by Tim Heald
‘Always sounds mawkish,’ said Grithbrice.
Near the door Mr. Green, who was short, swarthy and good-looking in a short, swarthy way, was standing between Lady Abney and Lady McCrum. The two women were arguing over the top of Mr. Green’s head. Mr. Green watched and listened in the disinterested manner of an umpire at Wimbledon.
‘But, darling,’ said Lady Abney, ‘we just have to go on. We can’t possibly cancel every single invitation. There’s the press and the tea’s all ordered. It’s simply not fair on Canning. Besides we can’t afford it.’ She was in her early forties, scrupulously neat in tweed suit from either a select mail order business or one of the smarter London stores. Like Lady McCrum she wore pearls.
‘I still think it’s quite wrong,’ said Lady McCrum, ‘I appreciate that it involves you in a certain amount of inconvenience but it’s the least you can do. I know neither of you cared for Freddie but he’s dead now. I think you owe him a little respect. Don’t you, Mr. Green?’
Mr. Green appeared startled at being addressed. He thought for a moment and then said, ‘I think the Earl would have wanted the show to go on, and anyway I’ve always made it a rule never to let pleasure interfere with business.’
Before either of the women could question him on this curious remark there was a knock at the door and Mercer entered in the discreet and yet totally obtrusive manner of the well-trained servant. He made very little noise and his movements were tidy to the point, almost, of non-existence. And yet within a moment of his arrival conversation had ceased and everyone was looking at him. He went straight to Sir Canning and said softly but distinctly, ‘There’s another person here from the police, sir. Quite senior I should say. He says it’s important.’
Sir Canning frowned. ‘Show him up,’ he said.
A minute later there was another knock and Mercer came in with a weary, grey-haired, grey-suited and almost grey-faced man whom he announced as Inspector Smith.
‘Ah,’ Sir Canning advanced, hand outstretched. At embarrassing or inconvenient moments he was always able to retreat behind an inbred wall of charm and good manners. He introduced Inspector Smith to the assembled guests and offered coffee and a cucumber sandwich. The policeman accepted the coffee and declined the sandwich.
‘Might I have a word with you, sir?’ he inquired as the room murmured with a stilted attempt at normal conversation.
‘If you insist. On the other hand, I suspect that we should all hear whatever it is that you have to say. We were all friends and colleagues of Lord Maidenhead. This has been a very sad and tragic loss for us all. Tragic. Truly tragic.’
‘Of course, sir.’ The Inspector looked at the floor and coughed in an attempt to appear respectful and sympathetic. ‘Very well,’ he paused. ‘All your guests arrived last night, did they, sir?’
‘They did.’
‘Ah. Well. Perhaps it might be as well if I could say a few words to the assembled company.’ He took a large white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped coffee stains from his upper lip. Sir Canning, meanwhile, clapped his hands to attract attention—a superfluous gesture since every moment of their brief conversation had been monitored by everyone present.
‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ Sir Canning disliked having to address a gathering of intimate colleagues and rivals so formally, but he felt it was what the policeman wanted. Or needed. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Inspector Smith of the local constabulary would like a few words if you’ll honour him with your attention.’
Everyone turned, cups and saucers held in just such a way as to indicate attentiveness. Inspector Smith regarded them briefly and then said, rapidly and without expression, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I regret having to follow bad news with worse, but I have to tell you that the late Earl of Maidenhead did not die of natural causes but was shot through the head with a .22 rifle, and that in consequence I am compelled to assume that the deceased was murdered by a person or persons yet unknown.’
3
SIMON BOGNOR’S DAY BEGAN with a boiled egg and a call from the office. It was a long and one-sided telephone conversation but more cheerful than usual. Since his not wholly successful conduct of the Beaubridge Friary affair Bognor had been assigned to strictly routine duties. Parkinson had put him back on codes, ciphers and protocol and no one could pretend that this was interesting or amusing work. Today’s was a protocol mission and it was, at least, a day out. ‘The Umdaka of Mangolo,’ said Parkinson, ‘commonly known as George, is passionate about boats. I’ll have a word with Canning Abney myself to tell him he’ll have to look after George for a day, and I’ll tell him you’re coming down to arrange it. O.K.?’
