by Tim Heald
‘All right, all right.’ Bognor tried to calm himself, only too well aware that he must do so if he were to have the slightest chance of convincing her. ‘Let’s look at your right arm first.’
She poured more tea and looked at him as if trying to decide whether or not to emit the threatened scream. Then slowly she pushed up the sleeve of her nightdress and offered her right arm for inspection. Bognor bent over it like a stamp collector cross examining a suspect penny black.
‘Aha,’ he said, at length, ‘I do believe I have it. Just look at that.’ He tried to twist her arm so that she could see the miniscule red dot but in the end he had to fetch his shaving mirror so that she could see the reflection in that. She was not impressed.
‘It looks like some sort of a bite to me,’ she said. ‘Maybe a bed bug.’
‘Oh, Monica!’ Bognor hid his head in his hands. He felt like banging it against the walls but didn’t dare for fear of what it might do to Myrtle’s very new and exquisite wallpaper.
‘Now calm down,’ said Monica. ‘I’m going to play Lejeune of the Yard. Let us suppose that everything you say is true. That either I was so deliriously ill or so totally hypnotised or amnesiacked by whatever nettle or dandelion based concoction he put into me that I don’t remember a thing. Now why should all three of them also deny it happened? They all seem to have behaved in an exemplary fashion. You’re suspicious because Felix answered the phone so quickly and because there was a doctor in the house. But they’ve anticipated that suspicion by telling you that Norman had suffered one of his brain-damaging migraines. So why go back on that perfectly adequate story?’
‘Mighty odd coincidence Norman having a migraine just as you’re expiring with food poisoning.’
‘So?’ Monica looked arch. ‘So life is full of amazing coincidences. You mustn’t be paranoid. There’s more cock-up and coincidence in life than conspiracy and immaculate conception. You know that. It’s what you’re always telling me.’
‘Touché.’ Bognor got out of bed and lurched over to the window where he stood scratching his back while he stared out at the mist peeling back off the villagescape. ‘You may be right. Lying there thinking about it I just thought that the best possible way of really unnerving me was to pretend that none of it ever happened. If you couldn’t remember anything then I would start to half believe that I was dreaming.’
‘Forget it,’ said Monica. ‘You can speculate too much. My mind is in neutral. There’s no point in discussing the hypothetical when you can check it in the dictionary. Isn’t that Berlins?’
‘Isaiah?’
‘No, dummy, Berlins with an “s”. The Lord Justice of Appeal. His monograph on Crime, Punishment, Laws and Asses.’
‘Oh.’ Bognor seldom failed to be amazed by his wife’s erudition. He had never even heard of Lord Justice Berlins, much less his monograph.
‘So,’ said Monica, ‘ring Doctor Macpherson. Tell him that I’ve come to, seeming very chipper and compos mentis, and ask him to confirm something or other. That I ought to stay in bed this morning for instance. If he denies all knowledge of last night you have one problem. If he doesn’t you have another.’
Bognor groaned. ‘I hate riddles,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to wonder whether he’s likely to do either. Am I right in thinking that the modern English village is a hyper-complicated place?’
‘Ancient English villages too,’ said Monica. ‘No change in that respect. I’ve been telling you that for days. Now phone Macpherson. He’ll be in the book which is in the bedside table along with the po and the Gideon’s Bible.’
Bognor had noticed them already when doing his usual routine check of the room. He had been surprised to find the Bible and chamber pot and could only suppose that they had been left over from the previous regime. Neither of them quite tied in with Felix and Norman.
‘Macpherson, Dr E. St G.,’ he read. ‘That’s him. I remember the initials on the side of his bag.’
He got an outside line and dialled the number. After a long wait a receptionist answered. ‘Dr Macpherson’s in Surgery,’ she said. ‘Can I help?’
Bognor explained that it was urgent. Dr Macpherson had attended his wife in the small hours and he needed immediate advice now that she had regained consciousness. The receptionist asked him to wait and he was treated to a barrage of clicking sounds until Macpherson came on the line sounding neutral if a trifle harassed.
‘Macpherson,’ said Macpherson.
