by Tim Heald
Bognor liked the look of him. A board member, prime suspect of course, but where Bentley, who this evening sported a red carnation in his buttonhole, seemed a papier-mâché figure, a forlorn imitation of a figment of his own imagination, Colonel Crombie appeared altogether more substantial. He was only little, small as a jockey, in fact. Although he must have been in his late sixties or early seventies he seemed fit and alert. His little eyes, rodent-black, flashed and crinkled at the corners in a way which suggested laughter, though Bognor couldn’t see that he would get many laughs with the feathery Bandanna Rose.
Bognor decided to call him ‘sir’. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he said.
‘I’ve heard a great deal about you, Mr Bognor.’ He sounded as if, for once, this might have been true. ‘Both from Muriel and Harrison here and from my old colleague Roddie Farquhar.’
Bognor noticed that Colonel Crombie was careful not to claim anything as hypocritical as friendship with Sir Roderick. ‘There are one or two things I’d like to discuss with you. Would you lunch one day? Tomorrow perhaps. My club? The Royal Canadian Naval and Military, a 1001 University. Corner of University and Dundas. Twelve forty-five? I look forward to it.’
He shook hands with Monica, and the party withdrew.
‘What was all that about?’ she asked, mouth full chicken and potato, neglected in these social niceties and cold.
‘He wants a word,’ said Bognor, ‘about the murder, I should guess.’
‘Is he a suspect too?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘La Bandanna too.’
‘The sooner,’ said Monica, ‘we get you safely home, the happier I shall be.’
The Royal Canadian Naval and Military was modelled closely on its London counterparts around Pall Mall. Its hall was marble-floored and hung with green felt noticeboards announcing the election of new members, the death of old ones, cricket matches, increased bar charges and a warning about late payment of subscriptions. It boasted a brace of squash courts, a library with regimental magazines and other military publications, a bar, a card room and a dining room where the food was plain and plentiful. Its members tended towards moustaches and very short haircuts and the staff, apart from two buxom red-haired waitresses, were men grown old and faded in the service of their country. Their uniforms were old and faded too, so much so that as Bognor swung clumsily through the doors, obligingly held open for him by a hall porter in soup-stained livery with brass buttons dull with neglect, he felt quite at home. It scarcely mattered that the club was housed in the bottom two floors of a thirty-storey skyscraper. It was a convincing piece of lovingly manufactured reproduction and for Bognor the fact that it was an imitation enhanced rather than diminished it. He enjoyed the idea that someone had thought a London club worth imitating. There was no logic to this because he had despised Harrison Bentley’s drawing room with its phoney efforts to ape upper-class England. Perhaps it was because he enjoyed nostalgia but despised snobbery. Or liked to think he did.
Colonel Crombie was waiting under an enormous oil painting of the British scaling the Heights of Abraham. It was a quite spectacularly dire bit of work, resembling, in this and other respects, those innumerable gory pictures found in military clubs and officers’ messes throughout the world.
‘I’m glad you could come, Mr Bognor,’ said Crombie, detaching himself from a little group of moustached folk in tweeds and blazers. ‘Can I give you a hand with those crutches?’
‘Thanks,’ said Bognor, stumbling slightly. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t quite got the hang of them yet. There’s a knack to it but I haven’t mastered it.’
‘Haven’t been on crutches since Dieppe,’ said Crombie. ‘Never figured them out until it was time to get rid of them and go back to managing on my own two legs.’ He laughed shortly and took Bognor by the elbow. ‘Luckily we have elevators here,’ he said. ‘In the old building you’d have had to deal with stairs but we’re quite modern now. Come through and have a drink.’
They moved clumsily into the bar, Bognor cursing his disability. It drew attention to himself, which he hated. He liked to merge with the wallpaper (which would have been difficult here since it was pea-green) and if there was one thing crutches did it was to interfere with one’s natural anonymity. He accepted the colonel’s offer of a dry martini and then regretted it when Crombie ordered himself a straight tomato juice with a liberal splashing of Worcester. The colonel did not, Bognor noted with approval, refer to the drink as ‘a Virgin Mary’.
