Murder at Moose Jaw (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  Before he could complain further, the girl had turned and hurried away into the crowd. Before doing so, however, she had thrust a small white envelope into his hand. Opening it he saw that it was a theatre ticket: third row of the stalls for tonight’s performance at the Royal Alexandra Theater. He pocketed it, bemused, and set off down the escalator and then through the catacombs, the long lanes of boutiques and delis and underground trees and fountains which threaded the city’s foundations like a rabbit warren. Ten minutes later he came out on the corner of Bay and Queen, made a quick dash across the street and emerged red and breathless in Simpsons’ shoe department. Just over half an hour later he looked almost Canadian. On his feet he wore a pair of waterproof galoshes over the brown brogues he had brought from London. He had a pair of padded mitts, a knee-length quilted parka and a green woollen hat with a bobble decorated by a ring of prancing caribou. He toyed with the idea of ski-goggles and a pair of herringbone knickers, specifically designed for striding across the frozen wastes, but he decided they were too melodramatic. Far too melodramatic for coffee with Smith of the Mounties.

  He was quite breathless when he reached the coffee shop. His parcels were encumbering, and he had taken a couple of wrong turnings. At the entrance a man in a Tip Top Tailors’ suit stood waiting.

  ‘Si,’ he said, hand outstretched. ‘Great to see you.’

  Bognor grappled with his parcels and failed to extricate a hand.

  ‘Nice to see you, too,’ he replied. He was almost certain he had never seen the policeman before in his life. He was lean and bony with an oversized nose and a weathered complexion. His hair was very short and he had a neatly trimmed ginger moustache.

  ‘You take coffee?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes please.’ Bognor made to join the line-up which moved slowly past the unappetising displays of processed food, but Smith waved him towards a table by the window.

  ‘You just set your bags down and rest your feet. How d’you like it?’

  ‘Black, no sugar,’ said Bognor. He never had milk before lunch.

  ‘Be right with you,’ said Smith.

  The snow had settled patchily on the green copper of the old City Hall roof just opposite. Bognor watched in idle fascination as the wind gusted along the guttering and teased the gargoyles. It was beginning to drift.

  He thought of Sir Roderick Farquhar dead in his railway carriage between Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat, a fat corpse slopping around in the bath, depressingly unlamented. Death had been by bath oil. Bognor was no chemist but someone who was had managed to insinuate a lethal substance into Sir Roderick’s bottle of Balenciaga. Phosphorus trioxide, the lab report had said. Otherwise known as P406. At first they had thought it might have been supersaturated sulphuric acid but that would have left burns. Farquhar had died from inhaling phosphine, produced by phosphorus trioxide crystals, more of which had been found in the bottle. The clever thing about the crystals was that they didn’t turn into gas until they were mixed with warm water—28.3 degrees Centigrade to be precise. The glass of the bottle was opaque so the old boy wouldn’t have noticed anything, especially as he was invariably half-cut after dinner. He wouldn’t have known a thing till the phosphine hit him. By which time it would have been too late. He’d have been out before he could say Dow Jones. Nice way to go for a nasty piece of work. Amos Littlejohn, the steward, claimed that the dead man had always poured the oil in himself. He also swore that that night’s bottle was brand new and sealed. The level of liquid confirmed this. The seal, like that on so many of Sir Roderick’s personal effects, was wax, and seemed newly broken.

  ‘One black coffee no sugar.’ Smith put the coffee down on the formica top of the table and smiled automatically. Bognor was glad they were on the same side. He had a cold-fish look that suggested a sinister expertise in the interrogation room.

  ‘You making much progress?’ asked Bognor, carefully pouring spilled coffee from the saucer back into the cup.

  Smith peeled the top off a sachet of sugar and poured it fastidiously, then stirred with his spoon.

  ‘I wouldn’t say “much”,’ he replied. He took a sip of coffee and dabbed at the corners of the moustache.

  ‘You get what you wanted?’ He indicated Bognor’s parcels, and Bognor nodded. Smith was clearly going to come to the point in his own time, ponderously and unhurried. That was fine by Bognor. He much preferred to let others make the running, so for five minutes or so the conversation followed a trivial course quite unconnected with the matter at the forefront of both their minds. Eventually Smith said, ‘You heard what’s happening at Mammoncorp?’

