Deadline (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  However the relationship was manageable until Gringe received an invitation to a gastronomic weekend at the Grand in Brighton. Originally he and Mrs Gringe were to go but she developed some gastric infection on the Friday and cried off. Gringe still had to go and asked Anthea Morrison. It was not intended to be a suggestive invitation. Gringe did not think of himself as sexually desirable, nor Anthea as sexually attainable, but the inevitable happened. She accepted and after a nine course banquet and a lot to drink the two of them ended up in the double bed originally intended for Mr and Mrs Gringe. Neither had taken any precautions. They had been too drunk and too surprised and anyway Anthea was a Catholic. Next day they were both full of half-hearted recriminations but it was too late. Miss Morrison was pregnant. Later when she discovered, she refused to have the abortion for which Gringe pleaded. She had resolved to have the child and let it be adopted.

  ‘So you see,’ said Mr Gringe, as they sat in the car, now parked by the side of Blackfriars station. ‘I am your man.’

  ‘I’m sorry, what?’ said Bognor, who had been listening, enthralled.

  Gringe asked for another cigarette which he handled as clumsily and with as little enjoyment as the first.

  ‘When I found out about Viscount Wimbledon and St John,’ he said, morosely, ‘I thought I’d get my own back. I went to him and I said that if he told anyone about me and Anthea I’d tell everyone about him and Willy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ Gringe’s voice here became positively tremulous, ‘he laughed.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘I went on paying the money.’

  ‘And you think you’ll be accused of murdering St John Derby because he was blackmailing you?’

  Mr Gringe said nothing coherent but a stifled sob emerged from his direction and Bognor saw that he was nodding.

  ‘If you want to know,’ said Bognor, ‘the late St John Derby was blackmailing half London. There’s hardly a man alive without a good reason for having knifed him.’

  ‘But there’s Anthea,’ wailed Gringe. ‘They’ll say I killed her because she was going to have my child and then I’d have been ruined.’ He broke off and began to sob uncontrollably, coughing at the same time on the unfamiliar tobacco smoke. When, eventually, he stopped, Bognor asked him a question.

  ‘Why did you wear that frightful macintosh to the Sevens today?’

  Gringe looked at him as if he was insane. ‘It was cold and I thought it might rain or snow.’

  ‘Don’t you have a proper overcoat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you didn’t think of wearing a hat?’

  ‘I don’t have a hat.’

  Bognor leant across and opened his door for him. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk to the train with you. Otherwise you’ll miss it and your wife will give you hell.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to … don’t you want to ask … I mean,’ Mr Gringe seemed strangely disappointed. Almost as if he had been hoping for handcuffs and a prison cell.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bognor, ‘I don’t think you killed anybody. Somehow you’re going to have to carry on living. I’m sorry.’

  He saw him onto his train but neither of them said any more, except for a mumbled, goodnight. The carriage was almost empty and Mr Gringe sat on a corner seat near the window, fidgeting with another cigarette Bognor had given him. Bognor watched as the train drew out, slowly taking away the forlorn, crumpled figure in his distinctive dirty mackintosh.

  ‘Poor little sod,’ said Bognor under his breath.

  8

  AT HOME HE FOUND Monica in more forgiving mood. She poured him a drink and ran a bath, then listened to the day’s events.

  ‘Sounds like more motives,’ she said, when he’d finished. ‘Everyone has one now. If I were you I’d leave it to the police.’

  Bognor frowned. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I think I rather agree with Bertie Harris and his father. If left to their own devices the police are going to pick the wrong man. If I know Gringe he’ll have cracked up even more overnight. I wouldn’t put it past him to confess to Sanders in the morning. If he does then the only piece of hard evidence against him is some circumstantial stuff about a man in an overcoat and hat seen pushing away from the crowd at Blackfriars underground station. And Gringe’s only defence is that he always wears a mac. No one’s going to accept that.’

  ‘But you do,’ said Monica.

  ‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘I just believe someone else is guilty. And I think I know who.’

