by Tim Heald
‘OK,’ said Gabrielle, undoing her apron and then taking a Gitane from a packet on the draining board. ‘Let’s talk.’
‘Where?’
‘Outside. By the pool. And I’d like Amanda to hear everything too.’
Outside, the moon had risen higher and some of the lights in the town had gone out. Cicadas competed with the orchestra, and it was warm. To Bognor it felt as if they were in a low to moderate oven, sitting on a rising loaf.
‘Well?’ he asked, when they had found a corner hidden from crowds by a mess of bougainvillea.
‘How much do you know?’
‘Knowing might be putting it a little too strongly,’ he said. ‘But I believe that Pring is threatening you because the little part-time espionage ring or blackmail ring, or whatever you choose to call it, won’t go in with him.’
‘I …’ she began to protest, but Bognor cut her off. ‘At the moment I’m not concerned with what you may or may not have done,’ he said. ‘I happen to think that you slipped Scoff contraceptive pills, hoping that you would depress him so much that he’d eventually commit suicide, leaving the whole shooting match to you.’
‘I didn’t think he’d commit suicide. That’s not what they said …’ She stopped and took another Gitane from her shoulder bag. ‘It wasn’t meant to turn out like that. Not at all.’
‘Just now I’m not concerned with the past. I’m more concerned with what is likely to happen in the immediate future. I don’t care who you may have killed or caused to be killed. Not for the moment. I’m much more worried about whether Pring killed Blight-Purley, whether he did so because Delphine Bitschwiller wanted him to, whether he is bullying you. And whether he is bullying you on Bitschwiller’s behalf. So I only need you to tell me one thing: Does Aubrey Pring want you to enter an exclusive arrangement with Bitschwiller?’
She didn’t say anything. The end of the cigarette glowed bright as she inhaled, then he smelt the unmistakable French tobacco smoke as she breathed out and simultaneously nodded her head.
‘Providing the same sort of, ah, service that one of your colleagues did when he spied on me at the Orange Lily.’
‘You were indiscreet,’ she said. ‘But that was nothing to do with me. Not my idea at all.’
‘You didn’t know about it?’
‘Not until later.’
‘And Petrov, what about him?’
‘I thought you were not interested in the past.’
Bognor sighed. ‘All right. The past will have to come later. Has Pring given you an ultimatum?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘I have promised a final decision before we touch down at Roissy on the way home.’
‘We don’t have much time,’ said Bognor. ‘What is your answer going to be?’
‘I must consult with my … colleagues,’ she answered, ‘but if what you suspect about Colonel Blight-Purley is correct, then I do not believe I have an alternative. It is possible, you know, for someone like Aubrey to destroy me professionally. He would not have to kill me to do that.’
‘Especially if he really is the Guide Bitschwiller man.’
On the far side of the pool someone stood faintly lit by a mauve spotlight, then dived in and began to crawl gently in their direction.
‘But you want to keep your little network to yourself, Gabrielle, is that right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You’re not the only one.’
‘You mean Ebertson.’ She said the name disparagingly.
Bognor sucked his teeth. ‘So he’s been involving himself a little more than he cares to admit,’ he ventured.
Gabrielle remained silent.
‘Which,’ continued the Board of Trade’s Special Investigator, ‘means simply that we have to find some way of sorting out Aubrey Pring.’
‘Er, hmmm.’ Amanda Bullingdon, who had said nothing throughout this revelatory interlude, cleared her throat ostentatiously and mouthed, ‘Cave.’ The swimmer was approaching their corner of the pool and was even now clambering up the ladder on to the marble pavement.
He stood there for a minute or two, then wandered, apparently purposelessly in their direction. A few feet away he became recognizable to them, and they, evidently, to him. ‘Hello, you lot,’ said Aubrey. ‘Congratulations on the omelettes, you girls, I can’t think how you do it.’ He paused and burped noisily. ‘Sorry,’ he said, as the sound died away, and then turned to go. Just as he was walking away he seemed to think of something and stopped. ‘Oh, Simon,’ he said, ‘you haven’t heard from your friend Monica, have you?’
