by L. C. Tyler
‘Presumably.’
‘Was my name mentioned?’ he asked.
‘What do you think?’ I asked.
‘And what did you say when it was mentioned?’
‘I specifically said that I wasn’t suggesting it was you,’ I said.
‘Thank you. That was kind. So, I can expect a visit from the Old Bill, then?’
‘That is likely.’
‘Then I am forewarned. I shall be ready for them. Was anything else said about me?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Really? Don’t you? Did I mention my meeting with your chairman?’
‘Yes, I took your point. I may have to look for another publisher. These things happen.’
Davies looked at me. ‘Was there any suggestion that I might have been in Chichester? I think you can tell me that.’
‘No, there wasn’t.’
‘Did they speculate on what motive I might have for killing Roger Vane?’
‘No. The police are more interested in who had the opportunity.’
He considered this for a moment. ‘Perhaps we have less to discuss than I thought. I’m sorry to have brought you all this way for so little.’
‘There’s no need to apologise,’ I said.
‘That wasn’t an apology,’ he said.
He opened his diary to check his next appointment.
I stood. Then a thought occurred to me. ‘So, where were you last night?’ I asked.
I had expected him to damn my impertinence, but he simply looked up and said: ‘Here. In my office. I had a conference call with some people in California – early evening their time. I needed to do some preparation for it, so I sat up until about three in the morning, took the call, then went to bed here – I have a bedroom in the building for when I need it. It’s not that far to walk home, but it’s often easier.’
‘Do you have any proof of that?’
‘Which bit? The bedroom? Or the distance home?’
‘It’s entirely your decision, Lord Davies,’ I said, ‘but when the police question you, I’d drop the flippant replies.’
‘Would you? Well, you can tell the police they can begin by checking the CCTV footage of reception. They’ll see me come in at about eight and they won’t see me leave until I go home later today. And if you don’t consider it unduly flippant, say I’d be happy to send them a copy if that would assist in any way.’
‘I’ll tell them,’ I said.
‘Good. I think that would be helpful for all concerned,’ said Davies. He flicked through the diary, then looked up again as if surprised I was still there.
‘Have you discussed Vane’s murder with anyone else?’ I asked.
‘Other than talking to you, I haven’t really had time to think about it. If I had discussed it with anyone else, it would be none of your business. You may like to imagine a great conspiracy taking place behind your back, but this isn’t even my tenth most important meeting today. I’m sorry that Roger is dead, but he was never a friend of mine and not somebody I’ve thought about a great deal for the past twenty years. He means almost as little to me as you do.’ He gave me a stiff, formal smile.
‘So that’s it, then? Shall I find the limousine again to take me home?’
‘I’m sure my secretary could order you one, if you don’t mind the expense. I needed you here, so I provided a car. I don’t particularly need you anywhere else.’
‘I’d better get the train, then,’ I said.
‘Entirely your choice,’ said Lord Davies. ‘My secretary will see you out of the building. Security is necessarily very strict. It is important to keep out undesirables. As you pass the CCTV camera you can wave at your policeman friend. He’ll like that.’
I was heading for the Tube and Victoria Station when my phone rang again. This time I recognised the caller – it was a number I had entered in my contacts list.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Ogilvie,’ I said.
‘Afternoon, Ethelred. Do you fancy a spot of lunch? I’ll see you at my club at one o’clock. The Pagan Club in Pall Mall. My treat. I’ll be waiting by the porter’s lodge, just inside the entrance.’
‘I was about to get the train back to Sussex,’ I said.
‘It’s lucky I caught you, then. Don’t be late.’
I put my plans for returning to Chichester on hold and checked the Tube map in my diary. I could just about get to the Pagan by one. I hadn’t asked him how he knew I was in London. There probably wasn’t much point. Davies had lied to me. I was fairly sure Ogilvie was planning to do the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘The beef Wellington is very good,’ said Ogilvie over the top of his menu.
‘Maybe something lighter …’ I said.
‘Nonsense. We’ll both have the beef Wellington,’ he said to the waiter, who had been hovering in the background. ‘He needs building up. New potatoes. Peas. Buttered carrots. And a bottle of the 1998 Clos de Vougeot.’
‘And some water,’ I added.
‘And some water,’ said Ogilvie, as if the waiter had been unaware of my presence.
The waiter nodded and slipped the menus from our hands as if they had been made of silk.
Ogilvie leant back in his chair and stretched his legs out. We both briefly surveyed the room, taking in the high ceiling, the heavy plaster mouldings, the immensely thick royal-blue velvet curtains, the great gold tassels, the dark-blue leather of the chairs, the polished mahogany everywhere. ‘Luncheon!’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘Big mistake not to have it. Big mistake. Most important meal of the day. That and breakfast. And tea of course.’ He paused, perhaps wondering if he could add dinner to the list. Or midnight feasts in the dorm. I thought of Elsie’s comment about the Cordwainers’ lifelong obsession with their stomachs. Roasting oxen on Big Side.
‘I’m sure the beef Wellington will be very good,’ I said.
‘Roger always liked his food – we often lunched here – well, not so much in the last twenty years of course …’ He lapsed into silence.
