Murder at Moose Jaw (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  ‘It’s not a game, darling. It’s real. The old man is dead. And even though it may seem preposterous, you could be considered a suspect. Especially by some resentful flatfoot from the Oxford police. Remember how they dislike the university. One of them tried to rape me that night when I was climbing out of your room.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish,’ he exclaimed. ‘He was just helping you down, and you lost your grip.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it. He pestered me for weeks after that.’

  ‘You led him on. I bet you did.’

  ‘Shut up and listen, Simon Bognor!’ She wagged her fork at him. ‘Now. Why was this man Lingard in your office this morning?’

  ‘Don’t remind me of him.’ Bognor had not thought of the interloper since dinner began. The mention of his name induced definite palpitations. ‘Oily little creep. He was up just after me. Trinity man. Typical. Stowe and Trinity. He reeked of after-shave.’

  ‘He was there because you’ve applied for a transfer, Simon. And your applications are to the Treasury, the Foreign Office and the Home Office.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They all involve promotion.’

  ‘Arguably.’

  ‘And they’re politically sensitive. Or likely to be.’

  ‘I doubt. Anyway, the Board of Trade is politically sensitive.’

  ‘Well,’ she paused to chew, ‘my point is that before anything like that came through there would be a whole cat’s cradle of red tape and paperwork. References taken up, opinions sought. Meetings, soundings, interviews.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bognor picked up a bone in his fingers and gnawed at it speculatively. ‘I’m absolutely adrift. No idea what on earth you’re on about.’

  ‘My point is that the one place they’re bound to go back to, to discover any character flaws, political defects and general bad-lottery is Apocrypha. The Jesuits are always supposed to have said that if they had a child until the age of seven or whatever, then they had its soul, but that’s manifestly not so. It’s what happens at university that matters. That’s when Burgess became Burgess, Maclean, Maclean and Blunt, Blunt.’

  ‘That was Cambridge. And before my time.’

  ‘You’re being deliberately silly. You know how slowly the civil service moves. I’m quite certain the first thing that they’d do before moving you to the FO or the Treasury would be to get on to Beckenham and ask him to turn up your file.’

  ‘They’d ask Parkinson for his file first.’

  ‘Possibly. But your university file would be a jolly close second.’

  ‘So you think I killed Lord Beckenham to stop him telling the Treasury snoopers about the time I was sick on staircase nine or planted daffodils in Trinity Junior Common Room?’

  ‘You know what I mean, Simon,’ she said. ‘I’m being quite serious.’

  ‘Quite serious,’ he mimicked her. ‘I know you are, darling, and I see what you’re getting at.’

  She set her knife and fork neatly together and wiped her mouth fastidiously. ‘You do and you don’t,’ she said. ‘I’m really only using you as an illustration. What I’m saying is that if an old Apocrypha man was in for a job, then the people who are considering him for it would be idiotic if they didn’t run a rule over Apocrypha. And my hunch is that if there was any dirt available the Master would be most likely to have it. So it is at least conceivable that one of your whizzy contemporaries wanted to shut him up before he could spill the beans about the skeletons in his cupboard.’

  ‘You mix your metaphors wonderfully,’ he teased, ‘but I do see your point. And I take it too. Jolly shrewd.’ He put out his hand and patted hers affectionately as it lay on the table between them.

  ‘Don’t be so patronizing,’ she protested. ‘What was he drinking?’

  ‘Same as he always drank. That hideous raspberry liqueur he always took after dinner.’

  ‘Framboise?’

  ‘No – worse than that. Don’t know what it was called or where it came from. Polish, I think. Very strong. People he knew used to keep a bottle in their rooms specially, in case he just blew in unannounced. Never known him to drink anything else.’

  ‘So whoever did it need only have doctored the bottle and not the glass.’

  ‘I suppose. That should be perfectly easy to prove. And now can we talk about something else? I’m finding this distinctly morbid. How was your lamb?’

