Business Unusual (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  Business Unusual

  A Simon Bognor Mystery

  Tim Heald

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One: The Bognors and Business

  Chapter Two: The Bognors at Breakfast

  Chapter Three: Face to Face with the Pilot

  Chapter Four: An English Countess goes upon the Stage

  Chapter Five: Not a Tremendously Good Show

  Chapter Six: ‘Beer drinking don’t do half the harm of lovemaking’ (Eden Phillpotts)

  Chapter Seven: A Game of Two Halves

  Chapter Eight: ‘If you don’t go to other men’s funerals, they won’t go to yours’

  Chapter Nine: ‘A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her’

  Chapter Ten: ‘An answer is always a form of death’ (John Fowles, The Magus)

  PROLOGUE

  ‘FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE Scarpington Artisans’ Lodge, Your Graces, My Lord, ladies and gentlemen …’ Reg Brackett, MBE (for community services), picked nervously at his chain of office and flashed his dentures at the assembled company. One hundred and seventy-three souls were crammed into the King Alfred the Great Banqueting Room at the three-star Talbot Hotel, flagship of the Jolly Trencherman chain, owned by Scarpington’s most successful son, Sir Seymour Puce, MP for the city, who was seated on the left of the Countess of Scarpington herself. Black-tied Artisans and their wives were augmented by the great and good of Scarpington and District. The Earl of Scarpington, Grand Patron of the Lodge, was guest of honour and would speak next. The Bishop of Scarpington had said the traditional Artisans’ Grace (‘For these thy gifts, the fruits of thy mercy and of our dutiful toil and labour, we thank thee, Lord’) and they had all scoffed their way through the Fruit Cocktail Artisan, the Baron of Beef Scarpington and the Coupe Talbot.

  Now the nose-powdering break was over, the port was on the table and this year’s President of the Artisans was on his feet. It was not so much that Reg was unaccustomed to public speaking, more that he didn’t seem to be able to get the hang of it. He had raided hundreds of Gyles Brandreth joke books, knew every Englishman, Scotsman, Irishman and Welshman story in the world and could even manage sexy racism — though he tended to keep that for stag nights. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, his after-dinner speeches were literally stunning.

  All round the King Alfred Room men and women looked duly stunned. The strong drinks before dinner coupled with the Blue Nun and the Nuits-St-Georges had a lot to do with this, but so did Reg. As Chairman and Chief Executive of Bracketts Laundry and Dry Cleaning Services (Est. 1936) Reg was a force in the land. Had he not been a force in the land he would not, naturally, have been President of the Artisans. The Artisans of Scarpington were to the Masons or the Rotary as the Brigade of Guards to the Pioneer Corps. They were an elite. Of course Scarpington had its Round Table and its Guild of Scarpington Men, but they were as New Zealand Cheddar to Stilton. Membership of the Scarpington Artisans’ Lodge was what all good burghers of Scarpington wished for themselves. To be an Artisan was to have arrived. They were, paradoxically, the salt of Scarpington and its cream as well.

  All along the top table sat the predecessors of President Brackett. Brown of Brown’s Dairy; Green of Green and Green, Builders Merchants; Sinclair of Sinclair’s who made custom-built invalid carriages and had once held the warrant for the Royal House of Iraq; Festing of Festing, Festing, Hackett, Festing and Festing, the top solicitors in town; Moulton of Moulton and Bragg, the brewers of Scarpington Special; Fothergill, owner and proprietor of the Scarpington Times (incorporating the Scarpington Clarion and Faringay Echo).

  They were all there with their wives; all plump with dinner and self-importance; all nodding off quietly almost in time to Brackett’s post-prandial drone.

  As the speech wore on, it seemed to those very few who were paying close attention that Reg’s speech was becoming more than usually slurred and his delivery more than usually faltering. He told the story about the Englishman, the Scotsman and the Irishman on the desert island with even less than his customary panache.

  ‘So the Englishman says to the genie, “Take me back to Blighty”; and the genie claps his hands and the Englishman vanishes.’ The Earl of Scarpington’s head fell on to his chest and he breathed very heavily for a moment before shaking himself awake like an ancient Sealyham coming in from the rain. ‘And the Scotsman says to the genie, “Take me back to Glasgie”; and the genie claps his hands and the Scotsman vanishes.’