‘Did you know he was planning to come down to Chichester?’ I asked.
He looked at me for a moment. ‘He mentioned it,’ he said. ‘Phoned me yesterday afternoon to update me on one or two things and mentioned it in passing. I was down in the constituency at the time.’
‘Remind me – where’s that?’ I asked.
‘Hampshire.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m almost in Hampshire myself,’ I said. ‘Hayling Island’s just across the water from us.’
‘Yes, I suppose you are. You’d need to be a lot further west to vote for me, though.’
There was an assumption, if I were far enough west, I would not choose to vote for anyone else. The only impediment was geography.
‘So did you come back last night?’ I asked.
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Because you’re here now. You must have travelled back last night or early this morning.’
‘Yes.’ There was another pause. ‘It was … last night, actually. Yes, last night. Ah, there’s the wine waiter.’
We watched as the cork was carefully removed and a small libation was poured into Ogilvie’s glass. Ogilvie sipped it thoughtfully and nodded. Our glasses were filled to the level that the waiter considered good for us and he departed.
‘They decanted it in the old days. A decent wine like this one. Not any more. The wine committee decreed that because the French don’t decant their wines, we shouldn’t either. I always say, the French may know how to make wine, but we know how to drink it. Eh? What’s your own wine committee say?’
‘I don’t possess one,’ I said. ‘I don’t belong to any clubs.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘I’d propose you for this one but there’s a very long waiting list, I’m told. And the committee’s quite choosy. They won’t accept everyone. Nothing gives them greater pleasure than turning down some jumped-up nobody. Pure snobbery, of course – I don’t approve of it myself. You could always try one of the oth
ers along here – the Oxford and Cambridge, say. Or the Travellers. They’d probably take you.’
‘I’m not up in London often enough,’ I said.
Ogilvie nodded and took another sip of undecanted wine.
‘So what do the police make of it all?’ he asked casually.
I decided there could be no harm in telling him what I’d already told Davies. Anyway, I’d learnt something from Davies in the process. Perhaps I would learn something from Ogilvie too. ‘They thought at first it was a mugging,’ I said, ‘but it is likely somebody deliberately lured him there to the alleyway. That seemed odd in view of the fact that so few people knew he was in Sussex – but the more I speak to people, the more seemed to have been told. You said he phoned you. Did he mention that somebody had already tried to kill him?’
‘Kill him? Ah … yes … I suppose he did. Well, he’d had some sort of threat, anyway. His account was difficult to follow – he’d spoken to somebody who said he deserved to die – then they admitted that they’d tried to push him under a Tube train earlier that day. Or was it that they’d instructed somebody to push him under a train? It all sounded a little confused and rather improbable. I mean, if somebody had attempted to kill him, would they then phone him up and tell him so? Hardly …’
‘So you didn’t take it seriously?’
‘There might have been a small grain of veracity in it somewhere. Roger was in the habit of falling back on the truth when all else failed. And in the habit of expecting you to jump to it whenever he needed something doing. He wanted me to drop by and see him in Chichester on my way back to London – as if I had nothing better to do.’
‘Did he say who had threatened to kill him?’
‘No. He implied it was somebody I knew well. He was going to tell me when I saw him that evening.’
‘And your journey back took you close to Chichester, enabling you to meet?’
‘Did I say that? I suppose so … close enough … it depended which route I took. Not if I went along the M3, of course. But we didn’t meet. I certainly wasn’t in Chichester town centre when Roger was killed, if that’s what you’re implying.’
‘I didn’t imply anything. But what I say or what you tell me makes little difference. I’m sure that the police would pick up your car on CCTV if you had been there.’
He looked at me for a moment. ‘Yes, good point – I suppose they would. Well, I’m always ready to assist the police with their enquiries,’ he said. ‘I’ll write my registration down for you and you can give it to them. That should save them a bit of time.’ He scribbled it on the back of one of his cards and passed it to me.
‘I’m not sure when I’ll talk to them next,’ I said, placing the card in my wallet. ‘I’m not helping them any more than any other witness.’
‘But they’ve asked your advice?’
‘Yes.’
‘As Roger’s biographer?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, they’ll probably be asking who else knew him? Who might have held a grudge?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what have you said?’
‘I’ve told them who knew him.’
‘Including me?’
‘I’ve said you are his lawyer. It’s unlikely that that wouldn’t have come to light.’
‘I suppose not.’ He looked at me for a moment, like a chess player trying to guess his opponent’s next move. What would it be? A bold move with his queen? Or would he sacrifice a pawn? ‘I suppose you know Jonathan Slide is on holiday in your part of the world?’ he said.
‘He told me he was planning to stay in Bognor … no, Selsey. That was it. But he didn’t say exactly when. Would he have known Roger Norton Vane was in Chichester?’
‘I may have mentioned it to him. In passing. He phoned me. Asked whether I thought that it really was Roger. Said he wanted to talk to him – make it clear he bore him no ill will. That sort of thing. So, I probably did mention what I knew …’
‘But last night Slide was in Selsey, some miles away.’