  He returned to Oxford by train since Monica insisted she needed the car. She was helping Fiona out at the art gallery. At least Bognor thought that was what she was doing. Or maybe she was helping Camilla out in her boutique in Camden Passage. Or was she typing and answering the phone for Richard because Vivien was off sick? Or for Vivien because Richard was off sick? He did wish, now that they were married, that she would complete the act of settling down and find herself a permanent job. He simply couldn’t keep up with her peripatetic, universal jill-of-all-trades acts. No – it was none of these things, he realized guiltily; she was helping Myrtle provide a buffet for a hundred and twenty Darby and Joans because she, Myrtle, had rashly agreed to bail out Caroline who had got lumbered with organizing some ‘do’ for her pet charity. How much less complicated and wearing it was to be a mere special investigator with the Board of Trade. Even if it did mean that he had to go by train because Monica needed the car. He didn’t like the car anyway, which was a new Mini Metro, purchased in an access of patriotic enthusiasm to postpone the inevitable collapse of the British motor industry. What was the country coming to, he wondered morosely, as he bought a Times and a Telegraph at the Paddington Station bookstall. Even the distinguished old masters of Oxford colleges were not allowed to fade away in peace, but were foully done to death by over-ambitious Trinity men from Teddington only concerned with their own careers. Made you despair.

  ‘Penny for them?’ said a slightly husky voice, trained on his left ear and coming from alarmingly close range. He gave a start, glanced guiltily up and found himself confronted by the disconcertingly flared nostrils of Dr Hermione Frinton.

  ‘Quelle coincidence,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to frighten you. As a matter of fact that was the third question I’ve addressed to you. You all right?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ he replied, stuffily. ‘Just thinking, that’s all.’

  ‘Very preoccupying, thought,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t put you down as one of the great thinkers, somehow.’

  ‘And what had you put me down as, exactly?’

  ‘That would be telling, wouldn’t it?’ She laughed throatily, causing Bognor an uneasy tremor of incipient desire. She was no longer in yesterday’s skirt, but instead had reverted to the tight trousers which did the maximum possible for her elongated legs. She also, in a phrase he associated with his old friend Sir Erris Beg, was a ‘fine mover’. Bognor sensed trouble ahead. He adored his wife, but he was uneasily mindful of the fact that a prime reason for their marriage was that he found the idea of being unfaithful to a wife somehow more acceptable than being unfaithful to a mistress or ‘live-in girlfriend’ (as the displeasing contemporary argot preferred). Not that he had ever been unfaithful, though there had been some near misses.

  They were walking towards the platform. He offered to carry her bag, which was an expensive light tan leather creation with gold initials and a number of tags among which he noticed those of the Eastern and Oriental in Penang, the Hong Kong Mandarin and Las Brisas in Acapulco.

  ‘I hardly imagine you were delivering a paper on Beowulf in Acapulco,’ he tried, banteringly, he thought, and not altogether unwittily.

  ‘Hmmm.’ She smiled down at him, as if to say ‘Funny little man.’ Bognor shrank but persevered.

  ‘Nor Penang.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Though in point of fact the British Council did arrange for me to give a talk on Shakespearean metaphor.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘No. I gave them “Maugham to Burgess and Theroux: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes to the Peninsula: Studies in Literary Imperialism”
. Maugham’s a speciality of mine. Would you believe I read them The Hairless Mexican in Acapulco, standing naked on the seashore?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ she said again, giving him another of her patronizing looks. ‘Are we going first?’ she asked as they passed along the platform.

  ‘Parkinson doesn’t like it,’ said Bognor. ‘He’s on a permanent economy drive.’

  ‘He looks as if he’s its original victim,’ she said. ‘Breakfast, then?’

  ‘I’ve had breakfast.’

  ‘Have another. Nothing succeeds like excess, you must know that.’

  ‘I’ll have a coffee.’

  ‘You do just that.’

  The dining-car was virtually empty, British Rail meals being beyond the means of most of those who travelled the Oxford line, and they easily found a table for two.

  ‘Well,’ she purred, when they had settled themselves and the train began to ease out of the station, ‘isn’t this fun?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve wanted to meet you for ages. I’ve been a great fan, ever since that business at Beaubridge Friary. I read the files. Very imaginative.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It never occurred to me that one day we’d actually be working together.’

