by Tim Heald
‘That will do, thank you,’ said the DCI. He put his hand in his jacket pocket like Prince Philip and surveyed the little group in silence, moving his head from left to right, pausing for meaningful eyeball-to-eyeball contact with each person in turn. Bognor guessed the idea was to get everyone to look away before he did. It must have been something from the latest Scotland Yard manual on how to interrogate terrorists. Bognor was not going to become involved in eyeball wrestling at this stage of the proceedings so he stared resolutely at Hemlock’s Encyclopaedia Britannica which was handily situated a few yards behind Inspector Bumstead’s left elbow.
‘We believe’, said the Inspector when he had finished this lingering tour d’horizon, ‘that we are dealing with a murder.’
No one spoke until Monica Bognor, a woman given to speaking her mind and much less susceptible to intimidation than her husband or indeed anybody else present.
‘Are you implying that one of us killed Vernon Hemlock?’ she asked.
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘I didn’t say you did. I merely wanted to know if that’s what you were implying. There’s a difference.’
‘I have reason to believe that the deceased did not die due to natural causes.’
‘Goodness, how exciting!’ It was Cynthia Midgely, the distaff side of the Midgely writing team which performed under the joint by-line of Miranda Howard. She and her husband Wilfred used to work on the same local paper until hitting on a royal book formula which had made them both millionaires. Theirs was the newly announced Royal Family Cookbook. Its predecessors included The Royal Family Bedside Book, Royal Party Games, The Queen Mum, Good Queen Bess, Charlie’s Aunt, More Royal Party Games and The Royal Family Bedside Book 1979 – and an annual sequel in each of the following years. Cynthia was easily excited – an attribute which contributed to the notorious but commercially successful purple gush of the books. Wilfred supplied the research, though neither of them had ever actually seen a member of the Royal Family in the flesh. When confronted with this, both Cynthia and Wilfred used to reply archly that Lady Antonia Fraser had never met Mary Queen of Scots and look at her. This always went down very well on the Wogan show.
This time Cynthia had not meant to speak so loudly. She coloured and said in a coy simper, ‘I mean, how perfectly dreadful!’
‘Perfectly dreadful indeed,’ said Bumstead. ‘There are no signs of a forcible entry having been effected into the house and I am therefore driven to the conclusion that whoever killed Mr Hemlock was staying in the house. Not to put too fine a point on it this was an inside job.’
Looking round, Bognor saw that the company was, if not struck dumb, at least extremely subdued by this news. The most affected were, predictably enough, the two women known to be in Hemlock’s life: his wife Audrey, the foreign rights director, and his mistress Romany Flange, brightest of the Big Books editors whose eye for the main chance was unerring. Miss Flange was supposed to be enamoured of Merlin Glatt who was on the verge of becoming an absolutely enormous poet. Hemlock had not allowed him over the threshold – not just because of his place in the affections of Romany Flange but also because he had signed a contract for an erotic bestiary with Andover Strobe, Hemlock’s biggest rival in the world of books.
The Inspector smiled a thin, professional smile designed to freeze bone marrow.
‘Everybody who slept in the house is in this room now,’ he said. He stared at Bognor.
‘You’re forgetting the staff,’ said Bognor. ‘This may have been an inside job but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been a downstairs one. Consider the butler.’
‘Bugger the butler,’ said the Inspector. Bognor seemed to be getting on the policeman’s nerves. This was exactly where he wanted to be.
‘I’m sorry.’ Bognor felt a sudden access of confidence. Reaching into his inside pocket he found his impressive laminated ID and waved it at the policeman. ‘I do have a certain professional standing in cases like this,’ he said, ‘and my view is that you would be unwise to bugger the butler, whatever your inclination. As a member of the Special Investigations Department of the Board of Trade I do have some experience of crime, and…’ he paused here for dramatic effect ‘…murder.’
The DCI now looked quite angry. ‘Is that so?’
‘That is so,’ said Bognor, confidence flowing into him along with the irritation.