  Bognor nodded. No holds had been barred in the internecine struggles in the Mammon boardroom and the warring factions were still at each other’s throats. Quite apart from the antipathies of various directors, previously held in check by Sir Roderick, there had been the unseemly squabbling of various relations of the dead man. None of his four wives was still living; the major beneficiary of his will appeared to be one of his later mistresses, a peroxide blonde presently residing in a white clapboard mansion overlooking Skaneateles Lake in upper New York state. This lady, unexpectedly cognomened ‘La Bandanna Rose’, was actually a former fan dancer named Dolores V. Crump, and as soon as she had heard of Sir Roderick’s demise she flew into town to defend her interests, with a sharp Manhattan lawyer riding shotgun. Bognor’s latest intelligence was that though there was no way her purely financial situation could be threatened, power was going the way of Sir Roderick’s son-in-law Ainsley Cernik, a handsome but supposedly stupid cipher dominated by the formidable women around him. But the situation was not fully resolved and there were a number of shadowy influences. The Canadian Government was said to favour Cernik, but the Americans were not averse to La Bandanna Rose, whose candidate, Colonel Crombie, had a place in Florida and was an admirer and acquaintance of Ronald Reagan and Bob Hope. Bognor had himself been instructed to do all he could to further the ambitions of a third force, dominated by a handful of old-monied patricians from the wealthy Toronto and Montreal districts of Rosedale and Westmount. The leader of this group was an elderly Anglophile named Harrison Bentley. Privately Bognor regarded him as a ‘no-hoper’ but he would, as always, do as he was told.

  ‘Unholy mess there, Simon. Just awful.’ Smith shook his head sorrowfully.

  ‘You think someone at Mammoncorp knocked him off?’

  It seemed the logical question but Smith looked pained.

  ‘You think that?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. It just seemed a good place to start.’

  ‘Who would have done it?’ asked Smith. ‘No one benefits. Farquhar was a “divide-and-rule man”, as you people say. Lookit, it’s more than a month since he went and still they can’t decide who takes over. No sense any of those guys killing him.’

  ‘Who then?’ asked Bognor. He was deciding he didn’t care for this man. He seemed far too sure of himself. Bognor disliked certainty. As far as he was concerned life was a tentative affair made up almost exclusively of doubts.

  The Mountie leaned forward, his stomach bulging dangerously against the waistband of his trousers. ‘We know who did it, Simon,’ he said portentously.

  ‘You know?’ Bognor was incredulous.

  ‘For sure.’ Smith maintained his expression of high seriousness. ‘This wasn’t some boardroom piccadilly,’ he said, ‘this was your politically motivated crime.’ He leaned even further forward so that he was able to whisper. ‘Assassination,’ he said. ‘Those French bastards.’ And he returned himself slowly to a more normal posture, grinning.

  ‘You sure?’ Bognor frowned. ‘I mean, do you have proof?’

  ‘We have all the proof we need, Si,’ said Smith.

  Bognor wondered what this meant. It could mean that the assassin had been caught, as it were, in flagrante, or it could mean that the Mounties had no proof whatever, regarding such a thing as a dispensable luxury. He did not voice these questions, however, contenting himself simply with a tho
ughtful nod. Then he said, ‘But if you’re so certain about this why don’t you arrest these Frog bastards?’

  The policeman grinned as if humouring a backward two-year-old.

  ‘Like I said, Simon,’ he paused for a sip of coffee, ‘it’s a political crime so those guys in Ottawa call the shots. They say “no move”, because if we arrest the frogs who wiped Farquhar out, then Quebec will secede like there was no tomorrow.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for the politicians’—Smith offered the word contemptuously—‘they’d be inside by now and put away for a long time. They want to ruin this country. If they don’t like it they should get out and go back to la belle France where they came from in the first place.’

  Bognor did not reply. In view of the prejudice it seemed most likely that there was no evidence against the Quebecois. He would have to proceed carefully.