‘Oh, I would think so. But he’s in the habit of coming into Chichester quite often. There are various bars that he likes to visit – places he’s been going to for years.’
‘Well, if he was in Chichester last night, I’m sure the police will want to question him.’
‘He did have a bit of a motive, of course. All those dubious characters in novels.’
‘But he told you he wanted to make things up with Roger?’ I asked.
‘That’s what he said. That’s why I gave him Roger’s number.’
‘Well, I can’t see Slide hitting somebody over the head,’ I said.
‘Is that what happened?’
‘Yes, then Vane fell apparently, striking his head again.’
‘It doesn’t take a lot of strength to hit somebody hard enough to throw them off balance. Walking stick … something like that. And Roger wouldn’t have been expecting it.’
‘Sorry, are you saying Slide did it? He seems as harmless an old buffer as you could meet.’
‘Now maybe. He wasn’t always.’
‘You mean he had a wild youth?’
‘You’ll have heard one of his roles was careers advice?’
‘Yes. It sounds a bit of a sinecure. I’m surprised the school was so indulgent.’
‘He was recruiting for MI6. That was how it was in those days. No application form. You simply got asked if you fancied that sort of thing. If you said yes, then you were given instructions to go and have an informal chat with a man near Waterloo Station. Slide spotted likely candidates and fed their names through. Old boys at MI6, and there were plenty, would have impressed on a succession of headmasters the need to keep Slide in place for the sake of national security.’
I thought back to my conversation with Thwaite. Something he had said – that Slide’s role as career’s master ‘might have fitted in with other things’.
‘So, did Dr Slide actually work for MI6? As a spy?’
‘Some of us did a quick calculation and concluded that there were a couple of missing years in his CV – between the dates he was at university and the date of his joining the teaching staff at Cordwainers. Of course, he could have been in prison for gross indecency or something, but we reckoned he might have been spying. The masters at Cordwainers had collectively failed at an impressive range of things before settling on education as a vocation.’
I thought of my father, who had had many ambitions in his youth but ended up teaching Chaucer and Beowulf at our local grammar school. He never quite abandoned the idea that one day he might become prime minister. He eventually retired as acting deputy head of English.
‘Well, Slide must be a suspect,’ I said. ‘So must Cynthia, as the person who will now inherit Vane’s estate.’
‘Not really. She’s not the heir. Hasn’t been for some time. Roger asked me to change his will twenty years ago, just before he and Tim Macdonald went off to Thailand. He wanted Tim to inherit everything.’
‘Does Cynthia know that?’
‘She came to see me a week or so ago, when she was still trying to prove that it wasn’t Roger. I felt obliged to tell her that even if she did prove he was an imposter – even if she proved conclusively that Roger Norton Vane had died – she still got nothing, poor kid. Not a penny.’
‘Was she upset?’
‘She did her best not to show it, but it was a lot of money – two or three million of accumulated royalties and other payments, I think. She could have used that. So could her mother.’
‘You didn’t think to tell her before?’
‘Roger wasn’t dead. I was under no obligation to tell anyone anything. Quite the reverse.’
‘But you told her then?’
‘It seemed helpful. I mean, the idea that she might inherit the money did appear to underlie her continuing campaign to prove he was a fraud … It was better for all concerned that she knew the truth. He’d cut her out of his will long ago – or to put it more positively,
he’d cut Tim in. It wasn’t unreasonable. Before Tim came on the scene, she was his next of kin – no other close family to leave it all to. After Tim became his partner, it was different. Had Roger got married, if he’d had children of his own, it would have been much the same for Cynthia. It’s not uncommon. Many’s the golden prize I’ve seen snatched from a devoted nephew or niece when their uncle decides, late in life, to shack up with some teenage floozy on the make.’
‘So you thought it better to tell her and get her off your back? It didn’t have quite that effect you expected, then. She was continuing to say that Vane was an imposter, right up to the last moment.’
‘Was she? Fair play to her, then. It’s just that her uncle’s death would not have benefitted her, and she knew it. So, she had no motive of any sort. Tim’s the one who will now collect. In spite of their being daggers drawn towards the end. When you think about it, Tim’s lucky Roger died when he did – before he had a chance to change his will again. I’m sure he would have done in a week or two – possibly in Cynthia’s favour. Did Tim know where Roger was, by any chance?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Elsie told him. In the strictest confidence.’
‘Really? How interesting. Not that I’m suggesting anything, of course. Still, that’s Slide and Macdonald with excellent motives and every opportunity. We’re making progress at being detectives, aren’t we? Eat up, Ethelred. You’re having treacle tart and custard to follow.’
I left the Pagan Club feeling that I had eaten and drunk too much. Ogilvie had insisted that we should have cheese after the treacle tart and port with the cheese. In fact, I felt slightly nauseous as I descended into the Underground, but no worse by the time I had bought a single ticket to Chichester at Victoria Station. I’d had my phone switched off at the club but checked it quickly as the train slid away gently from the platform. There was a text from Joe, only a few minutes before.
‘Drop by at the police station on your way home. There have been a couple of interesting developments. I just wish I understood them.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE