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  POISON AT THE PUEBLO *

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  * available from Severn House

  POISON AT THE PUEBLO

  A Simon Bognor Mystery

  Tim Heald

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2011

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2011 by Tim Heald.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Heald, Tim.

  Poison at the Pueblo. – (Simon Bognor mysteries)

  1. Bognor, Simon (Fictitious character) – Fiction.

  2. Government investigators – Fiction. 3. Poisoning –

  Fiction. 4. Salamanca (Spain) – Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9´14-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-170-5 (ePub)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-010-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-516-9 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being

  described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this

  publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons

  is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  As a virtual monoglot I would like to dedicate this to my multilingual family and friends with admiration, despair and envy.

  ONE

  Jimmy Trubshawe was into mushrooms.

  Jimmy Trubshawe was not his real name, and the mushrooms he contemplated that evening in the mountains west of Salamanca were not mushrooms in the accepted sense.

  ‘Bloody good-looking fungi,’ he said, wrinkling his nose over the bowl of risotto. Risotto was the wrong word as they were in Spain not Italy. Arroz probably came into it somewhere or other. Despite the fact that he had been a more or less full-time resident in Spain for the best part of five years, he only had about half a dozen words of the lingo. ‘Why faff around?’ he asked anyone who was interested. He could watch Man U on Sky Sports, the credit card machine spoke English and so did the locals, especially if you talked at them loudly and not too fast.

  The other three at his table also looked enthusiastically at their identical platefuls. The rice was moist and glistening; the mushrooms rich, brown and abundant; the whole sprinkled with emerald-green parsley. Simplicity itself, and none the worse for that. A stone jug of local red wine stood in the middle of the table. All four glasses of the stuff were full of it too.

  Pablo raised his glass to his nostrils and sniffed absent-mindedly, ‘The bouquet is, how you say, erm, h’unremarkable’. The ‘h’ he planted before the ‘u’ of ‘unremarkable’ came from the back of his throat.

  ‘Unremarkable,’ said Trubshawe. ‘There’s no “h” at the beginning.’ He shovelled more rice and fungi into his mouth and slurped some red country wine in afterwards, fresh from the earthenware jug. All four ate in silence until they had finished, wiping their plates clean with the rough country bread that had been placed casually in the local peasant baskets, which were probably flown in from Harvey Nicks but still had an authentic, earthy appearance.

  The man who claimed to be Trubshawe, but wasn’t, burped aggressively, almost daring the other three to be decorous. It was an English burp, he told himself. Rich, sonorous, un-Hispanic. The burp was a lesson in itself.

  ‘Bloody good,’ he said. ‘Bloody good mushrooms. Bloody good rice. Bloody good sauce. Know what I mean? Bloody good.’

  The other three said nothing, but looked. The looks spoke volumes; some louder than others.

  The next course was plain. A grilled veal cutlet with a drizzle of oil and a splatter of garlic; chips chiselled from real local potatoes and deep fried in oil. That was all. Halfway through, the man who called himself Jimmy Trubshawe pushed his plate away from himself and took a slug of the earthy Tempranillo in his tumbler.

  ‘Bloody good,’ he said, mopping his mouth with a linen napkin, ‘but I’ve had enough. Had enough.’

  He smiled at the others, put the napkin on his side plate and dabbed his forehead with the palm of his right hand. He was sweating even though the room was cool. As he got to his feet he stumbled slightly and swore. By the door he stumbled again slightly and fumbled as he grasped the handle. Then he was gone, leaving silence behind him.

  The other three at Trubshawe’s table were Pablo Calderon, Felipe de los Angeles and Colin Smith, whose real name was almost certainly not Smith, and probably not Colin, but who seemed to be fluent in English and probably came from somewhere in the British Isles – though his accent might have seemed just a shade too cultured and his grammar and syntax too perfect, as if he had learned the language from the book or perhaps at a language school run by retired majors. Or possibly he had studied at an elocution school run by the same retired majors. It came to much the same thing, meaning that the voice, like the person, was too good to be true, too perfect to be entirely convincing. He and it came from somewhere else.

  Pablo and Felipe were probably as Spanish as Colin Smith was English. The former worked at the great oil refinery in La Coruna and the latter at a large sausage factory in the suburbs of Madrid. They spoke English because speaking only in English was the be-all and end-all of life in the Community. ‘Community’ was the English word for what was almost a community in the religious or monastic sense, and which combined a secluded, introverted, closed society with an exercise in English sociocultural imperialism. The English spoken by the Spaniards who made up half the Community’s members was not always fluent, or even coherent, but it was the only tongue tolerated. No Spanish in the Community. This was not an ex-pat community with Anglophile camp-followers but a sophisticated form of English teaching by immersion with natives. It worked and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

  ‘He didn’t look too hot.’ The man calling himself Colin Smith took a considered mouthful of Tempranillo. ‘Proper peaky.’

  ‘Peaky?’ repeated Felipe.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Colin. ‘Slang. Not very well.’

