by Tim Heald
‘I don’t want your damned help.’ The Inspector was spitting now. Bognor was aware of something damp striking him on the cheek. Possibly the piece of muesli. He dabbed at it with the blue and white handkerchief.
‘There’s no need to spit,’ he said, ‘nor to be so agitated. It would be much better to treat this as a team game. We’re both on the same side.’
‘Don’t patronise me with your lah-di-dah public school rubbish. We are not on the same bloody side. As far as I am concerned, you’re right in this up to here.’ He made a waving motion at his neck, hand only inches from Bognor’s face.
Bognor backed off. ‘Don’t be absurd.’
‘I’m not the one who’s being absurd.’ DCI Bumstead was obviously about to play an ace. ‘I have reason to believe that at or about the time that Vernon Hemlock was murdered last night you were somewhere downstairs in this house despite having gone to bed. Or pretended to go to bed.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Bognor.
‘Were you or weren’t you?’
‘Wasn’t I or wasn’t I what?’
‘In bed with your wife?’
‘Don’t be impertinent.’
‘I’m warning you, Bognor!’
Monica decided it was time to intervene with a little feminine reason.
‘It’s perfectly straightforward, Mr Bumstead,’ she said. ‘My husband stayed up a little later than I did. Shortly after coming to bed he felt thirsty and went downstairs to get some milk. He can’t have been gone more than five minutes.’
‘That’s your story.’
‘Yes.’
‘If he was thirsty why didn’t he drink tap water?’
‘He doesn’t like tap water, and I don’t blame him. I’ve tried this Byfleet-next-the-Sea tap stuff and it’s worse than London. And he’s particularly partial to milk.’
Bumstead deflated a notch or two.
‘It’s a remarkable coincidence that your husband should choose to go downstairs at just the same time as Mr Hemlock was being murdered.’
‘I don’t suppose we yet know the precise moment of death,’ said Monica, sounding knowledgeable, ‘and I doubt the lab will be able to give you one anyway. And if you want further evidence I suggest you get your forensic people to check the kitchen fridge and milk bottles for prints. You’ll find my husband’s there. I was awake the entire time he was away and I assure you he was not gone more than five minutes. The whole thing is preposterous. Even if he had the opportunity to kill Hemlock what on earth would be the motive? And where on earth is your proof? It’s barely even circumstantial.’
The DCI began to look uneasy.
‘Anyway,’ asked Bognor, ‘who told you I was downstairs?’
‘Never you mind,’ said the policeman. ‘The fact is that you were, and I find that in itself an extremely suspicious circumstance.’
‘Do you just?’
‘Yes, I do.’
They were squaring off again, Bumstead’s face getting closer and closer to Bognor’s, when the phone rang.
Monica answered.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s here. I’ll pass you over.’ She smiled glacially at Bumstead. ‘It’s for you. Your Chief Constable, I think the girl said.’
The conversation was rather like one between Bognor and Parkinson. In other words it would have been an exaggeration to say there were two sides in it.
What the Bognors heard was: ‘Yes, sir’, ‘Yes, sir’, ‘No, sir’, ‘I’m afraid not, sir’, ‘Not at all co-operative, sir’, ‘Downright suspicious if you ask me, sir’, ‘No, sir, sorry, sir’, ‘Yes, sir’, ‘Is that an order, sir?’, ‘If you say so, sir’, ‘Under protest, sir’, ‘I understand, sir, and I’m sorry too, sir’, ‘Thank you very much, sir’, ‘I will indeed, sir’.
Bognor guessed he sounded like a bit of a creeper on the phone to his boss but never, surely, as creepy as that.
Bumstead returned the phone to Mrs Bognor.
‘That was my boss,’ he said, in a voice like freezing drizzle.
‘Really?’ Bognor realised his inflection was off-key but he could think of no other response.
‘Your boss threatened my boss with a Q4.’
‘Did he?’
‘It’s out of order. There’s no issue of national security involved here.’
‘We don’t know that yet. Books are an international business. And they can get unpleasantly tied up with national security. Look at that fellow Wright in Tasmania. Books about MI5 and 6 are practically an industry within an industry.’ Bognor tried to seem expert.