‘Don’t mind my not drinking,’ he said, noticing Bognor’s embarrassment. ‘I have meetings this afternoon and at my age I find I have to watch the alcohol intake. Used to be a bit of a boozer. Had to cut down, though. Come and sit down.’
He led the way to a corner table with four low-backed leather chairs. Bognor fell into one and let his crutches fall to the floor with a clatter.
‘Cheers,’ said Crombie, ignoring the fallen crutches, and wrinkling his nose over the tomato juice. ‘I hope you don’t mind if we get down to brass tacks, straightaway. Never cared for that convention about not talking business till you’ve finished eating.’
‘Carry on,’ said Bognor, removing the olive from his drink and eating it.
‘You’re here to look into the Farquhar murder,’ said Crombie.
‘In a manner of speaking.’ Bognor frowned. It was difficult to explain quite why he was here. He had virtually forgotten. Not that this was unusual. People had a habit of inviting him on assignations and then pretending to forget they had done so. This seemed to be the Mountie line of the moment.
‘I was involved in the Gentleman’s Relish business,’ he said.
Colonel Crombie nodded. ‘I remember only too well,’ he said. ‘You were wrong but for the right reasons.’
‘In a manner of speaking. I thought Sir Roderick was at the bottom of that but for once in his life he was innocent. All the same I knew he wasn’t to be trusted.’
Crombie chuckled. ‘You were right about that. A real corkscrew and yet, you know, I couldn’t help being fond of him in a curious way.’
‘Oh.’ That had not been Bognor’s problem. Nor anyone else’s as far as he could ascertain.
‘We were sworn enemies, of course,’ Crombie continued, ‘which is why I could afford to like him. He was hell to his friends.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought all his enemies were fond of him.’ Bognor thought of the Honourable John Baker.
‘Oh, you needed a sense of humour to appreciate him,’ Colonel Crombie flicked a couple of peanuts into his mouth and smiled as if remembering some more than usually absurd incident. ‘He could be a funny, funny man. But as you have probably realized, a sense of humour is not the dominating Canadian characteristic.’
‘Leacock,’ ventured Bognor dubiously.
‘Leacock was a Brit,’ said Crombie. ‘He just came to live here. Not half so funny as Farquhar in my view. The conceit of the man. Personalized Gentleman’s Relish. Personalized Balenciaga bath oil. Personalized Krug. You couldn’t take a man like that seriously, not if you had any feeling for the ridiculous. He was deeply absurd. I miss him a lot, if you must know.’
‘You’re the first person who’s said that.’
‘Really?’ The colonel popped a couple more peanuts. ‘Well, that’s a shame. But I’m sorry, I interrupted. You were telling me what exactly your role was in the investigation.’
‘Well,’ said Bognor, ‘when he was done in, my people at the Board of Trade wanted me to come out and—this is between you and me—wanted me to come out and see that British interests didn’t suffer unduly in the vacuum created, as it were, by Sir Roderick’s death.’
‘I see.’ Colonel Crombie nodded. ‘Your guys don’t want Mammoncorp pulling out of the sceptred isle. Correct?’
‘Correct,’ said Bognor, ‘and the RCMP were prevailed upon to issue a formal invitation.’
‘I see.’ Crombie said this in a manner which suggested that he did not see much, nor clearly. ‘So,’ he said,
in an effort to clarify the situation, ‘you’re really here as an observer?’
‘I don’t have what you might call an executive responsibility,’ agreed Bognor, rather pleased with the phrase, ‘but the Mounties have told me, informally, that they have no objection to my pursuing my own independent enquiries.’
‘Hmmm.’ Crombie glanced at Bognor’s glass, now almost empty. ‘Can I have that freshened up? Or would you rather go through and eat?’ Bognor looked shiftily equivocal. He knew from experience that there would only be iced water with lunch. Colonel Crombie took the hint and snapped his fingers at a white-jacketed waiter.
