’

  ‘No but seriously,’ said Molly, after they’d drunk, ‘someone must have done it. But who?’

  ‘I suppose the principal suspects are us,’ said Willy Wimbledon flatly. The remark did not go down well.

  ‘Oh really,’ said Molly and Milly in unison.

  Bognor disagreed. ‘I think he has a point,’ he said, ‘and if not one of you then who else? Who else did he have dealings with?

  ‘Endless people,’ said Milborn. ‘You can’t run something like the Pepys show without dealing with people.’

  ‘His bookie,’ said Molly.

  ‘Bookie? Did he bet?

  ‘Regularly but lightly,’ said Milborn, ‘and he was a bookie’s delight. Never won more than once or twice in a year. In any case he always put on with the shop over the road and I really don’t see one of them pounding up to the office at midnight with a paper knife.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about his wife?’ asked Bognor. ‘Cherchez la femme and all that.’

  ‘You’ll be accusing me next, darling,’ said Molly, ‘he hadn’t seen Lotte for years and years. No reason to, there weren’t any children and they had nothing in common.’

  ‘Any more women, latterly I mean?’ Bognor was suddenly aware that he was sounding a little eager. The other three seemed to sense something more than idle curiosity in his manner.

  ‘I think it had been young men recently,’ said Molly, ‘I never much liked the way he looked at you, Willy. In fact I’ve always had my doubts about his hiring you in the first place. You have no qualifications whatever.’

  ‘That makes two of us,’ said Bognor brightly.

  ‘Oh,’ said Milborn. ‘Where were you before exactly?’

  Bognor derided to leave the fictitious Winnipeg Eagle out of his claims this time. ‘I wasn’t really anywhere actually,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve got in by the back door.’

  There was a pause while they drank their champagne. Bognor noticed that Mr Port drank his faster than any of the rest of them. It was he who spoke next.

  ‘Why do you say the principal suspects are us, Willy?’ he asked. ‘Rum sort of idea.’

  The young man blushed a little.

  ‘I think,’ said Molly, ‘he meant that the police are fearfully dim witted and will be hard pressed to think of anyone at all to suspect let alone accuse, and since the wretched man was done to death in our own office in the middle of a working week we are extremely convenient targets for the unimaginative mind.’

  ‘There’s slightly more to it than that,’ said the Viscount. ‘For a start whoever did it knew how to find the office without asking. If anyone had asked Albert the way he would remember.’

  ‘Albert?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘The night porter,’ said Milly. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well secondly it looks as if it was probably someone he knew. Otherwise surely he’d have kicked-up some sort of racket.’

  ‘That doesn’t follow,’ said Molly, ‘he was almost certainly too pissed to speak let alone make a racket.’

  ‘Look at it another way,’ said Wimbledon. ‘Granny Gringe said he thought of us as his family which is a typically Granny-ish sort of thing to say but on the other hand it is quite accurate. He didn’t have any real family and he didn’t seem to have any real friends. Only acquaintances, and you surely don’t get murdered by mere acquaintances?’

  Milborn Port held up the now empty Pommery bottle and waved it in the direction of the waitress. Another arrived swiftly and Wimbledon and Molly Mortimer split the cost despite mumbled protestation from Bognor.

  ‘You forget, darling,’ said Molly, ‘that unless you are a homicidal maniac which is a possibility that we can’t rule out altogether, particularly in Fleet Street after the pubs have closed, then you need a motive for killing people and I don’t see that any of us by any conceivable stretch of imagination could possible have a motive for killing St John.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ said Milborn, who had a reputation for becoming irritatingly arch under the influence of drink.

  ‘You may need a motive but it can seem jolly flimsy to the outside eye. Knew a chap in the Gurkhas who killed someone because of BO.’

  ‘BO?’ Molly looked scandalized.

  ‘Never washed under his arms or changed his socks and he had the next bed. Hacked him to death with a kukri. He got off.’ He drank deeply and realized that he hadn’t fully explained himself. ‘There was a war on,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose Gringe had a motive,’ said Wimbledon. ‘He’d always wanted to run the column and
St John obviously wasn’t going to resign so perhaps he thought the only way to get the job for himself was to kill him.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Molly forcefully. ‘Eric is one of nature’s number twos and he knows it. Besides I don’t believe he has the strength, let alone the nerve, to kill anyone with a knife. It’s inconceivable.’

  ‘There was a time, wasn’t there, Molly, when you were on, shall I say rather closer terms with St John, than you had been recently?’ Milborn, Bognor realized, was stirring. He judged that it was something he enjoyed doing.

  ‘Oh really,’ she said, ‘you know bloody well that’s a ridiculous thing to say. About fifteen years ago when I first joined the paper I occasionally went out to dinner with him, or once or twice to the theatre.’

  ‘I understood you used to go to Paris for weekends.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake. We once met in Paris quite by accident when he was doing the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for the paper and I was stopping over after a holiday in St Trop. That was all. You men, you’re all the same. Anyway what sort of motive does that give me? I’d hardly kill the old thing just because I went out with him once or twice in the dim and distant past. Would I? Be fair.’

  She was very irritated. Bognor deflected attention.

  ‘What about you Milborn?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you have a motive?’

  ‘What, me? No. I’ve never had a motive in my life. Totally impulsive I am. Nevertheless I dare say young Willy has one. Maybe Molly was right. Maybe St. John had been making improper advances, eh?’

  Milborn, at least after a few drinks, was undoubtedly a mischief maker. On the other hand, Bognor conceded, Viscount Wimbledon was quite pretty enough to have excited the attention of an old pederast, if pederast he was.

  ‘You know perfectly well,’ he said, ‘that my interests in sex are entirely conventional.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Milborn. ‘No doubt you found St John’s attentions so distasteful that you felt compelled to knife him between the ribs.’

  Bognor was beginning to find the conversation a strain.