by Tim Heald
Lady McCrum patted the Pekingese and gave it a chocolate. ‘I shouldn’t really, I know,’ she said, ‘but we don’t have many vices, do we, Cecil?’
‘Go on,’ said Bognor, ‘I imagine it had got worse recently.’
‘Yes. In the last few weeks. Freddie was stalling like mad but it was becoming most embarrassing. First of all he said he wanted to give Princess Anne a horse. Well, Freddie explained that you didn’t do things like that and that you had to have met them first at the very least. So then Mr. Green said he’d like to meet her in that case, and Freddie explained very patiently that he didn’t know the princess and the only one he knew was her father because he played polo with him, and he said anyway they didn’t get on because Freddie swore at him once in Greek and apparently the prince didn’t like it. Anyway the next thing was Green said he wanted to get into parliament and he understood the local constituency near Hook belonged to the Lincolnshires and how much would they want for it. Again Freddie had to explain that Mark, the Lincolnshires’ eldest, had the seat and would go on being the MP until his father died, and then probably he’d give it to his son. And Freddie said wouldn’t Mr. Green be better off with the Labour people, they were more his sort. That didn’t go down at all well I gather. There was rather a scene and next day Green rang back and told Freddie he wanted a peerage. I mean, imagine!’
‘So what did Lord Maidenhead do?’
‘Well,’ Lady McCrum’s handkerchief came out again, ‘he didn’t have a great deal of alternative by then. Mr. Green was talking about demanding the money back immediately. So he said he’d do what he could but it would take time. And from then on…’ Her voice started to break. ‘From then on, until the day he died, hardly a day passed without Mr. Green making horrid threatening noises about his wretched peerage.’
Bognor sighed. ‘He should have told him to get stuffed, like Canning Abney.’
Lady McCrum stopped sniffing and looked up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He did exactly the same with Canning Abney. Lent him over two hundred thousand, and then asked to be made a member of Pring’s.’
‘Goodness.’ For the first time that morning Lady McCrum laughed. ‘Mr. Green. Pring’s. How awful.’
She laughed again. It was rather a pleasant sound and Bognor again had a glimpse of what Freddie Maidenhead had seen in her. Then she realized the implication of what she’d heard.
‘Goodness,’ she said again, ‘and Canning refused point blank. Then what happened?’
‘There was a scene. I understand Mr. Green became abusive and threatening.’
Lady McCrum looked very thoughtful and patted the pekingese.
‘So,’ she said, ‘Mr. Green was demanding favours from Freddie and Canning. And Freddie, poor lamb, wasn’t able to do anything about the peerage. And Canning refused to do anything about Pring’s. And they both died one after the other. And Mr. Green was staying in the house at the same time.’
They sat in silence, Bognor wishing he hadn’t had the second piece of toast, and Lady McCrum stroking Cecil.
‘Do you really think…?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said, ‘but it’s beginning to look very like it.’
A further quarter of an hour elapsed and still Sir Archibald had not returned. Bognor once more said that he would see what he could do about mentioning Lady McCrum’s relationship with Lord Maidenhead and, naturally, added that he would do everything in his power to stop the McCrum making more of an ass of himself than he already had. Lady McCrum, who was now insisting that Bognor call her Mabel, said she would assist over this, but that it would be difficult. Once Archie got an idea fixed in what passed for his mind it stayed fixed.
As the weather was brightening they decided to go in search of the highland chief. Bognor put on his riding mac, borrowed a pair of gum boots and a tweed hat of a similar type to the one worn by the Land Rover driver, and Mabel McCrum put on a duffel coat over her McCrum kilt. They set off across the park at a brisk pace.
‘Those are the animals,’ she said, waving her walking stick in the direction of some heavily wired stockades behind which a mangy pair of lupine creatures were pacing hungrily. ‘We only have animals which come originally from the Highlands. Those are wolverine. We have wolves and snow leopard and lynx and beavers too. Archie’s going to try to get the beavers to build a dam but they’re not being frightfully co-operative. He’s just started negotiating for an elk.’
‘Not with funds borrowed from Cosmo Green, I hope,’ said Bognor flippantly, realizing with a sudden shock that Green had claimed to have lent money to the McCrum.
