The Sinking Admiral

by The Detection Club

  ‘The column wasn’t the end of his ambitions either,’ the editor went on. ‘He reckoned it was only a matter of time before his weekly musings would appear in book form.’

  ‘Really?’ said Amy, sure that she would have heard from Fitz about this idea as well if it were true.

  ‘He was convinced it was a goer. In fact, he’d got some publisher woman there with him.’

  ‘That afternoon in the Bridge?’

  ‘That’s right. Well, I say a publisher… a publisher of sorts, and one who might, just might, no promises, nothing as serious as pack-drill, turn next morning’s fish wrappings into something altogether more deathless. At least that’s what the Admiral was hoping for.’

  ‘What was the publisher’s name?’

  ‘Odd one. Not one you’re likely to forget. Ianthe Berkeley. Yes, and she seemed quite keen on getting a book out of Fitz’s columns. A book is a book, after all, whereas a newspaper column is just jottings, mere jottings with the accent on the “mere”, as it were. Fitz very much liked the idea of his musings appearing in book form.’ There was respect in his tone, even a little wistfulness. As a journalist, a producer of ‘next morning’s fish wrappings’, he too aspired to the permanence of one day seeing his work between hard covers.

  ‘And did Fitz appear to know Ianthe well?’ asked Amy.

  ‘I wouldn’t have said “well”, but they’d clearly met before.’

  ‘Hm.’ Amy looked thoughtful, even troubled. Christie wondered for a moment whether she was jealous of Ianthe’s closeness to Fitz.

  He gazed blearily at Amy, trying to fathom her relationship with her boss. She referred to Fitzsimmons as ‘Fitz’, but then so did virtually everyone else in Crabwell. Whether Amy had ever conducted anything other than a professional relationship with him was a matter of conjecture. Bob Christie, who knew little about the workings of the female heart, assumed that, being an attractive woman, Amy had conducted unprofessional relationships with practically everyone. But her and Fitz… he couldn’t quite see it.

  Feeling the need for a top-up, he offered to buy Amy another gin, but she said drinks were on the house that evening and fetched two more apparently identical G&Ts (though there was still no G in hers). Taking his drink, the editor settled himself on the sofa and waited for the next part of his interrogation. He thought it was all going rather swimmingly. Just as well that he didn’t know what his interrogator was thinking.

  Amy was more than ever convinced that Christie was lying. At the time on the Monday that he claimed Ianthe was in the Bridge with him and Fitz, the publisher hadn’t even arrived in Crabwell. Still, believing she’d get more out of him by massaging his ego than by confrontation, she pronounced the great untruth: ‘You’re clearly someone who understands human nature.’ He nodded gratified agreement with the compliment. ‘Tell me more about Ianthe Berkeley.’

  He was more than ready to offer his opinion on the woman. In Bob Christie’s view, she was a publisher in name only, even though that was what she put under ‘profession’ on her CV. She had an office, and a title. Ianthe was an editor at Bone and Spittle, which even had a slogan (‘Bone and Spittle – the Home of Books’) but, alas, appeared so far not to have edited any books.

  ‘And do you think she really hoped to publish a collection of Fitz’s opinions?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was clearly of great interest to her.’

  ‘As what? As a potential author?’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A few minutes ago you asked me if Fitz had known her well. I said no at the time, but the more I think about it, the more I think there must have been something between them, some shared history.’

  Amy was firmly of the opinion that he was making this stuff up, improvising on the hoof, but she still didn’t voice her doubts. ‘When you use the word “history”, do you mean they had been lovers?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, but there was definitely something. Fitz was a man with a lot of secrets.’

  This offered a more promising line of enquiry. ‘What kind of secrets?’ she asked.

  ‘All kinds.’ He smiled smugly. ‘I did quite a lot of research on Fitz for a profile I was going to do on him, one of an occasional series I do on local characters. I found out some interesting stuff.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, I’m afraid I couldn’t reveal that.’