  ‘No.’ Bognor was feeling rather nonplussed.

  ‘Ciggy?’ She waved a pack of Black Russian at him.

  He declined. He would have liked to ask if she was really a tutor in English as well as being in the employ of the Intelligence Services, but judged this to be unwise. Instead he said, ‘Which college were you at as an undergraduate?’

  ‘LMH,’ she said. Clearly she read his thoughts, for she went on: ‘I’m quite genuine. The teeniest little bit after your time, but I did get one of the best firsts of my year, not to mention a quarter blue for basketball. It is said that I slept my way through the whole of All Souls.’ She exhaled smoke and said, in the manner of Lady Bracknell, ‘But that is a lie.’

  She was having the continental breakfast. Her orange juice arrived, as did Bognor’s coffee, at least two-thirds of which was still in the cup. He poured his saucer off, clumsily, as they rattled over some bumpy points just outside Ealing Broadway.

  ‘What’s this chap Smith like?’ he asked.

  For a moment she looked blank, then she grinned. ‘You mean our inspector chappie.’ She sipped her orange juice and laughed. ‘Fearful halitosis and that fatal combination of egg and chip.’

  ‘Egg and chip?’

  ‘Outsize ego, chip on shoulder. They seldom go together but when they do it’s cop-out time. However, he will have to do as he is told. He has rather delicious ears. Distinctly edible except that it would be impossible to get within range on account of the breath.’ She gazed at him in an appraising manner. ‘Your ears could hardly be said to be your best point but you have the sweetest nose. I do hope we’re going to be friends.’

  This is ridiculous, thought Bognor. What on earth does she think she is playing at? Out loud he said, ‘So do I!’ And then, quietly, in his most serious voice, ‘How long have you been … er … one of ours?’

  ‘Since I came down. Lord Beckenham recruited me personally.’

  Bognor choked on his coffee. ‘Who recruited you personally?’

  She fluttered her eyelashes. They had to be false. They reminded him of caterpillars. ‘Becky. Your old Master. He was one of ours, too. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No, I did not.’

  She eyed him suspiciously. ‘No,’ she said, at last, ‘I do believe you didn’t. I’m his replacement, in a manner of speaking. That’s part of the point.’

  ‘I see.’ He dabbed at the coffee on the table top, not daring to look up. Eventually he said, ‘In what sense was he “one of ours”?’

  ‘Oh, not much more than the university rep really. He co-ordinated intelligence on people like the exchange students and the Rhodes Scholars, supervised selection, helped with the files on subversives. Routine stuff. No field work, needless to say. He wasn’t what you’d call a real pro like you or me. Last of the old school in a way.’

  ‘How many people knew?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Parkinson, for instance?’

  ‘Probably not.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m afraid that with the spectacular exception of your own irruptions into the world of espionage, intrigue, chicanery and international whatsit, the Board of Trade hardly features in the divine order of things. Not even Special Operations Division. It’s desperately run of the mill, other rank stuff.’

  ‘Someone once said “all cloak and no dagger”,’ said Bognor, wondering half-heartedly if it had been himself but not wishing, in present company, to take credit for the aphorism. Just in case.

  ‘Quite.’ She leaned forward in a confidential manner, and Bognor was disturbingly aware of breasts, concealed though they were under an exotic poncho-style garment probably of foreign extraction. Also of her scent which was expensive and, in a way he was unable to identify, suggestive, even rude.

  ‘Chief-inspector chappie doesn’t know,’ she stage-whispered, ‘nor Waldegrave. Nor should they. Also, I’m determined that the post-mortem results should be hushed up for as long as possible.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky,’ he said. Bognor had a low opinion of pathologists, coroners and policemen. Hushing things up was not, in his experience, their style at all.

  The train had hurried through Slough and was approaching Maidenhead. Frinton was eating toast, heavily buttered and marmaladen. It was clear she did not have to worry about her figure. Before long they would reach Reading and turn north along the Thames valley, one of Bognor’s favourite railway journeys.