‘The RCMP officer in charge of the case seems to be someone named Pete Smith,’ said Colonel Crombie.
‘Yes.’
‘Not a very live wire.’
‘Not very, no.’
‘My information,’ Crombie spoke slowly, measuring the words, ‘is that he already has a good idea who was responsible.’
‘Yes, that’s so.’
‘And do you agree with him?’
‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I disagree,’ Bognor disliked this sort of verbal fencing, ‘but the evidence is rather circumstantial. Or, to be more precise, it’s virtually non-existent.’
‘Smith took a statement from me,’ said Crombie, ‘but he didn’t seem very interested in getting any facts, more in confirming his prejudices.’
Bognor said nothing.
‘Do you agree?’ asked his host.
Bognor smiled. ‘I wouldn’t disagree,’ he said, for the second time.
The colonel seemed slightly discomfited by this. Bognor, not wishing to seem discourteous or unhelpful, added, ‘My colleagues at the RCMP seem to think that the murder was politically motivated. They’ve established that the suspect—and I take it we’re both talking about the same person—was a member of a secret association of Quebec partisans. Farquhar was passionately opposed to the Quebecois but, paradoxically, he wanted them to stay within the Dominion. Therefore he was murdered in order to prevent him using his power and influence to cripple Quebec. Q, as far as the Mounties are concerned, ED.’
‘Farquhar was passionately opposed to Jews, blacks—always excepting old Amos—freemasons, homosexuals, and anyone who crossed him, including me. If it’s motive you’re looking for there’s no problem. Most people who’d ever heard of him would have preferred him dead than alive.’
‘Including you?’
Crombie cocked his head on one side and looked at his half-empty glass quizzically. ‘Perfectly fair question,’ he said, ‘but first let me ask you one. Do you think I might have done it?’
‘I think you might have done it,’ said Bognor, ‘which is not at all the same as thinking you did.’
‘Touché,’ laughed Crombie. ‘OK. In answer to yours, no, I think I preferred having him alive. There were moments when I wished him dead. Many moments, but on the whole they passed off quite quickly. I’d say that I was happy for him to go on living. And I certainly couldn’t have sustained a pathological ill will long enough for the premeditated killing. I might have slugged him at a board meeting but I’d never have gone to the trouble of fixing his bath oil.’ He paused and smiled, half mockingly at Bognor. ‘Do you buy that? Or do you think I’m lying?’
‘I’ll buy it for now,’ said Bognor.
‘In that case let’s go eat.’ Crombie got briskly to his feet and hauled Bognor laboriously to his. Bognor felt light-headed from the martinis. He hoped he would be able to hang on to his crutches. On the other hand it was good to think that he had something to hang on to at moments like this. He wondered what Crombie was leading up to. Was it going to be merely a protestation of innocence—fairly superfluous in his case since he was not in Bognor’s nor the Mounties’ eyes a prime suspect.
‘Let’s not beat about the bush.’ They had ordered their meal and were waiting for soup. Crombie’s manner was suddenly several degrees tougher. ‘My sources in Ottawa tell me there are going to be no arrests because of the political situation in Quebec.’
Bognor said nothing at all and after a moment’s silence Crombie continued, ‘I’ve talked to several members of the board and our view is that we can’t afford to have this skeleton in our cupboard. We need a solution. And fast.’
‘I’m doing my best,’ said Bognor.
‘Yeah. Well.’ Crombie paused while the optimistically designated potage bonne femme was set before them by one of the Irish waitresses. ‘As you’ve made clear, your part in these proceedings may not be central but it can be crucial. To be frank, Mr Bognor, the lack of a solution is having an exceedingly adverse effect on company morale, and that is being reflected in the company’s performance on the stock exchange. Do you read the city reports?’
Bognor had to confess that he did not.
‘Well, as far as Mammon is concerned they’re a real horror story right now.’