‘I do hope, Mr Bognor, that you are not going to be a nuisance.’
Bognor spread his hands to indicate that he personally had no intention of doing anything at all which might in any way interfere with whatever it was the DCI was up to. He also managed to convey, with surprising skill, that in his opinion the Detective Inspector might be making a big mistake.
At this point Monica decided to intervene. Hostile she might be in private, but in public she could be loyal as a lion. She did not like to see her husband patronised or bullied. Still less did she like to see him make a fool of himself.
‘Chief Inspector,’ she said, smiling, ‘I wonder if I might have a word with you in private?’
‘I shall be having words with everyone in private,’ said the Inspector, ‘and in the meantime I must ask all of you to go to your rooms and under no circumstances to discuss anything at all with each other – least of all the deceased and the manner of his demise.’
He paused again. ‘One of these officers will call you when I need you.’ He nodded curtly at the impossibly young constables who stood at either side of the library door. ‘Now if you’d all make your way upstairs in silence I’d just like Dr Belgrave to stay behind, please.’
Dr Belgrave was an iron-grey spinster in a maroon trilby. She wore gloves, smoked a cigarette through a holder, sported steel rimmed specs and was the author of The British Approach to Sex, Sex and the United States, La Vie Sexuelle – an Analysis of the French Way of Love and Behind the Net Curtain – a Study in Suburban Sin. In Bognor’s view she was almost certainly a man, bearing, as she did, a remarkable resemblance to one of the greatest of all Welsh scrum-halves. She was alleged to have been Hemlock’s adviser concerning the erotic dungeon below-stairs where he had met his end. As far as sex was concerned, her interest was said to be entirely theoretical and intellectual – though even there Bognor had his doubts.
Monica was not so easily fobbed off.
‘Ann,’ she said, grasping Dr Belgrave by the elbow and propelling her towards the door as everyone began to leave, ‘I won’t be more than a second. But I do feel someone has to save this silly little man from himself.’
THREE
FIVE MINUTES LATER BOGNOR stood at the bedroom window watching the waves lash the sea wall. Pondering the arbitrary way in which the grim reaper gathered in the harvest, he was roused from his reverie by his wife bursting in with as much ferocity as the sea outside.
‘What a perfectly bloody little man!’ she said, chest heaving. She was a formidable sight when roused and she was plainly roused now. ‘He more or less told me to mind my own business.’
Bognor gazed out at the troubled waters and wished he was on the other side, abroad, away from tiresome, unexpected murders which threatened to upset the equilibrium of his ways.
‘He as good as told me that we were suspects ourselves.’
‘I suppose, in the circumstances, that’s not unreasonable.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. What can you mean?’
‘If Hemlock was murdered last night then presumably he was murdered by someone who was staying in the house overnight. That includes us.’
‘No intelligent investigator could seriously include us among a list of murder suspects. It’s preposterous.’
‘He’s not an intelligent investigator, he’s a spivvy little halfwit.’
Monica sat down on the bed. ‘I’d no idea you’d taken against him quite so strongly. His name’s Bumstead, by the way, Arthur Bumstead.’
‘There’s a footballer called Bumstead,’ said Bognor. ‘Plays for Chelsea.’
‘S
o?’
‘So nothing. But it’s not a fortunate name. He’d have done a sight better if he’d changed it. There’s a lot in a name.’
‘It doesn’t seem to have done the Chief Inspector much harm.’
‘He’s done well in spite of it.’ A gust of wind caught an abandoned deckchair and tossed it against the railings where it stuck flapping. It reminded Bognor of a dying bird, a dying bird in the garish stripes of some impossibly minor public school or designed by a state-of-the-art advertising agency. It was the sort of thing Vernon Hemlock would have enjoyed as a publicity stunt – spraying a whole lot of birds in fluorescent paint and releasing them at his sales conference. He would have worked in some naked ladies as well, being such a one for naked ladies. Real and imaginary. If it hadn’t been for his obsession with naked ladies he might still be alive and well and…
‘Simon! You’re not listening.’
