Business Unusual (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Oh, Mr Bognor,’ Edna Fothergill simpered. ‘Fancy finding you here. Are you taking part or scoring? And Diana, I rather thought Lionel wasn’t keen on your joining in the “bridge”. Has he relented? What fun! How nice.’

  Bognor was somewhat taken aback by this response. He had anticipated the guilty confusion that he himself had experienced on being caught in semi-flagrante in the sauna. Mens sauna in corpore … no, no, he told himself. Take a grip.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, in the icy tones of a senior Board of Trade investigator, investigating, ‘that the Countess and I are not here to participate or adjudicate.’

  ‘Piggy left a pair of socks behind last time he was in,’ said the Countess. ‘I said I’d drop by and pick them up.’ She smiled.

  ‘I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.’ Nigel Festing put down what looked like gin and tonic and solemnly extended a hand, which, to his mild chagrin, Bognor took and shook. ‘Nigel Festing,’ said Nigel Festing.

  ‘Simon Bognor,’ said Simon.

  There was one of those pauses. Pretty pregnant. Which in the circumstances was understandable.

  ‘I understand,’ said Bognor, ‘that these er … interesting … murals are the work of your grandmother.’

  ‘Oh, how clever of you to spot it,’ said Nigel. ‘Not her usual style, of course. There are some watercolours in the drawing-room which are rather more typical. But she did experiment in the, um, erotic vein. We have some peculiarly fine notebooks of hers at home. Fine, fine work. But a little strong for popular taste.’

  ‘Excuse me just one moment,’ said Edna Fothergill. She simpered again. ‘Must powder my nose.’

  ‘Look,’ said Bognor, when Mrs Fothergill had left, ‘I’m not here to make moral judgements.’

  ‘Oh, quite,’ said Festing. ‘Absolutely. I do so very much agree. Not a moral issue. That’s the whole essence of the Artisan Understanding. With respect, Diana.’

  ‘I’m here on behalf of the Board of Trade.’ Bognor was anxious to retain control of the situation.

  ‘The Great Architect of the Universe would understand that, Mr Bognor.’

  ‘Isn’t that a Masonic phrase?’

  ‘We have some affinity with the Masons,’ said Festing.

  ‘But you’re sexier?’

  A thin smile. ‘So we’ve always thought.’

  ‘Look,’ — Bognor could smile as thin as the next man — ‘I said I don’t want to push the moral thing, but the fact is that you’re really just running a wife-swapping thingy under the pretext of a sort of Rotary Bridge Club.’

  ‘So?’

  This was a stumper. Bognor hadn’t thought it through.

  ‘I have a friend,’ he said, ‘called Molly Mortimer on the Globe. If she knew about this she’d have a field day.’

  ‘So would we. Put up a class silk like “Noisy” Simpson and we’d clean up. We’re not doing anything illegal. I should know. Festing, Festing, Hackett, Festing and Festing have been interpreting the law since the law began. Practically speaking. I am the senior partner. Frankly, what I don’t know about the law isn’t worth knowing.’

  ‘Look,’ Bognor made as if to put his cards on the table, ‘two men have died in the last forty-eight hours. Both were connected with your “bridge” club.’

  ‘So?’ Festing had an obvious capacity for truculence. ‘Poor Reg had a heart attack. Public speaking always had a terror for him. Bang! Woof! Over he keels and dies in the small hours in Scarpington General with the good wife holding his hand. As for “Freddie” Grimaldi, he set fire to a foam-filled piece of upholstery while under the influence. Happens to the best of us. And to the worst, which was him.’

  Bognor decided to get heavy.

  ‘If your clients,’ he said, ‘were to realise that you were given to cavorting about on a golden waterbed with the likes of Edna Fothergill there might be, how shall we say, at least a marginal decline in enthusiasm for your practical advice. And if I were to extend that particular piece of observation I dare say I could blow a sizeable hole in the side of the Scarpington economy. What price Moulton and Bragg’s Old Parsnip if the punters thought it had been brewed by a sex maniac? Who’d buy a Sinclair invalid carriage if they thought the manufacturer was bouncing about on a waterbed in Wedgwood Benn Gardens with the local dairyman’s doxy?’

