Murder at Moose Jaw (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  ‘And so he off-loaded a few as Christmas presents?’ Bognor listened to the weather pounding the little wooden house and thought of the bottle of Balenciaga he had seen in Harrison Bentley’s bathroom. A Christmas present from Farquhar. No wonder he had been disliked.

  ‘How many? And to whom?’ Bognor intended to sound incisive but had a mouth half full of beans. He was also, he realized, quite suddenly, slightly drunk and extremely tired. This was no time to be conducting a cross-examination. He ought to be in bed.

  ‘Each person got a box of twenty,’ said Prideaux. ‘I can’t tell you off-hand how many would have been sent them, but the list will be on file somewhere. In fact I may have it in my papers. I could let you have it tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bognor. ‘Yes. That would be helpful.’

  Louise cleared away their plates and produced some cheese, French brie and oka, an intriguing Quebecois variety made by monks. She also put on a kettle for coffee. She had brought freshly ground beans from a new place in Hazelton Lanes. Bognor was beginning to think highly of her.

  ‘Did you get any yourself?’ he asked Jean-Claude.

  ‘No. But I could have taken any whenever I wanted. It hardly provides me with an alibi. But it does show you that Amos and I were not the only people who might have murdered him.’

  ‘Could they have substituted their oil for his?’

  ‘They were all known to him,’ said Louise. ‘It would have been possible, yes. For all of them.’

  ‘I see.’ Bognor picked at a piece of goose or other matter which had become lodged between two front teeth. The girl had even provided toothpicks, though conceivably they had been left over from summer. They had a faintly stale feel. ‘You never told the Mounties about the Christmas presents?’

  ‘I told them very little.’

  Louise turned round from the stove. ‘They are pigs, really. You must understand that. If Jean-Claude had told them something like that it would only have made them more convinced that he was guilty. They would think he was trying to shift the blame, that’s all.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have believed him?’

  She shrugged violently and made a dismissive noise, impossible to reproduce accurately on paper but most nearly rendered as ‘Pouf!’

  ‘But,’ Bognor was indulging his old habit of thinking out loud, a ponderous process, especially at this time of night, ‘they could easily have found out. I mean, didn’t any one of Sir Roderick’s friends tell them that they’d got some of his special bath oil for Christmas?’

  ‘They’re not stupid,’ said Prideaux. ‘They all knew how the old bastard had been killed. If they let on that they were, as it were, in possession of loaded revolvers of the same calibre that fired the fatal shot then they would be automatically putting themselves under suspicion. Wouldn’t they?’

  ‘But not as much suspicion as if the Mounties found out on their own and realized that they had been concealing the evidence.’

  Prideaux pulled a face. ‘Je m’en doute,’ he said. ‘I don’t think your friend Smith of the Mounties was ever interested in looking beyond me. The minute he realized I was from Quebec and, as you might say, politically inclined, then he decided I had done it. Sure, it’s circumstantial, but it’s neat. Neat enough for them, at any rate.’

  The monks’ cheese was unusual but far from unpleasant.

  ‘You really didn’t do it then?’ he asked, staring hard at Sir Roderick’s former secretary.

  Louise answered for him. ‘There was no political reason for killing him,’ she said. ‘Jean-Claude had no other reason for killing. Many, many others had good reason.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Prideaux. ‘Why should I kill him? It was a good job. He was an enemy, I agree, but I was educating him. Besides, he left me nothing. Everyone else has something. Even Amos has the horses. So why should I kill him?’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Bognor. ‘That’s not the question. The question is, “Did you kill him?” You still haven’t answered that.’

  There was a silence broken only by the wind beating against the cabin, straining to blow in the doors and windows, tugging at the roof. Bognor had read about American storms, mad whirlwinds and tornadoes that struck suddenly, laying waste whole communities in seconds, corkscrewing solid stone houses into the air, flinging cars about, killing people.

  ‘No,’ said Jean-Claude eventually, ‘I did not kill him.’

