by Tim Heald
‘Parkinson,’ he moaned, ‘two to one on Parkinson. Nobody but Parkinson would ring like that. So shrill and aggressive.’
‘For heaven’s sake answer it,’ shouted Monica, emerging briefly from the kitchenette, hands full of saucepan and wooden spoon. Obediently he went lethargically to the instrument.
‘Bognor,’ said Parkinson, ‘you are indolent and slothful and by this time of the morning you should be sufficiently wide awake to answer the telephone before it has rung three times.’
‘I was in the middle of my press-ups,’ said Bognor looking down at his thickening waist and thinking that the idea was not a bad one.
‘I am in the office at this moment, Bognor, and I want you round here in half an hour at the latest. Can you do shorthand?’
‘No.’
Type?’
‘One hand and two fingers.’
‘It’ll have to do. You’re going to spend some time on a newspaper, though, so help me God, it’s no wish of mine that you should. I will see you here in twenty-eight minutes.’ The line clicked and Parkinson’s voice vanished.
‘Funny,’ said Bognor. He sauntered into the kitchen and kissed Monica idly on the cheek. ‘Parkinson wants me to be a journalist. At least I think he does.’
‘What’s journalism got to do with the Board of Trade?’
‘I should know in about twenty-five minutes.’
Because of the unwonted urgency Bognor splurged on a taxi. Normally he was more cautious. The Board of Trade did not pay its investigators handsomely, and although Bognor had been with the organization for some years he had not obtained preferment. It was painfully obvious to all concerned that Bognor’s talents, whatever they might be, were wasted in the Special Operations department of the Ministry. The qualities demanded of men in the Department were patience and courage, ruthlessness and cunning. Simon Bognor was impatient and cowardly, squeamish and utterly straightforward. He was poor at poker, increasingly fat and florid. Years before, his honest degree and his guileless manner had plainly qualified him for the conventional Civil Service career which all about him had predicted. Then at that fateful interview with the University Appointments Officer he had made that totally whimsical error. It was still etched on his mind. He could see the stiff donnish figure leaning across the table at him and saying ‘There is another branch of the Civil Service, a rather special Branch.’ He dreamt about it sometimes but even in his dreams his own response was the same: an eager nod, an indication of genuine enthusiasm and real intent. Then the ensuing nightmare of weekend house-parties and mysterious men in pubs in macs. Later decoding, and reading ciphers and debriefing people and suddenly that dreadful experience of being sent out on his own to investigate the mystery of the smuggled secrets from Beaubridge Friary, and then the even worse affair of the murdered peers and the Umdaka of Mangolo. He shuddered at the memory and paid off the taxi.
Trotting downstairs he wondered what on earth Parkinson had been on about. After the last case, from which despite some undeniable faux pas he and the department had emerged, Bognor reckoned, with no little credit, Parkinson had vowed to keep him chained to his desk for ever and ever, never to be allowed out on even the most menial errand. Secretly Bognor was pleased. He was not ambitious.
Outside Parkinson’s office he stopped for a moment, pulled at his tie, patted his jowls, smoothed the thinning hair which stuck up rebelliously at the back, and then knocked.
‘Come.’
Bognor waited and counted to ten. He delayed partly because he was afraid and partly to annoy. As he finally entered Parkinson was in the middle of saying ‘Come’ for the second time.
‘Why,’ he snapped, ‘you are incapable of coming when I say “come”, I shall never understand. However there are many other things I fear I shall never understand and most of them concern you, Bognor. Sit down.’
Bognor sat and stared thoughtfully and apprehensively at his chief’s steely eyes and impatient mouth.
‘What do you have in mind for me … sir?’
Parkinson twitched. ‘I personally have nothing much in mind for you. Others evidently do. You’ve heard of Lord Wharfedale?’
‘Of course.’
‘You know that he owns the Globe Group?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that the Globe sponsors the Expo-Brit scheme in which you became so hopelessly embroiled while investigating if that is the correct word the agricultural secrets which were being smuggled to Eastern Europe?’