Bognor swore inwardly but answered as evenly as he was able. ‘No. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Pring. The damp flop of his footsteps faded away into the Mexican night until they were drowned by the band which had just embarked on a discordant rendering of ‘La Bamba’. This time Bognor swore out loud.
8
THE RETURN FLIGHT TO England was grim in almost every conceivable respect. It was delayed; there was what airline officials referred to as ‘turbulence’ which made Bognor feel even iller than previously; the party was over; the party was hung over; Bognor himself was very hung over. He was also more depressed than he could remember. Somewhere in the bowels of the Boeing lay the mortal remains of the late Colonel Erskine Blight-Purley. The Colonel had been fished from the water some twenty-four hours after entering it. Literally. A Mexican fishing smack had netted him not far from the spot where he had dropped in. Subsequent events proved confused and confusing. The authorities had wanted some form of inquest. The captain of the boat had asked for compensation due to the damage inflicted on the netting. The undertaker had been unable to provide oak. There was trouble over identification. The sorting out had fallen to Aubrey Pring and had involved, on Pring’s own admission, the greasing of a great many already well-oiled Mexican palms with a ludicrous quantity of vividly coloured Mexican bank notes.
‘Only language these chappies understand,’ he had said to Bognor as, from force of newly acquired habit, he had pressed pesetas into the hand of the startled emigration official.
‘It’s the same the whole world over,’ Bognor replied, lugubriously. He had bought Monica a large over-priced bottle of scent in the Acapulco duty-free shop. Now, sitting in the jumping jet as it flung them around on the edge of some tropical storm, he wondered again if it would do anything to placate her. He was in no doubt that someone would have fulfilled their part of the blackmailer’s bargain and told her of his night at the Orange Lily. It seemed supremely unimportant. Indeed, looking across at Amanda Bullingdon dozing in the seat beside him, it seemed inconceivable that they had ever shared anything quite so intimate as bed.
He fiddled with his headphones, trying to find the Mozart. Certainly things had happened in Acapulco. Enough for Parkinson not to dock his leave by double? He doubted it. He had, if he was absolutely honest with himself, no firm solutions to offer, only new crimes to solve. He nodded his head in time to ‘Il mio tesoro’ and peered out of the window at cloud. Could it be cumulus? Was Aubrey Pring at the bottom of it all? He wished he knew. Was there such a thing in the world as certainty—or proof? Wasn’t there an area of detection in which people dealt with fingerprints and alibis and Bradshaw’s train timetables and solid incontrovertible things called facts? ‘In this life, we want nothing, but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’ he recited to himself.
Something else that had happened in Acapulco was that he had contracted a touch of that embarrassing affliction known as Montezuma’s Revenge. He unfastened his seat belt, unhooked his headphones, brushed past Amanda and headed down the aisle in the direction of the lavatories. A stewardess blocked his way. She was holding an envelope.
‘Monsieur Bognor?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is for you.’
She handed him the letter and smiled the regulation inhuman smile of airline stewardesses the world over.
‘Thank you.’ He stuffed it in his poc
ket and did not take it out until several minutes later when he had returned to his seat. Before opening it he gazed at it. There was no stamp. He had no idea where it came from. He was not expecting any post. Indeed its arrival seemed a violation of air space. Here, thirty thousand feet up, one was surely entitled to some peace. Turning it over he saw that on the flap there was a ritzy ‘B’, carefully surrounded with what looked like wrought-iron vine leaves. He knew what that meant. The note, in impeccable calligraphy, read:
Dear Mr Bognor,
I am sorry that we had so little chance to talk in Acapulco. I wonder if you would care to stay with us this weekend on your way home. It will be very quiet but there should be an opportunity for you to see how we work. If you are agreeable, you could join us on the journey from Charles de Gaulle and I can arrange for a car to return you to the airport so that you will be in England in time for the office on Monday! Perhaps you would be kind enough to give your reply to one of the cabin staff.