‘Doctor, my wife has come round now and seems quite well.’ Bognor chanced his arm, risking a scream from Monica, ‘it’s just that she and I have a quite different recollection of exactly what you wanted her to do. I thought you wanted her to stay in bed at least for a morning but she distinctly recollects your telling her to get out into the fresh air as soon as possible.’
There was another long pause and although there were no audible clicks Bognor had a distinct sense of cerebral cogs clunking and whirring inside the doctor’s head.
‘I’m surprised she can remember anything at all about last night,’ he said at last. ‘She was quite unwell. Delirious in fact. And with the treatment and everything else … ah … perhaps I’d better speak to her myself.’
‘Of course.’ Bognor handed the phone to his wife who mouthed something unintelligible at him. Not something very agreeable.
‘Good morning, Doctor,’ she said. ‘My husband says I’m to stay in bed this morning.’
Macpherson, though polite enough, sounded mildly put out, and unsure of himself.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. He seemed reluctant even to commit himself to such an anodyne question.
‘Fine,’ said Monica. ‘A bit washed out.’
‘Then I think it might be as well if you took it easy. If there are any problems please call me. And if I might offer a word of warning do heed the chef’s advice in future. I understand Norman Bone warned you there might be something wrong with the steak.’
‘Yes,’ said Monica. ‘Thanks.’
She replaced the receiver.
‘Sorry I doubted you,’ she said. ‘There is something odd going on.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Bognor. ‘Intuition?’
‘Not entirely,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s not conclusive but I am right in thinking that Felix was extremely persuasive about your having the steak?’
‘That’s what I’ve been saying.’
‘And exactly the reverse when it turned out that I was going to eat it?’
‘Precisely,’ said Bognor. ‘They were happy enough to murder me, but they baulked at you.’
‘You can’t prove that, of course,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘They might have been telling the truth. Norman might only have realised the rest of the steak was a bit niffy after he’d dished up yours. They might have warned you off anyway.’
‘But Felix started being peculiar as soon as you said you were having it,’ said Bognor. ‘The charade about Norman sniffing out the other steaks only came later. It was their number two ploy.’
‘And number three ploy,’ said Monica, ‘was to phone the doctor and get him to come steaming round with the antidote. Again I doubt that would have happened if you’d been the victim. He’d have got here just too late.’
‘You can’t prove that.’ Bognor frowned. ‘Even though I’m almost certain you’re right.’
‘Too much hypothesis and intuition,’ agreed his wife. ‘But that’s what would have happened. Just as well you’re not the only carnivorous greedy pig in this family.’
They sipped their Earl Grey with sanguine expressions, contemplating the awfulness that might have been, he a quite ordinary little man in striped pyjamas, she a strapping equine figure in a Marks and Spencer nightie. Neither in the first flush of youth, but both too young to die.
And then, just as it so often did in the aftermath of crisis, the telephone rang. It was ever thus in Bognor’s life. There was never a trough between the waves. They kept on coming like Zulus at Rorke’s Dr
ift, and whenever the enemy paused to re-group he had to field an attack from his own side.
He gazed sourly at the strident interrupter of their post-almost-mortem. He would know that ring anywhere – more hectoring, more shrill, more insistent than any other telephone call in the world. Always later at night, always earlier in the morning, always inconvenient, as distinctive as the mating call of the grebe or the hunting cry of the stoat.
Parkinson.
Glumly he put the receiver to his ear and said, ‘Myrtle here.’
‘Oh, come along, Bognor,’ His boss’s rasping tones grated across the wires from Whitehall. ‘It’s too early for fun and games and I’m perfectly certain that the lady with you is your lovely wife. Now, Bognor, I want you to take your mind off toast and marmalade and concentrate on what I have to say. Customs and Excise have just been on and …’
When you have worked in intelligence as long as a man like Bognor you develop any number of sixth and seventh senses which enable you to react to circumstances in a manner which would elude most armchair investigators. It is this which keeps men like Bognor alive: the awareness that the smiling stranger in the Burton suit has knuckledusters on his fingers; that the man with the firm handshake and unflinching stare is shiftier than he seems; above all that walls have ears. Or, more particularly, telephones. For most people the phone seems a private even intimate form of communication into which the most embarrassing intimacies can be communicated. Not to Bognor. In some countries, naturally, he only ever used public call boxes just a he would never do more than pass the time of day in a hotel bedroom unless the taps were running. In Herring St George he might not normally have entertained such suspicions but this was not a normal time and he suddenly – intuitively, if you insist – became aware that there was a third party on the line. And the third party was not there by accident.