  Before he went to bed Bognor put a phone call through to his old Oxford acquaintance, Spencer Nugent, political editor of the Daily News.

  ‘It’s a tall order,’ said Spencer when he’d explained what he wanted, ‘but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll ring you tomorrow morning at the Globe.’

  In bed Bognor said, quite seriously, ‘If this doesn’t work then I think Parkinson will, as they say, “have my guts for garters”.’

  He slept badly. The images which disturbed his slumbers were manifold. The staff of the Samuel Pepys column paraded before him with bloodied paper knives, each one of them in turn. He saw St John Derby on a step ladder hiding pieces of evidence in the cricketers’ almanacks, and turning to address him with a triumphant leer: ‘Eric Gringe has got the secretary pregnant, Viscount Wimbledon has been to bed with me, “Sir” Milborn Port sells dirty stories to the Russians, Bertie Harris is selling his inheritance for a mess of pottage, and dear Molly here is my willing accomplice.’ Then he declaimed:

  In the city set upon slime and loam

  They cry in their parliament ‘Who goes home?

  And there comes no answer in arch or dome

  For none in the city of graves goes home.

  And with a final ghastly cackle he fell off the ladder clutching a paper knife to his stomach, and Bognor woke.

  Before his interview with Lord Wharfedale he looked in briefly at the Samuel Pepys office where, to his surprise, he found everyone present and correct, albeit self-consciously silent.

  ‘Might I have a word, Willy,’ he asked the youth whose only sign of yesterday’s adventures was the silk sling which supported his injured arm. Wimbledon followed him into the corridor.

  ‘Eric Gringe told me,’ said Bognor brusquely. ‘I assume you thought that by seducing St John you’d make sure of a job and a future.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said, surlily. ‘You won’t tell Molly, will you?’ He showed no sign of shame. Bognor was offended.

  ‘If you want to reach the Editor’s chair on your back that’s your business,’ he said loftily, ‘but I do need to know for certain that it was you who slugged me outside Molly’s flat. And if you don’t tell me the truth I’ll make sure the whole of Fleet Street knows you got your job by sleeping with St John. Then you really will have to resign.’

  To his gratification the Viscount winced. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘I thought you and Molly …’ his voice trailed off.

  ‘I believe you,’ said Bognor, ‘but if you’re lying, then I’ll do exactly what I said.’

  Upstairs at half past ten he went through the complex ritual of gaining admittance to Lord Wharfedale and was pleased to see the same nubile blonde secretary wearing the same white trouser suit. His Lordship was smoking a Havana.

  ‘You may have four minutes thirty-five seconds, Bognor,’ he said, gazing out of the window across Fleet Street towards Holborn. ‘I’m a busy man.’

  ‘I only have two questions,’ he said. ‘They won’t take long. First of all, did you at any stage try to get rid of St John Derby?’

  Lord Wharfedale turned to stare at Bognor, which he did with a look clearly designed to turn lesser men to stone or into pillars of salt. Bognor found it unimpressive. He looked like an angry overweight monkey. Eventually, sensing that his menacing stare was not having the desired effect he said, ‘St John Derby was a very remarkable man. I’ve said so before. I said it in the newspaper. I may say it again at his memorial servic
e. God rest his soul.’

  ‘But did you want to sack him?’

  ‘Maybe I did.’ He smiled an evil little smile and waved his cigar in the air. ‘Comes a time, Mr Bognor, as you will find to your cost one day, when a man is but a shadow of his former self. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”; and to be absolutely frank with you, Mr Bognor, in my opinion St John Derby had reaped his talents. I would have preferred to see him enjoying a peaceful retirement.’

  ‘But the Union stopped you.’

  ‘Hell and damnation, no. The Union is a powerful creature. You flout it at your peril. But even the Union doesn’t interfere with my hiring and my firing.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you fire St John Derby?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me why?’

  ‘Later today I may.’

