Just Desserts (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  The drawing room was oddly bare, almost unfurnished, like the bedroom. There was some good, though teutonic furniture; bookshelves contained, French classics apart, the complete works of Sir Walter Scott in English and, still more remarkably, those of Percy F. Westerman.

  ‘We have always suffered from an embarras of anglophilia,’ said his hostess. ‘I had an English nanny. Norland. From Eastbourne, I believe.’

  ‘Really.’ Bognor accepted the glass of Bitschwiller offered by the minion. It was ’69, he noticed. The carpets were sparse and very old. The pictures were few: a couple of family portraits, a water-colour of Champagne countryside. The only other decoration was a large boar’s head above the door.

  ‘I thought I’d show you the cellars after lunch,’ said Pring. ‘Delphine has some business to catch up on, and she also has some organizing for our good selves. She had a plot to invite ourselves over to see the Clicquot people I believe. Isn’t that right, Delphine?’ Pring was markedly less deferential to his employer than he had seemed before.

  Delphine nodded agreement. Bognor did the same. ‘Sounds fine,’ he said. They had only the one drink before moving into the dining room. The meal was simple but perfect: Oeufs Mayonnaise; a lightly grilled entrecôte with frites and haricots verts. The Brie afterwards was a little chalky for his taste, but the Millefeuille made up for it. The main bore as far as he was concerned was that they drank Bitschwiller throughout. Conversation was spare and discreet. They were all tired. Of the three Pring flagged the least. Afterwards there was marc de champagne, good black coffee with the utterly inimitable French aroma and taste, and small Havana cigars brought to France through the good offices of a nephew in the Corps Diplomatique.

  ‘And now,’ said Delphine, rising to go, ‘if you will excuse me, I must make arrangements. I will leave you two boys to take a promenade in the cellars.’ She held out a hand for shaking. ‘Have a pleasant afternoon,’ she said, gazing intently into Bognor’s eyes. ‘It has been so nice to have met you.’

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, jovially.

  She seemed oddly and momentarily disconcerted. Bognor felt a sudden emptiness in his stomach. Then with an obvious effort she smiled again. ‘But of course.’ She said. ‘A bientôt.’

  ‘Remarkable person,’ vouchsafed Pring, helping himself to another marc when she had left the room. ‘They say she has only one lung. Something to do with the Germans, I believe.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Bognor. ‘How long have you known her?’

  ‘Oh, quite a long time.’ He savoured his cigar. ‘How did you enjoy Acapulco?’ he asked, conversationally.

  ‘Not all that much,’ confessed Bognor. ‘I’m afraid the Blight-Purley business rather upset me.’

  ‘Quite,’ Pring sipped. ‘The dinner was a bit of a farce, too. No style.’

  ‘No, not much.’

  ‘The French manage this sort of thing so much better when they’re left to their own devices.’

  Bognor considered. ‘You’ve always been a bit of a Francophile.’

  ‘You make it sound like an accusation,’ said Pring mildly. Bognor wondered if the mildness was deceptive or real. It was difficult to think of him as being in any way dangerous.

  ‘You have been hiding your light rather.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Not letting on that you were the Guide Bitschwiller Inspector.’

  ‘Well, it’s not the sort of thing that should be broadcast. The Michelin people are anonymous. It’s only the sort of egocentric amateurs who advertise themselves in The Good Food Guide who are anything else.’

  ‘Did ffrench-Thomas know?’

  Pring glanced at him in the old-fashioned way.

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just curiosity. After all, he is the Bitschwiller rep.’

  ‘That’s rather different. He is exactly that. A rep. A lackey.’ He took a gold hunter from his waistcoat pocket and clicked his tongue.

  ‘Time for the cellars, I think.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Bognor looked around the room, feeling absurdly like a man going to execution, catching his last glimpse of the real world. Would he ever see daylight again?

  ‘There’s no one there on Saturday afternoons,’ said Pring, ‘so we’ll need a key. Hang on a tick.’

  He disappeared, returning shortly with an old-fashioned black key of the style and proportions Bognor associated with dungeon doors.

  ‘Right. Shall I lead?’

  ‘Lead on.’

