Murder at Moose Jaw (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  To while away the time he made lists of suspects and motives and opportunities. He wrote thumbnail sketches of all those he had interviewed. He tried to think himself into the position of Sir Roderick himself, a rich, malevolent old man with a sentence of death passed on him. Would he, perhaps, try suicide? He guessed not, though he could not be sure. His impression was that a man like Farquhar would hang on to the bitter end, half believing in his immortality and half believing that a miracle might happen. But if not … And who was trying to frighten Bognor away? Succeeding, moreover, he acknowledged ruefully. After all if it had not been for the telephone calls and that unpleasant experience on the CN Tower he and Monica would still be in Canada. Not perhaps getting anywhere, but doing their best. They had not seen Niagara Falls. He had not given La Bandanna Rose a touch of the third degree. It had been, he was forced to concede, a flop and he had the scars to prove it. That untouchable imbecile Baker. Would he be Canada’s next prime minister? Beyond belief. But they had had some rum premiers in the past. For such a conventional country to have chosen Mackenzie King—or Trudeau, come to that. But the idea of Baker was preposterous. A PM who threw bottles of Chivas at his wife’s presumed lovers. Inconceivable. Bognor ordered a split of champagne from a passing hostess, a dark, skinny girl with big black kohlrimmed eyes. He thought wistfully of Louise and drank her an apologetic little toast in champagne. Nice girl. Pretty girl. He glanced across at Monica’s open mouth and toyed with the idea of pouring a drop of champagne into it. No. A waste. She would only choke on it. On the other side of the plane a small child lifted the window blind to reveal some rosy-fingered dawn. He consulted his watch. They must be over Ireland by now.

  He must have drifted off in the end because he woke to find them beginning the descent to Heathrow. Monica was finishing breakfast. She looked fresh as a mountain stream.

  ‘Sleep well?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t wake you for breakfast. You looked so sweet all sprawled out. Like a teddy bear.’

  Bognor growled. He had been dreaming. A confused dream in which he had been forced to drink buckets of bath oil by a squad of lumberjacks and Mounties. ‘Who do you think did it?’ he asked, as the no-smoking signs came on and the engines changed pitch, inducing fear and uncertainty in Bognor’s suggestible imagination.

  ‘Funny,’ said Monica, handing her tray to the harassed girl with the big black eyes, ‘I was just wondering that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think he did it himself.’

  ‘No suicide note? No warning? No explanation?’

  Monica pondered. ‘I know it’s not usual but it is possible. He obviously wasn’t terribly close to anyone in particular. And he was also, to put it mildly, misanthopic. Misanthropes leave no letters.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ she said, decidedly. Below them London appeared through the clouds. They could see the Thames snaking sullenly across the city like a grey tapeworm.

  ‘Looks awfully drab down there,’ he said, gloomily.

  ‘Not as cold as Toronto.’

  ‘Damp though. And not such good central heating.’

  ‘Not as dangerous.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. Just as much chance of being hit on the head in London as there is in Toronto. I speak from experience.’

  Monica smiled.

  ‘You still make me laugh,’ she said, ‘even after all these years. Even more after all these years.’

  ‘Huh.’ Bognor was not sure about this. He knew the laughter was affectionate, but it was laughter nonetheless. Being laughed at was all very well in its way, but not virile. He bet no one laughed at Ainsley Cernik. He put a hand in his pocket and fingered his life membership of the Macdonald-Cartier Squash Club. He didn’t suppose he’d ever use it even if he ever went back, which he doubted.

  ‘Bath oil?’ he mused. ‘It’s an odd way to commit suicide. Why go to all that trouble? Why not an overdose? Or if he wanted to do it in the bath, why not slit his wrists?’

  ‘Maybe he wanted to set some final conundrum,’ said Monica. ‘It’s one way to be remembered.’

  ‘Not that anyone’s likely to forget him in a hurry.’ The undercarriage went down with a rasping crash that set Bognor’s nerves jangling.