  ‘In the meantime,’ he said at length, ‘none of you will have any objection if I do some nosing around?’

  ‘You just do whatever you want, Simon,’ said Smith. ‘Be our guest.’ He finished his coffee, and put on an expression of friendly menace. ‘Just keep your nose clean,’ he added, ‘and steer clear of trouble. This time we have it solved, and this time we’re right. Happy to have your endorsement but as a matter of fact the work’s all done. Job’s finished.’

  ‘Right ho,’ said Bognor. ‘In that case I’ll just take a look round, for form’s sake, and concentrate on winter sports.’

  Smith smiled. Bognor smiled. It was obvious to each that their relationship was not rooted in trust, but for the time being they were both going to pretend. Bognor was good at pretence. Deceit was his stock-in-trade.

  2

  BOGNOR’S STATUS WAS, AT best, equivocal. He had not been invited by the Canadians. He had invited himself. The arrangement had been finessed by various malleable officials at the Board of Trade in London, the Foreign Office, the Canadian High Commission and External Affairs in Ottawa. Papers had been shuffled, cocktails consumed, likewise lunch, until at the end of the day his involvement had been agreed and the question of who had instigated it was lost in bureaucratic confusion. His ostensible role was to help in solving the murder, no matter how much the Mounties might protest that it was already solved. His real and more secret role was to safeguard British interests within the Mammon Corporation. Mammoncorp had, over the years, made substantial investments in Britain, but in common with most British investments these were yielding lower and lower returns. Men like Farquhar were fed up with the mother country. It was all very well for his fellow billionaire Ken Thomson. Ken owned The Times. There was prestige in that, but Mammoncorp was into beer, biscuits, textiles and, god help them, motorcars. Farquhar and his fellow directors would never have drunk, eaten, worn, let alone driven in, any of their British creations. They were second-rate and unprofitable and the plants were teeming with idle Marxists. Mammon had threatened to withdraw on many occasions but Farquhar had possessed a residue of sentiment for Britain. Now that he was gone, however, the pressure to cut and run would become irresistible and the only people who could be relied on to put old loyalty before new acquisitiveness were Harrison Bentley and his friends.

  Bentley therefore was the first of the Mammon board to be subjected to the rigours of a Bognor inquisition. This took place over tea, a meal which evidently lingered on in those reaches of Toronto society which still took pride in behaving in a manner more English than the English.

  ‘Good day to you,’ said Bentley, opening the door of his enormous 1930s colonial Georgian mansion overlooking a rocky ravine in the most expensive neighbourhood in town. Bognor was surprised to find that he was wearing a monocle. Also that he spoke with only the faintest hint of a North American accent intruding on an exaggerated, plummy, clubman’s English which Bognor had not heard in years. Bognor shook snow from his feet and crossed the threshold. He found himself irrationally irritated by the monocle.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, extricating a hand from a mitt and offering it to his host. ‘Bognor. Board of Trade.’

  ‘You had a good journey, I trust,’ enquired Bentley courteously. He was a man of about sixty, Bognor supposed. Silvery grey hair, somewhat arranged, a long deep-lined face, tall with a slight stoop, he had a look of James Stewart in one of the later films. He also gave the impression that he knew it, and worked at it. He might have been English but for the monocle and the tweed suit. The check was too loud and the squares too wide.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Bognor.

  Bentley helped him off with his coat.

  ‘And how was dear old London town?’

  Bognor frowned, not sure what answer was expected. ‘Pretty much as usual I should say, actually,’ he tried, half-heartedly.

  ‘Ah,’ said Bentley. He hung up the parka with a fastidious disapproval, then rubbed his hands together for a moment and said, ‘Ah,’ again. Then he repeated, ‘Dear old London town’.

  Bognor did not reply.

  ‘Come on through, Mr Bognor,’ said Bentley, stepping across the highly polished oak floor dotted with elderly Persian rugs. A crumpled Airedale rose sleepily from a corner and joined them. ‘Muriel’s just made tea,’ said Bentley. ‘We have crumpets. Crumpets are quite extraordinarily difficult to obtain in this country, Mr Bognor. Indeed, had I had the opportunity I would have asked you to bring a consignment from Jacksons of Piccadilly.’