‘Oh, I do hope not,’ said Lady McCrum, laughing, ‘I don’t think it’s very likely. Archie never discusses money but he’s very clever about it. You could say he was rather mean, and I’m sure he’d never borrow from a man like Mr. Green. Archie’s a great believer in protocol.’
Bognor decided to say no more. The McCrum marital situation was fraught enough as it was.
‘I hope you’re fairly fit,’ she said, lengthening her stride, ‘I have a feeling we’ll find him down at the Ghillies’ Tomb.’
Bognor winced, and her ladyship, who was obviously in first-class physical trim, proceeded to tell him, in gory detail, precisely how the Ghillies’ Tomb got its name when, in 1824, a previous McCrum had come upon two of his own ghillies attempting to poach salmon from a stretch of river with a pool and waterfall which was a particular favourite of his, and famous throughout the Highlands for its fish. The McCrum had immediately conducted a brisk interrogation and when, after some thirty seconds, he had established the men’s guilt beyond question, he had made them stand at the edge of the fall, and discharged both barrels of his shotgun into them from close range.
‘I sometimes think Archie’s a bit like that,’ said Lady McCrum. ‘I’m sure that’s what he’d like to do to Tony Grithbrice and that Johnson girl.’
Half an hour later, after a gruelling struggle across what Bognor considered ‘difficult terrain’, they arrived at the Ghillies’ Tomb.
‘I was right,’ called his companion, who, nimble as a goat, had gone on ahead. ‘Here he is.’
Bognor, breathing very heavily by now, clambered up on to the rock alongside her, and looked down at the stream. There sitting on a large, smooth boulder, with his rod at his side was the McCrum. He was smoking a pipe and appeared deep in thought.
‘Archie,’ shouted Lady McCrum through cupped hands, ‘Mr. Bognor’s arrived.’
The McCrum remained motionless and his wife called again.
‘Cooeee,’ she cried, the shrill sound reverberating around the narrow gorge. Still he didn’t move. ‘Come on,’ she said to Bognor, ‘we’ll have to go closer.’
Finally, when they arrived, Sir Archibald took the pipe out of his mouth and said, rattily, ‘No need to shout, I heard you the first time. Morning, Bognor. Good journey I hope. I trust Mabel’s been looking after you.’ Then he returned the pipe to his mouth and went back to contemplating the waters.
Bognor began to say something, but before it actually came out, Lady McCrum put a finger to her mouth and shook her head at him. A minute passed in uneasy silence and then the McCrum stood up and jumped down from his perch. He was curiously dressed in thigh-length green waders, the McCrum kilt, a khaki anorak and a deer-stalker.
‘Fish?’ he asked Bognor.
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Nothing to be afraid of. Shoot?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, too bad. Never mind. Not a countryman, eh?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Mmm,’ the McCrum looked disapprovingly at Bognor’s dress. ‘Did I understand you were a relation of Humphrey Bognor’s?’
‘Distant, yes.’
‘Oh. Good. First-class.’
They started to walk back to the castle, a return which Bognor found even more fatiguing than the outward journey. The Colonel said nothing about the purpose of Bognor’s visit and confined his
remarks to a few observations about country matters. All that Bognor heard clearly was that he should read Nobbes’ The Complete Troller, and always stick to a Durham Ranger or a Silver Doctor. He was too out of breath to make a coherent reply. When they arrived back at the castle, Sir Archibald said stiffly to his wife:
‘Bognor and I have matters to discuss. We’ll be in my den. Lunch at one?’
The McCrum’s den was nothing that the comfortable womb-like word implied. It was the size of a large aeroplane hangar and about as draughty. Antlers and stags’ heads festooned the panelled walls in a haphazard display and there were two glass cases of stuffed salmon. At the far end the window was of stained glass, on a religious theme.
‘Used to be the chapel,’ said the McCrum. ‘Grandfather had a private chaplain. Father dispensed with him. Quite right in my opinion, I’m not a religious man myself. Don’t hold with it except at Christmas and Easter, eh? You’ll take a dram?’