‘Yes.’ Bognor was very perplexed indeed.
‘It appears, and I don’t have to tell you that I find this most surprising, it appears that his Lordship was exceedingly impressed with the way in which you handled the case.’
Bognor was surprised.
‘So impressed,’ continued Parkinson, ‘that when a member of his own staff is found murdered at Wharfedale House he is not satisfied with the perfectly adequate measures being taken by the excellent Criminal Investigation Department of the City Police. No, not a bit of it. So he immediately telephones the Minister, who is naturally a very old friend, or to be more accurate, is naturally a politician to whom a kind word from the Daily Globe means a great deal and he says to him and here my comprehension is strained to its very limits and says to him, “I want Simon Bognor of the Board of Trade assigned to this case”.’
Bognor couldn’t help smiling. It had been his first case.
‘What exactly does he want me to do?’
‘He wants you to join the Samuel Pepys column of the Daily Globe. After the murder they’re one short and I gather they’re rather given to employing people of limited experience.’ He managed to imply ‘and of little ability’ without actually saying it.
‘I’m sorry, you haven’t told me yet who’s been killed.’
Parkinson smiled bleakly. ‘A man called St John Derby. He ran the Pepys column. Had done for years.’
‘Wasn’t he what’s known as a character?’
‘I think,’ Parkinson seemed relaxed for the first time that morning, ‘that Lord Wharfedale described him as “a journalist of the old school”. He was about sixty. Married once, years ago, unsatisfactorily to Lotte Pelman, the woman who’s on all those TV quizzes. Lived on his own in South Kensington. Drank excessively, played a certain amount of bridge, moderately gregarious, belonged to the Savage Club and Surrey County Cricket Club. Inordinately fond of cricket I believe. And reputed to know most of the work of G. K. Chesterton by heart.’
‘I’m sure I’ve come across him somewhere,’ said Bognor. ‘Didn’t he wear peculiar clothes?’
‘He affected a cloak and a wide brimmed black hat. And he used to carry a stick.’
‘I know,’ said Bognor, with an air of triumph, ‘I’ve seen him in the back of El Vino’s drinking champagne. Fat chap.’
‘Inclined to obesity.’
‘How was he killed?’
‘Stabbed with a paper knife late last night or early this morning. They found it behind a radiator. No prints, just some glovemarks.’
‘Any thoughts?’
‘None whatever.’
‘Is it of any interest to the Department? I mean he wasn’t in espionage or anything? No security leaks?’
‘It’s only of interest because you have been assigned to the matter. You were not assigned because of any interest on my part. As so often where you are concerned, Bognor, my sole concern is that the affair should be concluded without embarrassment. Please.’
‘When do I start?’
‘Lord Wharfedale would like to see you first. At ten. He apparently wishes you to preserve your incognito. You are not to be recognized as an investigator of any sort, you are to convince everyone that you are a bona fide journalist.’
‘How?’
‘That’s your problem.’
‘Do they know the old man was murdered?’ Bognor felt out of his depth already.
‘At first the Wharfedale management thought they might be able to hush it up but eventually they decid
ed against. The doorman found him and there was rather a lot of blood. The old pals act will operate as far as the press is concerned. “Journalist found dead” I assume, with a strong suggestion of suicide. The inquest will be adjourned as long as necessary that’s arranged. But most of the staff of the Globe will know. The staff of the column your new colleagues’ – he smiled again, ‘have been told officially. Because all journalists and particularly, I believe, those who work on gossip columns are incapable of keeping secrets I should imagine that all Fleet Street will know it was murder by now.’
‘Ah.’
Interview over, Bognor went briefly to his desk to collect his thoughts and the morning mail. This did not sound an entertaining assignment. His experience of journalism was entirely vicarious, at least since Oxford when he had written occasional drama notes for Isis. Some of his university contemporaries had taken it up but it had proved bad for their marriages and worse for their livers. Those that he still saw also seemed to have become quite unnecessarily cynical and world weary.