‘I think that’s just plain stupid,’ said Bumstead. He sounded petulant. ‘Anyway, my boss took the Q4 threat seriously.’
‘So I gathered. Wise man.’ Bognor smiled.
‘That doesn’t mean we have to co-operate,’ said Bumstead. ‘Just because you have or may have a Q4 doesn’t oblige me to be on the same team.’
‘It obliges you’, said Bognor, quoting, ‘“not to withhold any evidence regarding the case nor to in any way impede the holder of the authority from making any enquiries howsoever conducted”. Sounds pretty unequivocal to me.’
‘It means’, said Bumstead, ‘that I can’t stop you doing whatever you want and I have to tell you what you need to know. But it damn well doesn’t oblige me to tell you anything voluntarily nor to abandon any suspicions I may entertain. You put a foot wrong, my friend, and I’ll have your guts for garters.’
Bognor nodded.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Just so we understand one another.’
‘Quite,’ said the DCI, turning on his heel. He shut the door with a force marginally the right side of insulting and stomped off to do some more interrogating.
Simon and Monica listened to the retreating steps.
‘Phew!’ said Monica.
As predicted, the decisive move came from Milton Capstick. Bognor and his wife were drinking a dry sherry from their travelling decanter and speculating on the likely course of events when Capstick arrived in the nearest Capstick was ever likely to be to a lather of excitement.
‘Look here,’ he said, accepting a glass of Sandeman’s best, ‘can you pull rank on this really rather boring policeman? I have to present a paper at the RIL this evening. I can’t conceivably duck out of it, sorry though I am about poor Hemlock. It’s been arranged for months and it’s completely sold out. One has a duty to one’s public, don’t you know?’
‘RIL?’ asked Bognor.
‘Royal Institute of Letters,’ said Capstick. ‘It’s immensely prestigious. Somewhere in Chelsea. I’m told Michael Holroyd’s coming.’
‘Goodness!’ said Bognor.
‘So you see my problem?’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Bognor disingenuously; ‘it’ll only take three hours at the most to get to London. What’s the problem?’
‘It’s that wretched inspector man. He’s trying to insist we all stay put until he’s solved the crime. Which will be for ever if you ask me. You must outrank him. Can’t you order him? I’ll be back tomorrow if he wants. If the sales conference is still on, that is. It’s all too terribly tiresome.’ He shot a cuff of Ariel white. His links were silver and coral of vaguely Spanish design.
‘As I understand the law,’ said Bognor, judiciously, ‘you’re entirely free to come and go as you please. You’ve not been charged with anything?’
‘Most certainly not.’ Capstick acted affronted.
‘Nevertheless, you do seem to have been the last person to have seen Hemlock alive.’
‘Don’t you start,’ said Capstick. ‘I’ve had about as much as I can take from Bumstead.’
‘It’s true, though.’
‘How should I know?’ Capstick’s Adam’s apple was mesmerising. ‘He might have seen all sorts of people after Warrington and I left him.’
‘I understood Warrington left before you?’
‘About thirty seconds.’
‘So you didn’t go down to the basement with Hemlock?’
&nbs
p; ‘Certainly not. Not my sort of scene at all. Not at all. The idea of drooling over rude pictures with Vernon Hemlock. It’s too horrible to contemplate.’
Bognor made a mental note or two and said ‘I see.’ Then he went on, ‘No one liked Hemlock much, did they?’
‘You could say that. He was bloody good at his job, though. And we all made a bob or two. I’m not complaining.’
‘Even though he paid outrageously low royalties?’
‘You’re better off with five per cent of a few million than fifteen per cent of a few thousand.’
‘I heard rumours about the film of Looking After Number One.’
‘Rumours, what sort of rumours?’ Capstick’s Adam’s apple rose and fell like a yo-yo.
‘That Hemlock wanted Marlene Glopff to star and Arthur Green to write the script.’
‘Maybe he did. I should worry. I had a good deal. Vernon controlled the rights. What he did with them was his affair.’
‘So you had no reason to wish Vernon Hemlock dead?’
‘None whatever. Am I free to go?’