  Brown glanced at Green and winked; Fothergill looked at Festing and raised an eyebrow; Sinclair stifled a yawn.

  Reg Brackett’s voice was beginning to sound like an old gramophone record fast running down.

  ‘And finally,’ he said, ‘the genie asks the Irishman for his wish and the Irishman says …’

  Almost everyone present had heard Reg tell the story at the Scarpington Scarecrows Cricket Club Annual Dinner and Dance in this very room less than a month earlier, so they all knew what the Irishman’s wish was. But this time the wish was never articulated for just as Reg was about to tell everyone what it was his eyes, which had almost shut, suddenly opened very wide and revolved briefly. There was a momentary gargling sound and he fell forward with startling rapidity, smashing a port glass with his forehead and ending face down on the table where he lay quite still.

  He was, of course, extremely dead.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Bognors and Business

  IT DID NOT SEEM a good idea, even at the time.

  ‘The business of the Board of Trade, Bognor, is “trade”,’ said Parkinson at their weekly meeting. His boss glowered out from beneath the reproduction of Annigoni’s portrait of the Queen, looking, thought Bognor, sadly frayed at the edges. A lifetime of civil service was poor preparation for a fulfilling retirement, and Parkinson, now in his early sixties, was beginning to look as if he might not even make it. Bognor guessed that it was only the prospect of some sort of valedictory gong that was keeping him in harness. Parkinson OBE. The Officers of the Order of the British Empire ranked immediately below Members of the Fourth Class of the Royal Victorian Order and two above the eldest sons of the younger sons of peers. Bognor knew this because he had been told by his wife’s great-aunt Celia many years before. The information had stuck in the irritating way that worthless information so often did. Bognor smiled at the idea of old Parky ranking above the eldest sons of the younger sons of peers. The thought that OBE was traditionally supposed to stand for ‘Other Buggers’ Efforts’ and that in this instance he was the principal ‘other bugger’ widened the smile. Parkinson, not pleased, tried to wipe it smartly from Bognor’s face.

  ‘It may seem funny to you, sunshine,’ he said, ‘but it’s life and death to most of us. Britain is a nation of grocers, and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘Shopkeepers, actually,’ said Bognor mildly, ‘or, to quote with precision, “boutiquiers”. Only I don’t think Napoleon meant “boutique” in the modem sense, there being no. Carnaby Street in his day. Or not in the sense that we understand it.’

  Parkinson’s pencil, with which he had been jabbing his blotter, snapped, and he swore.

  ‘Don’t try on that sort of smart-alec pseudo-intellectualism with me, Bognor,’ he said. ‘You may not have noticed, but this country has returned to good old-fashioned Victorian values. That’s what Thatcher’s about.’

  ‘Grocering,’ said Bognor. ‘God made the wicked grocer … that’s what Thatcher’s about. Poisoning us all with cut-price corned beef.’

  Parkinson thrust his ruined pencil into the blotter, rose to his feet and told Bognor not to be silly.
Then, making a severe effort to appear reasonable and efficient in the manner expected of a senior Board of Trade person hanging on for a middle-range medal on retirement, he said, ‘The fact of the matter is, Bognor, that we don’t know enough about … well, about a place like, well …’ he stabbed at the map of England alongside the Annigoni print, ‘places like … Scarpington.’

  Long pause. Very long pause, deepening into very long pause indeed, and fast shading into a silence of genuine incomprehension.

  Finally Bognor broke it in the only way he could think of — a trick he had heard was often employed by royalty when flummoxed. Prince Philip, he understood, on being introduced to, let us say, an orthodontist, will ask ‘What do you do?’ The orthodontist will reply, ‘I am an orthodontist’ to which Prince Philip will say, ‘Ah, an orthodontist’, thus delivering what rugby players call a ‘hospital pass’ straight back to the orthodontist.

  ‘Scarpington,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Scarpington,’ said Parkinson and they glared at each other.

  It was Parkinson who capitulated. His fuse was shortening in old age.