  ‘That’s very good of you.’ Lord Wharfedale’s sarcasm was considerable. He continued: ‘If you really want to know, St John Derby stayed on this paper because of the kindness and affection of my son, Bertie, who appreciated his virtues perhaps more than I did.’

  Bognor said nothing, then saw that he was expected to speak.

  ‘And you accepted your son’s assessment. You let him keep Mr Derby on when you yourself wanted him out?’

  Lord Wharfedale looked ruminative.

  ‘Odd thing,’ Mr Bognor,’ he said after a moment. ‘For years I listened to Bertie but finally I decided that St John Derby would have to go, no matter what Bertie thought. I told Bertie I would finally give him the golden handshake on Thursday morning. Now there’s an odd thing.’

  ‘See you later,’ said Bognor flippantly, rising to go. He felt oddly optimistic.

  Downstairs once more he found that there was no one left in the Pepys office except for the temporary secretary. He assumed they were all out drinking.

  ‘Two messages for you, Mr Bognor,’ she said, smiling a spotty smile and pulling her skirts down round her fleshy thighs. ‘Mr Nugent says your interview is arranged for twelve noon and Mr Sanders has just telephoned to say, could he see you in the front hall. He said it’s urgent.’

  In the front hall Sanders was examining the bust of Lord Wharfedale with an expression of truculence. His earlier friendliness seemed to have evaporated after the débâcle at St John Derby’s old flat.

  ‘You can go back to your work now,’ he said brusquely, ‘and stop playing at detectives. We’ve got our man.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Gringe. He’s just been in my office making a confession and I’ve sent him down to the station to get it all done according to the book, have him charged and get everything typed out and witnessed.’ He paused and smiled. ‘Well,’ he continued, holding out his hand, ‘I wish I could say what a help you’ve been but I’m afraid your intervention wasn’t exactly a success. Never mind. In future perhaps everyone will remember to leave matters of life and death to the professionals. Luckily you didn’t do any real damage. But you could have done.’

  Bognor ignored the outstretched hand.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘He didn’t do it.’

  ‘Look,’ Sanders was giving the impression of the man whose patience, sorely tried, is about to be exhausted. ‘We’ve got it all. He was having an affair with the secretary. Derby found out and was blackmailing him so he arranged a late night meeting to thrash the thing out, and, when there was a row stabbed him with the paper knife which was lying on the desk. Then he pushed the secretary under the train because she wouldn’t have an abortion, also because she knew about the murder.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He told her.’

  Bognor couldn’t conceal his impatience.

  ‘I thought you were tolerably intelligent,’ he snapped. ‘He couldn’t possibly have done it.’

  ‘And why not?’ Sanders’s voice was rising too.

  ‘Because he owns a grubby mackintosh and no overcoat and because somebody else did it.’

  ‘You stick to Wisden Cricketers’ Almanacks’ shouted the policeman so that everyone in the front hall heard and glanced up. He flounced across to the swing doors and marched out with an air of wronged authority. ‘Ass,’ said Bognor.

  Back in the Pepys office, he wondered how he was going to handle his interview at noon. It was the most crucial of the case and if it misfired it would be disastrous.

  As he was sitting contemplating, Bertie, Willy, Milly and Molly came in together. They had evidently heard. Indeed as soon as Bognor’s back was turned Granny Gringe had apparently treated them to a dummy run confession. All of them seemed deeply impressed, with the exception of Molly Mortimer who was strangely quiet. After the others had had their say, each one being wise after the event with much protestations about always knowing ‘there was something funny about Granny’, she said nonchalantly:

  ‘Simon darling, would you fancy lunch at the Montegufoni?’

  ‘That would be nice but …’

  ‘I said I’d make it up to you.’

  He smiled. ‘I’d imagined it would be more interesting than lunch.’

  She didn’t smile back. ‘I wanted to talk to you about cricket,’ she said.