‘And that’s because the Farquhar murder is still unsolved.’
‘That’s my belief.’
‘Nothing to do with anything else. Your companies are sound and healthy in mind and limb?’
Crombie raised an eyebrow and broke his roll with a stabbing movement of finger and thumb. ‘You can take it from me, Mr Bognor, that given the overall climate of recession there isn’t a single division or subsidiary of Mammoncorp which isn’t in terrific shape. Or wasn’t until all this blew up.’
‘I don’t see why solving the murder will improve your showing on the stock market.’
‘You’ll just have to take that from me too.’
‘That’s not good enough.’
‘No?’ Crombie pushed aside his soup half finished. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘that soup is just terrible. I haven’t had soup like that since I was stationed at Camberley. Listen, you may not realize it but this is a very small town, and in some ways it’s a very small country. People talk. And right now people are talking their heads off about Mammoncorp. I hadn’t realized just how bad it was, sitting down in my place in the Bahamas, not until I saw what was happening to the share prices. Then I high-tailed it up here and I know at first hand.’
‘What exactly are they saying?’ asked Bognor. ‘No one has said anything to me, and there’s nothing in the papers.’
‘We don’t have that kind of press,’ said Crombie, ‘and you’re not talking to the right people. What they’re saying is that there is a real scandal at Mammon and that the Farquhar murder is only the tip of the iceberg. They say that it’s being hushed up in Ottawa, who have got a hold of the RCMP and won’t let them make an arrest because of the scandal. They say that the murderer is going to get off because he’s too damned powerful and he’s being protected by government.’
Their next course arrived. Steak and kidney pie. The vegetable claimed to be broccoli.
‘Who are “they”?’ asked Bognor, spraying pepper over his food as if it were weed-killer.
‘“They” is everybody. Gossip. Informed talk. I don’t know how you define it, but it exists in every community the world over. Since I’ve been in town I have not been to a cocktail party nor a club nor a private dinner without someone coming to me and saying, “Fred, is this true, what they’re saying about Mammon?”’
‘Can you be more precise?’ Bognor’s impressions of this man were in disarray. ‘Who do “they” think the main suspect is?’
‘There isn’t any agreement over that. No such luck. Sometimes it’s Harrison. Sometimes it’s Cernik and Eleanor. Sometimes Dolores.’
‘But never Prideaux or Amos Littlejohn.’
‘If it were I wouldn’t be worrying. The company can live with either of those two being guilty. But if it’s another board member we’re in trouble.’
‘What about you?’
‘No one has quite had the gall to point the finger at me in my presence,’ he said, ‘though they have come close.’
‘And what am I supposed to do about it?’
Crombie helped himself to a dollop of mustard. ‘We must
have a solution,’ he said. ‘I don’t care who it is but we need to have the whole deal wrapped up and out of the way. If the RCMP won’t nail Prideaux because of the political situation then it will just have to be somebody else.’
‘Irrespective of whether they did it or not.’
‘Sure. Provided the charge sticks.’
Bognor had decided. His first impression had let him down. This man was by no means nice. As nasty in his way as Baker. At least Baker was hot-blooded. Bognor wondered about Crombie’s sex life with La Bandanna. He would have to talk to La Bandanna, though not, perhaps about Colonel Crombie’s bodily functions. For the time being however Bognor decided to play ball.
‘Let’s assume,’ he said, abandoning the steak and kidney, ‘that Prideaux is out of the question because of politics. Let’s further assume that Smith is right and that he did it. What then?’
‘Find someone else.’
‘Even if they’re innocent?’
‘I already said that.’
‘Isn’t that a little … immoral?’
Crombie too laid down his knife and fork. ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You and I have been around. We know that there are times when an individual has to be sacrificed for the greater good. I agree that it would be neater and tidier if we could pin this rap on the right guy, but we have to live with the reality of the situation. If we can’t do it to the right guy we’ll have to find a scapegoat.’