‘As far as I’m concerned, yes, absolutely. What are you talking about?’
‘“Literature as Business”,’ said Capstick, ‘subtitled “Combining Cash and Narrative Flow”. It’s about how to make money from writing books. Some of the Fellows of the Institute are absolutely hopeless at it. Famous and all that but they live off pitiful little bursaries and grants of one kind and another and they think marketing is something that happens once a week in Taunton and Dorchester. It’s too sad.’
‘How interesting,’ said Bognor. ‘As a matter of fact I’m researching something along those lines. Any chance Monica and I might be able to come along?’
Capstick seemed genuinely chuffed. ‘Delighted, dear boy, and you too, Mrs Bognor. Can I offer you a lift? I have an idea some of the others were going to go as well. Vernon had laid on transport but I thought it would be easier and nicer if Ronald drove the Rolls. But will you have a word with Inspector Bumstead?’
Bognor said he would. It was not something he much wanted to do but needs must and he had one of his notorious hunches about the do at the RIL. It might just lead somewhere. They agreed to meet at lunch and Capstick went away to pack.
All Bognor’s instincts in this case were the opposite of the police’s. He recognised that part of this was to do with his personal hostility to the man in charge but there was more to it than that. The police instinct was to keep everyone under one roof, try to get some good forensic evidence at the same time as trying to trap people with relentless questioning to flush something out.
This might work but he was not optimistic about the forensic stuff. The fire would have made a fair old mess of poor Hemlock himself and would have destroyed anything else that might have come in useful. He supposed there might be fingerprints. The butler’s, of course. Hastings might never have read a book but that wouldn’t have prevented him from going down to have a private salivate over the pictures when his master was away. Dr Belgrave’s dabs would be all over the place, too, since she was the onlie other begetter of the place. If there was any suggestion of Warrington or Capstick having been there that would be suggestive if not entirely damning. They had both denied making a visit the previous night. This might or might not be true but neither man struck Bognor as the sort who would deny something as incriminating as that if he thought there was any chance of some proof to the contrary emerging. The fact that they were the last two to be seen getting fuddled with Hemlock was bad enough anyway. Going to the blue basement library would not have made matters so very much worse. Either man could have said that he had stayed in the library and then gone to bed. That was not a murder confession. No more incriminating than Bognor’s search for milk.
‘By the way,’ he said to his spouse, ‘you needn’t have perjured yourself. There was no need to say you’d been awake.’
‘It made life simpler,’ said Monica. ‘Anyway, that’s in the past. I don’t think he’s likely to resuscitate that episode unless you give him more reason for suspicion. And you’re surely not going to do that?’
‘No,’ said Bognor, ‘but who do you suppose told him I was downstairs?’
‘The only people he’d seen were Dr Belgrave and Warrington.’
‘But he’d scarcely had a chance to talk to Warrington. He’d only just left us.’
Monica sighed. It was time for lunch and she was worried that arrangements might not have been made. ‘In any case, there are telephones in every room. Anyone at all could have rung to tip him off. After all, it could seem like vital evidence.’
‘But whoever saw me was almost certainly the murderer.’
‘Seems pretty likely,’ said Monica. ‘Naturally you didn’t see whoever saw you?’
‘Too busy looking for the milk,’ conceded Bognor. ‘Too much brandy. Anyway, why should I be looking for someone suspicious? I didn’t know there’d been a murder.’
‘It does have to be a murder, doesn’t it?’ Monica was musing.
Bognor nodded. ‘He couldn’t have activated those moving shelves if he was in between them. It had to be someone else.’
‘I know,’ said Monica. ‘It’s just that I feel there’s something obvious we haven’t noticed. Warrington, for instance, saying he went to bed before Capstick. Capstick saying they went at the same time.’
‘Cherchez la femme, I say,’ said Bognor.
Monica grinned.