  ‘It does seem odd,’ he went on, ‘that he should have given out bath oil as Christmas presents and then used the same bath oil to kill himself.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Monica pulled her seat belt tight. ‘You’re jumping a lot of guns.’

  ‘No, but,’ Bognor persisted, ‘if he did kill himself then it is rather peculiar that he should have sent out the bottles as Christmas presents. What could it mean?’

  Monica thought for a moment. ‘Put it slightly differently,’ she said. ‘If he really wanted to set a conundrum what better way to do it than hand out the bottles and then use a bottle to kill himself. I mean, suppose you want to spread a little confusion. Right. First of all you hand out a quantity of rather rare sawn-off shotguns to people you wish to be suspected of a murder. Then you shoot yourself with a sawn-off shotgun of the same make or calibre or whatever the distinguishing features of shotguns are. And, hey presto, all the people to whom you gave shotguns become suspects.’

  ‘But,’ said Bognor, eagerly, ‘there’s a flaw in that. It would obviously be suicide because they’d find your own shotgun by your corpse.’

  ‘Yes, but with bath oil that doesn’t matter.’

  The plane touched down with a heavy double bump. The engine raced. Mr and Mrs Bognor gripped each other’s hands tightly.

  Most of that day they slept, rising only in time to go out to dinner. They had a curry, a particular treat since Indian restaurants, unlike Chinese, appeared to be in short supply in southern Ontario. Next morning, quite bright and early, Bognor reported back to work at the Board of Trade. He was walking quite nimbly now, and his rib cage was giving much less pain. His face too was almost mended. Even so, as he tottered along the peeling corridors of power and influence he attracted gratifying remarks of commiseration and concern. When be reported to Parkinson he was not in the least surprised, however, to find that his boss’s greeting was rather more peremptory. Parkinson was bored, even mildly disgusted, by illness and injury, in others. It was an indication of failure, not a badge of courage.

  ‘Aha, Bognor,’ he said not even looking up, but pretending to be engrossed in whatever it was that he was writing in fussy strokes with a blue felt-tipped pen. ‘Close the door. There’s an energy crisis. We have to conserve heat.’ Bognor kicked it shut with his better leg. Parkinson looked up shortly, said nothing, looked volumes, and returned to his scribbling. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said, ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’

  Bognor sat and stared at the portrait of Her Majesty. It was always deflating to come home.

  ‘Good,’ said Parkinson at last, flinging down the pen and appraising his subordinate with an unflinching gaze. ‘Well, well. We have been in the wars.’

  ‘Yes, we have rather.’

  ‘Tsk, tsk. Sorry about that. You know I prefer members of the department to be resolute in maintaining the low profile.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I am sorry.’

  ‘I’m sure. Hurt, does it?’

  ‘Not so bad now. One gets used to it. It was painful at the time.’

  ‘They talked about brain damage.’ Parkinson allowed the remark to hang in the air, half question, half statement, so that Bognor waited before replying, ‘No brain damage.’

  Parkinson beamed soullessly. ‘Excellent. No brain damage. And the leg. You’ll regain full use of that in due course, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘I believe so, yes.’ Bognor smiled sardonically. ‘They’re not even going to amputate.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Parkinson rubbed his hands together and beamed again. ‘So no harm done, eh?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘And what do you have to report?’

  ‘Report?’

  ‘Report, yes. R-E-P-O-R-T. Report. Have you solved the insoluble
? Is the murderer incarcerated and awaiting trial? Or were you merely rushing in where angels fear to tread?’

  ‘Frankly I’m beginning to wonder if it was murder actually.’

  ‘I see.’ Parkinson put his fingers together and stared morosely along the top of them, as if lining his minion up for summary execution.

  ‘Not a murder actually.’ Parkinson appeared to brood on this. ‘Life in the old corpse yet. Is that it? Sir Roderick Farquhar not dead but frozen alive. Is that what you had in mind?’

  ‘I had a thought about suicide.’

  ‘A thought about suicide.’ Parkinson nodded several times. ‘Good, good. Excellent. Well, I know, Bognor, that, as usual, I can rely upon you to keep your thoughts to yourself.’