Bognor smiled to himself. Life in the special investigations department of the Board of Trade had its moments. It did not, he supposed, rate as high as MI5 or 6, but it was much more anonymous, often as exciting, and sometimes as important. Bognor had arrived in the department by mistake and stayed by default. However, even he felt capable of smoothing the path of the Umdaka of Mangolo.
‘O.K.’
‘Now. George will be bringing two of his wives, three security men of his own, a cook and the ambassador…’
Parkinson continued with an encyclopaedic briefing on the man and his country, which Bognor punctuated with toast-muffled affirmatives. Eventually he put the phone down, dressed in a tweed suit appropriate to stately-home life and went downstairs to collect the Mini. By nine-thirty he was threading slowly down the Cromwell Road in the direction of the Hammersmith flyover and Abney House.
At Slough he turned off the motorway, just past the sewage works, and then took the back roads under the main railway line, through Taplow, past Nashdom Abbey, the Canadian Army Memorial Hospital, the Feathers, and the main entrance to Cliveden, and then turned left down the narrow Hedsor Hill with the oddly named Garibaldi pub and Bourne End Nurseries. At the main road he turned right towards the village and Abney itself.
He had decided to do some incognito snooping, rather as the McCrum had done at Netherly. For an hour or so he would take his place in the throng of day trippers who tripped round Sir Canning’s estate to the tune of half a million twenty-five pence a year. That, he reflected with envy, represented an annual income of £125,000 before you started assessing all the extra admission charges, the souvenirs, the ice-creams and the candy floss. It was a lot of money.
Half a mile from the house he slowed the car down to join the back of the queue, which was crawling towards the automatic main barriers. There were four, rather like the entrance to an underground car park. You had to stop for a ticket which you surrendered on departure. The four barriers were ample to deal with the traffic flow but Sir Canning had no jurisdiction over the approach roads and the council had always looked on the commercialization of the house with extreme disfavour. They had refused to help with sign posting, road widening, planning permission or anything else. They much preferred the refined, old-fashioned approach of the National Trust up the road at Cliveden and thought the exuberant razzmatazz of Abney inappropriate for the area. Their obstructiveness was short-sighted and had resulted in appalling traffic problems and miles of queue throughout the year. Almost every month some official body or other would deliver a protest to Abney Enterprises who would then blandly reply that it was none of their business. In fact, Sir Canning rather approved of the hot dusty wait which his visitors had to endure. It increased his sale of soft drinks and ices.
After ten minutes Bognor was through the barriers and had squeezed the Mini into a space in the park, skilfully camouflaged behind a row of poplars. The next step in the Abney plan was to put the cars below ground, but the council, perversely, was as usual fighting the idea all the way. He got out and consulted the signpost. ‘Abney House’, ‘Cabin Restaurant’, ‘Self Service Cafeteria’, ‘Shooting Gallery’, ‘Small Ships Museum’, ‘Conveniences’, ‘Excursions’…
His glance stuck on ‘Shooting Gallery’, about which he vaguely remembered adverse comments when it had opened five years before.
It was during the period of the great safari park boom. Abney, he recalled, had had neither the inclination nor the space to join the competition. Instead he had argued that, conservationists apart, the average English person looked upon the lion, the buffalo and the tiger not as beautiful animals to be admired from behind barbed wire but as an amusing target to be hunted. This cynical attitude had earned him brickbats from the World Wildlife Fund, the Ecologist and a coterie of progressive, high-minded, international fashion models; but his judgement had been correct. In his shooting range he provided his guests with a rifle and five rounds of ammunition and invited them to take shots at lifelike moving replicas of the sorts of wild animal which now cluttered the parks of his rivals. The popular press had treated the idea as an agreeable joke, all the more so when, a year after its inauguration, he had added new targets. It then became possible to fire not only at papier mâché models of the lions of Longleat or the bison of Lydeard but also at the noble Marquesses who owned them. Again he had been pilloried, this time on grounds of taste, but once more his commercial instincts had proved sound.