It was almost a silent lunch. A cold collation had been arranged but no one apart from the Bognors had much appetite for it. Even Monica spurned the pressed tongue. Apart from ‘I wonder if you’d very much mind passing the mustard?’ and ‘Could you possibly let me have the Perrier?’, there were no exchanges of significance. The weather, television soaps and cricket were lightly touched on and quickly passed over. Before the meal began, Audrey Hemlock introduced a very grey man named Borage whom Bognor had never met nor even heard of. He was described as ‘Group Managing Director’ but his true status could be gauged from the fact that he was not a guest at Hemlocks but was putting up at the Goose and Goblet, a one-star AA pub opposite the railway station. It was no secret that Big Books was a one-man band. The only others allowed to play any instruments at all were Audrey, who had a fair amount to do with selling Big Books to foreigners, and Romany Flange, whose role really consisted of choreographer and ego-masseuse to the small elite group of Big Book millionaires. In Hemlock’s lifetime Borage had been less influential than Hastings, the butler. Judging from his performance before lunch he would soon be returning to insignificance. Grey man, grey suit, grey countenance, he managed only a few grey words. These were, verbatim:
‘My name is Charles Borage, Group Managing Director of Big Books PLC and Chairman of Aspen and Larch. Despite the appalling tragedy which has struck so suddenly, we at Big Books PLC and Aspen and Larch believe most firmly that the, er, show must go on and that our late founder and president would have wished it to do so. In view of recent tragic events, however, we will not be holding any sessions this afternoon but will recommence in the Winter Gardens as per usual tomorrow morning. I shall be issuing a revised schedule as soon as possible and you will be getting these along with the current catalogue which has been unavoidably held up at the printers. If any of you experience any problems with the media all that side of things is being handled by our Publicity Director, Chris Yardley. Thank you.’
He then exited left with Audrey. Chris Yardley, a retired Avon lady, was presumably fending off the world’s press from the Winter Gardens, where she had a cubby-hole called a press office. You could tell what her status was from the fact that she didn’t even rate the Goose and Goblet but was in a guest house on the promenade. (The Sea View. Prop. E. Wynne-Morgan (Mrs) ‘Recommended. All Mod Con. TV in every room.’) Any publicity worth the name was handled by Hemlock himself. Chris Yardley typed press releases, stalled Nigel Dempster and arranged occasional parties.
Paradoxically, the one absolutely taboo su
bject at the awkward lunch was the one topic that everyone wanted to discuss, namely the dead man and the cause of his death. You could feel him and it hovering over the feast like spectral ectoplasm, but something prevented any verbal expression of the common preoccupation – possibly the memory of Inspector Bumstead’s dire threats but more likely that crippling English politeness which in extreme cases totally inhibits any expression of anything about anything except the weather and the cricket. Even Mr and Mrs Bognor felt so inhibited that they did not mutter between themselves but kept their heads down over the cold meats.
‘Thank God for that!’ said Bognor eventually, lighting a slim cheroot under the porte-cochere. ‘Talk about funereal. Imagine giving us cold beetroot. I haven’t seen cold beetroot since school. It would never have happened in Hemlock’s day.’
‘It’s Hastings’ revenge,’ said Monica, turning up the collar of her Burberry against the salty wind which still spat at them from the other side of the pebbled beach. The gale put roses in her cheeks and a shine in her eye while blowing cigar smoke back in Bognor’s face. She was still, he reflected, a fine-looking woman, while he…well, it was too late for recriminations. If you chose a high-cholesterol diet, sloth and gin you ended up looking like Bognor. Had he taken exercise and stuck to raw carrots, Malvern water and lentils, he might still look like Bumstead. Not that he’d ever looked quite like Bumstead, thank God, but one knew what one meant. A short life and a faintly disgusting one was what he had chosen and that was that…
‘Hello there!’ It was Capstick, dressed in a yellow oilskin with a curious rainproof fedora-style hat, the like of which neither Bognor had ever seen. In one arm he held the brown Vuitton valise with Cipriani label which was part of the essential equipment of seriously rich writers and in the other, less predictably, he held Romany Flange. For a moment Simon, who had marked Milton Capstick down as incorrigibly left handed, felt that sinking sensation he always had after a false diagnosis. Then, on looking again, he observed that Capstick was holding Miss Flange in what he could only describe as not a heterosexual way. He could not say in precisely what way this was so, but he knew it in his bones. At the same time he felt that something was up between them. Nothing sexual, but something all the same.