  Bognor opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again.

  ‘That’s an order, Bognor. Meanwhile you will naturally furnish me with your written report in triplicate by nine hundred hours tomorrow morning. Oh, and you’ll be glad to hear that I had a wire from RCMP HQ informing me that you had been safely escorted off the premises and the matter was now back under control. They expect to be arresting some Frenchman as soon as the political situation allows it. I gather they’ve been having trouble with Ottawa. They should come over here and see what I have to contend with at Westminster. Out of the mouths of babes and … Oh, well, some of these so-called ministers are scarcely out of nappies, but that’s my problem, not yours, thank god.’

  He stood up, the gesture inviting Bognor to do the same.

  ‘Good to have you back,’ he said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. You cut along and write that report and then we’ll find some appropriate light duties to keep you out of further mischief. We’re woefully behind on positive vetting. I think we’ll give you a couple of weeks of that to see you right again and get you back in the swing.’

  Bognor swore under his breath. ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘Good to be back.’ He hoped, as he limped defiantly down the passage, that the irony shone through.

  The report was a bore. He disliked writing them and he was enough of a realist to appreciate that this particular one would be little more than a catalogue of failure. At least it was a failure at this point. There was one further interview which might just change that, and before he even started to marshal his thoughts, he telephoned Farquhar’s London doctor and managed to make an appointment for just after lunch.

  The doctor’s rooms in Harley Street turned out to be opulent and distinguished in a way that Harrison Bentley would have adored but could never emulate. The furniture had been accumulated over a long period of time, rather than bought in a job lot from Harrods. The nineteenth-century watercolours were a particular hobby of the doctor’s. The library of medical books though quite precious first editions were regularly consulted. The only magazines were Country Life, The Connoisseur and Apollo. The doctor himself was elegant, silver-haired, sixtyish, a stylish real tennis player, a member of the MCC and Pratt’s. His charges were what one would expect. His clientele, increasingly, tended to come from the Middle East, a circumstance which distressed him, but not inordinately.

  ‘I’ve had to squeeze you in, I’m afraid.’ He spoke in a soft, almost sibilant manner which managed at one and the same time to be immensely deferential and extraordinarily condescending. ‘There does seem to be a lot of illness about. Mustn’t complain. But you haven’t come to discuss your symptoms unless I’m much mistaken.’ He put his head on one side and half smiled an invitation to impart a confidence. At a certain level, Bognor considered, doctors find it impossible to abandon the bedside manner.

  ‘I’ve come about one of your patients.’

  ‘Ye-e-es.’ He smiled, encouraging Bognor to continue.

  ‘It’s rather a long shot. I wanted to know whether or not this patient is or rather was intending to commit suicide.’

  The doctor coughed. ‘You must understand, Mr Bognor, that the medical profession is bound by a code of ethics. There is an oath. It would be most improper to discuss one of my patients with a third party. Unless they were family and then only in exceptional circumstances. You’re not family, I take it?’

  ‘No.’ Bognor had the impression that the doctor was playing games with him. ‘No, I’m not family. I’m Board of Trade.’

  ‘Quite.’ The doctor waited.

  ‘The fact is,’ said Bognor, ‘that your patient is a late patient. That is to say he died.’

  ‘That would naturally put a different complexion on the matter.’

  ‘You could talk about a dead patient?’

  ‘Under certain circumstances.’ The doctor looked up at the grandmother clock which ticked sonorously in a corner of the room. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bognor, but I don’t have very much time. You’ve come to talk about the late Sir Roderick Farquhar.’

  Bognor nodded. ‘But how did you know?’

  ‘Let’s just leave that for now. Am I to understand that you are involved in a murder investigation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And has anyone been charged?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked crestfallen. ‘Then I’m sorry. I don’t think I can be of help.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Bognor was flabbergasted.

  ‘I can’t help you unless someone has been charged with Sir Roderick’s murder.’ The doctor’s mouth set tight. His charm seemed in the balance.