  ‘The Artisans have been behaving thus for ever,’ said Festing. Very sententious.

  ‘Antiquity will get you nowhere,’ said Bognor. ‘You Scarpingtonians are sex mad, and it won’t do. It really won’t.’

  ‘Nigel,’ — Diana Scarpington’s smile was clearly intended to defuse a situation which was growing ever more awkward — ‘as Simon said, we’re not here to strike moral attitudes. In my case I am simply curious. My husband has never so much as mentioned any of this to me and as a wife I have a natural curiosity. For example, most wives seem to be asked to become members. One can’t help feeling a little left out.’

  ‘I’m afraid, Diana, that divorced wives are unacceptable to Artisans. At least when it comes to carnal knowledge within the Bridge Club.’ He said this with a stiff distaste as if he had a mouth full of prune. ‘The Great Architect is very precise on that point.’

  From downstairs came the sound of speech. It was Edna Fothergill talking into thin air.

  ‘Oh hell,’ said the Countess. ‘Is that silly cow on the phone? I thought “call of nature” meant something quite different.’

  ‘Warning off the other players?’ Bognor did his best to glare at Festing.

  ‘And the umpires, or scorers or whatever?’ Diana Scarpington could look frostier than Bognor. Festing quailed visibly.

  ‘Tant pis,’ she said. ‘Now that we’ve got this nasty little man here we can at least ask some questions.’

  ‘I’m not obliged to say anything. Anything at all.’ Festing had taken on a hunted look. Bognor sensed he was bulliable, but at his most dangerous when physically threatened.

  ‘Look,’ said Bognor. ‘Be reasonable. I’m certainly not here to intrude into private grief. If, as you say, there is nothing illegal in it then you have nothing to hide.’

  ‘That,’ said Festing, ‘is a complete non sequitur.’

  ‘Maybe. I’m not a lawyer.’ Bognor sat on the sofa and sighed. ‘I am simply here to find out what makes the Scarpington business community, er, tick. I’m not in the name-calling business. I am neither a journalist nor a policeman. I am, as I have told you, a Special Investigator for the Board of Trade.’

  ‘That could mean anything.’

  ‘As such,’ — Bognor was not going to respond to cheap lawyer’s gibes — ‘it would help me to know a little more about the activities of the Bridge Section of the Artisans’ Lodge. If only in order to be able to dismiss it from my report. Which, in any case, is an internal government matter and as such confidential. Highly confidential. Which is to say, top secret. Anyone divulging anything in it to a member of the press or the public would go directly to gaol without, as it were, passing “Go”. So your secrets are safe with me. On the other hand, if you choose to be obstructive it is within my compass to make life exceedingly difficult for you. Which I should not like.’ He paused. ‘And nor would you.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Festing took a silver cigarette case from his pocket and lit an unripped Navy Cut.

  ‘Well, for a start, how long has all this been going on?’

  ‘It was an ancestor of her husband’s who started it all. “Black Jack Stranglefield”, the fourth Earl. He was a rake.’

  Bognor, losing concentration momentarily, had a sudden and bizarre horticultural image conjured up for him.

  ‘As in rakehell,’ said Bognor, ‘loose-fish, rip or whoremonger?’

  Festing regarded him with newly awakened curiosity.

  ‘He had more than an eye for the girls. In fact he was said to be the last nobleman in England to exercise the droit de seigneur. He was a Hawcubite and a founder member of the Hellfire Club. When he succeeded his father
as Grand Patron of the Artisans he, well, he made a number of changes.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse, Diana. He introduced a sexual dimension, which as far as I can see from reading between the lines of the old minute books consisted entirely of his having his way with the members’ wives. But in the nineteenth century it got democratised.’

  ‘So,’ said Bognor, ‘that everyone was allowed to have his way with the members’ wives?’

  ‘That’s an exceptionally vulgar way of putting it, Mr Bognor.’

  ‘But true.’

  Festing did not disagree. Edna Fothergill returned to the room. She appeared mildly distrait but sat down on a chair and tried to compose herself. Bognor glanced in her direction and attempted to curl his lip. But without a lot of success.