  They went out into a hallway, down a corridor and stopped at what could easily have passed muster as a dungeon door. ‘Family entrance,’ Pring explained, heaving it open. ‘The main one’s in the yard. Mind your step.’ The stairway was steep and there was no rail. The light was provided by dim single bulbs.

  ‘Very dank,’ said Bognor shivering slightly.

  ‘It’s the chalk,’ explained his guide. ‘Constant temperature of between ten and eleven centigrade and humidity between seventy and ninety per cent all the year round.’ They reached the floor, and Bognor saw that they were standing in a long vault much the same shape and size as the tunnel of a London underground station. Ranged along the walls were countless bottles top downwards in racks. ‘Ready for the remuage,’ said Pring. ‘You understand the principle.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ He grabbed hold of a couple of bottle bottoms and with quick flicks of the wrist shook and twisted them. ‘They do it every day,’ he said, ‘gets the sediment down to the cork.’ He began to lecture, steadily explaining the eccentric process of turning grapes into sparkling clear alcohol. He knew his stuff. Gradually as they paced the damp chill vaults Bognor became absorbed in what he was saying, scarcely noticing the distance they had covered. There were railway lines along some of the tunnels, just like those down coal mines. ‘There are a hundred and twenty miles of cellar under Champagne,’ intoned Pring, ‘and most of it’s been here since the Romans. Some of the galleries have never been properly explored. There are no maps.’

  ‘Very easy to get lost,’ said Bognor. He had wandered on ahead of Aubrey Pring and was examining racks of bottles dusty with age which extended above his head.

  ‘Ready for drinking,’ said the guide. ‘This morning’s bottles came from here. But that’s enough education for now.’ His tone had suddenly changed, taking on a new threatening dangerous inflection. ‘Turn!’ he ordered. ‘Hands above head.’

  Bognor did as he was told, Montezuma’s Revenge mingling with terror. He’d lost his concentration. ‘Idiot,’ he said to himself as he saw that in Pring’s now-extended right hand was a small shiny object. Bognor was no expert on firearms, but even he recognized a pistol.

  ‘As you say, very easy to get lost. There are shafts in places. One quite near here. Several hundred feet deep, water at the bottom. Quite uncharted. Anyone who didn’t know his way around could so easily have a nasty tumble, particularly with a little help from a friend. It’s happened before.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ protested Bognor, feebly.

  ‘I most certainly would.’ Pring grinned. ‘I killed Blight-Purley after all, as I understand you suspect. Not Scoff. That was Petrov. I don’t suppose Gabrielle told you about her little liaison with him. Gabrielle is less than honest. She will have to be taken in hand. Which, of course, has been the point of the exercise all along.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘I wonder.’ Pring’s manner was conversational, almost amiable. ‘The trouble with you,’ he went on, ‘is that one really can’t be sure. My own feeling has been that you know very little, whatever you may suspect. Delphine, alas for you, thinks otherwise. She feels you were too close to the late and unlamented Colonel B.-P. for comfort. It was quite a feat for him to recall the origins of Oreille de Cochon. Extraordinary in its way.’

  Bognor noticed that Pring was beginning to wave the gun about in a cavalierly casual manner.

  ‘And you killed Petrov?’

  ‘Amazing ho
w things can pan out,’ he grinned again. ‘We’d wanted him out of the way for ages, and he was making a nuisance of himself bidding for the Scoff network. But those louts ffrench-Thomas and Dotto decided he’d be better off dead as well. It was a very ham-fisted effort, but there you are.’

  Drink and jet-lag were beginning to tell. Pring now had one hand in his pocket. With his other, the gun hand, he scratched his ear. Bognor calculated the distance at about fifteen yards. The light was rotten. Behind him it was worse still, and there was a protruding piece of rock about five paces away. A sudden dive and he might just make it.

  ‘What are you going to do with me?’

  ‘Oh, down the shaft. You’ll be dead first, so you won’t drown. Not like the Colonel. One neat shot through the head and away you go. Nobody will ever be able to find you.’

  ‘But they’ll suspect.’

  ‘They won’t be able to prove anything. I’ll say you wandered off. Next thing I knew there was a scream and a crash and …’

  Bognor dived.