Yours sincerely, Delphine Bitschwiller.
‘Ho, hum,’ he said, loudly. He had, inevitably, one of those feelings. Pring suspected that he suspected. After observing them at the swimming pool he probably knew that Bognor suspected. The remark about Monica had been more than a casual cattiness. He had reported the matter to Delphine. Hence the invitation. But what was Delphine going to do? There were only two possibilities. Either she was going to try to buy him off, or knock him off, just as Blight-Purley and the others had been knocked off. Or conceivably she might try to allay his suspicions. That was the least likely of all. His suspicions were now well past allaying. He took a postcard from the pocket on the seat in front, rummaging awkwardly among the reinforced brown paper vomit bag and the multitudinous maps, then wrote:
That would be very nice indeed. Accept with much pleasure, Simon Bognor.
The same stewardess was walking down the aisle looking officious. Bognor smiled at her. ‘I wonder if you’d mind giving this to Madame Bitschwiller?’ he asked. She smiled back the same meaningless smile and took the card.
‘Plastic bag,’ he thought to himself unreasonably.
Beside him Amanda stirred. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Mexico time or London time?’
‘Oh.’ She stretched and smiled a sleepy smile. ‘I forgot we were up here.’
‘Where did you think we were?’
‘Bed,’ she said mischievously.
‘I’m spending the weekend chez Bitschwiller.’
‘God! Why?’
‘She asked.’
‘But mightn’t that be frightfully dangerous?’
He mimicked her. ‘Frightfully dangerous. Frightfully frightfully dangerous.’
‘Many a true word …’
‘I’m not jesting. Have you spoken to Gabrielle?’
Since the sudden burst of revelation Gabrielle had avoided Bognor, hardly acknowledging him. She was apprehensive and had admitted to Amanda that she had said too much. Now, apparently, she was saying nothing more, not even to Amanda, with whom she had begun to develop this unlikely understanding.
‘No. Well, not seriously.’
‘So you’ve no idea what answer she’s going to give Pring?’
‘No.’
‘You’re a lot of help.’
‘Sorry.’
Bognor settled glumly back into his seat and tuned back to the Mozart. They were now on to horn concertos. Perhaps it didn’t matter whether Gabrielle succumbed to Pring’s threats, he thought. Such a capitulation was surely reversible. Besides, it would buy time: time for him to prove Aubrey Pring a murderer. He grimaced. He was becoming increasingly certain that Pring had tampered with the mechanism of the parachute, but there was no way whatever of proving that in a British court of law, much less a Mexican one. ‘Oh God!’ he said loudly.
Amanda patted his knee. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, appearing to read his thoughts, ‘people who don’t know you as well as I do are sometimes quite impressed with your knowledge and perception.’
He removed the headphones. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said angrily. ‘You don’t know me that well. Besides, who?’
‘Gabrielle, for instance.’
‘She’s not the least impressed.’
‘She is, quite. And ffrench-Thomas.’
‘He’s just a heavy.’
‘You underestimate yourself. After all, you represent the Board of Trade. That is part of the government. People are afraid of the British Government, so up to a point, at least, they’re afraid of you.’
‘Oh, balls,’ he said.
VIP treatment was not something to which Bognor was used, and yet at Charles de Gaulle airport this time, VIP treatment was what Bognor got. He seemed scarcely to have time to say good-bye to his friends and colleagues before he was sitting in the back of a well sprung black Citroën. Next to him, a tartan travelling rug over her knees, was la Veuve. In front next to the grey-capped chauffeur was Aubrey Pring.
‘I gather you’ve tumbled our little secret,’ he said, half-turning to the rear seat, as the limousine creamed away towards the N3 and Château-Thierry.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Bognor.
Pring smiled with an expression of both duplicity and complicity.
‘La Guide. That I’m the Guide inspector for the UK.’
‘Oh, that.’ Bognor was relieved. For a hideous moment he was afraid there was going to be some confrontation right there in the cruising Citroën. A quick shot, a brief opening of the door, a bloodstained corpse by the roadside. But no. Nothing so obvious. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘I had rather gathered that was so.’