  ‘And now it’s become competitive.’

  ‘A benefit of Thatcherism,’ said Festing. ‘We’d had enough of the old sixties laissez-faire rubbish. Frankly, the Bridge Section had degenerated into nothing more than a whole lot of people simply sleeping around. So one or two of us got together and completely revitalised it. We gave it a new sense of purpose.’

  ‘A league system.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ A gleam of fanaticism had appeared in the little lawyer’s eyes. ‘It’s just like my squash club. Only you have to have a judging system, so in that sense it’s more like dressage or figure skating. Everyone gets marked out of ten but the rules are all clearly understood. You get points under a whole lot of different headings like enthusiasm and effort and innovation.’

  ‘And politeness,’ said Edna.

  ‘And politeness,’ confirmed Festing. ‘We’re very hot on etiquette and good manners. Pleases and thank yous do matter. So each league is four people.’

  ‘Opposite sexes?’ This from the Countess.

  ‘We have had some trouble from the gay community over this, but at the moment we’re being rigorously conventional. Each league is four, so everyone plays two matches per session and then the winner goes up a division and the loser down.’

  ‘And I dare say you present a cup to the overall champion at the end of the year.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes.’ Festing seemed quite cross at the ironic tone of Bognor’s question.

  ‘And you probably have an annual knock-out competition too?’

  ‘And what’s so funny about that?’ Festing was much affronted. ‘The d’eath-Stranglefield Bridge Cup. Your husband donated it, Diana. It’s a very handsome trophy.’

  ‘Bet he’s never won it,’ said the Countess.

  ‘And all Artisans belong?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘Technically speaking,’ said Festing, ‘an Artisan may opt out. Like being a conscientious objector. But it’s very seldom done. Not the thing. Un-Scarpingtonian. Not Artisan.’

  ‘And you mustn’t think,’ said Edna Fothergill, ‘that any Tom, Dick or Harry can become an Artisan. The entry requirements are extremely stiff.’

  ‘I thought,’ said Bognor, ‘that it was all to do with old boy networks and business proficiency.’

  ‘Dear me, no.’ Edna Fothergill’s expression had taken on an alarming, almost evangelical fervour. ‘Every candidate has to come here to be examined.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Bognor. ‘And who does the examining?’

  Festing chipped in quickly. ‘It would be grossly improper for us to divulge such a thing,’ he said. ‘It would be quite contrary to every conceivable Artisan Understanding, written and unwritten.’

  ‘But Nigel, dear,’ said Edna. ‘It can’t possibly matter to poor Reg and Freddie Grimaldi. They’re both dead.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Game of Two Halves

  THE BOG WAS NOT one of the country’s great football grounds.

  That, however, was very far from being the whole story. In 1893 when Scarpington Thursday first joined the league and the Crankover Colliery was in full production and the antimacassar factory had not gone bust and the Etna match factory had not burned down and when Sinclair’s and Moulton’s employed more men than machines, then tens of thousands had crammed into the Bog to see Thursday play the likes of Preston North End and Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers. They had stood at the Sludgelode End in their flat caps and shapeless coats and they had understood the game and appreciated its finer points and even applauded the opposition. If you believed old men in their cups, some of them had even worn clogs.

  Men had been men then. The early managers of Scarpington Thursday had only to go to the mine and whistle, and up came another of the burly, baggy-shorted, Brylcreem-slicked centre forwards for whom the team was famous. Men like ‘Slogger’ Harris or ‘Titch’ Nisbome or Alf Hattersley, the man they called ‘the Wizard’. Scarpington Thursday had been a name to conjure with in those days. They had gone to Wembley. Scarpington men had played for England. Wherever a Scarpington man travelled in the civilised world strangers would nod respectfully when the town was mentioned and they would say ‘Ah, Scarpington Thursday!’ with a voice full of something not far short of awe.

  Then the lean times had come to the town and to the club. Thursday plummeted downwards until one dreadful season when they finished at the very bottom of Division Three North. The old stands mouldered and festered and crumbled and rotted and rusted until the one at the Sludgelode End was condemned as unsafe and had to be demolished, leaving only an empty uncovered terrace of concrete steps. The huge crowds drifted away and went to bingo instead. Or stayed at home to watch the telly. Those few who did come only came for the fighting and the drinking and the being sick and the chanting of ‘Out, out, out’ at the board of directors, presided over for too many years by Nigel Festing’s father, the late and unlamented Alderman Festing.

