by Tim Heald
‘Say that again,’ he said, very quietly.
‘I said you were being cuckolded by the Earl of Maidenhead. Your wife was his mistress. Look, honestly I didn’t mean to interfere and it wasn’t serious. It was just a little flirtation. Something to do with the change of life, I expect. I mean really there’s no need to get steamed up about it.’
‘Who in God’s name told you this?’
Bognor was flustered. In such circumstances he invariably told the truth.
‘Your wife did, sir. This morning.’
The McCrum said nothing. Very deliberately he picked up the internal telephone (an elderly Edwardian object) on his desk and wound it up. ‘Mrs. Campbell,’ he said, ‘please place Mr. Bognor’s belongings in the hall. He is leaving. There will be only two for lunch. No. A car will not be necessary. Mr. Bognor will find his own way to the station.’ He replaced the receiver.
‘I have no more to say to you, sir,’ he said, surprisingly evenly. ‘You are, I trust, qualified for some other job, since I shall ensure you do not continue in this one. You will not be hearing further from me, but I have every expectation that my solicitors will be in touch shortly. I must now ask you to leave forthwith.’
‘Look, honestly,’ Bognor was appalled at the thought of what would happen now. ‘All right so I phrased it badly, but why don’t you ask your wife? Get her to come down here and ask her.’
Once more the McCrum seemed to lose control for a moment. His cheeks twitched, his nostrils flared and he again took several steps towards Bognor, his sporran swinging aggressively and his hands bunched dangerously. Bognor did not give much for his chance in hand-to-hand combat. He stood his ground for a moment, watching mesmerized as the Scotsman advanced, then he turned and walked with as much dignity as was compatible with safety to the door. He reached it and continued down the stone-flagged corridor. As he walked he heard the McCrum’s voice receding into the distance. ‘Filthmonger… coward… don’t think you’ll get away with this,’ then a jumble of words in which, abuse apart, he heard, ‘Minister, slander and writ,’ then the door slammed and there was merciful silence. He stopped and wondered which way to go. Eventually after wandering blindly along lengths of chill characterless passage he came out into the hall. Lady McCrum was standing there holding his overnight case in one hand and dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief in the other.
‘You… you told him?’ she said.
‘I’m afraid so. He didn’t seem to believe me.’
‘I had an awful feeling he might not. What did he say?’
‘He just told me to leave immediately.’
‘I know. Mrs. Campbell told me. I’ve asked her to cut you some sandwiches quickly. I’d drive you in to Spean Bridge, but quite honestly I don’t think I dare.’
‘That’s all right. It’s very kind of you to bother about the sandwiches. I should be able to catch the night train to London.’
‘It’s a ten-mile walk.’
‘Oh,’ he smiled wanly. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he said feebly, ‘I really did try.’
He felt very inadequate, and Lady McCrum was crying again.
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘if he didn’t believe you, he won’t say anything to me. Life will go on the same as before.’
‘I don’t know. He may have believed me. He just wasn’t going to admit it. I’m sorry, I just don’t feel I know him well enough to say.’
‘But do you think he could have killed Freddie?’
‘I got the impression he could have killed me, frankly. And I hadn’t done anything, I just said something.’ He saw the look of despair on Lady McCrum’s face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I ballsed it up, didn’t I?’
There was a noise of shuffling slippers on stone and Mrs. Campbell came in with a small package in greaseproof paper.
‘The sandwiches, my lady,’ she said surlily. She gave Bognor a look which suggested that she hoped they choked him, and shuffled off into the bowels of the castle. Then somewhere far away in the distance a door slammed, harsh steel-heeled feet banged along a corridor and they heard an angry alcoholic cough.
‘You must go,’ said Lady McCrum frantically. ‘There’s a sjambok on the wall in the library. He tried to use it on a man once. Thank you for trying. I’ll write to you if anything happens or if there’s anything I can do to help.’ The footsteps’ warning tattoo was approaching fast. He smiled feebly and hurried out of the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he left, ‘please do write.’