  Louise poured coffee and found a half-full bottle of cognac. Jean-Claude produced a packet of cheroots. Bognor accepted one and sat smoking thoughtfully, allowing fatigue and alcohol to overcome him, as he contemplated the complexities of the case. Conversation, now that the purpose of his visit was achieved, became embarrassed, stilted, desultory. All three clearly wanted to get away to think about what had been said and to ponder its effects on each other. After a while Louise rinsed the dishes under the tap. She had a rucksack into which she packed the remaining cloves of garlic and one or two cooking implements she had brought with her in the morning. It was a quarter to twelve. Last ferry for the mainland left at midnight.

  ‘OK,’ said Jean-Claude. ‘Better hit the trail.’ And they went gingerly out into the storm, Jean-Claude leading the way with his torch, Bognor next and Louise bringing up the rear. Bognor felt torn between extreme tiredness, a certain amount of apprehension, and a ridiculous desire to giggle. He managed to conquer the fatigue and bite back the laughter, but the fear was less easy. It was a real storm. The wind shrieked at them, threatening to blow them over, so that after a few stops Jean-Claude fell back and indicated mainly by sign and gesture that they should march on three abreast holding on to each other for support. It was snowing hard and the flakes came at them horizontally in the Canadian style to which he was becoming accustomed. Louise was now in the middle of the trio and Bognor contrived to hold on to her as tightly as possible, though her fur coat and his gloves were so thick that it was impossible to derive any real physical contact from the hug. It was in every sense quite chaste, though Bognor experienced a pang of jealousy when his right arm came into contact with Jean-Claude’s left and he was reminded that he was sharing the girl with Prideaux.

  They reached the landing stage five minutes before the ferry was due.

  ‘Usually you can see the lights of the city,’ Jean-Claude shouted in Bognor’s ear as they stood huddled in the rudimentary shelter with its two enormous life belts roped to the side. ‘It’s not that far. Only half a mile or so.’

  Peering out towards the north it was impossible to see more than a few yards. The night was like soup and the lake, even though this part was as sheltered as the Solent, was churned into a froth of wave and spume.

  ‘Do you think he’ll come?’ bawled Bognor, in two minds about whether or not the crossing would be worth the risk and the discomfort. He was not a brave sailor and he was inclined to queasiness. He was aware that he had eaten too much cassoulet. Beans on a high sea were a recipe for almost certain disaster.

  ‘The ferry always comes,’ said Prideaux, though he too seemed to be regarding the lake with more anxiety than he was going to admit.

  ‘It’s unusual for the time of year,’ said Louise, shivering, and withdrawing further into her shell of fur.

  They waited until midnight. And for five minutes more. And then for another five minutes. And then another five. Finally Jean-Claude looked round. ‘There is a light at old Manzi’s house,’ he said. ‘I’ll telephone from there. See what’s happening. You two wait here.’ He stumbled off in the direction of the house. Bognor stamped his feet and waved his arms about, banging them forlornly against his chest.

  ‘Christ,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s bloody cold.’

  Louise’s face peered up at him out of the darkness. Little more than her eyes and nose were visible for she had a scarf and fur hat, the one pulled well up, the other well down. She giggled.

  ‘Bloody cold,’ she called out, mimicking his Englishness, and then, before he could complain or remonstrate, she put he
r arms round him and rubbed her hands vigorously against his back, still looking up into his face and giggling mischievously. After a moment she stopped this and snuggled her head against his chest. Bognor put his arms round her and told himself very firmly that he was only trying to keep them as warm as possible in these appalling conditions. At the back of his mind there was a persistent image of Monica Bognor which, try as he would, he could not quite banish. This was, he kept telling himself, perfectly innocent. All the same he kept a keen weather eye out for the returning lantern of Jean-Claude Prideaux and when he saw it bobbing towards them through the swirling, eddying snowflakes, he disengaged himself as swiftly as he could without seeming rough. She too evidently felt a little compromised. She made no resistance and moved a few feet away from Bognor where she stood, rubbing her hands together. ‘Bloody, bloody cold,’ she said, mimicking him again, before Prideaux came within earshot. The three words made Bognor glow.

  ‘No ferry,’ shouted Prideaux as he neared them. ‘It’s cancelled. I’ve never heard anything like it.’ He stared across the lake as if willing the boat to come to them, but the air remained impenetrable, yielding up nothing. ‘I asked Manzi if we could borrow his launch,’ said Prideaux, ‘but he says it leaks like a sieve and he’s run out of gas. I guess we’ll just have to spend the night at the cottage. We have our coats and there are plenty of blankets.’