  And finally there had been a revolution, not unlike that which overtook the Bridge Section of the Artisans. Out went fusty, crusty old Festing and his musty board and in came thrusting, dynamic, trendy, cigar-smoking, velvet-collared, entrepreneurial, Thatcherite, you’ve guessed it, Sir Seymour Puce. A stealthy buying of the old farthing shares, a vulpine swoop at the AGM, a couple of well-concealed and tellingly aimed stabs in the back and the deed was done.

  That was five years ago. Since then there had been three new managers and a number of expensive and not wholly unsuccessful signings of players. The team had risen. Not all that far, and not as far as Sir Seymour would have wished, but it had risen. There had been ugly rumours that he was to sell the Bog for an office development. Harold Fothergill, in an uncharacteristic fit of insubordination, had run a Times campaign and had thousands of ‘Save the Bog!’ car stickers printed. The scheme had been quietly shelved and Sir Seymour had, instead, devoted his energies and money into turning the Bog into ‘the finest stadium in the land’ with a ‘brand new leisure complex’ and ‘Megastore’ on the waste land behind the Sludgelode End stand, now rebuilt and named, in an ironic tribute, ‘The Alderman Festing Stand’. It was actually a cheapskate effort and used mainly by visiting fans. The smart stand, the one with the directors’ box and the ‘corporate entertainment’ boxes occupied by companies like Sinclair’s and Moulton and Bragg, was what had once been the ‘East’ Stand and was now, of course, ‘The Puce’.

  It was at the private directors’ entrance to this magnificent monument of glass and concrete that Bognor’s taxi dropped him half an hour before the kick-off against Lokomotiv Frankfurt.

  His head was still spinning, partly from the effects of lunch, following on the disasters of the previous day and partly from the enormity of the revelations at The Laurels. They bothered him. Part of his botherment was sheer shock. He simply had not expected to find such a thing happening in middle England. He remembered a school history master returning from jury service with scandalous tales of incest and perversion in rural Dorset, but at the time he had discounted them as the product of a fevered imagination and a desire to shock or titillate small boys. He knew from his occasional furtive glimpses of the tabloid press and from page three of the Daily Telegrap
h that naughty things did go on behind the curtains of apparently respectable homes, but he always supposed that they were exceptional and that chastity or at least a decently abstemious monogamy such as that practised by himself and his own dear wife was the rule. And now this. He regarded himself as a man of the world who had knocked about and seen a thing or two and was no saint himself, but even so he had to admit that, to his surprise, he was, well, in a word, shocked. It was the only word for it.

  He knew that he must dismiss the notion immediately. It was no part of his job to be upset by such things. ‘Shock’ should simply not be a word in the Board of Trade lexicon. Nevertheless he had to confess that try as he might the shock lurked. It was a nuisance and he must do his best to ignore it, but it could only fog his otherwise clear vision and penetrating analytical powers. That and the Old Parsnip.

  The trouble was that he was finding it difficult to decide on its relevance. Was the private life of the Artisan members and their wives relevant to his professional enquiries? There was, after all, a right to privacy. Or should be. But could an entire business community be said to have a private life or to enjoy the privilege of avoiding the inquisitorial searchlight of a government investigator? He rather thought not. If this was how middle England behaved, then the people had a right to know. Well, Parkinson had a right to know, which was perhaps not quite the same thing. It would have to go into his report. He had no alternative.

  Then there was the question of the deaths. What of them? Was the odious little Festing creature correct in saying that there was no connection between this amateur vice ring and the sudden demise of two of its leading arbitrators? Well, maybe. Wartnaby had said nothing about the post-mortem on Brackett, so Bognor could not yet say whether it had been natural causes or not. It would be next to impossible to prove that the Grimaldi business was not a case of auto-combustion. And if the Chief Constable really was in the Artisan pocket, as Wartnaby suggested, then there wasn’t a chance in hell.