Murder at Moose Jaw (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  ‘Who is this?’ It hardly sounded like an Oxford policeman. Far too familiar, and also far too grand and well-educated. A gown rather than a town voice.

  ‘Oh, sorry. It’s Sebastian Vole here, Simon. I hope you don’t mind my ringing you at your hotel. Waldy Mitten told me I’d probably get you at the Randolph. Hope you haven’t got one of the maids’ rooms up in the attic. Look, actually something pretty urgent’s cropped up and I wondered if we could have a spot of lunch. Waldy’s genned me up as a matter of fact. He thought it best, and in the circs I’m bound to say I’m glad he did.’

  Bognor swore under his breath. Another postponement of his business meeting with Hermione. And why had the preposterous Mitten unburdened himself to Vole? ‘You sound very agitated, Sebastian. Calm down and speak slowly. Whatever is it?’

  ‘I am very agitated actually,’ said Vole. ‘I hadn’t realized until this morning that the Master didn’t die of a stroke or a heart attack or indigestion or whatever. Someone else did it. And you’re investigating.’

  ‘Look, Sebastian.’ Bognor tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. ‘It is very distressing. I’m touched by your distress, which I share myself. Now do you simply wish to communicate this to me, or do you have something new to contribute?’ He sounded like Parkinson – a conscious parody.

  ‘Oh, it’s new all right,’ said Vole. ‘Dynamite. It’ll singe your eyebrows.’

  Bognor did not want his eyebrows singed, but he did not say so. ‘Very well,’ he said flatly. ‘Lunch, then. Where do you want to meet?’

  ‘Turf?’

  ‘Not exactly discreet.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Vole, ‘but we can meet there and move on. Maybe go for a walk.’

  ‘OK.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shall we say twelve-thirty?’

  ‘Twelve-thirty it is.’

  He hung up and immediately phoned Hermione Frinton again. She sounded gratifyingly disappointed.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Business before business. I’ll put your G and T on ice. Come and get it as soon as you’re free. And don’t believe too much of what Vole tells you. He’s inclined to exaggerate and my historian friends tell me his reputation is wildly inflated.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware he had a reputation,’ remarked Bognor.

  ‘That’s what I mean.’ She laughed. ‘See you soon.’

  Actually this exchange was unfair to Vole, and Bognor knew it. Soon after leaving Oxford he had produced a slim volume on Italian Fascism, entitled Mussolini: Mannerism Makyth Man, which was generally considered the cleverest book on its subject for years. It was, however, a young man’s book: flashy and as meretricious as its title suggested. The most venerated authority on the subject, old Cormorant of All Souls, had blown Vole out of the academic water over an entire Times Literary Supplement front page. As a result Vole had resolved to produce nothing else in a hurry, except for the occasional review and learned paper. For more than fifteen years he had been engaged on a magnum opus, the exact subject of which was known only to Vole, Mrs Vole and his loyal secretary-cum-researcher. Its publication was annually awaited, and had been for almost a decade. The saga had now gone on so long that it could truthfully be said that Vole’s very life, or at least his career, depended on it. Privately Bognor did not believe that Vole would have the guts to publish during his lifetime.

  He had just hung up his spare grey suit, even more shiny and bagged than the one he was wearing, when the phone shrilled again. This time it was Smith alias Chappie. He was downstairs. Bognor descended with a heavy heart to find a short, stout individual in a regulation CID fawn mackintosh and a pork pie hat which he had not removed.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said this person, taking Bognor’s right hand in both of his and squeezing uncomfortably hard. ‘Long time, no see. Don’t suppose you remember me?’

  Not for the first time in his life Bognor had an overwhelming desire to return home at once.

  ‘Must be twenty years ago if it’s a day,’ said the policeman, relinquishing Bognor’s hand and stepping back to appraise him. ‘You’ve changed. I’ll say that.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Bognor, ‘I don’t have any recollection.’

  ‘How about a coffee?’ inquired the inspector, not waiting for an answer but leading the way briskly towards the lounge. ‘I said to the missus when I heard, I said, “Well, that’s a turn-up for the book and no mistake. Course,” I said, “he won’t remember!”’