  ‘Jacksons closed,’ said Bognor. ‘Ça n’existe plus.’ He didn’t know why he said it in French. He guessed he did it to annoy.

  ‘Jumping Jehoshaphat!’ Harrison Bentley passed a hand across his forehead as they entered the drawing room, several hundred square feet of it complete with grand piano, real logs in the grate and a wife, faded, thin, long-suffering, seated demurely on a chintz chaise-longue. ‘Muriel,’ said Bentley, ‘this is Mr Bognor from London, England. He tells me Jacksons of Piccadilly is closed.’

  Mrs Bentley smiled wanly and shook hands. ‘Gracious,’ she ventured, ‘that’s too bad.’

  ‘I would have asked Mr Bognor here to bring crumpets from Jacksons,’ said her husband, ‘but now it seems there’s no point. Muriel found these in the Mix shop opposite the Summerhill Liquor Store. Are they Canadian, Muriel, or imported?’

  Mrs Bentley said that she was afraid they were Canadian crumpets. Not at all, she implied, the same as English crumpets. She poured the tea from a handsome silver pot. The tea, she explained, was from Twinings. Bognor, politely, mentioned that Murchie’s of Vancouver enjoyed a fine reputation for tea. Mrs Bentley smiled, suggesting that while this might be so, it was not proper to mention the place in the same breath.

  ‘Mr Bognor is from the Board of Trade, come to tell us all who murdered Farquhar,’ said Bentley, spreading butter on his Canadian crumpet.

  Mrs Bentley favoured him with another of her insipid smiles.

  ‘That was a dreadful thing,’ she said.

  Her husband did not seem to agree. He did not say anything, but concentrated ferociously on the crumpet and did not look up.

  ‘Do you have any theories?’ asked Bognor, trying to push the Airedale away from his fly without its owners noticing. The dog refused to budge.

  ‘Theories?’ asked Bentley. ‘What sort of theories?’

  ‘About who killed Sir Roderick. Who the murderers were? Are?’

  ‘Cherchez la femme,’ said Bentley unexpectedly. He had finished his crumpet swiftly and now dabbed at the butter around his lips, using the red and white spotted handkerchief from his breast pocket.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Bognor was nonplussed.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Harrison Bentley smiled courteously and made a little play of removing his monocle and polishing it. ‘I understood from your earlier remark that you spoke French. Cherchez la femme. Find the woman. There’s a woman at the bottom of this, you mark my words.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  Mr Bentley coughed with exaggerated discretion. ‘Muriel,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’d
be good enough to leave Mr Bognor and myself for a moment or two. I don’t think this is something you should hear.’

  Mrs Bentley rose and did as she was told. She was not the sort of woman who answered back.

  When she had gone Bentley said, ‘I don’t know how Farquhar managed at his age. He was insatiable.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Bognor helped himself, unbidden, to a second crumpet. They were not half bad.

  ‘Women.’ His host said the word with distaste. ‘All the time. Sometimes two at once. Maybe more for all I know. He was over seventy.’ He shook his head in a mixture of shock and admiration.

  ‘What sort of women?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘All sorts. That nigger manservant used to pimp for him. He laid on the whores and Farquhar looked after the classier ones himself. I don’t know what women saw in him, but, boy, they certainly saw something.’

  ‘But what makes you think his womanizing had something to do with his death?’

  ‘Stands to reason. He just cuckolded one man too many.’

  ‘Who in particular?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not saying anyone in particular,’ Bentley grinned, conveying to Bognor the impression that if he wished he most certainly could say someone in particular. ‘To be frank,’ he continued, ‘whoever did it performed a public service. We’re well rid of him. I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but in his case I’m prepared to make an exception. It was particularly distressing to me that he should have been the holder of an order of knighthood. His conduct was always a long way short of that becoming a gentleman.’

  ‘You didn’t care for him?’ Bognor found it easy to fall into understatement. He glanced out of the french windows and saw that it was snowing hard. The conifers at the end of Bentley’s substantial garden were barely visible through the scudding flakes and under their thick coating of white.

  ‘You could say that.’