The Globe was not regular reading for Bognor and he hadn’t so much as glanced at the Samuel Pepys column since it had carried an item about the occasion on which he and some friends had planted turf and daffodils in Trinity Senior Common Room. That was more than ten years ago. Nevertheless the Department library had all the morning papers so before setting off for Lord Wharfedale’s he went there to refresh his memory.
The Globe was a broadsheet, the same size as The Times or the Daily Telegraph which it resembled in no other way. Its politics under the aegis of the ageing Wharfedale were well to the right of either but were inspired by a Calvinist zeal which the proprietor was thought to have acquired in his native South Africa where he was brought up in the religion of the Dutch Reform Church. The Globe was reactionary but it made its appeal to ‘the man in the street’. Leader writers were instructed to refer frequently to the benefits of thrift and industry and to spice their texts with frequent references to ‘ordinary folk’. The rest of the paper was given over to a spirited examination of contemporary society which spared a few of the more lurid details while, of course, always deploring them. The style was floridly old fashioned and nowhere more so than on the Samuel Pepys column which combined the worst of its principal rivals, the William Hickey column of the Daily Express and the Peterborough column of the Telegraph.
That morning’s, the last to appear under the editorship of St John Derby, had approximately ten items in all: a joke about the price of steak which Bognor was sure he had seen elsewhere, a cartoon which showed two men in hats and bore the caption ‘I suppose before long with student grants increasing at 12 per cent they really will be able to have their cake and eat it’, which he found totally incomprehensible. There was a story about the 105th birthday of the Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry; an account of the Harbingers’ dinner; a suggestion that there was a split in the Anglo-Rhodesian Friendship Society; a very ambiguous innuendo hinting that the teenage daughter of a minor canon of Salisbury cathedral might be the result of an adulterous liaison between her mother and a notorious cabinet minister; a speculative piece about the secretaryship of Pring’s and a very clear suggestion that Lady Aubergine Bristol had been incapably drunk at the annual Instamex Literary luncheon. Bognor sighed. He very much doubted whether he would be able to master the breathless ‘Strange goings-on at the annual Instamex luncheon yesterday!’ any more than ‘Sir Cedric Ponsonby, K.B.E., tells me he will be 105 on Thursday and assures me he is as fit as the proverbial fiddle, a fact he attributes to his unusual diet of bananas and turbot with a glass of madeira every morning at eleven’. He sighed again. It was time to be moving in the direction of Lord Wharfedale.
Once more he took a taxi. He had the impression that journalists travelled everywhere by taxi and were able to charge the luxury on expenses. He shivered as the cab crawled down the Strand. The sky had that watery grey tinged with pink which often heralded snow. He shrank into his old herring-bone overcoat and contemplated the idiocy of his situation. He was too old at thirty-five for this sort of escapade. Would have been too old at twenty-five or even fifteen. Once more he was being forced to forsake the safe boring bowels of the Board of Trade for a masquerade. All because a boozy old journalist had been stabbed to death in his office. All because a mad newspaper proprietor had got the wrong end of the stick about his role in a previous case. All because newspaper proprietors have friends and influence. All because, years ago, Bognor had made a mistake about the course his life was to take. He glanced out at the Disney-Gothic of the Law Courts and the City’s Coat of Arms in the middle of the road. It reminded him of reality. The City Police. They were in charge. He was superfluous. An embarrassment. It made his position doubly dangerous. Surplus to requirements, expendable that would be the police view. A menace that would be the murderer’s view. He swore softly into the collar of his coat.
He had never visited the Globe office before. It was grotesque. The great pillars, the sweeping front steps and the 1930s gargoyles yielded to a marble hall dominated by a massive bust of Lord Wharfedale on a stone plinth. Each wall was covered in highly polished copper murals portraying, Bognor imagined, the virtues claimed by Lord Wharfedale on behalf of his newspapers. He noticed a beefy Achilles and a very old man with a quill pen who, he presumed, indicated wisdom. Above the entrance to the main staircase and lifts, in enormous purple lettering edged with gold, was the Wharfedale motto: ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.’