  ‘I give in,’ conceded Bognor, wearily subsiding into a chintz armchair. ‘Give me a clue.’

  ‘Give you a clue, eh?’ Smith scratched his chin and screwed up his eyes. After some cogitation he said, ‘About two o’clock in the morning, cold night, I was on duty, walking past the back gate of Apocrypha College, and what do I see emerging from a first-floor window but a pair of legs, female. Shapely, too, as far as one could judge from the lamplight.’

  ‘Ah.’ A Cheshire cat expression, fatuous, beatific but comprehending, illuminated Bognor’s face. ‘Are you telling me it was you who …’

  ‘Assisted you and your lady friend out of a tight corner? Right in one.’

  ‘What an extraordinary coincidence!’ Bognor was almost cheered by it. He ordered their coffee with something approaching enthusiasm.

  ‘Small world, innit?’ The inspector pulled out a packet of filter tip cigarettes, offered one to Bognor, who declined, lit, and puffed. ‘Course I transferred a little while afterwards to CID. And here we are. Who’d have thought it? She was a bit of all right, your bird, if I remember correctly. On the big side. Well-built, if you follow.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Bognor. ‘I’d forgotten all about it. Or had, until my wife reminded me about it the other day.’

  ‘Wife? What? Same bird? Married her, did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, well. Good for you. Don’t mind admitting I wouldn’t have minded a spot of dalliance if it hadn’t been for … well, it’s a long time ago.’

  Bognor toyed with the idea of telling Smith that Monica had called him a rapist, but decided against it. She always exaggerated. Besides, one sneeze from her and this little man would have blown away. Out loud he said, ‘Clever of you to remember after all these years.’

  Smith glowed. ‘Like I say, she was a bit of all right, your er, missus, if you’ll pardon the expression. And I never forget a name. Monica Becket and Simon Bognor. That’s a name and a half, eh, Bognor? Never come across another. Twenty-three years on the force and never known another Bognor. Met a couple of Worthings and a Deal, and Viscount Weymouth of course, but never another Bognor. Odd, innit?’

  ‘And now you’ve got a Frinton to add to your list.’

  ‘Yeah.’ The inspector stubbed his cigarette out very deliberately. ‘Bit of all right, she is. Big girl like Mrs Bognor. But too much of an intellectual for my liking. Not altogether straight. Still, you can’t fault her legs.’

  ‘No,’ Bognor agreed. He wasn’t sure he didn’t also agree with his colleague’s character assessment, but he judged it better not to say so. Their coffee arrived. Bognor was mother. The inspector took his milky with three sugars.

  ‘Well,’ said Bognor, a shift of tone indicating that the time had come to cease frivolous small talk and move to the agenda. Also that he was not only mother but chairman too. ‘What progress have you made?’

  ‘I’ll be quite candid,’ announced Smith. ‘The fact is we’ve made very little progress at all.’

  ‘I see.’ Bognor examined his finger tips and waited.

  ‘Fact is, Simon …’ He paused. ‘Don’t mind if I call you Simon, do you?’

  Bognor shook his head to convey that the familiarity was perfectly in order, if not wholly desirable.

  ‘Fact is, present company excepted, it’s never easy dealing with the college people.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ He could too – only too well.

  ‘Frankly I’m out of my depth. So I’d value your co-operation, I would really.’

  ‘You sh
all have it.’ Bognor was as susceptible to flattery as the next man. Perhaps more so, since he was so seldom accorded it.

  ‘You must have discovered something,’ he prompted.

  ‘Right.’ The inspector drew breath. ‘One. The deceased was poisoned. I’ve got a name for the stuff back at the office. Our experts say it acts in about an hour.’

  ‘And the time of death?’

  ‘About three.’

  ‘And he was drinking in Mitten’s rooms until about a quarter to.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘Could it have been self-administered?’

  ‘No trace of a supply in the Master’s lodgings. No sign of any suicide note. No evidence of depression. I’m inclined to rule that one out, until we find something to prove otherwise.’

  ‘His wife had died.’ Bognor remembered Lady Mabel well. Small, pear-shaped, nearly always smiling, she had never ironed out her northern accent as her husband had done. She was an unusual Master’s wife. Very few airs and graces. He’d no idea how she and her husband had got on together. Well enough, as far as could be seen. Nothing spectacular. Certainly nothing to suggest that Lord Beckenham would be so grief-stricken at her passing that he would commit suicide.