  Then why the hell did you mention it? Amy was tempted to demand. But she restrained herself and said, ‘Are you implying that there was bad blood between Fitz and Ianthe?’

  ‘Something like that, yes.’

  ‘You’ll have to be more specific.’

  ‘Well, I got the impression that there was something Fitz knew about Ianthe that she wanted kept quiet.’

  ‘Did he actually say that?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but he did kind of…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Threaten to make what he knew public.’

  ‘And how did Ianthe react?’

  ‘She said she’d kill him to stop him doing that.’

  Once again Amy was certain that Bob Christie was making up his part as he went along.

  And what was she left with? What admissions had been made? Bob had met Fitz on the afternoon concerned. They had admitted the meeting – or rather Bob had – without undue pain. But thanks to Ben’s documentary footage she already knew that. The second gin at least had been superfluous, maybe the first. What had been discussed at the meeting in the Bridge was, however, anybody’s guess because to put it crudely one of the trio who had supposedly attended, had snuffed it.

  And as for the other witness, Ianthe Berkeley… Amy decided she had heard enough of Bob Christie’s lies.

  ‘I’m afraid, Bob,’ she said calmly, ‘I don’t believe anything of what you’ve just said.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ he asked, affronted.

  ‘I don’t believe that Ianthe Berkeley was present at your meeting with Fitz on Monday afternoon.’

  ‘But of course she was.’

  ‘In fact, I wonder if you’ve ever even met her.’

  ‘What nonsense. How on earth could I know all that stuff I’ve just told you about her?’

  ‘Fitz could have told you. Or you may have met her in the past, you may have discussed the idea of Fitz’s columns in the Clarion being turned into a book, but that meeting didn’t take place on last Monday afternoon.’

  ‘Are you accusing me of lying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How dare you? I’m a journalist!’

  ‘So…?’ Amy asked coolly.

  ‘Journalists are famed for their integrity.’ But the expression on Amy’s face told him she didn’t fall for such gallant protestations. ‘Why don’t you believe me?’

  ‘Because your meeting with Fitz in the Bridge took place between one-thirty and two-ten on Monday afternoon, and Ianthe Berkeley didn’t arrive in Crabwell until about ten o’clock that evening.’

  ‘Well, I… Well, I…’ He was so flustered he couldn’t get his words out.

  ‘So what did you and Fitz actually talk about during that meeting?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you that. As a journalist, I must protect my sources.’

  ‘That’s rubbish. Journalists always get very po-faced and self-righteous about that stuff, but in this case there are no sources involved. You’ve just invented a lot of rubbish, and I want to know why. Your pathetic attempt to put Ianthe in the frame as Fitz’s murderer I treat with the contempt it deserves… though I do ask myself why you put that forward, unless it was to move suspicion away from yourself. Listen, Bob…’ Amy’s steeliness was now quite scary. ‘You had a meeting with Fitz on Monday – there’s no question about that. Fitz is now dead. I want to know what you talked about.’

  ‘And I want you to stop asking these impertinent questions! Bear in mind that you are nothing more than a bar manager. I might be more inclined to co-operate
if the police were to question me in the way you have.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they will,’ said Amy.

  Bob Christie looked slightly shaken by this thought, but he said no more. Instead, downing the last of his Gordon’s and gathering up his coat, he stormed out of the Mess.

  Leaving Amy with a lot of unanswered questions. Like why he had spun out such elaborate lies about his real reason for visiting Fitz? And what was that reason?

  Also, why had he been so keen to implicate Ianthe as the murderer?

  These were the thoughts of Amy, as she sipped what looked like gin in the snug at the Admiral Byng. She was surprised by the amount of tension she felt draining out of her. Bob Christie really was a very creepy man. The blazer, the eye shade, his other sartorial eccentricities. Amy shuddered. And she really wished that his socks had not been mauve. That was one insult to taste too many.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ben Milne was smart enough to keep at a safe distance from the law. His instinctive wariness of police officers (above all those who lurked in unmarked cars on motorway slip roads as he sped past in his sports car) was matched by a deep-rooted distrust of the legal profession. There was nothing personal in this. He’d stayed in touch with several lawyers who were friends from student days, but their tales of professional life did nothing to diminish his prejudices. The criminal defence barrister moaned that everyone he represented was guilty, the personal injury lawyer regarded his whiplash-suffering clients as grasping liars, and the probate specialist only seemed free of the stress that ground down her colleagues because everyone whose estate she administered was dead.

