Carnage on the Committee: A Robert Amiss/Baroness Jack Troutbeck Mystery

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘Apparently not. Said he’d just remembered something he had to tell her, but Hermione had begun to put some twos and twos together.’

  ‘You can’t believe anything that noxious old bitch says,’ said Amiss crossly. ‘She’d character-assassinate her sick grannie.’

  ‘That may be so, but we can’t ignore her testimony. That’s why Jim’s interviewing Sir William again tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You, not me, Ellis, I’m afraid. That call I took as we arrived here was to tell me about another meeting with the AC tomorrow. More nit-picking and recommendations from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious. I’ll have to swap with you and see Ferriter instead since Rawlinson asked me to come to his City office and Soho’s much better for me. Sorry.’

  ‘Rawlinson must be better than Ferriter, Ellis. Honestly.’ Amiss spooned some more chicken in lemon sauce onto his plate. ‘Oh, no. I’m being insensitive. You do hate asking people whom they’re sleeping with, don’t you?’

  Pooley straightened his shoulders. ‘I’m a policeman. I have to take the rough with the rough.’

  ***

  Milton shook off his annoyance with the AC as he sat in the bar of the Groucho drinking coffee. He had become mesmerised by Felix Ferriter’s tongue stud, for the professor had a big mouth and the stud was very visible. What a little squirt, thought Milton. And a cross-looking little squirt at that. Being sartorially conservative, Milton did not think Ferriter well-served by his dyed, gelled red hair, his designer stubble, his black eyeliner or the leather shirt open to the waist which revealed a scrawny chest with two pierced nipples. ‘So what is your opinion of your colleagues on the Knapper-Warburton, Professor Ferriter?’

  ‘Their taste is so retro,’ said Ferriter querulously.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Retro. Y’know.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘So yesterday.’

  ‘You mean old-fashioned?’

  ‘Yeah. I mean Hermione was the only one who’d embraced Queer Studies, and even she was only just beginning to get a grip on post-postmodernism and avant-pop.’

  Milton tried hard to conceal his irritation. ‘Professor, I am a policeman, not a literary critic. Would you please be good enough to use words I can understand?’

  Ferriter bridled. ‘OK, OK. What d’you want?’

  ‘I want to know if you’ve any idea why anyone would want to kill Lady Babcock.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t notice any particular tensions on the committee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you mean everyone got on well together?’

  ‘D’you mean psycho-dynamically?’

  ‘I mean, did everyone get on well together?’ asked Milton levelly.

  Ferriter looked mutinous for a moment, then shrugged. ‘No. There were a lot of arguments. Griffiths and Den Smith were always shouting.’

  ‘How did you and your colleagues get on with Lady Babcock?’

  ‘Hey, dude, I can’t deconstruct the whole fuckin’ committee for you. I hardly knew any of them and I was thinking of the books, not the hidden narratives.’ Seeing Milton’s glare, he hastily added, ‘She was OK as chair. Well, OK for me. Maybe not for the retro crowd.’

  ‘Did you know her well?’

  ‘Sort of. Lectures. Conferences. Committees. Professional discourse. But we didn’t hang out. Didn’t do much facemailing.’

  ‘You didn’t do much what?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t meet and talk much. Anyway, I’ve been moving on. Queering up.’

  Milton’s phone rang. It was with great relief that he heard that he was urgently needed at the office to deal with a crisis in the Ealing axe-murder case.

  ***

  The phone rang just as Amiss had despatched his least favourite character over the edge of a cliff and, as a result of several yowls from Plutarch, was thinking about breaking for lunch. ‘Hello…Ah, Ellis. How did you get on with the grieving widower?’

  ‘Very straightforward. He admitted to it immediately. He and Hermione had had an open marriage, he said—not in the sense that they told each other about their affairs, but in that neither of them asked the other awkward questions. He had, however, denied the relationship with Alina as he could see Hermione was not pleased about it. He saw her point of view. It is always bad manners to stray so close to home. And, of course, Hermione was a snob who was appalled he was sleeping with a servant. Still, he was unapologetic about Alina. It was an arrangement that suited everyone perfectly well. Hermione and he had long had a celibate marriage, Alina was a widow whose emotions were focused on her children in the Philippines and they were a comfort to each other.’