  ‘But I can’t charge anyone unless you help me,’ Bognor pleaded.

  ‘Then we’re caught in a vicious circle.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Bognor could not believe what he was hearing. ‘Let’s get it absolutely straight. If I come back and say that someone has been charged with Sir Roderick’s murder then you will help me. Otherwise not?’

  ‘That’s exactly it.’ The doctor smiled, more friendly now. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m not being wilfully obstructive, I’m really not. Shortly before he died—the last time I saw him—Sir Roderick gave me a letter. It was addressed to you.’ Bognor’s jaw sagged. ‘It was not to be given to you until after his death,’ he waved aside Bognor’s attempted interruption, ‘and not only after his death. After someone had been accused of murdering him.’

  ‘You mean he knew he was going to be murdered?’

  ‘That I can’t say.’

  ‘Can you tell me how ill he was?’

  Again the doctor appeared to think for a moment, then he replied, ‘Very ill. It was a cancer of course. There were complications. I personally gave him about a fortnight to a month, but you can never tell in these cases. He might have dropped dead the second he got outside the door. Or he might have struggled on for, oh, three months. Even more.’

  ‘And in the end …?’

  ‘He died about three weeks after leaving these rooms.’ The doctor paused dramatically. ‘But not, as you are aware, of cancer.’

  ‘I see.’ Bognor’s usual cover for hopeless confusion. He sighed. ‘But I can’t have this letter unless someone has been charged with his murder?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘OK,’ said Bognor, gloomily. ‘I’ll have to see what I can do. I’ll be back.’

  The doctor smiled. ‘I admire your optimism,’ he said.

  It took Bognor three quarters of an hour to return by taxi to the Board of Trade, and it was almost four o’clock before he was finally seated in his own grubby cubbyhole in the bowels of the building, surrounded by central heating pipes, faded notices, chipped teacups and unanswered mail. That meant it was mid-morning in Toronto. He asked the operator to get him a personal call to Pete Smith and waited in a state of high excitement, the first time he had been in such a state while waiting to talk to Smith, and probably the last. Eventually, after three false starts he was through to the right Smith in the right town in the right country.

  ‘Hi, Si.’ The ponderous voice came thudding across the Atlantic, reminding him that North America had its PC Plods as well. ‘Great to hear you. How’re things?’

  ‘Fine th
anks. And you?’

  ‘Minus eight degrees Celsius in Metro, Si. Snowing hard. And the Leafs were shut out by the Kings last night.’

  ‘In LA or at the Gardens?’

  ‘At the Gardens, would you believe.’

  ‘Gosh, Pete, that’s terrible.’

  ‘Sure is, Si. Mrs Bognor OK? She recover from that upset on the CN Tower?’

  ‘Yes thanks. I say, Pete. There’s something I think you ought to know. You might be able to help. I don’t know. It’s about the Farquhar murder.’

  A distinct pause. Bognor thought he had done enough ingratiating to soften him up. Evidently not. ‘Yeah, Si?’ Definitely suspicious.

  ‘I went to see old Farquhar’s doctor today. He told me that Farquhar was definitely terminally ill. He only had a few days left.’

  The Mountie whistled. ‘Is that right, eh? Someone went to a lot of trouble for nothing.’

  ‘It does look like it,’ said Bognor. ‘But the most extraordinary thing is that Farquhar left me a letter.’

  ‘Is that a fact? And what did it say?’

  ‘I haven’t read it. I don’t know.’

  ‘Haven’t read it? Jeez, Si, that could be an important letter.’

  ‘I am aware of that,’ said Bognor tetchily. ‘It’s not for the want of trying. I haven’t been able to read it because I haven’t been given it.’

  Long pause. Then, ‘Say again, Si.’

  ‘It is eccentric,’ Bognor admitted. ‘Sir Roderick left the letter with his doctor here in London, the one I told you about, and his instructions were that I was not to be given it unless someone was charged with Sir Roderick’s murder.’

  ‘This is a very bad line, Si. Would it help if I called you back?’