  And as a maker of controversial television documentaries, Ben had encountered more than his fair share of pussyfooting lawyers in the broadcasting companies that employed him: overcautious men and women who would always rather cut the best bits of his footage than take the tiniest risk. No, he didn’t like lawyers.

  Yet into every life a little rain must fall, especially on a Friday evening in March in an English coastal resort. Just about the same time that Amy was welcoming Bob Christie into the Admiral Byng, Ben, taking refuge from the persistent drizzle in a greasy spoon at the end of the village’s meagre parade of shops, mastered his reluctance to speak to a solicitor, and found the number for Griffiths Bentley’s office in Crabwell. At least the man couldn’t charge him for an interview. Perhaps he might even be persuaded to offer a bit of free advice about the validity of the get-out clause in Ben’s contract with Tantalus Television.

  ‘Griffiths Bentley and Company.’ The voice was mournful and masculine, the accent mildly Welsh.

  ‘Could I speak to Mr Bentley, please?’

  ‘May I ask who is calling?’

  ‘My name is Milne.’

  ‘You’re not an existing client.’ A statement, not a question. Although how could a receptionist know the name of every client of the firm?

  ‘No, it’s about… about a new matter.’ Ben had been assured by his personal injury lawyer chum that this phrase equates to Open Sesame when trying to get past the gatekeeper of a solicitors’ firm.

  ‘A new matter?’ The voice definitely sounded a shade less mournful. ‘What particular subject?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s rather sensitive.’

  ‘Please hold.’

  There was a long silence. Evidently Griffiths Bentley and Company didn’t believe in holding music. This was a point in their favour, in Ben’s opinion. He had learned to loathe Eine Kleine Nachtmusik while spending hours waiting for a human being to answer his enquiry about a glitch with his broadband router.

  ‘Griffiths Bentley speaking.’ The voice sounded familiar. Not unlike the receptionist’s, actually, if less obviously Welsh and a shade more melancholic. Perhaps this was a family business. Alternatively – and more probably – a one-man business. ‘Mr Milne? A new matter, I understand.’

  ‘Yes. I wonder if I could come and see you?’

  ‘Well, you’d need to book an appointment, of course. I could probably make some time early next week.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could spare me half an hour right now? I’m only around the corner, here in Crabwell.’

  ‘Right now?’ A shocked pause. ‘It is rather late. I was just about to go home.’

  ‘It is a matter of some importance.’

  ‘What’s the nature of this “matter of some importance”?’

  ‘It’s… personal. I’d much rather discuss it face to face.’

  ‘Personal, you say?’ A pause. ‘I suppose I could fit you in. No more than half an hour, mind. I need to get home.’

  ‘That’s extremely kind. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’

  ‘Very good. May I take your full name, please?’

  ‘Ben Milne.’ Ben’s middle name was Clint – his parents’ first date had involved going to watch a Dirty Harry movie – but he refused to acknowledge it. If the opportunity arose, he might even ask Bentley how easy it was to get rid of the stupid monicker by deed poll.

  ‘Ben Milne?’ A pause. ‘Not the television…?’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Ben said quickly, and cut off the solicitor before he had the chance to remember that he suddenly had a pressing engagement elsewhere.

  The first surprise came when Ben, his extremely useful bag over his shoulder, walked down Market Street, a failing thoroughfare full of charity shops, trying to find number 12A, home to Griffiths Bentley and Company. The business occupied the first floor of a building that was also home to a Chinese takeaway, and adjoined by a bookmaker’s and a shut-down tattoo artist’s parlour. Premises more different from the discreet opulence of Mamba Capital’s headquarters in Berkeley Square would be hard to imagine. Did Bentley fear that ostentatious displays of affluence would deter anyone who deduced that the glitzy atriums, marble floors, and fountains found in so many offices these days were ultimately paid for not by the owners of the business, but by the clients?