  Behind him there was a shot, but it was very late and very badly aimed. Before Pring could have a second go he was behind the chalk buttress. Another gallery stretched away to his left. It was very dark indeed.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ called Pring. ‘You haven’t an earthly.’

  Desperately, Bognor looked around for a weapon. There were only bottles. Bottles! He grabbed one, swung it behind him and chucked it out in Pring’s direction. The only response was laughter and footsteps approaching. Bognor picked up another two bottles and made a run for it. Another shot blasted out behind him and caught the chalk above his left shoulder, then another which ripped into a rack of champagne causing another explosion, louder than the first. ‘Damn!’ shouted Pring, ‘You’re being ridiculous.’

  The explosion had given Bognor an idea. Pring was silhouetted in the entrance to the gallery. Bognor was in relative darkness. Pring presented a target, if only he had a gun. Very quietly he undid the wire around the top of one champagne bottle. Then he gave it a couple of quick shakes, aimed it in the direction of his adversary and eased the cork with his thumb. There was a pop and a shrill exclamation, more of surprise than pain. ‘You stupid sod!’ Pring exclaimed, laughing slightly madly. Once more he started to advance. Once more Bognor shot a champagne cork. This time there was no response. The gallery was narrowing now. Bognor felt his way along the walls. It was very dark.

  Suddenly he moved his foot out and felt it connect with nothing. He moved it around. Still nothing. Then to back and one to side he felt terra firma. ‘It must be the shaft,’ he thought to himself. At last a thin, desperate beginning of hope began to permeate his brain. As quickly as possible he eased round the hole in the ground which he reckoned to be a circle of about six feet in diameter.

  ‘There’s no way out down there,’ Pring’s voice sounded sure of itself. ‘It’s a dead end. You might as well give up now.’

  Bognor reckoned there were only a few steps between Pring and the hole. Somehow he must make him accelerate. ‘Come and get me,’ he injected a note of pleading into his voice. ‘My shoulder’s gone. That second shot …’ he simulated the sound of tears and choking. The acting was hammy but effective.

  ‘Snivelling little creep,’ said Pring, ‘I should leave you there to die slowly but being, whatever my Francophile leanings, humane and British I shall allow you the luxury of a quick and …’ The sentence was lost in the scream which followed the missed footing. He had relaxed. He had fallen. Bognor, to his enormous discredit, let out a howl of triumph. It was a drawn out, lengthy howl, and it was over when, in the ensuing stillness, he heard from the depths a muffled splash. ‘God,’ he whispered out loud and, staggering back past the shaft’s opening, was suddenly and violently sick.

  It took him the best part of an hour to find his way upstairs, and when he did there were yet more surprises. In the hall were two men unmistakably French and, by the cut of their raincoats and the style of their shoes, policemen. They were arguing politely but firmly and volubly with la Veuve. As he emerged noisily and bedraggled into the presence the argument ceased. For a moment he saw a look of supreme irritation cross Delphine Bitschwiller’s aristocratic mask of a face. Almost immediately it was replaced with one of worry and concern.

  ‘Mr Bognor,’ she cried, ‘are you all right?’

  ‘I’m OK,’ Bognor gasped theatrically. ‘It’s your chap Pring. He’s fallen down a hole.’

  Epilogue

  MONICA TOOK THE CREDIT. Shortly after her lover had left for Acapulco, she received a phone call from a stranger with a muffled voice who told her that Simon had spent a night with a woman called Amanda Bullingdon, at a pub called the Orange Lily.

  ‘Naturally, I paid no attention,’ she explained patiently when she rang Parkinson. ‘You know him as well as I do. It’s quite out of the question. But the mere fact that someone has suggested it means that something’s up.’

  Later, when he had not returned on the scheduled flight, she managed to contact Amanda.

  ‘She denied it,’ she told Parkinson, when she made her second call. ‘In fact, she seemed rather insulted at the idea. Which is a little insulting for me, don’t you think?’ Amanda had told her of Bognor’s weekend chez Bitschwiller. She had told Parkinson. Parkinson, now, finally alerted and only too well aware of his subordinate’s capacity for dangerous muddle, had asked the French authorities to check. They had checked.

  ‘Bloody silly,’ they had both said to Bognor when he arrived home. ‘A lot of dead people,’ said Parkinson, ‘but what do we have to show for it?’