Outside the rain had started again and the animals were howling an anguished chorus. He struggled on with the mac and slipped the sandwiches into the grip. Then he set his face into the north wind and started to walk.
9
NEXT MORNING HE LAY in the bath at the flat while Monica massaged his chest with Vick. ‘And then,’ he said, ‘I had to walk all the way back in the rain. It was absolutely bloody. And that foul old woman had put spam in one sandwich and bloater paste in the other. And then when I got on the train all the sleepers had gone and there was no buffet. And a whole lot of drunken Scots got on at Edinburgh and sang all the way to York and then started being sick until Euston. Jesus Christ! The things I do for Parkinson.’
‘Talking of Parkinson,’ she said, ‘he’s been on twice this morning, asking if you were back.’
‘Already?’
‘I got the impression that he’d had several long harangues from your Scottish friend.’
Bognor pushed her away from his chest and wallowed. ‘Any breakfast?’ he asked.
‘Eggs.’
‘Scrambled eggs would be nice.’ After she’d gone out to scramble, he lay back in the warmth of the soapy water and went over his performance once again. Whatever way he looked at it, and he looked at it from all the ways he could think of, the excursion had been a colossal personal disaster. He had gone to shut up the McCrum and had succeeded in making him not only generally angry, but personally vengeful too. Worse, he had no more idea whether the McCrum had realized that his wife was betraying him with Freddie Maidenhead. He groaned and looked at his feet. Each heel boasted a large blister and the soles ached. The nail of the little toe on his left foot was beginning to come away.
‘Do you know,’ he said when she returned, ‘it was ten miles from the McCrums to the station?’
‘Do you good,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking. I think your friend was bluffing. I think he knew all about his wife and Maidenhead but he was so vain he didn’t understand how anyone else could suspect. He realized Maidenhead might be indiscreet, but not Lady Mabel. It’s other people knowing that will hurt him. Nothing else. It’s just wounded pride.’
‘Do you think he killed Maidenhead then?’
‘If he claimed to be on the loo for all that time with The Law o’ the Lariat and if he’d found out, then yes, I think he probably did. But I don’t see why he’d kill Abney. Specially if he was impotent. Hang on, I must go and look at the eggs.’
Bognor got out of the bath reluctantly and looked apprehensively in the mirror. It was as bad as he feared. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy and his face looked blotchy. He put on a thick towelling dressing-gown, a present, like all his remotely respectable clothes, from Monica, and went in to the kitchen.
‘I must go to work in a minute,’ said Monica, ladling out eggs. Bognor could never keep track of her jobs. She hated to be tied down to anything in particular and therefore worked, when she felt like it or needed to, as a temporary secretary. ‘But how about this for a theory? Suppose Lady McCrum was conning you. Suppose she never had an affair with Maidenhead. Suppose she imagined it.’
‘Ridiculous.’
‘Bad for you, though. Still, let’s go a stage further. Suppose she was telling the truth. However she and her lover had a dreadful quarrel and when her husband disappeared to the loo with a book she took the opportunity to nip out and shoot her lover in the back. How about that?’
‘Ridiculous too. I’m certain Lady McCrum was telling the whole truth. I fe
el very sorry for her.’
‘You’re just susceptible to sad middle-aged women.’
‘Oh,’ Bognor pushed his plate to one side, ‘you’re very good at scrambling eggs,’ he said, ‘but you’re lousy at murder theories. I concede that either of the McCrums could have killed Maidenhead, but neither have any reason for doing in Abney. It has to be Green or Grithbrice. They’re the only two who have a double motive.’
‘Sure you aren’t forgetting anyone?’
‘Of course I’m forgetting people. We’ve got to find someone and those two are very good suspects. I’ve no intention of buggering the case against them with a lot of red herrings.’
‘Like the McCrums, for instance?’
‘Oh, go to work.’ He smiled grudgingly. The affair was getting him down. He wished he could have stuck to arranging the security for official visits. He should have realized there’d be trouble when Parkinson first mentioned the Umdaka of Mangolo. She kissed him and pushed the morning’s Times at him.
