by Tim Heald
He recognized both Lydeard and McCrum from photographs. Lydeard was older than he’d expected. The face was more marked with broken veins. It was a warrior’s face though he seemed to remember that, in fact, Lydeard had failed to win a commission in the war and had been left to vegetate in Intelligence. Nevertheless he had a soldier’s face. Something to do with heredity perhaps, because he came from a long line of generals which started with the Conqueror. He looked shaky from his exertions. Bognor wondered if he could have murdered Freddie Maidenhead. He could have poisoned him, he supposed, but hardly shot him. He looked too shaky for that, though it was true he had a remarkable and unwavering reputation as a bagger of grouse.
The last of the four was, Bognor knew, a real soldier, though his manner and his moustache almost suggested a catering corps parody. His real name, that is to say his English name, was Colonel Sir Archibald McCrum but he called himself the McCrum and the rest of the world followed. Every year his picture filled the papers when he presided at the annual gathering of the Clan McCrum at McCrum Castle, that massive gothic pile near Fort William which Bognor had once visited on a windswept day when it was too windy to climb the White Corries.
It was surprising his tennis wasn’t better. Bognor watched him put his racket into its press with neat deft movements before straightening up and dabbing at his sweating forehead with a spotless white handkerchief. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said to the others, ‘I enjoyed that.’ It didn’t look as if this was true but the others echoed him with ill grace.
‘I could do with a swim,’ said Sir Canning, then checked himself and blushed. ‘Well, perhaps not today,’ he said. As he left the court his wife pecked him peremptorily on both cheeks and introduced Simon. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is Mr. Bognor from… er… from Whitehall. He’s come about George.’
Sir Canning looked rather mystified. ‘About George? George who? Are you sure he hasn’t come about Freddie?’
‘No, dear. He’s come to arrange about George Mangolo and his visit and he’s staying to dinner.’
‘Oh, the Umdaka. Why on earth didn’t you say?’ Sir Canning looked greatly relieved. ‘Oh well. First class.’ He shook Bognor’s hand. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Splendid. We’d better have a little chat. What would you like to know? I can’t spare much time now, but later… perhaps after dinner.’
‘Well, actually,’ said Bognor, as they walked slowly in the direction of the house, ‘what I really want is a good chance to have a proper look round.’
‘Oh quite,’ said Abney. ‘Why not spend a weekend? Bring your wife.’
‘That’s frightfully kind of you. I’m not married actually.’
‘Oh well, bring a friend… er… I’d prefer female.’ Abney looked faintly embarrassed. ‘It just makes seating so much easier for the staff. I’ve no objection otherwise. Only we’re two men up already with Cosmo Green and Peter Williams, so I’d prefer a girl if you don’t mind.’
‘That’s fine, thank you very much.’ Bognor wondered what Monica would make of it.
‘Well.’ They had reached the gravel forecourt. ‘I’m afraid I really must go and change. Are you all right for now? Feel free to take a look round wherever you want and we’ll see you at dinner.’
‘There is just one thing,’ said Bognor, ‘about this morning. The um… er, accident.’
Sir Canning looked suspicious. ‘I was afraid you might have come about Freddie,’ he said. ‘I’d rather you came out with it at once. I can’t stand deceit.’
‘No, I haven’t come about Freddie.’ Bognor found himself slipping too easily into the familiarity of first names. ‘I mean, the Earl of Maidenhead. But his death is relevant to the Umdaka’s visit. If it was the result of some security failure then we could hardly let the Umdaka come down here. At least not without laying on a lot of extra precautions.’
Sir Canning looked unconvinced. He scraped at the gravel with the handle of his racket. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. He was keen on the Umdaka’s visit. It would give him some unsolicited column inches in the national papers. ‘But Freddie’s death is in very capable hands. The police are dealing with it.’
‘Naturally,’ said Bognor, who knew from bitter experience that it would be best to leave it to the police, ‘but it is relevant. I’m sorry. I do realize it’s distressing for everyone but it has happened.’