  ‘Did he pay her?’

  ‘He volunteered that he didn’t. Said firmly that she was a good and nice woman and not a prostitute. He gave her presents from time to time but that was it.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean that she didn’t think there was more to it.’

  ‘He’s said not. And she confirmed it.’

  ‘Oh, my poor Ellis. You had to ask her about sex too.’

  ‘It wasn’t so bad since he’d rung her after I left his office and told her to come clean. She said she liked William, he and Madam did not sleep together and what was the harm? Life could be lonely and male company was nice sometimes. Asked if she had ambitions to marry Sir William she looked at me as if I was mad. Pointed out she’d never dream of marrying a non-Catholic. In fact, she said she thought it likely he’d soon want to move into a service flat and she had saved enough money to retire back to the Philippines.’

  ‘Your conclusions?’

  ‘They’re probably both telling the truth.’

  ‘How disappointing. What are you doing this afternoon?’

  ‘Stocktaking. But there’s a change of plan this evening.’ Pooley sounded excited. ‘Mary Lou’s coming up. Says she’s fed up with baby-sitting Moaning Jack Troutbeck. And even more fed up with reading freshers’ bad essays.’

  ‘Oh good. At least, oh, good if we’re still meeting.’

  ‘Of course, Robert. But my place rather than yours. And take-away pizza rather than Chinese. She’s hungering for her American roots and wants some fast and indifferent food as an antidote to what Jack stuffs her with at St Martha’s. Even demanded Pepsi rather than wine and bad chocolate cake for afters.’

  ‘You can take the girl out of Minneapolis…’

  ‘But you can’t take Minneapolis out of the girl. I know. Bye.’

  ***

  ‘Why aren’t you wearing glasses today?’ asked Amiss of Georgie Prothero.

  ‘Because this isn’t a professional meeting.’

  ‘Don’t follow you.’

  ‘I don’t need glasses. I only wear those because they make me look serious and I can hide behind them. You don’t count.’

  Amiss surveyed Prothero critically. ‘I see what you mean. You’re a bit too pretty for your own professional good, aren’t you?’

  ‘I look like arm-candy, Robert. That’s bad in my game. Good PR people have to look duller than the people or products they’re pushing.’ He reached for a sandwich. ‘I’m dreading tomorrow’s meeting.’

  ‘Why particularly?’ asked Amiss, pouring them both more tea.

  ‘Because everyone’s even crosser than usual. Because they’ve all been complaining to me all hours of the day every day. Because I hate everyone on the committee. I had to talk to that rather dishy inspector about them this morning and I realised how much I hated them. He is, isn’t he?’

  ‘Who’s what?’

  ‘Inspector Pooley. Dishy.’

  ‘Didn’t notice it myself. But he’s clever.’

  ‘He certainly is. He seemed almost to know what I was thinking before I said it.’

  ‘Were you frank with him?’

  ‘Of course I was. You know me. When I spill, I spill. And when someone with a bod like that asks me to spill, I really spill. He knows how I hate every single
horrid judge.’

  ‘Except me.’

  ‘Except you.’

  ‘And Dervla.’

  ‘Well, all right. I don’t hate Dervla, but trying to get any sense out of her gives me a headache. I hate all the others.’

  ‘You can’t hate Jack Troutbeck yet.’

  ‘I don’t know her well enough to hate her, but she told me this morning to stop being such an old woman.’

  ‘What were you being an old woman about?’

  ‘I was just being thoughtful. Doing my job. Checking she knew how and when to get to Warburton House tomorrow and advising her about where she should park.’

  ‘Ah, yes. She has a slightly unorthodox approach to parking so your instructions would have seemed irrelevant.’

  ‘And she was so troublesome about food.’

  ‘In what context?’

  ‘She hadn’t realised that we’re given lunch after the meetings and she demanded to know what was on the menu.’

  Amiss worked hard at keeping his face straight. ‘And you said?’

  ‘I told her it was wonderful food and cited the salmon en croute we had last time.’

  ‘And she, no doubt, asked if the salmon was wild?’

  ‘You really know her, don’t you. Yes, she did. So I said I didn’t know and she snorted and started going on about the evils of fish farming with a digression on how few people knew how to make decent pastry.’