He shook his head. He had noticed that his attention span had been diminishing recently, his boredom threshold getting lower.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I was thinking.’
‘We’re going to need to do a lot of that.’
‘Yes.’ Bognor was not looking forward to the prospect. He wished people wouldn’t get themselves killed while he was visiting. It had happened before.
The telephone rang. Both Bognors knew instinctively who it was. Only one person they could think of knew where they were. Only one person invariably got in touch after a corpse had appeared in Bognor’s life. He was Bognor’s vulture, an office undertaker. Where Bognor was so often and so unwittingly the harbinger of death, Parkinson was its confirmation.
Monica picked up the receiver and handed it to her spouse with a ‘Guess who?’ expression and a ritual ‘I think it’s for you-hoo!’
‘Bognor,’ said Bognor.
‘Done it again, eh, Bognor?’ Parkinson sounded almost pleased, as if glad to have his suspicions confirmed even though they were rather terrible. Like a weather forecaster walking into a blizzard of his own predicting.
‘You’ve heard, then?’
‘One gets to hear things before they happen in this job, as you should know by now, Bognor. I’m told your friend Mr Hemlock was squashed to death between two sliding shelves in his library.’
‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘Rather less than the size he used to be,’ said Parkinson without mirth. ‘I take it you’re assisting the police with their enquiries.’
‘No chance. The DCI seems to take a dim view of me at the moment. It’s mutual.’
‘That won’t do, Bognor. Won’t do at all. You know the rules. Maximum co-operation with the law at all times. At least on the face of it. You must put yourself entirely at the Chief Inspector’s disposal while reporting back to me at all times.’
‘I’ve tried,’ said Bognor. ‘He doesn’t want me at his disposal.’
There was a long pause. Bognor sensed irritation pulsing down the line like an electric charge. He could picture the Parkinson brow, sweaty, empurpled. The old man was more crotchety than ever as retirement loomed, especially as the coveted ‘K’ still eluded him.
‘You must try harder,’ he said eventually. ‘Meanwhile I’ll have a word with the Chief Constable, though frankly he’s a bit of a bugger himself. Downright obstructive in the drugged banana boat business in ‘eighty-two. Some of these people don’t seem to understand the jurisdiction of SIDBOT. Think they’re God Almighty and can do as they please. I may have to go over some heads and apply for a Q4 but meanwhile you butter your man up. And call me back this afternoon. I want this cleared up sharpish and with no embarrassment to the Department or the Board.’
‘Righty-ho!’ Bognor did not feel as jaunty as he tried to sound.
Monica had broken a nail. Worrying at it with an emery board she said, ‘How long can he keep us here?’
‘He can’t,’ said Bognor. ‘At least not in theory. We’re perfectly free to come and go as we please. But in practice I’d say we’re stuck here till about lunch. Then I should guess one or other of our little company is going to plead an urgent business appointment and cut and run.’
‘Guess who’ll be first?’
‘Milton Capstick,’ said Bognor. ‘His self-esteem demands it.’
‘I was going to say Capstick. He’s awful.’
‘They’re all awful,’ Bognor sighed. ‘Only some are more awful than others. I think I’m getting a cold. I shouldn’t have gone for that walk. Ruined my relationship with the gentleman of the police and my constitution all in one go.’ He blew his nose into a blue-and-white spotted handkerchief. It was rather grubby.
‘Who do you think did it?’ Monica sounded as if her own mind was made up already.
‘They’re all unpleasant enough. And everyone had the opportunity.’
‘I thought you needed a special card to get into the basement?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Audrey Hemlock. We had a tête-à-tête in the loo yesterday. She was having a bit of a weep.’
‘You never told me.’
‘You never asked. Anyway, it didn’t seem particularly interesting at the time.’
‘What was she blubbing about?’
‘What do you think? Her bloody husband. Whenever you see women crying their eyes out in the loo it’s because of some ghastly man.’