‘Not distressing,’ said Abney. ‘A nuisance. Never mind. I suggest you have a word with Smith, the man in charge. All I ask is that you’re discreet. I’m prepared to give you every help, even to the extent of having you here as my weekend guest; all I ask in return is your discretion. Can you promise that?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Good.’ Sir Canning turned and went into the house, leaving Bognor to kill time until dinner. He decided to go and find Smith.
Smith was, after some initial sparring, extremely co-operative. More so than Bognor would have been if the roles had been reversed. He offered to show Bognor the corpse—an offer which Bognor, who was squeamish, declined. He showed him the bullet, from a .22 rifle, which had done the damage and he provided him with a complete list of guests and staff with his own thumbnail sketches to match. He also opined that the murder had been committed at about seven a.m. and that no one yet had a real alibi or a real motive, unless it was Peter Williams and Dora Maidenhead. Since they were clearly having an affair they might have a motive, though divorce would have been simpler. Since the police had already discovered that, far from breaking down in their boat, they had spent a comfortable and well-planned night together at the Compleat Angler in Marlow it looked as if they might have an alibi too.
In return for all this Bognor volunteered the information that the sights of one of the rifles in the miniature range were wrongly aligned. Smith said that the night before the murder all the men, Honeysuckle Johnson and Mabel McCrum had gone down to the range and done some shooting. The murder shot had almost certainly been fired by someone lying on the diving board to take aim. The range would have been less than twenty yards. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of how to work a .22 could have done it. By the time they’d checked the guns they all had fingerprints from several hundred members of the public on them. ‘Including mine,’ said Bognor wryly.
He also suggested discreetly that his department were concerned that the killing could have been politically motivated. Smith duly added the possibility to his list but was frankly incredulous. There were already, he said, the germs of sexual motives, financial motives, publicity motives, and stately-home-jealousy motives as well as the possibility that there was no motive at all. However, if Mr. Bognor wanted political motive to be investigated then naturally it would be investigated. The two men parted with mutual promises of co-operation.
Back at Abney, Bognor went for a stroll down by the river bank. The private gardens were shielded from the river by shrubs and hedging except at the area immediately around the diving board. It was odd that the Abneys hadn’t built a pool, since the Thames was fairly filthy and swimming was a public matter which could take place only under public scrutiny. Perhaps that was why the board had been left. The chance of seeing near-naked nobles leaping into the river was a powerful additional incentive to Sir Canning’s potential visitors.
Bognor stood for a moment by the board and then gingerly lay down on its length, drew an imaginary head on the water about twenty yards away, then frivolously pulled an imaginary trigger and said, ‘Bang. Frederick, Earl of Maidenhead, this is your death.’ Immediately he regretted it, as a sultry voice from above and behind, said sarcastically, ‘When you’ve finished your macabre little game perhaps you would allow me to use the board for its proper purpose?’
Bognor got up and dusted himself down. ‘Miss Johnson, I suppose?’ he said, putting out his hand. ‘I’m Simon Bognor. We haven’t met, but I’ve heard a great deal about you.’ He realized as he prattled on inanely that she was staggeringly sexy. Her bikini, which was orange, set off her ebony skin to perfection. It was one of those
miniscule garments in which the pieces appear to be connected with curtain rings. Bognor, who regarded himself as undersexed and who was in any case devoted to Monica, fancied her enormously. All this, he thought to himself, and murder too.
‘Tony said there was some bum on the snoop,’ she said crisply. ‘You look like you could do with some exercise. You’re a very poor colour and a very bad shape. Now do you mind.’ He moved to one side and she stared at him for a moment with only the mildest curiosity, then brushed past and dived swiftly and gracefully into the Thames. It was a shallow, almost a racing, dive and she came up to the surface almost immediately. For thirty yards she crawled, then changed abruptly to an immaculate, lunging butterfly. She reached Berkshire quickly and with no apparent effort. Once there she got out and stood, shading her eyes to peer back at the house. The lock at Cookham must have opened recently because a little fleet of assorted and nondescript pleasure steamers, cabin cruisers and launches churned past. From somewhere up in the public area a voice through a loud hailer urged the boats to slow down because of their wash. A few of the occupants waved and whistled at the nubile figure of Miss Johnson. She ignored them studiously and waded back into the now-oily water before swimming lazily back. As she came to the board, Bognor knelt down and offered a hand up. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, then swam round to the steps at one side and clambered up unassisted.