Bognor found himself at the back of a queue again, but this time it was a short one. A large hoarding showed a Davy Crockett figure pointing a massive hunting rifle at a herd of buffalo. Underneath, the legend was: ‘The Real Safari: five shots for 50p. Money back for five kills.’ A few yards further on another sign showed the heads of five leading stately-home owners mounted on targets. The words were: ‘Knock some chips off the old blocks. A real test of skill.’
Behind the turnstile an elderly man, in the gold and blue livery of the Abneys, sat taking fifty-pence pieces. Behind him there was a notice, the equivalent of the small print at the bottom of a contract, which said: ‘Warning—Abney Enterprises can accept no liability whatsoever for any damage to life, limb or property, howsoever…’ Bognor couldn’t read any further but he knew what it was: a nasty little disclaimer which wouldn’t hold water in court but which would effectively stop anyone suing for damages.
‘Thank you, sir.’ The old man took his money and gave him five small silver and gold bullets which he took from a large box under the window. ‘There you are, sir. Mind where you point the gun. Can’t be too careful, can we, sir?’
It was quite dark inside the range, except for where the targets raced across, twenty-five yards away at the other end of the building. Bognor smelt the warm mixture of oil and spent bullets and was suddenly transported back to a similar, though less lavish, range at Bovington Camp in Dorset. He’d been there with a party from the school corps. Just in front of him three prone figures, two youths and a girl in tight white jeans, were firing ineffectually at the procession of giraffes and lions and peers of the realm which danced across the stage in their sights. The attendant reminded him of Bovington Camp, too. ‘Squeeze the trigger… Squeeeeeeze… don’t jerk it or you won’t hit a monkey’s fanny in a coconut shy.’ Bognor hadn’t met the phrase before, but it had a nostalgic ring to it.
‘Right now.’ The sergeant-major figure turned to Bognor. ‘Got your ammo? Right. Ever fired one of these before?’
He nodded. ‘Not for a long time though.’
The sergeant-major rattled the bolt a couple of times and handed him the rifle still smoking slightly and warm to the touch. ‘Right then. We’ll soon see. Take your time. Five shots.’
Bognor drew back the bolt, inserted a single round, and pulled the butt into his shoulder. The ground was hard against his stomach. He looked along the barrel and watched for a moment as the succession of animals and peers rattled across his line of fire. Then he swung the barrel to the right and waited. He had decided to shoot the people rather than the animals. It somehow seemed more British.
The first owner out through the trap was a Scotsman, unrecognizable unless by his kilt. Bognor brought the barrel up, moved it ahead of the flying Scot and squeezed.
‘You’re too high, number three,’ said the sergeant-major’s voice behind him. ‘Far too high. Don’t pull it.’
He flicked back the bolt a little clumsily and watched the spent round fly out. Inserting the other he tried to remember the different right angles his body was supposed to make, but he had had no occasion to use a rifle recently and had, quite simply, forgotten. His next selected target looked like the Duke of Devonshire. He squeezed, more gently this time and had the satisfaction of seeing His Grace swing back abruptly and disappear from view.
‘That’s better, number three,’ said the sergeant-major. ‘First time we’ve had him down this morning.’ The next two shots were two peers he didn’t recognize. One, a stereotype in ermine, could have been anyone. He hit him neatly, square in the middle of the forehead. The one after was a man in deerstalker and sideboards, whom he missed.
‘Too high again, number three.’ The sights, thought Bognor, who for obvious reasons always blamed his tools, were miles out. He settled down again, reminding himself to aim low and left. The first man out from the right was familiar. It was the Marquess of Lydeard. Poor old Lydeard, he thought. He waited until he was almost gone again, shot, and saw him collapse silently just as he left the stage.
He got to his feet and brushed himself down. ‘Thanks,’ he said, handing the rifle back to the attendant. ‘You want to do something about those sights, don’t you? They’re high and to the right if you ask me.’
‘Well, I’m not asking you.’ The sergeant-major looked at him evenly. ‘Nothing wrong with the sights. No complaints from anyone else. And, any case, I check them myself every morning. It’s your shooting what’s wrong. Not that you’re bad. Just rusty, I should say. Pity to go blaming the sights.’