  ‘Heel,’ said Pablo. ‘Colin believes that our friend Trubshawe is heel.’

  ‘Ill,’ said Colin, ‘Ill. No “h”. And you pronounce it with a short sharp “i” not a long drawn-out “ee” – “ill”. I thought Trubbers was looking peaky, seedy. Ill. Not “heel”. Ill.’

  The two Spaniards nodded. They were
both far more sophisticated, intelligent and well-educated than either Trubshawe or Smith, and they much disliked being condescended to because they were not native English speakers. But needs must. English had become the lingua franca de nos jours and they had to learn to speak it fluently.

  ‘Poor Himmy,’ said Pablo, and Colin did not tell him that Jimmy began with a ‘J’ not an ‘H’. Instead, he had more wine and silently wished he was back on his Costa having a pint of Doom in the Dead Duck.

  ‘May I join you?’ asked a suave olive-skinned man with a narrow matinee-idol moustache, slicked crinkly black hair, a blazer and espadrilles. He looked Spanish but talked English. He was Ernesto. Master of Ceremonies. Spanish father, English mother. Had spent much of his childhood in Eastbourne where he went to school.

  ‘Trubshawe not well?’ he enquired in well-modulated lounge-lizard of a mildly dated style.

  ‘Quite unwell, I should say.’ Colin pulled a face. ‘Positively ill, in fact. Wouldn’t you agree, chaps?’

  The two Spaniards nodded, not risking their imperfect English in front of the MC.

  ‘You and Mr Trubshawe are friends?’ said Ernesto in a sentence which should have been a statement but carried an interrogatory intonation. It was too advanced a concept for Pablo and Felipe.

  ‘I wouldn’t say “friends”,’ said Colin. ‘More like “acquaintances”. We knew each other, yes, but I wouldn’t say we were exactly “friends”.’

  Ernesto smiled at his compatriots. ‘You understand the difference between a friend and an acquaintance. A friend is a friend, and if you are a friend you have affection for each other. But if you are just an acquaintance you may be an enemy. It is possible for an acquaintance to have bad feelings about his acquaintance. That is not possible for a friend. You understand?’

  He smiled again. Pablo and Felipe bowed their hands and smiled a complicit smile. A waiter came and set down a saucer of wobbly yellow and brown flan in each place. Pudding in the Community was always flan, or a thinly disguised imitation. Puddings here were a 101 ways with egg and milk; custard with a hint of cinnamon or vanilla; occasionally a pastry crust or a sugary brown sauce, as in crème caramel or honey from local bees. Latin: flado; Old French: flaon; Middle English: flaton or flawn. There was a recipe for an ancient Roman version in Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa’s book. Now, however, ‘flan’ was the national dish of Spain, and, even though English was the mandatory language, it was, in the Community, a case of flan yesterday, flan tomorrow and flan today, but not, this time, for Trubshawe, who was keen on the dish and had even been known to ask for a second helping.

  Ernesto took a small spoonful and moved the helping around his mouth like an oenophile tasting wine. After he swallowed he exhaled lightly and smiled with satisfaction.

  ‘You must listen to the way Jimmy speaks English,’ he said. ‘He speaks English like a native. Colin also. Listen to the words they use and do the same. Then you will be a credit to the Community.’

  They all took spoonfuls of flan.

  ‘You have flan in England, Colin?’ enquired Ernesto.

  ‘Um,’ said Colin, who was not really into food, but ate primarily to stay alive. He was a meat and two veg man. Or frozen pizza. Maybe vindaloo. ‘Jimmy’s more of a gastro-bloke,’ he said. ‘Not really my scene.’

  The Spaniards looked quizzical.

  ‘Himmy a gastro-bloke.’ said Pablo and laughed. Felipe joined him and they finished their flan without speaking any more. Afterwards they retreated to the lounge and drank short strong coffees before retreating for a siesta, followed by the usual walks through the woods. On each of these a Spaniard was supposed to walk and talk with an ‘Anglo’. The language spoken was, as always, English. This was immersion. The participants talked about their partners, about sex, about politics, food, drink, motor cars, football. Two blokes together tended to have more blokeish conversations. Girls did girls’ stuff – children, fashion, diets. Men and women together compromised uneasily.

  Felipe was supposed to be enjoying an hour’s conversation with Jimmy Trubshawe but Trubshawe failed to materialize.

  ‘No Himmy,’ he said to Ernesto, who was standing behind the bar counter ticking off names on a clipboard.

  Ernesto told him to wait a minute. Trubshawe was not noted for his punctuality. He was nearly always late for conversation pieces, or charades, or simulated conference calls; seldom for meals. He was a trencherman, if not in reality a gastro-anything much. Ernesto went on ticking off names and dispatching couples into the woods. When he had done he glanced up at the clock.

  ‘I’ll call his room,’ he said and pressed buttons. Felipe could hear the electronic ringing of a phone through the headset. There was no reply and eventually Ernesto replaced the receiver and stroked his chin.

  ‘We must go look,’ he said. ‘You come too. Perhaps Mr Trubshawe is sick.’