  ‘That was three years ago,’ said the inspector. ‘Let’s forget the idea he killed himself.’

  ‘All right,’ said Bognor. ‘Method. I suppose someone spiked his drink.’

  ‘Looks like a Mickey Finn,’ agreed Smith. ‘Had a bit of luck there.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Post-mortem was done unusually fast, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t ask me why. I think it’s partly a question of Mitten and his friends pulling rank. Showing they can cut through the red tape.’

  ‘That follows.’

  ‘Result of that is that we know it’s murder before Monday morning. And Mr Mitten’s scout doesn’t come in till Monday morning, so the glasses haven’t been washed up.’ He paused. ‘So we’ve had them removed for analysis.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Bognor. ‘Which will demonstrate conclusively that his drink was fixed.’

  ‘I hope so. And that proves that he was done in by one of the people drinking with him in Mitten’s rooms, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Bognor. ‘The Master always drank a peculiar sort of Polish raspberry firewater. No one else ever touched the stuff. Doctoring that would have been a sure-fire way of getting him.’

  ‘Sound thinking,’ said Smith.

  ‘Not mine. That’s Mrs Bognor’s theory.’

  Smith raised his eyebrows. ‘She in this line of country, too?’

  ‘Not officially, no, but she is an ever-constant help in time of trouble.’

  ‘Not just a pretty face?’

  ‘No. Definitely not.’

  The inspector lit another cigarette and drew on it, then breathed out, watching the smoke as if it might have some message for him.

  ‘On the assumption,’ he said, as the smoke drifted away across the lounge, ‘that the Master’s drink … his glass, not the bottle … was fixed during your late-night session after dinner, who could have done it? And how?’

  Bognor closed his eyes and tried to visualize the scene. It was surprisingly easy. Old Beckenham in his equally ancient dinner jacket, literally green with age, the edge of his bulging waistcoat showing broken stitching, the shoes split. Mitten in his tobacco-brown smoking jacket. Hermione in that clinging, backless black number. Vole pinkly chubby. Edgware so very neat, everything creased razor-sharp including the parting of his hair. Rook flashily expensive with heavy gold cufflinks and matching studs in his old-fashioned boiled shirt. Crutwell smoking a pipe, Mr avuncular housemaster himself.

  ‘We were all a bit pissed,’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘In fact to be quite honest, at breakfast on Sunday morning the others claimed I’d said several things of which I had no recollection whatever.’ He laughed a hollow laugh. Inspector Smith, for once, did not join in. Bognor coughed. ‘Well, as you’ve probably seen, Mitten’s rooms consist of that little entrance hall where he has the elephant’s foot umbrella stand and the coat hooks. Then there’s the dining-room. Then the drawing-room/study and then the bedroom leading off that. The drinks are in a corner cupboard in the dining-room.’

  ‘And you were all in the drawing-room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doors shut?’

  Bognor closed his eyes again and concentrated. ‘Most of the time, yes. I seem to remember someone protesting about the draught. But there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.’

  ‘Did Mitten help you to drinks or did you help yourselves?’

  ‘He gave us our first ones. After that we just helped ourselves. Quite a lot. Hence all the to-ing and fro-ing.’ Bognor was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He knew he was not under suspicion. Not really. And yet this felt like a proper interrogation.

  ‘What were you drinking?’

  ‘What, me personally?’

  ‘Yes, you personally.’

  ‘Cognac. Brandy. Hine.’ He drank some more coffee and noticed that the palm of his right hand was sweaty. He hoped it was just the central heating.

  ‘And after the first drink, which was handed to you by Mitten, you helped yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Several times?’

  ‘’fraid so. Yes, several times.’

  ‘And when you helped yourself, did you help anyone else?’

  Bognor’s face contorted itself with the effort of remembering through the fog of alcohol and cigars.

  ‘I think so,’ he said at last. ‘As far as I can remember, whenever anyone went to get another drink they sort of looked round to see if anyone else wanted a refill and took an extra glass or two with them. But it was all pretty chaotic.’