  Bognor experienced a number of mixed emotions on hearing this, but he was too tired to analyze them. By the time they had trudged back through the snow to the cottage, he was feeling exhausted beyond recovery. He even refused offers of more drink or coffee, and had no sooner loosened his tie, removed his shoes, and climbed under a pile of blankets and his coat, than he was asleep. For once he did not dream.

  5

  HE AWOKE TO FIND the sun streaming in through the windows. Louise was kneeling beside him, a hand on his shoulder, a steaming mug of coffee in her other hand.

  ‘Hallo,’ she smiled. ‘Good morning. You are very difficult to wake, you know. You sleep like a, like a … Well I don’t know what you sleep like, but you are very difficult to wake. And you snore a little, I am afraid.’

  ‘You’re not the only person who says that.’ Bognor stretched. He felt a little fragile but not as bad as he had feared. He accepted the coffee and tried a tentative smile. It did not hurt so he broadened it, hoping it did not look too lopsided or louche. He wanted it to be a bright, good-morning smile, not a leer. She smiled back so that he assumed it had looked all right, even though he felt unkempt and unshaven.

  ‘Jean-Claude has gone to Manzi to phone the ferry office,’ she said, rising to her feet as he took the mug. ‘It’s a beautiful day. I don’t think there will be any problem.’

  Bognor drank the coffee gratefully, then got up and sluiced cold water over his face. It was only just after eight o’clock. He had another coffee and went out on to the veranda. She was right. The water sparkled, flat as the snow which lay thick and crunchy on the grass in front of them. On the mainland the Toronto skyline gleamed, its gold and silver towers reflecting the dazzling sun, the CN Tower braced like a rocket before blast-off. From the top of it on a day like this Bognor guessed you could see for ever. He smiled. In the middle of the lagoon two stumpy black and white ferries churned past each other, scarcely even bobbing on the placid water.

  ‘Nice, eh?’ She came out on the deck and stood beside him, coffee in hand, eyes narrowed against the glare. She had washed and made up and looked fresh as a snowdrop. Bognor was unhappily conscious of his dishevelled, unshaven state.

  ‘I hope you won’t be late for work,’ he ventured. ‘Oh, no,’ she laughed lightly. ‘I have a class at ten. Otherwise nothing.’

  ‘A class? What are you studying?’

  ‘Economics. But I’m not studying, I’m supposed to be teaching it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bognor was embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I mean I didn’t intend to imply …’

  She put a hand momentarily on his elbow. ‘I’m flattered you should take me for a student,’ she said. She paused. ‘How long will you stay?’

  ‘I don’t know. As long as it takes. How long is a piece of string?’

  She laughed. ‘You’re funny,’ she said. ‘Do you think you will be able to find who killed him? It will be difficult to convince those RCMP idiots. They only believe what they want to believe.’

  ‘We’re all guilty of that,’ said Bognor. Then, depressed by this uncharacteristically profound generalization, he said, ‘Perhaps you’d have dinner with me one night?’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said, watching, like him, as Jean-Claude Prideaux came out of old Manzi’s house a few hundred yards away and began to walk towards them. ‘But what about your wife?’

  ‘Oh, she’s miles away,’ said Bognor, then stopped. ‘Anyway, how do you know I’m married?’

  She didn’t answer, just laughed. Bognor coloured slightly and she must have noticed, because she said, kindly, ‘Of course I would like to have dinner with you,’ adding with a flirtatious smile, ‘as long as your wife really is miles away.’

  ‘Good,’ said Bognor. ‘How do I find you?’

  Prideaux was approaching. Soon he would be within earshot. Bognor did not wish him to overhear this conversation.

  ‘Call me at U of T. Economics Faculty.’

  ‘Don’t you have a home number?’

  ‘I’m never there,’ she said firmly. ‘The university is much more reliable.’

  ‘OK,’ said Bognor. ‘I’ll call you.’