‘It’s one of those half-open secrets, I suppose,’ said Pring, ‘but not that many people know. I’d rather you kept it under your chapeau. Eh?’
‘Of course,’ said Bognor, ‘I wouldn’t dream of embarrassing you.’
‘Naturally not.’
‘Have you been to Champagne before Mr Bognor?’ asked Delphine.
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Ah. I hope you will find it interesting.’
‘I’m sure I shall.’ He hoped his constitution was going to stand up to the car ride.
‘We should be there in time for lunch,’ said Pring.
‘Lunch?’ Bognor sounded incredulous. Whatever Pring and French time might say, his body told him very definitely that lunch was a long way off.
‘Just something light,’ said Delphine, ‘then we can show you around. But don’t worry, we will allow you a little rest after lunch. A nap. Forty winks.’ Like a lot of foreigners with excellent English she took an obvious delight in archaic colloquialism.
They lapsed into silence. Bognor dozed. So did the others. The countryside, on those few occasions when he opened an eye and was able to take it in, seemed flatly drab. It was a grey day and drizzle fell in a fog. After about two hours Pring said, ‘Vines.’ Bognor shaded his eyes and saw a gentle hillside with stunted green shrubs staked out on it. ‘The Maine,’ added Pring pointing to the river on their left, grey as the day. ‘The English dead,’ he began and stopped.
The vines continued broken only by villages less glamorous than their name suggested: Try Vassieux, Trossy, Mareuil le Port, Port-à-Binson, Oeuilly, Montvoisin Villesaint. On the outskirts of Epernay the Citroën swung left through Dizy Magenta and Hautvillers and then right on a lane which was scarcely more than a track. ‘We are rather out on our own,’ said Delphine. ‘Many of our competitors are what you would call a little hugger-mugger, all higgledy-piggledy next door to each other in the towns. The Bitschwillers have always been aloof. Proud.’ They continued for another winding mile and then Delphine said, ‘You will see the house around the next corner.’ She was correct. As they turned the corner, Bognor saw through the misty rain a square, stone house with a high, pointed green roof and dormer windows. It was surrounded by outbuildings which looked like stables but were presumably dedicated to viticulture in some form. Immediately before the château was a gravelled courtyard. Steps led from this
to a raised portico which Bognor adjudged to be something added to the original house within the last two hundred years. ‘Most of it is what you would call Georgian,’ said Delphine, following his inquisitive look, ‘though there have been additions.’ A uniformed footman scrunched over the gravel and opened the back door for la Veuve. The chauffeur got out and opened the other door for Bognor. At the top of the steps more servants appeared: maids in white pinafores and starched caps, men in aprons, a butler. ‘Mr Bognor, I expect you would like to see your room and wash, before lunch. I suggest we assemble in the drawing room in—shall we say twenty minutes?’
‘Fine.’ One of the aproned men took his case and led him up the staircase with its twirling balustrade. Bognor noticed the portraits of generations of Bitschwillers: haughty visaged autocrats with mean eyes. His room was at the end of a long corridor and overlooked first farm buildings and then vineyard, though it was not possible to see further than a few hundred yards on account of the weather. It was a plain room with a couple of nineteenth-century prints on the walls and a four-poster bed with fading hangings in the centre. In one corner was a wash basin with a china pitcher to one side and, greatest luxury of all, a grate with a handful of small logs burning smokily. The servant put down Bognor’s cases and departed, mumbling Gallic obsequities.
Bognor rinsed his face and sat down heavily on the counterpane. Almost unconsciously he reviewed the events of the last few weeks, allowing his mind to race unfettered over the deaths and the deceptions, the threats and the treacheries. It was an inconclusive piece of day-dreaming, except that it ended in the acknowledgement that the ball was firmly in the enemy court. The invitation was clearly the prelude to something, and Bognor was perfectly willing to allow la Veuve and Aubrey Pring to retain their initiative. He had no particular cards to play and he was certain that they for their part were about to reveal their hand.