‘Hang on a sec, sir,’ he said. ‘I can’t hear you very well. I’ll call back in a jiffy.’
But Parkinson was being obtuse. ‘Our American cousins have come up with some interesting material on your friends the Contractors. A company owned by them’s under investigation …’
Stupid oaf, Bognor said to himself. ‘Please sir,’ he said out loud, ‘I’m going to have to call you back …’ He cracked the receiver back into its cradle. ‘Deskbound Wally!’ he said. ‘You can tell he’s never been out in the field. He’s more danger to the country than Philby himself. Utterly crass. He must realise this isn’t a secure line. Either Felix or Norman were definitely listening in and in view of what happened last night I only hope I hung up in time.’
‘Depends how long he went on talking after you’d put the machine down,’ said Monica.
Bognor was getting dressed rapidly, pulling on his Y-fronts and a ‘fug’ of string vest and shirt, the one encased in the other. ‘Where the hell did I put my electric razor?’ he asked irritably, ‘Did you nick it?’
‘What I mean,’ said Monica equably refusing to be insulted, ‘is that you don’t break the connection just by putting the receiver down in your hotel room. The connection is with the switchboard downstairs. So if Parkinson went on talking your eavesdropper would have been able to hear every word he said.’
‘Oh, hell!’ Bognor was knotting his lurid Arkwright and Blennerhassett Society tie, one of his few remaining links with university life so long ago. ‘You’re absolutely right. And the way the old fool was blathering on he could have continued for hours committing Christ knows what sort of indiscretion.’ He located the razor under his hastily discarded pyjama bottoms and switched on, buzzing cursorily across the stubble of his jowls and chins. ‘Whatever he was saying will be all round Herring St George by now,’ he said. ‘And the crowning absurdity is that practically the only person who’s not in on the secret is me.’ He peered with displeasure at his reflection in the mirror. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, wearily, ‘I don’t think I’m me at all. Where did that sprightly youth go to? What happened to that boundless promise?’
‘You were never sprightly,’ said Monica harshly. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Find a phone box,’ he said. ‘Call Parkinson and then pay one or two social visits beginning with the intriguing if unlikely Emerald Carlsbad. Something tells me she is up to no good. I shall almost certainly pay my respects also to the maharishi, Phoney Fred. I’ll be back in time for a light lunch. Light for you anyway. You’re not allowed anything to drink until the sun is over the yard arm. Doctor’s orders.’
He pecked her on both cheeks.
‘Try to sleep,’ he said. ‘And if Parkinson calls again, hang up.’
She picked up The Times and the Portfolio card.
‘See you later,’ she said. ‘Take care.’
The morning was hazily beautiful as only an English morning in an olde village knows how. Bognor had seen Anne Hathaway’s cottage lovingly recreated in exact replica in a garden on Vancouver Island. He had seen an English hamlet with a water mill of genuine English stone in the middle of alligator-infested swamp in Orlando, Florida. He had seen the sunrise over a beach in Mauritius and the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. But you couldn’t beat the real McCoy: the mellow yellow stone, the flutter of butterflies, the skilfully posed roses, the hollyhocks chock-a-block in the little cottage gardens, the sweet peas and the bees, the hives half hidden in the trees, clumps of chives, and parsley and thyme in tubs by low front doors, and there by the wicket gate into the churchyard the scarlet of Victorian pillar box and the village telephone kiosk.
‘You can’t beat England!’ said Bognor, and hummed the first few bars of ‘Sussex-by-the-Sea’, as he strode bouncily across the green, speckled with buttercup and daisy. No matter how it was traduced and bowdlerised by city interlopers there was something about an English village like Herring St George which could never be destroyed.