  ‘Scarpington’, he said, ‘is middle England. It’s what politicians talk about and newspapers write about, but no MP ever goes there and nor does any journalist unless there’s a particularly juicy murder. It’s unfashionable but it’s vital. It’s as unknown to your average Whitehall mandarin as the rain forest of Cameroon or the Kalahari Desert. It’s a vote-winner; it’s a bread-winner; it’s what this country is all about. But no one down here in the corridors of power even begins to understand it. It’s deeply unfashionable and hideously boring and they’ve not heard of Australian Chardonnay or late Picasso. It’s a dump, Bognor. Not your sort of place at all. But it’s where most of the God-forsaken people in this God-forsaken country live and breathe and sweat and toil and provide the prosperity that allows the privileged few to take three-hour lunches and a long weekend. Our masters, Bognor, need to know more about this place and, as a first step, they have decided, in their infinite wisdom, to send you there. To Scarpington, which is the most middling place in the whole of middle England. You are going to Scarpington and you are not coming back until you can tell us what makes it tick. You may take your wife.’

  There was no arguing with this and Bognor knew it. Such lyricism only took Parkinson once every year, usually, he had observed, at about the time of the summer solstice. When it descended upon him like the gift of tongues it was best not to argue.

  Bognor, of course, had no experience of Scarpington nor of those myriad places like it. As far as he was concerned, no one went there and no one came from there. It was a blank on the map, a no-man’s-land in every sense of the word. A thought suddenly struck him. There had been a man at Oxford, Teddy Hall, he rather thought, a secretary or treasurer of the University Gastronomes, who, on being asked, as one always was, where one had been at school, replied, ‘Er … Scarpington, actually.’ He had been very dim.

  ‘Pack your bags, my sweet,’ he said that evening to his long-suffering spouse. ‘We’re off to Scarpington. For a stay of indefinite duration.’

  ‘You what?’ Monica’s mouth puckered.

  ‘Scarpington.’

  ‘I heard you. Mediaeval minster, minor public school; undistinguished stately home; light industry, some antiquated, some state of the art; perfect example of the England nobody knows about but everybody cites as a vital reference; there’s a particularly good Saxon archway at a church called, I think, St Botolph-without-the-wall; and Pevsner was moderately keen on the town hall; conservative with big and small “c”.’

  Bognor’s eyes widened. He poured himself a more than usually stiff Scotch.

  ‘Have you been talking to Parkinson?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Monica had a good line in scorn even when she was only demonstrating an above-average expertise in a peculiarly English variant of Trivial Pursuit.

  ‘But how do you know so much about it?’

  ‘It’s the sort of thing one knows. And yes, please, I’d like a drink too.’

  He poured her one. Not quite as stiff as his.

  ‘To be fair,’ she said, ‘some cousins of my mother came from somewhere near there. He was a country vicar in some benighted coal-mining community not far away. They talked about Scarpington as if it was the Great Wen.’

  ‘Ah.’ Bognor was relieved. His wife’s ability to know more than he did about so many things was a source of perpetual irritation, and it was some solace to find that in this particular instance she had, in effect, been cheating.

  ‘There seems,’ he said, ‘to be a widely held view that Scarpington is one of those places where “real” people come from.’

  ‘That sounds like politician’s-speak.’ Monica grinned. ‘We’re talking about the “silent majority”, are we not? People who vote in elections and are canvassed in opinion polls.’

  ‘Probably. Only this time it’s being tarted up as the economic heart of the nation. The theory is that the country’s wealth does not derive from North Sea Oil or boardroom intrigue or even new City spivvery but from thrift and graft in places like Scarpington.’

  Monica smiled more widely, showing strong, irregular, equine teeth. ‘The Grantham Grocer theory of economics.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And you are to produce a Board of Trade memorandum demonstrating how it works in practice.’

  ‘In a nutshell.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Monica, ‘I think you’d better take me out for a decent meal. As Edwina Currie keeps telling us, there’s nothing to eat north of the Trent except for chip butties.’