Bognor looked round to see if anyone could guide him to his Lordship’s presence. A number of faintly grubby people were standing at lecterns reading old copies of the Globe. Others sat at two long tables, some in animated conversation. Behind a grill under the first two words of the truth slogan sat a man in a uniform and a peaked cap. Bognor approached.
‘I’ve come to see Lord Wharfedale.’
The official looked disbelieving. ‘Have you filled in a form?’
‘No.’
‘You have to fill in a form. Then one of the reporters will deal with you.’
‘I don’t want to be dealt with by a reporter I want to see Lord Wharfedale.’
‘They all want to see Lord Wharfedale,’ said the man sourly, ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing Lord Wharfedale myself.’
‘I have an appointment.’ Bognor produced an identity card and flashed it under the man’s nose. It had the usual instant and desired effect.
‘One moment please, sir.’ He made a call on the internal phone. ‘Mr Bognor to see Lord Wharfedale … right you are.’ He turned back go Bognor. ‘Take the lift to the tenth floor, and you’ll be met.’
Bognor did as he was told. The lift was an antique contraption in mahogany and wrought iron which bore an inscription limiting its cargo to six adults. At least ten others crammed into it with Bognor. They all wore raincoats and smelt strongly of last night’s alcohol. Mention was made of a football match the night before and they all got out on the third floor leaving him with a lonely passage through the next seven. At the tenth he got out and found himself transported into yet another world. The reception area here had carpet as thick as grass on a rugby pitch, soft lighting and a small fountain tinkling into a tiny pond. Waiting by the lift doors was a nubile blonde in a white canvas trouser suit.
‘Mr Bognor?’ she simpered, showing perfect teeth and dimples. ‘Lord Wharfedale is waiting.’ So saying she turned round and guided him through some yards of carpet, through a room in which three secretaries sat typing, through another which was empty except for a boardroom table and a dozen chairs and then paused before a heavy metal door which looked like the front of a safe. She pressed a buzzer and spoke into a grill to one side. In answer to her information the door moved to one side with a slight squeaking and Bognor was ushered into the presence.
Lord Wharfedale was short, podgy, sallow-complexioned and dressed in a three-piece suit of dark pin stripe set off by a vivid scarlet cravat secured with a pearl pin. He c
ould have been any age over seventy-five.
‘Mr Bognor,’ he said coming round the desk, which was big as the boardroom table outside, and shaking hands. ‘I’ve sent for you because of the way you handled the Beaubridge Friary affair. I thought it masterly. Masterly. Take your coat off. Sit down.’
Bognor did both and almost disappeared from view in the deep luxury of the brown leather upholstery.
‘Cigar? Drink?’ Bognor declined.
‘You’ve heard of our murder?’
‘Briefly.’
Lord Wharfedale took a cigar several sizes too big for him from a silver box and lit it with trembling fingers.
‘What’s your theory?’
‘I don’t know that I have enough to go on at this stage. What do the police think?’
Lord Wharfedale looked put out.
‘I’m not overly impressed with the forensic abilities of our police force,’ he said. ‘The police have no officer class. This makes them stupid. Zealous they may be. Honest they may be. Intelligent they very rarely are. If I had my way the police would be recruited in the same fashion as the military. These other rank policemen should be confined to menial tasks. I want an intelligent gentleman to solve this business. That’s why I sent for you.’
T shall have to liaise with the police.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ said Lord Wharfedale, tapping ash into a crystal bucket.
‘What exactly do you want me to do?’ asked Bognor, genuinely perplexed.
‘Exactly what you did so admirably at Beaubridge Friary over the smuggled secrets. I want you to do what we in the newspaper industry call “get alongside” the situation. I want you to join the Samuel Pepys diary and read, mark, learn and inwardly digest all that goes on. Within the week if I’m any judge of character and ability in a man, and I am, we shall have our man ensnared.’