‘Could I ask you a few questions?’ he said, diffidently.
‘Gassy. Just gassy,’ she said, towelling herself down in a manner which Bognor decided was deliberately suggestive. ‘I heard you were fixing up a trip for that old bastard Mangolo. So I don’t see how I’m going to help there. And if you think I’m going to answer your creep questions like this, you’d better think again.’
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Bognor, reddening.
‘Oh,’ she said mimicking him, ‘I’m awfully sorry too, old boy. But,’ she dropped the imitation and came a step closer to Bognor, ‘I’ll tell you something for free. If you are interested in who did Fred this morning, just have a little friendly word with that faggot Cosmo Green.’
‘Really?’ said Bognor. ‘Why?’
She came another step closer so that she was only a couple of feet away from him. She smelt of River Thames. ‘Because, darling, he was in love with him. That’s why.’ Before he could demand an expansion of this unlikely news she had spun round and was walking back towards the house, her bottom wiggling in its inadequate orange casing.
‘In love with him?’ said Bognor out loud. ‘Cosmo Green and Freddie Maidenhead? That’s a bit steep.’
Dinner was at seven-thirty for eight. In the meantime Bognor had combed the grounds in a desultory sort of way not knowing quite what he was looking for, and had talked to the odd minion. No one seemed to come on duty before eight so no one admitted to knowing anything about Maidenhead’s death. As for George Mangolo, Bognor was quite unable to find anything that looked remotely like a threat to his safety. He rang Parkinson, who sounded still irritable, and also Monica who was upset to hear that he’d be back late, but pleased at the idea of a weekend as the guest of Sir Canning Abney.
Drinks were served in the plum drawing-room. Drinks were champagne cocktails made with Dom Perignon and some very old brandy from Harveys. Bognor, who was a bit faddish about that sort of thing, thought this vulgar ostentation and a waste of both. However it was suitably anaesthetizing. As he entered the plum room he realized that he was out of place. Everyone else had changed. The ladies were in long dresses—even Honeysuckle Johnson who compensated for this formality by virtually dispensing with a top—and the men wore dinner jackets. Cosmo Green wore a maroon smoking jacket, Grithbrice a tobacco-brown suit with velvet reveres, and the McCrum a dress kilt with a huge dagger stuffed in his sock. Bognor thought there was some rule about not wearing the kilt south of the border, but he had to admit that the McCrum tartan looked less incongruous than the Bognor tweed.
‘I am sorry,’ he said to Lady Abney, ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t able to change.’ It was the suede shoes that were bothering him more than anything. The Spanish footman from whom he accepted his drink was looking at them witheringly.
‘Don’t be silly, dear boy,’ said Lady Abney. ‘You look perfectly splendid. I’ve put you next to Dora Maidenhead. She needs cheering up, so be nice to her.’
Bognor nodded.
‘We’ll have a word after dinner,’ said Sir Canning, ‘but come and meet my general manager, Peter Williams. He may be able to help.’
Peter Williams seemed tense. ‘I can’t see that there should be any problem with the Umdaka,’ he said. ‘We’re fairly used to this sort of thing, you know. I mean, the fellow’s only some well-connected aboriginal. We’ve done the real thing. Buck House and all that. I really wouldn’t have thought there was any need for concern.’
Bognor was conciliatory. ‘It’s routine,’ he said, ‘that’s all. The Umdaka isn’t much liked in his own country and there are a number of Mangolan exiles over here who might try something on. It seems fairly far-fetched but we have to be sure.’ He asked Williams a lot of routine questions and Williams gave him a lot of competent, reassuring answers about closed-circuit TV scanners, burglar alarms and the vigilance and intelligence of the highly trained Abney staff. Bognor nodded throughout, but just before they went in to dinner he said: ‘Still, after this morning, nothing is certain is it?’