  ‘We must still try,’ she said. A ticket collector hove in sight and demanded tickets. Hermione frowned heavily at Bognor to indicate that even ticket collectors have ears, and said very loudly, ‘Super day!’

  ‘Super,’ he agreed.

  When the official had passed along and a similar charade had been enacted for the benefit of the attendant with the coffee pot, Bognor, catching his colleague’s theatricality, whispered hoarsely: ‘Do you have any theories?’

  Before answering she stood up, on the pretext of adjusting her clothing, and peered about her. There was no one at the table alongside them on the other side of the aisle. Behind Bognor a bald clergyman with a hearing aid and his frumpish wife were reading newspapers. Behind Hermione there was a scattering of businessmen, mainly English with American and Japanese companions, some of whom could have been tourists.

  ‘Not here,’ she announced firmly and with finality. ‘We’d better talk properly at my place. Where are you staying?’

  Bognor was at a loss to understand why she had been so indiscreet about the dead Master and was now being so tight-lipped about her theories. He guessed she had none and was going to spend the rest of the journey making some up. If you were to ask him he would have said she was a fraud – an alluring fraud. Positive Mata Hari in fact. But a fraud.

  ‘The Randolph.’ He liked the Randolph. It had been tarted up since his undergraduate days but at least it had survived, unlike the Mitre which had been turned into a steak house.

  ‘Silly billy, you could have stayed chez moi.’

  ‘People would have talked. My wife most of all.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were married.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She looked into his eyes until he dropped his gaze. Then she chuckled.

  ‘My place is in Walton Street, just round the corner from the Randolph. We’ll make it campaign HQ. Now tell me about your wife. Is she madly in love with you?’

  They did not talk about the murder again on the train, nor did they discuss Monica. Bognor never discussed Monica with anybody but Monica. He was old-fashioned enough to find it indelicate. For almost half an hour they talked about landscapes in literature. This seemed a safe subject and one on which there was a measure of mutual agreement. At Oxford Station Bognor carried Hermione’s bag through the mur
ky tunnel which ran under the railway line. Then they shared a taxi since it was much too far to walk. Bognor dropped her off at her flat in Walton Street.

  ‘Ta ta, then,’ she said, stretching those legs. ‘Shan’t kiss you goodbye in case people talk. See you in half an hour.’

  Bognor mumbled something incomprehensible and wondered what was happening to him. He felt that he was being swept along by a force that belonged to nature rather than any human agency, and as he collected his key in the foyer of the Randolph, much smarter now, but still with that familiar atmosphere of converted aeroplane hangar, he felt glum. He was glummer still to find a message from chief-inspector chappie. ‘Must stop calling him that,’ he said out loud to himself as he skimmed through the note, scrawled in semi-literate pencil.

  Smith had been to the hotel half an hour earlier and was calling again in about twenty minutes. Bognor sighed. He had been anticipating his business meeting with Hermione with an odd and guilty mixture of despair and eagerness. She had given him her number for emergencies like this. He rang to tell her the bad news.

  ‘Best get it over with,’ she said. ‘Then potter round here and I’ll have a large G and T waiting to take away the taste.’

  ‘Anything you’d advise me to say?’

  ‘As little as possible, darling. See you soon. Have fun.’

  He sank onto the forbidding-looking single bed. He hoped he was going to be able to stand the pace. Still, having her flat as a refuge was a blessing. He could never understand why enormous reception rooms in hotels so often denoted tiny bedrooms and vice versa. You couldn’t swing a mouse in this glorified cupboard, let alone a cat. He would have to get something bigger for the weekend when Monica came. There wasn’t even a view – just some roof and guttering. Some of the rooms must have views across to the Ashmolean, which was a view worth having. This emphatically wasn’t. The phone rang. Oh well, he thought, better get it over with. He counted three, then picked it up and said in his briskest, most official, most efficient manner, ‘Bognor, Board of Trade.’

  ‘Oh Simon, thank heaven I’ve found you. I’ve got to talk to you.’