He took a bottle and poured a large slug into two tumblers. It was very pale brown. ‘Tallisker,’ he said. ‘Island malt. Know it?’
Bognor nodded. One of his tutors had had a liking, amounting almost to a fetish, for Tallisker malt whisky. It came from Skye.
‘In that case you won’t take water.’
Bognor would have preferred water but he felt he had already done enough to antagonize his host.
‘Well,’ said the McCrum going to his desk and picking up a green file, ‘when are they to be apprehended?’
‘I don’t honestly know,’ he replied, ‘I don’t even know if they are going to be apprehended, but it’s not my job. It will be done by the police.’
‘I know the form, I know the form,’ said the McCrum, rubbing his moustache and sitting down in a frayed brown leather armchair. ‘Changed since my day. They’d probably have disappeared quietly then and no questions asked. Socialists changed all that sort of thing. Now. I’ve made some notes.’
‘Notes?’
‘Based on my observations of the guilty parties during my stay at Abney.’ He preened his moustache and looked smug. ‘I had my suspicions from the first. No idea they were going to resort to murder, but I had a pretty shrewd idea they were up to something. Right. Point one. Not to mince matters they were sleeping together.’
‘I know that,’ said Bognor, ‘there’s no law against it.’
‘That’s as may be. But I don’t hold with it. I know it’s considered very fashionable to carry on with a complete disregard for what I’d always been brought up to believe as decency and common sense, but I don’t condone the behaviour of the farmyard. Particularly in someone of Grithbrice’s pedigree. And she’s black.’ He stabbed a finger angrily in Bognor’s direction. ‘Black as your hat.’
Bognor resigned himself to a lecture.
‘Two. Basil Lydeard told me she was a Mangolan. Poor old Lydeard couldn’t tell a bleak from a gudgeon, but I knew at once what that meant. She was up to no good.
‘Three. He was after Maidenhead and Abney’s business. He and Abney’d got some harebrained scheme together. Approached me about it in a roundabout sort of way. Maidenhead told them what to do with it and so did I, but the Grithbrice fellow had his hooks into Abney, that much is certain.
‘Four. And this will be news to you. Grithbrice tried to kill me that night we were playing that damn-fool game. No doubt about it. Luckily I know a thing or two about unarmed combat and I managed to fight him off until some help came. Still ricked my ankle badly, though.’
‘You seem to have recovered very successfully.’ The McCrum glanced across with an irritated expression and his cheek muscles twitched. He poured himself another Tallisker but offered none to Bognor.
‘Five. Yes, well, naturally you know about these Mangolan claims. Now I’ve had experience of these sort of people. I was in Burma with Wingate. I saw some of the things those Japanese did. And I saw something of the Mau Mau stink as well. These people don’t pussyfoot around like you and your colleagues are doing. No messing about. Shoot first and talk later. Do you read Oliver Strange?’
‘No.’
‘You should. Might learn a thing or two.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Bognor, ‘but…’ The McCrum interrupted.
‘Being sorry,’ he said, ‘is half your problem. No point in being sorry. It’s always too late. I haven’t finished. Now. The reason you’re here today is because I spent yesterday creating a fuss. I’ve spoken to a good many people including some of your colleagues, and I’m bound to say that I find the situation most unsatisfactory.’ He stood up and walked over to a particularly moth-eaten stag’s head, staring it straight between the eyes. He then swung round in a gesture which Bognor reckoned he must have learnt in the Guards.
‘So,’ he barked in another Guards’ mannerism, ‘I have two things to say. One is that unless you have some good reason which you can now produce I shall expect an arrest. The second is that unless such an arrest is made within forty-eight hours of this moment I shall make a nuisance of myself the like of which has not been seen. Do I make myself clear?’
Bognor was stung, even though he knew that the man had to be placated.
‘With the greatest possible respect, sir,’ he said, trying hard, ‘we have no proof.’
‘I’ve given you all the damn proof you need.’
‘Again with respect, sir, you have not. This is just theory.’
‘Utter balls. I’ve never heard such nonsense.’ He grabbed at the Tallisker and refilled his glass. ‘Do you want me to ring your Minister immediately?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t, but if you insist. You see, sir, all you’ve given us so far are motives and in themselves they’re not enough.’