‘That’s rather different,’ said Williams, ‘I mean first of all it was an inside job, and secondly it was a crime passionel. We can hardly guard against that, can we? It’s just unfortunate he couldn’t do it in the privacy of his own home.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Bognor, intrigued.
‘What?’
‘Both. Inside job and crime passionel.’
‘Oh I don’t know. Forget I said it, I wasn’t here so I don’t know anything, do I? But that’s what people are saying.’
‘Ah. Yes, I gathered you weren’t here. The boat broke down… somewhere near the Compleat Angler, wasn’t it?’
‘I do hope,’ said Williams looking apprehensive and cross, ‘that there won’t be any need to go into all that.’
‘I hope not. It’s not really for me to say.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, there’ll be an inquest. It’ll be up to the coroner and the police. Not me.’
‘But you are police.’
‘Not really.’
At that moment Mercer came into the plum room and announced dinner. Everyone moved down the corridor in the direction of the private dining-room. ‘This used to be open to the public,’ said Sir Canning, who had evidently noticed that Williams and Bognor were not getting on, ‘but I closed it a couple of years ago. After all they see the grand dining hall which is much more interesting. I really don’t understand why they should see ours as well. And the smell in the evenings was indescribable. I’d no idea the public stank like that! Do you remember, Peter? We just couldn’t get rid of that filthy B.O.’
‘No,’ said Williams. ‘Even after we’d stopped them smoking it was still ghastly.’
‘The last straw was when Isobel found a piece of used chewing-gum on her chair,’ said Abney. ‘I mean, I ask you, aren’t people absolutely bloody?’
They had arrived by now in a well-proportioned oblong room, hung with heavy family portraits. Bognor had an impression of a great quantity of glass and silver worth a great deal of money but not of any particular beauty. He was sitting in the middle of one side of the table with Dora Maidenhead on his left and Cosmo Green on his right.
‘I do hope you two boys don’t mind being next to each other,’ said Lady Abney, ‘only we simply haven’t enough girls. Never mind. Simon’s bringing someone at the weekend so that will make things a little easier.’
Dinner was served by four girls in flowered cotton overalls, watched over by the vigilant Mercer, and consisted of lobster bisque, grouse, syllabub and scotch woodcock. The grouse, which was, of course, out of season, came
from the deep-freeze. The Marquess of Lydeard was heard to observe that this was bad form.
There was sherry with the bisque, Chateau Talbot with the grouse, Chateau Climens with the syllabub and, later, a profusion of port, brandy, liqueurs and real Havana cigars which Grithbrice had procured from a friend in the Hungarian embassy. To begin with, Bognor did his duty by Dora Maidenhead, who was not in the least downcast.
‘So you’re finding out what happened to Freddie?’ she said, as soon as they’d sat down.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m arranging a visit for the Umdaka of Mangolo.’
‘You mean George.’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘He’s divine. And terribly sexy. Five wives, my dear. Ten children and thirty bastards. I’ve always fancied him.’
Bognor was embarrassed.
‘I’m not embarrassing you, am I?’ said Dora Maidenhead.
‘No. Of course not, not in the least.’
‘Do you like sex?’
‘Well, um, yes, I suppose, I mean it depends.’
‘Depends on what? Do tell. I’m not embarrassing you, am I?’
Bognor looked round desperately, but everyone else was engrossed. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Oh dear, yes I am. To tell you the truth I’ve been drinking a bit. Not much. Just a little. I can’t take it like I used to. I adore sex. Do you like drink? You look as if you do. Gosh, what have I said now? My dear, I am sorry. Anyway, who do you think did it? Have you any clues? It can’t have been me or Peter Williams, we were having a dirty night out. Isn’t it dreadful? It’s not awfully nice to be out having sex when one’s husband gets done in, is it? Not quite right, what do you think?’
‘I really don’t want to pry, Lady Maidenhead. And I’m honestly not investigating your husband’s death.’ He looked around again, even more desperately and, to his great relief, Basil Lydeard, who was on Lady Maidenhead’s left, took up the challenge.