He opened the door of the phone box. Even the smell was ancient and traditional – that compound of old sock, manure, last year’s cigarettes and ale. The phone had not even been vandalised, as it would have been in any of the country’s great conurbations. The graffiti, especially the Swastikas and the ‘Pakis go home’ suggested interloping Hell’s Angels or National Frontiersmen from Whelk and the world outside, but there were still a few ‘Kilroy was here’s and ‘Bill loves Mary’s together with cupid’s hearts which recalled an earlier, simpler era. For a moment Bognor stood breathing in the unventilated air of a forgotten England and assimilating the sights of a vanished world. Then he dialled the operator, contacting her at only the third attempt, and asked for a reverse charge call to the Board of Trade.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ asked Parkinson angrily, when they had made contact. ‘First of all we get cut off and then when I finally get through again your wife refuses to speak to me. Have you gone off your rocker?’
Bognor was very patient. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, when this display of Parkinsonian petulance was over, ‘that it’s not safe to talk on the phones to the Pickled Herring. I’ve good reason to believe that the proprietors attempted to murder me last night and were only foiled because Monica insisted on eating my steak.’
Parkinson appeared to be experiencing some respiratory trouble.
‘Anyway,’ continued Bognor, ‘I won’t bother you with that except to say that in future, don’t call me, I’ll call you. Now you were in the middle of telling me something that the Americans had discovered about the Contractors.’
‘I told you that before we were cut off.’
Bognor winced. ‘I’m afraid not, sir. We were cut off before you got to the crucial passage.’
For the first time a shadow of doubt seemed to have crept into Parkinson’s voice.
‘Odd,’ he said. ‘I told you all about the company and this chap Herring being the president. I only heard the click and the dialling tone after I’d finished and you didn’t reply.’
Bognor suddenly felt queasy.
‘What chap Herring being president of what company?’
&nbs
p; ‘Sir Nimrod Herring, Baronet, MC,’ said Parkinson. ‘President of this Miami registered company called Dull Boy Productions. It seems to be a nominal position because the chief executive is your friend Peregrine Contractor and all the money obviously comes from them. Or I should say “originally came from”. Now it’s a case of “goes to”. The papers are ambiguous to put it mildly; but there’s evidently a lot of money in it.’
‘Well it’s not going to Sir Nimrod,’ said Bognor. ‘He’s as poor as a church mouse. Runs the village shop. Scarcely got two pennies to his name.’
‘Don’t bank on it, Bognor.’ His chief had that knowing inflection in his voice which meant he was about to teach his subordinate how to suck eggs.
‘I don’t know how many millionaires you’ve met in your life, Bognor,’ he said, ‘but I’ve known one or two and they’re not like you and me.’ Bognor resented being thus bracketed with his superior. He felt no affinity with him whatever. But he kept quiet. ‘Some of the richest men in the world,’ continued Parkinson, ‘make a fetish out of appearing not just ordinary but positively down and out. Your Sir Nimrod may well come into precisely that category. Eccentrics are seldom more eccentric than English eccentrics and things are seldom what they seem. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, Bognor.’
‘Indeed not, sir. You’re suggesting then, sir, that Sir Nimrod Herring is a sort of mute inglorious Robert Maxwell.’
‘I’m not suggesting anything, Bognor. I’m simply asking you to exercise rat-like cunning and extreme scepticism. Not to say caution.’
‘Very well sir.’
Bognor replaced the phone quite gently and then very deliberately kicked the metal wall of the box several times, hard enough to be painful. ‘Bloody, bloody, bloody man!’ he said, and then repeated, ‘Bloody man!’ Only then did he feel sufficiently calm to venture back into the world outside.
Herring and Daughter, Village Stores, was on the side of the green between the Pickled Herring and St George’s church. It was not a very prepossessing edifice, having been erected in rather a hurry after its predecessor, a thatched sixteenth-century building, had been flattened by one of Hitler’s bombs in 1942. The pilot had, it was assumed, jettisoned a surplus one while returning from a raid on the marshalling yards in Whelk. It was the only bomb to fall on Herring St George during the entire conflict.