‘Balderdash. What about the claim from Algiers?’
‘The Foreign Office are inclined not to believe it.’
‘Sod the Foreign Office. Lot of pansies. He tried to kill me on the tennis court, didn’t he?’
‘So you say.’
‘Are you doubting my word? No man alive doubts the word of a McCrum and gets away with it. Be very careful.’
‘No, I wasn’t doubting your word, sir, I’m only saying it isn’t enough. We know there are enough motives to make us very suspicious of both Mr. Grithbrice and Miss Johnson, but other people had motives too.’
‘Such as?’ The McCrum looked menacing. The Tallisker had not improved his temper and the twitch of his cheek muscles was pronounced. Bognor knew that it was unwise to say what he was about to, but he was unable to control himself. He did not like the way he was being treated and even in one as mild and subordinate as himself there were times when…
‘You for one, sir.’
‘I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon.’ The McCrum’s voice had risen several octaves and when he took two steps forwards it seemed to Bognor that physical violence was about to be offered. The moment passed and the Colonel had a fresh gulp of whisky. Bognor realized with further apprehension that it must be having some effect. On a long mahogany table in the middle of the room there was an old-fashioned Grundig tape recorder. The McCrum now paced over to it and started to play with it. He was obviously not good at machinery but after a few false starts he blew down the microphone and said in a contrived, official-sounding voice, ‘Testing, testing, testing… the cat sat on the mat… now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.’ He pressed a switch and reversed the tape, then pressed again and stood back to listen. The voice which emerged from the machine bore only a passing resemblance to the McCrum’s but, although partially muffled by crackling, the message could dimly be discerned. ‘The cat sat on the mat,’ it reported, and ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party’. Bognor took advantage of the interruption to steal another measure of Scotch from the rapidly emptying bottle of Tallisker.
‘I was hoping,’ the McCrum had executed his stiff military turn again, and was once more facing his guest, ‘that there would be no need to have recourse to this machine. I had expecte
d to be able to discuss this matter as one gentleman to another. That is evidently not possible. And if you are going to resort to cheap threats I would prefer to have them on the record should I wish to make use of them at a further time and date.’ He puffed out his chest and stalked back to the machine. ‘Would you mind,’ he said, ‘turning to face the recorder? I wish to have as clear a record as possible.’ He then flicked the switch with a flourish and said into the microphone, enunciating very clearly, ‘The following is a recording of a conversation between Colonel Sir Archibald McCrum of that ilk and Mr.’—he looked over his shoulder—‘What’s your Christian name?’ he asked.
‘Simon,’ said Bognor, with bad grace.
‘And Mr. Simon Bognor of, of, er… Her Majesty’s Government, which took place at McCrum Castle on Tuesday the 12th of May.’ He glared at Bognor and said, still enunciating grotesquely, ‘Now, sir, perhaps you would be so kind as to repeat what you have just said.’
‘I only said,’ said Bognor plaintively, ‘that other people besides Anstruther Grithbrice and Honeysuckle Johnson had reason to dislike the Earl of Maidenhead.’
‘Ho no, sir. Ho no, sir. You said more than that. A great deal more. You threatened me, sir. Threatened me. And I wish to have that threat recorded.’
Bognor swallowed. He was regretting his earlier remark. Not that he was worried any longer for his sake, or particularly scared of the McCrum, but in his present mood Sir Archibald was liable to do severe damage to the unfortunate Lady Mabel.
‘I only meant that you had reason to dislike the Earl yourself.’
‘Oh, come, sir, come, sir.’ The McCrum was truculent and again Bognor lost patience.
‘I mean, to be absolutely blunt,’ Bognor realized he was shouting and dropped his voice, ‘I mean that since you were being cuckolded by the Earl of Maidenhead, you had good reason, particularly given your extreme puritanism, to wish him dead.’ There was silence. Sir Archibald turned off the Grundig. Bognor prayed inwardly for Lady McCrum’s forgiveness. This was one way of finding out whether her husband knew, but hardly the one intended.