  ‘Heel,’ said Felipe, and followed the Master of Ceremonies outdoors and down the tarmac path towards Mr Trubshawe’s chalet. When Ernesto knocked loudly on the door there was no response from within. The little log cabin had an alpine feel to it, with a steep roof and shutters. The prevailing aura was one of snugness, of coolth in hot summer months and warmth in the winter cold. Technically there was no such word as ‘coolth’, but where there was warmth there ought to be ‘coolth’; pace Oxford which Bognor invariably cited as the ultimate arbiter except when, as now, he disagreed. Logic and linguistics may not always go together but perhaps they should. Today, at the turn of the seasons, it was like the Lacedaemonians of the New Testament and neither hot nor cold. Nevertheless both men shivered slightly as Ernesto slipped a master key into the lock.

  The drawing room was empty, but the door to the small bedroom immediately off it was open. The two men walked briskly towards it, neither saying a thing, but both experiencing the same premonitions.

  At the entrance to the sleeping quarters they both paused for a moment, Ernesto in front and Felipe close behind.

  On the bed the man who called himself Trubshawe lay flat on his back, clad only in a pair of floppy Hawaiian-style boxer shorts and a pair of white ankle socks. The sparse hair on his chest was white, the equally sparse hair on the top of his head was uncharacteristically awry, and his face seemed more than usually purple.

  He was, of course, extremely dead.

  TWO

  The knighthood came as a shock.

  The first Bognor knew about it was a letter from 10 Downing Street. It began in handwriting with ‘My dear Simon’ and signed off ‘Yours ever, Gavin’.

  Despite a lot of walking up and down and cogitating he had no recollection of ever having met the Prime Minister in this or any other life. Either Gavin had got the wrong Simon, or the wrong Bognor, or the wrong end of the stick. Or this was a fiendish Machiavellian stratagem of the kind for which politicians were notorious. Bognor was a committed cock-up man rather than conspiracy theorist, though life had taught him that it was full of surprises.

  As so often at moments such as this he rang his wife.

  ‘Monica, darling,’ he said, ‘I’ve had the oddest letter.’ Despite the fact that he suspected he was being bugged on a regular basis due to his position as Head of Special Investigations at the Board of Trade he read it out to her.

  There was a long pause.

  ‘That’s real,’ she said, at last. ‘Even a consummate parodist couldn’t capture the cloying conspiratorial tone of the people’s prime minister quite like that. Craig Brown could give it a whirl in the Eye but he would go over the top and be shot down in smoke. That’s pure Gavin with just a twist of Gina. The real McCoy. Take it. Say “yes”.’

  ‘You reckon?’ Bognor was unsure. ‘You’d be Lady Bognor.’

  ‘I can live with that. I won’t be Lady Bognor to our friends. Just in shops. And at Number Ten, of course. “Lady Bognor always dines in her tiara. Lady Bognor this, Lady Bognor that.” People will loathe it, I can’t wait.’

  Bognor thought for a moment. ‘You’ll always be Monic
a to me,’ he said, eventually.

  ‘Au contraire my petit choux,’ she said. ‘I shall expect to be Lady Bognor to you, of all people. In public and private. Especially private.’

  ‘Thus,’ said Bognor, ‘“I’m turning in, Lady Bognor. Mine’s a Horlicks.”’

  ‘Something like that,’ she said, ‘and I’ll often call you Sir Simon. I shall enjoy it. Particularly the expression on the faces of certain third parties.’

  At just that moment Bognor’s aide, Harvey Contractor, shimmered into his presence in his inimitably Jeevesian way. Contractor was very young, very bright and was on secondment from elsewhere in Whitehall. He had a first in semiotics from the University of Wessex. Well, he would, wouldn’t he, thought his boss morosely. He had only the barest notion of what semiotics were and knew nothing whatever about the University of Wessex. Bognor, ever paranoid, believed that Contractor had been sent to spy on him on account of his regularly long lunches and generally incorrect behaviour. It was his belief that there was a large government department devoted entirely to this sort of semi-secret monitoring, but he had been unable, hitherto, to prove it. On the other hand he was prepared to concede that the younger man had been put in place to keep him informed about a modern world with which he was increasingly unfamiliar. He liked Contractor, was impressed by him, but was gravely suspicious.

  ‘I’d better go,’ he said to his wife on the telephone, ‘something’s just come up.’

  ‘Meaning Harvey Contractor,’ said the about-to-be Lady Bognor, sounding mildly huffy. She wasn’t stupid.

  ‘Up to a point,’ replied her husband, who, despite what some people thought and said, wasn’t stupid either. He put the phone down.

  ‘How does “Sir” Simon grab you?’ he asked Contractor.

  The aide looked sceptical.

  ‘I’m not up for grabs,’ he said, ‘but I concede that “Sir” Simon has a certain resonance to it. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because,’ said Bognor, trying to keep a note of truculent triumph out of his voice, ‘I’ve just had a note from Number Ten telling me that they’d like to elevate me to the knighthood.’