  Thus it was that the Bognors came to Scarpington. For Bognor it was just part of life’s poor hearthrug. Since he had first inadvertently wandered into the Special Investigations Department of the Board of Trade all those long long years ago after the ridiculous muddle at the University Appointments Board, he had often thought of escaping. But he had been too lazy. Of course he was stuck in a rut, as Monica and his cousins and aunts and friends and contemporaries all told him. And what, pray, was so wrong in that? Looking round at the world of the middle-aged, which was where he now found himself, he reckoned he was very privileged to have a rut in which to be stuck. There were worse places to be. He had a roof over his head; a modest expense account; a pension scheme, index linked. There was even the possibility of early retirement before too terribly long.

  Looking back on the water that had flowed under his particular bridge he had to admit that it had been a bit of a trickle, that the early promise had not really been fulfilled. But what promise, one had to ask oneself? Had there been any genuine promise? A poem in the college magazine. A place at Oxford. A less than dazzling performance as Cornwall in Lear (‘Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now?’). One or two moderate school reports. It did not add up to a tremendously exciting promise, and if one were absolutely honest one had to admit that the only person who had even momentarily thought that he was going to become rich and famous was his dear mother, and even she was never truly convinced.

  Bognor sighed. He really shouldn’t have let himself go quite so badly to seed. He should never have given up exercise, though if he was honest with himself he had to admit that there had never really been any exercise to give up. And in his mid-forties, carrying at least two stone too much weight and smoking cheroots and drinking alcohol the way he did it would be folly to turn to exercise now. Certain disaster. Jogging kills. He knew it. And really it was too late to give up smoking and drinking. The withdrawal would undoubtedly lead to stress which would damage the heart. Much better carry on as he was, even though it would be nice not to … well, Monica was right. He did ‘wobble’ rather these days and if he wore trousers and a belt the effect was ‘unedifying’ though it was not kind of Monica to put it quite like that. There was no point in trying to look younger than one’s age and if a chap was middle-aged a chap should accept it and grow middle-aged gracefully. Gracefully was the wrong adverb. Redundant, though,
like most adverbs. It was Graham Greene who made such a fetish of adverbs. He had read that in an interview recently. At least he still read quite a bit. He might be a bit sluggish physically but his mind was still rippling with muscle. It made one surprisingly attractive to women still. It was interesting to find how intelligent, mature women were attracted by a good mind.

  Like Monica. Monica was middle-aged too, but it suited her. Those horsy looks which had made her seem gangling and clumsy as a young woman, all knees and elbows, were positively elegant now that she had just turned forty. There was a little grey at the temples which she refused to tamper with and she had interesting lines at the mouth and the corners of her eyes. They imparted character and it was character that had always been her strong point. He was very lucky to have Monica. She was a chum.

  He was reflecting thus, in an uncharacteristic way, self-analysis and introspection not being particular foibles of his, when Reg Brackett keeled over into his port.

  For a moment there was a silence, a lack of noise as 173 people seemed to hold their breath, which was positively eerie. Then the moment was past, there was a general exhalation and a rhubarbing hubbub of chatter, through which the voice of Sir Seymour Puce cut like a spoon through the Coupe Talbot.

  ‘A doctor,’ he shouted, with the authority of a man born to rule. ‘A doctor. Doctor Dick, Doctor Dick, come to the top table at once.’

  From somewhere well below the salt a small, bald, freckle-faced person started to push his way through the assembled diners.

  Bognor glanced across at his wife who was sitting on the other side of his table two places down. They exchanged looks which could not have been interpreted by an outsider but which said, in unison, ‘Oh God, here we go again.’

  They had only been in Scarpington for three days, yet here already was the first corpse. Both knew, intuitively, that Reg Brackett was already a stiff. It happened too too terribly often. An ordinary routine enquiry in an ordinary routine sort of place and then quite without warning and totally against the run of play someone died. In this particular instance it looked like a common or garden thrombosis brought on by an excess of food, drink and after-dinner speechifying. Oddly enough, Bognor had made a tour of Bracketts Laundry and Dry Cleaning Services that very afternoon, personally conducted by the President of Artisans himself. Bognor had thought then that Reg had seemed oddly jumpy, but he had put it down to pre-dinner nerves. The Artisans’ dinner was a grand affair and daunting for a laundryman and dry cleaner no matter how eminent.