Bognor wasn’t going to make an issue of it. He went out into the daylight. It was still bright and there were hordes of people, lying in the grass, stripped off to the waist. Candy floss and ice-creams were doing well, and a cacophony of transistor radios blared out across the grounds. From somewhere downstream the shrill toot of one boat’s siren was answered by the more drawn-out and deeper groan of another’s. It was almost lunchtime but before venturing over to the private apartments he decided to have a look at the museum. He retraced his steps and looked at the signpost. Thirty yards and another fifteen pence later he stood gazing at a five-times life-size blowup of a Victorian photograph of ‘Admiral Sir Canning Abney, 1st Baronet, 1803-1901’. And underneath were the words from The Wind in the Willows. ‘Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’ Bognor wondered if the hero of Besika Bay would have been happy at the juxtaposition, let alone the overall commercialization of his old seat. If he hadn’t been buried at sea he would doubtless be turning in his grave.
However, the museum was, in its way, magnificent. Bognor was not particularly interested in boats, let alone messing about in them, but he appreciated the airy, spacious, glass-filled structure. It opened out into an artificial basin full of water which was joined to the Thames itself by a narrow creek some forty yards long. In the water a myriad craft were moored. They were of enough variety to stir even Bognor’s landlocked spirit, though many, he supposed, were merely fibreglass reconstructions. There was a Brazilian jangada, a Ceylonese catamaran and a flying proa of the sort first described by Captain Cook. An aboriginal bark-covered canoe rocked gently astern of a Severn river coracle and an Irish curragh, and just ahead of two dhows from the Persian Gulf—a bagala and a sambuk, rigged with settee sails. Turkish caiques, two-sailed sandals, a taka and a cekterne jostled a dahabeab and a gaiasse from the Nile and an obsolete Venetian tapo. More homespun styles included dories and Labrador whalers, a Block Island boat, a No Man’s Land boat from North America, and such British varieties as the Deal galley punt, the coble, the Fifie skiff and the Shetland Severn. In the building on dry land there were small-scale models—one of the Lake Champlain Revolutionary War gunboat Philadelphia, the original of which was in the Smithsonian; another of Chichester’s Gypsy Moth.
He stood for a few moments looking
at the absurd boat in which the Norwegians, Haroo and Samuelson, rowed the Atlantic in 1897, and paused also to stare at the one in which Oxford rowed the Channel in 1885. Interspersed with the boats themselves were charts and maps and trophies; photographs of Nickalls and Kelly, Beresford and Davidge; a life-sized effigy of Sir Francis Chichester; a terrible oil painting of Sir Max Aitken and Edward Heath, arm-in-arm; a reconstruction of the Lord Mayor’s procession of 1454; a facsimile of Doggett’s Coat and Badge; and a children’s corner which included a stuffed owl and a stuffed pussycat.
The crowds were considerable without being overpowering. Many of Sir Canning’s visitors, guessed Bognor, would be swarming through the cafeteria, but the ones who weren’t circulated here, slowly viewing each item with open-mouthed blankness. There were no guided parties except by arrangement but there was an illustrated brochure (thirty-five pence), machines with earphones which gave you a few seconds of pre-recorded information (ten pence) and uniformed attendants of varying degrees of erudition (free). Bognor wandered over to one. He had noticed that a large section of the museum was sealed off behind a partition marked ‘Private’, and also that some of the craft lying at anchor in the basin were invisible under tarpaulin covers. He asked for an explanation.
‘That’s the steam,’ came the reply.
‘Steam?’
‘Steam. Opened tomorrow. By the captain of the Queen Ann.’
‘Ah.’ It hadn’t dawned on Bognor until that moment that all the boats on show were hand- or sail-propelled.
‘Why isn’t it advertised?’ he asked.
‘Only open to VIPs and Press. Public aren’t allowed in.’
‘What exactly is going to be opened?’
‘Like I said,’ the man was boorish and not over-bright, ‘steam. That section in there, that’s all the models. Then the real boats are out there in the harbour.’
Bognor nodded. ‘What sort of boats are they? Anything new? Special? Exciting?’