Bognor frowned. ‘What in particular?’
‘Honestly, Simon, you can be an awful oaf sometimes. No one enjoys constant public humiliation.’
‘You mean Romany Flange?’
‘Yes. Everyone knew she was Hemlock’s mistress. Everyone knew about the dirty books in the basement. Audrey thought we were all sniggering. Or pitying her. She couldn’t make up her mind which was worse.’
‘Poor old Audrey. Gives her a motive, though.’ Bognor chewed his lip and wondered if he might smoke a cheroot. He decided against. They made him wheeze and Monica would complain that they made the sheets smell.
‘I don’t think you’ll find any shortage of motive,’ said Monica, ‘but Audrey certainly didn’t have one of those open-sesame plastic cards for the basement.’
‘Did anyone except Hemlock?’
‘That ridiculous butler, I think. And there would have been a spare somewhere.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Bognor, ‘it’s perfectly possible Hemlock didn’t shut the door behind him. He was several sheets in the wind when I last saw him.’
‘How long after I came up were you?’ Monica had retired at ten-thirty, announcing that she was going to read another chapter of Margaret Atwood. Atwood, though a biggish author, especially for a Canadian, was not on the Big Books list. Hemlock had not been amused.
‘Pseudo-intellectual garbage,’ he had slurred, laying a fleshy hand on Monica’s bottom as she walked past.
Bognor frowned. ‘About an hour,’ he said. ‘Hemlock was banging on about export sales markets and telling smutty stories. People were drifting away one by one until it was just me, Warrington and Capstick. When I came in you were snoring with the Atwood wide open beside you.’
‘So when you left it was just the three men.’
‘Yes.’ Bognor thought as hard as possible. ‘They were all having what Hemlock – inevitably – referred to as one for the road.’
‘Maybe Hemlock invited them down to the basement for a little leer?’
‘It’s possible,’ said Bognor; ‘there was no sight or sound of anyone when I was looking for the milk. I assumed they’d gone up to bed. Maybe they’d gone downstairs instead.’
‘You what?’ Monica seemed astonished.
‘Assumed they’d gone up to bed.’
‘No. Before that. You said you’d gone looking for milk.’
Bognor blushed. ‘I had a sudden craving. Besides, I thought in view of the alcohol intake it might be a good idea. A lining for the stomach.’
‘Idiot,’ said Monica. ‘That’s before you start on the booze, not after. It’s supposed to act as a sort of b
arrier between the wall of the stomach and the alcohol. Pure fantasy.’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyway, you’re telling me that after you’d come up here you suddenly decided it would be a good wheeze to nip out again and go in search of milk.’
‘I told you. I had a craving. I couldn’t sleep because of all the noise you were making, so it seemed only sensible to get some peace and quiet and some milk into the bargain.’
‘So you were on the toot at the very moment Vernon Hemlock was snuffing it?’
Bognor grimaced. ‘I was not on the toot. I merely wanted a drink of milk.’
‘But you see what I’m getting at?’
‘No.’ Bognor was becoming decidedly tetchy.
Monica sighed. ‘If, she said, ‘you were larking about the house in the middle of the night, then you might perfectly well have roamed in the direction of the Hemlock erotic library, twiddled a few knobs and sent poor Vernon off into eternity.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not being silly.’
‘But you know I didn’t.’
‘I know you didn’t because I’m married to you. Chief Inspector Bumstead isn’t.’
Bognor scratched the back of his head. There was some truth in what Monica said. In retrospect it had been foolish to go looking for milk. Like so much in life it had seemed a good idea at the time – like joining the Board of Trade fresh from Oxford, marrying Monica, supporting Somerset at cricket. Grief had often had a disagreeable habit of treading on the heels of pleasure as far as Bognor was concerned. Not a very dramatic form of grief but what your average modern doctor would describe as ‘discomfort’. Like toothache or an ulcer. Something you were supposed to suffer in silence.