  He arrived at the front hall of the Daily News at five to twelve. It didn’t do to keep Managing Editors and heirs apparent waiting. It was a less grandiose building than that of the Globe, situated in a side street which ran from Fleet Street down to the Thames Embankment. There was none of the gilded flamboyance he associated with the Wharfedale group. Instead there was a lot of plate glass functionalism, electric doors which slid rather than manual ones which swung, and an abundance of garish strip lighting. The only point of similarity was the gnarled uniformed figure at the reception desk who seemed identical to the one at the Globe.

  He addressed himself to this individual and was told to go to the fifth floor where Mr Gravelle’s secretary would meet him. The lift was modern and it worked. Gravelle’s secretary was crisp, clean, functional and worked as efficiently as the lift. She showed him straight into Gravelle’s office which was completely free of ostentation.

  Gravelle showed no sign of recognition from lunch at Pring’s. Bognor produced his identity card, which he studied cursorily.

  ‘I’ve no doubt that you are who you say you are,’ he said, smoothing back neat, jet black hair, ‘but I’m at a loss as to what you could possibly want to see me about.’

  Bognor took a very deep breath.

  ‘It’s about a possible merger between this group and the Wharfedale Organization.’

  ‘Yes.’ Elliston Gravelle picked up a ruler and bent it to just short of snapping point.

  ‘I wanted to know whether this was going to take place?’

  ‘Surely that’s a matter for the Monopolies Commission rather than the Board of Trade?’

  ‘In a sense, yes, but I do have an interest in the matter.’

  ‘Would you mind telling me what that interest might be?’

  ‘I must ask you to treat what I’m going to say as a matter of the utmost confidence.’ Bognor hated it when he started to assume the outward pomposities of the professional civil servant.

  ‘Naturally.’

  Another deep breath. Bognor was aware that he was on exceedingly dangerous ground. One false move and Elliston Gravelle would be on the phone to Parkinson or, worse still, the Minister. And that would be the end.

  ‘I have information that an agreement between you and the Honourable Bertie Harris has already been signed to the effect that a merger will take place in the event of your inheriting your father’s respective organizations.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And I’d like that information confirmed.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Mr Gravelle did not look in the least afraid, ‘that that is not the sort of information I am prepared to discuss with you.’

  ‘Even if it were an integral part of a murder enquiry?’

  Mr Gravelle looked as if he were about to say ‘Pish, Tu
sh’, but changed his mind and instead said, ‘Would you kindly elaborate?’

  Bognor began to get very cold feet indeed.

  ‘I have reason to suspect,’ he said very deliberately, ‘that a certain person, now deceased, was aware of such an agreement between you and Mr Harris and was using it for the purposes of blackmail.’

  ‘And how might that have been achieved?’

  ‘If either your father or Lord Wharfedale were to discover that their heir was going to sell out to a rival they would be quite likely to disinherit that heir.’

  ‘It’s conceivable.’

  ‘So I want to know whether such an agreement is in existence.’

  Elliston Gravelle continued to play with the ruler. Eventually he said: ‘I’m sorry, Mr … er Bognor, but I am unable to help you.’

  ‘But this is a murder enquiry.’

  ‘If, Mr Bognor, it is a murder enquiry, I will be happy to answer any questions from the proper authority which in this case is the police. However I am not able to discuss commercial matters relating to the future of this company with officials from the Board of Trade. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry too.’

  ‘Good-bye, Mr Bognor, thank you for coming.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Good-bye, Mr Bognor.’

  He was angry now. Angry principally because he was increasingly certain that he was right, and increasingly afraid that he was going to be foiled. Perhaps Gringe, with all his talk of privilege, had been right. Perhaps the strong would survive while poor old Eric, the honest toiler of modest origins, would go to the wall. He knew now why he thought Bertie was the murderer. Not because of the feeble lie about sacking Derby although that was crucial, but because he could feel the Establishment closing ranks already. Elliston Gravelle had signed that agreement. He was sure of it, but Gravelle was going to protect his old mucker from Oxford. And the police with the easy option of choosing Gringe would hardly try to pin a murder on such a celebrated and privileged Establishment figure as Bertie.