  Prideaux waved at him cheerily and called, ‘Hi.’ Bognor waved back. Suddenly he felt pleased to be here. Although the surrealist city skyline was only a few hundreds yards away, it felt like the middle of the country. Bognor was reminded of a kampong off the coast of Singapore, the time the Second Secretary had collapsed with food poisoning in the car park. He had the same odd sensation of standing in primitive rural surroundings while staring, detached, at the ultramodern city. Two worlds separated by nothing but a stretch of probably polluted water. He wondered which he preferred: standing in the city looking out at countryside or standing in the country looking in at the city. He wasn’t sure. Silly sort of question to ask oneself anyway, particularly when standing here in the almost unmarked snow was so uncommonly bracing and sexy. He felt as if he were in a cigarette advertisement.

  ‘Ferries running all right, I see,’ he called out to Prideaux.

  ‘Sure,’ said Prideaux. ‘I’ve never heard of them missing out like last night. All drunk if you ask me. I’m sorry about it. I hope we haven’t ruined your schedule.’

  ‘Don’t really have a schedule,’ said Bognor. ‘Not my style.’ This was true. He liked to roll along gathering moss. Even when he produced plans they went astray within minutes of his making them and on the whole he preferred this. The unexpected was by definition more exciting, and even though he had endured his share of shocks and disasters, things usually panned out in the end. Besides, there was no point in knowing about disasters before they happened. That was a sure way of becoming depressed.

  A few minutes later they set off for the landing stage where a ferry duly docked and took them back to the terminal. Jean-Claude and Louise dropped him off at his hotel. They both waved as the little green Pinto shot away into the traffic. Louise smiled too.

  There were two messages waiting with his keys at reception.

  ‘Mrs Bognor called. Will you call back please?’ And ‘Mr Parkinson called. Will you call back please?’ He glanced at his watch and saw that it was just after nine. He could do with a shave, some fresh orange juice and coffee, maybe a croissant and then a kip. If he set the alarm for twelve-thirty he would be able to manage three hours’ sleep and call Monica. Then he could call Parkinson. And then he could ease downstairs for a spot of lunch before finding someone else to interrogate. He had to work through a tolerably long list of suspects, and he had scarcely begun. He smiled as he got into the elevator, which ran up and down the outside of
the building and made him feel ill. He smiled through a bath and breakfast and he was still smiling when his head hit the pillow and he resigned himself to harmless adulterous dreams.

  He did not, however, smile when the phone rang at eleven o’clock.

  Instead, he regarded it balefully and willed it to stop. It did not.

  He picked it up. ‘Two five two six,’ he said irritably.

  ‘Mr Bognor?’ It was the girl on the switchboard. She pronounced it ‘Bahgner’.

  ‘Sorry. Wrong room,’ he said, and put down the receiver sharply.

  He had just put his head back under the pillow when the phone rang again. Once more he willed it to go away but it continued to shrill at him piercingly and insistently. He picked it up and was about to say ‘Wrong number’ when his wife’s voice came crackling angrily across the Atlantic.

  ‘Simon. What on earth is going on? That was you just now.’

  ‘What do you mean “just now”? I haven’t spoken to you since’—he looked at his watch—‘the day before the day before yesterday. Or thereabouts.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling, I quite distinctly heard the operator asking for you and then I heard you saying “wrong room”. What do you mean by it?’

  ‘She didn’t ask for me. She asked for someone called “Bahgner” or “Bugner”. Certainly not Bognor.’

  ‘Don’t be so childish. Where have you been?’

  ‘Here of course.’ What, he wondered, had got into Monica? Marriage obviously didn’t agree with her. He decided to meet attack with attack. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ he enquired, aggrieved. ‘You’ve woken me up.’

  ‘Honestly, darling, what is going on out there?’ His wife’s voice now sounded alarmingly outraged. ‘It is four o’clock in London, which means that it is eleven o’clock in Toronto. Why are you asleep at eleven o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘Jet lag,’ he said, deflated. A still small voice told Bognor that he was in danger of putting himself irretrievably in the wrong. And this for no good reason. He was aware that he felt a marginal guilt about having spent the night in the company of Louise Poitou and Prideaux but not because of anything that had happened. He was in the clear on that score. Well, more or less. His guilt was entirely in the mind.