  ‘You’d better get used to it, Georgie. Jack likes her grub. And she likes her grub good.’

  Prothero’s voice rose. ‘As if I hadn’t enough to worry about. Look at the long-lists! I would defy the entire Foreign Office to find a way of reaching a decision that doesn’t involve half the judges walking out.’

  ‘That’s Jack’s problem. Not yours.’

  ‘The Big Knapperoonie will blame me. I’ll be back to doing PR for incontinence pads.’

  His phone rang. He looked at the screen and cast his eyes up to heaven. ‘Oh, God, it’s Hysteria. I don’t feel strong enough to take the call. She was on for an hour this morning being poisonous about you, Dervla and the Gee Gee. And even her unfortunate maid, who’d shattered her nerves by giving her the wrong cup and saucer at breakfast or something like that. I put the phone down for fifteen minutes in the middle and she didn’t even notice I’d gone.’

  ‘What did she say about me?’

  ‘Same as she said about them. No soul. Black aura. That sort of thing. Oh, yes. And she said she was sure the two of you were having an affair.’

  ‘Me having an affair with Dervla? I’m no paedophile.’

  ‘No. With the Gee Gee.’

  ‘With Geraint? Is she off her head? I mean more than usually so?’

  ‘She can’t see any other explanation as to why you agree with him about her favourite book.’

  ‘Anorexia Phlegmata! Too damn right I do. Do you know what it’s about?’

  ‘Well I assumed it was about some babe who was starving herself and being brave about it. But Hysteria said it was deeply perceptive and fastidiously spiritual. Or did she say spiritually fastidious?’

  ‘It’s pretentious, unreadable crap about a day in the life of Julia who works in Harrods’ Food Hall and feels sick in a hundred different ways depending on whether she’s being confronted by a carrot or an aubergine—interspersed with encounters with customers being brutally insensitive by actually asking her to pass them some vegetables. Along the way she nurtures a hopeless passion for the Indian on the cheese counter who never speaks to her. That enables her to meditate in a pseudy fashion among the potatoes on bits of the Bhagavadgita…’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Sacred Hindu stuff. Anyway, I had to read the whole fucking book because Wysteria was so keen and all I wanted was for the manager to transfer Julia to the meat section so she’d have to deal with the problem of selling beef.’

  Prothero shivered. ‘At least I haven’t had to read these books.’ His phone rang again. He peered at it. ‘Oh, I think she’s left a message.’ He nibbled a cucumber sandwich. ‘I feel strong enough now,’ he said and dialled the answering service. As he listened he began to look more angry than depressed. ‘How can she be so awful?’ he said when the call ended. ‘Who does she think I am?’

  Amiss raised an enquiring eyebrow.

  ‘She’s in Cambridge tonight reading in a bookshop and it’s going to go on later than expected and she’ll be too tired to go back to London tonight because of the gruelling day ahead of her. Can’t bear the thought of coming up by train tomorrow, though, as it’s likely to be so full it’ll bring on her claustrophobia and the people will be so noisy and terrible it’ll bring on a migraine too. Can I arrange for a car, would you please? It’s the least that can be done for her considering how much she’s suffering.’ He grabbed another sandwich. ‘Old bitch! Besides, if I hire a car for her and some of the others find out they’ll be demanding cars everywhere.’

  ‘You said she was in Cambridge, Georgie. Jack’s in Cambridge.’

  Prothero brightened. ‘Of course she is. Do you think she’d be prepared to give Wysteria a lift?’

  Amiss suddenly felt very happy. ‘I’m sure she’ll be absolutely delighted.’

  12

  ‘So what did you make of Georgie Prothero, Ellis?’

  ‘Amusing but a bit temperamental. No use, really. He didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.’

  ‘Murderer?’

  ‘If you can think of a good reason why he should kill someone he’s only ever met professionally.’

  Amiss smirked. ‘Well, he liked you.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear,’ said Pooley.

  ‘Tell us about Ferriter, Mary Lou,’ said Milton. ‘Revolting little creep. How can he possibly be a professor?’