  ‘We have unlimited access to the former Scoff network,’ riposted Bognor.

  ‘Not interested,’ said Parkinson, but he did not dock his leave.

  Monica was marginally more charitable. ‘Nice to have you back,’ she said, ‘but you’re getting disgustingly fat.’

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Simon Bognor Mysteries

  Prologue

  THE PERSONAL RAILROAD CAR of Sir Roderick Farquhar was a glorious anachronism in a country otherwise short on such eccentricity. It had been rescued from the breaker’s yard by Sir Roderick himself and restored to its former luxury under his own scrupulous supervision. That night as it rattled out of Moose Jaw station en route for Swift Current, Medicine Hat and the Pacific coast it was the only antique in the train, a single memory of the old Canadian Pacific lingering on among the shiny new blue-and-gold coaches of VIA, the Canadian answer to Amtrak and British Rail. Along its varnished purple side the gilded legend ‘Spirit of Saskatoon’ glittered in the moonlight. Inside in the refurbished galley, jars of plovers’ eggs and pots of Oxford marmalade jostled the Gentleman’s Relish and bottles of lychees in kirsch. The wine cellar was stocked with port from the House of Warre and claret from Château Lafite, and in the dining saloon, in a drawer of the Georgian sideboard, there were two boxes of Cuban cigars, nine inches long, a present from the President.

  Outside in the vast emptiness of the northern night, the silence was broken only by the steady thump and clatter of the train and the lonely cry of a loon. Inside the ticker-tape chattered spasmodically but did nothing to disturb its owner who had dined well. Being head of the Mammon Corporation had its compensations. Sir Roderick had been operated on for ulcers and had long ago discarded the last of his four wives, but he was rich and he was powerful. Mammoncorp was the largest conglomerate in the Dominion, the fifth-richest in North America and the tenth in the world. The Farquhar family fortunes, while below the billion mark, were, nonetheless, adequate and his annual income was at a level appropriate to his needs.

  Tonight he had dined with his private secretary, Prideaux, who had then retired to his modest quarters in another part of the coach. Sir Roderick had made two telephone calls, one to Caracas and the other to Zurich, before putting down his Havana, replenishing his cognac and retiring for the night. As always he drew his own bath. This had become a ritual and no one else in the world, not wives, not
mistresses, not manservants, had ever adequately managed it. He liked the water to be warm but not hot and he liked it to be of such a height that when his frame was immersed the surface came to a level no more than a centimetre below the auxiliary drain hole. The bath was an eighteenth-century Florentine tub rescued from a decaying palazzo five years before, not only commodious but a sound investment too. It was his habit to pour the water, place the latest copy of the Wall Street Journal, the Toronto Financial Post, the London Financial Times and the city pages of Die Welt and Asahi Shimbun on the walnut reading tray, add not more than three drops of his Balenciaga bath oil and stir it judiciously with the three remaining fingers of his left hand. Only then did he divest himself of his silk, monogrammed robe and enter the waters gingerly but with the keen anticipation of the genuine sybarite. He took his pleasures with the true seriousness of the convert, for he was a son of the manse and had been brought up strictly on porridge and corporal punishment.

  This night between Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat his pervading sense of loneliness and failure was numbed as usual by the external warmth of the bath water and the internal warmth of the alcohol. The steam rising from the surface of the ocean between chin and toes was so fragrant that he breathed it in deeply, savouring the scent of pine needle and jasmine and feeling so contentedly sleepy in so peaceful a manner that no one would have believed that he was inhaling the odour of death.

  Next morning at six, Amos Littlejohn, the burly Louisiana-born ex-heavyweight boxer who had been senior steward to the president of Mammoncorp for the past ten years, knocked on the door of his master’s bedroom. The silver tray which he carried so cleverly immobile in his left hand supported a goblet of fresh grapefruit juice and a pot of newly-brewed coffee made with a half-and-half mixture of Jamaican and Brazilian beans. There being no answer Littlejohn gently opened the door and raised the blind. When he had done so he turned to the bed and was sufficiently surprised by its pristine emptiness to spill two or three drops of grapefruit juice. The aroma of lavender bags reproached him and he hurried away in search of Prideaux.