‘Stop thinking about it,’ she said. ‘Do the crossword or something. I’ll see you this evening.’
‘O.K.’ Bognor sat down and turned to the back page. Despite every effort the problem wouldn’t go away. He didn’t even attempt the crossword for long. Instead he got dressed quickly and headed for the office. He might as well get this unpleasant interview over.
‘Very well,’ said Parkinson. ‘Just tell me exactly what happened. In your own words. Slowly. I don’t expect to believe it but I have to give you the benefit of some sort of doubt, and, in any case, if I’m going to fire you I’d better have your full account. For the files at least.’
‘The McCrum said he’d have me fired.’
Parkinson looked thoughtful. ‘I don’t like that assumption of power,’ he said, ‘but I’m bound to say that if you said half what he claims, then he had every right to threaten you in every way he could think of.’
‘I’ll start at the beginning.’
‘You’d better.
Throughout the long story Bognor told, he was acutely conscious, not only of Parkinson’s suspicious ferrety eyes, but also of the accusing gaze of Her Majesty the Queen behind him. As he spoke he was dimly aware that he was not making a very good impression. Even to him, the story sounded thin, and his own part in it preposterous.
At last he came to a, literally, lame conclusion.
Parkinson was silent for a while and then he looked up and smiled. ‘It has its funny side,’ he said, ‘and I sincerely doubt whether any other individual in the entire department would have handled it quite like you. Could have handled it quite like you, I should say.’ He leant back and closed his eyes before continuing. ‘Sir Archibald has telephoned me quite frequently since your precipitate departure. He was very angry and he was also very drunk. I didn’t warm to him. However, what he said amounted to a charge of grossly improper and unprofessional conduct by one of my staff, whom I naturally had to defend. He didn’t like that, by the way.’
Bognor shifted nervously. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said.
‘Don’t thank me,’ Parkinson snapped. ‘I had, unfortunately, no alternative. I happen to believe that any censure of my staff is a reflection on me. I was protecting myself.’
‘Oh. I thought it was too good to be true,’ said Bognor, who wondered if he was going to be sacked immediately, and whether he would be compensated for loss of earnings.
‘What he told me, as far as I could understand it, was that you had upset the staff. Subjected his wife to vicious and insensitive interrogation over kippers in the morning-room, thereby reducing her to hysterics. That you then disturbed the fish in the river by your shouting and cavorting, and that finally you made “filthy” allegations, which he wouldn’t repeat over the telephone and then threatened him. Oh and he said later on that you’d stolen some food.’
‘I suppose that’s a reference to the spam sandwich,’ said Bognor.
‘Look,’ said Parkinson, ‘I’m a forgiving sort of person but you try me, Bognor, you really do. However for the moment I will overlook the fact that you have made a potential irritant into a bloody menace and instead I will try to be positive. What do you think you achieved on this visit? Achieved.’
‘I think the case against Cosmo Green has become rather, er… compelling,’ he said. ‘And I think there are some reasons for suspecting McCrum.’
‘Mmmm. I’ve been checking on your friend Sir Archibald, which is partly why I’m prepared to take a marginally less severe view of what happened. His friends and acquaintances have a remarkably uniform view of his character.’ He picked up a piece of paper with scribbled notes on it. ‘Autocratic… cantankerous… megalomaniac… bloody-minded… difficult. I gather his military reputation was, shall we say, eccentric. Those whom I asked said that murder was definitely a possibility, but not except in the heat of the moment. In other words you were lucky to escape yourself, but he is unlikely to have accounted for Maidenhead. Still less for Canning. Premeditation is not his forte.’
‘I see. So you’re not prepared to entertain him as a suspect?’
‘Everyone is guilty in my book until proved otherwise. You know that. But remember as well, there’s only one motive and probably only two individuals who interest this department. Unless one or both these crimes were committed for political reasons we stay quiet. And the only political animals we have at the moment are Grithbrice and Johnson.’
‘Any more news from Algiers?’