  ‘Felix Ferriter is an asshole,’ said Mary Lou. ‘An alpha asshole and an alpha plus apparatchik.’ As she spoke, Amiss observed that Pooley had not lost the habit of looking slightly shocked when his beloved let fly. ‘For someone with a second-if not third-rate brain, he’s been a staggering success. And all because he’s a dedicated follower of academic fashion.’ She reached out for a slice of Pizza Continental. ‘Poor Jack. She’d sure have a seizure if she could see us now.’

  ‘You haven’t confessed your guilty gastronomic secrets to her?’

  ‘No. If she knew I sometimes nip out for a McDonald’s she’d not be able to sleep nights.’

  ‘Why didn’t she come up with you?’

  ‘Because the poor old thing still has a couple of books she just has to read and she’s already overwrought. When I left she had just jumped up and down—literally—on Uluroo.’

  ‘Uluroo?’ asked Pooley.

  ‘It’s a godawful Australian aboriginal novel,’ said Mary Lou.

  ‘To be precise,’ added Amiss, ‘it’s a look at Australia through the mind of a sentimental and intellectually-challenged kangaroo, which is presumably why Jack chose to leap on it rather than tear it apart.’

  ‘How bad is it that she was just about to embark on Closer to the Candle Flame?’

  ‘Bad. Very bad,’ said Amiss. ‘It’s French and about a girl whose phobia about moths leads her periodically to run naked through the streets when she fears her clothes are full of eggs. But being an existentialist, she spends the time in between musing on the moral implications of choosing such behaviour. It’s one of Hugo Hurlingham’s recommended reads: he can never get enough of existentialists.’

  Mary Lou took a happy draught of Pepsi. ‘But I guess it’s all going to get worse. She also had to sample one you said Ferriter was keen on.’

  ‘Which is?’ asked Milton.

  ‘This Hole My Centre. Sure, I can see you don’t believe me, Ellis, but as God is my witness, that’s what it’s called. It apparently explores the notion of the anus as the cradle and the anus as the grave through the eyes of an Albanian rent boy in Rome.’

  ‘Not just the eyes unfortunately,
’ said Amiss, as he refilled his glass with the Bordeaux which Mary Lou had spurned.

  ‘You see, as you know, Ferriter’s a recent and enthusiastic convert to what he calls QueerStud.’

  ‘I find the whole business completely confusing,’ said Milton. ‘I thought queer was a banned word years ago.’

  ‘Unless you’re gay,’ explained Mary Lou. ‘It’s like I can call another black nigger, but if you do it you’ll be in court. Anyway, Ferriter—who is, I should add, quite notorious in our profession—started his career as a straightforward Marxist critic because that’s what his professor was.’

  ‘This is completely beyond me,’ said Milton. ‘What do Marxists think about literature? I thought they concentrated on history and politics.’

  ‘No, no. Marxists take a view on most things and literature’s there to provide evidence of the wicked inequalities of society. Ammunition in the great struggle against the imperialistic and capitalistic oppression of the masses et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘It’s easy, really,’ said Amiss. ‘Marxist literary critics are like all Marxist commentators: they’re in the business of finding facts to bear out the conclusions they want to reach.’

  ‘Sounds like Geraint Griffiths,’ said Milton.

  ‘Geraint is an ex-Marxist who didn’t so much move on as do a U-turn,’ pointed out Amiss. ‘He’s an ideologue who’s become an enemy of ideologies.’

  ‘In a pretty ideological way,’ said Pooley.

  ‘Once a fanatic, always a fanatic,’ said Milton. ‘Which takes us back to Ferriter.’

  Mary Lou frowned. ‘Ferriter’s a fanatic only about his own career. He takes up these intellectual fashions at the drop of a hat and discards them just as lightly. He’s a natural linguist, I guess. But instead of learning real languages, he picks up a new language of criticism in no time at all. Writes like he talks—a mixture of yoof-drivel and incomprehensible and meaningless jargon that pleases whatever constituency he’s making eyes at.’

  Milton snorted. ‘You can say that again. Meaningless is what he does best. That and being so self-centred he’s got nothing useful to say about anyone.’

  ‘That figures. Anyway Marxist lit. crit. got him a foot on the Oxbridge ladder. Then he floated into Derridean semiotics.’