  ‘So at one time or another everybody left the room to get drink?’ The little man was leaning forward, his breath quickening. His face had lost much of its roundness and had developed unsuspected sharp edges so that it was almost ferrety. Bognor began to wonder if he was quite the oaf he had appeared to be on first acquaintance.

  ‘Not Lord Beckenham. He remained rooted to his chair throughout. Threatening to go pop at any moment.’

  Smith raised an interlocutory eyebrow.

  Bognor emitted a cracked, humourless chuckle. ‘Figure of speech,’ he apologized. ‘Unfortunate choice of phrase.’

  ‘No, not at all. Very apt. Very apt indeed.’ Smith’s eyes were very black. They were screwed up now, and Bognor was reminded of raisins in a steamed pudding.

  ‘Otherwise everybody went out, except for Hermione Frinton.’

  ‘Male gallantry survives in Apocrypha, eh?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Bognor was feeling most discomfited. ‘I seem to remember a certain amount of badinage about Germaine Greerism and whether a female Fellow could be one of the chaps. That sort of thing.’

  Smith’s expression indicated that he saw nothing humorous in this. It also implied that such childishness was only to be expected. ‘Was everyone drinking brandy?’

  ‘As I said, the Master was drinking his raspberry tipple. Some of the rest of us were on brandy, some on Scotch.’

  ‘Scotch with water?’

  ‘I suppose so. Yes.’ Bognor racked his brains feverishly. A piece of scum from the top of his coffee had attached itself in a thin film to the bottom of one of Smith’s two front fangs. Bognor was becoming mesmerized by it. He felt like a rabbit trapped by a car’s headlights. Why am I reacting like this? he thought nervously. I’m totally innocent and yet this man is going to make me confess to something in a minute. He’s eerie.

  ‘Where did the water come from?’

  ‘Um,’ said Bognor desperately. ‘Water?’

  ‘For the Scotch,’ prompted Inspector Smith.

  ‘Oh. From a jug.’ Bognor scratched his thinning hair. ‘No, no. I tell a lie. No jug, no jug. Some people went out to the scout’s pantry on the landing where there was a sink. And some peo
ple went into Waldy Mitten’s bedroom and filled their glasses from his washbasin.’

  Inspector Smith nodded sagely. ‘Scout’s pantry?’ he repeated.

  ‘Scout’s pantry. Sort of servant’s kitchenette.’

  ‘But no scout?’

  ‘Not that I could see.’

  ‘But he’d have served at dinner?’

  ‘Probably.’

  Smith pulled out a shorthand notebook and made a scribbled entry in pencil. ‘I’ll have to talk to him,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to have to talk to the others. Mitten and Frinton I’ve spoken to already. Frinton’s in the clear, I suppose, being one of ours in a manner of speaking.’ He sniggered mirthlessly. ‘No reason not to suspect Mitten. Bit of a pooftah, is he?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Everyone seems to think that. My guess is he’s sexless.’

  ‘Never made a pass at you, then, did he? Eh?’ Smith sniggered again. Bognor felt this was more like chief-inspector chappie.

  ‘No, never, I’m pleased to say.’

  ‘Obviously knew your attentions were otherwise engaged, eh? With the future Mrs Bognor, eh?’ For a hideous moment Bognor was sure that the diminutive detective was going to say ‘nudge nudge, know what I mean?’ in the manner of the man in the Monty Python sketch, but mercifully he simply-put his notebook away and licked his lips in a tentative fashion, succeeding, incidentally, in removing the coffee stain from his tooth. ‘And then we have Messrs Edgware, Vole, Rook and Crutwell,’ he said. ‘What about them?’

  ‘Well.’ Bognor looked at his watch. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve got a rendezvous with Sebastian Vole in ten minutes’ time at the Turf. Can we adjourn this till a bit later?’

  ‘Certainly, Simon. Only too glad. I’ve set up a little incident room in the college. The old Shakespeare Room.’

  ‘Yes, I remember it. The college’s most famous alumnus.’

  ‘Really?’ The inspector seemed surprised. ‘I had no idea that Shakespeare was an Oxford man.’

  ‘No,’ said Bognor, ‘nor have most people.’

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