‘The organization exists,’ said Parkinson. ‘Can’t say much more than that. They’re a motley lot. They could have made the claim to discredit Johnson. I gather, like most of these set-ups, they have their internal problems. However, Green. Green interests me.’
‘I thought political motives were what interested you?’
‘I’m interested in anyone who is trying to buy himself a parliamentary seat and access to what is laughingly called the Establishment. And besides, if he did it, then Grithbrice and Johnson didn’t. Which is relevant.’
‘So what do you want me to do now?’
‘Continue to liaise with the police. In the nicest, friendliest possible way. I don’t want them on my back as well as McCrum. And have another word with Mr. Green. Try confronting him with his misdemeanours. I fancy he’ll react rather differently to McCrum. And as for that person, I suppose I shall have to tell him that you are to be disciplined.’
By the time he got to his own desk Bognor was dispirited. He still felt he was getting nowhere and he needed to try to get the puzzle back into a perspective which he felt it had scarcely ever had. He went back to his lists. What he wanted was someone who might chat away freely and who was also not under suspicion. He read through his notes. Only one person really fitted that category. Unless Isobel Abney wanted her husband out of the way, and all the evidence suggested she was merely sexually bored by him, there was no reason to think that she could have been involved in either crime. He decided to telephone and ask if he could take her to lunch.
‘I’m sorry, sir, Lady Abney is not at home.’ It was Mercer, the wartime special agent turned butler. No wonder, thought Bognor, he’s so condescending, he’d probably have solved this by now. Unless he did it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘is that butlerese for she’s there but doesn’t want to talk to anyone? This is Simon Bognor here.’
‘I remember, Mr. Bognor. No, Lady Abney is, as I say, not at home, and I mean precisely that. Would you care to speak to Mr. Williams?’
‘He’ll have to do.’
‘Very well, sir.’
There was a flurry of whirring and clicking before Peter Williams came on the line. From the strange echoing noise of his voice Bognor guessed he was using an amplifier. He wondered if there was anyone with him; or if the conversation was being recorded.
‘Hello. Simon Bognor here. I wanted to talk to Lady Abney. Could you tell me where I could find her?’
‘I’m sorry, old boy. She’s left specific instructions she’
s not to be disturbed.’
‘This is rather special. You know my interest.’
‘Honestly, old boy, I’d tell you if I could, but it’s more than my job’s worth.’
Bognor swore under his breath. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘she was asked to keep in touch with the police?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then?’
‘Well, you’re not police, are you, old boy. That’s what you said.’
Again Bognor swore. ‘So they’ll have her address?’
‘Of course.’
Bognor hung up and rang Smith.
‘Funny you should mention it,’ said Smith, ‘I was going to have a word with you myself. It seemed a little peculiar. She’s gone up to Hook.’
‘Hook?’
‘Staying with Cosmo Green.’
‘Good God. First of all he’s an appalling pouf, and secondly he may be a double murderer.’ Bognor told him about the threats to Maidenhead, and Smith whistled softly.
‘I think,’ he said eventually, ‘perhaps your boss is right. Better have a word with him.’
‘Do you want to come?’
‘No,’ said Smith. ‘Try to pretend you’re the velvet glove concealing my iron fist. We don’t want to frighten him overmuch. Not yet awhile.’
It took Bognor four hours to drive to Hook so that he didn’t arrive until the afternoon. The estate was some six miles outside Hereford, past Stretton Sugwas on the Roman road. Unlike the other stately-homes it was not open to the public all the time, but there were signposts none the less, half a mile outside the village of Hook with its traditional black-and-white timbered houses and concomitant antique shops and tea shops he came to a lodge with a gate firmly closed. Barbed wire ran across it and along the adjoining walls. A large sign on the middle of the gate said, ‘Hook House will be closed to the general public until the Whit Bank Holiday, when it will open throughout the holiday from 10 a.m., until 6 p.m.’ Bognor was surprised. In the old days of Hook’s former owners, the Dorsets, the house had been open most of the time, albeit on a chronically haphazard basis.