  The vertiginous staircase leading to number 12A was covered in linoleum so ancient that it was probably subject to some sort of preservation order. The door at the top of the steps reminded Ben of the entrance to the domain of Spade and Archer in The Maltese Falcon. Judging by the state of the woodwork, the place had last been refurbished around the time that John Huston made the film. He rapped a couple of times, and a man’s voice called, ‘Come in.’

  Ben walked into a waiting room with three empty chairs, a single filing cabinet, and an untenanted desk. The walls were festooned with posters asking questions like Had an Accident? Not Your Fault?, and offering occasional words of cold comfort such as Making a Will Won’t Kill You. A second door on the far side of the room was open, and Ben stepped through it.

  The man behind the desk bore no resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, although Ben recognised his lugubrious cast of features from the film footage he and Amy had checked through. The man clambered to his feet, and extended his hand. Tall, balding, and awkward in his gait, he was probably only a few years older than Ben, but he looked nearer fifty. An air of defeat and disappointment clung to him like cheap aftershave.

  ‘Mr Milne? I’m Griffiths Bentley.’ His handshake was damp. ‘Take a seat.’

  Ben gestured towards the empty desk in the waiting room. ‘Your secretary’s out?’

  ‘She… um… only works part-time.’

  Evidently the solicitor answered incoming phone calls himself. No wonder those voices had sounded similar. ‘You’re a sole practitioner?’

  ‘Indeed. I was in partnership for a while, but it didn’t work out.’ The solicitor cast a sideways glance at a glossy brochure on his desk that bore the name and logo of the Venice–Simplon Orient Express, and clumsily slid a copy of The Crabwell Clarion over it. A photograph of the late Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons beamed out from the front page. ‘I decided to… go niche, as they say. Open a boutique law office.’

  ‘I see.’ Ben wrinkled his nose. The aroma of soy sauce wafting up from downstairs was pungent. Griffiths Bentley kept his overhe
ads down to a minimum. The carpet was shabby, and other than a couple of cabinets, a shelf of books, and a framed certificate just to prove that Bentley was indeed a qualified solicitor, the room was bare. No potted plants, no knick-knacks, no family photographs. ‘You’ve worked in Crabwell for a long time?’

  ‘My whole career. I was born close by, though I spent some of my formative years in Aberdyfi. Now, how can I help you? I don’t have a lot of time. You said the matter was personal.’

  ‘This isn’t a paying job, I’m afraid,’ Ben said, contriving an apologetic smile, while privately rejoicing that he wasn’t about to embark on litigation with the aid of someone whose demeanour was that of a natural-born loser. ‘But yes, it is a personal matter. Not personal to myself, I hasten to add, but in relation to the late Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons.’

  ‘What?’ Bentley’s tone changed in an instant. He sounded wary, and his eyes narrowed. ‘The… Admiral?’

  ‘That’s the fellow. I’m a television journalist, and I came to know him through working on a documentary about his pub.’

  ‘I’ve heard about that.’ Bentley’s expression was sour, and Ben thought it wasn’t because of the smell from the ground floor. ‘And about you, Mr Milne. People say you’re a muckraker.’

  ‘Is there much muck to be raked in Crabwell?’ Ben asked innocently. ‘Other than the litter blowing along the pavements of The Parade, that is?’

  ‘This is a close-knit community,’ the solicitor said. ‘People prefer to keep themselves to themselves. You wouldn’t understand. You come from London.’

  He made it sound as if Ben were an invader from Mars. The temptation to say: I come in peace was hard to resist, but Ben didn’t think the solicitor would believe him, and in any event, it wasn’t really true. The story was the thing, and he was prepared to fight in order to be able to tell whatever story lay behind the death of the Admiral.